Whitethorn Woods

by Maeve Binchy

  No, it turned out that he knew I wasn’t really Malka, that I wasn’t even a little bit Jewish.

  ‘Rivka and I have no secrets, never will,’ he said.

  And for some reason I felt a bit uneasy. Which was ludicrous, of course. Why should I be uneasy about Max? He was gentle and kind, he loved Rivka. In fact he was a pussycat.

  Rivka and I still wrote to each other. For a while. Then she began to call me from the office from time to time. She said it was easier, more immediate, one to one. Well, it was, of course, but it was also much more expensive. I mean, there was no way I could afford transatlantic calls. But Rivka said it didn’t matter, she could call free from her office where she was manager. She didn’t mind that I wasn’t able to make calls from my end.

  I missed our long rambling letters, but it wasn’t that she was keeping anything from me, she told me every heartbeat of what seemed to be an exhausting life. Rivka seemed to be permanently on some crucifying diet. She was always wasting a long-distance call telling me about some big benefit night that was coming up and she had to drop twelve pounds in fourteen days to get into a dress. She said she was always tired these days.

  And I told her how horrific Declan’s sisters were and that I should be canonised in my own lifetime for not telling him what a trio of mad bats they were.

  ‘Will you?’ she asked with interest.

  ‘Will I what?’ I said.

  ‘Be canonised in your own lifetime?’ Rivka asked. She must have been very tired. Even Jewish people should know that was a joke and that you can’t be made a saint until you’re dead.

  And then we both had a crisis at the same time.

  Rivka’s wasn’t that big a crisis as it happens, she was just desperately tired at some travel conference they went to in Mexico and fell asleep when everyone thought she was getting dressed for the awards banquet where they were giving Max a lifetime achievement award, and she had to be woken up and arrived flustered and looking terrible. And it was somehow an insult to Max, and to the travel industry, and to Mexico. God, you’d think the Third World War had begun.

  Compared to what had happened to me it was nothing. Zilch, nada, as they say in Mexico.

  My beautiful sister-in-law felt that she had to tell Declan what she found in our medicine cupboard in the bathroom where she just happened to be looking. Poor Declan wouldn’t have known that these pills I was taking were abortifacient. That was her word: they prevented conception and killed the incipient baby. They wouldn’t tell their mother – she would be too shocked, she might not survive hearing the information. Declan was very upset and said I had been holding out on him. I said my fertility was my business and he said, no, it was our business and he should have been consulted, and what kind of fairness and equality in marriage and the future did we have if I behaved in this secretive way?

  And there was a bit of me that agreed that he had a point, but sadly I didn’t say that: I said instead that his sisters were a pack of interfering hyenas and that I hated them with a passion almost equal to that which I felt against his mother. This was not a sensible or good thing to say, and things were very cool between us for a long time. The sisters smirked all over the place. I threw the pills into the fire but Declan said he didn’t want to force a child on me so we didn’t have sex and the sisters seemed to guess this and smirked even more.

  So I spent more and more time driving the mobile library up into the mountains, and Declan spent more and more time talking about hurling and firing pints into himself down in Callaghan’s with that awful fellow Skunk Slattery, and to be honest times weren’t great at all.

  And I tried to tell Rivka about all this, but she thought with some reason that Declan’s sisters were from the funny farm and even though she tried to understand she just didn’t.

  And I tried hard to understand why Rivka simply had to go to all these functions when she was so tired. It was a rulebook that I had somehow missed, and I knew she wanted to explain it but there weren’t any words.

  When we talked on the telephone I just kept on advising her.

  ‘Tell him you’re really tired.’

  And she kept advising me.

  ‘Tell him you’re really sorry.’

  Eventually Declan came back to our bed. It wasn’t the same as before but it was less lonely and the atmosphere wasn’t hanging around the house any more. Meanwhile Rivka found some marvellous vitamin supplement that gave her more energy, and amazingly we both got pregnant at the same time.

  They had a girl called Lida, after Max’s mother, and I hoped we would have a girl too and we would call her Ruth and that she and Lida would be friends for ever. Declan said it was a bit far-fetched as an idea, and anyway he’d prefer a son who would play hurling for the county.

  Brendan, named after Declan’s father, was born two weeks after Lida, and now that Rivka wasn’t in the office any more she and I began to write to each other again about labour pains, about breastfeeding, about disturbed nights, about tiny fingers and toes. We seemed in a veiled way to be telling each other that life wasn’t quite as good as we had hoped it might be.

  But we never said that. Why would we say such a thing? We had our children.

  I suppose I should have noticed how late Declan came home at night and how he wasn’t drunk, which he ought to have been if he had spent four hours in Callaghan’s, and I should have noticed that Skunk Slattery often asked me how Declan was, which was odd since he was meant to be drinking every night with him, but I didn’t because I was so taken up with little Brendan who was an angel. I spent busy days putting toddler Brendan into the mobile library van and driving him round to meet all the readers in small villages and to be admired. I was also concentrating very hard on keeping him well away from his awful aunts.

