by Maeve Binchy
Father listened impassively as Elizabeth explained about Mother’s illness. He shook his head when it was suggested that the whole thing had begun long ago and had only come to the surface now.
‘There was absolutely nothing wrong with your mother when she was here in this house. Nothing at all. Her mind got disturbed when she went up to that place with that Harry Elton and lived in poverty. She had everything she ever wanted in this house. I’m not going to hear stories that her nerves got bad in this house.’
Elizabeth sighed. ‘You’re probably right, Father, I just thought I’d explain what the doctor said.’
‘We’ll say nothing about it to anyone here. I’m a fair man and I’m also a compassionate man,’ Father said.
Elizabeth didn’t get the drift of his thinking.
‘I could easily tell people here, people in the bank and in the bridge club that Violet had become disturbed, I could tell them that she ended up in a home for the insane. But I won’t do that. I’ll let them remember her the way she was, I won’t give them the chance to say she got her just desserts.’
‘Her just desserts?’
‘Oh yes, people here would say that she could have expected no better luck when she upped and left her home and her child without a care, that no good would come of it. But no, I won’t tell them.’
‘That’s good of you, Father,’ said Elizabeth, closing her eyes so that she would not betray her utter disgust at his petty, old-womanish, told-you-so thinking.
‘No, it’s just a fair attitude, that’s all, it’s letting bygones be bygones. Your mother caused us trouble, now she’s having her own troubles. That’s life, no point in having her punished further by telling all the people she knew here what befell her. Just let it be, I say.’
Sometimes Mr Worsky would read to Elizabeth from some German magazine articles and essays on designs. He translated them as he went along and she politely sat in the shop, leaning against some well-cared-for piece like the sideboard he would never sell or on the little piano stools that Anna had covered lovingly but in the wrong fabric so they were now completely useless.
Elizabeth sat in the sunlight and listened or half listened. Part of her mind took in his words; she heard enough to be able to smile at the little jokes, and to nod thoughtfully as he explained and elaborated.
Her heart seemed like a big piece of ice that had detached itself from an iceberg and was flowing slowly downstream. She thought of Johnny. She thought over and over that she had been right to keep any bad news from him and she wondered did everyone else keep bad news from him like she did? She wondered had anyone else aborted his child rather than lose him? And if they had … if some other young woman had gone up the stairs of a house like the house of Mrs Norris … then the poor girl had been through all that for no avail. Because whoever she was she hadn’t kept Johnny.
She knew it was fanciful and foolish but she felt some silly comfort in thinking that other girls must have made similar decisions. She couldn’t be the only person in the world who had done such a thing for love.
There was this fear growing in her that it had all been a waste of time. Johnny had somebody else. Well, he hadn’t really got somebody else, but there was a woman … the girl … the one that he spoke of, talked of. The one who came into the shop a lot. The high society woman they called her. He couldn’t love her. He couldn’t. He couldn’t touch her and whisper to her … he couldn’t share with her what he shared with Elizabeth. It was impossible.
Right, it was impossible. She would not believe it. She had been so sensible about everything so far. She must continue, she must close the awful holes in her mind which let these suspicions in. She must try to warm up her heart again and stop it becoming this cold, dead, frightened thing. Everything was fine, Johnny was fine, he loved her dearly, he always went on about it. And Stefan loved her. She tuned in again to his voice. She listened and half listened as he fought for words, and stumbled for translations of theses which would be utterly useless to her in her examination. From time to time, Anna would remonstrate.
‘Stefan, seriously … the child will not need to know that. …’
‘Anna, you know nothing about what the child will need to know or will not need to know. She is studying design. I tell her about design, I tell her about European design, otherwise she will think that all Germans made were horrid, horrid steel tubes and hideous modern furniture. I tell her about Meissen china and of the pottery and porcelain of Furstenberg, of Nymphenberg, of Ludwigsberg. …’
‘Berg, berg, berg,’ muttered Anna. ‘Why care about these bergs and what they made and what they did? They destroyed your country and mine, the people from Furstenberg and Ludwigsberg, and you sit here in the sun and tell the child about what beautiful porcelain they made.’ She stamped off back to her little quarters, face red, full of good will, fearful that Stefan Worsky should be thought to be foolish or a bore.
