London Transports

by Maeve Binchy

  Shirley had come along for a final fitting for the wedding outfit. Her best friend was getting married and Shirley and Nan had been through reams of ideas before settling on the emerald-green dress and matching hat.

  Nan had been delighted with it and Shirley’s face was a picture of happiness as they both looked at the outfit in the mirror: the tall, slim, slightly wary-looking dressmaker in her elegant grey wool tunic and the short, mountainous client in her metres and metres of glittering emerald.

  “You’ll need green eye shadow, not blue,” said Nan. “I’ll lend you some for the wedding if you like.” She looked around for her bag. “Do you know, I was running out of some, and then I thought of you and this color, so I asked Colin to get me some. He’s in the trade, you know, so it’s a little perk. I can’t find the wretched thing anywhere.” As she hunted for the parcel, which wasn’t in her handbag after all, Nan felt a strange, unnatural silence descend behind her.

  “Is that it?” asked Shirley, holding up an envelope that was on a table. The envelope had writing on it. It said “Green eye shadow for burly Shirley.”

  The two women looked at the inscription in silence for what must have been only four seconds or so, but seemed never-ending. Nan could think of only one thing to say.

  When it was obvious that Shirley was going to say nothing either, she tried, but her voice only came out like a squeak. What she had been going to say was, “I didn’t write that,” and that didn’t seem a very helpful thing to say at that moment.

  She thought she would kill Colin. She would physically hurt him and bruise him for this. She would never forgive him.

  Shirley’s face had turned pink. Her fat neck had gone pink, too, which didn’t go very well with the emerald.

  “Is that what you call me—‘Burly Shirley’? Well I suppose it has the advantage of rhyming,” she said. She was so hurt she was almost bleeding.

  Nan found her words finally. “Colin has rude, destructive nicknames for all my clients. It amuses him—it’s childish, immature, and senseless,” she snapped fiercely.

  “How does he know I’m…burly? He’s never met me,” said Shirley.

  “Well, you see he makes up these nicknames without knowing who people are. You do see that it’s not an insult and it’s not a comment. He could have written anything.” Nan nearly laughed with relief. How marvellous to get out of it in this way. But Shirley was looking at her oddly.

  “So I expect he just chose the word because it rhymes with your name. If you had been called Dotty he might have said Spotty.” Nan was very pleased with herself, at the unknown powers of invention that were suddenly welling up within her.

  Shirley just looked.

  “So now that’s cleared up, why don’t you take the eye shadow and put a little on to see how it looks with the outfit?” urged Nan.

  Shirley politely started to put it on, and Nan released her breath and foolishly didn’t leave well, or nearly well, enough alone.

  “I mean it’s not as if anyone would deliberately make a joke about fat to anyone, not that you are very fat or anything, but one wouldn’t mention it even if you were.”

  “Why not?” asked Shirley.

  “Why? Well, you know why—it would be rude and hurtful to tell someone they were fat. Like saying they were ugly or…you know…”

  “I didn’t think being fat was on the same level as being ugly, did you?”

  Desperately Nan tried to get back to the comparatively happy level they had just clawed their way to a few moments ago.

  “No, of course I don’t think being fat is the same as being ugly, but you know what I mean—nobody wants to be either if they can possibly avoid it.”

  “I haven’t hated being fat,” said Shirley. “But I wouldn’t like to think it was on a par with being ugly—something that would revolt people and make them want to turn away.”

  “You’re not very fat, Shirley,” Nan cried desperately.

  “Oh but I am, I am very fat. I am very short and weigh sixteen stone, and no normal clothes will fit me. I am very, very fat, actually,” said Shirley.

  “Yes, but you’re not really fat; you’re not fat like…” Nan’s inventive streak gave out and she stopped.

  “I’m the fattest person you know, right? Right. I thought it didn’t matter so much because I sort of felt I had a pretty face.”

  “Well, you do have a very pretty face.”

