by Maeve Binchy
* * *
‘So will I leave you to rest and think over it all?’ Joe said.
‘I wish you thought I’d done the right thing,’ she said.
‘You know what I think. I think you should have given him away. I really do. There are other lives.’
‘Not for fifty-year-old women there aren’t.’
‘I know what you mean, but there are. Anyway, there you go.’
‘Why are you so fed up with me?’
‘Carmel, I’m not fed up with you. I owed you, I’d do anything for you anytime, I told you that and I meant it. You asked me one favour. You’ve paid me handsomely for it. I’ve done it, but I don’t have to approve of it.’
‘Oh, Joe, I thought you’d understand.’
‘You see, it’s the total reverse of all that happened, years ago. Then you did something brave just … well … just so that the right thing should be done …’
‘But this is the right thing! She’s young, she’ll find somebody else, a proper person, not a married man … not somebody else’s husband …’
‘No, you see this time you’ve arranged it so that the truth is hidden, lost … She thinks that Dermot is setting her up, she thinks he’s having a laugh at her, that he wanted her to come to the party as some kind of macho thing. Dermot thinks that she’s let him down, promised to go through with it and then thrown him over unexpectedly. Neither believes that the other is actually honest.’
Carmel stood up. ‘I know it’s complicated. That psychiatrist said to me, you know, the first time, that there’s no such thing as absolute right and absolute wrong. He also said that we can’t control other people’s lives, we must only take responsibility for our own. I decided what I wanted to do with mine, and I did it. That’s the way I see it. I don’t see it as meddling or playing God or anything.’
Joe stood up too. ‘No, whatever else it is, I don’t think it’s playing God,’ he said.
And he slipped quietly out of the house, making sure that he wasn’t observed, because he wasn’t meant to be a great friend of Carmel’s, he was only a casual friend whom they had met luckily again, and his last job was to make sure that the dinner party was great fun.
2
FLAT IN RINGSEND
They said you should get the evening papers at lunch-time and as soon as you got a smell of a flat that would suit you were to rush out and sit on the step at the head of the queue. You shouldn’t take any notice of the words ‘After six o’clock’. If you got there at six o’clock and the ad had sounded any way reasonable then you’d find a line trailing down the road. Finding a good flat in Dublin at a price you could afford was like finding gold in the gold rush.
The other way was by personal contact; if you knew someone who knew someone who was leaving a place that often worked. But if you had only just arrived in Dublin there was no chance of any personal contact, nobody to tell you that their bedsit would be vacant at the end of the month. No, it was a matter of staying in a hostel and searching.
Jo had been to Dublin a dozen times when she was a child; she had been up for a match, or for a school outing, or the time that Da was in the Chest Hospital and everyone had been crying in case he wouldn’t get better. Most of her friends had been up to Dublin much more often; they talked about places they had gone to in a familiar way, and assumed that she knew what they were talking about.
‘You must know the Dandelion Market. Let me see, you come out of the Zhivago and you go in a straight line to your right, keep going and you pass O’Donoghues and the whole of Stephen’s Green, and you don’t turn right down Grafton Street. Now do you know where it is?’
After so much effort explaining things to her, Jo said she did. Jo was always anxious to please other people, and she felt that she only annoyed them by not knowing what they were talking about. But Dublin was a very big blank spot. She really felt she was stepping into the unknown when she got on the train to go and work there. She didn’t ask herself why she was going in the first place. It had been assumed by everyone that she would go. Who would stay in a one-horse town, the back of beyonds, the end of the world, the sticks, this dead-and-alive place? That’s all she had heard for years. At school they were all going to get out, escape, see some life, get some living in, have a real kind of existence, and some of the others in her class had gone as far as Ennis or Limerick, often to stay with cousins. A few had gone to England, where an elder sister or an aunt would see them settled in. But out of Jo’s year none of them were going to Dublin. Jo’s family must have been the only one in the place who didn’t have relations in Glasnevin or Dundrum. She was heading off on her own.
