A Few of the Girls (9 page)

When they heard that Nicola was coming back to sell the family home they all said they simply
must
have a gathering for her. Nothing fancy, just a few of the girls. It would be marvelous to see Nicola again; she never changed. It was such a pity that she didn't live in Dublin. She'd liven things up, she always had, remember her at school, for heaven's sake? They all had a dozen tales of Nicola.

Mary thought of it first, so it was to be in her house. Just a simple supper, she said, no fuss. All they wanted was to sit and natter anyway.

They contacted Nicola through the auctioneers. She was never great at keeping in touch but she sounded delighted when she rang and said she had got the letter.

“Supper with the girls, how great,” she had said in a voice of wonder, as if it was as unusual a thing to do as flying to the moon.

For some reason Mary felt unsettled after she had put the phone down. She decided to go on a diet. You could do a lot in ten days, firm up a little, that's all, nothing drastic, and heavens it wasn't a question of going on a diet to impress Nicola. How silly. She had been a school friend. One couldn't impress school friends.

“I don't think we'll have the husbands,” Mary said to Nora. “I mean, it's a bit silly, isn't it, having to explain all the do-you-remember bits. Better just have the girls—what do you think?”

“I think just the girls, certainly,” said Nora, whose husband would never have come home from the pub in time for any supper party.

Mary was relieved. It wasn't that she didn't trust Gerald, but he did have a flirtatious way of going on, and if he directed it all at Nicola, she might think it was very stupid and put him down—or then again, she might think it was quite attractive and encourage him like mad.

“Yes, just us is better,” she said. “It makes it easier on Angie too, doesn't it?”

Angie had a husband, but he wasn't her own, he was somebody else's, and so he didn't come to many parties with her. It was only fair to think of Angie and be a bit sensitive.

They all wondered what it would be like to see Nicola again.

Angie noticed that there was a big paragraph about Nicola's home in the papers amongst the auctioneers' and estate agents' ads. It was described as a very unusual property full of character. How had she got that? Angie wondered. How on earth had Nicola, who lived in another country, been able to make a property correspondent describe a perfectly ordinary terraced house as unusual? Her father had died a long time ago and the house had been let to Italians. Only Nicola could have found elegant Italians. But now it appeared Nicola's brother was in some kind of trouble and she needed cash to bail him out. So the home had to go.

Nicola had always called it the Family Home as if it were Brideshead or Castletown. Other people would have called it the house or number eleven.

Angie hoped Nicola wouldn't ask too many questions about Brian and the setup. Nicola had a disconcerting habit of saying things straight out, things better unsaid, or half said. Angie bought a new handbag and had an aromatherapy facial. She didn't want to seem pathetic to Nicola. She didn't want to look like a loser.

Nora remembered the last time they had all gathered for Nicola's return: it had been in a restaurant nearly seven years ago. They were all still in their twenties—well, just. It had been a strange kind of evening. Nicola's father had been buried the day before and her brother hadn't turned up for the funeral. With anyone else there would have been talk, but not in Nicola's case. It was an arty, bohemian sort of affair, one of the many things that set her apart from other people.

They hadn't meant to talk so girlishly that night, brimming with confidences. It was the wine, and the fact of a funeral that did it. Mary had wept into her veal Milanese and told them that Gerald was seeing another woman. Angie had not got involved with the dreadful Brian at that stage, but she had confessed rather too openly that she was thinking of the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival or an ad in the papers if Mr. Even-Sort-of-Right didn't turn up soon. Nora also remembered, with shame, telling Nicola about how much Barry drank.

She had wished the next day that she could have had the evening over again. She remembered Nicola: small, dark, alert and interested as always, but nowadays trying to hide her mystification. Why don't you leave him? That was the question. It was so obvious that Nicola wondered why it had to be asked. Of course Mary should leave a two-timer. Of course Nora shouldn't sit around watching a lush drink away everything they'd worked for. Angie must need her head examined to set on this husband-at-all-costs crusade. These were all smashing women, they didn't
need
the aggravation of such men.

Nicola had always been right about everything at school; she had said they couldn't get expelled if the whole class just went to the disco. No convent was going to risk the publicity of expelling twenty-eight girls three weeks before their leaving certificate. And she had been right, of course. Like she had been right about everything else. They should all learn typing the summer they left school so that they couldn't be sent off for a dreary year to learn it in somewhere as bad as school. They shouldn't worry beforehand about what their mothers would say if they dyed their hair, got their ears pierced, disappeared to music festivals. Do it first, think about the explanations later. And amazingly, of course, the world did not come to an end, none of them were thrown out of their homes, and, oddly, nobody ever knew or would have believed that this small, dark girl, Nicola, was the spirit behind the rebellious, mutinous teenage years of their daughters.

Would things have been different if Nicola hadn't gone away?

Perhaps Mary might have had the courage not to marry Gerald when everyone around her said she must and held shotguns to them both all the way to the altar. Perhaps Nora would not have covered for Barry's drinking, lying to bosses and friends and family alike. Surely a shrugging Nicola would have given her the courage to see that it wasn't
Nora's
shame, it was his.

