A Few of the Girls: Stories

by Maeve Binchy

  Nick would marry Julia this autumn and Kay was already dreading the wedding day when she would have to be courteous to Peter and watch him doing his proud, concerned father bit.

  Helen seemed to be talking rather a lot about a musician called Johnny, but assuring everyone that there was nothing in it, really.

  How could they, young people who thought that thirty was over the hill, know what it was like to be given such a statement about being forty-five?

  She sighed a great sigh and Sandy came in quivering and carrying his lead. He had been hoping it was time to go out and had viewed the breakfast in bed ceremony with displeasure.

  “Okay. Come on, Sandy.” Kay put on her tracksuit and took the dog for a run. She would shower and dress and be ready and smiling when the antiques shop opened at ten.

  That was the thing about people her age, they were programmed to work and smile and they just go on with it.

  —

  The day seemed endless, as if things were in slow motion.

  She thought about Peter; he would have been forty-five some six months ago. Kay wondered if Susie, his twenty-seven-year-old wife, had made any jokes about him becoming half of ninety. Very probably not.

  She was not wistful and wishing that she could spend her birthday with Peter. She didn’t love him anymore. That was an absolute. He had lied too much, hurt and humiliated her too often. There had been no dignity in their breakup.

  She knew the children saw him from time to time but they never talked to her about it.

  “Do you want to hear how Dad is?” Helen had asked once in the early days.

  “Why should I want to hear?” she had countered, so now they said nothing about any visits.

  A colleague had told her that Susie was pregnant. Kay never asked further.

  It didn’t upset her; the upset was all in the past.

  She just wanted no part of it now, no interested discussions and phony friendship with a man who had betrayed her and made her feel so foolish for so long. She wanted none of this so-called civilized behavior. Peter had never been civilized before, not when he was sleeping with Susie in the mobile home that Kay had worked such long hours to save and pay for. She did not want to see, hear of, or meet this woman with whom he was making a new life and, from all accounts, a new family.

  She went out at lunch hour to have her hair done and the girl in the salon asked her was she going on a holiday this summer.

  “No, indeed, walking my dog around the common is my holiday. I’ve reached that time of life,” Kay said, and she saw the naked pity in the girl’s face.

  —

  Nick brought his fiancée, Julia, with him to the restaurant and Helen said that Johnny just might drop in at the coffee stage but no one was to read anything into it.

  It was a nice Italian restaurant and the staff was friendly and welcoming.

  More than once Helen and Nick said that they wished they had an Italian family.

  As they had dinner they talked about their work, Nick and Julia in a High Street bank, Helen as a receptionist in a local radio station. Kay told them about the antiques shop and the wonderful little inlaid cabinet that had come in last week and how they all loved it so much they hoped it would never sell.

  Enthusiasts, yes, they were definitely that, but businesswomen probably not, she laughed ruefully.

  They talked about when Nick and Julia would get married, probably at the end of the summer. They were fixing a date and sending the invitations very shortly.

  She thought she saw them looking at each other as if they wanted to ask her a question, but perhaps she only imagined that.

  So instead she asked them questions.

  Would it be a big wedding or a small one?

  Secretly she hoped it would be a big one, less need to talk to Peter if they were to be submerged in crowds.

  Julia’s mother wanted the works; her father wanted half the works.

  “And what do you want, Julia?” Kay wanted to know.

  Julia shrugged. “I’m an only child, Kay, so it isn’t really up to me because they’ll have no other wedding. Nick agrees with me in this, that I should do whatever they want to do, it’s only a day.”

  Johnny arrived for coffee, and, as instructed, they made no fuss and read nothing into it even though his hand never moved from Helen’s knee.

  There were more curious conversations beginning and ending, topics about wedding days being for everyone, about the need to forget the past.

  Suddenly Kay realized that they were definitely preparing the path for Susie to be invited to the wedding.

  She felt a wave of rage and resentment pass over her.

  To please their father, they were going to ask this woman, barely older than themselves.

  They were going to let him smirk even more as he propelled his young, pregnant wife around a family gathering.

  It was beyond reason to ask her to accept this.

  But she would not have a row now, instead she talked vaguely as if she hadn’t understood where the conversation was leading.

  Then she saw them all getting ready for the present giving. There were no wrapped parcels beside them, so she thought it might be a piece of jewely or a silk scarf.

  She got her face ready.

  It was indeed in a big white envelope, so it might be a scarf, but when she took it out it was a travel brochure and a page marked with a big yellow sticker. They had bought her a holiday in Italy.

  Her son and daughter, who surely couldn’t afford this, had paid for the present she would least like in the world. Two weeks in a small family-owned Italian hotel, where it said ENGLISH SPOKEN in very big letters.

  Kay could hardly believe it.

  There was no way she could refuse such a gift, such a misplaced generosity. And yet this was what she was now committed to. A punishing two weeks in a place where English couples would sit two by two at their tables and nod to the lonely woman aged half of ninety sitting at a table by herself.

