by Maeve Binchy
He looked down at his rug on the wheelchair.
‘Of course, like this it stands to reason I don’t make many mates these days.’
‘Yeah, that’s the trouble when you work on your own,’ Johnny agreed, having deliberately misunderstood him. ‘You don’t have mates at work, you miss that. Of course, there are advantages working on your own. If you feel like knocking off an hour earlier or taking a long lunch you can do it.’
Gerry brightened up. Together they talked about working on your own, piece-work rate for the hour. Johnny even went out to the car and asked Gerry’s advice about an old clock that he had picked up at a sale of work. ‘I only bought it for the face, but I think the insides are like scrambled egg.’ Gerry had his eyeglass out, and in minutes it was ticking. The small kitchen filled with pride until it burst. Elizabeth couldn’t have imagined anything that would have brought more pleasure. Addresses were exchanged, if ever any work came the way of Mr Worsky which needed the touch of a craftsman it would be sent to Gerry Sparks.
In the firelight and under the dim centre-bulb the peaky face and bent back of Gerry Sparks was joined with the handsome young Johnny Stone. If they had met in Italy they might have been mates too. But of course Johnny Stone wasn’t old enough to put on a uniform, and the year that he was just old enough they stopped fighting. Elizabeth and Mr and Mrs Benson seemed to exchange innocent, pleased looks about the conversation at the fire. But it was something that could never have been put into words.
Mr Worsky’s cousin was not at all interested in their visit to a house in Jubilee Terrace, a small, poor little place. She was very interested in Elizabeth, a lovely young woman, just right for Mr Stone, and very right for Mr Stone to settle down, too, no more of the romancing.
‘It’s just as well I’m not your young lady,’ said Elizabeth wearily as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom. ‘Since we left London this morning, everyone has assumed I am and that I have a dreadful time with you.’
Could it really only have been this morning that she had said goodbye to Father? She hadn’t given him a thought all day. Perhaps that’s what happened to Mother. But then they were married, which was different. She wondered whether Mother would like to be called Violet tomorrow. She wondered whether Johnny would come in and call like he had at the Sparks’s house. She wondered how Gerry Sparks got out of his wheelchair when he wanted to go to the bathroom, and whether she should try to stay awake and write to Aunt Eileen about the visit. …
There were three more calls on the way to Preston. Elizabeth said nothing about the prices offered to and accepted by a war widow, a clergyman and an elderly doctor. She helped willingly and cooperatively, she wrote things down in her little notebook and she scrambled under a bed in a loft with Johny where their hands touched over some old silver-backed brushes. When they took them downstairs the old doctor said that he vaguely remembered them from his childhood.
‘I’ll buy them if you like,’ Johnny said.
‘Oh, they’re filthy now, and the hair’s all rotting. I’d be ashamed to sell them, I’ll throw them out,’ said the old man.
‘They could be nice if we got them done up, polished you know, and new bristles,’ said Johnny.
He caught Elizabeth’s eye before she looked away.
‘And valuable, Doctor,’ he went on. ‘We might be able to sell them for a lot more than we give you.’
The old doctor smiled.
‘Well, I should hope so my boy,’ he said agreeably. ‘Otherwise what’s the whole business about?’
Johnny celebrated his triumph by avoiding Elizabeth’s eye.
When the signposts said that Preston was only five miles away Elizabeth turned to Johnny almost shyly.
‘I hope you’ll come and stay for supper. … I don’t think they’d have a bed for the night. Not if Harry’s been making all this palaver over doing up the guest room for me, you know. But supper would be super.’
‘Why don’t I just see you in the door, say Hi to Harry and Vi and push off, arrange what time to pick you up on Tuesday and let the family get together as nature intended?’
‘It’s not the family, you know that.’ Elizabeth sounded troubled.
‘I know but it’s enough strain on everyone without having a total stranger there sitting in on it.’
‘But you’re … you’re very good at making chat and sort of helping things along. Please come and stay.’
‘Listen, I’ll come in and see what I think. If I think it’s better for me to go I’ll toddle off, if I think I’m helping I’ll hang around a bit. Will that do?’
