Maeve's Times

by Binchy, Maeve

  The other one nodded until her head nearly fell off.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘You’re too right.’

  I didn’t wish the pink girl a more sunny attitude, or a sense of priorities. I was sorry that she didn’t have anyone to disagree with her and to sing some song in praise of summertime. I wished her a better friend.

  The woman polishing her brasses was dying for a chat. ‘It’s a nightmare trying to keep the house right in summer,’ she said. I told her she was doing a great job of it. But no, apparently the bright light of summer was the enemy. You could shine and shine and some smear always showed up. But the very worst thing was the way the bit of brass polish comes off on the door, well, that kind of thing goes unnoticed in winter, but at this time of the year it’s a nightmare.

  I thought to myself that a nightmare was putting it a bit strongly, and though a lot of people have very exacting standards about housekeeping, there’s a question of going too far.

  ‘You see there should be some method which means that you only clean the brass and not the door,’ she said. What I should have said of course was, ‘I know, this is what you’re up against.’ Why do I never realise that this is the right thing to say almost all the time?

  But I said that there was a woman who lived near us in London who had little cardboard shields cut out and she used to lay them over the knocker and the letter box and just clean within them so that the brass polish didn’t get on the door.

  Well, if I had found the Holy Grail or the Missing Link she couldn’t have been more interested. And was it heavy cardboard and did you stick it onto the door, or just hold it, and imagine my doing that. She’d never have thought it about me, just goes to show how wrong you can be about people. She was going to go in and make one immediately, and would a cornflake packet be strong enough, or should it be something sturdy and what did I use myself?

  I was purple in the face trying to tell her that I had never done it, but she didn’t believe me. If you had a wonderful hint like that, then of course you’d use it. I had transformed her summer for her, she said. But don’t you like summer anyway, I pleaded.

  I wished she did, but in fact she didn’t. The sofa covers faded, the net curtains looked grimy after three days, you realised how much of the place needed painting. One good thing about winter, she said mysteriously, was that everyone was in the same boat.

  There’s this couple who have been given the loan of a mobile home for a week. They were delighted because they thought they could have one last real family holiday before the kids grew up and wanted to go off on their own. There’s only one problem. The children think they are grown up and have planned to go off on their own already. They’re 15 and 16, for heaven’s sake. What would they be doing going on a holiday with their parents?

  A holiday is what it says it is, it’s time off to enjoy yourself, to be free to do what you want. The mobile home would be like home, but even more uncomfortable. You’d have to be in for meals and clear up after them and you wouldn’t be allowed go anywhere.

  Now they don’t quite say it like this, but that’s the drift.

  And they don’t buy the idea of it being one last holiday either. You can be absolutely certain that come next year there’ll be one more ‘last holiday’, and so on until they are old and grey.

  The kind thing to do is to cut it now and let the parents realise that it’s not on packing Scrabble and a family-size Nivea Creme any more.

  I know I’m a softy, but I wish there could have been a compromise. That the children could have come to the mobile home for just a weekend. That way things wouldn’t have looked so bleak for good, warm people whose only crime was to want to enjoy the summer.

  The Fall

  19 October 1996

  Years ago, before I knew that people called things by different names, we knew an American person named Martha and she used to talk a lot about the fall. I didn’t know it was autumn for ages because she had so many other marvellous expressions and dramas in her life that the thought of a huge upcoming fall off a roof or a wall or something was only too likely. After all, her father had lost all his money in the Crash, and we thought it was a car crash and asked why he didn’t go back to the scene where the crash had happened and look for it. And when she talked about little cookies we thought she meant small people in chefs’ outfits.

  I call her a person, not a girl or a woman, because we thought she was oldish, almost bordering on being an adult. She was the cousin of a neighbour and she came to spend four weeks’ vacation every year. She used to clean the house from top to bottom as payment for her keep. She talked about Jello and turnpikes and trashcans and how her uncle used to take the paddle to his sons if they behaved badly.

  Mostly we didn’t know what she was talking about, but she seemed to treat us as equals, which was great. It was a time when it was much more important that people were of goodwill and occasionally had candy to offer than that we understood what they were talking about. We were always pleased when Martha arrived, and we listened, bewildered, to some of the things she said.

  Like, back home she worked for a tightwad who ran an old folks’ home, and her brother hoped to hang out his shingle and her sister had saved for a muskrat coat. And always she said she wished she could stay in Ireland for the fall. She would love to see just one fall in this part of the world. It would be wonderful what with there being so much greenery already.

  I didn’t ask anyone about it because, to be honest, I got the impression that the grown-ups thought Martha was a bit soft in the head and I didn’t want to let her down and I thought it was odd to look forward to and be wistful about seeing a fall of any sort. And I had no idea what greenery had to do with anything.

  And the years went on and her uncle’s wife died and he didn’t see any need to drag the unfortunate Martha back to be a skivvy in the house. Those were his words. His late wife had always referred to it as giving the girl a holiday. But anyway, Martha didn’t come. And sometimes she sent us the funnies from American newspapers – Blondie and Dagwood and things – and we got a lot of the jokes in them.

