by Maria Hoey
“I came to play with you,” she told me once, “but if you want to play with other people I can go and play with my other friends too.”
After that, to my everlasting shame, I avoided the twins when Violet-May came to play and they knew it and I knew they did. My mother saw it too and did not like it and told me so but, to their credit, the twins never once upbraided me for my treachery and whenever Violet-May was not around, which of course was most of the time, the three of us played together as though no such person existed.
But, in truth, when Violet-May came to my house we didn’t do much playing – mostly we sat in the sitting room and watched television. Violet-May liked television more than anyone I have ever known – she especially loved cartoons but really it hardly seemed to matter to her what we watched.
Often my father would come in as we sat there, feign surprise at finding Violet-May sitting next to me on the sofa then make a show of shaking his head, sighing loudly and saying, “I suppose you two will be wanting ice-cream and goodness knows what else now?”
“Yes, please, Daddy,” I would say.
Violet-May would smile up at him. “Yes, please, Mr Kelly.”
Then my father would go off on his bicycle and bring us back Fat Frogs or choc-ices and some sort of sweets – Fizzle Sticks or Sweet Bananas, Milk Bottles or Wham Bars.
When he handed hers to Violet-May he would say, “There you are now, little lady.”
Violet-May would give him her biggest, brightest smile and thank him more politely than I ever had.
In spite of everything my mother said about her, I think my father liked Violet-May and she liked him, which seemed only right to me, because I liked her father too.
Once, while playing hide-and-seek throughout the Duff house, I had burst in on Mr Duff in his library. Once inside the door I had come to a stupefied standstill, just gazing at all the rows and rows of books which lined the length and breadth of two entire walls. Mr Duff himself was sitting before the fire in one of a pair of enormous brown leather chairs, their backs shaped like great shiny brown wings. The light from the fire and a couple of table lamps picked out the gold inscriptions on the spines of some of the books and made them gleam. I thought it the most wonderful room I had ever seen.
Mr Duff, his pipe in his mouth, looked up from the book he was reading and smiled at me. He took his pipe out and said, “Ah, it’s little Miss ...” and then he stopped and waggled his ear.
I realised he had forgotten who I was. Ear-waggling, I had come to recognise, was a habit Mr Duff resorted to at times of puzzlement, anxiety, stress and distress.
“Kay,” I reminded him. “I’m Miss Kay.”
I loved being called Miss Kay so much that whenever I went to play at the Duff house I would play a game with myself in which I was not Kay Kelly at all, but somebody else entirely, somebody called Miss Kay. But for all that he had bestowed the title on me, Mr Duff frequently forgot who I was. In fact, I suspect he often forgot who his own children were. Time and again, I had witnessed him, called on by Violet-May or Rosemary-June to settle a quarrel between them, glance up from whatever book or paper he was reading with a mystified expression on his face and say, “Of what are we speaking?”
“What’s he reading?” I asked Violet-May once.
“History and stuff,” said Violet-May.
“But does he never go to work?”
“He used to,” she said, “but not anymore – he’s retired now.”
“What did he do before he was retired?”
“He was an accountant,” said Violet-May.
“My daddy works in a factory, making glue,” I told her. I thought about it for a while and then I asked, “What does an accountant make?”
“They don’t make anything,” said Violet-May.
“Oh,” I said. I said nothing more because I did not want to make Violet-May feel bad, but I could not help but feel sorry for her. I felt that for once I had the upper hand because my daddy made something and her daddy did not.
I was almost a grown woman before I realised that my father, who by nature should have been a farmer or a woodsman, hated every day of the forty years he spent in the glue factory. But how could I have guessed when the only complaint I ever heard him make was about the smells?
If anyone had told me that Violet-May and I would still be friends by Christmas, I would not have believed it. The truth was that I lived in daily expectation of her growing bored with me. But December came and still she wanted to come to our house most Saturday afternoons, to watch our television and eat my father’s sweets.
Then two weeks before Christmas, Violet-May got sick and did not come to school and, on the 16th December, Mrs Duff had her baby. My mother heard about it when she was out shopping.
“A little boy,” she said, “born early this morning. I hear she had a hard time of it.” She was not speaking to me, but to my father.
“Why did she have a hard time?” I piped up.
She looked put out when she realised that I was behind her. “Little pitchers have big ears,” she said, “I only mean that Mrs Duff is tired, that’s all.”
“Violet-May has two brothers now,” I said enviously. “I wonder what the baby looks like? I hope Violet-May is better soon and I can go and see him.” In my mind I was seeing a sort of infant version of Robbie all nestled up in a Moses basket and covered with a blue blanket.
“Even if she is better,” said my mother, “I wouldn’t be expecting to see her anytime soon. Her poor mother will have her hands full with a new baby in the house and she won’t want you hanging about the place.”
It was the first time I had ever heard her refer to Violet-May’s mother as “poor”. And she was right – I did not see Violet-May at all that week and when school finished for the Christmas holidays without her having come back, I remember a thought worming its way into my head: “She doesn’t want to be my friend anymore. She has a little brother now and a little brother is better than a television.”
