by Maeve Binchy
Glumly she went out to the big square in the center of Brussels and half listened as Johnny told them all about the buildings and led them to an inexpensive restaurant in a small street nearby.
For tonight, Sandra had planned to wear a sleeveless cream-colored shirt with a rose skirt. A cream- and rose-colored jacket would be on her shoulders for the photograph.
Instead, she was pictured looking like a freak with thirty people in a group photograph. The next morning, as the coach thundered on to Paris, a quiet man said to her, “That’s my sweater you have on; it looks much better on you than on me.”
Normally she would have told him that she didn’t wear synthetic materials and that unless something was pure wool it was unwise to wear it at all. She might even have said that she didn’t like that dull, gray-blue color and that she wanted something smarter that brought out the best in her complexion.
But she said nothing and he said that the color of his sweater was exactly the color of her eyes.
His name was Ken and he had never taken a coach tour either. He worked too hard and for his thirtieth birthday thirty of his friends had bought him this trip as a gift.
Sandra was pictured wearing this terrible shapeless, colorless garment in front of the Eiffel Tower.
The day they went to Geneva she wore the faded jeans of a woman called Lola, who had taken a course at the Open University and discovered that actually she was very interested in the history of modern art. Now she worked in a local gallery and was considered a sort of expert. She had married the gallery owner, who was minding the shop while she darted around Europe on a coach having a quick look at everything she could see in eleven days.
The day they got to Milan, Sandra was wearing a bright orange T-shirt, Lola’s jeans—which were actually quite comfortable—and she had Ken’s sweater tied around her shoulders.
“It’s still the color of your eyes,” he said. He asked Johnny the guide to take a picture of them arm in arm.
“Hope the T-shirt isn’t the color of my face,” Sandra said, and everyone laughed.
She was surprised; she hadn’t really ever made a joke before.
In Florence, Sandra got up early and went to the Uffizi Gallery with Lola. They stood, staggered by the beauty of the paintings.
“But I thought you only liked modern art,” Sandra said to Lola.
“We can all like everything beautiful,” Lola said. “Isn’t it wonderful that there’s so much for us all to see?”
In Venice, Sandra wished that she and Ken could have taken a gondola together.
They might have, but foolishly she had said it would be a waste of money and she would prefer to spend her lire on shoes.
She would remember to keep her mouth closed about such things in future. That evening, in a crushed lilac skirt and a shrunken yellow sweater as she strolled around the beautiful streets of Florence hand in hand with Ken, Sandra said how much she was enjoying it all, such great people, such deep, satisfying things to see.
“I’d love to know about all these Renaissance painters,” she admitted. “Like what kinds of lives they lived and were they special in themselves. It’s all such a mystery.”
“Maybe we could do a course when we got back to London…that’s if you felt like meeting me again?” Ken said.
And Sandra thought it would be a great idea.
Sandra had intended to buy shoes in Rome, but what was the point if she was wearing these terrible clothes?
Instead she invited Ken to come out on an early evening tour, just the two of them, in a horse and carriage.
She could have got really good shoes for the money, but she had plenty of shoes at home.
That night the group went to supper in a beautiful piazza, all of them talking like old friends about the marvelous things seen and those still to come.
Johnny wasn’t with them, he’d had to stay in the hotel because he was expecting a message.
He was such a good tour leader that they were all deciding already what they would buy him as a gift.
Some were saying that they should get him a briefcase, one of those lovely soft leather cases. Others said a really expensive Italian silk tie. Ken thought he might like one of those embroidered waistcoats. He had heard him admiring them.
They were fiendishly expensive, but between thirty of them it would be easy to buy.
Sandra was about to open her mouth and say that for someone like Johnny to wear one of those elegant waistcoats would be ridiculous.
But she kept it closed.
She was becoming less and less sure of things on this trip.
The waistcoat would make Johnny look enormous. But then, if Ken had said that he admired them…
She handed over her contribution willingly and they all went silent because Johnny appeared with a message in his hand.
“I have wonderful news for you, Sandra. They’ve located your bag of all your smart clothes. It will be there to greet you when we get home.” He looked at her, waiting for the delight in her eyes.
Instead, he saw gratitude and heard polite remarks.
This was the woman who had bitten his head off nine days ago and said that her holiday was ruined.
“I’ll be able to wash and iron all your kind gifts to me,” she said to the group, “and send them back to you.”
They told her she must keep them—it would be their privilege.
Sandra remembered the fun she had in these jeans and that T-shirt, how well and easily she slept in that nightie.
She remembered the lilac skirt and the yellow sweater she had worn when Ken had said he would like to see her in London.
“I’d love to keep them all—and I’ll never forget you,” she said.
They smiled at Sandra in a way that she knew they would somehow never have smiled if she had not lost her suitcase.
The Canary Valentine
Annie was utterly lost when her best friend, Clare, got married. She had never expected to feel so beached. She had been delighted for Clare, she had been through all the excitements, the ups and downs of the romance, the drama of the engagement, the rows about the wedding, and had worn a hat for the first time in her life to be Clare’s bridesmaid.
