by Maeve Binchy
And then Sara began to get premonitions about accidents that were going to happen to Richard on his way to work. One was very strong indeed. She could literally see the truck that mounted the pavement and killed Richard. She could hear the screams. So she telephoned him immediately. He was walking along the street near work with a colleague and had to go into a shop doorway to cope with her hysterical voice.
“Darling, you can’t have these fantasies, it’s just not normal.”
“Are you near the zebra crossing?” Sara cried.
“Yes, I’m looking at it, I’m about to cross it. Sara, this won’t do. You can’t go on like this…”
“Please don’t cross it, Richard!” He hung up.
She rang his office ten minutes later, expecting to hear there had been a terrible accident. Instead they said they would put her through to Richard straightaway.
“No, Sara. Not now. We’ll discuss it tonight. I am not going to live like this.”
Sara staggered through her day at the bank. She called her mother and asked if she could meet her for lunch.
“Was there ever any madness in our family?” she asked.
“Not on my side,” her mother said. “Though your father has a couple of dotty aunts. Why?”
“Richard thinks I’m going mad.” Poor Sara told the whole story of the premonitions and how, in all honesty, she just could not let him walk to his doom.
“But it wasn’t his doom,” her mother said.
“Well, that’s because I altered what was about to happen. When I called, he had to stop and talk to me about it, you see.”
“Yes,” said Sara’s mother doubtfully.
“So what should I say to him tonight?”
“Tell him that you are very sorry but it was only because you love him so much, then take him to bed and love him to bits. That usually sorts most things out.”
So Sara did just that and the great row never occurred, and Richard seemed very pleased that marital relations had been restored again. Unfortunately he didn’t realize that it was a one-off, and the next night he began to make signs that suggested he thought it was going to be a regular occurrence—but of course Sara had to check so many alarms, unplug so many appliances, and parade Nesbit that Richard was asleep when she got to bed.
She had two more premonitions, but instead of ringing Richard she telephoned her mother. One was that the ceiling was going to fall in the foyer of the estate agency; one was that he would get food poisoning from a salad. Neither of these things happened and her mother talked her down on both occasions.
Sara’s mother had begun mentioning seeing a counselor who specialized in unreasonable fears. Sara pretended she hadn’t heard. There was nothing wrong with her. She was just lucky that she had such sensitivity she got premonitions, that’s all. And, all right, she wouldn’t call Richard at work again. But everyone must back off trying to drag her to a shrink and make her take happy pills. She was fine.
And time passed. She had fortunately very few premonitions about the bank, which meant a fairly easy, uninterrupted working life; and only one or two about home, where she thought Nesbit might be nervous sleeping downstairs and brought him up to their bedroom, where he slept at the end of the bed and virtually put paid to any of the minimalist marital activity that had survived into the fourth year of their marriage.
Richard had stopped asking about starting a family. He was staying later at work, and they had very few friends and did little or no entertaining. Sara was usually too tired to go out anywhere, what with the ceaseless round of security duties and the statistics that most homes were robbed in the evening, when the owners had just gone down the road to the pub.
Most of Sara’s friends had small babies now, and they would urge Sara and Richard to go the same route. Richard didn’t bring anyone home from work anymore—Sara was too strange and uneasy. He sometimes talked about Ted and someone called Nell—when he was late home he had often had a pint with them, but there was no suggestion that they come back to Richard and Sara’s for a meal.
And then one morning, right out of the blue, Sara got a premonition that Richard was going to go out and see a house with a client and the floor would collapse. She could see Richard falling and struggling to hold on and then the rest of the bricks and mortar collapsed on top of him, killing him.
Well, as Sara often said to people, what would you have done? It wasn’t just that she thought such a thing could happen, she could actually see it.
Sara sat there in her bank, shaking all over. For the rest of her life she would live with the guilt that Richard went to his doom because she was too scared to speak up. Yet she knew that both Richard and her mother would have her in a funny farm if she dared to warn him. What a decision to make!
She sat for what seemed ages but was about half an hour, deciding between the two evils. If only she had a friend in Richard’s office, someone she could confide in, someone who could help her. But he would just hate Sara to call Ted or Nell with what he said was one of her cracked ideas. So that wasn’t on.
Unless.
Unless, of course, she called for some other reason—not the premonition. What would bring Richard running home? Suppose she was to tell him she might be pregnant? Later, of course, when the danger of the collapsing house was over, she could say it was a false alarm. But he had begged her not to ring him at work on any pretext. It always somehow turned into some alarmist issue.
So she had to ring one of his friends. She rang the estate agency and asked to be put through to Nell. It rang for a while and then she heard a voice saying, “Hold on, darling, I’ll get rid of this. Yes? Hello, Nell speaking. Can I help you?”
Immediately Sara thought that this was very unprofessional. Imagine letting a client hear you say you were going to get rid of a call rather than dealing with it. Still, that wasn’t important now.
“Oh, Nell, I’m Richard’s wife, Sara. I wonder, can I have a word with you?”
Nell sounded very wary. “Um, about what?”
