Maeve's Times

by Binchy, Maeve

  ‘I suppose the children are bastards as well. Everything that went before is all written off.’

  ‘There’s nobody who could say one word against you, Stella,’ he began.

  ‘Except that my husband was really my fancy man, and I can’t go to his funeral, myself and the four love children stay here while the wailing and the drinking and the praising and the caterwauling goes on in the west of Ireland, isn’t that right?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘It is like that. And someone would say what a great man he was and how hard it is that emigration causes the break-up of families for so many people …. I’m not English, Father, I was born here but my parents were Irish, and know about funerals, I’ve heard them talk about them.’

  ‘No one said life was fair,’ he said. ‘It’s been very cruel to you this Christmas.’

  ‘Tell them they can have him,’ she said. She didn’t come to the door, she wanted no Mass in Kilburn.

  The brothers arranged with the undertaker and the body was taken to London Airport and flown to Shannon and driven up the west coast and two weeks before Christmas on a cold Sunday afternoon Patrick was buried in a churchyard a mile from the house where he was born.

  Saved by the Wiles of Cupid

  14 February 1998

  Of course their names are not Sean and Maire, but they are from the south-west of Ireland and they are out in Cape Town on a holiday.

  And when they arrived at their hotel they were asked did they want to make a booking for St Valentine’s Day. Special dinner.

  ‘Ah, we’ll sort that out later,’ said Sean.

  After all, it was January 24th – three full weeks before the saint’s feast day. This was serious advance planning that was being called for.

  ‘Touting for extra business, looking for a quick buck,’ Sean said to Maire on that first night. ‘That’ll be it, believe me.’

  And Maire said ‘fine’, and that’s all she said.

  The hotel didn’t tout for business in any other way. It let them bring wine into their room, it pointed out a cheap laundromat, it let them make sandwiches out of the breakfast buffet.

  But the following Saturday it asked them again, ‘Made your plans for St Valentine’s Day?’ And Sean, who by this stage had got a suntan and was thinking in rands, not punts, thanked them politely but said there was no real rush.

  And then they began to read the papers.

  Page after page showed the restaurants that are completely booked up for February 14th. They watched the talk shows at night on television, heated debates … is it all too much this Valentine fuss, or is it wonderful and symbolic?

  Does it mean that 364 days a year your loved one does not think about you, but that’s OK if there’s one day that the loved one does made a fuss?

  The flower shops all over town have had huge warning notices up urging people not to leave it until the last minute. The South African phone service, Telekom, has huge ads showing empty flower buckets outside florists, and giving the grim reminder ‘Phone First’.

  Everything seemed to be referring to the day. Slimming machines were offered at 10 per cent off if you ordered them before The Day. Building societies were offering 16 per cent Home Loans on any love nest where the paperwork was done in time for St Valentine. There were so many heart-shaped Valentine balloons, paper flowers, teddy bears, gold-wrapped chocolates, satin and sequinned offerings in the newsagent’s that Sean and Maire could barely find a picture of Table Mountain to send to annoy the folks back home in the rain.

  Saturday night would be their last night. Sean did not want to be wandering the streets of Cape Town, his nose pressed against windows where lovers or pretend-lovers were toasting each other in sparkling wine at £2 a bottle and them unable to get anywhere to sit down.

  He booked.

  ‘All right, yes, a Valentine special,’ he said awkwardly. He had never sent a Valentine to Maire. Not in 39 years of marriage. It wasn’t the way for them, or their kind. They were people who worked hard and got on with it.

  Not fancy words and poems and flowers.

  Irishmen of his class, his age, didn’t go in for that sort of thing. That was for romantic-novelists, card manufacturers, flower sellers, confectioners, restaurant owners. They were the people who made the money out of it. Didn’t Maire know he was fond of her? They had been married nearly 40 years, raised a family. You don’t have to say these things with lots of red and white decorations for them to become real, Sean believes. And had Maire ever sent him a Valentine’s Day card, did he think?

  Well, in the past when the children were at a silly age she might have thrown an old Valentine on the table and they all had a laugh and wondered who it might be from ….

  And I asked Maire on her own would she have liked Valentines at all over the years, and she said she would of course – like any human. But Sean wasn’t made that way and it would be like asking for people to do something completely against their nature. He was a good man to her. He’d give her money to buy one for herself if he thought she was fussing over it.

  But oddly, for the first time he was looking around him out there where waitresses and shopkeepers and barbers and deck-chair attendants were all talking about the feast day. He had actually said to her that maybe sending a card was a cultural thing – like wearing shamrock on St Patrick’s Day. So she wouldn’t be surprised if the man she fell in love with in 1958 when Mick Delahunty’s band was playing might well buy her a card this year. It wouldn’t continue at home, but it was different in the southern hemisphere.

