by Maeve Binchy
Rose had the urge to scream at her that occasionally she opened a bloody cookbook, but stifled it. It would not be practical to shout at a friend, a hostess. She smiled and said it was nothing. She went into the room—there they all were, each playing the role that could have been written for them.
Bill was talking about the match, Gerry about the cost of airfares, her Denis was nodding sagely about Business Expansion Schemes, Nick was telling them about a horse he knew. And the women had roles, too. Annie talked about the litter in the streets, Nessa about the rudeness of the people in the supermarket…Susie, as she always did, apologizing and hoping everything was all right.
Rose’s mind was a million miles away when Ted, standing beside her and spooning some of the rice salad onto his plate, said into her ear: “Very exotic.”
“Oh, it’s quite simple, really,” she began mechanically.
“I didn’t mean the rice, I meant you,” he said, looking straight at her.
Ted. Ted with the new car every year and the fairly vague job description, married to mousy Susie, who had the money.
“Me?” Rose said, looking at him with interest.
“Well, your perfume, it’s very exotic indeed. I always fancy that if we were all in the dark I’d find you immediately.”
“Well, it’s hard to prove seeing that it’s broad daylight.” She laughed at him, her eyes dancing like his.
“But it won’t be daylight on Tuesday,” he said. “Not in the nighttime, that is.”
“Now, what made you make a deduction like that?” She was still playful but didn’t sound puzzled or outraged. It was as if she were giving him permission and encouragement to go on.
“I’m going to Cork on business…overnight…and I thought that perhaps we could test out this theory of the perfume, you know. See whether I knew what part of the room you were in. What do you think?”
It was the moment to ask did he mean to include anyone else. It didn’t need to be asked. “And have you thought out how this could be managed?” she asked. She spoke in her ordinary voice, as if they were talking about any of the same things they talked about in each other’s houses for the last seven years.
“I gave it a load of thought,” said Ted, “like it’s your half-term and you could be staying with your mother, as it were.” He was leaning on a shelf and looking at her. Interested. That’s what he looked. It was a lovely, almost forgotten feeling to have someone looking at her like that. Rose felt a tightening of her throat, and a small lurch in her stomach.
“You’ve thought of everything,” she said.
“I don’t see any obstacles, do you?” Ted might have been talking about garden furniture.
“Only the messy one of upsetting people,” she said.
“Ah, but you and I wouldn’t do anything like that. It’s not as if we’re falling in love or leaving anyone or breaking up any happy homes. It’s just a bit of…well, how would I describe it…?”
“A bit of excitement?” Rose suggested.
“Precisely,” he said.
She thought it was very sophisticated of them indeed not to make any plans and think up any cover stories. If it was going to happen, which she thought deep down it would, then these would all come later. They rejoined the group.
Rose let her glance fall over the others, Nessa and Susie and Annie, Grace. Did none of them ever ache for a little excitement in their lives? And if they did, whom would they have found it with? Hardly her own Denis. He had barely time and energy for that kind of activity in his own house without thinking of arranging it with someone else’s wife. The Sunday ended, as every Sunday did, with a visit to the pub. They had their traditions in this too. No big rounds, meaning that people stayed all night. Each family bought their own drink. It was very civilized, like everything they did. And very, very dull, Rose realized.
As they left the pub for the car, Andrew said he hated fizzy orange, and Celia, who had drunk very little other than fizzy orange in her life, said she hated it too.
Denis opened the door of the car for Rose. “Don’t we have marvelous friends?” he said unexpectedly. “We’re very, very lucky.”
She felt a hard knot of guilt form in her chest. But she swallowed it and agreed.
“But we work at it, of course,” Denis said. “Having friends means a commitment of time and effort.”
Rose looked out the window. If working to achieve a Sunday exactly like this every single week was the result of time and commitment, then she was absolutely within her rights to want a day off, a night out.
The knot of guilt had quite disappeared.
