Maeve Binchy's Treasury

by Maeve Binchy

  Why did a nice, good, warm man like her father have nothing to do, and nowhere to go after all he had done for Victoria and for everyone? Tears of rage on his behalf pricked Victoria’s eyes.

  Victoria remembered the first time she had been to Paris, and how Daddy had been so interested and fascinated; dragging out the names of hotels in case she was stuck, and giving her hints on how to get to them. She had been so impatient at twenty, so intolerant, so embarrassed that he thought that things were all like they had been in his day. She had barely listened, she was anxious for his trip down the scrapbooks and up the maps to be over. She had been furious to have had to carry all his carefully transcribed notes. She had never looked at them while there. But that was twenty and perhaps everyone knows how restless everyone else is at twenty and hopefully forgives them a bit. Now at thirty she had been to Paris several times, and because she was much less restless she had found time to visit some of her father’s old haunts . . . dull, merging into their own backgrounds . . . those that still existed . . . she was generous enough these days to have photographed them and he spent happy hours examining the new prints and comparing them with the old with clucks of amazement and shakings of the head that the old bakery had gone, or the tree-lined street was now an underpass with six lanes of traffic.

  And when Mum was alive she too had looked at the cuttings and exclaimed a bit, and shown interest that was not a real interest. It was only the interest that came from wanting to make Daddy happy.

  And after Mum died people had often brought up the subject to Daddy of his going away. Not too soon after the funeral of course, but months later when one of his old friends from other branches of the bank might call . . .

  ‘You might think of taking a trip abroad again sometime,’ they would say. ‘Remember all those places you saw in France, no harm to have a look at them again. Nice little trip.’ And Daddy would always smile a bit wistfully. He was so goddamn gentle and non-pushing, thought Victoria, with another prickle of tears. He didn’t push at the bank which was why he wasn’t a manager. He hadn’t pushed at the neighbours when they built all around and almost over his nice garden . . . his pride and joy, which was why he was overlooked by dozens of bedsitters now. He hadn’t pushed Victoria when Victoria said she was going to marry Gus. If only Daddy had been more pushing then . . . it might have worked. Suppose Daddy had been strong and firm and said that Gus was what they called a bounder in his time and possibly a playboy in present times . . . just suppose Daddy had said that. Might she have listened at all or would it have strengthened her resolve to marry the Bad Egg? Maybe those words from Daddy’s lips might have brought her up short for a moment . . . enough to think. Enough to spare her the two years of sadness in marriage and the two more years organising the divorce.

  But Daddy had said nothing. He had said that whatever she thought might be right. He had wished her well, and given them a wedding present for which he must have had to cash in an insurance policy. Gus had been barely appreciative. Gus had been bored with Daddy. Daddy had been unfailingly polite and gentle with Gus. With Gus long gone Victoria had gone back to live in Daddy’s house. It was peaceful despite the blocks of bedsitters. It was undemanding. Daddy kept his little study where he caught up on things, and he always washed saucepans after himself if he had made his own supper. They didn’t often eat together . . . Victoria had irregular hours as a traveller and Daddy was so used to reading at his supper . . . and he ate so early in the evening. If she stayed out at night there were no explanations and no questions. If she told him of her adventures there was always his pleased interest.

  Victoria was going to Paris this morning. She had been asked to collect some samples of catalogues. It was a job that might take a week if she were to do it properly or a day if she took a taxi and the first fifty catalogues that caught her eye. She had told Daddy about it this morning. He was interested, and he took out his books to see again what direction the new airport was in . . . and what areas Victoria’s bus would pass as she came in to the city centre. He spent a happy half an hour on this, and Victoria had looked with both affection and interest. It was ridiculous that he didn’t go again. Why didn’t he?

