Maeve Binchy's Treasury

by Maeve Binchy

  She had no jewellery, he noticed, and that included no wedding ring. Her hair was short and slightly damp looking, as if she had just got out of a shower. She had a soft black leather shoulder bag, and pointed-toe, low, black shoes.

  He took all this in in seconds.

  She was examining different mirrors from his choice. Slightly over-ornate, he thought. They were Georgian certainly, but they had candlesticks attached, a little fussy for today’s world, yet they had been hugely popular for a long time.

  Martin pretended to look at his own choice, but all the time he watched her.

  She wasn’t what you would call languid, but her movements were slow, almost rippling. Yes, that was it, rippling. She reminded him of a beautiful filly stretching and arching her neck.

  For the first time in his whole life he felt an uncontrollable urge to go straight over and put his hand on the arm of someone he did not know. He wanted to talk to her, tell her how her particular simple style of beauty had touched him, suggest they have dinner.

  He pulled himself together sharply. That kind of thing would be pure sleaze, completely vulgar. A mature man reaching out to stroke a beautiful young woman, a stranger. This wasn’t what an eminent counsel did while browsing at one of the smartest antiques fairs of the season.

  She would be frightened by him, repulsed. He must not even think of doing it. But he could not let her disappear from him. Not now that he had seen her.

  Twice in his life he had thought he might be in love. Once with Francesca, a hopelessly unsuitable, but beautiful, Italian woman who eventually married one of Martin’s colleagues and made the man unspeakably miserable. And once with Shona, an intense law lecturer who might certainly have been a suitable wife in that she could hold her own at a dinner party, and they would have had plenty in common. But Shona lacked glamour and style. And for all that he admired her mind, Martin found it hard to overlook the fact that she wore shabby cardigans and didn’t look after her hair and her nails.

  Unlike this goddess who stood examining the mirrors.

  How he wanted to sit opposite her at a dinner. He knew exactly the restaurant to suggest to her. Once they got talking . . .

  Why was there no way to let her know that he was a really respectable person? That, if they were in Ireland, everyone would know his face and, to be honest, everyone would be pleased, almost honoured to be addressed by him.

  It never mattered to Martin that he was well known, it sat lightly on him. But now, on the one occasion he needed to be recognised, he had to be in London, a city of twelve million people for God’s sake! How very unfair!

  She had one of those long, swan-like necks that you sometimes saw on models, but she didn’t look haughty or aloof. Not unlike a taller Audrey Hepburn, but not as pixie-like.

  He ached to talk to her, to say something pleasant so that she would reply and he would hear her voice.

  What would his friends say in such circumstances? The lawyers would make arch legalistic remarks. ‘Would my learned friend care to inform the court what conclusion she has reached . . . on the sculptural girandole with scrolled acanthus leaves?’

  The people he knew from racing would offer odds on it being a genuine Robert Adam piece or not. Nothing seemed right.

  And soon she would move away and he would never see her again. The thought terrified him.

  ‘Are you interested in horses?’ he blurted out suddenly.

  Her eyes widened in surprise. He wished he were twelve feet under the ground. She looked him up and down.

  ‘Fairly interested,’ she said eventually. She had a slight Australian accent.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to go to the Melbourne Cup,’ Martin said foolishly.

  ‘Well, why don’t you go then?’ she asked reasonably.

  ‘Oh, I will one day,’ he reassured her.

  She was just about to move on, thinking presumably that she had met a madman. Martin just couldn’t let her go.

  ‘I have a wonderful tip for you for next Sunday,’ he stuttered, completely unrecognisable as the silver-tongued lawyer who could silence a court with his opening sentence.

  ‘You have?’ She had such a lovely voice, not strident, not affected. Warm, interested.

  She didn’t seem to think it at all odd that a stranger should come up and offer her a tip. Maybe people were doing that all the time.

  ‘Yes. She’ll be placed. No question,’ Martin’s voice was still shaking slightly.

  He was having a real conversation with her and she wasn’t walking away in disgust or anything.

