A Few of the Girls: Stories Page 9

  But then he began to wonder if he was becoming fixated on her. It was bad enough to be dull and sad and ordinary—he didn’t want to end up like something from Psycho.

  He had half his holiday left and he would go around Dublin as if he were from a different place altogether and he might well bump into her somewhere. He went to gyms and leisure centers in the early mornings to ask for brochures. Lots of these broadcasters did workouts, he heard. Maybe he might see her in the foyer or something. He saw a lot of glowing healthy people, but no Fiona.

  She might have breakfast in health food places or lunch near Donnybrook. She would be invited to poetry readings or art exhibitions. It wasn’t hard to get invited, if you went about it cleverly. Rory had a full week and indeed a happy week, even though he never laid eyes once on Fiona of the Afternoon Talk Show.

  “Are we looking for anyone?” Katie asked him one Saturday afternoon in St. Stephen’s Green when her father’s eyes roamed all around the place.

  “Often I look, Katie,” he said. “I look for someone who will make me more lively and exciting, more interesting than I am.”

  “I think you’re nice the way you are, Daddy,” his daughter said. “I wouldn’t want you different, I feel safe with you.”

  That’s because she’s nine, he thought, when she’s fourteen even she’ll realize what a shell I am. The visits will be shorter, the impatience very obvious.

  Rory was invited to a colleague’s wedding. Brian, the bridegroom, sat beside him at work, and he had been through all the highs and lows of the romance with Maureen, the dramas of the courtship, the on-off nature of the engagement. The throwing away and retrieval of the diamond ring. Now the day was almost here.

  Normally he would have made an excuse and got out of it, but not on this occasion. He couldn’t let Brian down.

  “You know, I owe it all to that girl Fiona on the radio,” Brian had said unexpectedly the day before the wedding. Rory blushed as if he had been found out. Fiona was his secret—he didn’t want her shared with everybody. Not in a personal way.

  “Did you phone her show?” He could hardly believe it. Rory thought he was the only one in the office who listened to Fiona on his earpiece.

  “No, but my fiancée, Maureen, did. She rang her last week and said she was so nervous of giving up everything, and changing her name and becoming a chattel, all the usual crap, and Fiona was great to her.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Oh, she sent some mousy woman round to talk to her and the two of them got on like a house on fire. The mousy woman said that Maureen didn’t have to change her name and she and I should be partners and friends, and suddenly since last week everything is just magical.”

  “Good for Fiona, then,” croaked Rory.

  “No, good for the Mouse, I say. She is coming to the wedding, by the way, but don’t tell anyone.”

  At the wedding the groom, Brian, red-faced with happiness and drink, introduced his friend Rory to this quiet, slim woman, with short, straight, shiny hair and a slightly diffident smile.

  “This issh the woman who saved my marriage,” he said, and left them together.

  “I’m Fiona,” she said simply.

  It was the same voice, the one off the radio, not so urgent and strident, but it was the same woman.

  “But I thought you were the Mouse? The Mouse who came to sort out Maureen.”

  “I’m both,” she said.

  He had seen her before, several times, walking quietly into RTÉ or leaving. But where was the hair, the glasses?

  “I wear them as a disguise,” she said. “You see, I’m actually not that sort of person at all, but someone I loved—or used to love a long time ago—said I was so dull and ordinary that I should try to get a job as an actress or something to liven myself up. So I invented this personality…”

  Rory looked at her in amazement.

  “Was it a long time ago?” he asked.

  “That I got the job?” she wanted to know.

  “That you loved the other person, the one who said you were ordinary.”

  “Oh, ages ago. I don’t love him anymore. I didn’t have the show and the false personality and everything just to get him back; I just thought he might be right that maybe I am very dull and ordinary.”

  “No, you’re not, you’re terrific, you sorted Maureen out.” He waved at the dazzling, happy bride.

  “Oh, that was easy. I do a lot of other things—I often get involved in a sort of quieter way myself to sort out people’s problems. I quite enjoy it.”

