by Maeve Binchy
Dot sighed, they had wanted the best for their only daughter, she and Martin had travelled long hours on buses in the rain to teach in schools, they had taken the tone deaf children of ambitious parents and forced scales and tunes into them in hours of joyless work. There had never been a car, even when they could afford one, always keep a nest egg there, just in case. Dara might want to do a Masters in America, they would need the funds.
And they had never regretted a minute of it. Martin and Dot rejoiced over their daughter, and they forgave Dot’s father his head-shaking, his sense of lives destroyed, marriage anticipated and lingering shame. That was the way he was, it was his generation, they had told each other. The man remembered tales of the Easter Rising, before the founding of the State. How could he be expected to understand what was going on?
Always around Christmas time Dot felt glad that there had been no coolness, no falling out or even a sense of distance between them. She decorated the old house as she had done for as long as she could remember.
It was somehow unchanging. Dot would put on her wellingtons and go out to the walls in the long wet lane behind their garden, and pull off great fronds of ivy. She ironed and folded the red ribbon each year so that it was ready to drape in big loose bows around the house. Even when Martin had been alive they used to bring a lot of their Christmas cards here to make the place look more festive. Dot looked back on it all, the Christmases when Martin had carved the turkey, and the ones that went before and came after, they were all a long continuous line, same red ribbons, same kind of ivy. Just Dara’s face changing, growing up, growing older even. Last year she had looked drawn and tired. But she had assured her mother that she was well and happy. Dot knew better than to pry, and was never tempted to offer advice. What could a middle-aged piano teacher offer in the way of counsel to a bright young star of the money market?
Dot’s father had brought out a tired neglected potted palm to be added to the decorations. It was far from lustrous, but he was fond of it.
‘I thought we could use this.’ He sounded a little diffident. Still, he was his old self, sure in the rightness of everything he believed in, which included leaving plants in the dark.
‘It’s lovely, I’ll put a ribbon around it,’ Dot said. Carefully she sprinkled a dusting of Christmas glitter over it. It looked quite splendid, she thought happily. Maybe this is what she and Martin should have done with their lives, run a flower shop, created sparkling Christmas decorations rather than teach unmusical children to play the piano. She was smiling to herself at the thought and didn’t hear the door open.
It was Dara, back from wherever she had been . . . certainly another country . . . maybe even another continent.
They sat in the firelight, companions and friends as well as mother and daughter. Dara told of the terrible rush to catch the plane, of the traffic, the crowds, the shops. At the mention of shops she leaped up and opened a parcel. It was a beautiful red silk jacket for her mother.
‘I couldn’t possibly . . .’ Dot was astounded. It was designer fashion, something for a younger woman, not for Dot.
But her daughter’s eyes were shining, she said that when she saw it . . . it reminded her of the scarlet ribbons and all the wonderful Christmases here at home.
Dot blinked the tears of gratitude out of her eyes, she tried on the jacket. She didn’t look like a middle-aged woman, she looked terrific. She stared with amazement at her rection in the mirror.
Behind her she saw Dara’s face. It looked different somehow, perhaps that was just because it was a rection. Dot turned around but she had been right, there was something different, Dara was going to tell her something.
‘I have some very seasonal news,’ she said.
Dot’s heart missed a beat.
‘What are you telling me?’ she said, her face full of hope.
‘What you told Grandfather in this very house a long time ago,’ said Dara.
It was another era, the girl stood there proud and sure, happy that her Christmas news was welcome, that this baby would delight as she had done.
Dot folded her daughter in her arms, she stroked the dark hair, she cried with happiness.
‘And tell me about him, when will we meet him. When will you get married?’ Dara pulled away.
‘Oh mother, I’m not getting married or anything,’ Dara said.
‘No, no.’ Dot’s voice was soothing, she didn’t want to spoil the moment, the wonderful Christmas moment.
‘It was never on the cards. I mean that wasn’t part of what this is all about.’
‘I see,’ said Dot, who didn’t see.
They sat together in the firelight, she held her daughter’s hand as she had done during Christmas times long ago. She rejoiced that next year there would be another person here. A baby looking up and smiling at the lights and the ribbons.
She wouldn’t ask now, about the man who had fathered this child, but was apparently never part of anything that this was about. She would hear eventually about why marriage had never been on the cards.
She must get the words and the tone right when she was telling her father about it. She must try to make him see what she couldn’t see herself.
There was a tap on the door. Dara leaped to her feet.
‘Grandfather!’ She threw her arms around him as she had always done. ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she cried.
‘Well, well, well. Isn’t that great news,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to have a bottle of champagne for that, what Dot?’
Dot looked at them amazed. Where was the freezing out of all those years ago? Wait until he heard the rest of the story! Dot’s heart was heavy that his unexpected first reaction would be bound to change.
‘I’m not getting married or anything, Grandfather, I’m not ready to settle down . . . if you see what I mean.’ She looked at him confident that he would understand the incomprehensible. But Dot’s father seemed able to understand twenty times as much as he had understood all those years ago.