  ‘She? It’s a filly then?’

  ‘Indeed. Called Alexander Goldrun. Great animal altogether, full of heart, runner-up in last month’s Irish Guineas. On Sunday, she’s in Chantilly . . . the 4.30 race. It’s called Diane Hermes. Back it for a place now, won’t you?’

  ‘Only runner-up in the Irish Guineas?’ she asked, frowning doubtfully.

  ‘But you should have seen that race!’ Martin had a light in his eye now. ‘She was runner-up to Attraction, a horse never beaten, undefeated, before and after.’

  ‘I see,’ she was thoughtful.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you put the deeds of the house on her or anything,’ he said with his famous Martin smile.

  ‘No, indeed,’ she agreed.

  There was a silence between them.

  ‘What were you suggesting, actually?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I would like to have asked you out, but people don’t do that to strangers, so I thought I’d do it differently. I am sort of giving you my credentials in a way by giving you this tip. And I thought that I’d also give you my name and phone number and if . . . when . . . Alexander Goldrun comes in, then you might give me a ring and we could go out to dinner?’ He managed to look hopeful but laid-back. He sent out the message that his life would continue even if she did not call him.

  She looked at him for a moment.

  ‘Fair enough,’ she said.

  He wrote down Martin Grey and his mobile phone number and handed it to her.

  ‘And are you a breeder, a trainer, an owner?’ she asked.

  ‘None of these things, I’m afraid, just an enthusiastic guy who hands my money over to the bookies,’ he laughed.

  ‘They must have handed some of it back.’ She looked at his expensive clothes.

  ‘A bit, from time to time, but I have a day job, too, I’m a lawyer.’

  ‘Ah, cautious to the end,’ she said.

  ‘Normally yes, this time no.’

  ‘I’m Megan,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll hear from you Sunday night then, Megan,’ he said, and moved away.

  He felt light-headed with excitement. She wasn’t a girl who would play games. She would call when the horse romped home in the first three.

  Megan wondered what it was about her that attracted lawyers.

  She had just finished a four-year relationship with a sharp Sydney barrister, who really should have been with a brainless bimbo, not a businesswoman.

  And when she had eventually found him with such a bimbo, she had left him without a backward glance and had returned his letters unopened.

  She had come to Europe to decide what kind of a fresh start she would make. For one thing, she would create a different place to live, not a minimalist, near-empty space looking out on Sydney Harbour. She wanted furnishings and items of beauty around her, like those she had been looking at, at the antiques fair.

  She’d never expected such a handsome, attractive man to approach her. Why hadn’t he asked her out directly, instead of all this waiting around until some horse won some race. But that was lawyers for you, always playing games.

  Megan knew a fair bit about horses. Her father had taken her to the races since she was a child. He would be very pleased she had met up with another gambling man. The Sydney lawyer wasn’t ever a man for the racecourse.

  Four days now until the damn race. And suppose the horse fell? She could ring him to sympathise. Or would that be pathe
tic? Megan didn’t do pathetic.

  Martin stayed on in London. In theory he should have gone back to Dublin, but what was the point, he would be seeing Megan on Sunday night, why waste the time going back and forth.

  The next days hung very heavy on Martin’s hands.

  Megan asked the porter in her hotel how she would get the results of a race in France which was not televised in Britain.

  He said he’d find out.

  ‘Oh, the Prix Diane,’ he said knowledgeably. ‘I have a tenner on Grey Lilas myself. For a place, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  Why on earth was time going so slowly? Why had she agreed to risk her whole future with a really attractive man on the result of some horse race in France?

  She paced the foyer watching the porter, willing him to make the phone call and give her the good news.

  Martin sat in his club clenching his fists and unclenching them and trying to keep his eyes away from the clock. In fourteen minutes he would ring his bookmaker.

  In thirteen and a half . . .

  He must have been mad to let it all depend on this. Stone mad.

  ‘You must have a lot on that filly,’ the porter said to Megan. ‘I never saw anyone so anxious.’