  He wondered for a moment had she known the women who had asked Katie to the birthday parties. Did he dare to ask her?

  Yes, of course he could. He knew it was a long shot but he was right. One invitation had been from Fiona’s sister Angela, who just loved little Katie, and in fact Fiona had met Katie at the house when she was doing her conjuring tricks.

  “You were the conjurer?” Rory cried. Katie had talked of nothing else for weeks.

  “I bought a book of conjuring; it was part of trying to be less dull.” Her eyes were big and anxious. He reached across and took her hands authoritatively.

  “You’re not dull, you’re marvelous,” he said, pure admiration shining from his eyes.

  “I never told all this to anyone before,” she said in a low voice.

  “I’ll trade you,” he said. “I took two weeks’ holiday just trying to find you. I liked you so much I hung around outside RTÉ looking for someone with hair and glasses.”

  “And?” she asked hopefully.

  “And it’s even better than I dared hope,” he said.

  It was quite a drunken wedding and the bridesmaid did an entirely uncalled-for striptease, which she would probably regret for the rest of her life. Brian was rather too appreciative of the bridesmaid’s displayed charms, and there was an argument about trade unionism that did no favors to either side but alienated a lot of people permanently. Three of the pageboys were sick, and the bride’s father got into a poker game where he lost five hundred pounds.

  But in the middle of this and all the music, Rory and Fiona celebrated the fact that nobody is, or ever has been, ordinary. Not since time began.

  Audrey

  When old Miss Harris died, her black-and-white cat, Audrey, didn’t know where to go.

  Audrey knew that some kind people thought it would be best if Audrey were put down too, but Audrey wasn’t nearly ready to go so she knew she must act swiftly. Choose somewhere to live and make herself indispensable and part of the household. The trouble was that she didn’t know people all that well in the area. Living with Miss Harris had been easy and pleasant: Audrey had had no need to look at the alternatives. But now she must decide.

  She didn’t want to live with the Wilsons next door. The wife had a very sharp voice and the husband had been known to aim a kick at Audrey when nobody was looking. The Wilsons had not been good neighbors to poor Miss Harris when she got old and frail. It wouldn’t have killed them to bring her in a mug of tea in the morning. Audrey had longed to be able to make the tea herself, but cats somehow couldn’t do this so she watched glumly as Miss Harris dragged her aching limbs from the bed and slowly and painfully got the whole show on the road.

  Audrey considered going to Eric. He was a pleasant man who had once given Audrey a whole fillet steak. But that turned out to be because he was drunk. It had been a mistake; he got the steak ready for himself and then left it on the floor, so naturally Audrey had eaten it—and been very grateful—and couldn’t understand why he was going through the house searching for it high and low.

  But even though Eric was good-hearted—and he had been kind to Miss Harris—he might be a poor choice because he was often drunk and was therefore unreliable. He could easily lock Audrey in the house and go away for six months and she would be a cat skeleton when he returned.

  Audrey didn’t really know many of the other households so she went on a tour of inspection.

  No to the family w
ho said “shoo shoo” before she came in the door. No to the retired couple who spelled out to each other that Audrey might have f-l-e-a-s. Imagine! Apart from the fact that Audrey never had fleas, why would they think that if she understood the word she might not also know how to spell it?

  No to the three girls who said a cat would be too expensive and they must not encourage it. No to the drummer who made the most alarming sounds unexpectedly with the drums and would unsettle even a calm cat like Audrey. No to the family with toddlers who were inclined to pick Audrey up by the throat and squeeze the breath out of her.

  Audrey wished that Miss Harris hadn’t died and left her. She had been such a nice lady, always digging in her garden and talking to herself. She used to say to Audrey, “You’re the only one who will really miss me when I’m gone. But I can’t leave you my treasure, because Henry would have me pronounced insane.”

