by Maeve Binchy
When the evening ended and he suggested a brandy in his room, she said no. Perhaps she would prefer to have the nightcap in her room, he wondered, thinking that this was the height of sensitivity. No nightcap at all, Lena said. She who had planned for so long this night, and all it would lead to.
At one stage she began to wonder had Maggie set her up, every single harmless kind of question she asked had brought such a negative response that she had managed to strip Shay, the man she had loved for years, of any lovable quality. It was as if Maggie had known the answers in advance.
Maggie hadn’t suggested that Lena talk to Shay of love. But that night she did. They were in a restaurant looking out on the river and he told her that he thought he loved her, yes, strange as it might seem, and having worked together for so long, but he did think he loved her.
She looked at him for a long time.
‘Well, say something,’ he said petulantly.
‘I don’t have any words,’ she said, truthfully.
He reached for her hands but she pulled them away.
‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked him.
‘How nice it is to love you, how there you were under my nose all the time.’ At least, she thought, at least he is honest in a childish sort of way. It must be nice for him to think he’s found a ready-made love, under his nose as he puts it.
For years she had seen how suitable she would be for him, how right as a companion, a friend, a wife. How much she would help his career and cope with his weaknesses.
Until tonight, she had never seen what it would be like for her. A lifetime of putting up with his moods, building him up when he was low, lying for him, pretending for him. And turning a blind eye when he wanted to run with a lively crowd and do the clubs and walk the blondes.
She smiled at him affectionately. It was the way she had seen her Aunt Maggie smile at a multitude of men.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked. He was sulking now, his declaration of love had not only not been returned, but it had been smiled at, patted down, soothed away.
‘I was thinking about going home, about driving out of the ferry and going home,’ she said.
This was a very puzzling response. ‘Why, what will you do then?’ He was anxious to know.
Lena wondered what would she do; she wouldn’t leave her job just because he had said he loved her and she wouldn’t love him back. She liked her work, she would stay there and overtake him if necessary. She would not fight with him or explain or apologise. Maggie never did that. She was happy in her garden flat, and now she was free as well. If some man came along, as men came along for Maggie, that she really did like, then she was free to love him.
‘What will I do?’ she answered him almost dreamily. The world was so full of possibilities now that the question was hard to answer. ‘What will I do when I get home? I think I’ll telephone my aunt.’
The Women in Hats
IT WAS VERY EXCITING WATCHING PEOPLE COME ON BOARD, SAID the purser. After a few journeys you could size them up pretty well. That woman would fight with her husband two days out, he would spend all his time with the bar people, she would find a younger man and a little shipboard romance. That woman over there, she would keep her husband by her side with a rod of iron, she was one of these so-called ‘invalids’ who had nothing wrong with them, except a very serious case of self-importance.
The purser was a beautiful, dark-eyed, gay Canadian who missed his boyfriend terribly (ringing him from every port) and regarded his job as so much torture necessary in order to save enough money for a house on the Great Lakes.
He liked talking to Helen. She was forty and friendly and didn’t show any dangerous tendencies of jumping at him some night and assuring him of her powers of being able to make the earth move for him. She played gin rummy with him, told him funny tales about the people at her table and seemed very interested in his tales of Garry. Helen advised him not to call Garry so much. ‘Telephone calls are very unsatisfactory and expensive,’ she had said. Paul, the nice agreeable purser, was beginning to think she was right. He would miss her when she got off at Singapore. He’d have to find a new friend.
Leaning over the side at Piraeus, Paul saw a good-looking man squinting up into the sunshine. A pang of infidelity to Garry swept over Paul but it was gone as soon as it arrived. Anyway, the handsome man didn’t look very available. A very beautiful woman with sunglasses in her hair rather than on her face, with golden suntan, and blue flowing sarong exactly the same colour as her eyes seemed to have her hands possessively on his arm.
‘What do you make of that pair?’ he asked Helen.
‘Honeymooners?’ wondered Helen.
