Maeve Binchy's Treasury

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘Be reasonable,’ he begged. ‘Listen, I can’t leave you here in this state. Let me stay until you get on the plane.’

  ‘Leave me ALONE!’ she shouted. ‘That’s what you are going to do anyway, so do it now.’

  ‘Katy, darling, please,’ he was beseeching her now.

  Suddenly Katy picked up a glass on the table and banged it against the side of a metal ashtray. It broke, leaving a jagged edge. She leaned over the table, using it as a weapon.

  ‘NOW will you leave me alone?’ she cried.

  The man was shocked and drew backwards, but she followed.

  ‘Go away, go away from here and from me. Don’t call me Katy or darling again as long as you live.’

  James felt his whole chest constrict with fear. Here in front of his eyes a woman was going to stab a man, and it was going to be his responsibility.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he said foolishly.

  The girl didn’t appear to notice him, she was still following the man, her eyes never leaving his. The man was stumbling backwards. He shouted at James.

  ‘Can’t you see everything’s not all right? Get the police, quickly!’

  It would take time to summon them, time that James thought he might not have. When he played the scene over to himself afterwards, as he often did, James wondered where his courage had come from.

  ‘I don’t think that’s the right thing to do, sir, why don’t you leave now as the lady asks and then everything will calm down.’

  The girl with the dark hair and the tear-stained face looked at him gratefully. The man, white as snow, looked wildly from one to the other. At least the glass wasn’t advancing on him now. He made a decision. He ran. James watched him. He was about thirty, good-looking, blond-haired, like the kind of man you saw in advertisements or in films about rich young chaps.

  The girl stood there as if she were frozen. She looked at the broken glass in her hand as if she had no idea how it had got there. In that moment the American man stood up and removed the glass from her hand.

  ‘Come and sit at this table,’ he said in a gentle voice as if it was some kind of social occasion.

  ‘You sit here and let the barman take care of all that broken glass,’ he said softly.

  The girl followed him obediently. James moved into action. He got a brush and swept up the fragments, he carried the girl’s small leather suitcase over to her new table.

  ‘I’ll pay for the glass,’ the girl said.

  ‘Nonsense, these things happen.’ James was proud of himself. He was behaving as if there had been no drama, which there hadn’t been thanks to his own quick thinking. How inspired it had been to get the guy to leave. Now it was almost impossible to imagine what the scene had been like. He left and went back to the bar where Paula stood looking at him in admiration.

  ‘You were great,’ she said. Paula hardly ever offered an opinion, a view, a greeting. James felt that he must have been great.

  At their table the two Americans talked as they might have talked to any other passenger in a foreign airport. They had had a simply wonderful visit to Britain, and this trip they had given themselves enough time, well, three weeks, for Americans that was a great deal of time to spend in one country. They told Katy about the inns they had stayed in, old, old places. Some of them had been in existence before the United States was founded. They had gone to the theatre often. They came from a city in the States where there wasn’t much theatre, so they wanted to stock up on memories. They had walked a lot and talked to people. It was surprising that people said the British were hard to talk to, they found them just charming.

  ‘I’m sorry for the upset just now,’ Katy said.

  They brushed it away. They seemed to think it was a broken glass. It was as if they hadn’t heard her shouts of pain and anger, her threats, her accusations.

  ‘I’m Maurice, and this is my wife Jean,’ the man said. ‘Can we get you another drink since yours got spilled?’

  He was kind and concerned. He reminded Katy of one of those TV doctors in an American television series. Saintly, caring people who would do anything to help a patient.

  ‘Are you a doctor?’ she asked him suddenly.

  ‘No, alas, not that kind of doctor, I do have a PhD, but that’s not what you mean.’

  There was something hypnotic about the way he talked. Katy was beginning to breathe normally again.

  ‘I’d like a brandy please. It might steady me a bit.’

  ‘Sure.’ He got up and walked at a leisurely pace over to James.

