A Few of the Girls: Stories Read online

  No? But then, Ange, to be honest, you are as blind as a bat these days.

  Anyway, it was impossible to get a thing out of Maggie about her own life and her plans or anything. She just kept saying she’d see what happened, as if that were any way to get anywhere.

  I don’t know whether you noticed, but she never answered a direct question. I know I asked if her father was still off the sauce and she said something totally waffly about him being marvelous, all things considered, which is neither a yes nor a no, so I asked again and she said that to some people drink was as natural as breathing. Where does that leave us?

  Then she was asking all about my mother and father and whether I should tell my father that my mum had been for tests. He might want to know. I said he had wanted to know very little else about her over the years since he left. She remembered everything, Maggie did, about when he left. More than I do. We were all twelve then. You’d swear it was her own family. Honestly, it was spooky. And she’s been to see my mother more often than I have.

  And it wasn’t only me. She knows all about your family, too, Angela. She said she heard from your brother who went to jail in Australia. I mean, I know you told us all about it at the time, but Maggie actually sends him postcards and things because he’d be lonely so far from home. She knows the name of the jail and all. And apparently he’s got very interested in birds, like in that film with Burt Lancaster. He writes to her about spangled drongos and galahs and things you’d never have heard of…

  Oh, he does to you, too? You keep in touch with him?

  That’s great. Great. Well, he is family, of course.

  No, I was just surprised that Maggie would.

  Yes, of course it’s kind of her.

  Maggie is kind. That’s what she does. And of course if you wanted me to write to him, I would. I just didn’t think you had anything in common with him anymore.

  No, indeed, you’re right. He probably wouldn’t remember me. And too much water under the bridge, really. But that wasn’t what I was talking about. I was saying that someone should tell Maggie for her own good that this kind of thing can’t go on any longer. It’s not fair, not on herself, not on anyone.

  No, Angela, I know what you’re going to say, that we should never try to come between lovers, no matter how star-crossed they are. Look, I know there’s a point in that. I know that you often end up with egg on your face when it turns out to be a long-lasting affair. But be honest, you were glad when we turned you against Eric, that con man who was going to take your money, weren’t you?

  What do you mean it was only money? You had worked for it. Saved it.

  No, that’s ludicrous, Ange. You know it is. He couldn’t have loved you. You couldn’t have been the only one he didn’t con. You were so well out of it.

  It’s not like you to look back and regret. Not like you at all.

  And going back to that time—at least you’ll admit that Maggie was lucky we pointed out that her fellow Liam had so many other girls. Look at the fool she would have made of herself and she had more things to worry about with her sister with asthma, her mother not well, and her father drinking.

  Oh, come on, Angela, how could that Liam have helped her with any of those problems? If he had been around he would have made things much, much worse.

  But now it’s really serious that someone says something.

  This guy Hanif. I mean, Angela, he’s an African. An Algerian. From Africa.

  Oh, I know Maggie says he’s a French citizen but it won’t work.

  Well it can’t work. I mean, marriage is hard enough anyway. Look at all the disasters we see around us and that’s even when they’re from the same culture and background and race and religion.

  I mean, what does Maggie know about Hanif’s life before he came here? He could have lived in a hut in the desert.

  No stop it, Angela. Stop telling me he’s from Marseilles. That’s not what it’s about. He can’t go in and live with Maggie in her house with her father poised to go back on the drink, with her sister whooping with asthma, with poor, daft Maggie going to see my mother, writing letters to your brother. It’s just ludicrous.

  I know it’s hard to do because we all like Maggie so much and we go back such a long way, but honestly, someone should tell her before she starts organizing a wedding.

  She has organized a wedding? I don’t believe you!

  You’re serious? When?

  But that’s only six weeks away. It can’t be!

  Angela?

  Angela, have you been invited?

  And are you going?

  I see.

  I see.

  Okay. I haven’t been invited, but I suppose you know that.

  What do you mean, when did I see her last? She’s our friend, for God’s sake. I’m always seeing her. I saw her that time we went to the smart hotel where she took the sugar packets and paper napkins. And then I saw her when we went to that weepy film and had a pizza afterwards.

  No, of course I haven’t been to Maggie’s house.

  Angela, listen to me. Who could go to that house with the chance that her father might come reeling in and the sister wheezing away in the corner?

  You do. I see.

  Okay, I know she asked me, but honestly…

  And so that’s true, I haven’t sat down and talked properly to Hanif. But what’s the point? What would there be to say?

  Oh. You do? You have? Good, good.

  No, I mean it. I’m glad you like him. And that you’ve found plenty to talk to him about.

  No, that’s nice, really it is. It’s just that…Oh, come on, Angela, you and I, we don’t have to talk politically correct to each other. It’s just that no matter how nice he is, he’s an immigrant. He’ll bring Maggie down. Whatever hope she had before, she’ll have none now. And suppose she has children? Well, I mean…

  But she’s not seriously going to marry him, is she?

  She is.

  And did she think I would never find out? I mean, was she ever going to tell me or anything? Was she going to wait until I walked into her one day when she had a brood of children by the hand?

