A Few of the Girls (25 page)

“Yes, she did come, I remember, and I was so sick of her then I didn't know why she was there really.”

“She was there because I
wanted
you to get sick of her and, amazingly, it worked. When we came back you didn't want to go on dares anymore, you had different and nicer friends.”

“You old fox,” I said, astounded. Imagine, it had all happened without my knowing! I would never have known, if it had not been for the fact that we needed to use the tactic again.

We began planning in earnest.

“Where is Eve now?” my mother whispered like a conspirator.

“Still in bed. That's what girls do nowadays, they sleep till lunch every Saturday morning.”

“Wake her and ask her to invite Hilda to lunch today. Ask what Hilda particularly likes to eat.”

“Are you sure, Mother?”

“Absolutely sure.” There was a flash of steel in my mother's eye.

I shook Eve awake—she looked like a baby rubbing her eyes. I felt very devious but we were talking about a Greater Good here. It had to be done.

Apparently, Hilda really liked sausages, but her mother never had them at home because they weren't posh enough. So my mother and I looked up a dish called saucisses de Toulouse, which was just sausages in a fancy sauce. And Hilda came and said it was terrific, and was very interested that Eve's gran had eaten it in a posh hotel, and then we played Monopoly on a French set that had all the posh streets in Paris. My mother admired the braids in Hilda's hair and asked was it difficult keeping the color right all the time.

Although Hilda yawned a bit and put her feet up on the furniture, I kept a smile on my face. I refused to think that the sofa had cost fifty-two long, tiring evenings working in the Italian restaurant and this girl had her boots on it.
Boots.
No. There must be calm. Great calm. Even enthusiasm when my mother was asking Hilda where she was going on her holidays and Hilda yawned and said that she wasn't sure. Her mother was going with some ladies on a bridge holiday and her father and his girlfriend were going on a cruise. I saw my mother nodding at me like a madwoman. This was my cue.

“Well, Hilda, I'm taking Eve and my mum and dad to Brittany for ten days this year. We know a lovely place and we'd just love if you came with us.”

Eve's little face lit up like a candle. “Oh
do,
Hilda,
do
come!”

And so she came. Horrible,
horrible
Hilda, sulking, lying around expecting to be waited on all the time, complaining that the place didn't have any celebs in it and that we weren't members of the yacht club.

“This is the worst, but,” my mother whispered to me, “but it's working. Believe me.”

I wished I could believe her. An entire holiday wasted as we pandered to this selfish girl.

As the days went by I saw that Hilda was a lonely child. She had little real attention from either parent: her father's only solution to a problem was to throw money at it and her mother's was to find a pecking order and try to rise to the top. Possessions were good, membership of clubs was good, but talking and listening and understanding weren't very high on anyone's agenda, neither were they fun.

I found myself genuinely trying to entertain the terrible Hilda, to give her a holiday she would remember. I suggested she might try tasting an oyster.

“I don't want to,” she said. “But it will be good to talk about afterwards.”

“That's really no reason to do anything,” I said. “No one is very interested.”

Hilda thought about it for a while. “I think you're right,” she said suddenly.

“Oh, I think so. I've been around forever, you get to know things,” I said, not wanting to take too much credit for anything.

“You're not bad at all,” she said, patting me unexpectedly on the arm. I told my mother secretly that it wasn't working at all. The monster Hilda was beginning to like me, and little Eve loved to see us all as a big happy family.

“There were two ways it could have worked with Rosemary Roberts,” my mother said. “Either she began to bore everyone in Western Europe, which is what happened in our case, or else we reformed her and made her a nicer person, which could well be what's happening with you and Hilda.”

I didn't want it that way. I wanted her out of here, miles away. She asked quite normal questions like why wasn't Eve's dad involved in her life, and I answered the same vaguely dishonest way as I had done before, saying he was long out of our lives before Eve was born and that he knew nothing of her.

“He should pay something though, shouldn't he?” Hilda said.

I told her I didn't think so at all. I had made all the decisions so the responsibilities were all mine. She gave me a sort of a hug.

“You're really all right, you are,” she said.

I was furious, of course, but a little bit pleased. Like we all like to be all right. When the holiday was over, I told her that I was going to give up the Italian restaurant one day a week and that Eve and I were going to learn how to cook some terrific dish, on a Friday afternoon. Did she want to join?

Did she want to join? Of course she did. And she chose things like apple tarts and chopped herrings because she liked the taste, not because they sounded posh or looked well.

So that was a bit of reform along the way. And she was only a child, a child that nobody had been nice to. I got to like her. A lot. Never quite as much as on the day I told her that I was going to look for a husband next year and maybe she might give me some fashion advice and maybe she could come shopping for an outfit. Hilda looked at me thoughtfully and said that, honestly, she didn't think it was all a matter of expensive outfits, that fellows probably just liked you as a person. You know, with views and ideas and jokes and things.

