Whitethorn Woods

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘I doubt it very much, Mother, I really do.’

  She still looked totally calm but this wasn’t the way she normally spoke. A little silence fell between us. Then after what seemed a long, long time Becca spoke.

  ‘Why did you do it, Mother?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I began. And I didn’t really – there were so many things it could have been. Was it the taxi? Had that really been Kate in the road who would have told her about the house being all painted up? That there were definitely signs of money, ill-gotten money, around the place? Or had she told her anything else?

  I stood up as if to leave but her hand shot out and pinned my wrist to the table between us. One of the warders moved towards us but Becca smiled and reassured her that everything was fine.

  ‘My mother is just about to tell me something, she’s finding it a bit difficult, but she will find the words.’

  I rubbed my wrist. ‘Well, you see …’ I began.

  ‘No, I don’t see, Mother. I hear that you are living with Franklin. That’s what I hear.’

  I began to bluster a little.

  ‘But I’m doing it for you, Becca darling. Wilfred and Franklin had to live somewhere, I live in a big falling-down house – why shouldn’t they have rooms there?’

  ‘Not so falling-down now, I hear,’ Becca said.

  ‘But, darling, they just have rooms there – don’t be so silly.’

  ‘Do you sleep with Franklin?’ she asked calmly.

  ‘Now how can you say that?’ I began.

  ‘Because Kate told me, and Gwen told me.’

  ‘Gwen?’

  ‘One of the warders here, you go to her every week for a manicure. Dressed very differently than you are dressed today …’

  For once I was speechless. Becca wasn’t speechless, however.

  ‘It’s disgusting, he’s thirty years younger than you.’

  ‘Nineteen,’ I said with spirit.

  ‘He’ll move on,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘One day, yes, maybe.’

  ‘Sooner than you think,’ my daughter said.

  And Becca told me her plan. She reminded me that I had said everyone should have a plan. Becca’s plan was to put Kate in touch with the tabloid papers. Kate and Gwen didn’t think that it was fair, the way Becca had been treated, and had alerted tabloid photographers to lie in wait for Franklin and myself.

  ‘Murderess Betrayed by Her Own Mother’ was going to be a much, much better story than anything that I had sold them so far. They would really pay Kate well for this.

  She looked very calm and in control as she spoke to me. I wondered suddenly whether, if I had put aside all my principles and invited the damn woman to afternoon tea, all this would never have happened. But we’ll never know …

  CHAPTER 6

  Bank Holiday Party

  Part 1 – Barbara

  You see, I was always such fun and so much the centre of things in the office, I obviously assumed that I was part of the Bank Holiday party. It never occurred to me that they would all go off without me. Not without me, Barbara, life and soul of the party. I mean, I was the one who had told them about it in the first place, this hotel in a place called Rossmore, miles away in the country where they had a big swimming pool with a patio where they let you grill your own steaks or pieces of chicken. I found the website and I printed out all the information and showed it to them.

  So naturally I thought I was part of it all.

  Then I heard them all talking about it and who they were going to be sharing rooms with and what time they were all getting together to have a drink before they set off to catch the train. And there was some kind of wishing well in the woods where a saint had kept appearing and they were going to investigate it and see could they catch her in mid-apparition.

  And then suddenly it dawned on me that I wasn’t part of it.

  At the start, I thought it was a mistake, you know the way things are. Everyone thinks that someone else told me. They just couldn’t be going without me. But you get a sort of gut feeling when you are being left out of things and this is what I had.

  Well, at first I was totally furious. How dare they take my idea and not include me? Then I became upset. Why did they not like me? What reason could have made them leave me out? Tears of self-pity had to be beaten back. Then I started hating them all. People I had thought were my friends. Laughing behind my back. I hoped they would have a really awful Bank Holiday weekend, and that the hotel would be a disaster. I wished them downpours of rain, and wanted the patio to be crawling with awful beasts that would get into their clothes and hair.

