A Few of the Girls (34 page)

Annie was utterly lost when her best friend, Clare, got married. She had never expected to feel so beached. She had been delighted for Clare, she had been through all the excitements, the ups and downs of the romance, the drama of the engagement, the rows about the wedding, and had worn a hat for the first time in her life to be Clare's bridesmaid.

But now Clare and John had gone to live in the West, and even though she knew they would love her to stay with them on weekends, she couldn't go
every
weekend. And she had been so accustomed to spending every weekend with Clare she didn't really know how to have one without her.

Annie didn't feel the same enthusiasm about going to concerts or theaters on her own and there wasn't as much fun spending a morning trying on clothes you were never going to buy if you did it by yourself, and though she did have other friends, it wasn't the same.

It was only when they were making up the holiday list in the office that Annie remembered this would be her first holiday for years without Clare. Up to now they used to pore over the brochures and agree that since all they wanted was a small taverna or pensione right beside the sea, they didn't have to spend hours agonizing about the culture of this place versus that. Where was cheapest in off-peak times? That would be the criterion. Maybe somewhere near a harbor where Clare and Annie would sit in the evening and look at the people and laugh and be picked up sometimes and sometimes not, but it never mattered much either way. This year Annie would have to go on her own.

She decided not to go anywhere she had been with Clare; it would point up too sharply that she was now alone, with few resources. No, she would have to try somewhere new. They were pressing her to choose her dates, after all she was twenty-six, one of the seniors in the office, she must have first pick. It had been a quiet Christmas, a lonely New Year, the weather was bad, and the holiday prospects wouldn't become any less gloomy by putting off the date. Annie decided she would take two weeks in February. The others were very pleased; this meant they could have more reasonable times to juggle around between themselves.

“You'll be away for St. Valentine's Day,” said a giggling junior who was so immature Annie felt sure that she should be in school, not out earning a living. “That could be very romantic.”

Annie looked at her grimly, confirming the girl's belief that Annie was indeed elderly and half mad. Then Annie wondered where she would go. Usually she and Clare would have a serious and wailing examination of their finances when it came to planning a holiday, but Annie found that she had plenty of money to spend. Without Clare she didn't spend anything in Grafton Street on a Saturday, she didn't drink so much wine, she went on fewer outings. It didn't cost much to sit in her flat and watch television or read books from the library, and since Clare got married in September that had been Annie's main entertainment. She could go anywhere within reason. Not the Far East or America or anything, but she could go on the kind of holiday they had always dismissed before as out of their reach.

It was very, very cold. Annie saw a woman with a warm, tanned face and a happy smile; she asked her where she had been, and the woman said she had been in the Canaries. Annie booked herself on the Sunday flight; so it appeared did half of Ireland, and she wondered mildly did everyone take their holidays on Sunday, February 10, but the man at the airport said it was like this every Sunday. Whenever a country was in crisis its citizens started flying out to the sun. It was a sure sign of desperate things ahead. Annie was annoyed about the discrimination against people who travel on their own, and how the single room supplements seemed to jack up the cost of the holiday in a very unfair way, and how the world of tourism seemed to be devised for those who go into the Ark two by two.

She noticed that she was the only passenger traveling by herself. Everyone else was in groups of even numbers. This had never worried her in the past. In those days she had been waiting for Clare or going to meet her, not because she was genuinely on her own. Now it was different somehow.

She gave herself a brisk mental shake. “I'm not going to be the only person on my own when I get there,” she told herself firmly. “There's bound to be hundreds of people who came from different lands by themselves.”

Well, if there were, Annie didn't meet them. And she became self-conscious on the beach. She felt people were looking at her, and wondering why was she so odd and friendless that she sat alone, rare in the breed of sun-seeking humans. She sat all by herself reading a book, rubbing on suntan oil, smiling at the children playing, admiring the fashion parade that walked up and down. She didn't
feel
very lonely; she just thought that she looked lonely and a little eccentric. So Annie did something that
was
a little eccentric; she brought two towels out to the beach with her and spread one beside her as if her companion had just gone away for a while. She even took an extra pair of flip-flops to make it look more realistic. Once or twice she began a postcard to Clare and she was about to tell her of this idiotic subterfuge, but realized that it might sound pathetic and even verging on the insane, so she tore up the postcard and put it out of her mind.

