by Maeve Binchy
Ken, who hadn’t told a funny story about work in years, started doing imitations of the top men at work. It was as if by making fun of them he took the terror out of them, they stopped being demons. Judith herself told marvellous tales about the people who came in to look at houses that were way beyond their price range and how they had to be very tactful with a well-known personality who kept insisting on being taken on tours of inspection but who they all knew hadn’t a penny in the bank.
Often Judith had felt that Sylvia must envy their family life. She had never married. She did have an affair for a long time with an older man, she confided to Judith, for ten years of her life from the age of twenty-five to thirty-five; she had loved him but then he had tired of her.
‘I wouldn’t stay around with anyone who didn’t want me any longer. I have too much pride,’ Sylvia had stated very firmly.
‘Of course you didn’t have children, that might have made you stay,’ Judith had suggested gently.
Sylvia had been adamant. No, even more than ever if she had children. She would not force herself on someone who didn’t want her, not at any price. It wouldn’t be fair on children either to force them to live in a home without love.
Judith had argued it agreeably, thinking it was one of the many topics they talked about with Sylvia. Like Power and Taste and Class. She was so bright and lifted them out of the humdrum household things they talked about on their own.
But now as she sat shivering in the bowling alley Judith realised that Sylvia had not been talking idly. Sylvia had been laying down the lines for the confrontation that was to come. Sylvia was warning Judith not to live in a loveless home.
They had changed their shoes and there was a delay in getting a lane. Judith leaned against a wall. It was harder than she thought to keep things sounding normal; she felt sure her face must be flushed and that anyone could see her thoughts.
Only Ken noticed that there was anything amiss.
‘You’d tell me if there was anything wrong, if you thought it was anything . . . well . . . anything . . .’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course I would,’ Judith lied at him and looked straight into his eyes. His big, kind brown eyes that she had trusted since she met him twenty years ago when they were sixteen. She had trusted him all those years when their parents said they were far too young for each other and when his firm sent him away on a training course. It had never occurred to her that you didn’t trust Ken, and here he was with his face full of pain. Pain because he was going to tell her soon. Probably before Christmas. If she could stop him from doing that then things would be all right, or a bit more all right than they were.
It was like not walking on the lines on a pavement. Like when you are on a diet, knowing that if you got over the first three days, you could stick to it. Somehow if she could stop him telling her then it would mean it wasn’t real.
Judith knew that Sylvia would want to be civilised. That was one of her great words. Sylvia had little time for those who were not able to take whatever fate or indeed their loved ones handed out in a manner that wasn’t civilised. Judith had often thought it was a bit harsh to expect someone who had lost everything to go on with life as if nothing had happened. Sylvia had shrugged and said that surely it was better than tearing each other to bits.
There would be time to think about how civilised she would be later, Judith told herself. The most important thing was to have no declaration. No explaining of how for the first time in his life he had found real and true love. No, Ken, not when the whole world was getting ready for Christmas.
Ken touched her hand. ‘They’re ready for us now, Judith, if you want to?’ He had never called her Judy, or Jude; she had loved that, from the start, he had known that when she said her name was Judith, standing there in her school uniform, it was important to her. He liked being called a shortened version of Kenneth, he said it made him seem more like a mate. He had never wanted to feel a person of importance as Judith had. Perhaps that was what had happened, with her petty titles and her making the job in the estate agency sound so powerful. Perhaps he just longed for someone less pompous than her, someone lively and light-hearted like Sylvia.
Perhaps Sylvia was always eager to make love. Judith had been feeling so tired lately. Perhaps Sylvia sounded more interested in his office. Perhaps she encouraged him to do new things, exciting things like taking up golf, when he was only a few short years off forty.
But surely this was nonsense? No agony aunts gave this kind of advice to abandoned wives anymore. Did they? Judith felt ashamed that she must have been too smug to read their pages recently. She felt sure that marriages and relationships were based on much more equal terms these days. She didn’t feel sure anymore of anything.
Automatically she had bowled and somehow the skittles had fallen. Her two children were clapping her eagerly. What kind of life would she give them when their father had left? Would they still come here on a Wednesday? What an empty, pointless evening it would be.
‘I honestly don’t think you are well, Judith, you must sit down quietly.’ Ken’s voice had never sounded kinder. To her horror she felt her eyes fill with tears.
‘I think I must be a bit tired, that’s true,’ she admitted. ‘It’s probably work.’
‘I used to say that about work too.’ He beamed at her. ‘But nowadays I just refuse to let it get me down. We are here such a short time.’
There was something ominous in everything he said. Like once upon a time in the days before Sylvia when he had nobody to liven him up he had been beaten down by work. Like the phrase about life being very short. Judith could hear his speech when he was saying goodbye, it would have a lot about life being short and everyone having to seize what happiness they could find.
At the restaurant she saw him ruffling Tommy’s hair and smiling proudly at Jane. He will always love them in that proud, wondering way, Judith thought, even if I am not civilised and fight him over access to them. But she knew she wouldn’t fight him over Tommy and Jane. It wouldn’t be fair, they were grown people, almost twelve and fourteen. And they’d probably prefer to be with their father and Sylvia anyway.