‘Sometimes I think your mind does wander, my Elizabeth. Perhaps it is a boring thing I tell you.’
She lifted a Meissen plate and traced her finger over the mark. ‘If it weren’t for you, Mr Worsky, I wouldn’t know whether this plate was a new batch from Woolworth’s. Now I can read its history, I can read the story of everything here, it’s like a new language you’ve taught me. And I always wanted someone to care about what I’m doing, you know, Mr Worsky, I have so many people I know and not one of them knows what examination I will be doing on Tuesday. Only you and Anna. My father just knows the end is in sight, the great day when all this ridiculous, affected studying of art will be over and I can get a job. That’s all he knows. And my mother has lost her mind. I didn’t tell you that because Father has this notion that we are to tell nobody in London. She is in a mental ward now of a big hospital in Preston up in Lancashire, and she doesn’t really know where she is. I went to see her, remember? But I didn’t tell you.’
‘Oh, my poor child.’
‘And Harry, my big, simple, foolish stepfather is up there doing deals with all kinds of people, the vicar, I think, and the doctors and the ward sister, saying that if she gets better he’ll look after her better. He looked after her perfectly. She loved every minute with him.’
‘Oh my dear. …’
‘And Monica Hart has just got engaged to a Scotsman who wears a kilt, and she couldn’t care if I was doing an examination in design or in plumbing. Aisling O’Connor is waltzing around her home town playing some kind of I’m-the-king-of-the-castle game with all the local gentry, so far as I know. She barely reads my letters, she barely writes any. Her mother, Aunt Eileen, knows it’s an examination, but she thinks it’s like school. She thinks everyone does the same, she asks how many of them are going in for the exam, as if it was some huge thing that half the country was doing. …’ Elizabeth was walking around pacing through the furniture. She was more distressed than Mr Worsky had ever seen her. She came back and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘So you see how much I appreciate you, and thank you and could never be bored by you in all my life. …’
‘It is I who thank you, for putting all kinds of happy things into an old man’s life and work. Sometimes I am long-winded and boring and I talk too much and I read you long-winded things. Anna is right, I am not sensitive.’
She knelt beside him and took both his hands in hers.
‘You, not sensitive? Dear Mr Worsky, you are beautifully sensitive. Just now when I’m full of self-pity and listing off all my friends and saying how they don’t know and care what I’m doing, you didn’t ask me what about Johnny? You didn’t say, what about your lover? Surely your young man knows? You didn’t say that.’
‘But child, Johnny is Johnny, we know that.’
‘We do. Johnny is Johnny, and nowadays Johnny is being driven around London in a smart sports car by that woman from high society.’
‘She will not last long, the woman from high society.’
‘No, you are right, she will want more than Johnny will give her. One of these days she will
say to Johnny that they are all going to a house party to meet Princess Margaret, and Johnny will say he’s not coming, with no explanation. And the high society woman will sulk and throw him out of her sports car, and she will wait until Johnny telephones to apologise or sends her flowers and then she will forgive him. But what she doesn’t know is that he will make no telephone call and send no flowers, there will be no apology.’
‘Don’t distress yourself.’
‘No, that’s what will happen, and she will burn with rage for a week and she will call around here, and she will buy something very expensive and she will enquire about Johnny. And we will tell Johnny and he will roll his eyes up to heaven and say Good Lord, and we’ll all laugh.’ She was still sitting like a child at his knee. He said nothing, but he stroked her hair very lightly. ‘So Johnny doesn’t know that it’s Design Finals and you’re the only one in the world outside the college.’
‘And I know you’ll do very well. If you do not do well there is no fairness in this world.’
