by Maeve Binchy
Then they went to look at scarves and ribbons and particularly at the kind of ribbon comb attachments that someone going to a glittering evening do might wear in her hair. Mother had short grey hair, hidden on the day of the outing by a hat. She never wore these hair ornaments but she fingered them, lovingly clucking over the prices, but saying that of course if you had the right dress then these ribbons could set it off and make the whole thing into a coordinated outfit that would be very striking. And then they might go to the cookery shop where they would examine whole ranges of coloured cookware and mother would discuss 12-place settings and easy-care napkins.
They would try on jackets, a nice jacket. A nice jacket paid for itself a hundred times over, she would tell the salespeople. And as they would nod and agree, she would see the price and cluck that it was steep but then you were paying for the cut. ‘And the material,’ the assistant might say. ‘Pure wool.’ ‘And the name,’ mother would say and put the jacket back on its hanger.
The tour almost always ended in the bed linen department downstairs. Real down was debated, the kind of goose that had delivered up the feathers for the duvet was identified, queen size and king size beds were clucked over; in the old days there had been just a double bed. Mother nearly always bought a pillowcase, it was wrapped carefully in the distinctive bag of the store and she would leave reluctantly for lunch with Nuala.
Since mother did not walk far, lunch was in Dawson Street or Wicklow Street. It was a nightmare for Nuala, who worked on the southside. She gave up trying to find lunchtime parking and took a taxi instead, arranging for another taxi to pick her up an hour and a half later. This meant nearly two and a half hours away from the office, unheard of in the place where she worked, but Nuala said that not to have it for her mother’s outing was unthinkable. She worked longer hours to compensate and always felt slightly guilty about it.
At lunch mother would talk about the tragedy of growing old on your own without knowing love and a family. Nuala would clench her teeth and smile ever more brightly as she said in a tinny voice that one never knew what was around the corner. And, at the age of 43, with the same relationship, of which her mother knew nothing, she found it harder and harder to play this role. Then it would be Jenny’s turn, what a pity the children had done such odd things, gone to Australia with no job and no plans, didn’t write letters to their gran, were never there when she came to the house. Jenny smiled and shrugged and said that was the way it was, and what could you do?
The sisters’ eyes met across the table. Twelve times a year they felt united by this huge resentment of the mother they both loved. Then Nuala’s taxi would come and she would go, and it was always too soon and nothing had been said and she worked too hard and perhaps that’s why she hadn’t settled down like a normal person. And then Jenny would get the car and take mother home for afternoon tea, never sure whether she wanted one of her children to be there and possibly bring up an argument about the Church, or whether it was better to face into an empty house. And she would put mother on the train. All the way to the station and as they boarded the train, Jenny’s mother talked about the great visit to Brown Thomases. It was a tragedy that it was going to change into that Marks and Spencers.
Last month at lunch she told Jenny and Nuala that she might cease these outings to Dublin. After all, with no lovely visit to Brown Thomases what was the point? Her two daughters looked at her blankly. Nuala began a useless attack, saying that the place had always been a bastion for the rich and privileged and that it was absurd to say it was for ordinary people. Jenny, trying to be a peacemaker, said that BT’s would be across the street and that everything would be just the same. But their mother would not be consoled, without any idea that she was writing off over 20 years of being welcomed warmly to Dublin by her two girls. As far as she was concerned it had been maybe 250 visits to an escapist paradise.
She was 71, too old to have the shining, glittery toy snatched away from her. Too innocent to hide from her children that the disappointment was so great it had clouded her judgment and her love for her family.
A Walk on the Wild Side
25 February 1995
It was usually with a group of friends in those days and they would all make sure to buy a different Sunday newspaper so they could go and have a drink afterwards and read four papers instead of one. It was very companionable then but of course nobody had time to do anything like that now; they were all in marriages or relationships varying from uxorious to deeply unsatisfactory and they would corpse themselves laughing if she were to suggest anything as ludicrous as walking down the pier on a cold Sunday and going to have a few jars.
Nowadays they asked each other to dinner parties, at infrequent intervals, to drinks mornings or to charity dos; the days of sharing newspapers and glasses of lager were long gone. So, if she were to go down the pier, she would go alone. But it might look odd if she met someone she knew, which was part of the purpose of the trip, so she borrowed a dog from a neighbour. She could always say it was a keep-fit exercise. The dog was less fit than herself and seemed to have had enough after a few steps. But she dragged him along behind her. She noticed that everyone else seemed to be following behind bounding hounds who were straining at leashes – she had obviously taken the wrong breed. This was a sleep-by-the-fire-and-wait-for-bits-of-roast-beef-after-lunch kind of dog.
