A Few of the Girls: Stories

by Maeve Binchy

  “You all seem very obsessed with the cost of getting there and I don’t know why,” said Grace, but she agreed to come in at eleven. Just as Mr. Trader was beginning to loosen his collar, and even to entertain a disrespectful thought or two about how Mr. Street had frightened them all, Grace said, “Oh, tomorrow’s Tuesday. No, I’m sorry. I forgot altogether that it’s Tuesday. I can’t possibly come in on a Tuesday morning. I’ve got to go to the clinic each Tuesday morning at ten-thirty. No, not a chance, it usually takes the whole morning.” Mr. Trader sweated a bit as he suggested Wednesday.

  “But what does Mr. Street want to see me for? Really, Mr. Trader, you have always been so helpful about everything—and you know I’m a busy woman. Well, I’ve nearly finished the next book, and that takes four hours’ work a day. I never mind doing anything for anybody, but I do like to know why. Listen, ask Mr. Street to ring me himself. I’m at home all day, and then we can sort out, Mr. Street and myself, what he wants. Perhaps there’s no need to come in at all; it could be something that could be solved on the telephone, without anyone dragging in all this expensive bus journey that you keep going on about.”

  Grace hung up and Mr. Trader felt that he was a failure at almost everything in life, and he sadly asked his nice, worried-looking secretary if she would make him another cup of tea and buy him a sticky bun. It was twenty minutes before he heard from Mr. Street’s office.

  “Can’t say you did a very good job on Miss Smith,” said Mr. Street.

  “It’s very hard to pin the lady down, Mr. Street, if indeed lady she is,” said Mr. Trader, with a hopeless attempt at a little joke.

  “Well, I was very put out when I got your note saying that she wished me to call her, but since I appear to run a company that doesn’t even bother to meet its most successful author in decades, I thought I should at least make some kind of gesture.”

  “Very good of you, Mr. Street, and when is she coming in to see you?” asked Mr. Trader.

  “Well, she’s not…at the moment, that is. She’s not coming in,” said Mr. Street. “Quite obviously things have reached such a ridiculous level of nonsense here that the woman thinks we are all mad. Anyway, tomorrow’s Tuesday.” He glowered at Mr. Trader.

  “It’s what?” said Mr. Trader.

  “Tuesday, the day she goes to the clinic,” said Mr. Street impatiently, as if everyone should have known this always. “The clinic, from ten-thirty on, and it will take the whole morning.”

  Mr. Trader wondered for the millionth time about the nature of Power and Authority. If he, the unfortunate and powerless Terence Trader, had repeated Grace’s idiotic nonexplanations in that tone, everyone would have said he was burbling and rambling, but Mr. Street could repeat them in a trusty way as if he were saying something utterly self-evident, and, because Mr. Street was who he was, everyone nodded respectfully. Well, damn it! Mr. Trader wasn’t going to nod respectfully. Just once, he was going to answer life back.

  “So have you made any arrangement to meet Miss Smith, sir?” he asked courteously enough, but with a little hint of “let’s see how you’ll get out of this one, smarty-pants.”

  “I’m going to see her,” said Mr. Street.

  Ah, that’s what power was—it was changing the whole game. An hour ago it had been a matter of Get that woman in here. I don’t care how much it costs. Now Mr. Street was going to see her.

  “At her house?” probed Mr. Trader.

  “At the clinic,” snapped Mr. Street. “The obesity clinic.”

  Mr. Trader had another bun in order to get this piece of information programmed into his subconscious. He wanted it down in the subsection because he couldn’t bear to consider it on an ordinary, conscious level.

  Now Mr. Trader had never been really stretched in what they liked to call the “publicity” side of his work. There was never any great publicity about anything Streets did. It was a matter of writing to various educational correspondents in the newspapers by name when some sociologist was producing yet one more volume about trends or thinking or spending. It was a question of gently pointing the various Streets publications in the right direction. It had always been that way. A few months ago, when Grace Smith’s extraordinary story about a bored woman who took on unlikely lovers to prevent herself from going mad suddenly looked like being a book which would get a great deal of publicity, Mr. Trader wasn’t even challenged. Because at that stage, outside people, and salespeople, and almost everyone got involved and the amount of money that seemed to be going through the various books and files was enormous.