‘Well there isn’t much, is there?’ She looked up at him. He said nothing. ‘Is there? Your wife dead, your sons lost, your country gone.’
‘I have been more lucky than many Polish people. It is you who have had a share of hard times my child. There will be good times to come.’
‘Will there? Johnny won’t change, you know that.’
‘Yes, I know it, what is good is that you know it. Now you have two very simple roads to go down. To take him as he is. Or to leave him and to find somebody else. Two clear roads with signposts. You are not lost with a false map.’ She stood up and held out her arms. He made an uncertain step towards her. ‘Now I give you one big hug and then we go back to preparing for these examinations. If I am the only person who knows you are taking them then I have all the more interest in seeing that you come through with waving colours.’
‘Flying colours.’
‘I only made a mistake to make you feel superior.’
‘I believe you did.’
In July Elizabeth got distinction in her examination results. The dean of the art college congratulated her, and offered her a part-time job teaching and she could do a teacher’s training course at the same time.
Johnny had finished with the debutante. Not that it was ever admitted or acknowledged that there had been anything to finish. He agreed enthusiastically with Stefan that Elizabeth should be put on the payroll as an adviser and consultant and special buyer.
Father took a very dim view of all this. ‘Does it mean that there is no end to the college after all? More time at a training college and back in those art rooms with students and still working in the antique shop? It doesn’t seem that you’ve got very far.’
‘I’ve got as far as I want to get, Father,’ she said in a clipped tone.
‘And is there any sign of this young man of yours asking you to get married? He’s been around for long enough,’ Father complained.
‘There is no sign of either of us wanting to get married, Father, when and if there is, I will tell you.’ Her tone was even more clipped, and she thought ruefully that for the first time for a long time she and Aisling were probably saying the same thing at the same time.
The summer went on. Harry wrote to say that Mother was no better and wondered if Elizabeth might come back again, just to cheer them all up. Aisling wrote to say that Tony Murray had got very drunk and almost had his way with her. In her engagingly explicit prose she explained that she was almost certain that penetration had not taken place, but was dead relieved when she got the curse a week later just in case something had gone wrong. Monica Hart wrote from Scotland. She had eloped with Andrew Furlong because his mother and her mother had been so ridiculous and they had got married at Gretna Green, which wasn’t a bit romantic, but wet and miserable, and Scotland was worse. Shirley wrote from Penzance to say that she was going to get married to a very nice fellow she had met in a hotel where he worked as a barman, could Elizabeth please make sure that Nick knew all about it? Elizabeth was to enthuse about how excited and happy Shirley was and if possible to imply that Guy, her fiancé, was actually a hotel manager rather than the barman. He would be some day, of course, so it wasn’t really a fib.
And Johnny’s mother died suddenly, and he went off to the funeral by himself. Mr Worsky and Anna sent one wreath, and Elizabeth sent another. He didn’t want any of them to come. He returned in his usual form, brushing aside expressions of sympathy graciously and easily. Yes, it was all for the best, his mother had been old, she had dreaded the thought of living beyond her time, she hated being on her own, her best was behind her. He and his brother thought it was all for the best.
He took Elizabeth out to a restaurant for dinner on the night he came back and the waiter brought them a free drink.
‘It’s to celebrate the birth of the new little princess,’ the waiter said. Princess Elizabeth had had a baby girl that day.
‘I’m sure she’s delighted,’ said Elizabeth. ‘First a boy and then a girl. Just right.’
‘Just right for Princess Elizabeth, who has a fleet of servants and all the money in the world, but not right for my Elizabeth who has no money and no time.’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Elizabeth, raising her glass to drink to the health of the baby with a brave smile and a defiant wave of the blonde hairs out of her eyes.
