Maeve Binchy's Treasury

by Maeve Binchy

  The young Miss Vogel had an agreeable manner with everyone, no future mother-in-law would stand in her way, no family would object to the girl who worked pleasantly in her father’s bakery. She was much in demand to dance at the weddings of her many friends and, although she caught the bride’s bouquet on many occasions, it never led to a wedding of her own.

  Miss Vogel didn’t look back on her girlhood in New York as a lonely time, she hadn’t yearned always for a beau of her own. She always thought there was one around the next corner. She lived happily over the bakery shop and didn’t really notice the years go by. There were so many other things to think about. Like her mother’s illness; the others were all married by the time Miss Vogel’s mother took to her bed, so she did the nursing, which made sense because she lived at home.

  And when her mother died and her father became gloomy and lost interest in his work, she had to work all that much harder in the bakery shop to keep it going. There was a manager of course, Tony Bari. They spent long hours together trying to see how the bills could be paid, the overheads reduced and the whole enterprise made sound.

  Everyone thought one day they might marry.

  Miss Vogel didn’t really think they would, even though she would have been happy had their quick embraces led to a proposal. But she was a practical woman and realised that Tony Bari was very interested in money and had told her several times that any sensible man in business was looking for a rich wife. Miss Vogel knew she wasn’t in this category and even though she did like his company, his big broad smile and the way his moustache tickled her cheek, she didn’t weep when he told her he had finally met a lady of property and invited her to his wedding.

  Not long after, Miss Vogel’s father went to hospital and it was known that he would not come out. Tony Bari bought the business, his new wife did not think it appropriate that Miss Vogel continue to work and live there so, at the age of thirty, she was unemployed.

  People said Tony Bari had not paid enough and indeed, after it had been divided between her sisters and brothers there was very little left.

  Miss Vogel had nowhere to live, she had no real qualifications to get a good job anywhere but, with her customary good humour, she decided to wait until something turned up. Then she saw a position as a type of janitor or superintendent in a new apartment block. A lot of the residents were female and they had specifically sought a woman super. Miss Vogel, with her calm pleasant manner, seemed ideal and she now had a two-room apartment, with an address in a fine part of town.

  Her friends were pleased for her.

  ‘You’ll meet very classy folk now,’ they said. Miss Vogel didn’t mind whether they were classy or not, just as long as they were nice. And mainly they were.

  She became involved in all their lives. She walked the little yapping dog, unsuitably called Beauty, for Janet the discontented widow in Number One.

  She babysat the teenage daughter of Heather who was a workaholic advertising supremo in Number Two. She took in the flowers and arranged them for Number Three, where Francesca the attractive mistress of two businessmen lived. Tactfully, Miss Vogel made sure these two gentlemen never coincided on a visit.

  She spent a lot of time in Number Four where Marion sat and looked out the window, sad because her husband came home so rarely.

  There were many others in the building whose lives were familiar to Miss Vogel. Her sisters sometimes said these must be rich, spoiled people who lacked nothing in their lives but Miss Vogel didn’t agree. As she sat in beautifully decorated apartments and drank coffee from a fine china cup or soda from cut crystal glassware, Miss Vogel knew that unease and unhappiness didn’t fly out the window just because you had money. A lot of the people had even more worries than the Vogel family ever had. Sometimes she went past the old bakery shop where Tony Bari had built a big business with his wife’s money. It was now a delicatessen and people faxed in their orders for sandwiches which were delivered to their offices. Imagine!

  There were three children. Miss Vogel watched them grow up. She would have liked to have met them properly and known them, to have been invited in to the store where she too had lived as a child. But Tony Bari’s wife never seemed to want her around. Miss Vogel thought this was sad, she had always been welcoming and kind to the woman who had come to live there only because of her father’s dollars. Then, you couldn’t make people like you if they didn’t.

  Her days and nights were never empty or lonely because of all the people in the apartments. Miss Vogel did not have what anyone would call a great life of her own but she went through all theirs, their hopes and dreams for Thanksgiving and Christmas, who would come home, where would they be invited, what would they cook? Their diets for the new year, how many days a week working out at the gym, low-fat foods to be stocked in the freezer. Then she went through their new wardrobes for spring. None seemed to notice Miss Vogel didn’t buy spring clothes, plan to lose ten pounds every January or discuss where she went for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

  She was a listening person, not a talking person. She was interested in their lives.

  Now it was time to talk about vacations.

  Janet was going to Arizona with her sister so naturally there was the matter of Beauty, the bad-tempered little dog. Beauty didn’t like kennels so perhaps Miss Vogel . . .

  Heather could only take a week and not one day more away from work so she would fly to Los Angeles.

  This way, she could fit in one or two meetings on the west coast as well as take fourteen-year-old Heidi to Disneyland and Universal Studios so it would be a fantastic holiday for the child. But there was simply no time to get her any vacation clothes. Could Miss Vogel manage . . . one Saturday morning possibly? Just a quick trip to the department store.