She had dressed quite carefully: a smart jacket with a white shirt coming out over it; dark pants and boots; no handbag or anything prissy like that; hair wind-blown but not messy. If she met anyone from the past she would look fine. She would also have her explanation – her husband was at the golf club for a special competition so she was released from making Sunday lunch and she thought she would blow away the cobwebs. It was mainly true. It was a bit true. And anyway, one of the great things about growing older is that you know people don’t care about your circumstances all that much.
After 10 minutes she met a man she hadn’t seen since they were students. He looked in very poor shape, she thought, and she could hardly believe that he must be the same age as she was.
‘Are you at the same game as myself?’ he asked her hopefully.
‘What game is that?’ She felt she might be. A game that involved beating back loneliness, trying to banish the growing feeling that life had not turned out as she had hoped it would.
‘Waiting for the pubs to open?’ he said, as if it were obvious.
She didn’t want to have a drink with him, his story was bound to have been worse than her own. ‘No, no, purely exercise,’ she said, and bounded on.
He had been such a firebrand at college; they all thought he would have been a politician. She would not allow herself to be brought down by him, he was not someone she had been fond of, there was no room in her heart to feel sorry about acquaintances, people she half knew. She had enough things she really did care about. She met a couple with their teenage children. The children were polite and shook hands; the parents were holding each other’s gloved hands as they shivered in the sea breeze. They told her she was looking terrific and they laughed at the lazy dog who had been so delighted with the pause for chat that he had fallen fast asleep at their feet. Their praise sort of made up for the fact that they were happy and together on a Sunday and holding hands still and that their children would bother to go out walking with them and be courteous enough to greet someone who was introduced.
And she met another couple she knew, walking together in animated conversation. They stopped to exclaim briefly how healthy and young she looked. They went back to their argument, which was about Riverdance and whether people were building all kinds of fantasies and wish fulfilment on it, or whether people who said that were just a shower of begrudgers. They seemed pleased to see her and each hoped to recruit her to their own side of the argument. They assumed she had been to the Point and shared the experience.
She felt nonplussed as she walked on. Imagine, people thought that she had the kind of marriage which involve
d joint outings to something like that, which she would have loved. It must have been two decades since she had been in a lively discussion with him about anything except the latest crisis concerning the children, or the fact that he hadn’t come in for a lunch or dinner that she had prepared. And everywhere she looked, it seemed that they walked the pier as if it was the gangway into the Ark, they went two-by-two, unless they were accompanied by eager, happy children who seemed perfectly content in the company of their parents. The single people that she did see were young, determined and obviously going somewhere.
Perhaps this had not been such a good idea. Then she met the man in the anorak. About 50-ish, hands in pockets, nice friendly face. He was carrying a small exhausted Pekinese in his arms.
‘At least yours is on his feet,’ he said, nodding at her exhausted charge who was gasping for air and for mercy beside her.
‘He’d be a bit heavier to carry than yours,’ she said. And they were friends.
They decided to turn back. They walked companionably back to the mainland, laughing over things like dogs having no stamina. And it was the most normal thing in the world to go and have a drink. When the boy came to the table, the man in the anorak said he hadn’t a penny on him. It would have been nicer if he had been just a little bit apologetic and said that by some amazing chance he had come out without his wallet. But he didn’t; he just said he had no money. So she bought him a pint and a gin and tonic for herself and then another pint and another gin and tonic.
They talked about the football match and Northern Ireland and the new plans for Dún Laoghaire, and Joe Duffy on RTÉ and the divorce referendum and Bishop Casey and the DART and then it was time for the pub to close. And he said that maybe he might see her on the pier next Sunday if she was a regular. And they woke the sleeping dogs and went their ways without exchanging names or family circumstances.
All week she had been wondering if she would walk the pier again. There were so many things to put on one side of the scales. Including the knowledge that it’s always women who feel low and unappreciated, who walk blindly into the most ludicrous situations. And would she be buying him pints all her life? But there was a bit of ballast on the other side too. It’s a long time since she had a proper chat on a Sunday and a bit of fresh air and, in a sense, it all depends on the weather tomorrow.
Peter Panic Attack
6 January 1996
The Messer will be 59 in February, into his sixtieth year he said on the phone, mystified as if it had suddenly crept up on him unfairly from behind.
It had been a long time now, 10 years maybe since I had talked to him; he sounded just the same, like he had sounded in UCD a long, long time ago.
He was calling from London on New Year’s Eve. He was on standby for a flight to Dublin, and had suddenly thought it would be great to see the New Year in with the old gang.
The Messer sounded so enthusiastic about the people of the past that you would get carried along with it and think they were all there waiting to gather in Neary’s. He spoke about them as if we were all still in duffle coats in Earlsfort Terrace. He spoke of people who would be spending New Year’s Eve with their grandchildren, people who had lived abroad for 30 years, people who had become recluses and disappeared from anyone’s lives. He asked warmly after two men who had died, and seemed shocked by the news. He must have known, he must have.
