A Few of the Girls: Stories Read online

  Andy sat in the kitchen talking to Chalkie as they all did, sooner or later. “How did they teach you poetry in the States?” he asked. “Did they make you learn it by rote? I wish I knew the answer. I want them to love it, but how can they love it if it’s a torture for them to learn chunks every night…”

  “How would they ever remember it to love it later, if they didn’t know it by heart?” Chalkie asked.

  He wasn’t convinced. “That’s for later. I’m thinking of now,” he said.

  “But surely that’s the point. You should be thinking of later. That’s what teaching is all about,” she argued fiercely. She sat curiously still as her hands were busy, chopping tomatoes very finely. She had long, narrow, white hands, he noticed.

  They talked on companionably. Her hands never stopped, but yet she seemed so calm. After the bedlam of school she was restful. After spending all day with people who threw themselves around the place with an excess of energy, she seemed mature and peaceful.

  Linda came bouncing into the kitchen. It was all movement. It was dashing here and back, it was dipping her finger in this and that. It was rushing in to get a cup of coffee and rushing out again. When she left the kitchen, things returned to the way they were.

  “Wonderful girl, Linda,” Chalkie said automatically.

  “Yes…I’m sure she is.”

  Chalkie looked up. She was about to list some of Linda’s qualities to this warm, kind man who sat beside her, but the familiar words just wouldn’t come to her. She didn’t say anything at all.

  Andy seemed apologetic at having slighted her friend. “I’m sure she is a great person when you get to know her,” he said. “It’s just that she’s got that off-putting cheesy smile. You know, it flashes on and off. It’s as if she were always saying cheese for a photographer who’s about to take her picture.”

  “That’s what they call us, Chalk and Cheese,” Chalkie said sadly.

  Andy reached across and touched her long, narrow, white hand. “In my business, chalk is much more valuable you know…No teacher would ever be without it.”

  Chalkie would have advised Linda to play hard to get, but she didn’t give herself any such rules. She smiled a big, wide smile. When it was something this important, there were no games that had to be played.

  A Few of the Girls

  When they heard that Nicola was coming back to sell the family home they all said they simply must have a gathering for her. Nothing fancy, just a few of the girls. It would be marvelous to see Nicola again; she never changed. It was such a pity that she didn’t live in Dublin. She’d liven things up, she always had, remember her at school, for heaven’s sake? They all had a dozen tales of Nicola.

  Mary thought of it first, so it was to be in her house. Just a simple supper, she said, no fuss. All they wanted was to sit and natter anyway.

  They contacted Nicola through the auctioneers. She was never great at keeping in touch but she sounded delighted when she rang and said she had got the letter.

  “Supper with the girls, how great,” she had said in a voice of wonder, as if it was as unusual a thing to do as flying to the moon.

  For some reason Mary felt unsettled after she had put the phone down. She decided to go on a diet. You could do a lot in ten days, firm up a little, that’s all, nothing drastic, and heavens it wasn’t a question of going on a diet to impress Nicola. How silly. She had been a school friend. One couldn’t impress school friends.

  “I don’t think we’ll have the husbands,” Mary said to Nora. “I mean, it’s a bit silly, isn’t it, having to explain all the do-you-remember bits. Better just have the girls—what do you think?”

  “I think just the girls, certainly,” said Nora, whose husband would never have come home from the pub in time for any supper party.

  Mary was relieved. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Gerald, but he did have a flirtatious way of going on, and if he directed it all at Nicola, she might think it was very stupid and put him down—or then again, she might think it was quite attractive and encourage him like mad.

  “Yes, just us is better,” she said. “It makes it easier on Angie too, doesn’t it?”

  Angie had a husband, but he wasn’t her own, he was somebody else’s, and so he didn’t come to many parties with her. It was only fair to think of Angie and be a bit sensitive.

  They all wondered what it would be like to see Nicola again.

  Angie noticed that there was a big paragraph about Nicola’s home in the papers amongst the auctioneers’ and estate agents’ ads. It was described as a very unusual property full of character. How had she got that? Angie wondered. How on earth had Nicola, who lived in another country, been able to make a property correspondent describe a perfectly ordinary terraced house as unusual? Her father had died a long time ago and the house had been let to Italians. Only Nicola could have found elegant Italians. But now it appeared Nicola’s brother was in some kind of trouble and she needed cash to bail him out. So the home had to go.

  Nicola had always called it the Family Home as if it were Brideshead or Castletown. Other people would have called it the house or number eleven.

  Angie hoped Nicola wouldn’t ask too many questions about Brian and the setup. Nicola had a disconcerting habit of saying things straight out, things better unsaid, or half said. Angie bought a new handbag and had an aromatherapy facial. She didn’t want to seem pathetic to Nicola. She didn’t want to look like a loser.

  Nora remembered the last time they had all gathered for Nicola’s return: it had been in a restaurant nearly seven years ago. They were all still in their twenties—well, just. It had been a strange kind of evening. Nicola’s father had been buried the day before and her brother hadn’t turned up for the funeral. With anyone else there would have been talk, but not in Nicola’s case. It was an arty, bohemian sort of affair, one of the many things that set her apart from other people.

