by Maeve Binchy
I was helping to clean up, and an old man told me not to, that only people who couldn’t speak English cleaned up. I thought this was a wrong theory, but he said it was very sensible, people who could speak English talked to the guests, the others who would like to talk to them but couldn’t cleaned up.
So I went to talk to him and he told me he was 91 and very happy. He had been so lucky to get into this home, because there were three television sets, and three sitting rooms, so you could watch whatever channel you liked, and that this was the kind of thing that really made a home successful, and he got £2 of his pension into his hand every week, and was saving it up to buy a nice West Indian nurse a Christmas present, because she had been great to him, and she kept promising to take him back to Trinidad with her, even though they both knew it was a joke.
And then they were all having a little doze, and they would have afternoon tea at four when other helpers would come in and serve it to them at their chairs. I don’t think it really made me feel good inside but it made me a lot less afraid of being old.
Thursday: Brighten up your office, we work better in bright surroundings.
This was actually taken out of my hands because the office was full to the gills of workmen brightening it up for me. The London Editor had cunningly arranged that the Conservative Party Conference should be taking place in Brighton, as far away as possible from 85 Fleet Street while this chaos was going on, so I had to deal with it alone.
Well, deal with it? It was a matter of getting down on all fours and crawling under my own desk to be able to sit at it. Then I was trapped in a corner, while Alf and Bert walked backwards and forwards across it foot in typewriter and bottom on telephone, both cheerfully apologising and saying they hoped they weren’t disturbing me. Every time the phone rang they both took out pneumatic drills, and made exaggerated dentist noises about a foot from my ear, and anyone who telephoned me on Thursday may well be justified in thinking that I had gone mad.
I managed a few calls by putting my head and the phone in a drawer. But when I got it out again, Alf had piled four chairs on my desk, and Bert had moved the filing cabinet over to block the door. They had both left in search of some electricians and so I missed the coffee trolley when it passed the door and I missed going out to a nice wine and cheese reception, but at least there were no drills going and nobody pacing backwards and forwards on my desk so I got a bit of work done.
And then they came back and they told me that this job was going to take a bit longer than I thought and than they thought and they started drilling again. And I picked up the potted plant that was going to brighten up my office for me and I left silently with it under my arm and went to a library not far away and read three books that I had to review.
I felt a bit guilty because it was a Christian Science Reading Room and I apologised for not reading anything about Christian Science but the woman said it didn’t matter, I could read whatever I liked, so I hid the titles from her and read away until it got dark.
Friday: Shake yourself out of your old routine. Do something you would never normally do.
The trouble here is that I don’t have an old routine. Nearly every day I do something that I wouldn’t normally do, there’s no normal. But I’m still not glittering and action-packed like these new women that upset me so much.
I must try to think of something really unusual to do at lunchtime.
I’ve seen all the lunchtime plays that I want to, and then that couldn’t be called unusual. I’ve never been up to the top of the post office tower, but it’s a dull day and would I see anything? There is a lunchtime cookery class I believe somewhere, but then that’s too like Monday and learning a new skill. Eventually I thought of something. I’d take a walk. I would go and explore parts of the city I had never seen. This would be helpful about opening my mind and broadening my horizons, not to mention flattening my feet.
I set off happily and marched down towards the City, to the stockbrokers and the banks and the money houses, looking fearfully upwards in case I’d be hit by falling bodies of speculators. But nothing like that happened. I just got a bit weary plodding on through these caverns of streets, when suddenly a door opened, and two men, locked in what looked like a very un-Londonish embrace, hurtled out. Still groping each other, they fell on to the ground and rolled lovingly towards the traffic. Taxis and buses were now practically standing up on their hind legs to avoid them, and there was an enormous amount of excitement. So near me were they that they actually knocked my handbag out of my hand, so I had to join them more or less in order to get it back.
I was extremely embarrassed by the whole thing, kneeling beside them on the edge of the footpath saying, ‘Excuse me … I’m sorry … you seem to have ….’
Then I made the appalling discovery that they were not murmuring endearments to each other at all, they actually were trying to kill each other.
‘I’ll get you,’ one was panting.
‘Lying bastard,’ the other was huffing.
I grabbed my bag and explained to all the onlookers that it was really mine, one of those long, boring explanations that make you seem guilty when you are really innocent. ‘You see I don’t know either of them,’ I explained to a stunned crowd. ‘You see, I was just passing by and they kind of knocked my handbag … it is mine, you see, it has all my things in it ….’
Nobody believed me; they were as amazed by me and my speech as they were by the men pounding each other in the gutter.
There are policemen when you need them, and two approached, the crowd was waved on. I moved off too and the two men were stood up, dusted down, and forced to give some explanation of their behaviour. I took a taxi back to the office, which cost 90p, and decided that if I had been asked to explain my part in the whole business and had said that it was all part of a week of self-improvement, well you might never have heard from me again.
Violet
25 June 1977
Violet rang yesterday with the bad news that she is coming to London for a week. When I think of the 164 people I would love to be coming to London for a week, I wonder why it has to be Violet. She’s not a friend, she has no friends, she has contacts. It’s me in London, and Hilary in Galway, and Helen in Cork, and Ruth in Paris, and Sheila in Belfast. Sheila had to take a week off to recover last autumn.