  “You gave me the courage to wear all these bright clothes instead of the blacks and browns…”

  “You look lovely in…”

  “And I didn’t worry about looking a bit ridiculous; but you know, ridiculous was the worst I thought I ever looked. I didn’t think it was ugly…”

  “It isn’t, you misunderstood…”

  “It’s always disappointing when you discover that someone hasn’t been sincere, and has just been having a bit of fun, that she’s just been pitying you.”

  “I don’t pity you…I wasn’t…”

  “But thanks anyway, for the outfit.” Shirley started to leave. “It’s lovely and I’m really very grateful. But I won’t take the eye shadow, if you don’t mind.”

  “Shirley, will you sit down…?”

  “The cheque is here—that is the right price, by the way? You’re not doing it cheaply just for me, I hope.”

  “Please, listen…”

  “No, I’m off now. The life has gone out of it here, now that you pity me. I suppose it’s just silly pride on my part, but I wouldn’t enjoy it anymore.”

  “Shirley, let me say something. I regard you as my most valued customer. I know that sounds like something out of a book, but I mean it. I looked forward to your coming here. Compared with most of the others, you’re a joy—like a friend, a breath of fresh air. I enjoyed the days that you’d been. Now don’t make me go down on my knees. Don’t be touchy…”

  “You’ve always been very friendly and helpful…”

  “Friendly…helpful…I regard you as some kind of kid sister or daughter. I had a fight with Colin about you not three months ago, when he said you looked like Moby Dick with stripes or something.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Oh God.”

  Shirley had gone. The bang of the door nearly took the pictures off the walls.

  “I’ll miss her dreadfully,” thought Nan. “She was the only one with any warmth or life. The rest are just bodies for the clothes.” To hell with it. She would telephone Lola, the friend who had sent Shirley to her in the first place.

  “Listen, Lola, this sounds trivial, but you know that nice Shirley who worked with you…”

  “Shirley Green? Yeah, what about her?”

  “No, her name is Kent, Shirley Kent.”

  “I know it used to be till she married Alan Green.”

  “Married?”

  “Nan, do you feel okay? You made her wedding dress for her, about a year ago.”

  “She never told me she got married. Who’s Alan Green? Her husband?”

  “Well, he’s my boss, and was hers. Nan, what is this?”

  “Why do you think she didn’t tell me she got married?”

  “Nan, I haven’t an idea in the whole wide world why she didn’t tell you. Is this what you rang up to ask me?”

  “Well have a guess. Think why she mightn’t have told me.”

  “It might have been because you and Colin weren’t getting married. She’s very sensitive, old Shirl, and she wouldn’t want to let you think she was pitying you or anything.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Anyway, it was the most smashing wedding dress—all that ruffle stuff and all those lovely blues and lace embroidery. I thought it was the nicest thing you’ve ever made.”

  Green Park

  * * *

  They had both sworn that they would not dress up. They had assured each other that it would be ridiculous to try to compete with Jane after all these years and considering all the money she had. Very immature really to try on fine feathers
and glad rags—like children dressing up and playing games. Yet when they met at the station they were almost unrecognizable from their usual selves.

  Helen had bought a new hat with a jaunty feather, and Margaret had borrowed a little fur cape. Both of them wore smart shoes, and their faces, normally innocent of powder, had definite evidence of rouge and even eye shadow. After much mutual recrimination they agreed that they both looked delightful and settled themselves into the train to London with more excitement than two schoolgirls.

  How extraordinary to be heading off for tea at the Ritz with Jane. Helen whispered that she would love to tell everybody in the railway compartment that this was where they were heading. Margaret said it would be more fun to let it fall casually in conversation afterwards: “How nice you look today, Mrs. Brown, what a sensible colour to wear, lots of people in the Ritz last week seemed to be wearing it.”