  The months went on and on. We still went to see Declan’s mother every Sunday, each of us bringing a dish as she became more frail. It made her happy to see all her children around her, so I went along with it. Rivka often sent me recipes from America. When Declan’s mother eventually died it was very peaceful and she sort of slipped away.

  On the evening after her funeral Declan told me in a very calm voice that of course I must know he was seeing someone else. Her name was Eileen, she was the school secretary and they were going to England at the end of term. Brendan was seven then. Quite old enough to come and visit his dad regularly, Declan said casually. And he added reassuringly that Eileen would be like a second mother to Brendan.

  I looked at Declan as if I had never seen him before. It felt very unreal, like fainting or the sort of shock you get if you bang your head suddenly. I said that Brendan and I had to go to Dublin on the train the next day and we could talk about the visits and everything when I came back. I had put Brendan on my passport two years ago when I thought we might be going to America to see Rivka and Lida, but Max had something on that time and we couldn’t go.

  I left a note for Declan saying that I had taken enough money from our bank account to go to New York and for a little spending money when we were there; he could make the arrangements about the house and telling people about the situation. He wasn’t to think I was taking his child away for ever, I would be back.

  No need to call Interpol.

  I didn’t mention what a rat he was, how upset I was, or even a word about the lovely Eileen.

  Rivka had said she would be delighted to see me.

  ‘What about Max?’ I asked fearfully.

  ‘He’s hardly ever at home, he won’t notice if you are there or not,’ she said.

  We cried in each other’s arms when we met, big heaving sobs. It was the first time I had cried since the night that Declan had told me. I wept for all that there might have been. But no, I wouldn’t take him back now even if he were to beg me. Possibly he was right, it was over, long over.

  The two seven-year-olds played happily with Lida’s toys. My blond boy and her beautiful little girl with the dark ringlets. We gave each other advice as we had always done: Rivka
said I must get him to sell the house, and I should move. My father was dead now, Rivka said I should live with my mother.

  ‘But I can’t go back to her house, I spent so long trying to get out of it,’ I heard myself bleating.

  ‘Well, you can’t stay there in that place way out of Rossmore, with all the sisters, and the dreadful Eileen, and the whole place talking about you. This is the time for courage, Malka, up and out. Go back to Ireland, you could even move to Dublin, and take your mother, find a place of your own. Start again.’

  Yes, it was all very well for her, Americans are accustomed to doing that, new frontiers and covered wagons, but not in Ireland. Living with my mam and all the I-told-you-sos? Not really.

  I advised her to throw in the job at the office, which was cutting across her busy social life, and to go into the travel business like Max, build up an aspect of the holiday business that he hadn’t yet done. Let her mother help more in looking after Lida. Her marriage wasn’t over yet but it could be, the way she was going.

  Of course she resisted that terribly too but we laughed over it.

  As the days went on, I felt stronger and better than I had for years. Brendan loved it all there.

  ‘Why do they all call you Malka out there, Mammy?’ he asked on the plane coming home.

  ‘It’s American for Maureen,’ I explained.

  And he was perfectly satisfied. As he was when we moved to Dublin, and when my mam turned out to be miles better than we all thought, and never said I told you so once.

  I got a job teaching in a school where I set up a real library and Brendan grew up big and strong. I did make sure he went from time to time to see his dad in England, and learned with some pleasure that Eileen was very sharp-tempered and told Declan that he drank too much, and then the Principal of the school told him he drank too much.

  I wrote to Rivka every week, and then she got a fax machine, which was quicker still.

  And finally e-mail.

  She was in Europe four times a year now because she ran an art tours section of Max’s business and brought people to galleries and exhibitions. They included Ireland in the itinerary so that Rivka could come and see me. Well, there were nice art things to visit too, I suppose.

  Rivka talked less and less about Max and more and more about Lida. Max went to a lot of business meetings and came home only rarely. We didn’t think he had another woman but we agreed that he had lost interest in Rivka. Somehow it didn’t really matter all that much, any more than Eileen with her sharp temper mattered, nor the fact that Declan had been sacked from his job in England and was back in his place outside Rossmore, helping out his brothers-in-law where he earned so little that he had to ask Eileen for drinking money to go to Callaghan’s every night. But Lida mattered to us and Brendan mattered to us.

  They were our future.

  When Lida was seventeen she came to me for a holiday in Dublin. She wanted to be away from her mother for a bit and, well, Rivka and I understood that. We could write the textbook on that sort of thing.

  She said that her mother and father hadn’t slept in the same room for as long as she could remember; she wondered whether that was natural? Normal?

  I said I hadn’t a clue about America, it was probably different there. And that maybe it was all for the best anyway. I had slept in the same bed as my husband for years and it hadn’t done me all that bit of good since he left me for another woman.

  She was very sympathetic. She sat and stroked my hand. She said men were hard to fathom. That a man had said to her she was frigid when she wouldn’t have sex with him. Then he had said she was queer like her father. She hadn’t said it to anyone.

  I told her she was right, best to forget it, the guy was obviously just mad to have sex with her and was flailing around because she wouldn’t.

  We kept in touch over the years, but she never mentioned it again and neither did I.