Ted rang casually and told her there was a great place to leave her car in for an overhaul, only a few miles beyond Newlands Cross. Rose took down the details and thanked him. If the call had been bugged by every private detective and secret service in the world, it would have seemed totally innocent. Rose went into town and bought herself a black lace nightdress, a bottle of full-strength perfume with matching talcum powder, and body lotion. If she was going to have a bit of excitement with Susie’s handsome husband, he was going to remember it for a long time.
“I want to go to the zoo tomorrow,” Celia said at supper.
“That sounds nice,” said Denis, not looking up, “Mummy’s on half-term.”
Rose looked at her son, hoping he would speak on cue. He did. “I hate the zoo,” Andrew said.
“I hate the zoo too,” said Celia.
“That’s settled, then. Maria Pilar will take you out for a lovely walk and an ice cream.”
“I get tired when I go on a lovely walk,” said Andrew.
“So you can go on the buzz. Maria Pilar loves the buzz.”
“Eet is not the buzz, eet’s the bussss,” said Maria Pilar, hissing across the table.
“So it is, I keep forgetting.” Rose got up briskly from the supper table. “Now, I’ve got lots to do, I’m off to see Grannie tomorrow.”
“I want to see Grannie,” Celia said.
“I hate Grannie,” Andrew said. Before Celia remembered that she hated Grannie also, Rose said no, this was a flying visit.
“Are you taking the plane?” Andrew asked with interest. His hatred of his grandmother might be tempered by a new experience like going in an airplane.
“Sorry, what was that, you’re going to see the old bat?” Denis asked.
“Has Grannie got a bat?” Andrew was very interested now.
“I want to see the bat,” Celia said.
Rose glared at her husband. Now she would have to pretend that Grannie did have a bat. “It’s out a lot,” she said. “Especially at night.”
“It’s too much down and back in one day,” Denis said.
“I know, I’ll stay the night.” Rose was surprised how easy it came when it had to, the lie, the cover-up. She always thought that women who weren’t used to this would bluster or redden and give themselves away.
“You’re doing your purgatory on earth, that’s all I can say.” Denis left the supper table and went into what they called his Denis’s Den. He would be there until midnight. There were a lot of figures to be sorted out—coming up to sales conference time, he would tell her if she protested. Or Annual Report time or the AGM or the Visiting Firemen. There was always something.
Rose slept a guilt-free sleep. No woman was meant to sign on for such a dull life. That had been part of no bargain. Somewhere in the air there was a little clause allowing for a few Excitements along the way.
Ted was waiting exactly where he had said at ten o’clock. He was relaxed and easy. They transferred Rose’s little overnight bag into his trunk.
“This is great fun,” he said.
“Isn’t it just?” said Rose.
On the journey, they flirted with each other mildly. Rose said he drove the car in such a masterful way. Ted said she curled up like a kitten in a very seductive way. They played Chris de Burgh tapes. Ted had to do a few calls, but he had booked a table for lunch somewhere he thought Rose would li
ke. Perhaps she’d like to settle into the hotel first and meet him at the restaurant. They didn’t mention Denis or Susie. They told each other none of the cute little things said by Andrew and Celia or by Ted and Susie’s children. This was an Excitement, time out and away from all that.
Rose examined the bedroom with approval…. She hung up her good dress, hid all the perfumed unguents in her case. She didn’t want it to look as if everything had come out of a bottle. She looked at her own face in the mirror. She was exactly the same as she had been last Sunday morning, only two days ago before Ted had come up with the offer of the Excitement. The same, but a little more carefully groomed. She had waxed her legs. Always a dead giveaway about affairs, people said, but Denis wouldn’t have noticed. She strolled happily along to the restaurant, where she was greeted by a cry that froze her blood. “Rose, Rose, over here.” It was her mother.
Sitting with Nora Ryan, the most horrible person in the South of Ireland or maybe in the whole of Ireland. A woman with beady eyes and a tongue that shot in and out like a snake’s tongue. Delivering harsh, critical words every time. They were sitting at a table for three, and they pulled out the third chair for her. Rose felt a pounding in her head. It was if they had expected her.