  And of course they giggled all the more because, in spite of sending themselves up, they actually were a little nervous about going to somewhere as splendid as the Ritz. They were overawed. The very mention of the Ritz made them nervous. It was for perfumed, furred people, not people who had dabbed some of last Christmas’s perfume behind the ears and borrowed a sister-in-law’s well-worn Indian lamb.

  In some way both Helen and Margaret feared they might be unmasked when they got there. And they giggled and joked all the more to stifle this fear.

  None of their fear was directed towards Jane. Jane was one of their own. Jane had trained to be a children’s nanny with them all those years ago. You don’t forget the friends made during that kind of apprenticeship. It was far more binding than the services were for men. It was almost like having survived a shipwreck—the eighteen girls who survived that particular obstacle race in the school for nannies, which had long since closed down, had forged a friendship which would last for life. Some of them had gone to the Gulf states and they wrote regular newsletters saying how they were getting on. Some, like Helen and Margaret, had married and applied their nanny training to their own children; only Jane had become spectacular and famous. But because she was Jane from the nanny training school it didn’t matter if she became head of the United Nations, Helen and Margaret would never be in awe of her.

  They changed trains, twittering happily at Euston, and took the underground to Green Park.

  “Perhaps people think we are career women, dropping into the Ritz for a business conference,” whispered Helen.

  “Or wealthy wives up for a day’s shopping,” sighed Margaret.

  Neither Margaret nor Helen were wealthy. Margaret was actually married to a vicar and lived in a draughty vicarage. She was so much the vicar’s wife now that she felt quite guilty about wearing the Indian lamb in case any of her husband’s parishioners saw her and wondered about her showiness. Helen, too, was far from wealthy. Jeff, her husband, had a flair for backing things that went wrong and that included horses. Yet never had a hint of envy been spoken or indeed felt by the two women about the wealthy friend they were en route to meet.

  Jane was the mistress of a very eccentric and extraordinarily wealthy American industrialist. He had bought her many gifts, including a ranch and a small television station; she was one of the world’s richest and best-known kept women.

  For the twentieth time Margaret wondered if Jane could possibly look as well as she appeared in the photographs, and for the twentieth time Helen said it was quite possible. If you didn’t have to do anything each day except make yourself look well, then it was obvious you could look magnificent. Suppose each day when Margaret got up she didn’t have to clean the vicarage, take her children to school, shop, cook, wash, go to coffee mornings, sales of work, cookery demonstrations, and entertain the doctor, the curate, the headmaster—think how well she could look. Margaret had a very good bone structure, Helen agreed grudgingly, she could look very striking if only she had time to lavish on herself. Margaret felt a bit depressed by this; she knew that Helen meant it as a compliment but it left her feeling as if she were in fact a great mess because she didn’t have this time, and that her good bone structure was wasted.

  As they came up from Green Park tube station into the sunlight of Piccadilly the two women giggled again and reached for their powder compacts before they crossed the road to the Ritz.

  “Aren’t we silly?” tittered Helen. “I mean we’re forty years of age.”

  “Yes, so is Jane of course,” said Margaret as if that was some kind of steadying fact. Something that would keep their feet on the ground.

  Jane had been attractive twenty years ago, but she was a beauty now.

  “You look ridiculous,” gasped Helen. “Your face, your whole face, it’s the face of a twenty-year-old. You look better than when we were all teenagers.”

  Jane gave a great laugh showing all her perfect teeth.

  “Aw, for Christ’s sake, Helen, I bought this face, and bloody boring it was, I tell you. It’s easy to have a face like that. Just give it to someone else to massage it and pummel it and file the teeth down and put caps on, no the face isn’t any problem.”

  Margaret felt that she wished the foyer of this overpowering hotel would open and gulp her into the basement area. She had never felt so foolish, in her ratty, overdressed, overdone bit of Indian lamb.

