by Maeve Binchy
She remembered how Jim had gone a dull shade of red when Doris had said that, truthfully, she had always expected him to be a success in life and might not have married him had she known how often he was going to be passed over at work. And there had been that moment when Hilda had said in answer to one of those silly questions that kept going around, that Brian loved the poor and the needy in the world much more than he loved his own family, whose names and birthdays he often had difficulty in remembering.
Lorna and George had been very quiet after that party, a year ago. They had driven home in near silence. She had managed to turn all the questions into little jokes and answer them with a loving pat on the knee to her husband. George had done the same. But in the car there had been nothing to say. The emptiness seemed to hang between them like a curtain. All those questions that the other eight had battled with, trying to find honest answers and ending up red-eyed and angry, Lorna and George had managed to ignore. But the questions themselves could not be taken back. What sense of disappointment did they feel? Had there been any great letdowns? Did they still feel excited to see each other? Did they ever look lingeringly at any others?
Lorna had always told herself that she and George had escaped unscathed from that silly, silly party that Lola and Teddy had been mad enough to dream up. The others had all endured a public humiliation—George and Lorna may have been a little more silent and withdrawn at home than they were already, but at least in the view of their friends they were still what they had always been, a very well-suited couple. In fact, they had weathered the decade very well, Lorna thought, no terrible high-flying brought down by the whims of a stock exchange as had been the case with Kevin and Anne. Well might Kevin complain that Anne was no fun these days—it can’t have been fun to have had so many lovely things repossessed, such a change in lifestyle. And then of course they had been luckier by far than Doris and Jim. Doris should never have said it of course, but Jim was a bit of a plodder, always satisfied with the very lowest position in the office, the cheapest car, the really awful furniture and decor. Jim never seemed to notice that all the others had gone far ahead of him. It would have been somehow more acceptable, Lorna thought, if he had been just a little bit apologetic about things, acknowledged somehow that he hadn’t climbed as far up the tree as the others.
And Lorna often told herself that even though her George was very silent, no one could deny that it was better by far than all the prattle that Teddy and Lola went on with, especially since it had led to all that business at the party, counting the number of ladies there had been, listing their names. Oh, dear me, Lorna would much, much prefer a little silence than that sort of thing!
It wasn’t even as if George’s silences were moody like Brian’s and Hilda’s were, he wasn’t always worrying about Society like they were, or about the Third World, things you could do nothing about. No, indeed. If George and Lorna were silent, perhaps it was because they had everything said by now and it was normal for people who were in their early forties in the late eighties to keep their views to themselves. It wasn’t like the silly sixties when people had been talking about Love and Flowers and Hippies, nor the seventies when they had all been working so hard, long, long hours at the office in order to get noticed and get on, and then when they did relax they had all drunk far too much.
In those days too, of course, they had eaten the wrong things, all the time! No wonder there was so much cholesterol and stress and obesity even in their little group of friends. The eighties had meant that they had taken care of themselves at least. Now no long happy chats with George across a dinner table, of course, no snuggling up with a snack to watch television together.
To be strictly honest, and even to be a teeny bit selfish, Lorna did rather miss those times when they had so much to talk about. In those times, the days were just not long enough to say all that had to be said. They tumbled over the words, and they had never known a silence. Still, Lorna would always give herself a shake when her thoughts went down that kind of road.
It was deeply silly to get worried about little things like long silences. After all, look at what all the others had to put up with! And really and truly, one could only measure one’s life by comparing it with everyone else’s.
Lorna had been very good at the measurement game. Even from the start. They had always been richer than Doris and Jim, they had been more practical than Brian and Hilda, more cautious in business than Kevin and Anne, more circumspect in talking about their past than poor Teddy and Lola. How else did you know how you were doing unless you had some yardstick? There had been a time when she used to discuss this with George. Not very satisfactorily, though. George had always missed the point slightly, he kept bleating like a sheep, “But they’re our friends, Lorna!” as if she didn’t know that for heaven’s sake. He always made it seem as if it was some kind of sacrilege to say anything that showed their friends to be less than perfect.
Lorna had asked George what he thought about a party. “Yes, fine, if you like” was what he had said.
“Just our friends?” she had said.
“Well, yes.” George had seemed surprised that there might have been anyone else. It had irritated Lorna slightly. It seemed to imply that they only knew eight other people, which was ridiculous—they could have fielded a huge team if they had wanted to.
“And I think we’ll call it a Sensible Celebration?” she had said, waiting for his nod of approval.
“Why?” he had asked.
“To let them know what it’s going to be like,” Lorna had said, surprised.
“Oh,” George had said.
The evening seemed very long. She made list after list of what they would eat, crossing things out as reasons presented themselves why shellfish wouldn’t be a good starter—too many nervous tums these days; no hot puff pastry—too fatty, too much waist-watching. Nothing eggy in case cholesterol watchers had had their quota of eggs for the week. Soup was rather ordinary and it did encourage the feeble of spirit to overdose on crunchy French bread. Avocados were so predictable, and simply chockablock with calories for those who counted such things—which was anyone with a brain these days.