There was a big notice in the hotel lobby announcing a St. Valentine's Day party. Everyone was to wear a big label shaped like a heart with their name on it and it would create great romance in honor of the saint, the hotel announcement said.

“I thought everyone here was romantic already! What would they want to know anyone else's name for?” Annie asked the man behind the desk out of genuine interest.

“Oh, a man is always searching for new romance,” he said, smiling with thirty-two overwhite teeth. Annie thought this was probably true. But on Thursday it was either put on a red heart with “Annie” written on it, or else go up to her room and sit on the balcony. There was no middle course. She took her heart and pinned it on her dress and went into the big room.

There was a welcome cocktail, a very dangerous tasting drink, which was a bright, limpid purple and might have been cleaning fluid with some cassis added. Annie sipped it cautiously. Then a Swede asked her to dance at once and said that he would like her to come to his apartment later for some Good Loving Games and wine. Annie said she thought not, and he wanted to know did she think not or did she say not. When she said she was saying not, he shrugged, finished the dance with the air of a courteous martyr, and left her.

She danced with an Englishman, who said his wife was behaving like a tramp, and she spent the dance assuring him that he might be mistaken in this view; then she danced with a man who didn't speak at all. The name on his heart was Sven, so she assumed he was another Scandinavian. He had a nice smile. She was sorry he didn't speak. She began to talk herself but it coincided with a very loud blast of “The Rivers of Babylon” as they were passing the band and he just smiled and pointed to his ears. There was a cabaret and there was a supper of aphrodisiac foods, oysters and strawberries mainly, and a lot of wine. Sven came and filled her glass up once and Annie wished he would say something. If Clare had been here they would have made a joke and called him Sven the Speechless to each other, but on your own it's hard to make jokes and laugh at them.

The band, six lustful-looking fellows with flashing eyes, had managed to make connections with two groups of three equally lustful girls. It was safe to hunt in packs, Annie thought. If she had two friends with her she too might have gone off to whatever was promised, but on your own it was inviting some kind of disaster. She watched the musicians packing up their guitars hastily before the mood of lust passed from them or before the girls had second thoughts. A group of cheerful Irish people who had what seemed to be a jeroboam of Baileys Irish Cream with them were in high form and hardly noticed the departure of the band. For a moment Annie was tempted to join them; they looked married and settled and as if they wouldn't object, in fact they seemed the kind who'd pull up a chair for her and give her a pint mug of Baileys, but something held her back. She took off her cardboard heart so as not to look silly in the lift and was walking to the door. She saw Sven taking off his heart too and smiling at it.

“I think I'll keep it as a souvenir,” he said to her.

Annie wondered was she in fact very drunk; this Dane or Norwegian or whatever he was spoke with a Dublin accent.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, hoping to clear her head.

“They can never spell Sean properly so I wrote it down for them and then they couldn't believe it; they thought I was an illiterate Swede who couldn't spell his own name.”

The false Sven had a lovely smile.

“Did you have a row with your friend?” he asked her.

“What friend?”

“The one that never turns up to collect his towel and his shoes on the beach.”

“There's no friend,” she said.

“That's great,” said the false Sven. “Will we go out on the terrace and have a pint?”

Annie pealed with laughter. And as they sat in the moonlight with a lot of very cold lager and their two cardboard hearts on the table in front of them, she never once thought what a pity Clare wasn't here to share all the laughs. She never thought of Clare at all.

Kay woke up because the curtains in her bedroom were being pulled back. This hadn't happened for a long time, not for five long years, since Peter had left. It gave her a shock.

Then she heard a breakfast tray rattling and saw a big vase of flowers on a table. Her daughter, Helen, must have let herself into the house and was giving her a birthday treat.

“It's all from Nick as well,” Helen explained, not wanting to take all the praise. “He delivered the flowers, reminded me to keep the half bottle of champagne cold, he would have been here if he could.”

“Champagne!” Kay couldn't believe it.

She felt tears in her eyes. They were so good to her, and always had been.

“Just a half bottle and fresh orange juice—you are going to have a Buck's Fizz or a Mimosa or whatever they call it.” Helen was struggling with the cork.

Kay sat up in bed happily. There were fresh croissants on a warmed plate and a thermos flask of coffee. This breakfast could go on all morning if she wanted it to. And why not? Her day was her own until ten o'clock, when she went to work in a nearby antiques shop, and it wouldn't really matter if she were late. They didn't depend on her to run it, exactly.