  What do you mean, that’s what she said?

  She said she wouldn’t be likely to run into me because I never suggested any meetings! That is so unfair! That’s so Maggie for you.

  No, Angela, don’t take her side.

  Didn’t I go along to that excruciating thing at the hotel and the movie and pizza in that place with plastic tables? You say nothing because there’s nothing you can say.

  I wouldn’t want to go to her wedding anyway, even if she did ask me. It’s all so petty, isn’t it?

  When you think what friends we all used to be. If I were getting married I would have asked Maggie. Probably…

  And where are they having it anyway?

  In a registry office. I see.

  And you’re going to be a witness. Oh, I see.

  And are they having a reception?

  Oh really? Really? That’s rather a nice restaurant. What made them choose that one? Won’t they feel a bit out of place?

  Oh, they both work there. I see.

  And will he have anyone there, coming over from Algeria?

  Oh, France. I see. Thirty of them. Good heavens! Well, well, well.

  And does she know you’re telling me about this or is it to be forever a secret?

  She asked you to! Maggie asked you to tell me?

  She said what?

  She said: “Someone’s got to tell her!”

  Those were her actual words?

  The Foul-Weather Friend

  Whenever I look at my telephone answering machine winking at me as I come in, I think of my friend. I bought the answering machine once because of a friend. A good friend indeed, but a foul-weather friend.

  She stood by the bus stop the day that I met her first, so thin, so frail, that I thought a strong gust of wind coming around that corner might brush her and make her hit her head against the shelter. He
r head seemed very large—a lot of very frizzy brown hair, not an Afro cut, but as if someone had gone around it shaving little bits off like those pom-pom tassels we used to make at school. I looked at her hair for a long time, not realizing I was staring.

  Probably a lot of people stand at that bus stop not realizing they are staring. It’s just outside the hospital. I wanted to think of anything except the face of my friend Maria, who wouldn’t see me, who sat in her room—they won’t call it a cell—dealing and redealing those cards. Not ordinary playing cards, but Tarot cards with swords and cups and pentacles. Hour after hour she sits there, laying them out in the shape of a cross and mumbling to them.

  John didn’t know I had been. He had begged me not to go. “We made her this way,” he had said so often. “This is our punishment.” I had tried to laugh him out of it. I am the Irish Catholic, I told him; if there is a sense of Sin, I should have it.

  He was brought up in a house where nobody talked conversationally about Hell like we all did. Yet he was the one with the huge guilt that ended our love. We had betrayed Maria, he her husband, I her best friend. I stood staring at the big fuzzy head of the pale woman who hugged her arms around her thin waist as if she were trying to hold the top half of her trunk in some unsatisfactory way to the rest of her body.

  She spoke to me without smiling.

  “My name is Fenella,” she said.

  “I only read that kind of name in school stories.” It was true; Fenella was always the plucky one, or the tomboy even. Nobody back home was called Fenella.

  “You’re very upset, aren’t you?” she asked.

  She had so much compassion in her voice I could have reached out and touched her, helped her to hold that thin body together for fear of its breaking and one half being swept away. She hadn’t made a bus stop remark about there never being any kind of transport when you needed it. She hadn’t made a hospital remark about having to be grateful for having your own health. She looked at me and saw my hurt and unhappiness; they were so clear for her to see that she had spoken of them.

  I thought it was only the sharp, cold wind that stung my eyes as it whistled around the high walls of the hospital, but it was her sympathy that made my eyes sting. No stranger had ever reached out and spoken to me like that before. Not even back home, where they often spoke almost too directly and came too far into your life. But in England of all places. In the manicured leafy lanes of the Home Counties outside the well-pointed walls of a private mental hospital, a complete stranger had said that she could see my upset. I felt like a fool as the tears rolled down. She put out her arm and I thought she was going to embrace me so I flinched a little. But no, it was just that the bus was coming.

  “It’s a request stop,” she said gently. “You have to ask it nicely otherwise it will just pass by.”

  She was trying to make me smile, I think, to look less like someone who had escaped from behind those high walls.

  She paid my fare on the bus and came into my life.

  In the town she knew a place where they served homemade soup and lovely whole-wheat rolls. It was comfort food and the tables were far apart. Nobody, except Fenella, had heard my tale of John and Maria, and how it had all been her fault, how she had a perfectly happy life until she took off in hot pursuit of Carlos, how it had unhinged her. I told her of the lonely days and nights and how John and I had consoled each other in the only way great and good friends could do, by loving and giving. And how I had hoped she would find happiness with her Carlos and her mad quests. But John wanted things tidied up, so he broke it off with her—he hated loose ends. And now they were tidy all right. John a workaholic, Maria mad as birds in a place she would never leave, and as for me…It’s odd, but I never remember telling anyone as much as I told Fenella, not only that afternoon in the warm restaurant with its crackling fire and its crusty rolls and its deep, warming, reviving, steaming bowls of good things.

  Later that evening, on the train back to London, and that night, when she said it didn’t seem wise to leave me alone, she came back to my flat. She sat in a chair and her hair was like a halo. I thought she was indeed some kind of saint, ready to listen, and listen. Always wanting to hear more. Never a word of blame.