  Francesca was going to spend one week with one man and the other with the second man but she had told each she was going to a health spa for the week she would not be with him. Would Miss Vogel mind very much taking the bus to this town two miles away, where the spa actually was, and mailing two postcards for her? You see, men were so possessive and so suspicious these days and one didn’t want to do anything silly.

  Marion in Number Four was uncharacteristically cheerful because she and her husband were going to a quiet inn—he said he would like time to talk properly. That had to be good, Marion said, vacations were a time when people found new relationships if they had none or cemented an existing one that needed to be patched up.

  That was the wonderful thing about vacations, wasn’t it? Marion had said over and over.

  Miss Vogel didn’t know. She had never had a vacation. There had never been either the opportunity, the money or the time. And now at fifty-three, there seemed little point in hoping she would find a new relationship and there wasn’t an old one to cement.

  Tony Bari and his wife and children were going to Italy. Miss Vogel’s sisters, brothers and their families were going to a lake where they rented chalets every year. Nice for the cousins to get to know each other and keep in touch, they said.

  None of them ever thought it might be nice for Miss Vogel to get to know them all and keep in touch too. But then she would be out of place. An elderly aunt on her own.

  All the holidays seemed to come together. Miss Vogel would have a very empty building to look after. But she enthused about their trips as she had enthused for so many years about everything they did. She did all she was asked to do; studied the feeding schedules of the small aggressive Beauty to reassure Janet, she took Heidi on an outing to Bloomingdales and with Heather’s dollars bought her bright-coloured clothes to wear in the Californian sun. She planned the two bus trips so she could post the deceiving postcards for Francesca. She helped Marion pack romantic negligees for her week in the country inn.

  And, of course, she would do all the other things that made them think Miss Vogel was an angel. She would turn out their lights, pull their drapes at different times each evening, sort their mail so, when they came back, it would be in a neat pile
on their hall table. She would see their garments were returned from the dry cleaners and hung in their closets, she would admit a television repairman here and an interior decorator there and listen to their holiday tales and look at their holiday photos with great interest on their return.

  Often there was fuss and near hysteria at the actual time of departure, limousines had not been ordered in advance, taxis could not be hailed on the New York streets. This year Miss Vogel decided to cut through all the drama and found a neighbourhood car service. She spoke to Frank, a man with a tired, kind face, who was at the desk, telling him she had four trips over two days, to La Guardia Airport for Heather and Heidi, to Grand Central for Janet, to Penn Station for Marion and her husband and some secret pick-up place in New Jersey for Francesca.

  ‘What commission are you looking for?’ Frank asked wearily.

  ‘Oh no,’ Miss Vogel said, ‘I was only trying to arrange something for the people in my building. They’ll all pay you the rate. I don’t want anything. I don’t want anything for myself.’

  ‘You must be the only person in the world who doesn’t then,’ said Frank.

  ‘It’s just their vacations, they get very fussed, you know, the way people do?’

  ‘I don’t know the way people do,’ Frank said. ‘I’ve never had a vacation.’

  Miss Vogel gave him a big smile. ‘Do you know, neither have I? We must be the only people in the world who haven’t.’

  A bond was established between them and they worked out the times he would be there to pick up the holidaymakers.

  He was courteous and punctual but more than that, he was kind. He waited while Janet kissed Beauty goodbye; he told Heidi she’d love Disneyland—everyone came back from it a new person; he explained to Francesca that he was a genius at finding out-of-the-way spots in New Jersey; he told Marion and her husband that an inn in the countryside was the very best vacation anyone could choose.

  Miss Vogel was sorry when the last had gone. She enjoyed Frank’s company. She would miss his regular visits when she always found time to make him a coffee and give him some of her own home-baked shortbread. To her surprise he turned up again.

  ‘I was wondering, Miss Vogel, if you and I should have a vacation in New York,’ he began tentatively. ‘We could pretend we were tourists here and see it through their eyes.’ He looked at her hoping that she would not laugh at this or dismiss it as a ridiculous idea.

  ‘A vacation in New York City?’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, a lot of people do, you know,’ Frank was defensive. ‘I drive them to places, I should know.’

  ‘That will be great,’ said Miss Vogel. ‘But first, I have to do a bit of fussing, that’s essential.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll come around tomorrow morning. Does that give you time enough to fuss?’ he asked.

  Miss Vogel worked out that she could take a five-hour vacation each day. Then she ironed her clothes carefully and laid out a different outfit for each outing.

  She went to a beauty parlour on the corner and got her hair and her nails done.

  She prepared several picnic lunches they could have and left them ready in the freezer. She got new heels on her comfortable shoes. She checked the weather forecast. She was ready for her vacation.

  They went to Ellis Island and spent the day looking at where their grandparents had come in to the United States from Italy and Germany, Ireland and Sweden.

  ‘I bet they were four young people who never had time for a vacation once they got here,’ Miss Vogel said.

  ‘But they must have been adventurous young people,’ Frank replied, ‘not the kind of folk who would like to believe their descendants would be stay-at-homes.’

