by Maeve Binchy
The next night I introduced her to Christian, the sour doctor. I thought it would be a conversation of ten seconds’ duration, and was surprised to see them half an hour later chatting away. That night she sat with him at dinner and was very, very late back to our bungalow. She turned on the lights, handed me a cigarette and, clasping my hand, said, ‘You are a genius; he’s perfect, just perfect.’
To be woken from sleep to such enthusiasm is startling, but the more I thought of the strange doctor and the magnificent-looking romance-seeking Francine, the more I began to think it was one of those dreams where you imagine that your younger brother is married to Catherine the Great and you wonder what to do about it.
It was no dream. The 24-year-old Francine and the 50ish Christian were inseparable for the rest of the holiday. She would wake me every night to tell me the details, which were very, very boring, and mainly involved her strategy in not giving him all he would naturally as a man want, because it was wiser to wait until they were married.
One night, despairing to be woken to the same story, I said that perhaps he might not want all that men might naturally want on account of sharing a bungalow with his 18-year-old son, and she said I had a lot to learn. The son, who was called Claude, became even more painful as time went on, and was sitting shrugging and yawning every time I was dragged to join them all for a drink. He was interested in no subject and one day in desperation I asked him what he would like best to happen that afternoon.
He said, ‘I would like that stupid girl to leave my father alone and find some cowboy to divert her. My father is very easily swayed.’
Oh drama, drama. I couldn’t bear to leave them not knowing what was going to happen though I didn’t really like any of them enough to be on anyone’s side.
But the months went by and the time I could afford to go to Paris came eventually. I wrote to Francine and said it would be nice to meet for lunch. On the way to the restaurant I expected she would have difficulty in remembering what Christian’s name was. He seemed to be such an unlikely life partner. But there he was, the two of them smiling, and a bit of diamond flashing. They had just become engaged; would I come to their wedding? They insisted on giving me a ticket as a present, because I had introduced them, remember? Well, I was polite for a bit. They would have met anyway; it wasn’t fair to take a ticket. And then, of course, I gave in as we had all known I would.
It was an extraordinary wedding. The town hall one day, a church the next, two great feasts, lots of congratulation, everybody on both sides of the family assuring me of the good work I had done. If ever there was a couple so right for each other it was Christian and Francine. The sour Claude had become less shruggy. He said it was better for his father not to have a lonely old age. I swore to become a deep and intimate friend of the whole family, and we exchanged Christmas cards for about three years as an assurance that this is what indeed I was.
Then I had a party, a party all of my own in Paris. It sounds very grand, and in fact I thought I would never get a chance to write about it. It was in fact 12 people invited to my hotel bedroom to have some duty-free Irish whiskey, which I had smuggled in. I invited Christian and Francine among the guests. Maybe you know already what was going to happen, but I hadn’t a clue, and it staggered me for weeks. Francine arrived, but with her glum stepson Claude, less glum and deeply protective to the extent of embracing his stepmother in the most unacceptable manner, as the French would say.
Francine dragged me aside, telling me that I looked a bit better than before but not much. I should have my eyebrows done professionally and perhaps red hair what with being Irish. ‘Where’s Christian?’ I squeaked, knowing I was going to hear something strange.
‘Oh well, you know it was never very wise, when there is such an age difference and everything. He has gone to live in Switzerland. He is a very famous surgeon there now in a clinic, he is very happy. This man is interested really only in his work. You do understand and I would die in Switzerland. All those dull, clean, plain people. I would die outside Paris. He knows that, he writes from time to time. He did a very famous operation and it was in the papers.’
I’m really not able for all this sort of thing at all you know, despite my pretensions, and my voice was like some kind of puppet by the time I managed to get out the words, ‘And what about Claude?’
‘Oh, isn’t he marvellous? You are a genius, he is just perfect. Everybody would have such a happy holiday romance if they only went on a holiday with you. I can never thank you enough.’
I Was a Winter Sport
21 November 1974
I knew that I would probably fall, but I didn’t expect to fall coming out of the railway station. Crowds of elegant Germans in posh ski wear tramped over me, a few British looked embarrassed and then looked away, an Italian man bent down and told me that it happened to the best of us and went away without picking me up. When the station was empty three porters got me to my feet and begged me not to take the next train home. Madame would be skiing like a bird, they assured me, and like a fool I believed them, and slid and crawled my way to the hotel.
It was full of sweat and heat, and pipes gurgling, and basements with people throwing skis around like darts, and radiant faces talking about the south piste, and worried brows discussing ski bindings. There was registration for the nursery school and a lot of hot rum, and a view from the bedroom like the best Christmas card ever and a very deep, slightly bruised sleep.
Next day, hot chocolate, plenty of buns to keep up the strength, into the ski pants that looked great in Dublin and cost a week’s salary. Beside everything else on the patio they looked like fancy dress. On with about four sweaters, in case I got frostbite and a jar of cream rubbed into my face in case there was sunstroke going around as well. Left, right, left, right, and we marched to the foothills of a crag.