There had been a lot of jokes about her going to work in the Post Office. There’d be no trouble in getting a stamp to write a letter home; what’s more, there’d be no excuse if she didn’t. She could sneak the odd phone call too, which would be fine, but they didn’t have a phone at home. Maybe she could send a ten-page telegram if she needed to say anything in a hurry. They assumed that she would know the whole business of the high and the mighty in Dublin the way Miss Hayes knew everyone’s business from the post office at home. People said that she’d find it very easy to get to know people, there was nowhere like a post office for making friends, it was the centre of everything.
She knew she wouldn’t be working in the GPO, but whenever she thought of herself in Dublin it was in the middle of the General Post Office chatting up all the people as they came in, knowing every single person who came to buy stamps or collect the children’s allowances. She imagined herself living somewhere nearby, maybe over Clery’s or on the corner of O’Connell Bridge so that she could look at the Liffey from her bedroom.
She had never expected the miles and miles of streets where nobody knew anyone, the endless bus journeys, the having to get up two hours before she was meant to be at work in case she got lost or the bus was cancelled. ‘Not much time for a social life,’ she wrote home. ‘I’m so exhausted when I get back to the hostel I just go to bed and fall asleep.’
Jo’s mother thought that it would be great altogether if she stayed permanently in the hostel. It was run by nuns, and she could come to no harm. Her father said that he hoped they kept the place warm; nuns were notorious for freezing everyone else to death just because they wore thermal underwear. Jo’s sisters who worked in the hotel as waitresses said she must be off her head to have stayed a whole week in a hostel; her brother who worked in the Creamery said he was sorry she didn’t have a flat, it would be somewhere to stay whenever he went to Dublin; her brother who worked in the garage said that Jo would have been better off to stay where she was – what would she get in Dublin only discontented, and she’d end up like that O’Hara girl, neither one thing nor the other, happy neither in Dublin nor at home. It had to be said that he had fancied the O’Hara girl for a long time, and it was a great irritation to him that she wouldn’t settle down and be like a normal woman.
But Jo didn’t know that they were all thinking about her and discussing her, as she answered the advertisement for the flat in Ringsend. It said ‘Own room, own television, share kitchen, bathroom’. It was very near her post office and seemed too good to be true. Please, St Jude, please. May it be nice, may they like me, may it not be too dear.
There wasn’t a queue for this one because it wasn’t so much ‘Flat to Let’, more ‘Third Girl Wanted’. The fact that it had said ‘Own Television’ made Jo wonder whether it might be in too high a class for her, but the house did not look any way over-powering. An ordinary red-bricked terraced house with a basement. Her father had warned her against basements; they were full of damp, he said, but then her father had a bad chest and saw damp everywhere. But the flat was not in the basement, it was upstairs. And a cheerful-looking girl with a college scarf, obviously a failed applicant, was coming down the stairs.
‘Desperate place,’ she said to Jo. They’re both awful. Common as dirt.’
‘Oh,’ said Jo and went on climbing.
‘H
allo,’ said the girl with ‘Nessa’ printed on her tee-shirt.
‘God, did you see that toffee-nosed bitch going out? I can’t stand that kind, I can’t stand them …’
‘What did she do?’ asked Jo.
‘Do? She didn’t have to do anything. She just poked around and wrinkled her lip and sort of giggled and then said “Is this it?” in a real Foxrock accent. “Oh dear, oh dear.” Stupid old cow, we wouldn’t have had her in here if we were starving and needed her to buy us a crust, would we, Pauline?’
Pauline had a pyschedelic shirt on; it almost hurt the eyes but was only marginally brighter than her hair. Pauline was a punk, Jo noted with amazement. She had seen some of them on O’Connell Street, but hadn’t met one close up to talk to.