On Christmas Eve, our house was full of the smell of the Christmas tree and the ham that had been boiling all day. But in Dallas, Southfork was on fire and JR and Ray had already collapsed from the fumes. I was sick with worry about who would save Sue Ellen and John Ross who were asleep in their smoke-filled bedrooms.
When we heard the knock at the front door, I did not even look away from the screen.
“For God’s sake, who’s that now?” said my mother, but she did not move.
When the knocking began again, my father said, “I’ll get that then, will I?”
But Bobby Ewing had just arrived in his speeding shiny red car, and neither of us answered him. He came back with Violet-May and I was so shocked that I could not move from my chair. She was wearing a new red coat with a hood trimmed with white fur and she looked like a princess in a winter fairy tale.
“I came to give you this,” she said. “Happy Christmas, Kay.”
I reached out and took the present from her. “I didn’t get you anything,” I said.
“I don’t mind,” said Violet-May. “Do you like my new coat? It’s for Christmas Day really, but Mummy let me wear it tonight. I think it’s beautiful.”
She did a twirl and over her shoulders I saw my mother roll her eyes.
The mention of Mrs Duff had reminded me of something. “What’s the baby like?” I said.
“He never stops crying and neither does Mummy,” said Violet-May. “I have to go now, Daddy’s waiting in the car. We’re in a hurry because Robbie’s going to a party.”
The realisation of what she had said suddenly hit me.
“Is Robbie waiting for you in the car?” I asked and, when Violet-May nodded, I followed her out into the hall.
My mother came too and opened the door. “Where do you think you’re going?” she said, as I made to follow Violet-May outside.
“I’m just going out to the car to wish Mr Duff a Happy Christmas,” I said.
“Well, here, throw on your coat,�
� said my mother, reaching up and taking it down from the hallstand. “It’s freezing out there.”
She came out with me to the gate and stood there watching. It was very cold and very dark and the sky was spattered with bright sharp stars.
Robbie Duff was sitting in the passenger seat right there close to me, looking straight ahead, and when Violet-May opened the back door and climbed in behind him there was a blast of sound from the radio. She must have said something to her father about me wanting to wish him a Happy Christmas because Mr Duff said something then which I could not hear and Robbie suddenly leaned forward and the music faded to a low hum. He rolled down the window and Mr Duff leaned across and they both peered up at me. All of a sudden I felt too shy to say anything at all, but Mr Duff was smiling at me.
“Happy Christmas, Miss Kay,” he said. He leaned a little further across Robbie’s body and called out, “Happy Christmas, Mrs Kelly!”
“Happy Christmas, Mr Duff,” said my mother.
I found my tongue at last. “Happy Christmas, Mr Duff,” I said. “Happy Christmas, Robbie.”
“Happy Christmas, Kay,” said Robbie and he gave me one flash of a smile. Then he leaned back in his seat and said, “Now can we go? I’m already late.”
They drove away then and my mother told me to come in quickly out of the cold. As we walked back to the door, I remembered the package I still held in my hand and in the hall I stood and examined the red-and-gold wrapping. My mother went ahead of me into the kitchen and I heard her talking to my father and mimicking Violet-May’s high little voice and doing a particularly good job of it too.
“Oh, he never stops crying and neither does Mummy,” she said. In her usual tone she added, “That little madam.”
“Ah, she’s a bright little thing,” said my father.
“That’s not bright,” said my mother. “That’s cheeky.”
“It isn’t cheeky if it’s true,” I said, coming into the room. “But why can’t Mrs Duff stop crying?”
“Never you mind,” said my mother. “And don’t you go repeating what I said, and anyway isn’t it time you had your bath and got ready for bed? It’s Christmas Eve, for God’s sake.”
Violet-May’s gift to me was a diary with a blue cover and a silver lock and key, and in my eyes not one of the many more expensive gifts I received for Christmas that year came close. Before I went to sleep that Christmas Eve of 1983, I made my first entry: Violet-May Duff is my best friend and Robbie Duff knows my name.
Chapter 8
The beech trees that lined the Duffs’ avenue began to sprout, just tight green spearheads at first, then fat buds which in turn burst out into their full glory. The thick green-leaved plants I had thought so little of in September exploded too into great blossoms of showy red and purple and dazzling white. Rhododendrons, my father told me they were called, one spring day when he dropped me to play with Violet-May, on his bicycle. He also told me that they were noxious weeds and would destroy all the plants around them if left to do so. I wondered if that was why I had disliked them from the beginning.
But the garden itself looked beautiful and each time I went there it had grown more and more so. But for all that, in those early months of 1984 it made no difference to me whether I played with Violet-May at her house or mine: Robbie Duff had gone to boarding school so now there was no chance of seeing him anywhere.
But in April everything changed. Easter was coming and Robbie was too, coming home for two whole weeks. And not only that, there was to be a garden party at the Duffs’ house on Easter Sunday, not because it was Easter but because it was Robbie’s fifteenth birthday. And I was invited and so was my mother and so was my father.