  They were leaving on Friday at lunchtime, catching a two o’clock train. They all brought their bags to the office that morning. What was really amazing was how they talked about it so openly in front of me. They weren’t even embarrassed that they had stolen my holiday and then left me out of it. They didn’t lower their voices or turn away, just discussed it as if I had assumed I would be no part of it.

  On the Friday morning Rosie, who was one of the nicer ones, confided to me that she had great hopes of getting together with Martin from Sales during the weekend.

  ‘Do you think I might stand a chance with him, Bar?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know why you ask me,’ I said coldly.

  Rosie seemed surprised. ‘Because you’re so cool, you know everything, Bar,’ she said. As far as I could see she wasn’t mocking me. Which made it all the odder that she hadn’t wanted me to join them.

  ‘I think you have every chance of winning Martin’s affections,’ I said. ‘Best keep him away from Sandra, though, she’s meant to be a bit of a man-eater.’

  ‘Oh Bar, you’re just wonderful, I wish you were coming with us, you could advise me the whole time. Why will you not come? Just this once?’

  ‘Wasn’t asked.’ I shrugged, trying not to show how much it mattered.

  Rosie pealed with laughter. ‘As if you would have to be asked,’ she said. ‘You just didn’t want to come, we knew that from the word go, the way you talked about the place and sneered at it. We knew you had something much better to do.’

  ‘I never sneered at Rossmore, I suggested it,’ I cried, outraged.

  ‘No, not sneered exactly, but, Bar, we all knew it wouldn’t be your kind of thing. A bit beneath you. Not in a snobby way but that’s the way it is.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said.

  ‘Well, ask anyone then,’ said Rosie. And I did.

  I asked the man-eating Sandra.

  ‘I don’t suppose it would be your scene,’ Sandra said. ‘All right for us ordinary folk but not for you, Bar.’

  ‘Why not for me?’ I asked in a voice of steel.

  ‘You’re sort of classier than we are, Bar, you know – no one could see you spending a weekend in jeans grilling sausages.’

  I was astounded.

  Well, yes, I do dress well. I take care of my appearance. I consider myself well groomed. I have had some elocution lessons to improve my accent. But too classy to go on an office outing? Come on. They couldn’t all be so humble and in awe of me as not to include me? Surely?

  But I wasn’t going to let them see how startled and upset I was. No way.

  ‘Have a good time anyway, Sandra,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Got your eye on anyone in particular for the weekend?’

  ‘Not really. That Martin fellow in the Sales Department is a bit of a looker. But we’ll see.’

  Sandra could have any man she wanted, Rosie wasn’t so fortunate. Even in the middle of my own disappointment I decided to even things up.

  ‘I wouldn’t waste my time on him, I heard he’s as dull as ditchwater when you get to know him,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks, Bar,’ Sandra said, putting on more lip gloss. ‘Good to have your card marked. What are you doing for the Bank Holiday by the way?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m not doing much,’ I said, confused.

  ‘I bet you a
re,’ Sandra said.

  ‘I’m giving a big lunch party,’ I heard myself say.

  ‘Ooh, Barbara, aren’t you something else? How many people?’

  ‘Twelve, including me.’ Was I mad? I don’t know twelve people. I couldn’t cook for them even if I did.

  ‘Twelve people! You’re fabulous, Bar, will you have photos next week?’

  ‘Very probably,’ I said miserably. I could always say the camera had jammed. Not only was I pathetic and unpopular … I was mad and dishonest as well. Great start to a Bank Holiday weekend.

  I waved them all goodbye as they left the office for the two o’clock train. People I had thought were my friends – sexy Sandra, innocent Rosie, that nice, gentle Martin from Sales, and half a dozen others who all thought I was stuck up and superior. I looked at myself in the mirror in the ladies’ room. A pale face, framed with an expensive haircut, a well-cut jacket, which I sponged and brushed every night. I wore cheap T-shirts underneath, a different colour every day. There was nothing upper class, snobby about me. Was there?

  Two cleaning women came in with their buckets and mops. They greeted me pleasantly with big smiles and a lot of gold teeth. They weren’t Irish but there are lots of overseas people working in Ireland now and I didn’t know where they were from. They were remarkably good-humoured with three hours of scrubbing and polishing ahead of them.

