“I’ll just get my bag,” Melly said and hopped back home for a giant lime-green sack.
“I’ve everything here,” she said, as an explanation, when she turned.
“But … um … Melly, we told you we’re going to Clifden tomorrow!”
“I’ll come with you!” Melly said, overjoyed. “He’ll never think of looking for me in Clifden—it’s perfect.” She smiled from one to the other.
She slept on the sofa with her things strewn over the floor. During the night they heard him shouting and looking for her.
“Do you think we should do anything?” Harry whispered to Nessa in bed.
“We are doing something—we’re driving her to the other side of the country,” Nessa said, trying to put the man’s raised voice out of her mind.
Next morning Melly took all the hot water for her shower and used the nice new towels they had prepared ready for their return. She made them breakfast, however, saying that since there were only two eggs she had made an omelet and divided it into three.
Harry and Nessa looked at each other, aghast. Their whole plans had been thrown totally out of order by this ridiculous girl whom they hardly knew. By now they should have been in their car and beyond Lucan. Instead they were still at home, plotting how to get Melly into the car.
“He could be looking out the window so we’d better take no risks,” Melly warned.
“You could lay a rug over me and I could crawl very slowly into the backseat.”
Then there was her lime-green sack—he would certainly recognize that. So Harry had to hide it in a black plastic bag.
“By the time we get to Clifden we’ll be ready to go to a mental hospital,” Nessa said into Harry’s ear.
“If we’d ever get there,” Harry whispered. “She’s talking of doing things en route.” That was something Harry and Nessa never did, visit anything en route. They just got their heads down and drove there, wherever there was. It didn’t look as if it was going to be like that this time.
When they finally got away and Melly emerged from the rug it was nearly time to put on their audiocassette and listen to an improving book. By the time they got to Clifden this year they would have heard the three-and-a-half-hour version of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. But they had reckoned without Melly. She didn’t like it at all. She did, on the other hand, like the scenery and the places they passed. She chattered nonstop about the housing estates, the road signs, the huge walled demesnes, the factories and the traffic, so that Harry and Nessa lost completely the story of Becky Sharp and were forced to turn it off.
“That’s better,” Melly said. “Now we can chat properly.”
She phoned ahead on her mobile to friends in Mullingar and said she wanted them to prepare lunch, that she was bringing two pals called Harry and Nessa.
They protested vigorously. By the time they got to Clifden it would be very late. And they did have sandwiches.
But Melly would have none of it. And in Mullingar the two hippies who lived in a squat had made a magnificent lentil-and-tomato dish with lots of crusty bread. The hippies were perfectly at ease with Harry and Nessa and asked them to deliver some honey to Shay in Athlone because he had a bad throat.
“But we might not stop in Athlone,” poor Harry began.
“Normally you wouldn’t,” they agreed with him. “But because of Shay’s sore throat you will this time, won’t you?”
Shay was very welcoming, and he made tea and toasted scones. He said that Harry and Nessa were everyday angels—that was the only phrase for it—rescuing Melly from that monster.
“If she hadn’t met two everyday angels like you he’d have trashed her, you know. He’ll probably have trashed her house and yours as well when you get back,” Shay said cheerfully.
Nessa and Harry looked at each other. Their glance asked the question: Should they go home? Now, this minute? There was no time. Melly was on the mobile phone to Athenry. And then they were waving goodbye to Shay and back in the car heading west.
They were expected in this pub in Athenry, you see—there would be chicken in a basket for them when they got there and a great gig.
“By the time we get to Clifden they’ll have given away our room,” said Harry in a voice that sounded like a great wail.
“Nonsense, Harry, we can give them a ring,” Melly said.
Nessa took out her little sheet called “Emergency Numbers and Contacts for the Journey” and found the number of the B&B.
“Could you ring them, Melly?” Nessa asked. “You seem to know our plans better.”
Melly saw nothing wrong with that.
“Hiya, you’ve got a couple called Nessa and Harry coming to stay with you.… Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, that’s it. It’s just that we keep getting held up on the way—you know how it is.”