“Well, it’s a bit complicated but you would be doing me and Richard a great favor if you were to ask him to come home straightaway. I’ll meet him there.”
“Oh, are you ill or something?” Sara thought that Nell sounded awkward, not friendly or helpful or anything.
“No, not ill, but I have some news for him.”
“Couldn’t it wait until this evening when he’ll be going home anyway?”
“No, it couldn’t, actually.”
“Oh.”
“So will you ask him to do that then, Nell?”
“Why don’t you call him and ask him yourself?”
“He doesn’t like being telephoned at work.”
“But if it’s important…”
“Listen, Nell, I’m going to level with you. I think I’m pregnant. He will be so pleased and I just want to share the news with him immediately. Now!”
She ended in a bark of urgency.
“You think you are what?” Nell asked.
“Well, I can’t be certain, but it looks very like it,” Sara trilled.
And then Nell hung up. Or they were cut off. Hard to know which.
Sara telephoned the estate agency again and said that her call had been cut off. She was reconnected.
The phone was snatched up and thrown on a desk. Sara could hear Nell’s voice saying that the damn phone was always ringing when you didn’t need it. She was both crying and sniffing as she talked to some man. She had abandoned the phone completely.
Sara shouted “Hello? Hello?” but to no avail.
Nell was sobbing. “You told me that you haven’t slept with her for over a year…”
“And it’s true, darling Nell, it’s true.”
By the time that Nell said the name Richard, Sara already knew. Nell and Richard were having an affair. Those nights that he was late home had a reason. But as she always said later, let nobody tell her that she was wrong about premonitions. She knew something was going to happen th
at morning.
And, boy, wasn’t she right.
Big Decisions in Brussels
She looked around happily and decided that the flight to Brussels was now becoming as routine a journey as the train in from Bray used to be. There were men reading files, men working with little calculators over columns of figures, men smiling and laughing with other men. The Common Market had taken away a lot of the excitement of travel. These men wouldn’t become enthusiastic about foreign smells of good coffee and fresh-baked rolls, they wouldn’t marvel anymore at the traffic being on the wrong side of the road, they wouldn’t translate the signs triumphantly for each other. They all had opposite numbers who spoke perfect English, and secretaries who booked their rooms routinely, reminding them to keep the receipts for expenses.
They all seemed much more mature these days, Maura thought. She remembered that about ten years ago Irish businessmen would have laid into the gin and tonics on an early flight, delighted to have it offered to them, unwilling, almost unable, to pass up the chance of an airborne party. But this morning anyone she could see was having coffee. There would be a day’s work ahead. And for her there was a difficult day ahead too. She had to be more watchful than ever before in her life. One slip could ruin everything. One little thoughtless reaction and everything Auntie Nell had taught her would be useless. She would never be able to look Nell in the eye unless everything went according to the master plan. Nell didn’t accept that people forgot, or were tired, or didn’t think. Nell thought that losers deserved to lose. She was very absolute about that.
Aunt Nell had insisted she go to Brussels with him. She had said that there was no other course. To refuse would be childish and petty; it would be playing into the hands of the enemy. Maura must be very enthusiastic about the trip, get herself a new outfit and tell all her friends that she was going. She must keep questioning Dan about the places that they would see. Above all, she must appear to suspect nothing.
It was hard to feign enthusiasm for a trip that she knew was a journey to say good-bye. It was very hard to pretend an eagerness to see a city that she knew would be the one where her husband would tell her he was leaving her. It was almost impossible to sit beside Dan now, after eighteen years of marriage, and watch him read The Irish Times with a calm, untroubled face when she knew that he was going to tell her that he wanted to leave her. She knew that he would take the job in America and she knew that he would take that Deirdre with him.
Nell had always advised her to read his letters and to go through his pockets.
“He’s too good-looking for you, that Dan. If you must have him, and it appears you must, then be prepared, be a jump ahead. Know your problems before they become too hard to solve.” It had always seemed shabby and dishonest to Maura to spy on someone you loved, but she had to agree that, forearmed, she was able to make a much better fist of things than she would have done with no warning. She had been able to head off some mild flirtations in the past by arranging for the family to be doing something else when a little adventure was looming. The little adventures had fizzled out. Nell was invaluable on such occasions. Nell was wealthy and Dan liked to go and stay in her big country house. Whenever Maura needed help to distract him from a dalliance, Nell obliged by providing people who would be useful in his career. She had always been a prop like this for Maura, and it was agreed that it would be their secret till death. No letters were ever written between them.
“Why do I ask your advice like a silly schoolgirl?” Maura had wondered last week as she strolled with Nell around the orchard, picking windfalls.
“Why do I want to play God with you?” asked Nell.
“You’re always right, that’s what’s so hard to understand. You don’t make any of the mistakes that I do,” grumbled Maura.
“I made them twenty years ago. That’s why I like to steer you through the minefield.” Nell had ended the conversation abruptly. Nothing of her own mysterious and rather scandalous liaison way back in the 1940s was ever discussed. She had married dull, wealthy Edward, who adored her. She was over fifty but she could be any age; she had charm and confidence. Everyone except Maura presumed that she was extremely happy.