  ‘More than you’d believe,’ Megan said.

  Only three minutes. ‘Go on, Kevin, go on Kevin Manning, ride the race of your life,’ Martin Grey cried out to the walls.

  Under the French skies, Latice came first, Milllionaia second and Grey Lilas third. A very good fourth came Alexander Goldrun.

  Martin put down the phone from his bookmaker. His heart was heavy. It was a place, of course, but fourth place.

  He had a very strange feeling that he was going to cry. But he knew that once he started he might never stop. The mobile phone was on his table beside him.

  Megan had not telephoned.

  Megan sat shell-shocked. The porter was trying not to look too pleased about Grey Lilas.

  ‘Do they pay out on fourth?’ she croaked to him.

  ‘In handicaps they do, if there are sixteen or more runners,’ he began.

  ‘So it is a place then, is it?’ Her face was full of hope.

  ‘It’s France, you see, they don’t have bookies over there, it’s all the Tote, Pari Mutual they call it, and they don’t pay on fourth, no matter how many runners.’

  ‘Would any bookie pay out on it, do you think?’

  The porter was puzzled.

  ‘Well, you could have made an individual arrangement with a bookie and agreed with him that he pay on fourth.’

  ‘Could I?’ She had hope again.

  ‘But you didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said.

  ‘Did you lose much?’ the porter was sympathetic.

  ‘Almost everything,’ she said.

  Martin waited in his club until Tuesday, then he left for Dublin. She wasn’t going to ring. She might have thought that a fourth paid out. Or that it counted. But she didn’t care enough.

  Back to work.

  Megan went to the airport on Tuesday. She was going back home.

  She would put it behind her. It was a foolish thing to have agreed to. She should have spoken at the time. If she had called him and said that fourth counted, he would always have despised her. She had never run after a man. She wouldn’t start running after one now.

  ‘Which terminal?’ the taxi driver asked.

  Megan couldn’t remember. It was three weeks since she had come into London, how could she recall the terminal where she arrived? It didn’t matter anyway, there was surely transport from one to the other. And she had plenty of time to spare.

  ‘Terminal One,’ she said uncaring.

  Martin was in the bookstore. He would get something that would take his mind off this woman. A thriller. A good, creepy, bloodthirsty thriller.

  When he got home, he would have a shower, change and sit on the terrace of his elegant Georgian house and read.

  He realised with a sense of pain how very lonely his life seemed. Long empty years ahead.

  He shook himself. It was nonsense to think like this. She might have been entirely unsuitable for him, he might have been far too old for her. He must get rid of this ridiculous sense of loss.

  Megan realised that she should be in Terminal Four. She decided to have a coffee before she made the trek. A lot of the life had gone out of her. She had enjoyed her long trip over from Australia. Now she felt tired and weary. A sense that she had missed something. She must get rid of such a negative feeling.

  And then she saw him. His face looked grim. He was unhappy today. Not at all the boyish, eager man she had seen at the antiques fair. But still very handsome, a face of character, a warm expression. A man you could trust.

  She took out her mobile phone and dialled his number.

  ‘Hello?’ His voice was as she remembered it.

  ‘It’s Megan,’ she said.

  ‘It is?’ There was joy in his face, she could see it. ‘Megan, where are you?’ he cried. She saw how pleased he was she had called.

  ‘At the Tie Rack,’ she said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A shop that sells ties and scarves about twenty metres away from you.’

  He looked over, saw her, dropped his briefcase and started running towards her. She left her luggage and ran to meet him.

  In an airport, it’s not unusual to see people embracing. Welcoming someone home or saying goodbye. There’s usually a lot of embracing going on. But never as ardent as the way Megan and Martin held each other with tears of relief and the joy of discovery in their eyes.