  And love is in the air all over the place, not only for the Feast Day. This week Nelson Mandela’s handsome face smiles out of every paper as he clasps the hand of Graça Machel, widow of the Mozambican President. He has now spoken publicly of his love for her, how they talk every day on the telephone and how she has changed his life. Commentators on all sides seem to be full of indulgence and delight about it all, even though weddings have not actually been mentioned. Even Archbishop Desmond Tutu harrumphs only mildly about it and though he has to point out to the President about being a role model for young people, there has not as yet been any serious thundering from pulpits.

  And then there’s the other marvellous love story that’s all over the papers. The tale of David and Caroline Dickie. He is 80, she is 70. They only met recently at a party in England and confided to each other that their children were plotting to put them into old people’s homes against their wills. So they came out on a holiday to South Africa and got married.

  According to the way it’s told here, their children still don’t know. David is English and used to work in Kenya. Caroline is originally Irish, a teacher, and used to work in Zambia. They both look radiant, barefoot on a sandy beach under a caption saying ‘Saved By The Wedding Bells’.

  They are going back to England to face the music today, and if I had the energy and the time I’d find them and go with them myself just to see the St Valentine’s Day surprise a lot of people are going to get when they find out.

  Just Don’t Ask

  14 March 1998

  When we were young teachers a wise woman told us that we should never ask the children to tell the class what they did for Easter or Christmas or Confirmation or St Patrick’s Day.

  Don’t ask, she said, because it will turn out that some of them did nothing at all or – worse still – had a really awful time. Nothing points up the inequality of people’s lives more starkly than asking innocent children to tell you how they spent what was meant to be a festival.

  But once I forgot this and asked them what they did for the National Day.

  There was the usual chorus of visiting granny and going to watch the parade and having lunch in a hotel from the lucky ones.

  And then there was a child who said they spent the whole day looking for a vet’s that might be open because their dog had got hurted.

  And I asked what had happened to hurt the dog.

  Later you get a sense o
f what not to ask, but you don’t have it when you’re 22 and eager to be nice to the children and encourage them to tell stories.

  It was a tale of a brother who had been away at sea coming home unexpectedly and his not liking the fact that Mammy’s friend was living in the house and breaking a chair, and the dog got frightened and ran under the table whining.

  And there had been a fight between the girl’s brother and her Mammy’s friend, and the dog hadn’t understood so he jumped at the brother not realising who he was and to save himself her brother had picked up a bread knife and the dog was badly hurted.

  And we all sat in that classroom as the horror of someone else’s St Patrick’s Day came through to us.

  And I remember her voice going on about it not being too bad in the end because eventually she and her sister brought the dog to a hospital – a hospital for people – and someone there knew a vet nearby, so they carried the dog to his house and he stitched the cut in the shoulder and the dog would limp always on his front left paw and he had a bit of a cough but he was not going to die which they thought he might when they saw all the blood.

  I wonder do any of the other pupils remember her telling that story? She is dead now, so I can tell it without hurting her.

  She left school without any real education or exams, nothing much at home to encourage her, and she married when she was 19 – to a very nice fellow apparently, and they had a grand marriage until she died at the age of 38, some complications after a routine operation.

  I’m sure that during the years of her happy marriage she didn’t keep thinking back to that terrible St Patrick’s Day in 1962 when she and her little sister carried a big dog covered in blood all around Dublin and eventually going to a hospital for people.

  Maybe even the sadness and fright of the Domestic Incident had long died down in her mind.

  Not in mine.

  I think of it every St Patrick’s Day when I see the Special Menus advertised in hotels, when I hear the oompah-oompah of a band. Not because I want to superimpose on everyone else’s happiness the image of those two frightened little girls whose dog always coughed and walked with a limp as a result of the day’s events.

  I suppose it’s just to remind us not to assume.

  It certainly cemented the lesson that the wise old teacher had taught us, and now that I’m not in the classroom any more it hasn’t lost its relevance. I strongly believe that you don’t do thoughtless, cheerful vox pops to people about feast days.

  In spite of the greeting cards, the streamers, the cheerleaders and the festivities, a startling number of people may have remarkably little to celebrate.

  And all this came to mind because I met a glowing young girl with a tape recorder who was doing a series of ad-lib recordings in a shopping mall for a radio programme.

  She thrust her microphone at passers-by and with a huge infectious grin she asked every one of them, ‘What will YOU be doing on St Patrick’s Day?’ Her tone expected a reaction of riotous excitement, fun, happy families and carnival time.

  In my earshot she met a man who would be going to see his wife up in the hospital as usual.

  She met a woman who said she was going to stay in bed all day with the sheet up to her chin because she was demented with all the demands her children were making.

  She met an elderly woman who said she wouldn’t be doing much because she had been broken into and robbed.

  In one way I wished the gorgeous girl with the microphone might realise that not everybody on this windy day was gearing up to a party-party spirit. That she was unearthing more despair than hope.

  But then as a co-worker I was sort of sorry for her. I know what it’s like when people won’t say what you want them to, when they refuse to behave like a crowd sent down by Central Casting who are mouthing exactly what you want to hear.

  But finally she met another gorgeous young girl like herself.

  ‘I’m a SINBAD, I’ll be cruising Temple Bar,’ said the interviewee, which seemed to satisfy the girl with the microphone perfectly.

