by Maeve Binchy
Mary Brennan had been dreading the end of the summer but no, the Lynches kept him on. Then when all the tourists had gone, Mary used to have him to herself. They walked the cliffs in autumn and when the winds got cold in October he put his coat around her shoulders and told her that she was lovely. Nobody had ever kissed her, except two drunks at the dance, and she thought it was great to have waited so long for it because it was even better than she had ever hoped. Then people started to tell her that he was making a fool of her.
Her father had been the worst, even her mother and Nessa and Seamus had tried to stop her father when he got into one of his attacks. Nessa had looked away when her father had said to Mary that she should look in the mirror and have some sense. How would a young ne’er-do-well like Louis, six years younger than she…how could he want a woman like her?
The winter days had melted into each other, Mary could remember only a blur. She used to go to work in the post office every day, she supposed. She must have come home for her tea, but did she have it on her own or were there rows every single night with them all? She remembered that Louis was always shivering, they used to talk on the street. They couldn’t come home; her father wouldn’t let him into the house, he couldn’t ask her into the Lynches’ house…it would be setting them up as enemies of her parents. Sometimes they talked in whispers in the back of the church, where it was warm, until once Father O’Connor had said it wasn’t very respectful to the Lord to come into his house and talk and skitter in it like a couple of bold children.
The night that Louis had said maybe he was only being a cross for her to bear, she made up her mind. Louis had said maybe he was bringing her more bad luck than happiness, and that he should go off and she should forget him. Mary Brennan made up her mind firmly. She was very calm. It was three days before Christmas, and she filled in all the forms about transferring the money from her post office account. She tidied up her little section of the counter and told the postmistress that she should look for someone else in the new year, and then she walked home and told her mother and father and Nessa and Seamus that she was leaving on the bus, and they would catch the train and they would go to England.
She left the house in an uproar and went to Lynch’s and told Louis. He said they couldn’t go now. She said simply:
“You have to come with me, I’m cleaving to you like it says in the New Testament—you know, about a man cleaving to a wife and leaving father and mother and all. That’s what I’m doing. Don’t leave me to cleave all by myself.”
Louis had laughed and said of course he couldn’t do that; he packed his case, he told the Lynches that they needn’t pay him the Christmas bonus because it wouldn’t be fair. He came and stood outside the Brennans’ house with his suitcase in his hand, a bit like he had looked when he arrived at the beginning of the summer but colder, and waited until the door opened and all the crying and the noise came out into the street and Mary came down the steps slowly, but without any tears.
They had never cried on that journey, they laughed and thought what great times they would have and they found a room near Paddington station and, though they pretended to be married, they slept in separate beds until they were married by an Italian priest three weeks later, with two Italians as witnesses.
She wrote one letter home. Early in that year, in the spring of 1963. She said that they had been married in a Catholic church and that they had used her £1,200 to buy a share of a small corner shop. They thought the business should be very good.
They were both prepared to work long hours, and this was how you built up good trade in a neighbor-hood like this. She said she had nothing more to say, and she didn’t really expect to hear from them, she thought they had said all they ever wanted to say that last day. But still Louis had been very keen that she should let them know where she was. Louis sent them cordial wishes. She was merely pleasing him by writing this once.
They wrote, they tried to write letters explaining what had been done was done with the best motives. Nessa wrote and told her about the visit of President Kennedy and how they had all gone on the excursion to see him. Seamus wrote and said it was a bit dead at home now, and you’d sort of feel sorry for the old fella. But Mary never wrote back.
Once, when she was combing her hair, Louis said she should look in the mirror. “Look at yourself in the mirror, there’s a bit sticking up there,” he said good-naturedly. Mary had burst into tears. She never looked in the mirror. She was afraid she might see a mare like her father had seen.