  Suddenly she thought she knew. She realised it was all because he had nobody to go with. He was in fact a timid man. He was a man who said sorry when other people stepped on him, which is what the nicer half of the world does . . . but it’s also sometimes an indication that people might be wary and uneasy about setting off on a lonely journey, a strange pilgrimage of return. Victoria thought of the good-natured woman and the man who must be ten or fifteen years older than Daddy; tonight they would be eating a meal in a Dutch restaurant. Tonight Daddy would be having his scrambled egg and deadheading a few roses, while his daughter, Victoria, would be yawning at a French restaurant trying not to look as if she were returning the smiles of an ageing lecher. Why wasn’t Daddy going with her? It was her own stupid fault. All those years, seven of them since Mummy had died, seven years, perhaps thirty trips abroad for her, not a mention of inviting Daddy. The woman with the good-natured countenance didn’t live in ivory towers of selfishness like that.

  Almost knocking over the table, she stumbled out and got a taxi home. He was actually in a cardigan in the garden scratching his head and sucking on his pipe and looking like a stage image of someone’s gentle amiable father. He was alarmed to see her. He had to be reassured. But why had she changed her mind? Why did it not matter whether she went today or tomorrow? He was worried. Victoria didn’t do sudden things. Victoria did measured things, like he did. Was she positive she was telling him the truth and that she hadn’t felt sick or faint or worried?

  They were not a father and daughter who hugged and kissed. Pats were more the style of their touching. Victoria would pat him on the shoulder and say: ‘I’m off now, Daddy,’ or he would welcome her home clasping her hand and patting the other arm enthusiastically. His concern as he stood worried amid his garden things was almost too much to bear.

  ‘Come in and we’ll have a cup of tea, Daddy,’ she said, wanting a few moments bent over kettle, sink, tea caddy to right her eyes.

  He was a shuffle behind her, anxiety and care in every step. Not wishing to be too inquisitive, not wanting, but plans changed meant bad news. He hated it.

  ‘You’re not doing anything really, Daddy, on your holidays, are you?’ she said eventually once she could fuss over tea things no longer. He was even more alarmed.

  ‘Victoria, my dear, do you have to go to hospital or anything? Victoria, my dear, is something wrong? I’d much prefer if you told me.’ Gentle eyes, his lower lip fastened in by his teeth in worry. Oh what a strange father. Who else had never had a row with a father? Was there any other father in the world so willing to praise the good, rejoice in the cheerful, and to forget the bad and the painful?

  ‘Nothing, Daddy, nothing. But I was thinking it’s silly my going to Paris on my own. Staying in a hotel and reading a book and you staying here reading a book or a paper. I was thinking wouldn’t it be nice if I left it until tomorrow and we both went. The same way . . . the way I go by train to Gatwick . . . or we could get the train to the coast and go by ferry.’

  He looked at her, cup halfway to his mouth. He held it there. ‘But why, Victoria dear? Why do you suggest this?’ His face had rarely seemed more troubled. It was as if she had asked him to leave the planet.

  ‘Daddy, you often talk about Paris, you tell me about it. I tell you about it. Why don’t we go together and tell each other about it when we come back?’ She looked at him . . . he was so bewildered she wanted to shout at him, she wanted to finish her sentences through a loud speaker.

  Why did he look so unwilling to join? He was being asked to play. Now don’t let him hang back, slow to accept like a shy schoolboy who can’t believe he has been picked for the team.

  ‘Daddy, it would be nice. We could go out and have a meal and we could go up and walk to Montmartre by the same routes as you took in the Good Ol
d Days. We could do the things you did when you were a wild teenager . . .’

  He looked at her frightened, trapped. He was so desperately kind he saw the need in her. He didn’t know how he was going to fight her off. She knew that if she were to get him to come, she must stress that she really wanted it for her, more than for him.

  ‘Daddy, I’m often very lonely when I go to Paris. Often at night particularly I remember that you used to tell me how all of you . . .’

  She stopped. He looked like a hunted animal.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to come?’ she said in a much calmer voice.