But she wouldn't think of that now as she sipped the fizzy orange. Alcohol at eight in the morning—whatever next?

“I'll just have a sip then I must go to work.” Helen was all busy and excited. “Anyway, tonight, Mum, it's the birthday present. Nick and I will be here at seven to pick you up and we'll all go to this restaurant and give you our present.”

“But
this
is my present, this and the dinner, surely?” Kay protested.

“Nonsense. We have to do something special—after all, it's not every day that your mother makes it to half of ninety,” said Helen, giving her a kiss, and was out the door.

The color went out of the spring morning, the fizz went out of the lovely fresh drink she had been enjoying so much, the coffee tasted bitter, and the crisp fresh croissants on the warm plate lost their appeal.

Kay Nolan was forty-five, half of ninety.

What a sad, lonely, terrible thought.

She got out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror.

She couldn't quite work out what she was looking at.

A small woman with red-brown hair, quite fit and trim from all that hard work lifting and moving things around the antiques shop where she worked and walking the dog over the common twice a day.

Did she
look
half of ninety?

Impossible to say.

But now that she realized this is what she was, she sure as anything felt it.

She sat at her dressing table, head in hands.

Only the young, happy Helen and Nick, convinced that she was doing fine, would say that as a sort of joke. They were twenty-four and twenty-two, strong and handsome.

Nick would marry Julia this autumn and Kay was already dreading the wedding day when she would have to be courteous to Peter and watch him doing his proud, concerned father bit.

Helen seemed to be talking rather a lot about a musician called Johnny, but assuring everyone that there was nothing in it, really.

How could they, young people who thought that thirty was over the hill, know what it was like to be given such a statement about being forty-five?

She sighed a great sigh and Sandy came in quivering and carrying his lead. He had been hoping it was time to go out and had viewed the breakfast in bed ceremony with displeasure.

“Okay. Come on, Sandy.” Kay put on her tracksuit and took the dog for a run. She would shower and dress and be ready and smiling when the antiques shop opened at ten.

That was the thing about people her age, they were programmed to work and smile and they just go on with it.

The day seemed endless, as if things were in slow motion.

She thought about Peter; he would have been forty-five some six months ago. Kay wondered if Susie, his twenty-seven-year-old wife, had made any jokes about him becoming half of ninety. Very probably not.

She was not wistful and wishing that she could spend her birthday with Peter. She didn't love him anymore. That was an absolute. He had lied too much, hurt and humiliated her too often. There had been no dignity in their breakup.

She knew the children saw him from time to time but they never talked to her about it.

“Do you want to hear how Dad is?” Helen had asked once in the early days.

“Why should I want to hear?” she had countered, so now they said nothing about any visits.

A colleague had told her that Susie was pregnant. Kay never asked further.

It didn't upset her; the upset was all in the past.

She just wanted no part of it now, no interested discussions and phony friendship with a man who had betrayed her and made her feel so foolish for so long. She wanted none of this so-called civilized behavior. Peter had never been civilized before, not when he was sleeping with Susie in the mobile home that Kay had worked such long hours to save and pay for. She did not want to see, hear of, or meet this woman with whom he was making a new life and, from all accounts, a new family.

She went out at lunch hour to have her hair done and the girl in the salon asked her was she going on a holiday this summer.

“No, indeed, walking my dog around the common is my holiday. I've reached that time of life,” Kay said, and she saw the naked pity in the girl's face.

Nick brought his fiancée, Julia, with him to the restaurant and Helen said that Johnny just
might
drop in at the coffee stage but no one was to read anything into it.

It was a nice Italian restaurant and the staff was friendly and welcoming.

More than once Helen and Nick said that they wished they had an Italian family.

As they had dinner they talked about their work, Nick and Julia in a High Street bank, Helen as a receptionist in a local radio station. Kay told them about the antiques shop and the wonderful little inlaid cabinet that had come in last week and how they all loved it so much they hoped it would never sell.

Enthusiasts, yes, they were definitely that, but businesswomen probably not, she laughed ruefully.

They talked about when Nick and Julia would get married, probably at the end of the summer. They were fixing a date and sending the invitations very shortly.

She thought she saw them looking at each other as if they wanted to ask her a question, but perhaps she only imagined that.

So instead she asked them questions.

Would it be a big wedding or a small one?