Nell said that the trip to Brussels was Maura’s last chance. If she played it properly she would win. Nell knew Brussels as well as she knew everywhere else. Every little street off the Boulevard Adolphe Max she seemed to have toured in her time. Romantic restaurants, big markets, quaint chiming clocks…anything that two people in love could need, Nell knew it.
“But we aren’t two people in love,” complained Maura with the hint of tears. “We’re one person in love and the other gritting his teeth and girding himself and getting ready to tell me he’s off.”
Nell was impatient. “I’m surprised he hasn’t gone already if that’s your attitude,” she said sternly. “You must make this trip what he has lyingly said he wants it to be, a chance to talk. Remember Scheherazade.”
“What did she do? I forget,” Maura said wretchedly.
“She talked,” said Nell. “And by talking she put off the evil hour.”
The plan was that Maura would talk. As they strolled around the lakes of Ixelles, Maura was to speak gently and happily about the future. She was to say that he should take the job in America. She was to say that she and the twins would not come out yet, not for six months anyway, and then only for a visit. This was so that he could concentrate on the job without the additional worries of settling in a family as well. He would be confused by this, because it was not in his plans. Thinking on his feet, he might seize the opportunity—in fact, the odds were that he would. After all, it offered him the best of both worlds. He could have his Deirdre and his New York job with no confrontation, no accusations, heartbreaks, and recriminations. What man would be able to say no?
But then Deirdre would be outraged. After all, she had been urging him for months to tell his wife of their plans. Once Dan had postponed the great telling again, their relationship was bound to suffer. In New York she would feel shabby and second best, hidden and with no status—just as she was now. Their relationship would probably wither.
Maura wasn’t so sure. It had been going on for ten months—that was about eight months longer than any previous flutter.
“Well,” said Nell, “I did offer to kill her. Run her down accidentally with my car. I am getting shortsighted. No one could accuse me of doing it deliberately. I don’t even know her.” Maura’s hand had flown to her throat in terror. Nell sounded so matter-of-fact. She actually meant it!
“But there is the danger that I might just wound her, and that might be worse than ever. She’d be a bloody martyr,” Nell said, abandoning the scheme to Maura’s great relief.
Dan knew quite a few people on the plane. “Nice to be able to bring the spouse, if it is the spouse,” said a man jovially. “Of course it’s the spouse,” said Dan, annoyed. “I’m very flattered at being thought a bit more exciting,” Maura said, laughing, and the moment passed.
They went in on the train, a journey so quick that Maura could barely believe they had arrived in the city. Nell had told her not to keep making provincial statements, so she bit back her comments on how long would it be before Dublin ever had such a system, and her views on a colleague of Dan’s who always took a taxi, which was about ten times the cost and four times as lengthy. Instead she laughed like a girl and told Dan a funny story about the first time she had ever been on the Continent, when the school had taken them on a trip to Rome. It made him laugh, and she hoped that somewhere Nell would hear that laugh and congratulate her.
Dan’s meeting included lunch and the afternoon. She had a million things to see, she said, and a guidebook and flat shoes. She would tour and sightsee, and when he came back they would have a bath and a drink and go out to dinner. She kissed him good-bye lightly and wondered why people didn’t nominate her for an Oscar.
She didn’t do any sightseeing. She went to the Church of St. Nicholas and tried to pray. Often God
listened and understood. She didn’t burden him with too many of the details since she presumed he knew them already. But today he didn’t want to know. When she heard herself telling God that she needed his strength and help to preserve their marriage, a good Christian marriage, she realized she was being hypocritical.
“All right, God,” she said. “All right. There’s no point trying to fool you, any more than Nell. I want you to use every bit of pull to get him back for me. I can’t see a life without Dan. Please can I have him back? Please? I never did much bad, except read his letters and tell a few lies.”
She saw people lighting candles, and remembered that Nell had told her this was a church where young ballerinas, or would-be ballet stars, came to pray to St. Nicholas so that they would get a good part. It seemed utterly ridiculous of them, she thought impatiently, and smiled to herself when she realized what they would think of her.
—
That night they walked around the Grand Place, all lighting and fairy tale like the postcards he had sent home so regularly. He was tired; his meeting had been difficult. Everything was fine until the Italian had disagreed, then he had agreed, and just as it all settled the British viewpoint was reexamined. When that had been smoothed down the German had become apoplectic. Maura laughed at his descriptions: she knew what he was talking about. Since she discovered that Deirdre shared an interest in his work she had made herself very well up in all that happened. They had an unaccustomed after-dinner brandy and a stroll to the hotel. He seemed to think she expected him to make love to her. She took that decision away from him too. “Tomorrow,” she said, and kissed him gently. She heard a Brussels clock chime away the night.
Dan’s meeting the next day was an all-day affair. They would finish in time for the suitable trains and planes back to the other countries in the Community. Everyone on this particular committee would go home to some kind of lifestyle. Dan would stay in Brussels and tell his wife he was leaving her. Maura looked at him and wondered how he could sleep.