When he knew the result of his exploratory operation, Louis wrote to Mary’s parents. “She is very proud and she feels always that to open up her heart to you…is to let me down somehow. She thinks that it’s further loyalty to me if she cuts you out. But when it’s all over I’m sure she’ll need you. Please let her know that this is what I wanted. I’ll leave her a letter myself.”
They had tried to contact him at the hospital, but it was too late. Mary had sent them a black-edged printed card, thanking them for their condolences.
As she had worked for ten years in the little shop as a wife, so she worked ten years as a widow. Other little shops were bought by new immigrants, hardworking Pakistanis who were prepared to work equally hard hours. Once or twice an elderly Pakistani had made her a good offer for her little corner business, saying he wanted to set his nephews up in a good trade. That day she remembered that she, too, had nephews. Nessa had three sons, and Seamus had two. She wondered what they heard of their Aunt Mary in London.
The night she forgave her family Mary looked at herself in the mirror. Nearly fifty, she didn’t feel it; perhaps she looked it. She didn’t really know how she looked nowadays. No Louis for many years to admire her, or tell her she was frowning too much, or that she had beautiful big gray eyes. Her father was nearly blind now, and her mother’s yearly letter seemed to imply that he was no longer able to leave the house. Her mother seemed to go to the church even more than she had done all those years ago; there was a lot of mention of Nessa’s family, she had married the son of the pub owner, which was a good thing to have done. They had three boys and three girls.
Nessa had her own car. Not much mention of Seamus. His wife was hardly mentioned at all. Perhaps she had been another Louis in their eyes, a no-good, mad for the Brennan money. The poor Brennan money. It was laughable. Within two years she and Louis had gathered more than her father had gotten in his lifetime. But she mustn’t speak like that when she got home.
No, no triumphant tales of how well it had all gone, what a good man Louis had turned out to be, how wrong, how very wrong they had been to say that he had been anything less. No, if you forgive, you must forget a lot too.
They had obviously been able to forget, too, no words of apology these days. Not since Louis had died, and they had sent her his letter and asked her to come back. Begged her.
Excitedly, she wondered what it would be like. She would stay for a week, young Mr. Patel, who was her assistant in the shop, could easily run the place. His family didn’t celebrate Christmas anyway. She could even stay for two weeks. She wondered where she would sleep. In her old room? She supposed that Nessa would want her to stay in her house, too…and she’d make a great effort to go and stay with Seamus and the wife and make a fuss of them. She would be like Santa Claus for all the children…she must look through the letters again to see how old they were. It would be desperate to bring them all the wrong things. Lord, Nessa’s eldest would be seventeen now. A grown man nearly.
What would he have to say to his aunt, his new aunt, or rather his old aunt? Her gaiety left her for a moment. What would any of them have to say?
There was a nagging voice which wondered would they like to be forgiven…or might it all be a bit too much trouble now? Perhaps they all had their own Christmas planned. Perhaps the priest was coming to lunch on Christmas Day, and old Mrs. Lynch from the shop where Louis had worked. Perhaps Nessa and her fellow had to go to the pub people for Christmas. Who knew what S
eamus was like now?
She touched her grey hair as she looked in the mirror. She was a stranger to them all. It didn’t really matter whose fault it had been…or who had said what…the main thing was that they didn’t know her. They didn’t know what her life had been like with Louis; they’d never heard that she and Louis took a train to Rome one year and had picnics with Italians all the time. They didn’t know what her little flat was like here, and how she had made a patchwork quilt and how she had gone on a holiday to an old hotel with a lot of other people who wanted to learn about antiques.
Her mother and father didn’t know that she had had her gall bladder out three years ago, and that she had given up smoking three times and the last time it seemed to be working. They didn’t know she could make pickles and that she had a friend, Phyllis, whom she went to a show with every week. They would look up the papers and choose what seemed suitable.
They both had the same taste. Phyllis had been going to book them a Christmas lunch in a hotel…she had probably made the booking by now. She would understand, of course. But still.
