A Few of the Girls (23 page)

They stood looking at him, and it was like a freeze-frame on the video when you pressed the pause button.

He knew that none of them would ever forget this minute but he had no idea why.

It kept coming back to him in the days that followed, the days when everyone seemed to have stopped talking like they used to talk. There had been no holiday; of course that was a false alarm. And there had been no custardy pudding on his birthday at McDonald's, but nobody thanked him for his solution to that one. And Katy's baby got ready and came out and was a girl, and Father was very pleased, and said he'd better stay with Katy a lot more to look after things because he wasn't able to stay in the old place anymore. He never called it home; he always called it the old place.

And there were all the conversations with other people who were called lawyers and Mother got more and more tired because she had to work so hard and Auntie Helen and Grannie got very cross and snapped the nose off everyone.

And Bernard still remembered the freeze-frame feeling on the day that he went to court and the judge said he wanted to see him in his chambers. Bernard knew that chambers didn't mean what you thought it would mean, but he didn't know it was going to be an ordinary room.

And the judge was nice. Bernard told him all about Mother having to work so hard and never being at home, and how hard it was to talk to Mother because of Grannie and Auntie Helen being there and being so cross. The judge seemed to know that kind of thing, and he was very interested when Bernard explained about not being able to nail things on the wall, and Mother kneeling down and crying outside the school. The judge asked about Katy, and Bernard said that it was amazing how thin she had got when the baby was ready and came out, and Katy often said that he, Bernard, was a lucky boy because so many people in the world loved him.

And no, Katy had never said a word against Mother. She had said that Mother was terrific but worked too hard, and was never there when you were looking for her, which Bernard, struggling to be fair, said was true.

And afterwards there was a lot of noise outside, and Grannie and Auntie Helen were saying terrible things to Katy and Father. Mother was very quiet and said nothing. Katy said that she had invited Bernard's friend, Gerald, to come and stay for a few days, and she had put up lots of shelves and racks for them on the wall.

Bernard couldn't understand why they seemed to think he wasn't going home. He must be going to stay with Katy and Father and the new baby girl. He didn't know when that had been arranged but it all seemed settled. He didn't know how long the visit would be for, but he thought it better not to ask.

Then Mother said she'd come to see Bernard on Saturday. About eleven o'clock, and they'd go somewhere nice. Mother's eyes looked very strange, as if there was no light in them anymore.

She hardly waved when he got into the car with Father and Katy. She just kept looking in front of her as if she didn't see anything at all.

It was to be their last Christmas as a family, all of them together. Next year, Sean would be married, Kitty would be in Australia, and it would only be the two of them, and Martin. So Nora decided that it would be something really special, something they would remember when Kitty was drinking beer from a can on Bondi Beach and Sean was dealing with his prissy in-laws. There was even an unworthy part of Nora that made her want this Christmas to be so good that they would remember it with longing for the rest of their lives and regret ever leaving the nest.

Everything she read in the papers said it was all about being prepared—buying the cooking foil in September, writing the Christmas cards in October, testing the lights for the tree, measuring the oven, cleaning out the freezer in November—all of it very admirable, and particularly for a couple as busy as Nora and Frank. She was very pleased with her progress; she had even booked the window cleaners and arranged for a neighbor's child to bring her a ton of holly and ivy. And then she got the news that Girlie was coming for Christmas.

Girlie was Frank's aunt.
Eccentric
was the kindest word you could find for her. Somewhere in her late sixties, maybe older; always vague about details like that, always diamond-sharp at remembering the things you wanted forgotten.

Girlie was based, loosely speaking, in New York. She was mainly to be found traveling the world on the decks of expensive oceangoing liners. She would send irascible postcards from Fiji or Bali, complaining that the food on board was inedible or was so good that everyone had put on twenty pounds since embarkation. Nothing anywhere ever seemed to be right or good.

Yet Girlie, whose late husband had left her a staggering insurance policy, sometimes saved everyone's lives. She sent them money just when they needed it for Sean's and Kitty's school fees. She also sent a lecture about the appalling results of the Irish educational system that she saw all over the world, results that made her despair of the nation. She sent Sean a deposit for his house and Kitty a ticket to Australia that allowed her a few stop-offs so that she might see a bit of the world before she went to that god-awful place. Girlie disliked Australia as much as Ireland and the United States and, in fact, everywhere she had ever been.

