Victoria Line, Central Line

by Maeve Binchy

  That lovely expression, ‘as right as rain’, Elizabeth had used it a million times, without ever thinking about it. She thought suddenly of the soft gentle rain in Ireland. She thought about the constancy of rain. She felt vastly cheered.

  ‘I don’t know why you came to meet me,’ said Dara. ‘I could easily have made my own way to the house, you know. It would have given you another couple of hours to yourself.’

  ‘Oh we always meet you at Euston,’ said Elizabeth, and Dara patted her hand affectionately.

  The house was indeed in poor shape. Dara looked around with a practised eye. The children were sweet little three- and four-year-olds, Benny and Nell, but they had obviously worn Derek to a frazzle.

  ‘What do they eat at this time darling?’ he said in a harrassed tone to Elizabeth. ‘They seem very restless. I’ve no idea what you would have given them.’

  Dara gave Derek a peck, and vanished to her room. She returned in ten minutes dressed for work in a simple pinafore of green corduroy.

  ‘You look very business-like,’ said Derek with approval. Elizabeth felt even more foolish in her best silk suit, which she was hoping might escape the strains and dangers of Benny and Nell.

  ‘Well, your wife is going to leave us together for three weeks, I’ll tell you all about it later,’ she said. ‘So meanwhile, I suppose I’d better dress to please you.’

  Already the tension was lifting.

  Already the atmosphere was lighter.

  Dara was working her familiar magic.

  ‘Lie down, Elizabeth my love, I’ll call you when the meal is ready. Do, there’s a good girl,’ said Dara.

  And Elizabeth went up to her room, where she rested with a great sense of relief. Dara would explain it all to Derek. Dara would make him see that she wasn’t a non-starter. Not a weakling. She closed her eyes. At peace for the first time for ages. It was nine o’clock when Dara came to waken her with a cup of consommé with sherry.

  ‘This will liven you up,’ she said.

  Elizabeth drank it gratefully.

  ‘What’s happening? I must get up,’ she said suddenly.

  All her guilt came flooding back. The meat hadn’t been unfrozen for the goulash, the dish-washing machine hadn’t been emptied. Heavens. There might well be no clean linen. She had been asleep for two hours.

  ‘It’s under control,’ said Dara. And indeed it was. Derek had been banished with a drink to the television, the children had been bathed and given cornflakes, the goulash had been designated tomorrow’s dinner, while Dara’s smoked salmon from Ireland had been carved and sliced and laid on beds of vegetables, the table had been polished and old mats with hunting prints had appeared. In the kitchen the soft whir of the washing machine meant that all the table linen as well as the children’s clothes were purring around in a low suds detergent. Elizabeth sighed with pleasure. It was a delightful dinner, and Derek said to her tenderly that he felt very selfish for not having noticed her strain. All three of them made great plans for the week in the nursing home. They drank a toast to the joy of hospitalisation without any disease, or any terror of waiting for results. For the first time in months Elizabeth slept a long peaceful sleep.

  Elizabeth went to the nursing home early in the morning. Derek drove her there before he went to work. Dara said she knew well the running of the house, and insisted that she could also replace Elizabeth at the nursing agency so that no extra cash would be lost. The real reason she wanted to do it was to ensure that nobody there could regard Elizabeth as a malingerer. Dara’s nursing qualifications were even superior to Elizabeth’s, there would be no problem.

  And indeed there were no problems.

  Dara realised quickly that a great deal of problems could be solved by buying food in bulk. So she made a master list and suggested that she and Derek buy this early on Saturday morning. She settled him with the children in a café and had the shopping ready to be collected from the supermarket door in forty minutes. Then she settled in to sit with the children while she sent Derek with a list to buy the week’s drink and gardening requisites. ‘That’s a man’s job,’ she said when Derek demurred, and he felt very important.

  On Sunday she arranged to have the neighbour’s children for the day, mainly so that they would entertain Benny and Nell in the bedroom which she had made into a play room for them. But it also made the neighbour feel that she wasn’t being taken for granted. It meant she could go to the pub and even have a leisurely lunch with her husband and a bit of slap and tickle. She agreed readily to hold on to Benny and Nell until whatever hour the family liked to collect them on work days. ‘I think Derek should pick them up in his car. Their little legs get tired walking home,’ said Dara. Derek wondered why nobody had ever thought of this.

  She spent a half-hour each day in the garden, but always in places where it showed. The front looked weeded and cared for. Dara even organised funny winter window boxes which looked cheerier than anything else on the road.

  When Derek arrived home with the children, she was there, cheerful, fire lighting, and drink in her hand. Derek relaxed while she bathed the toddlers, and together they read them funny stories while they had their supper and went to bed. Then Derek and Dara played chess or looked at television while she mended clothes. Dara told Derek funny tales of the people she nursed. She always made the people sound tender or witty or eccentric, never demanding or tiresome. He loved to hear of them. She was very interested to know where his research was going and why so much money was being given to the Americans while so little went to the British.

  Each night they telephoned Elizabeth and listened to what she said. Sometimes she seemed very defensive, and self-justifying. ‘You don’t have to explain to us,’ said Dara over and over. ‘We know why you’re run down. It’s a killer running a job and a home.’ Yet, Dara didn’t look killed by it, she glowed with happiness, and the house seemed to turn on oiled hinges.

  The day of Elizabeth’s return was to be fêted, Dara decided. There would be a special celebration meal. Elizabeth was to come back at seven o’clock on a Friday.

  ‘Be sure to take a taxi from the station, darling,’ said Derek. He was beginning to believe that a small expense on taxis could save a lot of wear and tear and a lot of time.