  “But I can’t accept this…” she began. “It’s far too generous.”

  They beamed with pleasure and assured her that it was all paid for, she wouldn’t be stopped at the airport.

  “I’m not sure if I can take the time off,” she blustered.

  They had been to the antiques shop and she could.

  “But Sandy?”

  “Is going to my parents for the two weeks and you know they’ll look after him properly,” said Julia.

  And so she went.

  Keeping up the appearance that she was delighted and that she had the two most generous children in the world.

  Nobody would have known she was furious with them for not consulting her, for not asking her opinion, treating her as helpless to be packed off to wherever they thought “suitable.”

  Had Kay been given a choice she might well have gone to Italy, but for a one-week art tour to Venice or Florence, somewhere she would have been with people of similar interest, not sitting awkward and alone amongst middle-aged, middle-class, smug couples visiting Tuscany.

  But it was too late, so she would go with a good grace.

  It was exactly as she expected. A beautiful house with a long terrace overlooking a magical valley. A hardworking Italian family and seven English couples. They were polite and welcoming, her countrymen and women. But Kay, who had married at twenty and had never known the heady excitement of traveling alone, felt out of things. She did not want to intrude on these people’s lives, she feared that she was boring them and becoming a hanger-on. So, for the first two evenings, after dinner she excused herself and said she liked to take a little walk before going to bed.

  She didn’t want to go down to the center of the little town with pavement cafés and the music coming from the bars. It reminded her too much of a life that was over. Instead, Kay would go out the back gate and up a windy road.

  In the warm Italian evening she would walk and look into people’s houses and then past fields and eventually up to a wonderful
hill and sit under what she thought might be an old cedar tree and look down on the lights of the town.

  A man walking a dog passed her on both nights and they exchanged a cordial good evening in both languages.

  At first she was alarmed in case she looked vulnerable or available sitting alone like that, but he seemed to think she was perfectly entitled to be there and did not stay to interrupt her thoughts. Her thoughts were not very worthy; Kay realized they were mainly self-pitying, yet she would not welcome that woman to Nick and Julia’s wedding.

  They didn’t need her there…

  There was no reason for her to want to attend a celebration of the family that she had succeeded in breaking up. If this Susie had any style, class, or feeling she would not want to go.

  It would be quite hard enough to meet Peter again, but that was all she would do, because every word he said would remind her of a betrayal, a lie.

  If he were to mention his mother she would remember the number of times he was meant to be dealing with his mother’s nerves when in fact he was in the mobile home with Susie…

  Kay knew she had been foolishly naïve to believe everything he had said over the long months that he was involved with Susie. But you do believe things from someone you love and trust, so what was so foolish about that?

  Except, of course, that it did mean that it took a long time to discover about Susie and the trips they had and the hotels in the Lake District and the meals in places that Peter and Kay couldn’t afford.

  And that was hard either to forgive or forget.

  And she thought about the children and how they had supported her all through the separation and then the divorce, and though they moved out to live in flats they kept in touch, calling almost every day, visiting twice or three times a week.

  She was so lucky in so many ways, so perhaps they deserved this “family” day they all seemed to crave so much.

  It was very unfair that she should have to make this choice. She was the innocent party in all this—why must she be the one to extend the hand of friendship to a woman who had lied and lied and was now expecting Peter’s child? And yet if Kay refused to do this, she was disappointing her son and daughter.

  She shouldn’t sit here under this tree and think only of the bad hand that she had been dealt. She should think of the many good things that also filled her life.

  It was just that in this place, where people came for a two-week vacation, there seemed to be a spotlight saying Successful Marriage shining over the heads of every couple that she saw.

  —

  On her way back into the garden of the little hotel, Kay passed the open kitchen door and saw the Italian family sitting around the table; she waved and was about to pass by, but they called her in.

  There was Liliana and her two brothers and her three children. They ran this place between them since their parents had died. Liliana must be about her own age, very different in style: tall, handsome, voluble, long dark hair tied back with a yellow ribbon. Her eyes never stopped moving, looking, seeing what had to be done, smiling at everyone.

  They were all going to a funeral in a village at the other side of the valley the following morning. They would really like to go now, but they were trying to sort out how to serve tomorrow’s breakfast here in the hotel. Lunch would be arranged in a local trattoria and the family would be back again by dinnertime. Nobody could agree on who they should ask in. There were people considered reliable by part of the family and totally unsuitable by others. Suddenly Liliana had said the quiet Signora Inglese might be willing to do it. It would only involve one morning, and mean making coffee and whatever eggs the English people wanted. The cold milk and hot bread would be delivered at seven. Could the Signora possibly consider it?

  It would help them all so much.

  Her face must have shown total shock. Kay hoped that it didn’t show the annoyance she felt. They had only asked her because she was the single one, the person with nothing to stay in bed for in the morning, with nothing to talk about at breakfast.