Elizabeth nodded. He took her hand and patted it. ‘You don’t have, you didn’t have any awkwardnesses in your family, you know with your mum who calls herself your-ever-loving-mother?’
‘Awkwardnesses? No. Not really.’ He negotiated the wet, slippy road. ‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘You know, like them being too loving or not loving enough. You know. Like them being not what you expected or wanted.’
‘Oh no, heavens, no,’ Johnny laughed. ‘My mother would like me to live with her and have a small car and drive her to see her friends … but I don’t like that as a way of life so I have no intention of doing it. None at all. My mother’s father wanted her to stay at home and look after him, but she didn’t, she ran away with my father. People do what they want to do. Once you know that and accept it you don’t have any problems.’
‘And your father?’
‘He ran off with someone else, with two someone elses. He ran off with people every ten years or so, my mother was the second. He’s frightfully keen on running off with people. …’
‘And you don’t see him?’
‘Why on earth should I? He doesn’t want to see me. Look, it’s not like your case, these folk have been painting a room for you for ages. They want you to come, you wanted to come … where’s the awkwardness? There’s no lies or demands or emotions.’
‘You hate that sort of thing, don’t you?’ said Elizabeth.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘I think you do more than most, you were very annoyed when I was crying yesterday. I could see it.’
‘No, my dear, honestly, I wasn’t annoyed. It’s just, I don’t know, I don’t want to get involved in dramas and tears and heightened scenes. So I never do.’
‘It’s not a bad philosophy I suppose.’
‘It has its drawbacks. People think I’m a bit cold or selfish or too flippant… but perhaps all these things are true … Heigh ho, Preston, jewel of the North, here we come.’
‘Do stay to supper,’ she said.
‘If they ask me,’ he promised.
The bedroom almost brought tears to Elizabeth’s eyes. Only the thought of having Johnny see her once more with a red, puffy face held them back. Harry had bought expensive and hideous ornaments which stood on a shelf. ‘Girls like pretty things,’ he said proudly as he looked at them. The utility furniture had all been painted white and so had rather a nice little bookcase which used to have doors. Elizabeth could see the hinges but they were painted over too. The bed had a flouncy blue and white spread; pictures in what she would now think of as the most awful chocolate-box tradition in shiny new frames covered the walls. In those days of shortages Harry had painted everything in sight. The blue carpet went wall to wall and you could see that he had stitched scraps together to get it to fit properly. His face beamed with achievement.
Johnny spoke first. He was marvelling at the things that should be marvelled at, how perfect the paint surface was … were three? three … yes, he had thought there must be three coats. Johnny marvelled too at how cleverly the electricity work had been done, a light over the bed, another over the wash-hand basin. He praised the bright, clear colours which made it look so cheery even in winter. As he spoke, Elizabeth found her tongue to praise and thank and marvel. She left her bag on the bed and looked around her with gratitude that nearly made Harry crack apart, so broad was his smile. Spontaneously sh
e hugged him, and when she saw the delight in Mother’s eyes she hugged Mother too. It had been a peck on the cheek as she had come in the front door of the shabby little corner shop.
‘Oh Mother, this is great,’ she cried. Mother hugged her back. Over Mother’s shoulder she saw Johnny nodding slightly and she knew she had been right to decide not to say Violet.
Johnny stayed to supper, the atmosphere growing more and more cordial. Harry was like a big child, he had grown fatter and more genial in the two years. Mother had become even thinner, if that were possible; she seemed nervy, she smoked a lot and her eyes looked huge in her thin face. She jumped up half a dozen times, nervous, anxious to please.
They both seemed pleased, in a childish and obvious way, that Johnny did not know Father, Elizabeth thought; in fact Harry went so far as to say, ‘That’s good, lad, we’re the first to have a look at you, eh?’ as if Elizabeth had taken Johnny there on some kind of tour of approval.
Elizabeth answered that one without any embarrassment.