  Benny and Nell made a banner with ‘Welcome Home Mummy’ on it. There was to be a bottle of champagne and a cake. They all sat until nearly eight o’clock when Derek became worried and rang the health farm.

  ‘Oh, she left here this afternoon,’ the director said. ‘She should be with you by now.’

  The key turned in the lock and in from the wet sleet came Elizabeth dripping on the newly vacuumed floor.

  ‘I took the tube, a taxi seemed such a waste. Then there were no buses,’ she said.

  There were cries of welcome, she looked less tired but very bedraggled from her long wait and walk in the rain. She gazed around the house admiringly, it looked very well kept somehow. There was much more peace than there had been three weeks ago when, weary and beaten, she had left it.

  ‘I’ll only have a very little piece of cake,’ she said proudly. ‘I’ve lost nearly a stone.’ They all cooed over her, and Derek put his arm protectively around her shoulder and said he was delighted to have her back and her old self.

  Dara tactfully went to bed early after dinner to leave them together. Derek began to tell Elizabeth about the new turn in his work but from habit her mind wandered, and she said she must think of tomorrow’s lunch.

  ‘It’s done,’ he said irritably.

  ‘Done? How can it be done?’ she asked mystified.

  ‘Well it’s Saturday tomorrow darling. We’ll be going out shopping early, and then home to soup and sandwiches, like we do every Saturday.’

  ‘Well, I’ll make the sandwiches, if we’re going to leave early,’ said Elizabeth, a bit discomfited to hear him say ‘like every Saturday’, when there had only been three Saturdays.

  ‘Oh, darling. They’re made. We always have somet
hing on Friday night that can end up as sandwiches next day. Dara has mashed up the chicken with some mayonnaise I expect, and we’ll get nice crusty bread tomorrow and that’s lunch.’ He said it with such confidence and sense of repeating the obvious that Elizabeth felt both amused and yet chilled. How very well the house had managed without her.

  ‘It’s a good idea this Saturday shopping then?’ she asked timidly.

  ‘Well, it makes sense doesn’t it?’ said Derek, making nothing of five years of her standing in line at delicatessens and greengrocers during lunch hours and carrying them home on crowded buses.

  But the week was sheer pleasure. She went back to work and was oohed and aahed over by the other nurses and by her patients who all praised that nice Irish nurse who had been there during her illness.

  Each evening when she got back the house seemed like a welcoming palace; Dara had used the time to do a thorough spring clean and a reorganisation of the linen cupboard.

  ‘Can you give me a list of all the things you buy on a Saturday?’ Elizabeth asked humbly.

  ‘Could you explain what exactly you do in the garden?’ she begged.

  ‘How are the clothes always clean when you are here?’ she implored.

  Dara always answered helpfully. She never implied that Elizabeth was an incompetent.

  The day before she left Elizabeth said, ‘I don’t think I’m as right as rain.’

  ‘You’re nearly as right as rain,’ said Dara as they sat in the sparkling kitchen and had a cup of tea. The children were gurgling happily in their bedroom-cum-playroom, and Derek was having a shower before his evening sherry and chat before dinner.

  ‘What’ll I do, Dara?’ she asked.

  ‘You could quit work, take a lodger to make up some of the dough.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘You could do extra hours for the agency and employ a home help.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Well, just keep sort of going I suppose,’ said Dara. ‘I mean it’s not anyone’s fault that you’re not as right as rain. It’s not Derek’s fault, he’s smashing, and the kids are lovely, and the work’s fine, and that neighbour of yours is a real pal, if you take her kids on a Sunday she’ll do anything for you. She loves her Sundays.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ Elizabeth begged.

  ‘Aw, come on Eliza,’ Dara always called her that. For over twenty years it has been ‘Come on Eliza’.

  Eliza looked at her, hoping for a solution.

  ‘Of course I’ve got to go. Take it easy, take it nice and easy. There aren’t any problems at all you know.’

  Elizabeth looked at her friend carefully. Dara had said that about Mother and Father. ‘Aw, come on Eliza they’re only having a bit of a barney with each other . . .’ then they had got divorced.

  ‘Aw, come on Eliza, it’s not the end of the world, they’re both nice happy people, don’t make them into old miseries by your own attitude. Enjoy both of them.’ Fine until Father had committed suicide and Mother had joined that funny religion of nutters leaving a small legacy to Elizabeth as a gesture towards sanity and family life.

  ‘Aw, come on Eliza, everyone works and runs a home these days – why do you think you’re going to be the one who won’t manage?’ she had said when Elizabeth had first complained of finding it all a little too much.

  ‘Eliza, you’ll be as right as rain,’ she had said only four weeks ago. And Eliza wasn’t.

  It had always been the same, when Dara had left, Mother and Father had looked at her and each other, expecting something that Elizabeth wasn’t able to give, and being disappointed with her, unreasonably disappointed, because she couldn’t. She realised that everyone – Derek, Benny, Nell, that tiresome neighbour, the people at the agency – would all look expectantly at Elizabeth and wish that there was something there, something that Dara’s presence had led them to believe was there.

  She looked at her friend, and wondered for the first time why she hadn’t had a duller friend, one against whom she could be measured and come out winning. Someone dull who would make her shine. Someone messy who would make her seem organised by comparison.

  It had been a bad thing to have had Dara to stay. It had been a bad thing for twenty-six years, but she only realised it now, when she was as far as she ever was from being as right as rain.

  WARREN STREET

  Nan had had another god-awful day. Nobody seemed to use any under-arm deodorant any more. 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 agents – 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 one 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 multi-coloured 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 wholemeal 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 only saw 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 three 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 organised.