  They hadn’t meant to talk so girlishly that night, brimming with confidences. It was the wine, and the fact of a funeral that did it. Mary had wept into her veal Milanese and told them that Gerald was seeing another woman. Angie had not got involved with the dreadful Brian at that stage, but she had confessed rather too openly that she was thinking of the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival or an ad in the papers if Mr. Even-Sort-of-Right didn’t turn up soon. Nora also remembered, with shame, telling Nicola about how much Barry drank.

  She had wished the next day that she could have had the evening over again. She remembered Nicola: small, dark, alert and interested as always, but nowadays trying to hide her mystification. Why don’t you leave him? That was the question. It was so obvious that Nicola wondered why it had to be asked. Of course Mary should leave a two-timer. Of course Nora shouldn’t sit around watching a lush drink away everything they’d worked for. Angie must need her head examined to set on this husband-at-all-costs crusade. These were all smashing women, they didn’t need the aggravation of such men.

  Nicola had always been right about everything at school; she had said they couldn’t get expelled if the whole class just went to the disco. No convent was going to risk the publicity of expelling twenty-eight girls three weeks before their leaving certificate. And she had been right, of course. Like she had been right about everything else. They should all learn typing the summer they left school so that they couldn’t be sent off for a dreary year to learn it in somewhere as bad as school. They shouldn’t worry beforehand about what their mothers would say if they dyed their hair, got their ears pierced, disappeared to music festivals. Do it first, think about the explanations later. And amazingly, of course, the world did not come to an end, none of them were thrown out of their homes, and, oddly, nobody ever knew or would have believed that this small, dark girl, Nicola, was the spirit behind the rebellious, mutinous teenage years of their daughters.

  Would things have been different if Nicola hadn’t gone away?

  Perhaps Mary might have had the courage not to marry Gerald when everyone around
her said she must and held shotguns to them both all the way to the altar. Perhaps Nora would not have covered for Barry’s drinking, lying to bosses and friends and family alike. Surely a shrugging Nicola would have given her the courage to see that it wasn’t Nora’s shame, it was his.

  And maybe with Nicola as a playmate, Angie wouldn’t have had to settle for the cliché life of being the girlfriend of a married man. Nicola would definitely have made her see that Brian could and should treat her far better, even given the situation.

  —

  Nora was pleased that the party wasn’t in her house. The house didn’t look great nowadays and Barry could always lurch home during the evening. Nora bought herself a pink tracksuit and white runners. She wanted Nicola to think she looked independent even though she wasn’t.

  —

  The room was overheated; it felt stuffy for a spring evening. Mary decided to open the window and knocked over a vase of flowers on the piano. As she mopped up she hoped Nicola wouldn’t ask who played the piano in the household and, on hearing that nobody did, would not further ask why on earth they had one.

  —

  Angie arrived. She felt awkward with this new handbag and carried it like a toddler carries a dolly bag. She was used to a briefcase. She felt overmade-up; the beautician had asked whether she wanted full evening or daytime makeup. Unwisely she had chosen the former and she thought she looked like an unsuccessful tart. But perhaps that’s what she was…She prayed that Nicola wouldn’t ask her why she just didn’t charge for it if she needed sex, instead of creeping away like a terrorist on the run to meet Brian whenever he felt it was possible and/or desirable.

  —

  Nora had hoped that none of the family would see the tracksuit, but her ten-year-old son had dragged his father away from the television to laugh at the sight of Mother in her gear. It was one of the few nights of the 365 allotted to the year that Barry had come home early. He corpsed himself laughing so much that she felt he would shortly have to go out again to a pub in order to recover.

  “No, honestly, love, you’re sweet,” he had said when he saw the hurt in her eyes. That was even worse than the laughter.

  She had caught sight of herself in Mary’s hall mirror; she looked like a young elephant with a face prematurely aged with worry.

  They often met—Mary, Nora, and Angie—or two of them met; they thought of each other as friends. But there were things they didn’t tell each other. Friends don’t have to know everything.

  They weren’t schoolgirls anymore, they were grown-up women of thirty-six. Imagine, they shrilled, our ages add up to 144; they thought that was funny for a moment and then somehow didn’t.

  The simple supper had, of course, turned into a six-course dinner. Nicola ate hardly anything; she was so delighted to see them all, she asked about this and about that and she held it in her head so that when she asked the next question it was obvious she had remembered the answer to the one before.

  Mary and Nora didn’t know that the awful Brian’s wife was called Shirley and that she was expecting another child; they had no idea that Brian liked Angie to stay in all evening so that if he had the chance to ring her then he would find her there. They hadn’t known that Angie couldn’t ring him at the office in case his secretary might become suspicious.

  Angie and Nora hadn’t known that Mary’s Gerald had been named as the father of a university student’s child, and that he was paying support for a baby girl. Since he and Mary had produced only boys he said he had a soft spot for this child, whom he referred to as “my daughter” in tones of great pride. Mary told this tale quite simply, in between carrying groaning platters to and from the table. She would never have told that story if Nicola hadn’t asked the questions that produced the answers that made the tale.