But now Clare and John had gone to live in the West, and even though she knew they would love her to stay with them on weekends, she couldn’t go every weekend. And she had been so accustomed to spending every weekend with Clare she didn’t really know how to have one without her.
Annie didn’t feel the same enthusiasm about going to concerts or theaters on her own and there wasn’t as much fun spending a morning trying on clothes you were never going to buy if you did it by yourself, and though she did have other friends, it wasn’t the same.
—
It was only when they were making up the holiday list in the office that Annie remembered this would be her first holiday for years without Clare. Up to now they used to pore over the brochures and agree that since all they wanted was a small taverna or pensione right beside the sea, they didn’t have to spend hours agonizing about the culture of this place versus that. Where was cheapest in off-peak times? That would be the criterion. Maybe somewhere near a harbor where Clare and Annie would sit in the evening and look at the people and laugh and be picked up sometimes and sometimes not, but it never mattered much either way. This year Annie would have to go on her own.
She decided not to go anywhere she had been with Clare; it would point up too sharply that she was now alone, with few resources. No, she would have to try somewhere new. They were pressing her to choose her dates, after all she was twenty-six, one of the seniors in the office, she must have first pick. It had been a quiet Christmas, a lonely New Year, the weather was bad, and the holiday prospects wouldn’t become any less gloomy by putting off the date. Annie decided she would take two weeks in February. The others were very pleased; this meant they could have more reasonable times to juggle around between themselves.
“You’ll be away for St. Valentine�
�s Day,” said a giggling junior who was so immature Annie felt sure that she should be in school, not out earning a living. “That could be very romantic.”
Annie looked at her grimly, confirming the girl’s belief that Annie was indeed elderly and half mad. Then Annie wondered where she would go. Usually she and Clare would have a serious and wailing examination of their finances when it came to planning a holiday, but Annie found that she had plenty of money to spend. Without Clare she didn’t spend anything in Grafton Street on a Saturday, she didn’t drink so much wine, she went on fewer outings. It didn’t cost much to sit in her flat and watch television or read books from the library, and since Clare got married in September that had been Annie’s main entertainment. She could go anywhere within reason. Not the Far East or America or anything, but she could go on the kind of holiday they had always dismissed before as out of their reach.
It was very, very cold. Annie saw a woman with a warm, tanned face and a happy smile; she asked her where she had been, and the woman said she had been in the Canaries. Annie booked herself on the Sunday flight; so it appeared did half of Ireland, and she wondered mildly did everyone take their holidays on Sunday, February 10, but the man at the airport said it was like this every Sunday. Whenever a country was in crisis its citizens started flying out to the sun. It was a sure sign of desperate things ahead. Annie was annoyed about the discrimination against people who travel on their own, and how the single room supplements seemed to jack up the cost of the holiday in a very unfair way, and how the world of tourism seemed to be devised for those who go into the Ark two by two.
She noticed that she was the only passenger traveling by herself. Everyone else was in groups of even numbers. This had never worried her in the past. In those days she had been waiting for Clare or going to meet her, not because she was genuinely on her own. Now it was different somehow.
She gave herself a brisk mental shake. “I’m not going to be the only person on my own when I get there,” she told herself firmly. “There’s bound to be hundreds of people who came from different lands by themselves.”
Well, if there were, Annie didn’t meet them. And she became self-conscious on the beach. She felt people were looking at her, and wondering why was she so odd and friendless that she sat alone, rare in the breed of sun-seeking humans. She sat all by herself reading a book, rubbing on suntan oil, smiling at the children playing, admiring the fashion parade that walked up and down. She didn’t feel very lonely; she just thought that she looked lonely and a little eccentric. So Annie did something that was a little eccentric; she brought two towels out to the beach with her and spread one beside her as if her companion had just gone away for a while. She even took an extra pair of flip-flops to make it look more realistic. Once or twice she began a postcard to Clare and she was about to tell her of this idiotic subterfuge, but realized that it might sound pathetic and even verging on the insane, so she tore up the postcard and put it out of her mind.
There was a big notice in the hotel lobby announcing a St. Valentine’s Day party. Everyone was to wear a big label shaped like a heart with their name on it and it would create great romance in honor of the saint, the hotel announcement said.
“I thought everyone here was romantic already! What would they want to know anyone else’s name for?” Annie asked the man behind the desk out of genuine interest.
“Oh, a man is always searching for new romance,” he said, smiling with thirty-two overwhite teeth. Annie thought this was probably true. But on Thursday it was either put on a red heart with “Annie” written on it, or else go up to her room and sit on the balcony. There was no middle course. She took her heart and pinned it on her dress and went into the big room.
There was a welcome cocktail, a very dangerous tasting drink, which was a bright, limpid purple and might have been cleaning fluid with some cassis added. Annie sipped it cautiously. Then a Swede asked her to dance at once and said that he would like her to come to his apartment later for some Good Loving Games and wine. Annie said she thought not, and he wanted to know did she think not or did she say not. When she said she was saying not, he shrugged, finished the dance with the air of a courteous martyr, and left her.
