A Few of the Girls (31 page)

She had forgotten about minding her own business.

Miss McCarthy always wanted to fall in love in winter. Not in spring, like everyone else.

It had started long ago when she used to be on the hockey team and they would cross the city after a match, steaming with energy and health, carrying bursting sports bags, and waving hockey sticks as weapons. She used to look around hopefully in case she might catch the eye of some young lounging fellow and have a bit of repartee.

And then, when she was in the secretarial college, it was the same. She never felt wistful about those who went off to court in the Dublin mountains on long sunny evenings, or who wandered hand in hand along a strand in the sunset. But she was filled with envy when she saw a little winter love. When she saw a couple buying the ring on Christmas Eve in the cold crisp air with all the excitement about the place. Or when she saw well-wrapped-up young lovers heading off on a freezing Saturday to some match.

Her pangs were sharpest when she thought of love by a dancing fire, full of warm burning briquettes where lovers sat on the rug and talked of the future.

Miss McCarthy's section in the service all seemed to get engaged with great regularity. Girls who had been talking about Sean one month, and Donal the next, produced small diamonds in unusual settings given to them by Michael the next.

Miss McCarthy had oohed and aahed over more rings in ten years than she would ever have believed possible. Young girls tossing their heads: “We'll have the deposit for the house in two years, we can live with his mother until then.” Other girls: “Well, it's hard to explain, but it really is like something out of a book, we're so happy.” More girls: “And it's going to be an evening wedding, much nicer really, there can be dancing and everything.”

Mr. Blake used to admire Miss McCarthy a lot. She was so patient with these silly girls, she just had the right touch—a little enthusiasm, a bit of excitement over their nonsensical romancing and telling what they did last night and whether they would be in when the fella rang next—and then back to work.

Miss McCarthy never told them to stop wasting time; instead, she looked at the clock and gasped guiltily, as if it were she who had been distracting everyone. It worked every time. Peace and activity settled back in their accustomed hum, and Mr. Blake was full of admiration for that.

He was not a leader of people himself, and he saw a kind of authority in Miss McCarthy. She was a bit like a nun he knew back home, firm but never harsh.

She was a fine-looking woman too. Tall and slim with nice lacy blouses and soft cardigans, pink and blue and gray. He liked those nice brooches she wore at the neck of her blouse too. She was what would have been called a very nice girl, a superior kind of girl, back at home. Even his mother, who was fairly critical of almost anyone, would find it hard to say anything against Miss McCarthy.

It was when he started to wonder what his mother's view of Miss McCarthy might be that Mr. Blake realized, for the first time in six years of working in the same section, that he was actually thinking of Miss McCarthy as a woman, and what's more, as a woman for him. He was startled and not altogether pleased by this realization.

Mr. Blake's life was very well organized and it didn't need any complications. He lived in a grand house in Clonskeagh with a distant cousin of his. He paid for his room and breakfast there, and had been settled there for six years, since he came to Dublin.

His room was big enough for him to have a friend in for a chat, or a game of cards, and there was even an armchair in it to encourage the fiction that Mr. Blake had a bedsitter.

Miss McCarthy thought Mr. Blake a very nice man but that he was a bit put upon by everyone. Extra work was always arriving in his tray. Knotty, boring, endless problems were always given to him, the kind of thing there was actually no solution to. Then other people would sigh because Mr. Blake had found no solution.

He was a late entrant into the service. She heard that he had worked in the family business in Cork somewhere and there had been a row. He lived now in some cousin's place, and, from all she could ever gather, he hadn't much of a life. He never volunteered much but she thought that he had seen a lot of the television programs that they talked about in the office and none of the plays or the films.

Maybe he sat in every night and watched the television in a darkened room with his cousin and her two school-going children. The cousin was a deserted wife, Miss McCarthy had heard in some whisper, and it was nice for her to have the money coming in.

Mr. Blake wondered idly what Miss McCarthy did in the evenings. She was always businesslike and bustling about going home, not wedded to a desk like some of the lonely older women who were really sorry to leave the comforting life of the office at the end of the day. He knew she lived with her mother in Rathmines.

He knew that she must be about thirty, four years younger than himself. He knew she had no regular boyfriend, no love life. It would have been hard to hide a love life in that section. He knew that she always found him pleasant and agreeable, so he decided that he would ask her out for a meal. What Mr. Blake didn't know was how hungry Miss McCarthy was feeling for a little winter love.

It was a wet February evening and they felt awkward walking together down the street instead of separating with a wave as they normally did at six. Mr. Blake had suggested a drink first, since it wouldn't be worth their while going home just to come into town again.

Miss McCarthy had worn a dress and jacket to work instead of her normal blouse and skirt with a pastel cardigan over her shoulders.

When six o'clock came she put on more lipstick, a pair of earrings, and a cream chiffon scarf. She looked dressed up to go out.

They walked companionably past all the shops selling Valentine cards and into a lounge where there was music and thick carpets. Mr. Blake had two half pints of a fancy draft lager, Miss McCarthy had two glasses of white wine.

They talked about the office and about the likely changes and about the man in the section who was a troublemaker and about how they had spent Christmas. Mr. Blake had decided to stay in Dublin to avoid all the traveling, he said—which meant that Mr. Blake had been on such poor terms with his family over whatever it was that he didn't even go home to wherever it was in Cork for Christmas.

Miss McCarthy had said she and her mother had a lovely quiet time, very peaceful, which meant that she and her mother had had nowhere to go and, even more sadly, had had few people to ask in. But the loneliness that hung over both of them didn't seem sad. In the buzz and burr of a warm city pub in early evening it seemed companionable.

But they didn't admit anything even to themselves, and by no glance did they let the other know that this was something possible, something warm and nice that they might hold on to, and it might become big and developing and look after them. They were treading very delicately in case it would go away.

And it went away. It went away because it was blown away.

It blew away as they went to the restaurant. Mr. Blake had suggested one place and Miss McCarthy thought it sounded very nice. When they got there it had candlelit tables and red tablecloths. There was a pianist playing softly at the back. There would be no worry about how much it cost since the menu was on the door, but suddenly Mr. Blake's neck seemed to bristle about it.

He turned to Miss McCarthy, who was looking inside with her pale eyes shining and her head filled with two unaccustomed glasses of white wine and a wish to look after Mr. Blake and make sure he wasn't put upon too much by the world.

“I don't think this is the kind of place…do you?” he said hesitantly.

“What? I beg your pardon?” Miss McCarthy was taken away from her vision, the windows wet and studded with raindrops, the warm, soft place with loving people inside. Every table seemed to have a couple at it.

“What?” she said again.

Mr. Blake looked around without any pleasure.

“I don't know about you, Miss McCarthy,” he said, “but I like a place where you can see what you're eating, where you can get the hang of what's going on. A grill bar or something?” He looked at her, waiting for her quick, eager agreement, her pleasant easing of situations.

But she was not giving any.

“Whatever you say,” she said in a clipped sort of voice.

Mr. Blake thought her face looked a little sharp and pinched, like that nun he remembered back at home.