I remember telling him about one myself 10 years ago, and the other was so well known even the Messer would have read about it. And yet you couldn’t feel enraged with him; he was so grieved, and said such warm and appreciative things about them both, remembering the good and the positive.
And after all he had been abroad.
He only came home rarely, on spur of the moment goodwill visits expecting to find everything frozen in a time warp of 35 years ago, a perpetual student life where people would assume he had only been away for a matter of weeks.
And where was he staying: in Dublin?
The question was always asked to the Messer with some trepidation, but even as it was asked you remembered the hollow nature of the request. The Messer always said that he was fine, and he would get fixed up, he never asked straight out for a bed for the night. He knew that the offer of a bed was increasingly refused as the years went by, because it was never for the night; it was for many nights and usually involved other people coming and going and irritation turning into conflict and guilt, huge, huge guilt, because the Messer was a decent person and none of this ever seemed to be his fault. Directly.
But somehow, even though he said he was fine and would get fixed up he never was fine and never did get fixed up, and someone always had to look after him because nobody could be so awful to him as to walk out and leave him there, or so patronising as to give him the price of a hotel room.
So what happened over the years was that you’d try to second guess the Messer, arranging to meet him somewhere in the city centre for a specific time in the middle of the day before things got to the stage that he would come home with you, being firm about your own commitments while assuring him that you were enormously enthusiastic about seeing him again, which was actually true.
His life is lived entirely in the past; he has painted the edges of everything we lived through then with heavy silver, and sees it all through the rosiest of spectacles.
He never remembers any incident that reflects anyone in a poor light, yet he makes us all uneasy because we have felt that time has marched on. Maybe we are all dull and middle-aged and middle class and the Messer who is older than any of us is the gilded youth, the Peter Pan who somehow kept the faith when the rest of us lost our wish to be free spirits.
We even pretend in his presence, people who meet rarely and casually. For his sake we let it be thought that we are all together the whole time and resist asking each other questions that would prove us to be near strangers.
The Messer gives little information about his own life: there was a wife and son a long time ago, and then another wife, and a long-time companion and someone in Prague who might or might not have been a wife. But they are never brought along to meet the friends of his golden youth – they are spoken of vaguely and benignly but with a slight raising of the shoulders, a near shrug, as if their responses and unpredictability are beyond the Messer’s comprehension.
Work seems too dangerous a topic to bring up. Certainly it’s not something that the Messer would introduce into the conversation.
He is interested in an astounded sort of way to hear what the people of his generation did with their degrees or often without them. His own was never conferred, because it was never given, ‘too many’ confusions and mix-ups and situations at the time.
And there are pen pictures of cities far away, all of them great places in their own way but none of them a patch on Dublin, which of course is greatly pleasing and flattering – but doesn’t hold water.
If Dublin is so great … why isn’t the Messer here all the time?
Anyway, as a standby he got on a plane. Of course he did. Quite possibly a passenger with a ticket may have ceded a seat to him. That’s the kind of person he is, charming and helpless and bewildered and good-natured.
And because it was a No Room at the Inn situation on New Year’s Eve he just wandered around the Old Haunts as he calls them looking for ghosts, waiting for the crowd to turn up. You just could not ask the Messer to anyone else’s house, too many years of people in floods of tears, fights in kitchens, the wrong thing being said over dinner tables, unlikely candidates being found in bed with the Messer or even more unlikely candidates being tight-lipped and furious because they were not in bed with him.
All those promises made and broken, all those cars over the years having to drive 30 miles in the rain to collect some late arriving friends that the Messer had assured of a welcome.
And as the clock struck 12 and those of us who had sort of grown up in our different ways celebrated in various parts of the forest I would say a lot of us thought
briefly of the Messer and wondered for a little instant had we been selfish to exclude a man who thought so well of us all, and who had written a memory book in which we all had starring roles.
But I looked around my gathering and felt deeply grateful that he wasn’t there, unwittingly upsetting all the good-natured people I was with, starting a political argument with one, an affair with another and with the sure knowledge that somewhere out there a crowd of Other People were hovering, waiting to join us.
The Messer rang from Shannon Airport last night. He was on standby for a flight out.
He had a great time in Dublin, but when had he not? God, wasn’t it a fantastic city; no, he hadn’t run into anyone from The Old Gang, they had all been tied up or out of town but he had gone to some of the Old Haunts.
And he had met a gorgeous girl celebrating her twenty-first birthday, and she had said to join them and they all went on and on, to pasta in one place and really lovely people, and then a nightclub. Imagine Dublin full of nightclubs! And then they had plenty of room in their place so he stayed, which was just as well because the poor girl had this awful row with her boyfriend on New Year’s Eve as it happened, and it was good that she had an older, wiser man to pick up the pieces, and a lot of their friends were going to the west so he went along too and it had all been great and he was so glad he had just acted on impulse and come to Ireland for the New Year.