‘No, stupid old bore. She was such a bore. She’d have bored us to death, years later our bodies would have been found here and the verdict would have been death by boredom …’
Jo laughed. It was such a wild thought to think of all that pink hair lying on the floor dead because it hadn’t been able to stand the tones of the flatmate. ‘I’m Jo, I work in the post office and I rang …’ Nessa said they were just about to have a mug of tea. She produced three mugs; one had ‘Nessa’ and one had ‘Pauline’ and the other one had ‘Other’ written on it. ‘We’ll get your name put on if you come to stay,’ she said generously.
Nessa worked in CIE, and Pauline worked in a big firm nearby. They had got the flat three months ago and Nessa’s sister had had the third room, but now she was getting married very quickly, very quickly indeed, and so the room was empty. They explained the cost, they showed her the geyser for having a bath and they showed her the press in the kitchen, each shelf with a name on it, Nessa, Pauline and Maura.
‘Maura’s name will go, and we’ll paint in yours if you come to stay,’ Nessa said again reassuringly.
‘You’ve no sitting room,’ Jo said.
‘No, we did it in three bedsits,’ said Nessa.
‘Makes much more sense,’ said Pauline.
‘What’s the point of a sitting room?’ asked Nessa.
‘I mean, who’d sit in it?’ asked Pauline.
‘And we’ve got two chairs in our own rooms,’ Nessa said proudly.
‘And each of us has our own telly,’ said Pauline happily.
That was the point that Jo wanted to discuss.
‘Yes, you didn’t say how much that costs. Is there a rental?’
Nessa’s big happy face spread into a grin. ‘No, that’s the real perk. You see, Maura’s Steve, well my brother-in-law as he now is, I hope, my brother-in-law Steve worked in the business and he was able to get us tellies for a song.’
‘So you bought them outright, did you?’ Jo was enthralled.
‘Bought in a manner of speaking,’ Pauline said. ‘Accepted them outright.’
‘Yeah, it was his way of saying thank you, his way of paying the rent … in a manner of speaking,’ Nessa said.
‘But did he stay here too?’
‘He was Maura’s boy-friend. He stayed most of the time.’
‘Oh,’ said Jo. There was a silence.
‘Well?’ Nessa said accusingly. ‘If you’ve anything to say, you should say it now.’
‘I suppose I was wondering did he not get in everyone’s way. I mean, if a fourth person was staying in the flat was it fair on the others?’
‘Why do you think we organised it all into bedsits?’ Pauline asked. ‘Means we can all do what we like when we like, not trampling on other people. Right?’
‘Right,’ Nessa said.
‘Right,’ Jo said, doubtfully.
‘So what do you think,’ Nessa asked Pauline. ‘I think Jo would be OK if she wants to come, do you?’
‘Yeah, sure, I think she’d be fine if she’d like it here,’ said Pauline.
‘Thank you,’ said Jo, blushing a bit.
‘Is there anything else you’d like to ask? I think we’ve covered everything. There’s a phone with a coinbox in the hall downstairs. There’s three nurses in the flat below, but they don’t take any messages for us so we don’t take any for them. The rent on the first of the month, plus five quid each and I get a few basics.’
‘Will you come then?’ asked Nessa.
‘Please. I’d like to very much, can I come on Sunday night?’
They gave her a key, took her rent money, poured another cup of tea and said that it was great to have fixed it all up so quickly. Nessa said that Jo was such a short name it would be dead easy to paint it onto the shelf in the kitchen, the shelf in the bathroom and her mug.
‘She wanted to paint the names on the doors too, but I wouldn’t let her,’ said Pauline.
‘Pauline thought it looked too much like a nursery,’ said Nessa regretfully.
‘Yes, and also I wanted to leave a bit of variety in life. If our names are on the doors then we’ll never get any surprise visitors during the night – I always like a bit of the unexpected!’
Jo laughed too. She hoped they were joking.
* * *
She assured her mother in the letter that the flat was very near Haddington Road, she told her father how far it was from the damp basement, and she put in the bits about the television in each bedroom to make her sisters jealous. They had said she was an eejit to go to Dublin; the best Dublin people all came to County Clare on their holidays. She should stay at home and meet them there rather than going up and trying to find them in their own place.