Lorna patted her neat little rump and wondered how so many of their friends had let themselves go. I mean, did one really wonder that Teddy had looked elsewhere so often—Lola wasn’t exactly an oil painting. And after they lost all that money Anne had looked positively geriatric for a long time. It was so easy to keep oneself trim, Lorna thought, pausing in front of the mirror to admire herself. All one needed was a little discipline and some practical good sense.
Lorna had always prided herself on being sensible. Every single year she went down to the big store and had a makeup lesson from one of the girls demonstrating cosmetics. That way you kept up with the trends and didn’t look silly drawing big heavy black lines around your eyes like they did in the fifties as poor silly Doris still did.
Lorna always said that one owed it to oneself to keep oneself looking well. She glanced once more to reassure herself about the success of her efforts. In the mirror she saw the troubled face of her husband no longer buried in his newspaper, but looking at her. Not admiringly, as she looked at herself. The only word to describe the expression on George’s face was sad. He looked as if something very, very sad had happened. The years of self-control had taught Lorna a lot, she believed. She certainly knew not to rush into questions she might regret later. She pretended she hadn’t seen the look on George’s face: the look of an unhappy man.
She must get him more involved, Lorna decided. That was what the look showed her, he wasn’t sad, he was just a little left out. How could George be sad? He had everything he could possibly want. A happy marriage, a beautiful home, two successful children, a wife who looked after herself.
Perhaps poor George had just begun to feel a little bit redundant in this life that went on around him like clockwork. He must thank his lucky stars every day that he didn’t have to help constantly with chores a
s did his friends. Kevin, Jim, Brian, and Teddy didn’t return home in the evening to perfectly run homes. They spent time chopping logs and carrying in coal, even cleaning grates. George never had known the need to do that; Lorna had seen that all fireplaces were walled up immediately and tasteful arrangements of dried flowers placed in front of where they used to be. When Jim, Brian, Teddy, and Kevin finished a day’s work there had been endless problems with children. As toddlers, as schoolchildren, and as rebellious teenagers. All this Lorna had been able to circumnavigate as well. From the start she had insisted on boarding school because it made the children independent, and there were always plenty of courses and camps and projects during the holidays. Now they were away again, one doing nursing in a far-off city, one learning word-processing skills even farther away.
Lorna had never listened to the concerned questions of her friends, Doris and Anne, Hilda and Lola, when they had wondered was it wise to let the children go so early and so far.
Lorna would smile to herself and reflect that in her home at least there was calm, there was tranquillity—and an absence of family dramas, something that could not be said for the homes of Lola and Hilda and Doris and Anne.
So Lorna didn’t meet George’s eye in the mirror; instead she walked purposefully back to the sofa where George sat. Lorna had read in a magazine once that loving couples didn’t have chairs, they always had small sofas instead. More cuddly, the article had said.
For years now they had been sitting on separate sofas, George with his newspapers, Lorna with her books on entertaining, etiquette, and lifestyles of the rich and famous. This time she squeezed in beside him.
“We have been lucky, George, haven’t we?” she said.
Slightly startled, George moved to make room for her and said, “Yes…oh yes.”
“No, I mean it, we’ve had everything, and so many of our friends—well really, most of our friends—have had nothing. It’s only right we should try to share what we have with them by having a party like this, but I want you to help me, help me to do it right, make it sensitive as well as sensible.”
He had that look again, the one she had seen in the mirror.
“Lorna, dear,” he said, as if speaking to a very slow learner, “dear, dear Lorna, you’re talking about our friends, you’re not talking about four couples in some kind of case study called Tragedy of the Eighties. They’ll love to come and sit down and eat and drink anything with us and talk. Like friends do. You don’t have to talk about being sensitive and sensible as if they were all some kind of victims.”
His voice was affectionate, and Lorna noticed, with a rising sense of annoyance, also rather patronizing, as if he were patting her down.
“Well, it comes to the same thing, darling, doesn’t it?” she said in a silky voice.
“That’s how you see our friends? Over twenty years and longer, that’s how you’ve always thought of them?”
“Not all the time, George. Oh, come on, you know as well as I do that life hasn’t treated all of them very well. They didn’t exactly come through the last decade…well, unscathed, did they?”
George had stood up and moved away from the sofa that the magazine article had said would show they were a family that was into cuddles. He stood at the mantelpiece that had never known a fire. He looked across at his wife, who was dressed immaculately even though they were not going out.
Lorna looked up at him, that upwards glance she had practiced so long and so often. She saw something in his face that she didn’t want to read. Something that said that she, Lorna, was the one who had fallen victim to the eighties. For a long time he said nothing. When she could stand it no longer she asked, “What are you thinking about?” It was a question she didn’t normally ask. Lorna knew from experience that men were rarely thinking of anything. But at least it put the ball in his court; he would have to say something.
