by Maeve Binchy
Girlie was based, loosely speaking, in New York. She was mainly to be found traveling the world on the decks of expensive oceangoing liners. She would send irascible postcards from Fiji or Bali, complaining that the food on board was inedible or was so good that everyone had put on twenty pounds since embarkation. Nothing anywhere ever seemed to be right or good.
Yet Girlie, whose late husband had left her a staggering insurance policy, sometimes saved everyone’s lives. She sent them money just when they needed it for Sean’s and Kitty’s school fees. She also sent a lecture about the appalling results of the Irish educational system that she saw all over the world, results that made her despair of the nation. She sent Sean a deposit for his house and Kitty a ticket to Australia that allowed her a few stop-offs so that she might see a bit of the world before she went to that god-awful place. Girlie disliked Australia as much as Ireland and the United States and, in fact, everywhere she had ever been.
Martin wondered if she had forgotten about him. Nothing seemed to be rolling his way from Girlie. But then he was only fourteen, the others told him; his needs had not become significant. Martin felt his needs were very significant indeed, and he certainly wouldn’t waste his money on getting a horrible little box of a house and marrying some awful prissy girl like Lucy, as his brother, Sean, was doing, and he wouldn’t go the whole way to Australia to be free, like Kitty was doing. You could be free anywhere if you had a good bicycle and a tent and were allowed to stay out all night in summer. But Girlie hadn’t seemed to understand this, even though he had written it cunningly to her in many different ways.
Frank said it was preposterous; this woman always laid down the law and she shouldn’t get away with it. How dare she impose on them, this, their last family Christmas? She was his father’s totally loopy sister who had cut off all connection with the family years ago and just communicated in barking postcards and air letters ever since.
“And very generous checks,” Nora reminded him.
Frank wasn’t convinced. She only did what she wanted to do and people couldn’t buy affection; he was very muttery and growly about it. But Nora was adamant. Girlie had never asked for anything before; this year, it would suit her to come to Ireland and be with family. It was the least they could do.
Frank said that not only could she afford to stay in the Shelbourne, she could afford to buy the Shelbourne—but that didn’t seem to be the point. She was going to come in the middle of November and leave before the new year.
The family met the news with characteristic rage. Kitty said that she was not going to give up her room; no way was she having that old bat living in there and poking around among her things. Her room was sacred; it had been hers for twenty years. Nora thought grimly about how eager Kitty was to abandon this room in order to go to uncharted lands in Australia but said nothing.
Sean said it wasn’t fair for him to be asked to give up his room; he had so much to do, he was at a hugely important, stressful period of his life. He couldn’t let this mad aunt come and take up his space.
Nora did not mention that it would be difficult for Sean to bring Lucy in for the night so often if he had to sleep in the box room on the camp bed. Lucy didn’t stay for breakfast and there was a family fiction that she wasn’t there at all—which covered everyone’s honor and allowed Nora to meet Lucy’s mother’s eye with something like equanimity.
Martin said glumly: “I suppose it has got to be me.”
“We’ll get you the bicycle,” said his father in gratitude.
“And can I sleep out in the Wicklow Mountains and by the side of a lake in Cavan, when it’s summer?” he asked.
“We’ll see,” said his mother.
“That means no,” said Martin, who was a realist. “What’s she coming for anyway?” he grumbled. “Is she dying or something?”
The others, too caught up in their own lives, had never asked.
“God, I hope not,” said Frank. “Not here anyway.”
“Not before the wedding,” said Sean.
“I couldn’t put off going to Australia for her funeral; I don’t even know her,” said Kitty.
“We don’t even know if there’s anything at all wrong with her,” said Nora, alarmed that the family had the woman buried before she arrived. But to herself she wondered long and without any resolution what made this aficionado of all the cruise ships of the world come to a suburban house in Dublin for Christmas—and not for a traditional four or five days but for four or five weeks.
Girlie did not want to be met at the airport; she had arranged her own limousine. Nora and Frank wouldn’t have known where you found a limousine, but Girlie in America had no such problems.
She had discussed the upcoming referendum on divorce with the driver and arrived at the house well versed in the arguments for each side. Barely were the greetings over when she asked if she might be told whether she was staying in a Yes or a No household. They looked at her, a small, plump, overmade-up woman who could be any age between fifty and eighty. They raked her face, with its lines and its heavy-duty eyeliner. Which way would she swing? It was impossible to tell. So, reluctantly they told her the truth, which was that she had hit a family of two Yeses and two Nos. Nora was a Yes because of all the women she met at work who should have had a second chance; Frank was a No because he felt that society followed the law and that the place would be like California in a matter of months. Sean was a No because he and Lucy were taking vows for life and not just until they had a falling-out; Kitty was a Yes because she wanted freedom. Martin wouldn’t have a vote for another four years.
Girlie asked Martin which way he would vote if he had one. Her small eyes had got piggy: he sensed a fight coming, whatever he said.
Martin was depressed by the whole thing: his poky bedroom, his clothes hanging on a rail borrowed from a shop, the roster of duties his mother had put up in the kitchen as part of Being Prepared.