  Now Lida was in her twenties and headstrong, dark and beautiful. She had studied law. And then this summer she announced that she was going to Greece for two months before she settled down in a big law firm. Nothing her mother said would make her go to Israel. Oh no, she objected to this about the place and that.

  Rivka and I were very disappointed.

  My Brendan was also in his twenties: fair-haired, leisurely and, I thought, very handsome.

  He was almost qualified as an engineer but before his career began properly he would take a long holiday in Italy.

  How Rivka and I would have liked them to go to the Negev desert, to ‘our’ kibbutz. They could have checked whether the gladioli farm had ever come to anything and what kind of women Shimon and Dov had married in the end. They could have fallen in love with each other, Brendan and Lida, against the romantic backdrop of those red cliffs and valleys. They would marry and give us three grandchildren, which Rivka and I could share. The young couple and their family would live six months of the year in America and six months in Ireland.

  Well, stranger things have happened, you know. Like both our own mothers turning out to be quite reasonable in late middle age, people you could talk to, not automatically lie to. That had never been on the cards.

  And though we sometimes sighed wistfully when we heard the radio play tunes for couples whose thirtieth wedding anniversary it was or saw a big celebration in a hotel, mainly we were fairly contented with the way things had turned out for us.

  We were fiftyish, trimmer and better dressed than when we were twenty-five and not too bad looking. If we were to put ourselves out in the marriage market again we might not do too badly. But we didn’t need to, we each had jobs we enjoyed, we each had a child we adored and for decades we had shared a friendship with no secrets, no disguises, and the wisdom to know that such a great friendship was rare.

  I remember reading once that your enjoyment of something doubled if you realised how lucky you were to have it. If everyone had a huge diamond on their fingers, or if sunsets were universally scarlet and gold, then we wouldn’t value them at all. It was like that with us.

  Part 2 – Rivka

  I sometimes give little talks, nothing too demanding, but you know the kind of thing – either for charity or to get publicity for Max’s company. Or both, even. Anyway I have learned over the years that there are two subjects that never fail to hold an audience. One is how to drop five pounds painlessly before your vacation, and the other is the positive power of friendship.

  The five pounds one is easy, it’s got to do with having exotic fruits for breakfast and supper, mangoes, papayas and the like. And small portions of grilled fish or chicken for lunch. I sort of intersperse it with funny stories about times things went wrong, and I ate a box of chocolate chip cookies or a tub of ice cream. They love that.

  But they love even more my stories about my great friend Malka. I call her that, even though her real name is Maureen. I tell them how we met on a kibbutz and remained friends for a lifetime, and how love could come and go but friendship survived. That friendship was better than love in a way, it was more generous. You didn’t object if your friend had other friends, you even encouraged it. But you did object violently to your love having other loves and did everything possible to discourage it.

  I could see the audience nodding in recognition.

  I always smiled when I talked about Malka.

  We had great times together after that chance meeting on a kibbutz. My mom thought she was a nice Jewish girl and didn’t realise that she came from a town of mad Catholics who all worshipped some well in the middle of the woods. I mean, if you only saw it. Cherish friendship, I advised them, and then I gave them the hard sell about going on vacation with a friend rather than a spouse.

  If your spouse didn’t want to visit art exhibits, go shopping, and sit in a piazza or a square watching strangers and making up stories about them – your girlfriend would.

  When I started working for his family firm, Max always admired the way I built up this side of the business: the art tours, the
painting classes and the ladies’ bridge clubs or reading groups. But he admired this and indeed admired me very distantly and objectively.

  You see, looking back on it all, Max never really loved me, not loved as people write about and sing about and dream about. I never thought that he loved anyone else. I told myself that possibly he didn’t have a high sex-drive, not like Malka’s husband sure did over in Ireland. No, I am sure that he didn’t love anyone else, he just thought of what we had as a sort of business partnership. That’s the way he was made.

  For a while I thought that if I tried harder, dressed better, got thinner, developed more sparkle, he would grow to love me. But oddly it was my friend Malka who convinced me that this was not really the way it worked. Otherwise all thin, groomed, sparkly people would be very happy and we all knew – because we saw them all round us – that most of them were totally miserable.

  And Malka told me I was a scream, and as bright as a button, and sharp as a tack, and a dozen other insane Irish phrases, and I started believing it all and became unreasonably confident about almost everything. And I was happy, most of the time, when I look back on it.

  I wasn’t happy in those years when my mom was on my case screeching at me about getting married. And there was that time when I was wearing myself out, eating nothing and putting in a ten-hour day at the office followed by social functions: I wasn’t happy then.

  But when Lida was born, my beautiful, beautiful daughter, I was happy then and never stopped being happy. And I had a notebook where I wrote down all the things my mom had done to irritate me and break my heart, and I tried not to do any of them myself.

  But the world had changed.

  Imagine my asking Lida to consider her marriage options before she lost her looks.

  I mean, imagine it! It would be like living on a different planet.

  And oddly, my mom had changed around that time too, she became normal and knew a lot of the world’s wisdom. She certainly had not been normal or wise when I was young and could have done with it, still it was nice that she had discovered it in later life.