  And yet I dared to feel sorry for myself, I, who had a good job in marketing, a big garden flat, a flat-screen television and a designer jacket!

  ‘Are you looking forward to the Bank Holiday weekend?’ I asked them.

  ‘Not very,’ said one.

  ‘Sunday often a sad lonely day in a big city,’ said the other.

  I knew how she felt.

  ‘Would you like to come to lunch with me?’ I heard myself say.

  They looked at me open-mouthed.

  ‘To eat a lunch with you?’ they asked astounded.

  ‘Well, yes. On Sunday at about one o’clock in my house. Look, I’ll write down the address for you.’

  I got out my little leather-bound notebook. The two women in their yellow working overalls looked on as if I were writing them an invitation to fly to the moon.

  ‘Oh, and I’d better know your names, to introduce you to other people,’ I said.

  ‘There will be other people?’ They looked alarmed.

  ‘Oh, indeed, about twelve of us altogether,’ I said cheerily.

  They were from Cyprus, sisters, they told me. They had Greek names: Magda and Eleni.

  Nobody had ever invited them to a home before, Eleni said, excited.

  Magda was worried about it all. ‘You like us to clean the house for you maybe?’ she said.

  I felt so ashamed I could hardly speak. ‘No, no, as my guests,’ I mumbled.

  ‘We will make some baklava … beautiful Greek dessert,’ Magda said, now that it had all been cleared up.

  I left them talking excitedly in Greek, nothing so marvellous had happened to them before in their new country.

  On the way back to my own office, before I had even time to think about what I had just done, I met my boss Alan, a tense, anxious workaholic of about forty-five, I suppose. We knew nothing about his private life except in bursts when he announced that he hated his ex with a great passion. This was one of these bursts.

  ‘She is an evil vicious woman,’ Alan told me in the corridor. ‘A foul and very bad person.’

  ‘What has she done now?’ I asked. Alan was quite handsome and he could be good company apart from all this droning on about his ex.

  ‘She’s only gone and dumped Harry and two of his ten-year-old friends on me for the whole of the weekend, and instructions about no fast food. I’m to cook them proper meals apparently.’

  ‘Oh, bring them round to my place on Sunday – about one o’clock,’ I said, casually writing down my address.

  ‘I can’t do that, Bar,’ he said, though it was obvious that he wanted to.

  ‘Ah, why not?’ I shrugged. ‘There’ll be twelve of us, and plenty of home-cooked food.’ I began to wonder, was I going mad?

  ‘I’ll bring you some wine then,’ Alan said, eagerly bursting with gratitude.

  Back in my office and gathering up my things I took a last look at my diary. I would be away from it until Tuesday, better see was there anything I should remember. It was my Aunt Dorothy’s birthday on Sunday – my father’s elder sister. Disapproving of everyone, she had rarely been known to utter a pleasant remark.

  There was still time to fling a birthday card into the post so that she couldn’t accuse me of neglecting her when next she saw my parents. Then I thought, better still, I’d ask her to lunch. She couldn’t make it any more ludicrous than the way it was shaping up to be.

  Aunt Dorothy was in a black humour when I called. Her three bridge friends had forgotten her birthday, she always remembered their birthdays, but oh no, they hadn’t said a thing about celebrating it.

  ‘Why don’t you return good for evil, Aunt Dorothy, and ask them all to lunch at my house,’ I suggested. I was now completely insane, I realised. Aunt Dorothy liked the idea a lot. She would embarrass them, humiliate them even, make them feel ashamed.

  ‘What can I bring with me for lunch, dear?’ she asked in tones that almost approached civility. I thought for a moment. I hadn’t even planned what we were going to eat but we’d need a salad. I suggested it.

  ‘For five?’ Aunt Dorothy asked.

  ‘No, for twelve actually,’ I said apologetically.

  ‘You can’t seat twelve,’ she snapped.