  Mr. Trader wondered sadly as he thought of big, fat Grace waddling in and out of her obesity clinic on Tuesdays. Life was very peculiar. A woman so sensitive and, indeed, passionate…that she could write a book like that! A book that made it seem totally reasonable for a woman to have a voracious sexual appetite because otherwise her dreary social life, a half life imposed on her by a rich, selfish, narrow-minded husband, would have made her go technically mad. Imagine that it had been written by a poor woman between visits to an obesity clinic! Mr. Trader wasn’t sure whether this was going to be an embarrassing fact that people would not like to mention, or whether the media would literally grab such a story with both hands and put it in every part of their papers. Mr. Trader was old-fashioned: he wouldn’t like to see it widely publicized, but he knew that other people did not necessarily think as he did.

  Mr. Trader’s secretary was a nice, kind girl called Hope, who was always rushing out to buy him soothing buns or antacid pills in the little row of shops nearby. Hope worried about him, and even though she was possibly twenty years younger than he was, she mothered Mr. Trader in a way he found very pleasant.

  Sometimes he deliberately went out without his coat or scarf so that Hope could run after him and fuss a little. Mr. Trader hadn’t enough fussing about him in his private life. He rarely consulted Hope about anything, treating her more like a favored domestic or an intelligent animal than another human being of his own kind, but today was different.

  “Hope, my dear,” he called.

  “Another bun?” asked Hope, anxiously gnawing her lip. Dear, dear Mr. Trader must really cut his intake of sticky buns. She was getting quite worried about it.

  “No, my dear, could you come in and talk to me?” he asked.

  His eyes looked quite tired, Hope noticed sadly. She really wished he would take more care of himself, or even, in her more fanciful moments, that he would let her take care of him.

  “Did you know that Grace Smith is grotesque and obese?” he began.

  “Oh, but she isn’t, Mr. Trader,” gasped Hope. “Whatever makes you think that?”

  “She’s so bad, the poor thing, that she doesn’t go out at all, never visits people. That’s why none of us have seen her. She’s having treatment, though, once a week, at an obesity clinic. It takes all morning.”

  Hope’s eyes were round with disbelief. Mr. Trader was encouraged by this great amount of mute interest to go on. “So you can see, my dear Hope, it’s hardly a publicist’s dream, is it? Instead of a beautiful, tormented-looking young author to introduce to the public, we have a huge woman, who eats compulsively, and whose book is only the wildest realms of fantasy and wish fulfillment. I just don’t know what to say about her. I’m not one of these modern young men who can turn the whole thing to some kind of positive advantage. I don’t approve of these gimmicks. Mr. Street is going to go to see her tomorrow and come back with the news that it’s all on my desk now. As publicity manager, I’m going to have to present Grace Smith to the world, in a way that won’t make us look indecent. I have to take a huge woman, a joke, a travesty, and tell the readers and buyers: ‘You must buy her book, she really knows what she’s talking about.’ ”

  Hope looked at him. “How do you know she’s so huge?”

  “Oh, Hope. She has to be huge. Why else would she go to an obesity clinic, my child? Why else should she hide herself? It’s just our luck, isn’t it? We get a best seller and w
e get a damn giantess who has written it.”

  Hope was silent.

  “Well, I thought I’d tell you about it, my dear. That’s the kind of thing that’s turning over in my mind today, and I need young ideas. You’re a woman, and a young woman, Hope. You’re the kind of person I’ll be looking for when I’m writing this publicity material. Would you be put off the book entirely if you knew Grace Smith was obese?”

  Hope looked back at him levelly. But she still said nothing.

  Mr. Trader was stirred enough to look at her curiously, and he didn’t like the look in her eye.

  “Well, Hope?” he prompted. A cross between a kindly but impatient schoolmaster and a loving but testy uncle.