‘The reason that Johnny doesn’t know Father is that Johnny is in Mr Worsky’s and Father, as you said in your letter, Mother, hardly knows where the antique shop is.’ She paused and, lest it appear to leave an opportunity for Father to be criticised, she spoke again. ‘You would be amazed at Father really, both of you. He is such a bridge addict now. No worries about what to get him for Christmas, new cards or scoring pads, or little bridge ashtrays. And he meets people all the time. As soon as somebody new comes to the area, if they can play bridge he’s met them in a week.’
‘Fancy George having a whole circle of friends.’ Mother was mildly amazed, as if it were a story about someone she knew a long time ago.
‘They’re not exactly friends.’ Elizabeth was thoughtful.
‘Of course they’re friends,’ interrupted Johnny, ‘if he goes to their houses and they come to Clarence Gardens, what are they? Enemies? Honestly, Elizabeth, you want people to exchange blood from their arms like Red Indians.’
Everyone laughed.
‘We did that in Ireland once, Aisling and I,’ said Elizabeth suddenly. ‘I’d quite forgotten.’
‘Yes, well you see,’ said Harry meaninglessly. He was trying to say something that would make that Johnny realise he was on his side.
It worked. Johnny put his arm around Harry’s shoulder. ‘Let the girls talk a bit, Harry, and you show me this workshop of yours, and if you come across any of those old weighing scales on your travels, you know the old-fashioned ones with brass weights. …’
Mother lit another cigarette and leaned across to clutch Elizabeth’s arm.
‘Oh, my dear, he’s so nice, he’s such a nice young man. I’m simply delighted for you. I worried about that too … you know, as well as anything else. I worried that you mightn’t have a boyfriend or a social life. You mention so little about it in your letters.’
Elizabeth sighed. ‘I suppose it’s useless my telling you that he isn’t my boyfriend. Really, until today and yesterday we’ve hardly even had a proper conversation. He’s someone I work with on Saturdays. But I agree, he is very nice, isn’t he? He’s been great company, simply smashing on the trip. The time just flew by.’
‘I know,’ said Mother. ‘That’s what’s wonderful about being with the right person.’
They spoke of him a lot during the weekend, which was a good thing as it kept them off the topic of Father.
Mother felt guilty about Father, she felt guilty about walking out with no proper explanations.
‘I don’t think explanations would have done much good,’ Elizabeth said several times, feeling years older than she had felt the day Mother left Clarence Gardens. ‘Father doesn’t listen much, I’ve come to think.’
Sometimes Harry spoke about Father too, in a worried tone. ‘You’re a grown-up young woman, Elizabeth, and I don’t want to sound like an adult talking to a child … but your mother and I worry about you down in that house, it’s not healthy for a child to live alone with a … well with such a remote man as your father. Now Violet won’t hear a word against him, and I wouldn’t speak one word either against a person’s father but you have to agree that he’s an odd fish, a cold person. He has no blood. A real cold fish. There’s an art college in Preston. …’
‘I know, Harry, but. …’
‘And we’d be no interference, I mean you’ve been having your own way, you could have whoever you liked into your own room … that’s a fair offer. We’d give you a key, you could come and go. Violet’s eyes light up now that you’re here … and mine too. I think it’s champion, as they say here, to have you in and out. …’
‘You’re very kind, Harry,’ sighed Elizabeth, and meant it. And she also meant it when she said that Mother was marvellous to her and had been like the kind of elder sister you read about in books. But no, she must really stay where she was. And no, really, she wouldn’t join the general outcry against Father. He had a life to live just like everyone else, and he lived it. If he didn’t have much joy that was bad luck and circumstance.
They eventually stopped trying to change her mind. In her shiny new bedroom, Elizabeth lay awake at night listening to the strange sounds of a different city and wondered whether everyone else had to keep being kind to people and talking down to them. She wished that someone would make all the decisions for her, and consult her views and take her moods into consideration.
In what seemed like a totally separate part of her mind she wondered how Johnny was getting on, and whether he would come back with a rabbit for dinner as he had promised Harry he would.