“How did you know I was…um…coming to see you…?” she stammered.
“Well, I rang. I rang and that not very bright girl said you were in zee Cork.”
“Europeans,” said Nora Ryan, casting her eyes up to heaven.
“We’re all Europeans,” snapped Rose before she could stop herself.
“How observant of you, Rose dear,” said Nora Ryan with three flashes of her thin, serpentine tongue.
“And what did you say?” Rose spoke to her mother.
“I said that’s great, and that Nora and I were having lunch here, but that stupid girl couldn’t understand a word I said.
“Spaniards!” said Nora, her eyes nearly reaching the brim of her hideous hat.
“So what did you do then?” Rose felt a sense of blind panic that she had never known before.
Now the unthinkable had happened. Her mother must have told her husband there had never been any question of a visit. Was there a hope in hell Rose could pretend it had been meant as a surprise?
“I had a very odd conversation with my grandson, who seemed to think the house was infested with bats and that you were coming down to deal with them.” Rose put her head in her hands. “So then obviously I rang Denis at the office to find out what was happening.”
“And what did he say?”
“Questions, questions, really, Rose, you’re like one of these interrogators on television,” said Nora Ryan.
Rose flashed her a look of pure loathing. “Mother, what did Denis say?”
“He said he was well, he said he was busy coming up to the sales conference….”
“Before I have to take you by the throat and beat it out of you, Mother, what did he say about my coming to Cork? What did he say?”
“Really, Rose,” Nora Ryan began.
“Shut up, Mrs. Ryan,” said Rose.
They stared at her. Rose tried to recover the lost ground. She spoke very slowly, as if talking to someone of a very low IQ. “Can-I-ask-you-Mother-to-tell-me-what-did-Denis say?”
Rose’s mother was fingering her throat, the one that Rose had threatened to shake her by. She seemed almost afraid to speak. “I don’t see why you’re talking like this, Rose, I really don’t. I told Denis that if you called before you went out to the house this is where we’d be having lunch. To save you…to save you the journey out to the house…that’s what I was doing and inviting you to lunch in a nice smart place like this….” Rose’s mother had taken out a handkerchief and dabbed the corner of her eye. “I most certainly didn’t expect dogs’ abuse and interrogation about it.” She was hurt and she didn’t mind them knowing it.
Mrs. Ryan was now in the totally unaccustomed role of being a consoler. “Now now, now now now,” she said, patting the shaking shoulder awkwardly and flashing glances of hate at Rose.
“Did he know I was coming to stay with you?” Rose’s voice was dangerously calm; the words came out with long spaces between them.
“Of course he knew,” her mother sniffled.
“How did he know?”
“I told him.”
“How did you know, Mother?”
Rose’s mother and Nora Ryan looked at each other in alarm. Perhaps Rose was going mad…seriously mad.
“Because Maria Pilar had told me, my grandchildren had told me….”
The breath seemed to come out of Rose more easily now. “Yes. Well, that’s fine, that’s all cleared up,” she said.
And at that moment Ted came into the room, carrying a single red rose wrapped in cellophane. The blood drained from her head yet again.
He saw her and came over. “What a surprise. What a huge surprise,” he shouted like a very bad actor in an amateur play.
The two older women looked at each other; again their alarm increased.
“Good God…it’s Ted,” cried Rose. “Of all the people in the world!” She looked around the room as if she expected to see a few other equally unexpected people, like Napoleon.
“I’ll tell you the most extraordinary thing,” Ted shouted, unaware that the entire dining room was now looking at them and could not avoid listening to them.
“This is my mother,” screamed Rose. “My mother that I was coming down to Cork to visit.”
“How do you do?” Rose’s mother began, but she might as well have been talking to the wall.