No, perhaps it would be foolish to rush into it. She might do more harm than good. Perhaps this year she should just pave the way. Send them a card. Let them know that she was holding no more grudges. Yes, that would be the way, and when they wrote and thanked her…then, little by little. And next Christmas. That was it. Not immediately, people don’t like to be forgiven too quickly.
She found a card and put a second-class stamp on it. There was still plenty of time—no point in wasting first-class postage. She thought for a while. People mustn’t be rushed.
After a lot of thought she wrote, “Seasonal Wishes to one and all. Mary.”
She put it on the little table to post early next morning, on her way to the shop. She thought that it would give them all a nice warm glow to know that she had forgiven them, and she was glad that it had happened at Christmastime.
Warren Street
* * *
Nan had had another god-awful day. Nobody seemed to use any underarm deodorant anymore. She had been wincing from whiffs of sweat all day, as people flung off their garments to try on her designs.
That maddening Mrs. Fine had, of course, noticed the seam that wasn’t exactly right; while that stupid, stupid woman—who apparently worked in some important position in an estate agent’s—had forgotten again what she wanted made out of the woollen material but was absolutely certain that it wasn’t the poncho that Nan had cut out for her.
“Why would I have said a poncho, when I have one already?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“That’s what I asked you at the time,” hissed Nan.
But the thing that was making Nan’s heart leaden was that she had had a row with Shirley.
Now nobody had rows with Shirley. She had a face so like the rising sun you expected rays to stick out from her head like in a child’s drawing. If Nan had rowed with her, it had to have been Nan’s fault and that was that.
Shirley had been coming to Nan for two years now, ordering maybe five garments a year. Nan remembered the first day she came she had been pressing her nose against the window rather wistfully, looking at a little bolero and skirt outfit on display. The skirt wouldn’t have gone over Shirley’s head, let alone made it to her waist.
Nan pulled back the curtain and waved her inside—she still wondered why she did it. Normally she never encouraged customers. She had enough enquiries she couldn’t deal with, and this was obviously not a fashion-conscious girl whom it would be a pleasure to dress.
Shirley’s great, happy face and bouncing, bulging body arrived in Nan’s little shop.
“I think I have the wrong place,” she began. “Lola, who works with me and who’s eight months pregnant, said she got her smocks here, and I was wondering if you have any more smocks. I mean, they might fit me, even though I’m not pregnant.”
Nan had liked her cheerful face so much she’d encouraged her.
“Sit down. I’ll go and see. I’ve very few things really—I mainly make clothes up for people, you see.”
“Oh, are you a designer?” asked Shirley innocently.
She had touched on something very near to Nan’s heart. She would have liked to think of herself as a designer and she had a flair for ideas and style. She sold things to classy boutiques from time to time. But something about Shirley’s face made her answer, to her own surprise, “No, more a dressmaker.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Shirley had said. “I thought that they’d disappeared. I wonder, would you be able to make me a smock…?” She broke off, seeing a refusal beginning to form itself on Nan’s face.
“Oh, please, please do!” she said. “I can’t find anything in the shops that doesn’t have white collars or tiny, thoughtful mum-to-be prints on it.”
“It’s just that I’m very busy…” Nan began.
“It would be very easy to do,” said Shirley. “You wouldn’t have to put any shape in it, and you wouldn’t have to waste time wondering if the fit was right.” She grinned encouragingly, and that did it. Nan couldn’t bear her to go around the world as vulnerable as that, and indeed, as badly dressed in that hideous, diagonally striped garment she had on.
“You win,” Nan had said, and they spent a happy half hour planning what Shirley would wear for the winter.
Away went the belted grey army issue-type coats—the only ones that fitted Shirley—and on came a cape. Away, too, the men’s warm sweaters and on with a rosy-red dress and a warm pink one.