‘No, they don’t have that absorbed look,’ Paul said. ‘They seem to be talking about something, not just “Imagine, this is us getting on a ship”. That’s the way honeymooners go on.’
The tanned girl had a huge blue and white hat tied by a ribbon around her neck. For no reason she annoyed Paul. People should put sunglasses on eyes, and hats on heads. What was she looking at anyway? He followed her gaze.
At the top of the gangway was the fattest woman Paul had ever seen. She wore a huge pink and white hat, on her head, he was relieved to notice. She had a flowing pink and white dress that could easily have been a tent for several people. She carried an enormous beach bag, white but with a name embroidered on it in pink. ‘Bonnie’ it said.
Paul couldn’t see her face but he got the feeling she was young. Immediately Paul felt protective towards her. Even if it wasn’t his job, he would look after her. In fact she might become his friend when Helen left.
‘Let’s ask the pink elephant lady to have a drink with us,’ he said to Helen. ‘I think she’s on her own and she’d appreciate it.’
‘No,’ said Helen. ‘She’s not on her own, she’s with the non-honeymoon couple, I saw them all get out of the same taxi, but I’m all for a drink with anyone any time.’
Paul looked at Helen with affection. She had talked him out of phoning Garry because of the time difference, the known unreliability of Greek phones, and all the unnecessary angst he would cause himself if there was no reply. Helen must have been through all this love business too, but unlike most women, she didn’t seem to want to discuss it or recall it way into the night. Paul called her a purser’s joy, someone who didn’t complain and who helped other people to enjoy themselves; he said she should really be getting a fee, not paying a fare.
Paul thought Helen must be wrong about big Bonnie. She couldn’t be with the golden couple; she wasn’t old enough to be the mother, she wasn’t young enough to be their child. But when he went to see how they were all settling in, he found the threesome was as Helen had said.
The good-looking boy sat in the middle and on either side of him huge hats bobbed, one blue over the slim tanned girl, one pink over the enormous smiling Bonnie.
‘I’m Paul Preston the Purser . . . you are very welcome on board.’ Bonnie looked up with a big welcoming smile and offered him a huge hand to shake.
‘How nice and alliterative,’ she said. ‘I’m Bonnie and this is Charlie and this is Charlotte . . .’ she waved delightedly at the golden couple. Paul still couldn’t figure out what relation they were to her.
‘That’s pretty nice and alliterative too,’ he said about their names.
‘I’m always saying that about them,’ said Bonnie. ‘It’s the most amazing coincidence, my two best friends in the world both called after some no-good Stuart King.’
Paul thought it was more of a coincidence that two people called Charlie and Charlotte should have met and married each other than to have turned out to be friends of Bonnie’s but he decided not to follow that line of chat.
They discovered he was from Ottowa originally, would like to live on the Lakes, had been a ship’s purser for four years and was aged twenty-nine. He discovered they were from Australia originally, but had lived so long in Europe now they had almost forgotten the Outback. Bonnie
was twenty-nine and Charlie and Charlotte were twenty-seven each. Another coincidence. They had been living in Greece for the summer, all three of them, and now they were going to Hong Kong on this ship to see if they could set up a little import-export company, and then they were all going to take a cheap flight back to Australia where they would stay until Christmas. None of them were very enthusiastic about going back home. Bonnie said her parents were dead and she had no ties. Charlie said his father thought people who left Australia were traitors. Charlotte said that her mother wanted her to marry a man who had a big share in a sheep station. They all seemed so easy and relaxed in each other’s company that it looked as if they had been friends for years.
Had they been in business long together? he wondered. No, they had only met that spring. All of them had been working in London. Bonnie had advertised for fellow Australians to set up a venture and that was how they had met.
‘And that’s how you got together?’ said Paul, smiling at the two golden heads of Charlie and Charlotte as they sat together near Bonnie’s knees on the deck. They looked like an advertisement for something, so healthy and happy did they seem.
‘Yeah, that’s how we all met,’ said Charlie, sounding puzzled.