  Miss Harris hated her nephew Henry with a great passion. He visited her once a year and seemed displeased that she was still alive. He would jangle his change in his pockets and look around Miss Harris’s house as if planning serious changes there after her time. After Henry’s last visit, Miss Harris had been very upset. She went into her garden with a shovel and went digging at a great rate.

  Audrey had joined her to be companionable. It was a great pity that Miss Harris didn’t know Audrey could understand everything she said and was trying to answer her. All Miss Harris and anyone else heard was the one word miaow.

  It was hugely irritating.

  Miss Harris had dug and dug, muttering that even Henry and a fleet of detectives would never find this. Audrey watched with interest as the good silver candlesticks and great plastic envelopes of cash were buried near the delphiniums. Then Miss Harris went back to the house and rested.

  She rested more and more after that, with Audrey lying in her lap, until the day she stopped breathing.

  Audrey hung around for long enough to know that Henry was livid with rage.

  “My aunt must have had more in her estate than what she left in her handbag,” he spluttered. In the will, Miss Harris had asked that the house and contents be sold and the proceeds go to an animal charity, with the rest of her estate going to her nephew Henry in gratitude for his annual visit.

  The rest of the estate turned out to be minimal. Very minimal. But everything was in order. Miss Harris had made the will in sound mind and she had regularly been taking money out of her savings in cash. That was her right. And no trace of this cash had been found.

  Audrey hugged her secret to herself as she walked along the road in great doubt about her future, and when she reached her street she saw a furniture van unloading at number twenty-eight. Miss Harris’s few belongings had already been sold in aid of the animal charity.

  Audrey watched carefully from under the hedge as the goods were unloaded. No kennel—that was good, they didn’t have a big barking dog. No birdcage, good also; people with caged canaries or budgies were afraid of cats. No toddlers to take Audrey by the throat.

  The people moving in seemed to be a young couple, and this was going to be their first home. They were exhausted from the move, excited about the future, and worried about whether they would be able to meet the payments every month. Suppose one of them got sick? Suppose there was a recession and there was no extra work?

  Then they would reassure each other with big mugs of tea and walk around Miss Harris’s house patting the walls and trying to summon up the energy to unpack the boxes. They were called Ken and Lilly, and the more Audrey watched them through the window the more she liked them.

  But she must not move in too quickly. They were tired and anxious. They wouldn’t want another four legs around the place, another mouth to feed. She would do it gradually. Until then she could sleep in Miss Harris’s shed.

  Audrey found a sparrow for lunch one day and a field mouse the next, but she was anxious to resume the nice meals that Miss Harris used to give her: a bowl of cat food that would build up her bones and make her glossy.

  On day three she thought it was time to join them. She groomed herself carefully in preparation for the visit. She knew she must not frighten them, and she mustn’t try to talk because they wouldn’t understand; they would think she was a whining cat or a hungry cat or a lost cat when in fact she was actually interviewing them to know whether this was a good place to stay.

  If only there was some way to communicate, to tell Lilly and Ken that she would be no trouble, that in fact she had lived in this house for three years, that she would show them round the neighborhood. But the language didn’t exist. They would think she was a hopeless stray instead of a new and helpful member of the household. Then suddenly Audrey remembered the collar that Miss Harris had given her. It said AUDREY and there was an address.

  When Miss Harris had died Audrey had asked two passing cats to help her get rid of the collar. It would be pretty pointless if kindly passersby kept delivering her back to an empty house when she was in the middle of finding a new home. But now, of course, it looked as if her old home could become her new home if she played her cards right. Audrey found the collar in the back of the shed and brought it with her when she went calling at Lilly and Ken’s house.

  They were astounded to see a black-and-white cat waiting patiently at the door, holding a broken cat collar in its mouth. They were more astounded by the address.

  “Audrey?” they said uncertainly, and so Audrey snaked around their legs and purred like an engine and offered her paw for a pawshake the way humans liked.

  “We should find out where it lives,” Ken said.