*
Elizabeth enjoyed the teachers’ training course. She thought it had very little to do with real life, since the high principles of education were not nearly as important as being able to think on your feet and cope with children and students. She taught two mornings a week in the college, and two afternoons a week in a local primary school. She felt she could write a book herself, and she would say that it was exactly the same problem with seven-year-olds as it was with seventeen-year-olds – keeping their interest and keeping them quiet. Johnny suggested a whiff of ether in the classroom.
Elizabeth had paid two visits to Preston during the summer. Both had been very gloomy. Harry’s spirit seemed to have collapsed, and he was wallowing in guilt.
‘You used to be the life and soul of things before, you used to be great fun always, she said so,’ Elizabeth said to him eventually in desperation. ‘Can’t you capture any of that back for yourself? I mean it’s not as if it was all that long ago, it’s only six or seven years. …’
‘I can’t remember anything except how much I wanted to do the best for Violet,’ he said, looking like a big, sad baby.
‘It’s no use, that kind of love, you’ve got to be cheerful. Suppose she were to get better and come out, what would she have to come out to? She won’t want to come here and see the place run down and you like an old sad sack.’
It worked. He didn’t become his old self, but he became something more like it than he had been for months. Elizabeth explained to the nurses and the doctor that she thought it might be a sort of therapy to give Harry some hope that things could return to normal, and they agreed. Without telling him any lies they encouraged him to think that a home visit would be likely.
Elizabeth sat and watched Harry telling her silent, abstracted mother about his plans for her return, and saw Mother pat his hand from time to time. The hospital had removed the pins and wires from the artificial violet and had sewn it to her cardigan. It must have been washed each time the cardigan was washed because it had faded from its hard purple to wishy-washy mauve.
Johnny was distressed about Mother. She only mentioned it to him after her third visit.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? That’s awful for you going up there to all that. It’s not like you to run off like that. You did tell Stefan some time ago. I asked him.’
‘Oh, well, no point in telling you.’
He looked hurt and a little annoyed.
‘What are you playing at?’
‘I swear I’m not playing at anything. I mean it, my love. Why tell you sad things? You’ve often told me that you don’t want to hear gloomy things, or problems, or l
ow, bad things that depress you.’
‘But darling, if your mother, if Violet’s been taken into a mental home, that’s big. Why didn’t you …?’
‘Because there was nothing you could do.’
She looked at him clearly. It was obvious she was indeed playing no games with him. He put his arms around her.
‘You’re very dear to me, funny face. You know you are the only woman I’ll ever love properly.’
Elizabeth smiled at him. ‘And I love you, Johnny,’ she said.
XII
‘WOULD YOU SAY that your romance with Tony Murray was passionate?’ Niamh asked Aisling one evening as she sat at Aisling’s dressing table and tried on bits of costume jewellery.
‘No, more an animal attraction I think,’ said Aisling without looking up from her letter.
Niamh giggled. ‘Seriously, some of the girls at school were wondering, Anna Barry said it was more a question of a suitable match. Not passion.’
‘Jaysus, it’s far from a suitable match, it’s about the most unsuitable match in Kilgarret from all the buzzing that’s going on,’ said Aisling.
‘Mam would kill you if she heard you take the Lord’s name,’ said Niamh prissily.
Aisling looked up. ‘And she certainly wouldn’t like you putting on lipstick. Take it off at once and leave that stuff alone. It’s mine. I work hard and I spend long hours earning the money to pay for it.’
‘If you married Tony Murray, you wouldn’t have to work any long hours. You could go to Dublin like his Mam and buy clothes there and three lipsticks at a time.’
Aisling didn’t answer.
‘I don’t know why you don’t marry him, you could lose him you know. Even though everyone says he’s keener on you than you are on him.’
Aisling still read her letter.
‘But they say you’d better not push your luck too far. He was seen with one of the Gray girls, you know, the one who was at school in England. She had a face like a horse once, but it’s got a different shape now. Anthea or Althea, you know. He was having coffee with her in the hotel. Honestly. So I thought I’d mark your card, you know, if ever there’s a chance of me being a bridesmaid I don’t want to lose it.’