And maybe with Nicola as a playmate, Angie wouldn't have had to settle for the cliché life of being the girlfriend of a married man. Nicola would definitely have made her see that Brian could and should treat her far better, even given the situation.

Nora was pleased that the party wasn't in her house. The house didn't look great nowadays and Barry could always lurch home during the evening. Nora bought herself a pink tracksuit and white runners. She wanted Nicola to think she looked independent even though she wasn't.

The room was overheated; it felt stuffy for a spring evening. Mary decided to open the window and knocked over a vase of flowers on the piano. As she mopped up she hoped Nicola wouldn't ask who played the piano in the household and, on hearing that nobody did, would not further ask why on earth they had one.

Angie arrived. She felt awkward with this new handbag and carried it like a toddler carries a dolly bag. She was used to a briefcase. She felt overmade-up; the beautician had asked whether she wanted full evening or daytime makeup. Unwisely she had chosen the former and she thought she looked like an unsuccessful tart. But perhaps that's what she was…She prayed that Nicola wouldn't ask her why she just didn't charge for it if she needed sex, instead of creeping away like a terrorist on the run to meet Brian whenever he felt it was possible and/or desirable.

Nora had hoped that none of the family would see the tracksuit, but her ten-year-old son had dragged his father away from the television to laugh at the sight of Mother in her gear. It was one of the few nights of the 365 allotted to the year that Barry had come home early. He corpsed himself laughing so much that she felt he would shortly have to go out again to a pub in order to recover.

“No, honestly, love, you're sweet,” he had said when he saw the hurt in her eyes. That was even worse than the laughter.

She had caught sight of herself in Mary's hall mirror; she looked like a young elephant with a face prematurely aged with worry.

They often met—Mary, Nora, and Angie—or two of them met; they thought of each other as friends. But there were things they didn't tell each other. Friends don't have to know everything.

They weren't schoolgirls anymore, they were grown-up women of thirty-six. Imagine, they shrilled, our ages add up to 144; they thought that was funny for a moment and then somehow didn't.

The simple supper had, of course, turned into a six-course dinner. Nicola ate hardly anything; she was so delighted to see them all, she asked about this and about that and she held it in her head so that when she asked the next question it was obvious she had remembered the answer to the one before.

Mary and Nora didn't know that the awful Brian's wife was called Shirley and that she was expecting another child; they had no idea that Brian liked Angie to stay in all evening so that
if
he had the chance to ring her then he would find her there. They hadn't known that Angie couldn't ring him at the office in case his secretary might become suspicious.

Angie and Nora hadn't known that Mary's Gerald had been named as the father of a university student's child, and that he was paying support for a baby girl. Since he and Mary had produced only boys he said he had a soft spot for this child, whom he referred to as “my daughter” in tones of great pride. Mary told this tale quite simply, in between carrying groaning platters to and from the table. She would never have told that story if Nicola hadn't asked the questions that produced the answers that made the tale.

Nora could hear her own voice telling them how Barry had had his final warning from the office: get dried out or else. He wouldn't get dried out. Nora was sussing out jobs for herself, property jobs—she had been doing temp work for months now. Angie and Mary hadn't known that.

Nicola told them little of herself; her brother was caught up in drugs, very messy. None of them had the right sympathetic questions to find out what kinds of drugs and how caught up. Was he victim? Dealer? Pusher? They would never know because the moment passed.

They all wanted to know how much the house went for, and somehow that moment passed too. All they knew was that the sweet Italians had left it simply perfect, and the new people were Greeks and darlings and loved gardening.

And was it because they weren't interested enough, or didn't have the vocabulary, that they never discovered whether Nicola had found anyone else after the simply marvelous but utterly impossible American she had married and had left? And was it because they didn't know the vocabulary and the jargon that they never learned exactly what she did in design? Was she a couturier, a secretary? Did she have her own office? Did she work in someone else's? Did she think up bouquets of spring flowers for duvet covers or did she make ashtrays with steel and chrome?

And she said she had to go at ten-thirty because Tommy was picking her up. They remembered Tommy, didn't they? They did. The boy that everyone fancied the summer they left school and Nicola had said he wasn't worth running after because his head was swelling to the size of a balloon—they should wait until he became nice and normal, then he'd probably be easy to catch and very nice. And he turned out to be both. Nicola had been right again. He came in for a drink, remembered them all, spoke words of praise. Angie, Nora, Mary, all of them as lovely as ever, how great that they and Nicola all kept up together. Women were so much
nicer
than men, really.

And they were gone and the girls sat there and the light had gone. Mary apologized for the meal, said it had been too heavy and said that, of course, her children were never to know about Gerald and all that business…And Angie said she quite understood, but of course she hoped they realized that Brian and Shirley had to live a normal life and she didn't mind one bit. That was the other side of Brian's life. Totally. And Nora said that in a way it might be a blessing having to go out and get a job, might be the makings of her.