  And what was so wonderful was that she never once tried to cheer me up. There was no point where she said I would get over him and find someone else. She never warned me that all men were some variety of louse and that time spent weeping over them was time wasted. She didn’t offer me hope that Maria would die, that John would come to his senses and beg me to return to his side, she just accepted that things were utterly terrible and shared the burden with me.

  Soon I felt a great, great tiredness, I welcomed it like you’d welcome rain when it has been a close day. It had been so long since my shoulders and eyes had been tired. Normally I sat, awake and tense, smoking for most of the night. In the staff room at school I knew they must have noticed how short-tempered and irritable I had become. A wave of resentment towards them all came over me. These were my colleagues and indeed friends for nearly a decade. How had none of them spotted my grief and been able to listen, to understand, to be such a great friend? I smiled sleepily at Fenella, who said she must leave. She refused the offer of the spare room. She said she would ring me tomorrow. It would be Saturday, known to be a very low time when people were unhappy.

  As I drifted off into the first proper sleep I had known for months, I remembered that she didn’t have my telephone number. Well, maybe I could find her again, I thought. Fenella can’t be a very usual name. I couldn’t think what her last name was, or what she did for a living, or where she lived. She must have told me. Surely? We couldn’t have talked about me all that time. But sleep was stronger than puzzlement. I didn’t even turn off the light.

  I was on my second cup of coffee when she rang. She had taken down the number, she said. I was too distressed to be bothered with trivialities. Would we go to the park? It was such a lovely day, we could walk and talk without anyone disturbing us. I felt a little twinge that surely I had talked enough, but she seemed so caring it would almost have been throwing her friendship back in her face.

  And indeed that sunny day while lovers entwined, and mothers talked between screaming for toddlers, when old men read newspapers and told each other about things that had happened years ago, Fenella and I walked the length and the breadth of one of London’s big parks.

  And sometimes we sat, and she had brought small sandwiches and a flask of coffee so that we didn’t have to leave until my legs were tired and my eyes were aching for all the tears they had wept as I told her of the first night with John and of how he had always loved me even before Maria had gone to this clairvoyant, which had tilted her mind and sent her in search of unsuitable love and unreachable dreams.

  Fenella remembered everything. Every single thing.

  “It must have been hard for you both when Maria took up all this card business herself. You know, dealing and redealing,” she said.

  I had forgotten that I told her about Maria and the Tarot cards. By Sunday I felt strong enough to go to see John, this time without making a scene. I had known two good nights’ sleep. I had talked out every heartbeat of the thing. There would be no emotion, no drama, no terrible recriminations.

  On the way back from John’s house, through the blurry tears I wondered what kind of self-absorption had allowed me to let Fenella go without asking her where she lived, or for her phone number. But when I got to my flat she was sitting in the courtyard. It was a warm evening and she sat, calmly unhurried, on one of the rather folksy carved benches under the old cherry tree.

  “I thought you might need me,” she said.

  “You must think I’m very weak,” I sobbed as I sat on my bed drinking the honey, lemon, and hot water that she said was soothing. Fenella sat in a chair.

  She was so good to me, Fenella was; she had all the time in the world. Of course I did take her address and her phone number and found out that she worke
d in a book rights agency. It sounded fascinating, but Fenella didn’t talk much about it—she said she didn’t want to bore me with the technicalities of her job. They just acted as brokers between literary agents in Britain and on the Continent. They suggested books that might be translated into Greek or Italian or whatever, and they got a commission on them. Did she meet a lot of fascinating people? I wondered. Not many, they didn’t deal with the authors directly, you see. I saw, and asked little more about Fenella’s job. Because I talked so much about my own.

  I told her what stick-in-the-muds they were at school and how they never tried to set up anything new for the children. How I longed to invite authors in to tell them what it was really like to write. To let them meet living writers instead of assuming that anyone who wrote was long-buried. I had been hoping for the woman who wrote Open Windows. Not really a children’s book, of course, but surprising how many of the Sixth Form had read it and identified with the rage against mothers that went through it. But I had not been able to find out where the author lived and was sure that the publishers would never forward a letter, especially if it was a speaking request.

  “I can give you her address,” Fenella said surprisingly. It turned out that they had handled deals for the translations and European sales.

  “Is she nice?” I couldn’t believe that anyone knew her.

  “I used to know her quite well when her mother had a horrible hip injury; we talked a lot in those days. But she’s too busy to chat now.” Fenella’s voice was cold.

  She was not too busy however to come to the school. And they liked her enormously. She didn’t talk down to them. She said, quite truthfully, that she did have a dreadful mother herself but then so did most people, including her own children. They liked that; it made them think. It made me think, too. I thought about my own mother, long dead now, in Ireland. I had never visited her grave. Did that make me a dreadful daughter? She had been a dreadful mother in many ways, wanting me to live at home in the country and marry a man who owned a pub. She said it was fast to travel as I did, that no man would want me. Perhaps she had been right, after all. I talked about it for hours with Fenella.