  But not me.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, coming out of hiding from my lurking position. ‘What’s a SINBAD?’

  Apparently it’s a Single Income No Boyfriend, Absolutely Desperate.

  But then everyone knew that, didn’t they?

  Bleach Sniffers on My Desk

  18 April 1998

  It had been a good day and when I saw a little ant run across my desk I thought to myself, in a rare fit of Buddhist kindness, that the poor little fellow hadn’t much of a life, really. The desk must have seemed endless to him and he didn’t know what awful dangers, such as myself, were lurking nearby. So I picked him up on a postcard and carried him out to the garden and put him in a big pot that contains a fuchsia. There, now he would have grand things to eat – old fuchsia leaves, earth grubs, much nicer than a dull old desk.

  Feeling very proud of myself and full of virtue, I went back to work and discovered 12 more ants crawling up the screen of the word processor.

  Suddenly we had a distinct change of policy.

  No more mercy dashes to the potted fuchsia.

  The ants were too many and too insistent and in the wrong place. I went for the Parozone and a J-cloth, and having nearly asphyxiated myself I looked at the surface to see had I dealt with them as quickly and efficiently as I believed.

  The ants loved the Parozone. They reeled a bit at first – as we all might with a first, strong gin and tonic – but they obviously took to it greatly, and sent out a message for their friends to come and join them. The other ants heard somehow that the good times were rolling on my desk and they arrived eager to share the delicious taste of bleach.

  The day looked a lot less good somehow and I withdrew a bit to consider my position. Now, I don’t like them. We’re not meant to like things with six legs and antennae. Nobody enjoys seeing things much smaller than us scuttling around the place, particularly around our place.

  And it was actually a question of numbers. One ant was all right but this amount was not. And I had the feeling the ant which had been carried outside had long said farewell to the fuchsia leaves and had come back to join the bleach sniffers. And of course there’s the huge guilt feeling: this must mean I have a filthy house. Why else were crawling insects marching towards it? Quite obviously it’s a place that any infestation would love to settle in.

  This was doubly distressing because I was expecting a colleague to arrive from London and we were going to be spending some six hours at this desk going through a manuscript page by page.

  The thought of having to beat the ants off with a ruler before we could even read the thing was not something I wanted to contemplate. Nor did I fancy what might be reported about the standards of hygiene in modern Dalkey.

  Sitting well back from the desk full of reeling, happy ants, I reached cautiously for the telephone to ring Éanna Ní Lamhna, of RTÉ’s nature-programme fame, who would be the right person. She would know what was politically correct about ants without being foolishly sentimental and asking me to give them muesli for their breakfast or anything. But there was only her answering machine. In times of stress nowadays I have a big mug of tea and turn on the radio. So, having examined the mug very carefully for fear of drinking a dozen ants accidentally, I turned on RTÉ.

  A huge ant discussion was taking place. I looked at the radio beadily for a bit. People are always imagining they hear voices on the radio talking to them: it’s a fairly common paranoia apparently. But I listened very carefully and they really were talking about ants.

  And wonderful, healing words came out of the little radio: ‘It doesn’t mean your house is dirty.’ The man said it twice. I could have leaped into the radio and hugged him. Apparently it’s just that people have patios near their houses more nowadays, and grouting between tiles. Yes, yes, I was saying, looking out at the roof garden with its tiles, all this is true. The ants are just looking for food, that’s why they come indoors, the calming voice
said. Yes, well. That’s as may be. But you’d wonder why can’t they eat the grouting and the things outside where nature intended them to be? This point was not properly dealt with, I felt.

  Anyway, they moved on to a pest person, and the pest person said that there were indeed far more inquiries about ants at the moment, a lot of people had been inquiring. Anxious even.

  Well, that makes you feel better. Up to a point. At least the house isn’t dirty. It has been said on the radio, so it must be true. And there’s somehow comfort in knowing that they’ve got into other people’s places.

  But not huge comfort.

  Remember the Hitchcock film The Birds? It wasn’t that much help to know that they were in everyone else’s house pecking their eyes out, too.

  There’s always a really good, kind person on these programmes and he came on and said that ants were fantastic little creatures and hugely helpful in the ecosystem. They ate dead insects and they aerated the soil.

  Yes, well. I looked at them marching up and down the screen of the laptop and forced myself to think well of them. Even if I could carry them all out, would I be able to motivate them to eat dead insects and aerate the soil?

  The kind man was saying that possibly the best thing to do was to make sure they didn’t get in in the first place and more or less ignore them if they did.

  But then I thought of the six hours of work at this desk that lay ahead, and I took a magnifying glass and looked at an ant carefully and whipped myself up with hatred for their species. And I went out and bought ant-killer. The ant-killer was full of warnings. First it said, ‘Use only as an insecticide,’ which was a staggering instruction. What did they expect people to use it as? A deodorant? To ice a cake?

  Then it said that you should wear rubber gloves and keep it miles from any electrical equipment and never let any of it get into the air, only on to skirting boards and window frames.