  ‘We’ll eat in the garden,’ I said. And hung up.

  I did a count, we had now reached eleven. Only one more. Larry the security man came in. He was about to lock the place up for the weekend. So naturally I invited him to lunch and naturally he said he’d love to, and that he’d come over early in his van with some planks and set up a table in the garden.

  So there was my party.

  I went home by a bookshop where I looked up a book on very easy entertaining. On Saturday I went shopping and bought three cheap tablecloths, packets of crisps and dips, some brightly coloured balloons as well as the ingredients for an Easy Chicken Pie and an Easy Vegetarian Special. That and the Greek desserts, Aunt Dorothy’s salad and Alan’s wine should cover everyone.

  I slept well on Saturday night and never thought at all about my colleagues on their patio in Rossmore, grilling their lamb chops and sausages amongst the mosquitoes and visiting walking statues in the woods.

  Larry, true to his word, was round with the wooden planks, and he had put half a dozen folding chairs in the back of his van, borrowed from the office penthouse. I had no seating plan: let them sit where they liked.

  At half past twelve I wondered whether any of them would come. At one o’clock sharp they all arrived and Alan had brought enough wine for half the neighbourhood. There was a roar of conversation from the moment they came in.

  Magda and Eleni had brought olives as well as dessert.

  Alan’s son Harry and his two friends turned out to be hugely interested in money. ‘How much will you pay us to be waiters?’ they asked as soon as they arrived.

  I looked at Alan helplessly. ‘They’re worth two Euro each, no more,’ he said.

  ‘Five,’ I said, and then I settled back while they did all the work.

  Aunt Dorothy lorded it over her friends very happily. ‘Oh, Barbara has a wide circle of acquaintances,’ she said proudly, and wept a little tear when I got everyone to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her.

  Magda said that Eleni had always needed a strong helpful man like Larry and did everything to throw them together. Harry and his friends finished the washing up and wondered, would they be paid for weeding the flower beds.

  ‘One Euro each,’ Alan said.

  ‘Three Euro each,’ I said.

  Magda and Eleni taught Larry to do a Zorba dance; Aunt Dorothy and her friends all sang ‘Just a Song at Twilight’.
/>   Alan said to me, ‘You know, I always fancied you a bit but I thought you were rather toffee-nosed. I never in a million years thought you were like this. You are absolutely wonderful.’

  So I forgot about the people who hadn’t invited me to grill things on a patio on a holiday that I had more or less set up for them, and Alan forgot about his ex.

  And I think somebody took some pictures but it didn’t really matter. Because no one would ever forget the day.

  Part 2 – Someone from Dad’s Office

  Lots of people at school have parents who are divorced. Well, it stands to reason, you don’t always want the same thing all the time, do you? I mean, I don’t like the things I liked when I was seven, not now that I’m ten. Those awful PlayStations that I liked then, well, of course they were fine then, but they are so boring now.

  So I quite see why Mum and Dad got tired of each other and wanted different things. It’s nothing personal. Or at least it shouldn’t be. But that’s not the way it is in this family. Mum never stops talking about how mean Dad is, how he keeps us in poverty.

  I don’t think we are in poverty but it doesn’t do to say that so I don’t say anything really.

  Dad is always saying to me that that mother of mine will have us all in the workhouse before long and that can’t be true either because Dad drives a big car and he is very high up in his office, but it’s not a good idea to say that we don’t look like the workhouse people you see pictures of in Charles Dickens’ time. So I say nothing about that either.

  They both keep telling me that they love me. Too much really.

  Mum says, ‘… the one thing that can be said about that monument to selfishness is that he gave me you, Harry.’

  Dad says, ‘… if there’s one thing to be said about that dizzy self-obsessed woman it’s that she gave me a fine son.’

  I don’t know why they think that, because I am always the problem, or the worry, or the person to be parked here or collected there.

  George doesn’t see his father at all, so he says I’m lucky compared to him. Wes says that his family are rowing all the time and we are both lucky compared to him. So obviously the whole family thing isn’t really meant to work.