Martin wondered if she had forgotten about him. Nothing seemed to be rolling his way from Girlie. But then he was only fourteen, the others told him; his needs had not become significant. Martin felt his needs were very significant indeed, and he certainly wouldn't waste his money on getting a horrible little box of a house and marrying some awful prissy girl like Lucy, as his brother, Sean, was doing, and he wouldn't go the whole way to Australia to be free, like Kitty was doing. You could be free anywhere if you had a good bicycle and a tent and were allowed to stay out all night in summer. But Girlie hadn't seemed to understand this, even though he had written it cunningly to her in many different ways.

Frank said it was preposterous; this woman always laid down the law and she shouldn't get away with it. How dare she impose on them, this, their last family Christmas? She was his father's totally loopy sister who had cut off all connection with the family years ago and just communicated in barking postcards and air letters ever since.

“And very generous checks,” Nora reminded him.

Frank wasn't convinced. She only did what she wanted to do and people couldn't buy affection; he was very muttery and growly about it. But Nora was adamant. Girlie had never asked for anything before; this year, it would suit her to come to Ireland and be with family. It was the least they could do.

Frank said that not only could she afford to stay in the Shelbourne, she could afford to
buy
the Shelbourne—but that didn't seem to be the point. She was going to come in the middle of November and leave before the new year.

The family met the news with characteristic rage. Kitty said that she was not going to give up her room; no way was she having that old bat living in there and poking around among her things. Her room was sacred; it had been hers for twenty years. Nora thought grimly about how eager Kitty was to abandon this room in order to go to uncharted lands in Australia but said nothing.

Sean said it wasn't fair for him to be asked to give up his room; he had so much to do, he was at a hugely important, stressful period of his life. He couldn't let this mad aunt come and take up his space.

Nora did not mention that it would be difficult for Sean to bring Lucy in for the night so often if he had to sleep in the box room on the camp bed. Lucy didn't stay for breakfast and there was a family fiction that she wasn't there at all—which covered everyone's honor and allowed Nora to meet Lucy's mother's eye with something like equanimity.

Martin said glumly: “I suppose it has got to be me.”

“We'll get you the bicycle,” said his father in gratitude.

“And can I sleep out in the Wicklow Mountains and by the side of a lake in Cavan, when it's summer?” he asked.

“We'll see,” said his mother.

“That means no,” said Martin, who was a realist. “What's she coming for anyway?” he grumbled. “Is she dying or something?”

The others, too caught up in their own lives, had never asked.

“God, I hope not,” said Frank. “Not here anyway.”

“Not before the wedding,” said Sean.

“I couldn't put off going to Australia for her funeral; I don't even know her,” said Kitty.

“We don't even know if there's anything at all wrong with her,” said Nora, alarmed that the family had the woman buried before she arrived. But to herself she wondered long and without any resolution what made this aficionado of all the cruise ships of the world come to a suburban house in Dublin for Christmas—and not for a traditional four or five days but for four or five
weeks.

Girlie did not want to be met at the airport; she had arranged her own limousine. Nora and Frank wouldn't have known where you found a limousine, but Girlie in America had no such problems.

She had discussed the upcoming referendum on divorce with the driver and arrived at the house well versed in the arguments for each side. Barely were the greetings over when she asked if she might be told whether she was staying in a Yes or a No household. They looked at her, a small, plump, overmade-up woman who could be any age between fifty and eighty. They raked her face, with its lines and its heavy-duty eyeliner. Which way would she swing? It was impossible to tell. So, reluctantly they told her the truth, which was that she had hit a family of two Yeses and two Nos. Nora was a Yes because of all the women she met at work who should have had a second chance; Frank was a No because he felt that society followed the law and that the place would be like California in a matter of months. Sean was a No because he and Lucy were taking vows for life and not just until they had a falling-out; Kitty was a Yes because she wanted freedom. Martin wouldn't have a vote for another four years.

Girlie asked Martin which way he would vote if he had one. Her small eyes had got piggy: he sensed a fight coming, whatever he said.