I could barely find the usual lighthearted tone that I used with her. So I gave her an awkward sort of a bear hug and when it was over she said that I wasn't to go and marry someone awful, that Eve and she were to be consulted all along the way. When I told my mother about it I had to do a lot of heavy blowing of my nose.

My mother, who is much less sentimental than I am when all is said and done, said that we should regard that as a result.

A result?

Where does she find these phrases?

It was as bad as a bereavement when Kay's engagement was broken off. Nobody quite knew what to say. They were afraid to say that she was better off without Larry even though a lot of them might have thought so. They didn't want to say it was just a lovers' tiff, because it was obviously much, much more than that. It would have been heartless to shrug and say that, like a bus, there was a new man around every corner.

So, with the best of motives, Kay's friends decided not to mention it at all. Sooner or later, they reasoned, Kay would give them an indication of how she wanted it discussed.

Kay felt unbearably lonely. It was as if a hand had reached in and taken Larry out of her life: his name never came up in conversation and the subject of weddings was hastily dropped if, by accident, it was ever mentioned. For a group of young women who used to talk regularly about marriage and babies and engagement rings and wedding dresses, a huge and tactful lack of interest in the subject seemed to have descended on them.

Kay was puzzled. These were her friends; they all worked together in the big delicatessen, making salads and pâtés and dips. They did outside catering as well and served food at business functions. This is where Kay had met Larry eighteen months ago.

If not love, it had been huge interest at first sight, for both of them. She kept circling him with the best canapés, he kept following her and asking serious questions about what filling was in the tiny vol-au-vents and whether she was going anywhere after the reception.

They had been so happy, so sure of each other. They had saved the deposit for their house together. Their wedding was planned for summer.

Larry was getting four weeks' holidays from his firm; Kay's colleagues were giving them the wedding reception as a present; they had booked a honeymoon in Italy.

And then he met another.

The Other was a tall, noisy girl called Zappie, who seemed to be a combination of everything that Larry hated. Or said he hated. She was very showy and calling attention to herself; she knew nothing about cookery, she said life was too short to own a kitchen oven; a tiny microwave and a nearby Chinese restaurant were all any couple needed.

When Larry started to tell her about Zappie, Kay thought it was a joke; she wondered was it April Fool, or
Candid Camera.
He couldn't mean these things he was saying. He was talking to her in that responsible tone he always used when speaking of money. He would work out exactly what her contribution had been to their building society and return it to her, together with the correct interest that had accrued.

She listened, horrified. He was talking about their life! He was unpicking their plans neatly and meticulously, as he would have done a file at work. He was going to put all her records and tapes in a box—they would divide the ones they had bought jointly, with Kay having first choice.

Three times, and three times only in the middle of all this, did he tell her he was sorry and that he wished things had been different—it was just that when Zappie came into his life, there was no room for anyone else.

Kay didn't sleep these nights. She got up and paced her flat. She felt that someone must be mad. Was it Zappie with her crazy clothes and her shouty voice? Was it Larry with his nit-picking division of goods and insistence that they were very lucky Zappie had come into his life before he and Kay had married rather than after? Because the end result would be the same, and there might have been more to divide, like children.

Or was it Kay herself who was going mad? Had she been insane to think that Larry loved her? There must have been signs all along the way that he was looking for someone much livelier than the dowdy little Kay who worked in the delicatessen.

She grew more and more silent and worked harder and harder. She knew they talked about her behind her back and worried about her. She knew that the dark circles under her eyes weren't covered by makeup and that the sparkle had gone out of her voice.

Years ago, in the olden times, women went into a decline after a Broken Romance, they had the Vapors and they were sent on a world cruise. Or the rich ones were. The ordinary ones just got on with it, Kay supposed. And in those days they had to marry the next man that turned up, because there was no other life for women.

She was not going to marry the next man, or indeed the only man who had turned up. He had been there for years, hesitant and hopeful and constantly saying the wrong thing. She would not take consolation from Eric. Not even if the world was going to end would she go to him. She had always told him that she felt nothing for him, and that was still true. He had been mute with disappointment when she announced her engagement to Larry and had sent an entirely inappropriate flower-covered card saying he would be waiting in the wings in case Anything Happened.

How could he have known it would? Did he dream up Zappie?

The date came when it should have been her wedding and her honeymoon in Italy. In order to avoid any silent sympathy, Kay said she would take holidays anyway. They seemed relieved, but didn't even dare to ask her where she was going, which was just as well.