  And one day some years later her uncle said that some people were just born for trouble, and that Martha had all the hallmarks of that kind of person. It wasn’t bad enough that her father had lost all his money on some cracked stocks and shares, her brother had been forbidden to practise law because of some misunderstanding, her sister had left home without a forwarding address. Martha’s mother was in a decline, so they had arranged that the mother go in to the home where Martha worked – no wages for Martha, but then no fees for the mother.

  I was about 14 then.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I said.

  Martha’s uncle said that in his opinion life was rarely fair.

  Martha didn’t remember what age we were or else she thought we’d still like the funnies, and when I was about 16, I actually got her address and wrote to thank her. She wrote back to tell me she was in love.

  And this was fantastic. Firstly nobody talked much about love, no one old like in their twenties, which Martha was, and she told me that his name was James and his aunt was a patient in the home and that when his aunt died James would be very rich and they would get married. And I was very excited by this and asked what kind of things James said, and Martha rather innocently wrote and told me and I told them to the girls at school.

  And Martha said that when she and James got married they would come to Ireland for a honeymoon – they would come for the fall. I knew what the fall was now but I didn’t rate it much in those days. I wrote and told her that she shouldn’t bother, the summer was nicer, and of course she wouldn’t have to clean her dead aunt’s house now. I even said that she had been very good to do all that years ago. And she wrote an odd letter saying that she looked back on those days like heaven, the work was so much easier than here in the old people’s home. She would love to leave but of course there was her mother to support there, and then James coming in twice a we
ek to see his aunt.

  I always thought she was a nurse there but she was a lowly cleaner, she explained. She said that she had never claimed to be anything else. She asked for a picture of Ireland in the fall.

  We didn’t have colour films in our cameras in 1956 and our garden looked desperate anyway, and my mother said why wouldn’t I take a snap of it when there was something to see instead of everything straggling and dying. I found a wet-looking picture postcard which looked as if it were taken in Famine times and sent it to Martha. She didn’t reply and then we lost touch.

  And when I was 20 and saw the colours of my first fall in New England I remembered Martha and wrote to the old people’s home that the tightwad had run. I didn’t know his actual name, but a woman wrote back and said that Martha didn’t work there any more, adding that the management had entirely changed.

  And I felt somehow that Martha had been annoyed with me for sending her that horrible postcard so I wrote again and wondered did they know where she was, because I wanted to send her a proper picture of Ireland.

  And the woman wrote to say Martha was in a penitentiary, she and a young man had been convicted of the unlawful killing of the young man’s aunt …. It had always been thought that Martha was very much under the young man’s influence.

  Martha’s mother had died shortly after it, her brother had been in some kind of trouble and there was no trace of her sister.

  Her uncle in Dublin is long dead.

  Martha would be 65 now.

  It’s not her real name, but if she were out there and on the internet? Maybe.

  On this lovely autumn day when the fall in Ireland never looked better, I would love to find her, and to take her back to see it just once. I don’t want to hear about James. I don’t imagine she sees much of him.

  There are greater coincidences in the world than that I should find her and show her the Irish autumn she wanted so much to see.

  Let’s Talk Gridlock

  30 November 1996

  When I went to live in London in the early 1970s I used to be knocked backwards by the amount of traffic-conversation that preceded every gathering. If you went to someone’s house for dinner you were expected to give an account of how you hacked your way through the jungle to get there, as if the place was some kind of forest clearing in Borneo instead of a suburban house in Ealing, and in turn you had to listen to everyone else’s story.

  I decided it was a ritual, like the way a dog often turns round a lot before settling down; London people had to tell you where they left the M4 and how they had skirted round the back of Paddington. Then, when it had all been said, you could talk about real things.

  It was very boring and I used to thank the Lord that in Dublin there would never be endless traffic stories like this because there weren’t a dozen alternative ways of getting from one place to another; you sort of went on the main road. So we could start the real conversation immediately, I thought. We were ahead of the game.

  Wrong.

  They’re here.

  And if you want to unleash them on yourself, just mention the three words Traffic Management Plan and you’ll get worse than you would believe possible.

  And the really bad part about it is that there’s no real solution except to leave three hours earlier than you need for everything, like in the middle of the night. And buy tapes with sounds of water rippling over the little rocks, things that will calm you down, and keep saying ‘ohm, ohm’ and try to loosen your grip on the wheel if you see bones coming through white flesh on your knuckles.

  That, and the knowledge that you are not alone, may help.

  Listen to the conversations all round you, know that everyone else is in the same position. Get solidarity and comfort from realising that the city has come to a standstill for everyone, not just for you. Listen, listen and calm down.

  In a restaurant, a couple waits for their host. He arrives in the door with a face like thunder, nearly taking the door of the restaurant, the waiter, and the people at two tables with him in his path to his own table. He starts dragging off his wet overcoat, his gloves; his face is purpling up by the moment.