As the days went on Paul saw no way of making Bonnie into a special friend, since she was never alone. If Charlie and Charlotte, or one of them, weren’t with her, she was surrounded by others. She had offered to embroider people’s names on their towels or bags, and was doing a roaring trade. Paul was sure that some by-law said she couldn’t charge fees but he never looked it up.
In Ceylon he bought a beautiful shirt for Garry. Helen had said it was much wiser than spending money on a telephone call, everyone knew how unreliable the Sinhalese telephone service was.
He was admiring the shirt lovingly when a big shadow and a soft footfall came upon him. It was Bonnie.
‘Shall I do your name on it?’ she asked. ‘In off-white on the pocket, so that you’d have to strain to see it, that would be nice.’ In fact that would be very nice. Paul admired her taste.
‘Could you put Garry on it?’ he asked shyly.
‘Is that your boyfriend?’ asked Bonnie.
‘Well, yes,’ Paul said. He didn’t feel at all at ease with her like he did with nice comfortable undemanding Helen. In a funny way this enormous woman seemed to consider herself quite socially acceptable. Was there even a hint of a flirtation with him and a sense of regret that there was a Garry in the background?
Paul began to wonder was he losing his reason. He must be imagining it. He must.
They sat in the sunset for a bit, then he told her about the flying fish that sometimes came up on deck, and she told him how much she loved embroidery and sewing and she was going to make herself a huge patchwork cape some day, with a hundred colours in it. It would shine out everywhere and nobody could ignore her.
This made Paul strangely uneasy again. With someone like Helen he could have said what came into his mind, which was that he didn’t think it a good idea for a gigantic woman to call further attention to herself. He had told Helen several times that she would look nicer if she wore lipstick, and eventually she bought some and wore it just to please him and everyone admired her. He would love to say this to Bonnie, that she should be more restrained, there was no need to go around like a lighthouse. But he didn’t dare. Nor did he dare to suggest that she should have white wine and soda instead of the great pint of beer she was drinking as the sun went down.
So Paul didn’t become a friend of Bonnie’s but he became, to his great amazement, a great observer of her. He noticed the way she settled herself by the swimming pool early with her embroidery, how Charlie and Charlotte would appear and consult her about how the day was to be spent. Bonnie had four sundresses, each one louder and more attention-getting than the one before. Some had sunflowers, some had huge roses, one even had multicoloured designs. And there was always a huge hat as well, usually matching the dress. The hat upset Paul most of all. It was like a flag saying ‘Look at me’. It was especially tasteless, he thought, since Charlotte also wore huge hats. Hers looked lovely, they made her seem like a slim Mexican boy, while Bonnie looked like a giant toadstool.
And it wasn’t a question of disliking her, she was one of the most easy-going pleasant people he had met. He couldn’t work out why he felt uneasy with her. He even discussed it with Helen.
‘You’ve been obsessed with her since they came aboard,’ said Helen grumpily. ‘In a way I’m a bit jealous, I don’t know why you are doing all this analysing. It’s very simple to understand.’
‘Well, I wish I understood it,’ said Paul.
‘You want to patronise her, pity her, bring her out of herself, get her to join in things . . . and it isn’t necessary. She doesn’t need pity, she’s already out of herself, she does things without your having to organise it, in fact she’s on a nice little number with all that sewing of people’s names on things. She’s taken in a couple of hundred dollars.’
Paul thought about this. Well, there was a little truth in what Helen had said . . . just a little. He wasn’t upset because Bonnie rejected his friendship . . . it was just that she seemed quite complete without it. That’s what was the little pique, the slight wound.
But he was drawn to them all, like someone charmed. He watched them every day. Charlie with his lithe athletic body playing deck games, Charlotte looking like an advertisement for the glamour of cruising, and Bonnie more ridiculous looking, more calm and sure of herself every day.
Paul’s mother had been fat. Back in Canada she had hardly moved outside her house. But then his mother had been a lady, she had dignity. In a million years she would never have understood this Bonnie who behaved . . . well, like a normal woman.