  Nora could hear her own voice telling them how Barry had had his final warning from the office: get dried out or else. He wouldn’t get dried out. Nora was sussing out jobs for herself, property jobs—she had been doing temp work for months now. Angie and Mary hadn’t known that.

  Nicola told them little of herself; her brother was caught up in drugs, very messy. None of them had the right sympathetic questions to find out what kinds of drugs and how caught up. Was he victim? Dealer? Pusher? They would never know because the moment passed.

  They all wanted to know how much the house went for, and somehow that moment passed too. All they knew was that the sweet Italians had left it simply perfect, and the new people were Greeks and darlings and loved gardening.

  And was it because they weren’t interested enough, or didn’t have the vocabulary, that they never discovered whether Nicola had found anyone else after the simply marvelous but utterly impossible American she had married and had left? And was it because they didn’t know the vocabulary and the jargon that they never learned exactly what she did in design? Was she a couturier, a secretary? Did she have her own office? Did she work in someone else’s? Did she think up bouquets of spring flowers for duvet covers or did she make ashtrays with steel and chrome?

  And she said she had to go at ten-thirty because Tommy was picking her up. They remembered Tommy, didn’t they? They did. The boy that everyone fancied the summer they left school and Nicola had said he wasn’t worth running after because his head was swelling to the size of a balloon—they should wait until he became nice and normal, then he’d probably be easy to catch and very nice. And he turned out to be both. Nicola had been right again. He came in for a drink, remembered them all, spoke words of praise. Angie, Nora, Mary, all of them as lovely as ever, how great that they and Nicola all kept up together. Women were so much nicer than men, really.

  And they were gone and the girls sat there and the light had gone. Mary apologized for the meal, said it had been too heavy and said that, of course, her children were never to know about Gerald and all that business…And Angie said she quite understood, but of course she hoped they realized that Brian and Shirley had to live a normal life and she didn’t mind one bit. That was the other side of Brian’s life. Totally. And Nora said that in a way it might be a blessing having to go out and get a job, might be the makings of her.

  And suppose Nicola didn’t come back for another seven years. They’d all be forty-three. Imagine. Just think of it…what would they learn about each other then.

  LOVE AND MARRIAGE

  The Bargain

  When Cara met Jim at a party the rest of the world seemed to disappear; they stood looking at each other with delight and listening to each other in fascination, as if they were old friends.

  When the evening was over, they knew they would meet again and everyone else knew as well.

  So they met the following day for lunch, and that turned into a walk beside the canal, and they spent so long over a cup of coffee that the waitress had to ask them to order another one or leave.

  They were both aged twenty-eight, they loved travel and jazz and cooking and dogs.

  His mother had died three years ago. Her father had died at the same time.

  Jim knew the fellow who was giving the party because he had been on the same hurling team as him, way back when they were kids.

  Cara knew him because he was a driving instructor and he had helped her to get her test.

  Cara was a short story writer. She had gone to the party to celebrate having finished her latest collection of stories.

  Jim sold agricultural machinery. He had come to Dublin to celebrate a big sale and his father making him a partner in the business.

  Finally, they hit one problem.

  Cara lived in Dublin. Jim lived two hundred miles away in the country.

  He was going back home the following morning. So they talked nearly all night about what they would do and finally, exhausted, they agreed that Cara would make the journey to Jim’s part of the world the next weekend.

  They made a bargain.

  If Cara hated it she was to say so. If she thought that she could manage to write her stories there, and that sh
e wouldn’t miss her Dublin life too much, then she would say that and they would get married as soon as possible.

  That’s how sure they were in less than forty-eight hours.

  So they both waited nervously for Cara’s visit.

  It involved a train journey, followed by a bus trip. Jim was standing there waiting at the bus stop. Cara’s heart leaped when she saw him look anxiously at the bus in case she might not be on board. She saw the smile light up his face. He was so generous and warm.

  Please may this not be a desperate place, she prayed silently.

  Jim couldn’t leave his father and the business they had both built up. She knew that. And she would be the one who should move. She lived at home with her mother and a big family of brothers and sisters. Her younger sister would get Cara’s bedroom. Life would go on without her. But Jim could not possibly leave home. His father and his four sisters depended on him to keep the business going.

  Surely it couldn’t be too bad a place? It had produced Jim, after all. But the countryside looked very wild and woolly as the bus had hurtled along. Frightening-looking goats, or sheep maybe, but probably goats. They had terrifying curvy horns. Small, rough fields divided by stone walls…It was very far from anywhere, anywhere normal. But she nailed a smile on her face and he held her in his arms for a long time.

  “I was afraid you might not come,” he said.

  —

  They drove together down one of the four streets in the town and out into the countryside.

  The house where Jim lived had old roses in the garden and sweet peas, and the grass had been freshly cut.

  “I did that this morning,” Jim said. “I was too excited to do anything else. They wouldn’t let me near work in case I gave the machinery away.”

  His father was stooped over a stick, standing at the door to welcome them.