  ‘Jesus Christ’ are the first words he gets out, and the place is treated to a description of how he waited for 20 minutes at one set of traffic lights, and 10 at the next and there was no parking and there were wardens and guards like spare parts at a wedding, walking round leering at people, and Jesus Christ!, again bawled at the top of his voice.

  The startled couple, who had been waiting for him more than half an hour, lied and said they had only been there for five minutes: the crumbs of 10 bread rolls proved them to be dishonest.

  ‘Can I take your coat?’ the waiter asked, politely.

  ‘Look, I don’t need any hassle today, let me tell you.’

  The waiter moves nervously away. The man who owns the restaurant arrives to take the coat, which is thrown half on a chair, half on the floor, with the gloves and a scarf and the man looks as if he’s about to strip down to the buff unless somebody stops him and calms him down.

  ‘A nice drink, perhaps?’ The owner cannot find the right word. There are no right words.

  ‘Nor do I want to be patronised,’ cries the purple man in a choking voice that terrifies the wits out of his two lunch guests, who had wrongly thought they were going to have a nice meal out.

  On the bus, the woman got up three times to ask the bus driver was there no way he could go any faster. The first two times he explained politely that there wasn’t. The third time there was a slight edge to his voice when he asked had she any suggestions. Like maybe ploughing through the solid line of traffic ahead of him? Or revving up seriously and taking the bus into a flight path 10 feet above the line of trucks, cars and buses below?

  There were tears in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and went back to her seat.

  People were kind and came up with suggestions. Could she get off the bus and walk? No, she walked with a stick, she wouldn’t be any quicker.

  What about a taxi?

  Wouldn’t it be the same snail’s pace?

  Yes, but at least the taxi driver could take a different route. People will understand if you’re late, they told her, everyone’s late these days. It just can’t be helped. Everyone understands.

  The woman could not be consoled. It was an appointment with the bank. Everything depended on their getting this overdraft. The bank had a feeling that they had been unreliable in the past.

  We all had the feeling that she might have been – the tears of mascara didn’t make her look like a good risk.

  The bus was silent thinking about banks. Someone gave her a tissue and someone else loaned her a mobile phone. She made a poor job of explaining the traffic situation. None of us had any hope for the loan.

  A boy stood at the bus stop – like everyone else he had been waiting forever as things went slowly by, grim-faced people from an adult world staring unhappily ahead.

  ‘Did you have a nice day at school?’ asked an old lady anxious for a conversation – any conversation – to pass the time. The bus was 200 yards away, it might take 15 minutes to get to us.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Why was that, dear?’

  ‘The bus was late getting there and the teacher said how was it that the rest of the class got in, and I said they had fathers with cars and they all got up at six o’clock in the morning and I was told not to give cheek.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ she said.

  ‘And then we all got late to the football pitch because the bus didn’t come and there was no football, and now the bus hasn’t come and I’m going to be late home and they’re going to say how is it that I’m the only one late home, and none of them go out but if I said that I’d be giving cheek again.’

  ‘It’s a hard life,’ the old lady said.

  ‘It’s a shit life,’ said the boy, ending the friendship between them.

  Outside a solicitor’s office. An awkward meeting, tw
o one-time friends have fallen out, a business is being wound-up, there are still areas of disagreement about some outstanding debts.

  ‘Let’s try to get this done in as civilised a way as possible,’ says one of them.

  ‘Yeah, well it would be easier to be civilised if your bloody lawyer had turned up.’

  ‘He’s stuck in traffic, his secretary said.’

  ‘Secretary? Gargoyle, more like. Where’s she coming from not letting us smoke in the building, for God’s sake?’

  They stood glumly in the rain smoking while traffic inched by.

  Once they had cursed the traffic to the pit of hell, and counted the number of cars that had only one person each in them, there wasn’t much to talk about. So they inhaled. And they talked about the old days, when they were starting out.

  When the solicitor arrived yelping about gridlock and the car scrappage scheme and nobody caring and cities coming to a standstill, the two men were looking at each other as normal human beings. One of the few success stories of the Christmas traffic.

  ‘They’ve Gone and Dumped Portillo …’

  3 May 1997

  As soon as the sun started to shine in London it was as if someone had shouted ‘Strip’. They stood half naked outside the pubs, pints in hands and faces upturned to the hot sky. In the parks they lay out on rugs in shorts and bikinis, their skin glistening with oil. They had dragged tables and chairs out into front gardens and people without gardens draped themselves over steps and footpaths. It was only the first day of May but there was terrific heat in the sun – and those who live in a city of nearly 12 million people will take any opportunity at all that might suggest closing their eyes and pretending it’s Midsummer’s Day.

  And even at the polling station in a west London school there was a holiday air. A woman with sunglasses on her head, two small children by the hand, came to the gate of the little school.

  ‘Don’t talk to anyone at all, just look at all the lovely pictures the other children have drawn while Mummy votes,’ she said.