  Had she been here with Peter or any other partner, they would not have made such a request. It was just because they saw her walking alone and pitied her they felt they could ask.

  Immediately they started to apologize.

  Most of all Liliana.

  “You must forgive us, such a thing to ask. Please forget we spoke. It’s just that the funeral has distressed us, you see.”

  Kay rushed in to tell them she would love to help.

  “Believe me, it’s just a British thing. I never expected that you would let me loose in your kitchen, or even trust me to do it. It would be a great pleasure, and I can’t really make too much of a mess out of coffee and eggs, can I?”

  “Are you really sure?” Liliana said. “I thought of asking you because you have kind eyes.”

  Kay knew she meant it.

  “I can’t tell you how much I would like to do this very small favor for you, Liliana. Why don’t you let everyone else get ready for the journey and you tell me exactly what’s to be done?”

  The two women sat and talked. Liliana said that only one couple was difficult: they had brought their own jar of marmalade and this is where it was kept. The young honeymoon couple only came down for coffee at ten and took it upstairs again.

  The smart couple who dressed up as if they were going to a wedding were always very bad-tempered in the morning; it had something to do with their metabolism, they needed a lot of coffee to bring them up to normal communication level.

  It was both exciting and reassuring to be allowed into the secrets of the hotel. Kay went to bed happier than since she had arrived.

  The next morning she joked with the other guests as she served the breakfast and felt that they somehow envied her for being taken into the inner sanctum.

  “I would have done it happily, I worked in catering for a while,” said the bad-tempered, well-dressed woman.

  Kay rushed to make sure that she had more coffee before she was allowed to become resentful.

  She washed the dishes and put them away in the sunny kitchen and looked at the photographs around the wall. There was Liliana and her three children laughing and shielding their eyes against the Italian sun. In the early years there was a handsome, laughing man with them all. It must have been Liliana’s husband, the father of her children.

  Not in evidence these days; possibly he was dead now and not aware that his wife, her brothers, and his children had made such a success of this little hotel. Maybe they had separated? Kay would probably never know. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask someone you hardly knew.

  She stayed around the house while they were gone to deal with callers. Many people came with sympathy cards in black-edged envelopes.

  A local girl came in to make the beds at lunchtime as Liliana had explained she would. Kay sat on the terrace writing postcards back home that it was wonderful and that she was very happy.

  And for the first time she began to think that she really was fairly happy here and certainly not useless, friendless, and self-pitying, as she had felt up to now.

  The tall dark man with the big dog, the man who always said good night to her when she sat under the tree, passed the house several times. As if he were watching it, guarding it even. But then possibly she was just being fanciful.

  —

  Kay felt they wouldn’t want her around when they got back and had to set to making a dinner immediately after the journey.

  She left her bedroom window open and could hear the noises in the kitchen, the smells too of the cooking wafted up to her, and she heard the doors of people’s bedrooms opening and closing and the sound of running water as they showered for dinner on the terrace.

  She wondered what the others would be doing back home. Eight-thirty here in Italy, seven-thirty back in England.

  Nick and Julia would have come from work, they might be making a snack in their little house where the mortgage took up such a percentage of their bank sal
ary, and then sitting down for more wedding chat and wondering how to include Susie in their plans.

  Julia’s parents were still debating the wedding, but they were serious dog lovers; they would have fed Sandy well and taken him on at least two walks.

  Helen would be with Johnny and perhaps they were busy putting up posters in one of the clubs where he was playing tonight.

  And her friends, the women from the antiques shop, they would have taken their trains and buses home, one to a difficult mother, one to a wordless husband, and one to an unreliable lover. They would all envy Kay out under the warm skies of Tuscany, and hope that she was having a good time.

  —

  Kay noticed that Liliana did not have her two sons to help her that evening as dinner was served, so afterwards she slipped into the kitchen to know if she could do anything to help.

  “Please,” she said to Liliana, “you can see I am on my own here and I like to talk, so the nights are often long for me.”

  The other woman looked at her for a long moment.

  “My sons stayed with their grandmother. I would love now to send my brothers home to their wives. Signora Kay, if you were to help me with the washing-up, we will have a beautiful Italian brandy afterwards and talk through the night.”

  And it seemed to take no time to restore the kitchen to rights, and to take out the really good glasses that were never given to guests. And Kay sat and listened to the story of today’s funeral. It was Paolo’s father who had died. Papa Gianni. A kind old man who never did anyone any harm and who had cried when he heard that his son Paolo was leaving the hardworking Liliana for a rich woman who lived in the city far away in Milano.

  Liliana didn’t want to go to the funeral and see Paolo getting out of the big car that his rich wife had bought him. She did not want to see him holding his five-year-old twins by the hand and watch him moving around in his expensive leather jacket, accepting sympathy from old friends.

  She did not want to raise her eyes to meet again those of the woman with money who had come here once on a vacation and who had bought Paolo and taken him away.