‘I think that’s very sensible of you, but then you were always a sensible young woman. Dot, did you say you were going to get us a drop of champagne to celebrate or are you going to stand there until Christmas is over with your mouth open and your eyes like saucers?’
The Apprenticeship
IT WAS TO BE ONE OF THE MOST STYLISH WEDDINGS OF THE YEAR. Florrie thought that if anyone had been giving odds a quarter of a century ago when she was born whether this child would ever be a guest at something like this, those odds would have been enormous. A child born in a small house in a small street in Wigan didn’t seem likely to end up as the bride’s best friend at what the newspapers were calling the wedding of the decade. If only her mother had lived, Florrie thought, if only her father had cared. They might have been able to get some mileage out of it, some reward for the long hours of work, the high hopes.
There would be pictures of Florrie in tomorrow’s papers, probably a glimpse of her on tonight’s television news. She would figure certainly in the glossy magazines, her hat alone would ensure she was well snapped. She would be seen laughing and sharing a joke probably with some youngish and handsome member of the aristocracy. This would not be hard, because unusually for a society wedding there might not be many young women friends of the bride around. And the groom’s friends being horsey would not be as photogenic. No, Florrie knew that she would figure in the Tatler and Harper’s. And she knew how to smile without showing a mouthful of teeth and how to raise her chin which made her neck look long and upper class.
She knew that it looked far classier not to be seen with a glass in her hand, but to appear fascinated by the particular braying chap that she was meant to be talking to.
Florrie knew all of this because she had worked at it, and learned it, like she had never worked at anything when she was at school. Long ago in a different place and at a different time, with Camilla, except of course that Camilla had not been Camilla then, she had been Ruby. And Ruby and Florrie had been best fr
iends. As in many ways they were still best friends today. The society columns might well describe Florrie tomorrow as a very close friend of the bride. But it would not say that they had grown up together, that they had shared great doorstep sandwiches in their lunch hour, that they had collected old newspapers just so that they could read the society pages and see how people lived in a different and better world.
They had read their subject carefully, young Ruby and young Florrie. No hint of social climbing or being a hanger-on. Not even the most suspicious could fault Camilla or catch her out in a lie today. Camilla had always said she was from way up North, that her parents were dead, that she had hardly any family. Better to stick as close to the truth as possible, she had advised Florrie, less for them to unearth, and you can never be caught out in a lie. Even if they found out she had once been Ruby, Camilla was prepared to say it had been a pet name. She thought it was terribly brave and funny of Florrie to hold on to her name. But then Florrie was such a character! Florrie had held on to her name because she remembered her mother holding her as a little girl.
‘I had a doll once called Florrie,’ her mother had said. ‘I never thought I’d have a little baby of my own, a beautiful baby to look after.’ Florrie was three when she heard this first, hardly a baby, and still further from babyhood when her mother dressed her for school and held her face gently between red rough hands. ‘Florrie,’ she had breathed in a voice full of admiration and love. ‘Such a beautiful name for a beautiful little girl. They wanted me to call you Caroline . . . but I wanted a beautiful name for you, one you’d love . . . Florence. It means a flower, little Florrie, beautiful little flower.’
Ruby’s mother might have thought she was a little jewel. She might even have said so, but Camilla never said it. Camilla said nothing about her parents. Except that they were dead. Which was true.
They had died together in a coach crash, on the very first holiday of their married life. Florrie’s father had said that’s what you got for grand ideas, coach tours to the Continent, no less. Florrie’s mother had said maybe they should take in the child. Ruby was eleven, she had nobody else. Everyone had said it was a great idea. After all it was unusual to be an only child in their street. Now Ruby and Florrie were like twins. And apart from reading all those ‘silly books’ as people called the magazines they read, they were sensible girls too. Not silly like some, not getting into trouble with boys. Hardworking. On Saturdays they worked in the beauty salon, and they learned how it was all done. The proprietor never had two such willing assistants. As well as sweeping floors and folding towels, they stood entranced watching the facials and manicures.
The customers liked them, two bright youngsters full of unqualified admiration. The customers didn’t know they had come to learn. As they went to the fashion stores to learn, and as they worked in the good hotel to watch. And they did secretarial courses at night. By the time they had their O-levels they were ready for anything. Ruby was ready to leave, to go South to start Stage Two. Florrie could go nowhere, her mother was failing fast.
She sat by her mother’s bed and listened to the homespun wisdom, with a heart that was filled with impatience as well as love. She heard her mother beg her to believe that dad was a good man really. It was just that he was a bit mulish, and drank a little too much. Dad had said no kind word in the seventeen years that Florrie had lived in his house. She nodded and pretended that she agreed with the mother who would not be leaving the hospital and coming home. Her mother said that Ruby was right to have gone to London, she was impatient, she would have been silly to stay around. The woman found nothing odd that the child she had taken in had abandoned her. Ruby has great unhappiness in her soul she said. Florrie sat by the bed and gritted her teeth. Patience and forgiveness like this were unrealistic. Surely they couldn’t be considered virtues. The nurses liked her, the handsome tall girl, a blonde with well-cut hair and long pink fingernails, unlike her stooped and work-weary mother. The daughter had character, the nurses told each other. She wouldn’t stay long with the bad-tempered father once the poor woman passed away.