“I was thinking about the farmyard years ago, when I was a boy, and how the cock would come out and crow, and he always managed to find something high to stand on where people could see him crowing and know what he was doing. I was wondering what part of the house we could use for it.”
He didn’t look at her; he went and got his hat and coat. She knew he would come back again, later in the evening. He wasn’t a man for grand gestures. And she knew he wouldn’t mention it again, and that she would be big-hearted enough to forgive him, unlike the other wives, who would have made unmerciful scenes over it all. But she also knew, which was most important of all, that he wouldn’t go and cry on the shoulders of Kevin or Teddy or Jim or Brian. So that when the day of the party came there would be no chink in the armor, and no one would ever know about this silly little nonsense that, in less wise hands, could have become an Incident.
The Mirror
It would have been all right if on the day of the viewing she hadn’t overheard the couple talk about how valuable the mirror was. Geri would never have even considered taking it otherwise. It was enormous for a start, very old-fashioned, and rather overfancy. They were each to choose one piece of furniture from their aunt Nora’s possessions before the auction took place.
Geri’s sister had taken the piano, her brother had taken the rocking chair, and she had been about to select a little octagonal sewing table when she heard that the mirror was worth a lot of money. Geri loved a bargain; the others used to tease her about it, but she said that she got such genuine pleasure from knowing she had bought something valuable, they surely couldn’t begrudge it to her.
So she told nobody about the overheard remark and said that the mirror was what she would choose.
“We don’t want a huge mirror,” her husband, Seán, said.
“Why don’t you take the bath with the funny legs?” asked her son, Shay, who was eighteen and into weird ideas.
“It would fall on someone and kill them,” said her sixteen-year-old daughter, Marian, who would disagree with anything on earth that her mother suggested.
But it was Geri’s aunt who had gone to the retirement home, and Geri’s choice when it came down to it, so the huge mirror was taken down from the hall and delivered to their house.
Aunt Nora had been surprised. “You don’t have a hall big enough for it, dear,” she had said.
This was, of course, true, but Geri hadn’t wanted it for a hall: she wanted it as a big showpiece in her dining room. She knew just the place, and there would be candlesticks beside it. It would knock everyone’s eyes out, and gradually she would let slip how valuable the ormolu mirror was and how rare a piece, how lucky she was to get it.
She wouldn’t need to say that to their neighbors Frances and James—they would know at a glance. And what a wonderful glance that would be. Even though Geri didn’t like to admit it to herself, she was very anxious indeed to impress this couple. They seemed to have effortless style and confidence.
Geri would enjoy their reaction when they saw the mirror at the dinner party.
“Where are you going to put the mirror, dear?” Aunt Nora wanted to know.
Sometimes her aunt irritated Geri: she seemed to know everything and be right about all subjects.
“In the dining room,” she said, and waited for the objection. She hadn’t expected it to be so forthright.
“You can’t be serious!” said the old woman, who had settled herself into the nursing home with a small selection of perfectly chosen pieces around her. Aunt Nora did have good taste, that couldn’t be denied, but she was also very, very dogmatic.
“That’s where I’d like it, Aunt,” Geri said, with more confidence than she felt.
She wondered why she felt so defensive, so apologetic.
Geri often asked herself this. She was a perfectly acceptable-looking woman of thirty-eight, she worked in an office five mornings a week, she went to the gym two afternoons a week. She was married to Seán, a civil servant, a man who loved her inasmuch as we ever know if anyone loves us. She had a handsome son, Shay, who would eventually get his act together and
realize he had to work for a living, she had a discontented daughter, Marian—but all girls of that age hated their mothers. She had a nice house, and she worked hard to keep it looking well.
Geri would go miles to get an inexpensive rug that people would think was much more classy than it actually was. But when you thought about it, was this a crime? Was this something that should make her feel guilty and humble? And in front of an elderly aunt?
“Why is that a bad idea, Aunt Nora?” she asked, keeping her temper.
“My dear girl, nobody has a mirror in a dining room, you must know that.”
Geri hadn’t known it and doubted if it was true. She listened patiently while her aunt, speaking from the point of view of another generation, told her it was unwise to let people see their own reflections. They spent ages titivating and making faces at themselves in a mirror and totally lost interest in the art of conversation, which was what a dinner party should be all about.
“Everyone knows that, Geri,” Aunt Nora said disapprovingly.
Geri decided to be very understanding—this was an elderly woman who had just been forced to leave her own home. Allow her to have the last word. Pretend to agree.
“I’m sure you’re right, Aunt Nora. I’ll have to think of somewhere else to put it,” she lied soothingly.
Aunt Nora snorted. She had been around a long time and she knew Geri hadn’t a notion of changing her plans.
By chance, that evening on a television program about interior decorating someone made the remark that you’d never put a mirror in the dining room. It unsettled Geri for a moment, but she rationalized it. It was one of these old superstitions, like not walking under ladders, some fuddy-duddy thing about having to have antimacassars on your sofa.