A Few of the Girls (35 page)

Except, of course, that it did mean that it took a long time to discover about Susie and the trips they had and the hotels in the Lake District and the meals in places that Peter and Kay couldn't afford.

And that was hard either to forgive or forget.

And she thought about the children and how they had supported her all through the separation and then the divorce, and though they moved out to live in flats they kept in touch, calling almost every day, visiting twice or three times a week.

She was so lucky in so many ways, so perhaps they deserved this “family” day they all seemed to crave so much.

It was very unfair that she should have to make this choice. She was the innocent party in all this—why must she be the one to extend the hand of friendship to a woman who had lied and lied and was now expecting Peter's child? And yet if Kay refused to do this, she was disappointing her son and daughter.

She shouldn't sit here under this tree and think only of the bad hand that she had been dealt. She should think of the many good things that also filled her life.

It was just that in this place, where people came for a two-week vacation, there seemed to be a spotlight saying Successful Marriage shining over the heads of every couple that she saw.

On her way back into the garden of the little hotel, Kay passed the open kitchen door and saw the Italian family sitting around the table; she waved and was about to pass by, but they called her in.

There was Liliana and her two brothers and her three children. They ran this place between them since their parents had died. Liliana must be about her own age, very different in style: tall, handsome, voluble, long dark hair tied back with a yellow ribbon. Her eyes never stopped moving, looking, seeing what had to be done, smiling at everyone.

They were all going to a funeral in a village at the other side of the valley the following morning. They would really like to go now, but they were trying to sort out how to serve tomorrow's breakfast here in the hotel. Lunch would be arranged in a local trattoria and the family would be back again by dinnertime. Nobody could agree on who they should ask in. There were people considered reliable by part of the family and totally unsuitable by others. Suddenly Liliana had said the quiet Signora Inglese might be willing to do it. It would only involve one morning, and mean making coffee and whatever eggs the English people wanted. The cold milk and hot bread would be delivered at seven. Could the Signora possibly consider it?

It would help them all so much.

Her face must have shown total shock. Kay hoped that it didn't show the annoyance she felt. They had only asked her because she was the single one, the person with nothing to stay in bed for in the morning, with nothing to talk about at breakfast.

Had she been here with Peter or any other partner, they would not have made such a request. It was just because they saw her walking alone and pitied her they felt they could ask.

Immediately they started to apologize.

Most of all Liliana.

“You must forgive us, such a thing to ask. Please forget we spoke. It's just that the funeral has distressed us, you see.”

Kay rushed in to tell them she would love to help.

“Believe me, it's just a British thing. I never expected that you would let me loose in your kitchen, or even trust me to do it. It would be a great pleasure, and I can't really make too much of a mess out of coffee and eggs, can I?”

“Are you really sure?” Liliana said. “I thought of asking you because you have kind eyes.”

Kay knew she meant it.

“I can't tell you how much I would like to do this very small favor for you, Liliana. Why don't you let everyone else get ready for the journey and you tell me exactly what's to be done?”

The two women sat and talked. Liliana said that only one couple was difficult: they had brought their own jar of marmalade and this is where it was kept. The young honeymoon couple only came down for coffee at ten and took it upstairs again.

The smart couple who dressed up as if they were going to a wedding were always very bad-tempered in the morning; it had something to do with their metabolism, they needed a lot of coffee to bring them up to normal communication level.

It was both exciting and reassuring to be allowed into the secrets of the hotel. Kay went to bed happier than since she had arrived.

The next morning she joked with the other guests as she served the breakfast and felt that they somehow envied her for being taken into the inner sanctum.

“I would have done it happily, I worked in catering for a while,” said the bad-tempered, well-dressed woman.

Kay rushed to make sure that she had more coffee before she was allowed to become resentful.

She washed the dishes and put them away in the sunny kitchen and looked at the photographs around the wall. There was Liliana and her three children laughing and shielding their eyes against the Italian sun. In the early years there was a handsome, laughing man with them all. It must have been Liliana's husband, the father of her children.

Not in evidence these days; possibly he was dead now and not aware that his wife, her brothers, and his children had made such a success of this little hotel. Maybe they had separated? Kay would probably never know. It wasn't the kind of thing you could ask someone you hardly knew.

She stayed around the house while they were gone to deal with callers. Many people came with sympathy cards in black-edged envelopes.

A local girl came in to make the beds at lunchtime as Liliana had explained she would. Kay sat on the terrace writing postcards back home that it was wonderful and that she was very happy.

And for the first time she began to think that she really
was
fairly happy here and certainly not useless, friendless, and self-pitying, as she had felt up to now.

The tall dark man with the big dog, the man who always said good night to her when she sat under the tree, passed the house several times. As if he were watching it, guarding it even. But then possibly she was just being fanciful.