The rabbit was a great success. Johnny had arrived when the shop was very busy. Mother and Harry were both dealing with children who spent thirty minutes trying to decide how to spend their tuppences and their sweet points. Tired women buying thin slices of pressed meat and packets of semolina, old men shuffling in for tobacco. Elizabeth had been reading in the kitchen when she heard the cries of welcome for Johnny in the shop. Harry rushed back in beaming like an idiot.
‘He’s here, he’s here, and he didn’t forget, he’s got the rabbit. Hurry Elizabeth, there’s a dear, get out the pot. Your mother will be in in a minute. …’
Elizabeth wondered how she could have ever feared Harry, or Mr Elton as she had called him then. How could she have thought him a sophisticated dangerous man, he was a big baby. She wished that he could be more cool, less excited, Johnny might think they were all very simple and overimpressed by him.
But no, Johnny seemed just as excited. ‘I’m going to spend the night here, and we’ll leave early tomorrow. Your mother’s invited me. We’ll have the best rabbit pie ever eaten in this country since before the war.’
It was the best rabbit pie that had been eaten in the country since the war. Elizabeth had made pastry, Johnny had gone to the pub for cider. They set a table and Mother made up her face. Johnny told them about how he had got the rabbit. The farmer who had been clearing out his furniture always offered people the chance to shoot a rabbit, because he was too old and arthritic to shoot himself, but he loved to go with another huntsman. Johnny had shot three, one for the farmer, one for his party and one, all wrapped up in wet grass at the back of the van, for Mr Worsky.
And they sang some songs, and Harry recited ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God’, and Mother did an imitation of how the nuns taught them to curtsey, which was hilarious. Elizabeth was pressed for a party piece. She didn’t have any, she said. Mother said that there were always songs in Ireland, that Elizabeth said people used to sing in Maher’s. With her hands by her side she began:
‘Oh Danny Boy
The pipes, the pipes are calling
From o’er the glens
And down the mountain side
The summer’s gone and all the leaves are falling
T’is you must go
Must go and I must bide. …’
Then they all joined in:
‘Oh come you back …
When sun shines in the mead
ow …
And when the fields are hushed and white with snow …
For I’ll be there in sunshine and in shadow …
Oh Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so.’
Every one of them, including Johnny, had tears in their eyes. Oh God, thought Elizabeth, why do I have to wreck everything? Why couldn’t she have found a cheerful song to sing, something that would have made people laugh like everyone else was able to do? Why did she have to pick the most mournful song in the world? The one party she had been to since she came back from Kilgarret and now she had to close it down by singing a sad song.
They were washing-up and scraping chairs and putting things away. Everyone was saying what a great night it had been. Mother fussed about sheets and blankets for Johnny, Harry said better be on the road tomorrow before six o’clock in order to avoid the worst of the traffic and the big lorries in the narrow streets.
Elizabeth didn’t sleep, she kept jerking awake in the middle of a bad dream where Gerry Sparks from his wheelchair was holding her wrist.
‘Why did you come to see me if you weren’t going to marry me?’ he cried over and over again. Elizabeth felt herself running away while his mother Mrs Benson and Harry shouted after her, ‘You’re always the same, you start things without thinking and you hurt people. …’
*
After their last afternoon call at an orphange, where Johnny bought four boxes full of old cutlery, the rain became so heavy that they had to pull in to the side of the road. The windscreen wipers couldn’t cope with the torrents hurtling at them. As they sat waiting for it to ease a policeman with a flashing torch came to the window.
‘Road’s flooded ahead, you’ll never get past. We’re turning back traffic already. You take your missus back to the town there, only a mile or two, you’ll not get to London tonight.’
‘Well, you’re my witness. I did try to get you home!’ Johnny laughed goodnaturedly as he reversed the car and was waved on by the policeman in the sheets of rain.
‘What will we do?’ Elizabeth asked. She wished she could take everything as casually and cheerfully as Johnny did. Already her mind was racing with problems. What would Father say when she didn’t turn up? Should she telephone him now before he left the bank? What time would she get back tomorrow? How could she explain about missing her lectures? Might Mr Worsky think that she and Johnny were just having a good time flitting about the country in his van?