  Part of It All

  HE HAD GIVEN UP BREAD IN MAY. BRIAN, WHO USED TO EAT IT IN doorsteps. And in June he had said that he’d have a Campari and soda rather than a pint. He had little pellets to dissolve in his coffee, and she had been very alarmed the first time she heard the groans from the bathroom, but they were only exercises. He had inquired at a bike shop how much a folding bike would cost, but his brother told Brian that these bikes were useless in the city, where you got more dirt and dust down your lungs than if you were down a mine and you arrived everywhere in a terrible sweat. Brian had forgotten about the bike, but he hadn’t forgotten about his stomach; he was flattening it for the holiday.

  ‘But who will we know there, who’ll be looking at your stomach?’ Maura had cried. It wasn’t as if they were going to run into a soul who would say approvingly that they’d been looking smart on the Riviera. Now if it had been for Kinsale where they’d have known everybody, or for Sean’s wedding where half the country was looking at them, she could have understood. But the South of France, it was impossible to know what he was at.

  Still, it was all to the good. Men of his age were always getting what were called . . . little shocks. Look at Harry. Not a real heart attack of course. But a fright. A spell in intensive care, a change in lifestyle. Look at her own brother, not able to go up stairs, moved to that desperate bungalow miles from anywhere. Look at the death notices you read all the time, young men, men in their fifties who didn’t take care of themselves. She should be delighted. She patted her own stomach; it was hard and small as it had always been. Her friends had always resented it. But it was worry, of course. She burned it off in worrying. You couldn’t tell that to people nowadays. Worry was more unacceptable than bad breath. Everyone was meant to be very relaxed.

  She had been surprised that Brian said they should have a holiday. Surprised and delighted. He had come home from work with brochures one day and after a couple of hours of adding and subtracting figures on a sheet of paper, ‘Ahem, I have a proposition to make,’ he said, his face as proud as a child who has a bunch of flowers behind his back as a surprise.

  ‘What’s that?’ Maura had looked up from her magazine. Upside down she had read the names of French resorts and had seen the rings he had put around package deals to Nice. She thought that there must be a conference and he was going to see if he could wangle her
out there for the weekend. She had said nothing so as not to spoil it.

  ‘You are going to be taken for a fortnight to the French Riviera,’ he had said bursting with pride at the words. ‘Yes, two weeks in the South of France, we’ll hire a car . . . we’ll go to Saint-Tropez and let Brigitte Bardot have a look at us . . . we’ll go to Monte and have a flutter with the Rainiers down in the casino. Well, what do you think of that?’

  ‘Brian, how can we afford it?’ She wished she hadn’t said that. His face clouded a little.

  ‘We can afford it. Aren’t I twenty-five years in the firm next month? Aren’t I fifty-four years of age? Haven’t we everything we want? Why do you think we couldn’t afford it?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . it sounds so . . . well, extravagant . . . you know . . . not like Majorca where everyone else goes.’

  ‘I want the best . . . I want to see it once. I want to take you to the best place,’ he said.

  She had stood up and gone over to hug him, she had sat on the arm of his chair while he pointed out hotels, and pictures of cafés. They would drive to Cannes, and to Menton and to this place and that . . . they would have lunches in shaded restaurants like that . . . they would see a bit of life.

  ‘Yes, imagine us sitting there watching the world walk by,’ Maura said enthusiastically.

  ‘And better, imagine the world watching Brian and Maura O’Neill walk by,’ Brian had said.

  She had laughed. Brian had replied, ‘Why not? Aren’t we as good as any of them?’

  They talked long into the night, and when Maura went out to the kitchen to make the flask of tea they took to bed every night in case one of them woke with a dry throat, she looked back and saw him smiling into the brochures still.

  ‘Aren’t you marvellous to think up something like that?’ she called in affectionately.

  ‘Oh, there’s still life in me,’ Brian said happily.

  Their friends were pleased for them, and surprised.

  ‘What will you do all day?’ Frances had asked her. ‘It won’t be like going to Spain like we did before poor Harry . . . it was organised there, you came down to the swimming pool, and then in to lunch and then back to the swimming pool. But you’ll be moving on from place to place.’