  “Well, nothing,” Hope said rudely, “there’s nothing to say.” She looked at him with two looks, one chasing the other around her pale face. One was bitter disappointment, and the other was scorn. Hope would never feel a tender, warm affection for Mr. Trader anymore. She was disappointed that this emotion was dying there and then. But her scorn was because he couldn’t see that he was talking to a very, very fat girl.

  Hope was seriously overweight and had been attending an obesity clinic for six months, with slow and steady results but nothing dramatic. The clinic took place on Tuesday mornings, which was why Hope worked staggered hours, and came in on Saturday mornings to serve in the Streets bookshop. Hope had become very friendly with the kind Dr. Helston who ran the clinic. Dr. Helston was very dedicated to her job, she felt a lot of it was social as well as medical, so she invited many of the patients to her own house for evenings where they mixed with Dr. Helston’s friends, and no mention of illness or fatness or unacceptability was ever introduced or allowed. It had done wonders for Hope’s self-confidence. She would never have applied for a job without Dr. Helston.

  It had been such a funny coincidence that one of the first letters she had had to type had been to Dr. Helston’s address. She mentioned this on one of her visits, but Dr. Helston said that for professional reasons she was calling herself Grace Smith. She had asked Hope to keep quiet about it. In the unlikely event of the book being a best seller, she had said, then the clinic wouldn’t have to worry. Getting people to deal with obesity was her main interest in life. Anyone could write a book, but not anyone could help fat people to see that it was quite all right to be fat. She had made them all believe that nobody thought less of fat people; that the world was not out there laughing at them.

  She had succeeded with Hope, who was cheerful and had even joined a golf club—which proved how unself-conscious she was becoming. And now, suddenly, when she least expected it, dear, dear Mr. Trader, whom she loved in a sort of way, was proving that Dr. Helston was wrong. Or did it just prove that Mr. Trader was a silly old meddler and messer and bungler who had got everything wrong?

  Decision Making at Christmas

  There were five places she could go for Christmas. Now, according to statistics this must be a very good average. You didn’t often find middle-aged spinsters with five invitations for Christmas Day. Janet knew that she was, by any standards, lucky. So many people felt beached and lonely with nothing to do for the season that everyone else had defined as festive. Which one would she accept?

  Years of working in an office where decisions had to be made came to her assistance. Janet would look at the choices calmly and reasonably and make the best one.

  She could go and stay with her mother. Mother was, in fact, seventy, dressed like thirty-five, and married to a man many years her junior. Mother would enjoy seeing her, but Janet would have to dress up spectacularly. She would have to pretend to be much less than her fifty years. It wasn’t in Mother’s scheme of things to acknowledge a daughter who was half a century old.

  There would be cocktail parties and a great deal of socializing. Mother had never been one for the hearth and home.

  Or she could go to her father. Father lived alone, surrounded by his books. Father, who always seemed to have difficulty in remembering who anyone, including his nearest family, might be. Father, absentminded to such a degree that everyone assumed he was putting it on.

  Father just didn’t care for people. He never had. It was a mystery how he had ever married and had three children. Since the divorce Father had never contacted any of them, but always seemed mildly and politely interested to see them when they turned up.

  Father always said courteously, “If you’re stuck for anywhere to go at Christmas you’re always welcome to bring a few books over here.”

  It counted as an invitation.

  There was Janet’s sister, Kate. Kate had said firmly, “You can’t possibly stay on your own at Christmas. You must join us. We have a rota and everyone contributes. Suppose we say that you do the washing-up Christmas Eve, make the mince pies, and prepare the vegetables on the day after Christmas?” It had been businesslike, brisk, almost like booking in casual labor for the Feast. But it was an invitation to join them.

  There was Janet’s brother, Shane.

  Shane was an alcoholic and so found Christmas a trial. Everything in the way of entertainment seemed to be connected with drink.

  So Shane liked to get away from it all. He rented a cottage, miles from anywhere, and holed up there for four days. Sometimes his friends from the support group came as well. Sometimes it was just Shane and his girlfriend—who was recovering from addiction to tranquilizers. They both talked long and earnestly about Getting Sorted, and often raced to the telephone to call their therapists. It wouldn’t be restful, it would be far from festive, but it was a place to go.