Kay felt they wouldn't want her around when they got back and had to set to making a dinner immediately after the journey.

She left her bedroom window open and could hear the noises in the kitchen, the smells too of the cooking wafted up to her, and she heard the doors of people's bedrooms opening and closing and the sound of running water as they showered for dinner on the terrace.

She wondered what the others would be doing back home. Eight-thirty here in Italy, seven-thirty back in England.

Nick and Julia would have come from work, they might be making a snack in their little house where the mortgage took up such a percentage of their bank salary, and then sitting down for more wedding chat and wondering how to include Susie in their plans.

Julia's parents were still debating the wedding, but they were serious dog lovers; they would have fed Sandy well and taken him on at least two walks.

Helen would be with Johnny and perhaps they were busy putting up posters in one of the clubs where he was playing tonight.

And her friends, the women from the antiques shop, they would have taken their trains and buses home, one to a difficult mother, one to a wordless husband, and one to an unreliable lover. They would all envy Kay out under the warm skies of Tuscany, and hope that she was having a good time.

Kay noticed that Liliana did not have her two sons to help her that evening as dinner was served, so afterwards she slipped into the kitchen to know if she could do anything to help.

“Please,” she said to Liliana, “you can see I am on my own here and I like to talk, so the nights are often long for me.”

The other woman looked at her for a long moment.

“My sons stayed with their grandmother. I would love now to send my brothers home to their wives. Signora Kay, if you were to help me with the washing-up, we will have a beautiful Italian brandy afterwards and talk through the night.”

And it seemed to take no time to restore the kitchen to rights, and to take out the really good glasses that were never given to guests. And Kay sat and listened to the story of today's funeral. It was Paolo's father who had died. Papa Gianni. A kind old man who never did anyone any harm and who had cried when he heard that his son Paolo was leaving the hardworking Liliana for a rich woman who lived in the city far away in Milano.

Liliana didn't want to go to the funeral and see Paolo getting out of the big car that his rich wife had bought him. She did not want to see him holding his five-year-old twins by the hand and watch him moving around in his expensive leather jacket, accepting sympathy from old friends.

She did not want to raise her eyes to meet again those of the woman with money who had come here once on a vacation and who had bought Paolo and taken him away.

But she had done it for the children. For her children, who must go and say good-bye to their grandfather, and go with the knowledge that their mother too would mourn the kind old man, no matter what had happened in the past. And her children had a right to meet and know their little half brothers too. These were just innocent little boys—they must not grow up in a shadow, in fear of a household that could never be mentioned.

You didn't have to like it but you did it. That's how life and families went on. And oddly it got easier. This was the third time. And there would be more times, weddings, christenings, and funerals.

Maybe if Liliana got married again herself they would all come and dance at her wedding. The whole extended family.

“Speaking of that, do you think that man with the dog fancies you?” Kay asked. “He's always going past the house.”

Liliana laughed until she cried. “No, he fancies
you,
Signora Kay. That's Pietro. He thinks you have beautiful eyes, but did not like to approach you, so he just admires from afar.”

Kay telephoned Nick and Julia that night; Helen and Johnny were there, but no significance was to be attached to that.

“You sound great,” Nick said. “Have you found a fancy man?”

“Well, yes, in a way. A man admires me—he keeps walking past the hotel with his dog.”

They were delighted.

“You're not to make anything of it,” she said, reacting to the way Helen went on. “We haven't exchanged more than a few good evenings. And I didn't call about that, it was something else.”

They sounded alarmed.

“No, nothing wrong, just something I forgot when we were talking; you
have
included Susie, Dad's Susie, on your wedding list, haven't you?”

“Well, yes, no, I mean we didn't really know…you see she's sort of—”

“Pregnant, yes, I know…Even more important then that she should be included.”

Kay went for her walk, she sat under the tree and waited for Pietro to pass by; she would ask him to sit down and they would talk in fractured Italian and English. Kay knew she wouldn't enjoy seeing Peter and Susie, but Liliana was right, it had to be done.

It was the way life and families went on.

Maeve Binchy was born in County Dublin and educated at the Holy Child convent in Killiney and at University College, Dublin. After a spell as a teacher she joined
The Irish Times.
Her first novel,
Light a Penny Candle,
was published in 1982 and she
went on to write more than twenty books, all of them best sellers, including
Maeve's Times: In Her Own Words.
Several have been adapted for cinema and television, most notably
Circle of Friends
and
Tara Road,
which was an Oprah's Book Club selection
.
Maeve Binchy received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Book Awards in 1999 and the Irish PEN/A.T. Cross Award in 2007. In 2010 she was presented with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards for
A Week in Winter.
She was married to the writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell for thirty-five years. She died in 2012 at the age of seventy-two. Visit her website at
www.maevebinchy.com
.