The Return Journey

by Maeve Binchy

  “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 bylaw 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 someday with a hundred colors 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, 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 multicolored 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 easygoing 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 analyzing. It’s very simple to understand.”

  “Well, I wish I understood it,” said Paul.

  “You want to patronize 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 organize it, in fact she’s on a nice little number with all that sewing 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 mesmerized 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?” asked Paul. He assumed that Charlie must make at least fifty percent 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 Charlie 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 anymore. 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 affro
nted. 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 realize 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 fiat 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 ever have looked at her properly if you don’t realize that she’s absolutely dazzling looking. Just too much fat.”

  “My mother was very attractive until she let go,” said Paul in a mulish small-boy voice. “But she never went around in such garish colors calling the full attention of the world to herself.”

  “Did she go around much at all?” asked Helen with interest.

  “No, she had respect for herself. She knew she didn’t look well, so she hid herself away. She was very dignified.”

  “And probably very depressed, too,” said Helen very sharply. “How have you the slightest idea whether your mother was dignified or was going nutty as a fruitcake having to stay in the great Canadian indoors just because her pretty little son and her handsome husband might be a teeny bit embarrassed if she ventured out. You don’t know anything about anyone.”

  “You said I was getting upset. You’re the one who’s shouting now,” said Paul, startled by this change in easygoing Helen.

  “You make me shout, intolerant insensitive little pansy,” said Helen. “Yes, pansy, pouf, queer, I can’t remember the other words, but I’m sure they’re there. Ten years ago, that’s what people would have called you. Ten years ago your particular minority didn’t go out very much, it was dignified and depressed and hid itself.

  “Stop looking wounded and betrayed. I only say this because you annoy me so much with all your unliberated attitudes. You think it’s modern to be able to tell me about Garry…think it’s just so much rubbish. You can’t see that your own mother was a victim to your narrow-mindedness about physical appearance. You want a world of beautiful identical robots. You want a Nazi world, only the fittest and the finest shall be tolerated…. You want to grow up, Paul.”

  Paul was still for a while.

  Then he said, “Helen, I don’t want to upset you, perhaps you’re right, but why do you take it so badly? You’re not fat, you can’t have an ax to grind for Fat Rights. Tell me what it is that makes you feel so strongly.”

  “I might have told you once. I might have given in to this seductive shipboard thing of confiding. I thought you were a gentle kind boy with a new open soul. But not now, I’ll never tell you. You’ll have to guess, and you can spend months guessing, and you’ll never know.”

  Helen laughed at him, not unaffectionately.

  “No, little Paul, you’ll never know whether I had a fat lover who died from slimming, or whether I was once fat, or whether someone I cared for was hurt by cruel insensitive attitudes such as yours. But that doesn’t matter very much. It’s just one shipboard story fewer to hear. What does matter is that you realize you are the one out of step, not big Bonnie. She’s modern and liberated, she’s no prisoner because of her flesh. I don’t have an ounce of sympathy for that girl, she’s a happy soul, she’s got an adoring husband, she’s got a good business sense. She’s not gross, Paul—you could be. You and Garry could end up in some community where people don’t like gays…and I’d hate to think where your courage and inner resources might be then.”

  She gave him an awkward kind of matey hug as she left the room. She didn’t want to close every door to him.

  With a numbness a bit like the way you feel after having a tooth filled, Paul walked to the upper deck and looked down below. It was sunset, and at sunset every evening, the glorious Charlie sat sipping a drink, flanked by the women in hats, and they were all laughing contentedly in the pinky red light.

  EXCITEMENT

  Everyone said that Rose was immensely practical. She was attractive-looking, of course, and always very well groomed. A marvelous wife for Denis, and wonderful mother for Andrew and Celia. And a gifted teacher. People said that Rose was a shining example. Or if they were feeling less generous, they said that they had never known anyone to fall on her feet like Rose. Married at twenty-five to a successful young man, two children, a boy and a girl, a job to stop her going mad in the house all day, her own car, her own salary every month, no husband grousing about the cost of highlights. Why wouldn’t she be a shining example?

  It had been Rose who suggested the idea of Sunday brunches. They had all come from the tyranny of family lunches with great roasts and heavy midday meals. So they moved from house to house every Sunday, everyone bringing a bottle of wine and some kind of salad thing. They all dressed up. The children played together. If any couple wanted to bring along a friend, they could.