  And of course there was Janet’s friend Rose.

  Rose, who had warned her against the faithless Edward. Rose, who had predicted the way Edward would leave her: at a time of maximum inconvenience and major heartbreak.

  Rose had said grimly that if Edward had not left his wife for Janet when Janet was twenty-eight, he was becoming less likely to do so with every passing year. And now that Janet had actually reached the age of fifty the situation had become ludicrous. Rose had said to mark her words. Edward would bow out as soon as his long-term girlfriend, his faithful Janet, who had sacrificed everything for him, had reached fifty and could no longer be called a girl.

  Rose had what she called a healthy disregard for men. Janet thought that it wasn’t totally healthy to dismiss half the population of the globe, but Rose was firm in her convictions. She knew all about men, she said firmly. She had married one of them.

  He had long gone and was not greatly regretted.

  Rose, for many Christmases, had urged Janet to accompany her to the sun.

  What could be nicer than a hotel where there would be anonymity, and a swimming pool with sunshine?

  But year after year Janet had always refused politely.

  Edward always called with Janet’s Christmas present each Christmas Eve. She couldn’t possibly be away.

  But what about the day itself? Rose would snort. A day when people could feel low and vulnerable unless they were in a secure situation.

  Did Edward call on Christmas Day? No, for over twenty years he never had.

  Now that it was finally over, surely Janet could break the mold of her existence and come abroad with Rose.

  Together they would walk through the Moroccan souks and buy jewelry, they would take trips into the mountains and photograph the local markets. They would have meals in Arab restaurants and listen to traditional musicians and admire the belly dancers.

  It would be a different world, a different universe.

  That was her fifth choice.

  Poor Miss Mills, sad Janet Mills aged fifty, deserted now finally by the man she had loved so foolishly for almost half her life, had five places to go for Christmas.

  So when anyone asked her what she was going to do, she told them, truthfully, that she still had to make up her mind.

  Janet Mills had worked for a long time in the office. She had never got any serious promotion but she was considered very sound. People often said that if
you wanted to know how something was done ask Janet. Young employees were told that Miss Mills knew everything.

  She kept in the background because of Edward, of course.

  How could he shine so brightly unless she had dimmed her own light? It was obvious to her and clear.

  She couldn’t understand why everyone else seemed to think it so puzzling.

  “That shark is using your brains to get where he wants to get,” Rose had hissed through clenched teeth. Most men were sharks to Rose. Some of them were barracudas; it was hard to know what system she used to differentiate.

  “Surprising that you haven’t got a promotion if your friend is doing so well,” Mother had hinted heavily.

  “Do you like…doing this menial office work?” Father had asked mildly.

  “If he’s not going to make an honest woman out of you, the very least he can do is make you his deputy,” Kate had snarled.

  “Dependency is a kind of addiction,” Shane, her brother, had confided. “Your dependence on Edward in many ways mirrors my own on alcohol. Perhaps as a family we are just very sick people.”

  Miss Janet Mills had a very simple way of making decisions. She worked in exactly the opposite way to everyone else.

  Instead of deciding which would be the best, she would always go for which would be the worst, and then she would eliminate the alternatives one by one.

  Usually the last one to be eliminated was the wisest decision.

  So Janet took her spiral notebook and began to work out her priorities by starting at the place she would least like to go.

  That was definitely to her brother, Shane.

  For one thing, Shane would hardly notice whether she were there or not. So there would be no question of disappointing him or letting him down. He was the most unfestive of creatures. There would be no holly or ivy or mistletoe decorating the frugal cottage. There would be no newspapers or magazines in case they advertised alcohol, there would be a litany of woes against the world.

  Janet had always decorated her apartment in seasonal berries and put up her Christmas cards. For twenty years and more Edward had said that it was like a parody of Christmas Eve when he would come to sip his drink and give her his gift, something she would have hinted at, suggested, and all but bought for him to give her.