  ‘My dear Victoria. Some time. I’d love to go to Paris, my dear, there’s nothing in the world I’d like to do more than to come to Paris . . . but I can’t go just like that. I can’t drop everything and rush off to Paris, my dear. You know that.’

  ‘Why not, Daddy?’ she begged. She knew she was doing something dangerous, she was spelling out her own flightiness, her own action of whim of doubling back from the station . . . she was defining herself as less than level-headed.

  She was challenging him too. She was asking him to say why he couldn’t come to a few days of shared foreign things. If he had no explanation then he was telling her that he was just someone who said he wanted something but didn’t reach for it. She could be changing the nature of his little dreams. How would he ever take out his pathetically detailed maps and scrapbooks to pore once more with her over routes and happenings if he had thrown away a chance to see them in three dimensions?

  ‘You have nothing planned, Daddy. It’s ideal. We can pack for you. I’ll ask them next door to keep an eye on the house. We’ll stop the milk and the newspaper and, Daddy, that’s it. Tomorrow evening in Paris, tomorrow afternoon we’ll be taking that route in together, the one we talked about for me this morning . . .’

  ‘But, Victoria . . . all the things here . . . my dear, I can’t just drop everything . . . you do see that.’

  Twice now he had talked about all the things here that he had to drop. There was nothing to drop. What he would drop was pottering about scratching his head about leaf curl. Oh, Daddy, don’t you see that’s all you’ll drop. But if you don’t see and I tell you . . . it means I’m telling you that your life is meaningless and futile and pottering. I will not tell you, who walked around the house cradling me when I was a crying baby, you who paid for elocution lessons so that I could speak well, you, Daddy, who paid for that wedding lunch that Gus thought was shabby, you, Daddy, who smiled and raised your champagne glass to me and said, ‘Your mother would have loved this day. A daughter’s wedding is a milestone.’ I won’t tell you that your life is nothing.

  The good-natured woman and her father were probably at Folkestone or Dover or Newhaven when Victoria said to her father that of course he was right, and it had just been a mad idea, but naturally they would plan it for later. Yes, they really must, and when she came back this time they would talk about it seriously . . . and possibly next summer.

  ‘Or even when I retire,’ said Victoria’s father, the colour coming back into his cheeks. ‘When I retire I’ll have lots of time to think about these things and plan them.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, Daddy,’ said Victoria. ‘I think that’s a very good idea. We should think of it for when you retire.’

  He began to smile. Reprieve. Rescue. Hope.

  ‘We won’t make any definite plans, but we’ll always have it there, as something we must talk about doing. Yes, much more sensible,’ she said.

  ‘Do you really mean that, Victoria? I certainly think it’s a good idea,’ he said, anxiously raking her face for approval.

  ‘Oh, honestly, Daddy, I think it makes much more sense,’ she said, wondering why so many loving things had to be lies.

  Package Tour

  THEY MET AT A CHRISTMAS PARTY AND SUDDENLY EVERYTHING looked bright and full of glitter instead of commercial and tawdry as it had looked some minutes before.

  They got on like a house on fire and afterwards when they talked about it they wondered about the silly expression, a house on fire. It really didn’t mean anything, like two people getting to know each other and discovering more and more things in common. They were the same age, each of them one-quarter of a century old. Shane worked in a bank, Moya worked in an insurance office. Shane was from Galway and went home every month. Moya was from Clare and went home every three weeks. Shane’s mother was difficult and wanted him to be a priest. Moya’s father was difficult and had to be told that she was staying in a hostel in Dublin rather than a bedsitter.

  Shane played a lot of squash because he was afraid of getting a heart attack, or worse of getting fat and being passed over when aggressive lean fellows were promoted. Moya went to a gym twice a week because she wanted to look like Jane Fonda when she grew old and because she wanted to have great stamina for her holidays.