  They congratulated themselves, it kept them young and exciting, they thought. Not dead and lumpen like their parents had been. And it had been Rose’s idea in the first place.

  Of course, another example of Rose’s luck was that her mother lived way down in Cork. She wasn’t constantly on the doorstep, criticizing the way the grandchildren were being brought up. Twice a year Rose’s mother came up to Dublin; twice a year Rose took the children to Cork. It was yet another example of how well she organized her life.

  So they would have been very surprised if they had known how discontented Rose felt as half-term was approaching. She seemed to have been teaching forever. The same things every year, and in the same words. Only the faces in front of her were different, the younger sisters of the children she had already taught.

  Then, on the home front, there would be the same arguments with Andrew, six, and Celia, five, about which place to visit when they went to the zoo: Andrew wanted snakes and lions, Celia wanted birds and bunnies. And there would be the same discussions with the au pair. A different name every year, but always the same discussion—the time she came home at night, the long-distance phone calls. And Denis? Well, he was pretty much the same too. There would be the usual jokes about life being a holiday for teachers, about the workers of the world like himself having to toil on. In a million years he would never suggest the two of them went away together. It wouldn’t matter what kind of a place. Even a simple guest house. But it wouldn’t cross his mind. And if Rose were to suggest it, Denis would say he really shouldn’t go away. Business was different from teaching—you had to stay in touch. And then what about Sunday? Surely Rose wouldn’t want to miss their Sunday with all the gang? Rose began to wish she had never invented these Sundays. They were a lash for her back.

  Always being bright and cheerful, always thinking up a different little dish to make them ooh and aah, blow-drying her hair, putting on makeup, reading the Sunday papers so as not to be out of the conversation, bribing Andrew and Celia to behave. It was always the same.

  Rose was quiet as the time came up toward the half-term holiday. Nancy, her friend in the staff room, noticed.

  “Where’s all the zip and the get-up-and-go?” she asked. Nancy was single and always saying in mock despair that she would never find a man.

  “A bit of the magic seems to be going from it all,” Rose said more truthfully and seriously than she had intended to.

  “Maybe he has the seven-year itch,” Nancy said. “A lot of men get it just because they think it’s expected of them. We poor spinsters keep reading about such th
ings just so that we’ll be ready for marriage, if it ever comes. It’ll pass, though, it usually does.”

  Rose looked at her in disbelief. Really, Nancy was as thick as the wall. It wasn’t Denis who had a seven-year itch. It was Rose. She was thirty-two years of age and, for the foreseeable future, her life was going to be exactly the same as it was now. A lifetime of smiling and covering her emotions had made Rose very circumspect. She was, above all, practical. There was no point in having a silly row with her friend and colleague Nancy.

  “Maybe you’re right, let’s hope that’s all it is,” she said with her mind a million miles away from the mild expression on her face. Because Rose now realized the truth. She was restless and unsettled. She was looking for something, a little spark, a little dalliance. Possibly even a little affair. She felt a shiver of excitement and disbelief. She wasn’t that kind of person. She had always thought wives who strayed were extraordinarily foolish. They deserved all they got, which was usually a very hard time.

  Rose found that, in the days that followed, everything had become even more samey than it used to be. Denis said, “Sorry, what was that?” to almost every single sentence she spoke to him, sometimes not waiting until she had finished. Every day Maria Pilar said, “I mess the buzz, the buzz was late.” It was useless to tell the stupid girl that either she was late or the bus was early. Rose gave up trying. Andrew said every day that he hated cornflakes and Celia, to copy him, said the same thing. Rose’s mother phoned from Cork regularly to say how good the life was down there, how dignified, gracious, and stylish compared to the brash-ness, vulgarity, and violence of Dublin. Rose listened and murmured, as she felt she had been doing for years. A meaningless murmur.

  And then it was Sunday again. She prepared a rice salad with black olives and pine nuts for the gathering at Ted and Susie’s. She knew before they even rang at the door what Susie would say. Susie, a colorless woman who would have looked very well if she had dyed her eyelashes and worn bright colors, in fact did say, exactly as Rose had known: “How clever you are, Rose. You always think of marvelous things. I don’t know how you do it.”