Secretly she hoped it would be a big one, less need to talk to Peter if they were to be submerged in crowds.

Julia's mother wanted the works; her father wanted half the works.

“And what do
you
want, Julia?” Kay wanted to know.

Julia shrugged. “I'm an only child, Kay, so it isn't really up to me because they'll have no other wedding. Nick agrees with me in this, that I should do whatever they want to do, it's only a day.”

Johnny arrived for coffee, and, as instructed, they made no fuss and read nothing into it even though his hand never moved from Helen's knee.

There were more curious conversations beginning and ending, topics about wedding days being for everyone, about the need to forget the past.

Suddenly Kay realized that they were definitely preparing the path for Susie to be invited to the wedding.

She felt a wave of rage and resentment pass over her.

To please their father, they were going to ask this woman, barely older than themselves.

They were going to let him smirk even more as he propelled his young, pregnant wife around a family gathering.

It was beyond reason to ask her to accept this.

But she would not have a row now, instead she talked vaguely as if she hadn't understood where the conversation was leading.

Then she saw them all getting ready for the present giving. There were no wrapped parcels beside them, so she thought it might be a piece of jewely or a silk scarf.

She got her face ready.

It was indeed in a big white envelope, so it might be a scarf, but when she took it out it was a travel brochure and a page marked with a big yellow sticker. They had bought her a holiday in Italy.

Her son and daughter, who surely couldn't afford this, had paid for the present she would least like in the world. Two weeks in a small family-owned Italian hotel, where it said
ENGLISH SPOKEN
in very big letters.

Kay could hardly believe it.

There was no way she could refuse such a gift, such a misplaced generosity. And yet this was what she was now committed to. A punishing two weeks in a place where English couples would sit two by two at their tables and nod to the lonely woman aged half of ninety sitting at a table by herself.

“But I can't accept this…” she began. “It's far too generous.”

They beamed with pleasure and assured her that it was all paid for, she wouldn't be stopped at the airport.

“I'm not sure if I can take the time off,” she blustered.

They had been to the antiques shop and she could.

“But Sandy?”

“Is going to my parents for the two weeks and you
know
they'll look after him properly,” said Julia.

And so she went.

Keeping up the appearance that she was delighted and that she had the two most generous children in the world.

Nobody would have known she was furious with them for not consulting her, for not asking her opinion, treating her as helpless to be packed off to wherever they thought “suitable.”

Had Kay been given a choice she might well have gone to Italy, but for a one-week art tour to Venice or Florence, somewhere she would have been with people of similar interest, not sitting awkward and alone amongst middle-aged, middle-class, smug couples visiting Tuscany.

But it was too late, so she would go with a good grace.

It was exactly as she expected. A beautiful house with a long terrace overlooking a magical valley. A hardworking Italian family and seven English couples. They were polite and welcoming, her countrymen and women. But Kay, who had married at twenty and had never known the heady excitement of traveling alone, felt out of things. She did not want to intrude on these people's lives, she feared that she was boring them and becoming a hanger-on. So, for the first two evenings, after dinner she excused herself and said she liked to take a little walk before going to bed.

She didn't want to go down to the center of the little town with pavement cafés and the music coming from the bars. It reminded her too much of a life that was over. Instead, Kay would go out the back gate and up a windy road.

In the warm Italian evening she would walk and look into people's houses and then past fields and eventually up to a wonderful hill and sit under what she thought might be an old cedar tree and look down on the lights of the town.

A man walking a dog passed her on both nights and they exchanged a cordial good evening in both languages.

At first she was alarmed in case she looked vulnerable or available sitting alone like that, but he seemed to think she was perfectly entitled to be there and did not stay to interrupt her thoughts. Her thoughts were not very worthy; Kay realized they were mainly self-pitying, yet she would not welcome that woman to Nick and Julia's wedding.

They didn't need her there…

There was no reason for her to want to attend a celebration of the family that she had succeeded in breaking up. If this Susie had any style, class, or feeling she would not
want
to go.

It would be quite hard enough to meet Peter again, but that was all she would do, because every word he said would remind her of a betrayal, a lie.

If he were to mention his mother she would remember the number of times he was meant to be dealing with his mother's nerves when in fact he was in the mobile home with Susie…

Kay knew she had been foolishly naïve to believe everything he had said over the long months that he was involved with Susie. But you
do
believe things from someone you love and trust, so what was so foolish about that?