“If I’m not old enough to have a vote and to stay out on a summer night in a tent, then I’m not old enough to have any kind of an opinion at all,” he said. And he imagined that she looked at him with some sort of respect, which was very different from the glares he was getting from the rest of the family, who had recognized the mutinous rudeness in his tone.
She was, at the same time, much easier and much more difficult as a guest than they had thought. For one thing, she asked for an electric kettle and toaster in her bedroom and did not appear before lunch. This was a huge relief. She had retained the services of the limousine and went on outings on which she disapproved of everything that she saw. St. Kevin was barking mad, a basket case, she said when she came back from Glendalough—but then, if you thought that it might be safe to criticize the Church on anything religious, you would be wrong. There was a conspiracy against all these unfortunate priests; none of them had ever done anything untoward; it was a plot to discredit them, that was all.
One day Ireland was a pathetic backwater, the next day it was a society based on worshiping money and more affluent than most of the EU, from which it was demanding hardship money. One shopping day the place was gross with its conspicuous spending, the next day it was like a Soviet supply hall in the worst years of the Cold War.
“She’s not very sane, is she?” Frank whispered apologetically to Nora in bed.
“She’s not consistent, certainly,” Nora agreed.
Frank had always been kind to her relatives; she would put up with this disagreeable and unpredictable woman for a few short weeks. It was, however, making her plans to Be Prepared much more difficult. Who could Be Prepared when you had Girlie in the house? She had brought the limousine driver in last night and they had eaten all the brandy snaps that Nora had stored lovingly in a tin.
Girlie would, of course, buy something unexpected and generous herself in turn. A fleet of Chinese waiters came up and set out an elaborate banquet for them on a night that Nora had been going to serve an Irish stew. Nora and Frank didn’t know you could do this so
rt of thing in Dublin. Girlie knew everything and enjoyed remarkably little.
Martin saw more of her than the others. Sean was out with Lucy’s family discussing the calligraphy on the wedding invitations; Kitty was with her friends arranging to meet them in Manly, or Randwick, or Kings Cross and all talking as if they knew Sydney intimately.
Nora and Frank were at their work until late in the evening.
“What are all these lists?” Girlie asked Martin once, looking at a roster in the kitchen.
“It’s the nights we each do the washing-up,” Martin explained.
Girlie took a ruler and made a few measurements. In minutes she had the right man in the right electrical store. It was never clear what she promised or gave, but he sent carpenters up to the house and the dishwasher was operational that evening.
Everyone said they were delighted. But in fact Sean felt inadequate now because Lucy admired it so inordinately and he would never be able to afford one. Kitty thought they were all mad to be tied to possessions when everyone should be free. Frank was sad because that had been his Christmas surprise; he had ordered a much cheaper version and now he had to cancel it. And Nora was sorry because she knew all about the secret and wanted Frank to have the pleasure of giving it to the family.
But they were all grateful for the thought and the speed and the gesture and they warmed towards Girlie until she said that it was a relief to have one in the house because this way you really knew that the cups and glasses were clean.
And the referendum came and went, and when she was with Frank and Sean, Girlie said that they were typical men trying to hold back society and ride roughshod over women. And when she was with Nora and Kitty she said that they were selfish women advancing a world where no one would care about the young.
To those who thought that the visit of President Clinton was overhyped, she said they should be goddamn grateful that the good old U.S. of A. was going to rescue them from their silly bickerings; to those who praised the trip, she said they were easily swayed by a vote-catching exercise. She took to reading the letters column in The Irish Times and would praise the side that appeared to have less support.
About herself and her lifestyle, she revealed little. No amount of polite questioning about her late and extremely provident husband yielded anything.
“He was a man,” she would say, and the family, feeling they sensed a less-than-joyful marriage, tactfully asked no more. Girlie, however, had no such tact and reserve. She would ask the very questions that everyone had been skirting around. Like asking Sean: “Are your in-laws putting too much pressure on you over this wedding? Why are you going along with it? Are you afraid of Lucy?”
Or Kitty: “Aren’t you only going to Australia on this open ticket because everyone else is? You really want to go for three months and then come back and settle down.”
Or to Nora: “Your job sounds terrible. Don’t tell me you’re getting any satisfaction out of it. You’re only doing it to keep up the mortgage on this place, aren’t you?”
And to Frank: “You’re your father’s son, Frank, that’s for certain. He could never make a decision to save his life. You’d love a smaller place entirely but you have some notion that everyone wants this pile of red brick and that you owe it to them, and so you frown and wince over bills and estimates. I see you; you can’t hide anything from Girlie.”
By the Friday before Christmas, Girlie had the household near a collective nervous breakdown. Only Martin remained outside her influence.
“Why aren’t you sulking and flouncing with me the way everyone else is?” Girlie said to him as she left the house to get into her limousine as usual.
“You haven’t annoyed me like you’ve annoyed all of them,” he said simply.
“Do you want to come out for a drive with me?”
“No thank you.”
“Please?”
“No thank you, Girlie. I don’t like shopping, I don’t have any money left, I don’t want you to give me money, and I won’t tell you things about myself that will make you know what’s wrong and then torture me like you do the others.”