  “Come on, we’ll go to the suite,” Jane said, an arm around each of their shoulders. She noticed how impressed Helen and Margaret were with the tea lounge and the pillars and the little armchairs beside little tables where only the very confident could sit waiting casually for their friends. She knew they would love to sit in the public area and drink it all in with Jane herself there to protect them.

  “We’ll come back and do the grand tour later, but now we go and meet Charles.”

  “Charles?” Both women said it together with the alarm that might be generated at a dorm feast if someone mentioned that the headmistress was on her way. It was obvious that neither of them had thought that the ordeal of meeting Charles was included in the invitation to tea.

  “Oh yeah, the old bat wants to make sure I really am meeting two old chums from the college. He has a fear, you see, that I’ll have hired two male go-go dancers from some show. I want him to get a look at you so that he can see you are the genuine article, not something I made up. Come on, we’ll get it over with, and then we can settle down to cream cakes and tea and gins and tonics.”

  Because Jane had shepherded them so expertly towards the lift, Margaret and Helen hadn’t even had time to exchange a glance until they found themselves outside a door where two tall men stood.

  “Are they bodyguards?” whispered Margaret.

  “They speak English,” laughed Jane. “I know they look like waxworks, but that’s part of the qualifications. If you came in here with a machine-gun to kill Charles you wouldn’t get far.”

  They were nodded in by the unsmiling heavies at the door, and Charles was visible. He stood by the window looking out at the traffic below. A small, old, worried man. He looked a bit like her father-in-law, Helen thought suddenly. A fussy little man in an old people’s home who didn’t really care when she and Jeff went to see him, he only cared about what time it was, and was constantly checking his watch with clocks.

  When Charles did give them his attention he had a wonderful smile. It was all over his face, even his nose and chin seemed to be smiling. Margaret and Helen stopped being nervous.

  “I’m a foolish old gentleman,” he said in a Southern States drawl. “I’m jes’ so nervous of my Jane, I always want to see who she goes out with.”

  “Heavens,” said Margaret.

  “Well, I see, how nice,” stammered Helen.

  “You ladies jes’ must understand me. I guess you know how it is when you only live with someone, you aren’t so sure, it’s not the same binding thing as marriage.” He looked at them winningly, expecting some support.

  Margaret found her vicar’s wife’s voice: “Honestly, Mr.…er…Charles…I’m not in any position to
know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any couples who live together who are not married.”

  She couldn’t in a million years have said anything more suitable. Jane’s mouth had a flicker of a smile and in two minutes Charles had taken his briefcase, his personal assistant, and his bodyguards and, having made charming excuses, he left for a meeting that had been delayed, presumably until he had satisfied himself about Jane’s activities and plans for the afternoon.

  “Is the place bugged?” Helen whispered fearfully when he had gone. Her eyes were like big blue and white china plates.

  Jane screamed with laughter. “Darling Helen, no of course not. Hey, I’m really very sorry for putting all that on you both but you see the way he is.”

  “Very jealous?” suggested Helen, still in a low voice.

  “A little paranoid?” Margaret offered.

  “No, dying actually,” said Jane flatly, and went to get a jeweled cigarette box. “Yeah, he only has two months, poor old bat. He’s half the size he was six months ago. They said well under a year, now it’s getting quicker.”

  She sounded as if she were talking about a tragedy in some distant land, a happening in a country where she had never been. Everyone is sad about far floods and droughts but they don’t concern people like near ones do. Jane spoke of Charles as if he were a figure she had read about in a Sunday paper, not a man she had lived with for ten years. She seemed neither upset nor relieved by his terminal illness, it was just one of the many sad things that happen in life.

  “I’m very sorry,” said Margaret conventionally.

  “He doesn’t look as if he had only a short time to live,” said Helen.

  “I’m sure that if he’s not going to get better it’s all for the best that it should happen swiftly,” said Margaret, being a vicar’s wife again.

  “Aw shit, that’s not what I wanted to see you about,” said Jane. She looked at their shocked faces.