Florrie stayed a week. Her father’s farewell was grudging, as every other gesture had been. He had always known she would go, he said, too high and mighty by far for them. No, she needn’t keep coming back up, there wasn’t all that much more to say.
Florrie was astonished at the change in her friend in ten short months. Vowel sounds had altered, and that wasn’t all. Ruby was no longer Ruby. It’s only a name she had explained, it could have been anything.
‘I know,’ Florrie had said, ‘I should have been Caroline.’
‘Then be Caroline,’ Camilla had begged.
‘Never!’ Florrie’s eyes had flashed at the thought.
They looked at each other then, a long look.
‘It’s only a name,’ Florrie had said eventually. ‘I’m on for everything else.’
And it was like the old days, they laughed as they heard each other’s phrases, you never said you had been to the WC or the toilet, it was the lavatory. You didn’t say serviette, you said napkin, and it wasn’t posh to have paper ones that you could throw away when they got crumpled. They had plenty of time: it was an apprenticeship, they told each other. They had until they were twenty, then they would be ready: to move among the smart and the beautiful, to be at ease among them, to marry them and live in comfort for the rest of their lives.
It would only be hard if they were unprepared. They had heard too many tales of people being trapped by their humble origins. Camilla and Florrie would be different. They would invent no pedigree which could be checked and found faulty. They would shrug and ask did such things matter anymore. They would look so much the part and seem to care so little about proving themselves that soon they would be accepted. They would try hard but would never be seen to try at all, that was the secret.
And soon they were indeed ready. And it wasn’t nearly as difficult as they thought. There was a career structure: chalet girls in ski resorts, a few weeks working in smart jewellers and in art houses so that they met the right type of girl. They were slow to take up with the right type of men at the beginning. They wanted other girls to be their allies at the start. And anyway they wanted to be ready when they found the really right men. They had noticed that it wasn’t only the Royals who liked their girlfriends not to have played the field, a lot of the Uppers thought that girls who had been around a lot might not be good wife material, and after all one wouldn’t like to think that lots of chaps had been with one’s wife.
And in the meantime, because they were so bright and met so many people, they actually got good jobs. Camilla was high up in an estate agency and Florrie was now a partner in a firm of interior decorators. Years of watching for quality and trying to define it had paid off for both of them.
And then Camilla showed a couple of town houses to a chap who thought she was quite super and asked her to his place in the country for the weekend. She went but she was slower than he thought to begin with a teeny affair as he called it. In fact she was adamant about not beginning it. He complained about her bitterly over a bottle of Bollinger to his friend Albert. Albert said that it was very rum, the girl must be mad. He’d like to meet her, he always liked meeting mad people.
Albert was of blood so blue that it almost frightened Camilla off. But she decided to take him on. This was the challenge she had spent years rehearsing for. This was the prize she had hardly dared to hope for.
Albert was intrigued by her. The girl who hadn’t been to bed with his friend, who wouldn’t go to bed with him either. Who wasn’t frightened of his mother, who was casual to the point of indifference about her own background. She was not a gold-digger, she had a position of importance in her firm. Nobody could see the potential like Camilla, they said. She dressed well, she seemed to have lots of girlfriends who all spoke glowingly of her. She had no past.
Camilla played it beautifully, she waited until Albert was truly besotted and at that precise moment s
he told him she was thinking of moving to Washington DC. There had been interest and offers, she was vague lest he ask her what interest and which offers. But she had timed it right. Albert couldn’t let her leave. Albert’s father predictably said she was a fine-looking filly but had she any breeding, his mother unpredictably said she was about the only kind of woman who might make a success of Albert and the rolling acres, and the complicated property investments and the tied cottages. The wedding of the decade was on.
It was decided between them that Florrie should not be the bridesmaid—the press would be too inquisitive, would ask about their origins. Papers nowadays did horrible things. They might send a photographer up to that small street and—perish the thought—find Florrie’s father, surly in his braces. And he might tell that Camilla was Ruby and that her parents had been killed on their first coach tour abroad.
Better to have six flower girls and Albert’s horsey-looking sister. Wiser to have the lovely Florrie stand out among the guests; a young woman of elegance, successful in her field. Further proof if any were needed that the bride was the right stuff or as right as you can get in these days of social change and upheaval.
Florrie stood in the old church, and looked up at the flags of the regiment that Albert’s family had fought in. The stained glass windows remembered various ancestors, and the pews had brass plates recalling the family. The bishop was old and genial. He spoke of duty and of hope. Florrie listened as she looked at Camilla’s beautiful face; she knew that her friend was listening too.
Then the Bishop spoke of love. He told how it conquered everything and that it cast out envy and ambition and greed. His eyes became misty when he talked of love.