There was Christmas music in the restaurant too. It seemed like a harsh, cruel mockery to Judith, who had always loved Christmas.
She worked like a madwoman in order to keep the house full of people and full of activity. She pretended to be too busy or too tired on the five occasions her husband tried to sit her down alone and tell her that he was going to leave. He even rang her at work.
‘I’m going to be in your area, Judith. I wonder could we meet for coffee, or lunch even?’
He was never in her area. He had never taken time for lunch.
‘No, Ken,’ she had said. ‘After Christmas. Please, whatever it is can wait until after Christmas.’
‘It can’t really,’ he said. She felt ice water in her stomach, but she kept the bright tone in her voice.
‘It will have to, darling, I’m flat out, on a countdown really. If you’d like me to stay sane, let’s not try to say anything more complicated than good morning to each other until the festive season is over. All right?’ Her voice sounded strange and brittle even to herself.
‘That’s a very strange way for two people to live together,’ Ken had said simply.
She knew he was right. But she could hear the bell-like tones of Sylvia in his voice. She could hear that strong opinionated tone. Little blonde Sylvia, too proud and independent to stay with her older man when he had waned in love. Sylvia for whom everything was absolute.
Judith realised in shock that it was now ten days since they had seen that same Sylvia. In half a year there had never been a gap like this. Under normal circumstances she would have been on the phone after two days to know was everything all right. Judith’s pain had dulled a little but it became sharp again thinking of her faithless friend. Sylvia must have agreed to stay out of the picture until Ken had admitted everything, made clear the way and then they could all
start being civilised, maybe at Christmas lunch.
It took enormous stamina and great cunning. But apart from when they were alone in the big double bed which they had won in a competition a decade ago when you had to make up a romantic limerick about love, Judith managed to spend no time with her husband.
Some nights when he came to bed she pretended to be asleep and lay long hours listening to his even breathing and the heavy tick of the clock. Two nights she had reached out for him and embraced him so strongly that they were making love before he even realised it. Then afterwards she would have no chat. She said she wanted to lie there in silence. She wondered sometimes what he told Sylvia. Did Sylvia think he was weak, that he was changing his mind?
Judith had no hopes that this was just a fantasy. She had run into Sylvia at the hairdresser. The small attractive face had looked at her quizzically.
‘No point in our talking, I suppose?’ she had said. ‘We’ll have to wait until it can all be done in a civilised way.’
Judith hadn’t been prepared. If she had, she might have said, ‘That will be a very long wait.’ As it was she said in a funny breathy tone, ‘I know, isn’t it dreadful the toll that Christmas takes, we must all be mad really to get so fussed. After Christmas it will all be different.’
‘It certainly will,’ said Sylvia, her glance never wavering.
Judith had nearly passed out during her hair-do. Her heart was beating so hard she felt that everyone in the salon must be aware of it.
The day arrived. Their house must have been the most beautifully decorated on the street. Their Christmas tree the most splendidly festooned. The cards more artistically arranged than ever, each present wrapped to perfection. The Christmas food was like a spread in a colour supplement showing you how it should be done, each mince pie was scalloped, the bacon rolls to go with the turkey were finished off in identical shape and size as if they were about to go on parade for a royal inspection.
Judith’s father and Ken’s mother were joining them for lunch. There were candles waiting to be lit, fairy lights on the tree and everything was perfect.
Judith paused with her hands on the back of her chair. This was probably the last Christmas they would have like this. She would not be able to go to all this trouble if there were no Ken around. The children would grow up and leave eventually. They would have lives of their own, homes of their own. There would be Christmases when they would feel they had to have their mother and make all the arrangements as she and Ken were doing for their father and mother. But her life with Ken was over.
Judith felt a terrible weariness as if the three weeks of frenzied running had caught up with her. She would be too tired now to lift the turkey from the oven, she was too tired to fight. He could tell her whenever he wanted to; the terrible thing was that he was leaving her. After twenty years of knowing him, and sixteen years as his wife she was going to lose this good, kind man. The loneliness was like a terrible ache.
She hadn’t noticed him coming into the room. The others were all in the sitting room, the presents had been opened and were still being admired. He came up and took her hand.
‘Please don’t run away from me anymore. Please. Just for a few short moments. Just for all that we’ve had together in the past.’
‘Very well.’ Her voice was just a breath.
‘It’s not easy.’
‘No, Ken, I know it’s not.’
‘You see, I know you’ve known. That made it unbearable.’
Somehow it wasn’t as bad as she had feared, his saying the words.
She had thought this would be the worst bit, this was what she had been trying to avoid. Now she knew that the worst part was that he was going to leave, that she would be without this kind, good friend and love forever.
‘It’s very sad, Ken,’ she said. Quite simply, without any disguises, without any accusation. She was just stating a fact.
‘I’ve been so foolish and so cruel and so selfish,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I’m no good at anything, not my job, not running a home here, nothing. Maybe that’s why I did it.’