“The most extraordinary thing,” Ted repeated. “I was back at the hotel before…um…before coming alone here, and who did I meet but Susie’s brother and his wife. Susie is my wife,” he said to the sixty or so people who were now part of his listener-ship. “They are in Cork and staying in the same hotel.” He paused to let the words sink in with all the diners. “The very same hotel.” He didn’t get the reaction he wanted, whatever it might have been, so he said it in a different form. “The selfsame hotel, I think you might say,” he said triumphantly.
Rose began to babble. “That’s lovely for you, Ted, you can all be together. I’d love to stay in a hotel myself sometime, but I’m staying with my mother.”
Mrs. Ryan looked at her with narrowed eyes. “I’m sure your mother wouldn’t mind at all if you were to stay in a hotel,” she said pleasantly.
“No, no, no, I can’t. And anyway, Mother has a lot of bats in the house,” she floundered wildly to Ted, “so that’s where I’ll be staying.”
Ted might not even have heard her.
“So the odd thing was that when they thought they saw me, they asked at Reception was that me and Reception, of course, goddamn interfering nosy parkers that they are, said that Mr. and Mrs. Ted O’Connor were there.”
Rose said, “What did you do?”
“I told them that suddenly at the last moment Susie couldn’t come and then Reception said did I want to move to a single room because it would be cheaper, and I said yes, but that I’d rush up and pack my things and so I did and they’re in the back of the car, if you know what I mean.”
Rose looked at him. His face was scarlet; he looked like a madman talking to other very mad people.
“If you get my drift,” he roared.
Rose felt a sudden maturity sweep over her. She knew now that she had enough excitement to last her a long time. On the grounds that she was helping Ted to park his car, she left with him, retrieved her suitcase. They were both too shocked to speak.
She returned to the restaurant, where the diners looked up with interest, hoping for Round Two.
Ted had given the red rose to Mrs. Ryan. “I bought it for you,” he had said without explanation. Nora Ryan saw nothing odd in this. In her youth it had happened a lot, she said.
Rose spoke courteously to her mother, planned the night in the house that she had forgotten was bat free and worked out what train to get back to Dublin and how t
o retrieve her car from beyond Newlands Cross. To begin what she hoped would be a fairly even-tempered and unexciting period of her life.
HOLIDAY WEATHER
Robert said that after dinner they would curl up with the map of the South of France and plan the journey. Frankie was looking forward to it. This was always a great part of the holiday, when he would sit on the sofa with his arm around her, the fire crackling in the grate, glass of wine at hand, and together they would point out magical names to each other. It had been like this last year, when his conference had been in Spain and they had hunted for little Spanish idylls for their rambles afterward. And the year before, when it had been in Italy, and their fingers had traced the names by the lakes.
Of course, Frankie knew that the evening would not organize itself. She would have to escape down to the shops at lunchtime to buy something she knew he would like, and this was getting more difficult since he had begun to worry about his waistline. Gone were the evenings of fillet steak, mushrooms, and garlic bread. Perhaps she might get some monkfish—very expensive, but it did seem special—and a small selection of vegetables. She could even top and tail them at work; there would be so little time when she got back to her flat. She would have to rush around it tidying, of course, getting rid of all the work things that littered the place. Well, Robert hadn’t been around for over a week, so she had been doing her Open University course every evening.
Frankie thought happily about the evening ahead. She would wear her green dress, the one that he had once said matched her eyes. A long while ago. But of course he still loved her, and people didn’t have to go on about eye color forever. It would have been unnatural, and possibly a bit repetitive.
The only good thing about working for a man like Dale was that it took up such a small amount of time and so little brain. All that the awful Dale wanted was someone to sit in his front office and look pleasant, ask them to wait a moment while they could thumb through some of the fairly horrible cuttings about Dale’s success in the world of public relations, and then ask them to go straight on in. Frankie was far too intelligent for this job, and that knowledge alone gave her great satisfaction. But by being with Dale and his outfit, she had an excuse to see Robert almost every day. And as far as Frankie was concerned, she would work in a coal mine or as a steeplejack if it meant being close to Robert.