Violet’s visits are very upsetting. If she was really horrible, it would be possible to say that you didn’t want to see her ever again, to say that life was too short, and put down the phone. But she is only accidentally horrible, and that’s why we all get sucked into these appalling arrangements, and end up hating her and hating ourselves as a result.
I was wondering if you could book me a hotel. Nothing too fancy, something rather quiet and nice.
Oh, that’s going to be easy for a start. In London, in July, in Jubilee Year? If I knew how to find something rather quiet and nice, I could set up in business immediately and make a fortune. But I am not going to ask her to stay. I’m not. I’m not. It would be an abuse of hospitality. When she went to stay with Helen in Cork, Helen had scrubbed the house from top to bottom and Violet still managed to imply that she would get scurvy from it. She actually bought some spray thing and cleaned Helen’s windows. She came to a meal here once and said, ‘Aren’t cleaning ladies unreliable?’ which left me in a rage for two months, because it was an innocent remark designed to wound and hurt.
So a hotel it has to be, three hours of phoning and cajoling, and asking people do they know anywhere, and then taking the stick afterwards because it’ll turn out to be full of foreigners, far from taxis or have a shower that doesn’t work.
And I wonder if you could book me a couple of seats for some good shows. I mean, you’re there on the spot, you’d know how it works.
I won’t. I’ll give her the name of a friend in a theatre-booking agency, and shift the lot on to him. I don’t care if she has to pay 30 pence more a ticket, I’m not going to have anything like last time. ‘Well, I suppose it was interest
ing. But very shouty, don’t you think, and rather vulgar. I’m not prim and proper, and I think you should call a spade a spade, but honestly what was the point of it all? I suppose when you live here, you see things differently.’
And there was the harmless musical I had suggested. ‘Well, I’m sure the children would have loved it. Very colourful and everything. But not quite what one comes to London to see.’
I’ll want to pick your brains about shopping. I’m going to buy a complete summer wardrobe when I’m there.
If you want to know all the latest places, I don’t even know the earliest places. I will not spend five minutes going into boutiques with idiotic names, and trying to recall what colour people are wearing this season. I don’t know what shape of toe shoes have, and there are many other things I want to know before that piece of info. Violet’s last visit gave me nightmares. ‘I think you must have made a mistake in the name, I looked through everything, and honestly they were all a year old. Nothing new at all. And between ourselves just a little bit tatty, no cut, nor any style. You must have mixed it up with somewhere else or it must have changed hands.’
I had been told authoritatively that it was the smartest and most expensive shop in London. This year I’ll be honest, I’ll tell her I know only Marks and Spencers and food shops and off-licences, and newsagents. She’ll think I have gone mad, but better to have her think that.
I thought I’d telephone Barbara and we could all meet for a meal, I’m sure she’d have us out to the house like last time. I’m dying to see what they’ve done with it now.
I’m surprised it hasn’t had swastikas painted all over it by now. Barbara’s fascist husband deserves them more than most. I’ll never forget the evening there during Violet’s last visit. I went to the bathroom so often to avoid jumping at him and hitting him that they all thought I had some intestinal disease. Barbara herself had been all right, but muted, and we had lots of nice chat about how he wouldn’t let a Trade Unionist Commie under his roof, wanted military service for all the layabouts who wouldn’t work even if there was work, and said that their launderette smelled of curry these days, because of all those blacks who would be much happier at home anyway, better weather and nice simple village life for them.
A meal with Barbara and her husband – oh that would be a lovely thing.
And I’m dying to catch up on all the gossip. There’s lots to tell you from here … but not over the phone.
Violet, you’re wrong. You could say anything over the phone. If half the Special Branch and the whole of Dublin were listening in, you could tell it all, and we’d be deafened with the clicks of everyone hanging up.
‘Frank and Mary, you remember them, oh you must know them, well they spent a fortune on a tumble dryer, a fortune, which is ridiculous, Frank sends all his shirts to the laundry and Mary, well we all know how Mary looks, there’s no need to be unkind. I can’t imagine why their ordinary spin dryer wouldn’t have done them. We went to this new place for dinner the other night. Everyone goes there now, it was full of people one knows. Who? Well, that actress was there, or is she an actress? She’s on television maybe, very attractive in a brassy sort of way. She was there. I can’t understand how you don’t know David Frost. I mean, he lives mainly in London, doesn’t he? I’d have thought you’d have met him by now. My sister-in-law’s friend met him at a party a few years ago, and she’d only been in London a few months. Still, as you say, it’s a big place.’
And I have one tiny favour to ask you. You know that ponyskin coat Gerald gave me for the last baby? Well, it needs to be cleaned, and there’s a marvellous place in London, but – and this is the problem – it takes two weeks, so if I could give you the ticket and a cheque then the next time you’re coming over ….