  ‘The lady will have a brandy,’ he said.

  ‘Has the lady calmed down?’ James whispered.

  ‘Oh yes, most definitely,’ said the American. ‘Congratulations on your quick thinking, by the way.’

  James felt as pleased as anything.

  ‘It was nothing,’ he said, reddening with pride.

  Back at the table, Jean was saying how sad it was that Richard Burton had died, a very fine actor, and also James Mason in the same year, another great. Katy appeared to be listening.

  ‘It was a bad year for people dying,’ she said. ‘Eric Morecambe died. He was one of the funniest men in the world.’

  Jean said they should think of something cheerful. Wasn’t it wonderful that Princess Diana was any day now expecting a new baby?

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Katy, but her voice was flat suddenly.

  Jean glanced at Maurice anxiously. He put the brandy into her hand.

  ‘Drink it slowly. You don’t look like a serious brandy drinker to me,’ he said smiling at her.

  ‘You’re very kind, both of you,’ she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘No, no it’s nice to have somebody to talk to at an airport,’ Maurice insisted.

  Katy hadn’t even sipped the brandy. ‘My life is over,’ she said. She looked from one to the other, expecting them to laugh and dismiss it. But they didn’t. They both took her seriously. They said nothing at all, just sat looking at her and waiting for her to say more.

  ‘You see he said he loved me. He said he was going to leave her.’ Katy shook her head as if she were trying to clear water from her ears.

  ‘I mean, you don’t know me or anything about me, so you wouldn’t know the kind of person I was before I met him. I was normal then. Before it all happened, before Colin.’

  They still looked interested, not agog with curiosity, but as if they had all the time in the world.

  ‘So you changed?’ Maurice said.

  ‘I changed totally. I gave up everything for him. I loved him so much it’s ridiculous, but you can’t say things are ridiculous if they happened . . . can you?’ She looked from one to the other.

  ‘If they happen they are part of you, and therefore important, I guess,’ Jean said, sympathetically.

  ‘Yes, well war is ridiculous and yet that happens and will happen again, and people starving, that’s ridiculous when there’s so much food on the earth, but falling for someone like Colin, that’s sort of the same. You know it’s going to end badly for everyone, for every single person, but you go on and do it all the same.’

  ‘And will everyone get hurt, do you think?’ Maurice sounded caring rather than curious; it was an odd distinction.

  ‘Yes, almost everyone I know. My parents are hurt because I left their home and called them backward and old fashioned and killjoys, and my friends . . . do I have any friends any more? I walked out on them. They’re hurt, I suppose. And Colin, he’s hurt because I told his wife, I told her I was sorry. And his wife’s hurt because she didn’t know. Imagine that she didn’t know anything about me at all.’ Katy’s eyes were wide with disbelief. ‘Three years and she didn’t know I existed. All this business of her trying to work out what to do, and how we owed it to her to wait until she sorted herself out.’

  Katy pushed the brandy to one side and laid her head down on the table and sobbed. They waited and soon it was over. Katy had a packet of tissues in her pocket.


  ‘At least I brought these,’ she said with a watery smile.

  ‘That’s good forward planning,’ Jean said admiringly.

  ‘And where are you off to anyway?’ Maurice spoke as one would speak to any traveller rather than to a girl who had brandished a broken glass, declared that her life was over and then cried like a baby.

  ‘To Greece,’ she said simply.

  ‘Oh really, one of the islands?’

  ‘Yes, Crete. We go every year, Colin and I. Well this is the third year. Except that he’s not going now.’

  ‘It might be a bad place to go without him,’ Maurice said. ‘You know, every place you see reminding you of other days, different days.’

  ‘But I tell you I am going,’ she replied defensively. ‘I paid for my ticket. I took my two weeks’ holiday from the office. I’m not going to be denied my holiday.’ Her lip started to tremble again.

  Maurice laughed at the very thought of anyone being denied a holiday.