She danced with an Englishman, who said his wife was behaving like a tramp, and she spent the dance assuring him that he might be mistaken in this view; then she danced with a man who didn’t speak at all. The name on his heart was Sven, so she assumed he was another Scandinavian. He had a nice smile. She was sorry he didn’t speak. She began to talk herself but it coincided with a very loud blast of “The Rivers of Babylon” as they were passing the band and he just smiled and pointed to his ears. There was a cabaret and there was a supper of aphrodisiac foods, oysters and strawberries mainly, and a lot of wine. Sven came and filled her glass up once and Annie wished he would say something. If Clare had been here they would have made a joke and called him Sven the Speechless to each other, but on your own it’s hard to make jokes and laugh at them.
The band, six lustful-looking fellows with flashing eyes, had managed to make connections with two groups of three equally lustful girls. It was safe to hunt in packs, Annie thought. If she had two friends with her she too might have gone off to whatever was promised, but on your own it was inviting some kind of disaster. She watched the musicians packing up their guitars hastily before the mood of lust passed from them or before the girls had second thoughts. A group of cheerful Irish people who had what seemed to be a jeroboam of Baileys Irish Cream with them were in high form and hardly noticed the departure of the band. For a moment Annie was tempted to join them; they looked married and settled and as if they wouldn’t object, in fact they seemed the kind who’d pull up a chair for her and give her a pint mug of Baileys, but something held her back. She took off her cardboard heart so as not to look silly in the lift and was walking to the door. She saw Sven taking off his heart too and smiling at it.
“I think I’ll keep it as a souvenir,” he said to her.
Annie wondered was she in fact very drunk; this Dane or Norwegian or whatever he was spoke with a Dublin accent.
“I beg your pardon?” she said, hoping to clear her head.
“They can never spell Sean properly so I wrote it down for them and then they couldn’t believe it; they thought I was an illiterate Swede who couldn’t spell his own name.”
The false Sven had a lovely smile.
“Did you have a row with your friend?” he asked her.
“What friend?”
“The one that never turns up to collect his towel and his shoes on the beach.”
“There’s no friend,” she said.
“That’s great,” said the false Sven. “Will we go out on the terrace and have a pint?”
Annie pealed with laughter. And as they sat in the moonlight with a lot of very cold lager and their two cardboard hearts on the table in front of them, she never once thought what a pity Clare wasn’t here to share all the laughs. She never thought of Clare at all.
Half of Ninety
Kay woke up because the curtains in her bedroom were being pulled back. This hadn’t happened for a long time, not for five long years, since Peter had left. It gave her a shock.
Then she heard a breakfast tray rattling and saw a big vase of flowers on a table. Her daughter, Helen, must have let herself into the house and was giving her a birthday treat.
“It’s all from Nick as well,” Helen explained, not wanting to take all the praise. “He delivered the flowers, reminded me to keep the half bottle of champagne cold, he would have been here if he could.”
“Champagne!” Kay couldn’t believe it.
She felt tears in her eyes. They were so good to her, and always had been.
“Just a half bottle and fresh orange juice—you are going to have a Buck’s Fizz or a Mimosa or whatever they call it.” Helen was struggling with the cork.
Kay sat up in bed happily. There were fresh croissants on a warmed plate and a thermos flask of coffee. This
breakfast could go on all morning if she wanted it to. And why not? Her day was her own until ten o’clock, when she went to work in a nearby antiques shop, and it wouldn’t really matter if she were late. They didn’t depend on her to run it, exactly.
But she wouldn’t think of that now as she sipped the fizzy orange. Alcohol at eight in the morning—whatever next?
“I’ll just have a sip then I must go to work.” Helen was all busy and excited. “Anyway, tonight, Mum, it’s the birthday present. Nick and I will be here at seven to pick you up and we’ll all go to this restaurant and give you our present.”
“But this is my present, this and the dinner, surely?” Kay protested.
“Nonsense. We have to do something special—after all, it’s not every day that your mother makes it to half of ninety,” said Helen, giving her a kiss, and was out the door.
The color went out of the spring morning, the fizz went out of the lovely fresh drink she had been enjoying so much, the coffee tasted bitter, and the crisp fresh croissants on the warm plate lost their appeal.
Kay Nolan was forty-five, half of ninety.
What a sad, lonely, terrible thought.
She got out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror.
She couldn’t quite work out what she was looking at.
A small woman with red-brown hair, quite fit and trim from all that hard work lifting and moving things around the antiques shop where she worked and walking the dog over the common twice a day.
Did she look half of ninety?
Impossible to say.
But now that she realized this is what she was, she sure as anything felt it.
She sat at her dressing table, head in hands.
Only the young, happy Helen and Nick, convinced that she was doing fine, would say that as a sort of joke. They were twenty-four and twenty-two, strong and handsome.