  “Well, according to the collar she lives here,” said Lilly. Lilly was the soft cop, Audrey decided, the easy touch, even.

  Ken was more anxious. “We’ll have to buy it food and we’ve barely enough to buy ourselves food.” Ken was the one Audrey would have to convince. She tried to make herself look small, a creature that would hardly need any maintenance. She purred louder and louder. He was stressed and anxious and it seemed to calm him.

  “All right, we’ll give the thing a week,” he said. Audrey was home free. No one ever gets rid of a cat after a week.

  They were very nice but, oh, Lordy, they were a very worried young couple. They were in a panic about repayments. Every night they went around patting the walls of Miss Harris’s house, saying how nice it was and how it had seemed like home from the moment they saw it. Then Ken’s firm stopped giving so much overtime, so Lilly said she would take in ironing. She had all the leaflets ready but didn’t like to approach the neighbors. So one day Audrey, tired of the dithering, took the leaflets herself and pushed them through people’s doors or left them under flowerpots and the ironing business began.

  Lilly was astounded that so many people had heard of her—she said that word of mouth was incredible. Audrey knew it was mouth of cat, but it was pointless to try and tell anyone that. There had been no mention of Audrey being asked to leave after a week. They were very fond of her and she slept on their bed like she had with Miss Harris, a comforting presence in the night.

  —

  And then Lilly told Ken she was expecting a kitten. Well, a human kitten. And Ken got so upset and said they couldn’t possibly afford it yet and went out of the house banging the door behind him. And Lilly cried and told Audrey all about it, said they would have no kitten ever. They would never have enough money. They had been foolish to take on this lovely house.

  Audrey didn’t understand; either you were having a kitten or you weren’t. Somebody had done something to Audrey and she couldn’t have kittens: she would have liked one or two litters but she thought that either you did or you didn’t, she didn’t know it could be changed midstream. But it was all making Ken and Lilly so tearful and Audrey knew she had to do something fairly speedily.

  So she led them to the garden with a great deal of mewing and meowing and agitation and she scraped at the earth where she had seen Miss Harris burying the treasure. With her little paws she scrabb
led at the ground.

  “She’s like a dog looking for a bone,” Lilly said.

  “God knows what we’ll dig up,” Ken said. “Maybe some awful carcass of a long-dead bird.”

  “No, I’m sure there has to be something important,” Lilly said, so Ken dug on and found the box and the wallets of money. A fortune that would mean they could go on living at number twenty-eight.

  They could afford a kitten of their own. They could afford even cat food for Audrey. She looked at them, beseeching them to do the right thing.

  They went into the kitchen and looked at the money. They said it must have belonged to the old lady—poor old dear, she must have gone mad and buried it out there. Then they remembered Henry, the old lady’s horrible nephew.

  Yes, of course they would keep it. You couldn’t possibly let him have it.

  Audrey relaxed a little.

  But then they felt guilty. It wasn’t theirs to spend. They must give it to the authorities. Audrey tensed up again and asked them what the authorities had ever done for Ken and Lilly, but naturally they didn’t hear her. And then she saw them kissing, which was a good sign, and she was sure they had come to the right decision.

  And Ken went back to the garden and filled in the hole so she knew that they had.

  And she didn’t tell them about the silver candlesticks because then they might have started to feel guilty. She would wait until their kitten was old enough to be demanding and they needed extra cash.

  Audrey settled down and enjoyed a bowl of expensive cat food. She wished she could tell Miss Harris that there had been a result.

  A great result.

  Kiss Me, Kate

  At every family wedding they said to Kate, “You’ll be next.”

  She never knew whether it was said as a consolation or a threat. She always gave the same rueful little smile, the sort of look that said that she’d never be so lucky as to marry anyone. But in her heart she didn’t want any of the trimmings that she had been through so often with her sisters and her brothers. For Kate had never been in love. At twenty-five that was a shameful thing to admit, so she didn’t admit it.