The ski instructor was called Mike, and nobody fell in love with him. In three languages he told us how to put on our skis, which were waiting in battered splendour on the snow. A man fell over just bending down to pick them up, and I was so sympathetic that I rushed to help him up and fell on top of him, which was a bad start, since Mike said in three languages again that there would be time for that sort of thing later, could we concentrate on getting the skis on now please. We extricated ourselves, and a nice 12-year-old tied on both our skis for us.
It was the most awkward thing I have ever done. Each foot seemed to weigh a ton and to be 20 feet long. It was impossible to point oneself anywhere without doing damage to someone else and the woman became quite hysterical because she found herself sliding sideways with gathering speed and couldn’t stop. Mike had to go and head her off before she went into a wall at a hundred miles an hour and that caused a lot of alarm in those of us who stood rooted to the ground. Skiing sideways was a new horror we hadn’t thought of.
He put us in two circles like a Paul Jones and we were asked to walk around to get used to the feel of the things. The space between each walker increased to huge distances because everybody seemed to be sticking a ski into the bottom of the person in front, and you couldn’t turn around to protest because you fell over at once if you moved in any direction except purposefully forward. So there were great oaths in many languages, as we marched gloomily around the churned-up snow dragging these fiendish appendages.
Just when I was wondering would it be time for the après ski to begin, Mike said that it was now nine-thirty a.m. and that we should all have the feel of the skis, so would we please follow him and we would learn walking on a slope. A small gradient, he explained, in case the nursery school became frightened by the word ‘slope’.
It looked like the wrong face of the Eiger when we had to climb it, and the scene began to be like one of those dreams where you try to move but find yourself constantly in the same place. Worse really, because in those dreams you are at least vertical, there is no sense of constantly hitting the ground. The Falling Man and The Hysterical Woman and a Twitchy Swede and I spent most of
our time clutching each other and dragging each other down again. About ten of the group seemed to have mastered it and were scaling the small gradient as if they had been born to such things.
‘Cheats,’ said The Falling Man. ‘I’ve read about those kind, they know all about skiing. They only join nursery classes to look good and improve their egos.’
‘I think I’m going sideways again,’ screamed The Hysterical Woman, and we all plunged out to rescue her, knocking her to the ground in the effort.
‘The rarified air is doing nothing for my heart, he is beating too rapidly,’ said The Twitching Swede. So The Falling Man gave him a nip of brandy, thinking that this might slow it down.
Mike skied back to us in a show-off way from the front of the group. He rolled his eyes to heaven. ‘Drinking is bad,’ he said in many languages.
We were all sitting in the snow drinking The Falling Man’s brandy at this stage, and if ever spirits are said to be medicinal it was in this case. Mike thought, however, it was loose living. ‘I will take that,’ he said like a school prefect and confiscated The Falling Man’s flask. We watched it disappearing like you would a life raft, but were too mute with fear to do anything except agree. Drinking was bad, we admitted humbly and repentantly.
Mike dragged us all to our feet, and pushed us towards the ascent again. It was a sorry progress. The Swedish heart was beating much too rapidly, hysteria was coming on strong with The Nervous Lady, The Falling Man and myself dragged ourselves painfully towards the summit, and Mike whizzed around us like a butterfly telling us always first in German, then in Italian and finally in English that we mustn’t lift our feet so high, and finally we made it to the group who were on top of the hill. ‘Now comes the interesting part,’ said Mike.
Great, I thought, about to take off my skis and run back to the hotel, it’s time for lunch. Not at all. The interesting part was apparently the exercises. The limbering up, the bending and stretching. The kind of thing in fact that I used to tell terrible lies in school to avoid, and here I was on a glass mountain abroad, at great cost, trapped and unable to get out of them. It went on until my body cried out with the agony of it all, and I wondered what would happen if I said I felt faint.
I tried it. ‘You are out of condition,’ said Mike. ‘Keep bending, it will make you less faint and more fit.’
I don’t remember coming back to the hotel, but I gather we stumped and spiked our way down, falling, and knocking down others, and the good ones in the group were beginning to be released from the rest of us and to have two beginners’ classes: one for good beginners and one for bad beginners. I went to bed immediately, and didn’t wake until the next morning, which was roughly 18 hours’ sleep.
We kept it up for three days, the bad beginners. We were joined by a fifth bad beginner who was an elderly Brazilian learning to ski secretly so that he could accompany his young wife on her winter sporting holidays. The third day he agreed that he didn’t mind if she made off with every ski instructor in Europe. He wasn’t going to join the game. We assured him that if they were all like the dreaded Mike, he would have no competition at all, she’d only be screaming to get back to him and to Rio.