  ‘Why not go somewhere else?’ he suggested.

  ‘Because the plane leaves in an hour, and I won’t get my money back,’ Katy said.

  ‘It’s no reason to commit yourself to two weeks of feeling miserable,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll feel miserable anywhere,’ Katy said, stating a fact.

  ‘All that Greek music . . . it will only remind you,’ Maurice said.

  ‘He’s right, Katy,’ Jean agreed.

  Katy shook her head.

  ‘Music anywhere reminds me. How do you think I feel when I hear Stevie Wonder sing, “I Just Called To Say I Love You”?’

  It was unanswerable.

  ‘You’ve been very kind,’ Katy said, getting up to go.

  ‘Do me a favour, just one?’ Maurice asked.

  ‘I am going to Crete,’ she said.

  ‘No, no of course you must if you want to. Just write to us this day next year, will you? Here’s my card.’

  ‘What will I say?’

  ‘Say you survived. Tell us something about the year.’

  ‘I don’t think I could . . . I’d be embarrassed, I cried all over you . . .’ Katy looked around her. James was coming to clear the tables.

  ‘Please, Katy, it would mean a lot to us. Just a note. It’s not much to ask.’

  James joined in. ‘Go on, they bought you a brandy,’ he urged her. ‘And anyway I’d like to know you’re okay too.’

  ‘How would you know if I was all right?’ Katy asked.

  ‘They’d tell me,’ James said.

  ‘Sure we would.’ Maurice gave his card to the barman. ‘Now you’ve all got this? Next year. 17 September 1985. It’s a big year for me, I’ll be fifty, call it a birthday card. Give your addresses to me then, we won’t plague you, just once a year. Hey, that’s not much?’

  His smile was warm.

  ‘I’ll write next year,’ Katy promised.

  Colin went straight home from the airport. He had told Monica that the firm wanted him to go for two weeks to Greece, and that he would be travelling around, he would call her from time to time. Sounded like a paradise but in fact it wasn’t. It’s all a consultancy job for hotels, hard graft, sweating in rooms with lots of people who didn’t want to spend money. How much he’d prefer to be at home. He had told Katy that this time he really would sort it out with Monica and that this trip to Crete, their third trip, would be a real honeymoon. No more hiding, they would be able to live together openly from now on.

  When he arrived at the airport, suitcase packed and looking forward to the trip, all hell had broken loose. Katy had just called Monica to say she was glad it was all in the open and to assure Monica that there would be no trouble about money and alimony and everything. Monica was to have the house, Katy had a job and could finance a flat for both of them. She had actually picked up the phone and said this to Monica, because she thought Monica knew.

  Now Colin was going home to face the music. Unpleasant music. He would have to say that Katy was mad, quite disturbed, in fact. Which, judging from the last glance he had seen of her brandishing a broken glass at him, did not seem too far from the truth.

  James went home to Miriam and told her all about it.

  ‘Real hero,’ she said sarcastically.

  ‘Don’t you like me at all, Miriam?’ he asked her mildly.

  She paused to think.

  ‘I don’t know, James, to be honest, I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘How could you forget when you live with me?’ he asked.

  There was silence.

  ‘It’s odd all right,’ Miriam agreed. ‘It’s just that we live such separate lives. I have my sisters and all their comings and goings and you have this life through the people that pass through your bar. I suppose we’re just interested in different things. I don’t dislike you though.’

  ‘No. No indeed.’ He was quiet.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s just I was looking at this couple today, the ones I was telling you about, who looked after the girl, I mean they’re only ten years older than I am . . . but they had something you and I will never have . . . they’re sort of friends, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Miriam agreed sadly. Then to cheer him up she said, ‘Of course, you and I, we’re not enemies or anything.’

  ‘No, no. And then this girl, she had something we’ll never have, a sort of passion.’