  They both loved foreign holidays, and on their first evening out together Shane told all about his trips to Tunisia and Yugoslavia and Sicily. In turn Moya told her tales of Tangiers, Turkey and of Cyprus. Alone amongst their friends they seemed to think that a good foreign holiday was the high-spot of the year.

  Moya said that most people she knew spent their money on clothes, and Shane complained that in his group it went on cars or drink. They were soul mates who had met over warm sparkling wine at a Christmas party where neither of them knew anyone else. It had been written for them in the stars.

  When the January brochures came out, Moya and Shane were the first to collect them; they had plastic bags full of them before anyone else had got round to thinking of a holiday. They noted which were the bargains, where were early season or late season three-for-the-price-of-two-week holidays. They worked out the jargon.

  Attractive flowers cascading down from galleries could mean the place was alive with mosquitos. Panoramic views of the harbour might mean the hotel was up an unmerciful hill. Simple might mean no plumbing and sophisticated could suggest all-night discos.

  The thing they felt most bitter about was the Single Room Supplement. It was outrageous to penalise people for being individuals. Why should travel companies expect that people go off on their holidays two by two like the animals into the ark? And how was it that the general public obeyed them so slavishly? Moya could tell you of people who went on trips with others simply on the basis that they all got their holidays in the first fortnight in June.

  Shane said that he knew fellows who went to Spain as friends and came home as enemies because their outing had been on the very same basis. Timing.

  But as the months went on and the meetings became more frequent and the choice of holiday that each of them would settle for was gradually narrowed down they began to realise that this summer they would probably travel together. That it was silly to put off this realisation. They had better admit it.

  They admitted it easily one evening over a plate of spaghetti.

  It had been down to two choices. The Italian lakes or the island of Crete. And somehow it came to both of them at the same time; this would be the year they would go to Crete. The only knotty problem was the matter of the Single Room.

  They were not as yet lovers. They didn’t want to be rushed into it by the expediency of a double booking. They didn’t want it to be put off limits by the fact of having booked two separate rooms. Shane said that perhaps the most sensible thing would be to book a room with two beds. This had to be stipulated on the booking form. A twin-bedded room. Not a double bed.

  Shane and Moya assured each other they were grown ups. They could sleep easily in two separate beds, and suppose, suppose in the fullness of time after mature consideration and based on an equal decision with no one party forcing the other . . . they wanted to sleep in the same bed . . . then the facility, however narrow, would be there for them.

  They congratulated each other on their maturity and paid the booking deposit. They had agreed on a middle of the road kind of hotel, in one of the resorts that had not yet been totally disc
overed and destroyed. They had picked June which they thought would avoid the worst crowds. They each had a savings plan. They knew that this year was going to be the best year in their lives and the holiday would be the first of many taken together all over the world.

  The cloud didn’t come over the horizon until March when they were sitting companionably reading a glossy magazine. Shane pointed out a huge suitcase on wheels with a matching smaller suitcase. Weren’t they smashing he said; a bit pricey but maybe it would be worth it.

  Moya thought she must be looking at the wrong page. Those were the kind of suitcases that Americans bought for going round the world.

  Shane thought that Moya couldn’t be looking at the right page, they were just two normal suitcases, but smart and easy to identify on the carousel. Just right for a two-week holiday. But for how many people, Moya wondered wildly; surely the two of them wouldn’t have enough to fill even the smaller suitcase? Well, for one person, me, Shane said with a puzzled look.

  Between the two happy young people there was a sudden grey area. Up to now their relationship had been so open and free, but suddenly there were unspoken things hovering in the air. They had told each other that their friends’ romances had failed and even their marriages had rocked because they had never been able to clear the air. Shane and Moya would not be like that. But still neither one of them seemed able to bring up the subject of the suitcases. The gulf between them was huge.

  Yet in other ways they seemed just as happy as before. They went for walks along the pier, they played their squash and went to the gym, they enjoyed each other’s friends, and both of them managed to put the disturbing black cloud about the luggage into the background of their minds. Until April, when another storm came and settled on them.