This cheered him so greatly he decided to hire a sleigh one day and take us on a tour. So we climbed in with rugs and flasks and great goodwill and roared past the good beginners and Mike, who were walking around in circles practising an elementary turn, and we had a beautiful day in a forest where there was no cracking ice, and you could walk in powdery snow without falling at all. The next day we advised the Brazilian to write to his wife saying he was passing through a posh ski resort but the snow didn’t seem to be good. We advised this because he was becoming morose and guilty and wondering what she was thinking; he was the kind of man who sends telegrams rather than letters, and that night he had one back from her saying she loved him, so he took us all to a great log cabin and we kept drinking her health all night.
And The Falling Man taught us to play canasta, so we sat all day out on the terrace and got great suntans playing cards. And the Swede, who had stopped twitching, said that his heart felt much better and he had gone and discovered a very cheap place where they had schnitzel and salad so we wouldn’t get fat. The Hysterical Woman had become as calm as the Mona Lisa. She asked us to take pictures of her in various ski poses, and we did, and in return she gave us a great recipe for cheesecake, and we went to the kitchen of the hotel and tried it one day when everyone else was out doing elementary bends and falling and breaking their limbs. I told them all about proportional representation, which is a great party piece for foreigners, and wrote down how it worked, with explanations of quotas, first counts, eliminations, distribution and transfers. They loved it and said that the whole trip had been worthwhile for this alone.
And then the week was up, and we avoided Mike’s eye and went to the station, where nobody fell and the porters remembered me and said that it was always the same, people came nervously but they left being able to ski like birds.
Keeping Faith with My Dear, Dear Dublin
5 February 1975
A friend of mine who emigrated some years ago used to drive me mad when she came back to Dublin for holidays. Firstly her accent had changed and had overtones of Chelsea, then she was using phrases that the natives do not know, like ‘Isn’t that a pretty little house?’ ‘That was naughty of you to buy me a large drink.’ Having lived perfectly happy for 20 years in Dublin, she suddenly saw all its faults and filth on her return. The streets had become covered with litter, she would say how terrible to see children begging, all the lovely buildings were being knocked down, wasn’t it odd that you found Irishmen always drinking in pubs without their wives, and wasn’t it amazing to see so many people outside churches on Sundays?
I determined that I would never behave like a returned emigrant and at least nobody has detected the slightest change in the way I speak – only, I suppose, surprise that I still speak so much after exposure to the more taciturn British. But I am making the same kind of mistakes, the little tell-tale things that show you have been living in another world, and it’s worrying.
Like the phone, I can’t believe that you have to pay fourpence. I simply can’t take it in, and it looks absurd to come back from a telephone in my own home town saying, ‘It doesn’t work and I did put the tuppence in.’ I had forgotten you couldn’t get beer in a restaurant, which is idiotic since I spent at least two years shouting in the paper that the licensing laws should be changed.
The minimum fare on the bus startled me so much that I thought the conductor didn’t understand I only wanted to go four stops. My first gin and tonic of the weekend nearly knocked me out after the pathetic drop in the bottom of the glass that goes as an English measure. I had brought people home grand cheap little velvet jumpers you can get in Marks and Spencers and thought they would be ecstatic with them. The ecstasy was dimmed by the fact that you can buy the same ones here and everyone had already bought half a dozen.
At least half a dozen men I know have nice long, clean hair when they used to tell me that they hated their sons having the same thing not two years ago; at least 20 women who used to have a great line in chat about their deep freeze and their au pairs have joined some kind of helpful thrusting organisations and are helping and thrusting all round the place. People ask me did I hear about things like us having a new President, and Ireland beating England at the international, and I begin to wonder where they think I am and who I work for.
Nobody at all speaks about doom, nobody has mentioned that we should be hoarding food, or putting money into building societies or taking it out of building societies. Things seem to be as dear, if not dearer, than in London, salaries don’t seem to have jumped accordingly and yet everyone thinks we’ll be fine once the warm weather comes.
Food seems to be extraordinarily expensive, and so do clothes, but nowhere do I hear great cries about how hard it is to live, to manage to eat, to dress or to get by. They ask me is Britain break
ing up, which is a bit difficult to answer because I have no idea, they don’t seem to be worried about Ireland breaking up and think that it will all be grand once the fine weather comes.
Nobody mercifully has had one conversation about the drop in share prices or the rise in them or whatever, which is great because even though the people I meet in England don’t have any shares either they always seem a bit worried about other people’s and the consequent ill-health of the nation if they go below a certain figure.
Out in Killiney I saw people walking Afghan hounds which, I feel, must be a sign of prosperity, but I am assured that it’s just the same person with the same hound that I keep seeing. A few people who should have done it years ago are talking about medical check-ups, and cholesterol, and increasing their subscription to the voluntary health, but that is probably a sign of nothing except that we are all getting older and more worn out. I took two taxis and both taxi drivers knew me but didn’t know I had been away, they just thought I had got mean about taking taxis. You can get telephone messages in pubs, and leave your suitcase in restaurants again, which is lovely, and you can meet 20 people in the space of a morning just by walking about, which is lovelier still. You can’t say a word about anyone because either they or their best friend are sitting at the next table.