Not again, not again. Finding somewhere in some street that not even taxi drivers have heard of, carrying it draped in tissue and polythene over my arm, trying to remember not to leave it in some pub, or I’ll spend next year’s salary replacing it. Dealing with security people about it, explaining to the Customs that it isn’t mine, it wouldn’t fit me, I wouldn’t wear it if it did, that it was bought in Dublin, that I’m not a ponyskin smuggler from way back. I had to do all that with some sequinned thing she had once, and what was worse, everyone told me that it could have been cleaned perfectly well in Dublin. I’m not going to do it. I’m allergic to fur, I’m against animals being made into coats, my memory has crumbled. I’d lose it. Get someone else, Violet, get someone else. Remember what happened to poor Hilary. She was months getting hand-knit sweaters to her from Connemara and then bringing them back to women to reknit them because the shoulders weren’t right.
Listen, this is very confidential. I was thinking of getting a sort of check-up while I’m there. It seems a waste to be in London where you can have all these cervical smears and breast examinations just by going to a Family Planning place. Could you ring up and make an appointment for me, I’m sure you’d know how to do all that, and it’s much less messy than having it done here.
What do I do? ‘Hello, is that the Family Planning? There’s a tourist coming over for a week. She’d like a medical examination, please. No, I don’t think she wants any advice about family planning, I think she has that under control. It’s just the free medical she’d like. Yes, she could have it done in Ireland. Yes, they do have proper medical services there. No, it wouldn’t cost her anything, but she doesn’t like hanging about. I’m not sure why; it might be that it interferes with bridge or golf or shopping, depending on what day it is, I suppose. No, I don’t think for a moment that she would regard this as an abuse of your services.’
What I don’t want is to be any trouble to you. I know you lead such a busy life.
How can she manage to make a busy life sound something kind of underground and sordid? I get the feeling that she thinks I do several shifts a week as a Madam in a brothel, and this is why I am too tired to know about boutiques and posh dry-cleaning. Last time she was in Paris, she thought that Ruth was ‘rushing about too much’. It was said with overtones that Ruth might have been rushing from one playboy’s pad to another. Ruth, in fact, had been driven to such hysteria by Violet’s relentless journey to jewellers and furriers that she had invented a heavy social life and gone to see six films by herself in a row, just to get out of the shopping expeditions. I could leave London for a week, but apart from being defeatist, cowardly and unkind it wouldn’t really make anything any better. There would be a dozen horrors waiting for me on my return, parcels delivered to my house or left in the office to readdress and post; tickets, dockets, vouchers, goods to be exchanged. No, it’s better to stay and face it and tell her, in controlled tones, what can and cannot be done.
In rational moments I tell myself that she is not evil, that she must be lonely running around from contact to contact exhausting us all, buying hundreds of pounds’ worth of clothes, sending excited postcards to her rather glum husband and her neighbours. And I wonder why her visit fills me with such dread, when I know she can’t be trying to put me down or upset me continually. That she only does these things by accident. But then, I can hear her voice saying, ‘You must show me what you bought in Australia’ and I’ll take out the boomerang and the didgeridoo, and the huge bottle-opener shaped like a kangaroo. Violet will laugh indulgently and say, ‘What funny rubbishy things, but show me what you really bought.’
Anna’s Abortion
9 July 1977
Anna loved Michael. She was sure of it. Michael was sure of it. Anna knew that she should take the pill, she used to take it two years ago when she loved Stephen, but this time … well it made you fat, it was embarrassing asking the family doctor for it, it might give you varicose veins, and who knows what it could be doing to your insides.
Anna was very organised. She used to put little crosses in her diary when she expected her period; it didn’t happen on May 1st, but Anna had read lots of magazine articles, so she wasn’t worried at all. Anxiety could delay it, and
she had loads of anxiety.
Her father wasn’t well at all. He was only 60 but he was behaving like a man of 90. He was thinking of giving up his large business, he was complaining of pains and aches. Life at home, when she went there every month or so, was far from great; that made her anxious.
Michael made her anxious too, sometimes. He kept saying he liked his independence but if ever he could settle down with anyone, it would be her; he begged her not to rush him. Anna thought that was very honest. She never rushed him at all. Then on May 28th–May 29th this year, a long sunny weekend, Anna realised she had missed her second period, and she couldn’t put it down to anxiety any more. So she did what she had once heard that people did, she took a sample of urine and brought it to Holles Street Hospital with a fee attached to it, and called the next day for a result.
Anna knew that they didn’t normally give out results to patients, so she pretended that a doctor had asked her to leave the specimen in, because he was on holiday, and there had been no problem. No problem until the report said ‘positive’, and then there was every problem.
Her family would die. Yes, she knew that lots of girls had told their parents, and the parents had surprised them by taking it all very well. Her parents were different, they wouldn’t surprise her at all. They had been appalled when a cousin had got married in a hurry four years ago. They would take nothing well. Her mother would say she was putting nails in her father’s coffin. There was no question of telling the family.
She had also heard that fellows took this kind of thing well too, that they did all kinds of cliché things. They rose to responsibilities, they loved the idea of fatherhood, they found that this cemented relationships, they said they were pleased and proud. Michael wouldn’t feel anything like that, he would flee from responsibilities, he would hate and deny the idea of parenthood. He would feel that this had cracked the idea of a relationship wide open.