* * *
They were having tea in the hostel on Sunday when Jo said goodbye. She struggled with her two cases to the bus stop.
‘Your friends aren’t going to arrange to collect you?’ Sister said.
‘They haven’t a car, sister.’
‘I see. Often, though, young people come to help a friend. I hope they are kind people, your friends.’
‘Very, sister.’
‘That’s good. Well, God bless you, child, and remember that this is a very wicked city, a lot of very wicked people in it.’
‘Yes, sister, I’ll keep my eye out for them.’
It took her a long time to get to the flat.
She had to change buses twice, and was nearly exhausted when she got there. She had to come down again for the second case, and dragged the two into the room that had been pointed out as hers. It was smaller than it had looked on Friday, yet it could hardly have shrunk. The bedclothes were folded there, two blankets, two pillows and a quilt. Lord, she forgot about sheets; she’d assumed they were included. And God, she supposed there’d be no towel either, wasn’t she an eejit not to have asked.
She hoped they wouldn’t notice, and she’d be able to buy some tomorrow – or she hoped she would, as she only had an hour for lunch. She’d ask one of the girls in the post office, and she had her savings for just this kind of emergency.
She hung up her clothes in the poky little wardrobe, and put out her ornaments on the window sill and her shoes in a neat line on the floor. She put her cases under the bed and sat down feeling very flat.
Back home they’d be going to the pictures or to a dance at eight o’clock on a Sunday night. In the hostel some of the girls would watch television in the lounge, others would have gone to the pictures together and go for chips on the way home, throwing the papers into the litter bin on the corner of the street where the hostel was since Sister didn’t like the smell of chips coming into the building.
Nobody was sitting alone on a bed with nothing to do. She could go out and take the bus into town and go to the pictures alone, but didn’t that seem ridiculous when she had her own television. Her very own. She could change the channel whenever she wanted to; she wouldn’t have to ask anyone.
She was about to go out to the sitting room to see was there a Sunday paper, when she remembered there was no sitting room. She didn’t want to open the doors of their rooms in case they might come in and think she was prying. She wondered where they were. Was Nessa out with a boyfriend? She hadn’t mentioned one
, but then girls in Dublin didn’t tell you immediately if they had a fellow or not. Perhaps Pauline was at a punk disco. She couldn’t believe that anyone would actually employ Pauline with that hair and let her meet the public, but maybe she was kept hidden away. Perhaps they’d come home about eleven o’clock (well, they had to get up for work in the morning); perhaps they all had cocoa or drinking chocolate in the sitting room – well, in the kitchen, to end the day. She’d tell them how well she’d settled in. In the meantime she would sit back and watch her own television set.
Jo fell asleep after half an hour. She had been very tired. She dreamed that Nessa and Pauline had come in. Pauline had decided to wash the pink out of her hair and share a room with Nessa. They were going to turn Pauline’s room into a sitting room where they would sit and talk and plan. She woke suddenly when she heard giggling. It was Pauline and a man’s voice, and they had gone into the kitchen.
Jo shook herself. She must have been asleep for three hours; she had a crick in her neck and the television was flickering. She stood up and turned it off, combed her hair and was about to go out and welcome the homecomers when she hesitated. If Pauline had invited a boy home presumably she was going to take him to bed with her. Perhaps the last thing she might need now was her new flatmate coming out looking for company. They were laughing in the kitchen, she could hear them, then she heard the electric kettle hiss and whistle. Well, she could always pretend that she had been going to make herself a cup of tea.
Nervously, she opened the door and went into the kitchen. Pauline was with a young man who wore a heavy leather jacket with a lot of studs on it.
‘Hallo, Pauline, I was just going to get myself a cup of tea,’ Jo said apologetically.
‘Sure,’ Pauline said. She was not unfriendly, she didn’t look annoyed, but she made no effort to introduce her friend.