  ‘We’re too old for that, James,’ but her voice was softer. She didn’t go out to her sister’s that evening, they watched television. It was companionable. James was glad he hadn’t told Miriam that they had always been too old for passion, even when they were young.

  Paula couldn’t concentrate on her studies. It was a warm night, but that wasn’t the distraction. She kept seeing the face of that girl in the bar today. The girl who was prepared to kill the man who had wronged her. Maybe that’s what Paula should have done when she was seventeen, killed the school teacher who told her he loved her, denied that he had ever said it and insisted she have an abortion. Paula had had no counselling, no guidance, no friends to talk it over with. Her parents would never have understood.

  She had been unable to get the A-levels that were hers by right. She couldn’t study for them the following year. The teacher was still in the school, smiling at everyone, but in particular at a different Sixth Former. Paula knew what it was to feel like Katy had, but she had never shown it. She would have died rather than make a scene in a public place, and yet the skies had not fallen on Katy, everyone had rallied to her.

  Perhaps Paula should have been less secretive and reached out for help, there might have been a lot more of it available. Suddenly she made a resolution. That was what she was going to do that year, be more open to people. Like those two nice Americans. She wished they had asked her to write to them the following year too. But of course she always hung in the background. Nobody would approach her because she looked like a person who could not be approached.

  Katy went to Crete. She knew the moment she stepped from the plane that it had been the wrong thing to do. The familiar heat, the taxi drivers calling, the little glasses of ouzo at the small tables, the bread and cheese and olives on the coloured plates. At night, the lights reflecting in the harbour. The swimming alone on the beach that used to be their beach. She got into the habit of taking a long bus journey to another beach and coming home late and tired. She counted the days until the holiday ended.

  One night, she looked at the moon and asked herself if it were possible that she had only been here six days, it felt like two years. And for no reason the next morning she bought five postcards and sent them to her parents, her sister and three friends. She thought of sending one to the American couple, Maurice and Jean, but no, they said they wouldn’t plague her, she wouldn’t plague them either. Next year they said, next year it would be.

  Tuesday, 10 September 1985

  Dear Maurice and Jean,

  I don’t know whether you will remember me or not. I was a very distraught madwoman at London airp
ort who got upset because my boyfriend had lied to me. You were very kind and supportive to me, and I have never forgotten you.

  I would love to be able to write and tell you that it all turned out wonderfully and then when I was in Crete I met a new man and we loved each other so much that the patter of tiny feet is now a definite sound. But no, life doesn’t work out like that.

  I came back from Crete and I made friends with my mother and father and sister again and that was great. And I made other friends, which was also fabulous.

  But truthfully it wasn’t enough, I yearned for Colin with such a pain you wouldn’t believe it. And when he wrote a letter saying how bad he felt, I took him back. He said he realised how much I loved him when I was prepared to kill him that day. He had no idea how strongly I felt.

  Men are so strange. What else did he expect me to feel?

  He hasn’t left Monica, she is being very difficult and could cause trouble for him at work, so it’s better not to rock that boat.

  I have less foolish dreams than I used to, I know it won’t all be plain sailing. We won’t have that holiday in Greece, but we have had a couple of nice weekends away together, and of course he comes round to me on Wednesday afternoons.

  You are both very kind people. I wish you knew how often I think of your friendly faces and how helpful and concerned you were for me. I feel sure you didn’t forget me.

  Warm wishes and great gratitude,

  Katy

  Dear Dr and Mrs Hunt,

  I am James Green, barman in one of the departure lounges in London airport. We agreed that I would write to you and find out whether the young lady, Katy, recovered from all her worries on that day. If you think this is an intrusion and you did not mean me to write, please forgive me.

  It’s hard to write news of things to strangers, hard to know what you would be interested in. There was a wonderful concert this year called Live Aid, where all the famous stars appeared free and it made a huge amount of money for famine in Africa. My wife, Miriam, and I went to it and we were both very moved by it all. There were similar concerts in the United States.