“I don’t go shopping,” she said. “Come on.”
Martin got into the car and they drove out to Wicklow Gap. As soon as they were miles from anywhere, the car stopped and the driver brought them white linen napkins, a box of smoked salmon sandwiches, and a bottle of wine.
“I don’t drink,” he said.
“You do today,” said Girlie.
“Why did they call you Girlie?”
“I was the only girl in a family of six: they weren’t very bright,” she said.
“Why are you so awful to them all? They’re doing their best to give you a happy Christmas.”
“What I’m saying is true. You know that, don’t you?”
“It might be,” he agreed.
“Well, don’t you hate poisonous little Lucy? Sean’s much too good for her, and Kitty is as nervous as a cat about seeing the world, and your mother hates that damn job, and your father’s in a state of panic about the new roof he thinks the place needs.”
“Well, why don’t you give them money then? You’ve got lots of it.”
“Money wouldn’t solve their problems, it has never solved a problem.” Girlie spoke very definitely.
“That’s easy to say when you have it.” Martin was brave.
“No, it’s true: if I gave Sean money he’d buy that horrible prissy little thing an even bigger ring, and Kitty would have to see the Kalahari Desert as well as the Outback when all she wants to do is to have a laugh with her friends in the sun. Your father would get the roof done and worry about something else; your mother would give up work and feel guilty and beholden to me. Much better make them see what’s wrong. What do you worry about, Martin?”
“I won’t tell you.”
“Why not? I have been utterly honest with you.”
“Okay, but you’ve got to answer a few questions first.”
“Shoot.”
He paused. Should he ask her about her husband? The one who left her all the money? Should he ask about how much she had left? Why she had come to visit them?
“Are you dying of something?” he asked suddenly, surprising himself.
“Yes,” she said.
Wicklow Gap looked beautiful as it always did. But, of course, he had never seen it from a heated limousine eating smoked salmon sandwiches and drinking white wine, and he never would again.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sure,” said Girlie. “Now tell me what’s worrying you.”
He told her that next summer he would be fifteen and they wouldn’t let him have a tent and come out to places like this and spend the night under the stars. They were afraid he’d get murdered or rheumatism or something. She listened with interest and without comment. Then she gave back the glasses and the box of crumbs to the chauffeur and they drove to the shop in Dublin that sold the most expensive kind of tent in the world.
“They’ll kill me for getting you on my side,” he said.
“I was always on your side,” said Girlie. She didn’t need to tell him not to talk about their conversation. Some things never need to be said.
—
It was a very strange Christmas. Nora said to Frank that a lot of this stuff about Being Prepared was for the birds. Look at all the great things that had turned out this year when they couldn’t have prepared for any of them.
They had decided to put the house on the market. Sean and Lucy had postponed their wedding indefinitely. Kitty said she’d be back from Australia at Easter.
And Martin, he had been a positive saint with that dreadful old Girlie, who had bought him an entirely inappropriate tent and said what did it matter if he got pneumonia from sleeping out-of-doors, weren’t there antibiotics for it nowadays? Which was actually true when you came to think of it.
“Do you think she liked it here? She’s as odd as two left shoes,” Frank said.
“I think s
he liked it too much. We should be prepared—she may well come again next year,” Nora said.
And Martin just looked out the window into the garden and said nothing at all.
A Result
I knew that I could never marry George the day I found out he took little packets of sugar and sauce from restaurants to put in the store cupboard at home. He said they were ideal for picnics. I said, We don’t go on picnics. He said that small economies like this amounted to huge profit in the years to come. Then he folded four paper napkins and put them into his briefcase and I knew I could not spend any time married to this man.
Sadly, it was the day before our wedding.
And also I was, though nobody else knew this, two months pregnant.
So this was a bit of a problem, but not as much a problem as marrying someone who was already building up a serious collection of marmalade portions. It was a nightmare, of course. My parents were very insistent that I should know all about the nonrefundable deposits on the hotel, the number of wedding outfits that had been bought, the people who had traveled long distances. They reminded me, as if I needed to be reminded, that I was their only child. And that the gifts would have to be returned, and a huge amount of gossip would result from it.
George tried to tell me I was having a nervous breakdown, common before weddings, he believed, and that it would all look very poorly in his office, where his chances of promotion might be adversely affected.
At no stage did he say he loved me and couldn’t live without me.
At no time did my parents say they wanted me to do whatever would make me happy.
It was forty-eight hours I would never want to live through again, and relationships with everyone were severely damaged. Except, of course, with Eve, my unborn daughter, who did not know what was going on.
By the time she was born I had moved to another town far away. I returned all the gifts, wrote twenty-seven letters of apology, and tried to tell my speechless parents that we had all done the right thing. Then I left home two days after the canceled wedding. I told nobody that I was pregnant. I got one job as a hotel receptionist from eight to four every day, another teaching Internet for Beginners from five to seven, and I minded people’s babies from seven thirty to midnight. I wrote a letter to my mother each week, giving her very little real information but keeping channels open. After all, they would be grandparents and I didn’t want to spring that completely out of the blue. But they must never know the truth.