‘I don’t suppose it matters why.’ Her voice was heavy now.
‘Can you ever forgive me?’
‘I suppose we’ll all have to be civilised eventually. But it will be a bit hard.’ She looked at him pitifully.
His hand came out and he stroked her hair.
‘Judith, I’m so sorry.’
‘I just didn’t want to talk about it before Christmas,’ she said.
‘And I did, desperately,’ he said.
‘But I didn’t want it to spoil their Christmas for them, I wanted to be able to let them have this one to look back on . . .’
‘Do they have to know? Why do we have to tell them?’ he asked. Humble now.
‘But when you’ve gone . . .’
‘Do I have to go?’ he said.
‘You don’t want to go?’ She looked at him in disbelief.
‘Only if you send me away. I’d understand it if you did. We never meant to be unfaithful to each other. You weren’t, I was. How are you to believe me when I say it’s over and I’m so sorry I could kill myself for hurting you, for being so stupid.’
‘You don’t love her, you don’t want to go?’ She said the words in a kind of wonder. The firelight seemed to flicker more brightly on the silver on the table which had been polished until her poor hands had nearly fallen off.
‘I don’t love her. But can you love me anymore when I was so untrue, so weak and selfish?’ His big brown eyes, troubled and guilty, looked at her as she had seen them that day three weeks ago. They were full of shame and guilt but there was hope in them, hope and love.
‘I’ll be able to love you,’ she said. ‘Of course I will.’
She put her arms around him and she felt the tiredness leave her. She held him close and stood like that even when the door opened and her son and daughter, her father and her mother-in-law came in.
It didn’t matter. It was Christmas. People were allowed to do foolish things when their hearts were full and their hope had not been taken away after all.
The Christmas Child
THERE WAS AN OLD STORY THAT WHEN PADDY CROSBIE WAS recording ‘School Around the Corner’ for the first time, he asked a small boy to tell him a funny incident. The child took a deep breath and said, ‘It was Christmas Eve, and my sister came in the door from England and said, “I’m pregnant”, and Da said, “Beautiful effing beautiful”, and we all laughed.’
Dot laughed more ruefully than others because as she used to say to herself . . . it was her story exactly.
It had been Christmas Eve when she had announced the same news. Things had been different back then. Very different. Her father hadn’t laughed at all. He didn’t even manage a smile during the chilly January wedding. It wasn’t as if he’d been an old man, but he’d had an old man’s attitudes and hardness of heart. But then those were different times, and the town was small. And most of all he blamed himself, he felt he hadn’t been parent enough for Dot, that somehow he had betrayed his promise to Dot’s mother who had died long long ago.
It was useless Dot trying to tell him that no amount of mothers would have kept her out of Martin’s arms and that she felt nothing but delight to be having his child.
Her father had turned his head away, holding up his hands. The situation was bad enough, must she now glory in her ways?
Dot used to look at pictures of her dead mother and wonder would the reaction have been the same. Might her mother have held her and consoled her, congratulated her even?
But it was foolish to be sentimental, it might as well have been the Middle Ages in a small country town.
No doubt the calm eyes of this woman in the photo frame would not have been calm at such news. And anyway it had all turned out so well, a beautiful daughter, Dara, born in the springtime, a happy marriage for years and years. Well twenty years. And that was more than most people had. It was more than her p
arents had.
It had seemed natural to go and live with her father again. Why should the two of them live in big empty houses with their memories?
Dara had been against it. It would mean an end to freedom, she had warned, her mother would grow old before her time caring for Grandfather. It wasn’t what Father would have wanted, Mother to be entombed with an old man, an old man who had been so disapproving of her. There had been no point in Dot trying to cover up her father’s long sense of grievance about the shotgun wedding. It was there in every sigh and headshake.
Dara begged her mother not to go back to her old home. ‘He was so cold to you there when you told him about me. Don’t go back now just because he’s ancient and decrepit and can’t manage anymore.’
Dot smiled. Her father was a sprightly pensioner, anything less incapable she had found hard to imagine. And they wouldn’t be on top of each other. Dot would move in down in the basement. She could give her piano lessons there easily, the pupils wouldn’t even disturb her father, they could come in by a separate entrance.
‘You think too much about him,’ Dara had grumbled. ‘Mark my words, it won’t work out well.’
But it had worked very well, the years living with her father. He had a busy life, led with committees and friends, and little outings.
Time passed peaceably. Dara moved in and out of their lives, bringing laughter and friends. But never just one friend. Never the man she was going to marry.
Dot longed to be a grandmother, she wished that her dark, handsome daughter would find a man she loved and start a family. Dara wasn’t getting any younger, but Dot told herself that Dara knew only too well what age she was, she would scarcely appreciate her mother reminding her.
So Dot was always bright and interested in stories of new friends, new interests, new and bewildering successes at work. Dara, small dark-eyed Dara, the light of her life, was apparently a killer in the money market. She talked of stock exchanges in Tokyo and New York as easily as her mother and father had talked of music examinations for their pupils, as her grandfather talked of the Parish Council.