Martin was depressed by the whole thing: his poky bedroom, his clothes hanging on a rail borrowed from a shop, the roster of duties his mother had put up in the kitchen as part of Being Prepared.

“If I'm not old enough to have a vote and to stay out on a summer night in a tent, then I'm not old enough to have any kind of an opinion at all,” he said. And he imagined that she looked at him with some sort of respect, which was very different from the glares he was getting from the rest of the family, who had recognized the mutinous rudeness in his tone.

She was, at the same time, much easier and much more difficult as a guest than they had thought. For one thing, she asked for an electric kettle and toaster in her bedroom and did not appear before lunch. This was a huge relief. She had retained the services of the limousine and went on outings on which she disapproved of everything that she saw. St. Kevin was barking mad, a basket case, she said when she came back from Glendalough—but then, if you thought that it might be safe to criticize the Church on anything religious, you would be wrong. There was a conspiracy against all these unfortunate priests; none of them had ever done anything untoward; it was a plot to discredit them, that was all.

One day Ireland was a pathetic backwater, the next day it was a society based on worshiping money and more affluent than most of the EU, from which it was demanding hardship money. One shopping day the place was gross with its conspicuous spending, the next day it was like a Soviet supply hall in the worst years of the Cold War.

“She's not very sane, is she?” Frank whispered apologetically to Nora in bed.

“She's not consistent, certainly,” Nora agreed.

Frank had always been kind to her relatives; she would put up with this disagreeable and unpredictable woman for a few short weeks. It was, however, making her plans to Be Prepared much more difficult. Who could Be Prepared when you had Girlie in the house? She had brought the limousine driver in last night and they had eaten all the brandy snaps that Nora had stored lovingly in a tin.

Girlie would, of course, buy something unexpected and generous herself in turn. A fleet of Chinese waiters came up and set out an elaborate banquet for them on a night that Nora had been going to serve an Irish stew. Nora and Frank didn't know you could do this sort of thing in Dublin. Girlie knew everything and enjoyed remarkably little.

Martin saw more of her than the others. Sean was out with Lucy's family discussing the calligraphy on the wedding invitations; Kitty was with her friends arranging to meet them in Manly, or Randwick, or Kings Cross and all talking as if they knew Sydney intimately.

Nora and Frank were at their work until late in the evening.

“What are all these lists?” Girlie asked Martin once, looking at a roster in the kitchen.

“It's the nights we each do the washing-up,” Martin explained.

Girlie took a ruler and made a few measurements. In minutes she had the right man in the right electrical store. It was never clear what she promised or gave, but he sent carpenters up to the house and the dishwasher was operational that evening.

Everyone said they were delighted. But in fact Sean felt inadequate now because Lucy admired it so inordinately and he would never be able to afford one. Kitty thought they were all mad to be tied to possessions when everyone should be free. Frank was sad because that had been his Christmas surprise; he had ordered a much cheaper version and now he had to cancel it. And Nora was sorry because she knew all about the secret and wanted Frank to have the pleasure of giving it to the family.

But they were all grateful for the thought and the speed and the gesture and they warmed towards Girlie until she said that it was a relief to have one in the house because this way you really
knew
that the cups and glasses were clean.

And the referendum came and went, and when she was with Frank and Sean, Girlie said that they were typical men trying to hold back society and ride roughshod over women. And when she was with Nora and Kitty she said that they were selfish women advancing a world where no one would care about the young.

To those who thought that the visit of President Clinton was overhyped, she said they should be goddamn grateful that the good old U.S. of A. was going to rescue them from their silly bickerings; to those who praised the trip, she said they were easily swayed by a vote-catching exercise. She took to reading the letters column in
The Irish Times
and would praise the side that appeared to have less support.

About herself and her lifestyle, she revealed little. No amount of polite questioning about her late and extremely provident husband yielded anything.

“He was a man,” she would say, and the family, feeling they sensed a less-than-joyful marriage, tactfully asked no more. Girlie, however, had no such tact and reserve. She would ask the very questions that everyone had been skirting around. Like asking Sean: “Are your in-laws putting too much pressure on you over this wedding? Why are you going along with it? Are you afraid of Lucy?”