  The next day they visited the zoo, then went up the Trade Towers to see the view and walked in Central Park in the sunshine.

  They drove together companionably to the town where they had to mail Francesca’s postcards and talked about how odd life was with so many people living a lie—Francesca herself and the two married men who were each taking her off for a week. They went to Chinatown and on a tour of the Stock Exchange in Wall Street.

  They went back to where Miss Vogel grew up and looked at the big delicatessen, so much changed in appearance since her youth. They went to see where Frank was raised, changed so very much from when he was a boy. He pointed out where he had lived with his wife for three years a long time ago and also the hospital where she had died.

  Neither had ever been to Carnegie Hall so they booked a concert. And as they had only seen a ball game on television, never in reality, they booked to go to Shea Stadium.

  And the week flew by.

  Frank helped Miss Vogel to sort the mail, draw the curtains and arrange deliveries for the tenants. Miss Vogel went to the car service office and brightened it up by washing the curtains and putting some colourful ornaments around.

  The next week, they could no longer afford five hours a day for vacation. Like everyone else in New York, they would now know that feeling which said the holiday was over.

  But for Frank and Miss Vogel, there was something new and wonderful, no longer did they keep their thoughts to themselves. There was someone to talk over the events of the day with. Not only holiday memories but what was happening in the real world as well.

  So when Frank drove Heather and Heidi back from the airport he could report that mother and daughter were hardly speaking and that the girl had been left alone in her hotel room looking at television since Heather was tied up in meetings all day.

  Miss Vogel could tell him that something very odd had happened in Francesca’s life—both men had proposed marriage to her, both would leave their wives but she wanted neither. Francesca was lying down with a cold compress on her eyes, trying to get the courage to tell them.

  Janet told Frank in the car her holiday with her sister had been a huge mistake—there would be no more family get-togethers. What did people want family for anyway? A good dog was worth twenty sisters.

  Marion told Miss Vogel that her rat of a husband had only taken her to the inn to tell her he was leaving her. And amazingly Marion didn’t really mind all that much. Once it was out in the open, she enjoyed the walking and peace of the countryside and her husband had been startled and annoyed at how well she adapted to the new situation.

  But nobody asked Miss Vogel had she enjoyed her time when they were away. And if they saw Frank around the place a lot, it was because they assumed he was driving people. Sometimes Miss Vogel wasn’t quite as available to babysit, walk dogs, listen to problems, arrange flowers. Nothing you could put your finger on. And if she looked happier and walked with a spring in her step and smiled with brighter eyes . . . they thought she might have lost a few pounds or something.

  Tony Bari’s wife noticed, however. She had returned from a tedious vacation in Italy with a lot of possessive in-laws and was glad to be back in New York. Her eyes narrowed when Miss Vogel came in. She always suspected Tony Bari harboured feelings for the daughter of the house and if she had had any money, he would very probably have asked Miss Vogel to marry him.

  ‘Did you have a good vacation, Miss Vogel?’ she asked politely, her sharp glance taking in Miss Vogel’s improved posture, hairstyle and general manner.

  ‘Very pleasant, Mrs Bari, I stayed in New York, got to know my own city, it was delightful.’

  Tony Bari’s wife, who would loved to have done the same, was envious.

  ‘Well at our age, Miss Vogel, we don’t expect very much from vacations, do we?’ She was trying to remove the pleased smile from Miss Vogel’s face. But she was not succeeding.

  Miss Vogel paused in her choosing of expensive mushrooms, specialty cheese and exotic olive oils and smiled confidently at the woman who had taken away her only hope of marriage and a home, merely because that woman’s father had money.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Bari, how sad, how very sad to hear you say that,’ she said as deeply sympathetic as if she were offering condolences at a funeral.

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nbsp; Tony Bari was at the other side of the shop. He was fat now and balding, his face set in lines of disappointment and greed. Life had not turned out as he might have wished. How could Miss Vogel ever have thought he would have made her a good husband? Had it all worked out at the time, then she would have just returned from a weary journey to Italy with this bad-tempered man. She would have known no other world but this one, she would never have gone in and out of the lives of the exciting people who lived in her building.

  She might have looked wistfully at the kind face of Frank, a limousine driver, if she had ever met him and wondered what it would be like to live in easy companionship with someone who saw beauty everywhere and gain and opportunity nowhere. Tonight for his birthday, she would cook Frank a great feast. They had plans for the future, plans young people were making all over the world but were no less loving and hopeful just because Miss Vogel and Frank were no longer young.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Bari,’ she repeated, her voice full of genuine sorrow. She had been about to ask, ‘What is the point of living at all if we don’t expect something from every vacation and every day?’ but it sounded a bit preachy and Miss Vogel had learned first-hand from her apartment block that happiness does not always go hand in hand with having a lot of possessions, so instead she said that to have unrealistic dreams should not be part of the ageing process.

  And head high, her shopping basket full of exotic ingredients, Miss Vogel left the delicatessen which had once been her father’s bakery shop and, without a backward glance, walked into the sun-filled streets of New York.