Nan also made her a multicoloured evening dress, which had all the shades of the rainbow in it. It was, she thought, a pleasure to design a dress for Shirley. She was so grateful, so touched and happy when it was finished. Sometimes she would whirl around in it in front of the mirror, her fat little hands clasped excitedly like a child.
Shirley was one of the few clients who didn’t seem to have a list of complaints and personal problems, which was another bonus. Nan thought of Mrs. Fine, always running down her husband. Shirley never complained about men at all.
Miss Harris was always bitching about traffic or work, or how you couldn’t get a taxi or a waiter who spoke English, or proper whole-meal bread. Shirley never seemed in the least upset by such deprivations.
In fact, Nan knew little of Shirley’s life, except that she fancied her boss in an advertising agency. Or maybe she didn’t—Shirley was always so jokey. The last garment she had made Shirley was a really lovely dress. Nan had spent hours on the very fine wool, with its embroidery, ruffs, and frills, its soft blues and yellows. Shirley looked like an enormous, beautiful baby.
It was for some gala evening and Shirley had said, “If he doesn’t tear the clothes off me when he sees me like this, he never will.”
Nan worked on a system of appointments that meant you had to come and see her on the hour, and she saw only eight people a day. That way, she said, the job was manageable. People didn’t stay longer than twenty minutes at the most. The rest of the hour Nan worked away, with her quiet little machinist burring on in the background.
She would never be rich, never be famous, but it was a living. She couldn’t see a life where she would be finishing buttonholes at 3 A.M. for a show next day. Her own life and her own lover were far too precious for that. Colin and she had lived together happily for ages and often thought of getting married but they’d never actually got the details organized.
That’s what they said. The truth was that Colin would have disappeared very sharply if Nan had suggested marriage. She didn’t mind much, although sometimes she felt he had it all ways since they both worked. She did the housework and paid the rent; but then it was her place, and he did share the bills.
And he loved the fact that she worked downstairs. Sometimes if he had a day off he would come in and give her a rose in the workroom, and on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion he had asked the machinist to go for a walk, locked the door, and made love to her there and then, to the accompaniment of Miss Harris pounding on
the door.
One day Colin had seen Shirley leaving with a finished dress. “Who on earth was the beach ball bouncing out a minute ago?” he asked. Shirley wasn’t the usual mould of Nan’s clients.
“That’s our Shirl, whom I talk about sometimes,” Nan said.
“You never told me she looked like a technicoloured Moby Dick,” said Colin. Nan was annoyed. True, Shirley was enormous; true, she was dressed extremely brightly—mainly at Nan’s insistence. But because she had such a lovely face, she looked well in colourful clothes and Nan didn’t like Colin’s joke.
“That’s a bit uncalled for, isn’t it?” she said sharply. Colin was amazed.
“Sorry to tease her—let me hold out my hand for a smack,” he mocked. “Yes, it was very uncalled for, teacher, nobody called for it at all.”
Nan retorted, “It’s cruel—to laugh at somebody’s shape!”
“Aw, come on, come on,” said Colin reasonably. “You’re always saying someone’s like a car aerial or the Michelin Man or whatever. It was just a remark, just a joke.”
Nan forgave him. “It’s just that I feel, I don’t know, a bit protective about her. She’s so bloody nice compared with almost anyone who comes in here, and she’s literally so soft—in every way. I just feel she’d melt into a little pool if she heard anyone making a remark like that about her, honestly.”
“She was halfway down the street before I opened my mouth,” said Colin.
“I know—I suppose I just hope that nobody says such things whether she hears them or not,” said Nan.
That conversation had been a few months ago, Nan reflected, as she sat, head in hands. Funny that it all came back to her now. She did remember exactly how protective she had felt, as if Shirley had been her favorite sister and their mother had entrusted Nan with the care of seeing that nobody ever laughed at the fat girl.
Nan could hardly believe that, not half an hour ago, Shirley had banged out of the door and shouted from the street that she would never come back. It was like a nightmare where people behave completely out of character.