The words pulled him up short when he felt himself thinking them. Of course, in many ways his mother and Bonnie were normal women, they actually were ordinary people, just fatter than the accepted shape. But mother had known that it was dignified not to go out and about if you looked different to other people, and when Mother had to go out she wore dark concealing clothes, the most restrained garments she could find. Bonnie with her big mad hats, wide smile and her red lipstick would have been like a creature from Mars.
He wondered, were Charlie and Charlotte attracted by her in the same mesmerised way as he was? Did they have this mongoose/ snake thing with her that he did? One day he decided to discuss it with Charlotte. She was sitting alone for once, feet up on the ship’s rail, hat hanging from its ribbon around her neck. She looked very gentle and beautiful.
He wondered, how did Charlie feel able to share her so much? Not that Paul was any authority on women, but he did feel that if you were married to such a dazzling woman as Charlotte you might want her for yourself rather than spend all your time in an odd trio.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked the still girl.
‘Oh, I was thinking about how undemanding life is on board a ship. Somebody else decides where you’re going, how long you’ll stay. I love not having to make any decisions.’
‘Do you have to make all that many in real life?’ he asked.
‘Constantly. How to earn money, who to live with, who to trust, where to be, when to leave . . . all the time.’
‘But that’s all over now, I mean you can do it as a team,’ said Paul. He assumed that Charlie must make at least fifty per cent of the decisions for the couple.
‘Yes, that’s the great safety of being with Bonnie,’ said Charlotte.
‘Well, I meant Charlie really,’ he said.
‘Oh, Charlie feels the same, he’s often said it to me. He said he felt such a wave of relief when he proposed to her and she said yes. He knew he’d be safe for the rest of his life . . .’
‘When he proposed to Bonnie?’ Paul stuttered, confused.
‘Well, not proposed, asked her to marry him, whatever people do,’ said Charlotte. Then suddenly, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I thought you and Ch
arlie were married,’ he said, ‘to each other I mean.’
‘No, I’m not married to anyone. Charlie and Bonnie were married in spring. You must have known they were married, or together anyway. I mean, they have a cabin and everything . . .’
Paul was digesting this very slowly indeed.
‘I didn’t know,’ he said. Even as he said it he didn’t know why he was so shocked. He couldn’t sit here and think about it any more. He got up quickly and made some mumbled excuse—so inadequate that the lovely Charlotte actually sat up in her deck chair to watch him disappearing off down the deck. She shrugged and went back to her book.
Paul found Helen.
‘Did you know that he’s married to Bonnie, not to Charlotte?’ he said.
‘Oh yes, I discovered that a couple of days ago. I heard someone call them Mr and Mrs.’
Paul was annoyed that she took it so calmly.
‘It’s ridiculous. They’re so unsuited.’
‘I think they get on particularly well,’ said Helen, spiritedly. ‘I mean, look at the other couples on the ship who are fighting or yawning or sulking. I think Bonnie and Charlie are a tonic.’
Paul felt affronted. He was astonished at the violence of his own reactions. He liked them all, he loved none of them. Why should it matter who was hitched to whom? But it did. It really did. He felt very adrift.
Helen looked at him sharply.
‘You really have been building up some kind of fantasy about these three, haven’t you?’ she asked, not unkindly.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said defensively.
‘You’re obsessed by them, and Bonnie in particular. Now you’re the last person on board to realise that it’s she who’s married to the young blond Adonis. It may have caused a momentary flicker in the rest of us, it’s nearly knocked you down.’
‘I think she’s gross,’ he said suddenly. Helen looked shocked.
‘No, of course you don’t. She’s not nearly as gross as that retiring German missionary who got on at Bombay, and she’s not nearly as fat as the Greek woman who has to lift her stomach up in front of her. What can you mean Paul? She’s just a fat girl with a lovely face. You can’t even have looked at her properly if you don’t realise that she’s absolutely dazzling looking. Just too much fat.’