“I don’t know if I’ll bother,” said my mother when the invitation came in the post, but in the end she bothered a great deal. She wore a new blue dress and my father had a new shirt and a blue tie and I had a yellow dress, not made, but bought from Roches Stores, because I had said “Please, Mammy, please can I have a dress from the shops, like Violet-May and Rosemary-June have?”
“Don’t you like the things I make for you?” said my mother.
“I like them fine,” I said, “but I’d like something really special for – for the Easter party.”
I had almost said that it was for Robbie’s party I wanted it but I think my mother might not have noticed if I had. She was looking out of the window when she said, “I thought something I made for you would be special. But if you want a bought dress you will have a bought dress.”
I have wondered since if that was the first time I wounded my mother’s heart.
On Easter Sunday my parents and I walked to the Duff house together. As we turned off the path and in at the gates, I remember seeing a teenage girl with very dark hair standing just inside the gateway. She turned and looked at us and, because I was happy and because I thought she was pretty, I smiled at her. Instead of returning my smile, the girl rushed past us and out through the gates. My mother turned and looked after her, then she nudged my father and leaned in to whisper something in his ear. I was too interested in what lay ahead of me to care about anything else and I skipped ahead of them up the avenue until my mother called after me and told me wait for them.
“Can you hear the music?” I said as they caught me up.
“You’d be hard set to miss it,” said my mother. “It sounds like she’s hired an entire orchestra. For a fourteen-year-old’s birthday party, can you believe that?”
“Robbie isn’t fourteen,” I said, “he’s fifteen.”
Then we came out from under the trees and past the blazing rhododendrons and we saw the white tent in the middle of the circular garden before the house.
“Look at that,” said my mother. “I told you she’d pull out all the stops – a marquee, the lot. I bet she has caterers.”
“How the other half live,” said my father.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, and I ran off ahead of them because I could see Violet-May and I wanted her to see my new dress.
“Oh, you’ve copied Rosemary-June,” she said as soon as she saw me. “It’s exactly like the one she wore to my birthday concert.”
Looking down at my dress, I said, “It’s not – mine is dark yellow, Rosemary-June’s was light yellow. It’s like a primrose and a daffodil, not the same at all.”
“Oh, well, it looks the same to me,” said Violet-May. “Do you want to come and see Robbie’s cake?”
I wanted to see Robbie, not his cake, but I let her lead me across the grass and into the tent where tables were spread with food. Three girls in white shirts and black skirts were serving drinks on silver trays. The cake was done in the shape of a record player and I said quite truthfully that it looked very nice. Then I asked where Robbie was.
“Who knows?” said Violet-May.
“But it’s his party,” I said.
Violet-May just shrugged.
Her mother came over then and told her to go check on Alexander. Violet-May pulled a face but she ran off. I would have gone with her but I was too afraid of missing Robbie so I stayed where I was and watched her as she crossed the lawn toward the house. The pram was standing up against the wall of the house right underneath one of the ground-floor windows. I saw Violet-May lean over it, to kiss him perhaps. I thought I heard a wail from the pram, then she straightened up and stood there for a moment. Then she walked away from the pram and disappeared inside the open doorway to the house. I wondered why, if Alexander was awake, she didn’t come and tell her mother.
Mrs Duff and Mr Duff came over just then and I forgot about Violet-May and Alexander.
Mr Duff shook hands with my parents. I thought he looked more rusty than ever and hot, very hot – his face was so shiny it looked almost sticky.
Mrs Duff said, “You must try a cocktail, Mrs Kelly.” She held up her own glass. “They really are delicious.”
“No, thank you, Mrs Duff,” said my mother. “Just a cup of tea.”
“And perhaps some cak
e,” said Mrs Duff. “There’s a rich chocolate sponge or a strawberry and cream –”
“Just some plain sponge will do me fine,” said my mother.
“I’ll go and get it for you,” said Mr Duff and he walked away.
“And have you tried the vol au vents?” said Mrs Duff. She did not look fat anymore and she was wearing a pink dress with a pattern of purple roses. Her hair was up and for once she was smiling like she really meant it.
“We only just got here,” said my mother. “I haven’t tried anything.”
“Well, do try them,” said Mrs Duff, “There’s chicken with mushroom in white wine sauce or prawn cocktail. And there’s quiche of course – perhaps you’d rather some quiche?”
“No, thank you,” said my mother.
“Later then, perhaps,” said Mrs Duff. “And be sure to try something from the hot buffet. Isn’t the string quartet divine?”
“Divine,” said my mother in the voice she used when she was saying the opposite of what she meant.
A woman tapped Mrs Duff on the shoulder and she turned and then walked away to speak with her.
“Has that man gone to China to get my tea or what?” my mother whispered. “And whose idea was this whole affair anyway? Not the birthday boy’s, that’s for sure. Who does that woman think she is?”
“What does it matter who she thinks she is?” said my father. “I don’t know why you have to get so worked up about her.”