Kay had no idea where she would go, and she cared less. Her last job was to deliver a birthday cake to an elderly woman who lived in a cottage about ten miles away from town. Kay would go on the bus, cake on her lap.

It was like the kind of cottage you see on the front of a calendar, beautiful thatching and window boxes with flowers tumbling out. In the garden tall hollyhocks were waving and there was an air of peace about the whole place, which was in great contrast to the busy traffic and crowds she had left behind.

Anna Whelan held back the door to let her in and Kay looked at the brasses, the jars of dried flowers, the rugs, and the walls covered with different kinds of plates. This was a happy place; people had lived a good life in this house.

The cake was examined and praised. The money was paid and the receipt given. Mrs. Whelan was highly impressed that an employee would travel all the way out on the bus. Kay explained that it was all good public relations and perhaps Mrs. Whelan would now recommend them to other people. She had a little card that she would leave, with their phone number. But she wasn't really thinking about work and getting further business, she was thinking about this lovely house. She looked around and sighed happily.

Anna Whelan was making tea and they sat together in the kitchen. They talked easily. The cake was for a neighbor. He would be seventy tomorrow. They had been friends for years. He came to tea once a week. Always had for years and years, ever since they had been young.

Sometimes the days went by so quickly she didn't realize it was time for him to come again. She worked, you see, mending broken china. It was deeply satisfying, she said. She wasn't up to museum standard or anything, but she could mend pieces that people valued. She had a little workshop out at the back, and she never noticed the hours passing as she worked with the broken cups and plates and cracked jugs that meant so much to the people who had brought them to her.

Kay found herself telling the whole story of Larry, and how they had met and that tomorrow should be their wedding day. She told Anna Whelan about the honeymoon they had planned, and how Larry had divided up the refund they got from the travel agency. She told her about Zappie and the hurt of it all, and even about Eric, who said he would always be there, and how that seemed to irritate her more than any other single thing in this unhappy story.

She was a wonderful listener, because she remembered everything and everyone in the tale. She asked if Larry were mean, and, thinking back, Kay decided that he was a little. Not dishonest or unfair but tight with money. She asked whether Zappie came from a rich family. Again, something Kay had not thought about, but it could well be so. Those clothes and that manner could well be the product of a rich, spoiled upbringing. She asked about Eric and if he were reliable and plodding and stable.

“I'm never going to marry Eric!” cried Kay.

“No indeed, my dear, that's the very last thing you should do. Come with me to my workshop and I'll show you some of my broken china.”

Together they went down the path through the back garden. The table was covered with pieces of china and ceramic.

“Let's try a little blue bowl,” said Anna Whelan.

She wiped the edges with acetone, then with a tiny toothpick she spread the glue over the edges to be joined.

Very, very little was all that was needed, she explained, and if a tiny bit oozed out at the sides you wiped it away with alcohol. If it had been a plate she would have put it on its side in a biscuit tin of damp sand, but bowls and cups were best just turned over on their rims. It would be as good as new in no time.

It did look deeply satisfying, Kay thought.

“What a pity you can't do that to a heart,” she said.

“But that's just why I took it up,” said the old lady. “My heart was broken, not simply like this bowl, but cracked all over; I thought it would never mend. And I too had a man waiting in the wings.”

“I expect you married him.” Kay was gloomy.

“No, I most certainly did not. The wings are where he waited for fifty years. It's his birthday cake that you brought along today. He wasn't the type to mend a broken heart, nor is your friend Eric. There are men who should be invited to tea and men who are allowed into your life.”

“And the man who broke your heart. Did he come back?” Kay asked. It seemed very important to her to know how Anna Whelan's story had ended. She seemed to live alone in this cottage and yet it had a look of a place that had known years of love and contentment.

“He tried to come back. But by that stage I knew that hearts could mend. And mine had. Perhaps it was all that china restoring. You see, I knew that you could mend things even if there was a piece missing; you got some kaolin at the chemist and mixed it with the glue, or powdered clay.”

She smiled brightly at how simple it was once you understood.

“And did someone else…”

“Oh yes, someone else did come along, when I least expected it. And he wasn't like the man who broke my heart, or the man who waits in the wings. He was just like himself.”

They went back to the house and Kay saw pictures of the man who had been just like himself. Who had been married to Anna for forty-five years, who was as alive now in her mind as he had been when he was on earth.

Anna Whelan said that she was behind on a lot of her simple work and that if Kay would like to spend a couple of weeks here helping, she would be very pleased.

She would see the man who had waited too long in the wings when he came for his tea and birthday cake, she would see also how fragile things could be put together again if you realized that this was possible. Rather than just putting them in the back of a cupboard and pretending that the break hadn't happened at all.