The voice seemed to know the way it was and sounded sympathetic.
“Oh, no idea at all when. Could you leave out a key and a note—you see, we’re not even in Galway, only on the way to Athenry, as it happens.… Thank you, yes, thank you for being so understanding—see you when we see you, then. Oh, and could I sleep in a chair or something for one night just till I get myself settled?”
That seemed to be agreed too.
“Who am I? I’m Melly, I’m their great friend and neighbor and they sort of rescued me. No, not fussy people at all, dead easygoing—you must be thinking of other people. No, real cool. We’re going to a gig in Athenry, maybe a drink in Galway just to be sociable, and then we’re going to get out of the car in Maam Cross and look at the goats and the sheep and smell the Atlantic. We wouldn’t be with you before one or two a.m. anyway, but haven’t they the week to get over it?”
She leaned in between them from the backseat of the car. “There, now, that’s sorted,” she said proudly.
Nessa and Harry smiled at each other, absurdly flattered to have been called “dead easygoing” and “real cool.”
Melly genuinely didn’t think they were fussy people.
And by the time they got to Clifden perhaps they wouldn’t be fussy people anymore.
When Wendy and Rita were friends at school they used to plan that one day they would run a company together. Possibly a detective agency. Or maybe a restaurant. Or a health studio.
But things don’t always turn out like you think they will when you are fifteen, and so it didn’t work out like that.
Wendy went to university in London and studied art history. It was all she had dreamed of and more: she got the First Year Prize and the Second Year Medal. Halfway through her course she met and fell in love with Mac, a dark, handsome, fiery lecturer in political science, who loved her too. So Wendy didn’t work so hard after that—there were so many things that needed to be done for Mac, not just cooking, cleaning, typing and all those normal matters, but also helping him set up lectures outside the university.
She spent so many hours helping create the perfect CV for him that there was little time to spend on her own studies. But what did that matter? Mac loved her; he was so grateful for all she did.
But perhaps he didn’t love her all that much. Certainly not enough to be anyway enthusiastic when Wendy became pregnant.
Wendy had thought it would be simple. They could share a flat, she would continue to look after him and the baby, of course, when it arrived, she would keep up her art-history studies when she could and eventually be able to get a proper job and bring in real money.
It had turned out to be far from simple.
Mac had not been ready to settle down; surely Wendy had known this. There had been a term full of tears, and Mac had used his new CV to get him a job far, far away. He had said he was sorry but there had been no question of their having children. Wendy must look after all this business entirely on her own.
Not only did Wendy not win a prize at her third-year examinations, she did not even sit them.
He was the image of Wendy, all freckles and red curly hair so she didn’t have to think of the handsome, dark M
ac every time she looked at her son.
She still kept in touch with Rita. In fact, it was often easier to talk to Rita by phone, or letter or e-mail, than to people nearby.
Rita hadn’t been on the spot to warn her against Mac, as so many others had. Rita’s own career news had not been great either. She had gone directly from school, with her long dark hair and huge brown eyes, to work in a boutique called Madame Frances in a town more than a hundred miles from her home. She thought it would give her independence and teach her to stand on her own two feet. In fact, it brought her a lot of loneliness and empty nights. And because she was on her own she thought a great deal about work and came up with some very good ideas for the dress shop where she worked.
It was in a busy market town, where quite a lot of their customers were middle-aged, larger women who were constantly having to leave without making a purchase, since there was nothing in their size. Rita had suggested to Frances, who ran the place, that if they stocked larger clothes they would make a great deal more money.
“But it must be elegant,” wailed Frances, who was always a perfect size eight and always would be.
“We could stock elegant larger clothes,” Rita had pleaded.
And it had worked. Magnificently. They had moved to new and better premises, Madame Frances had been interviewed by television crews and fashion columnists. Nowhere did she give any credit to Rita.
But Rita struggled on, coming up with ever-new ideas.
What they often needed was someone to do alterations on the premises. Madame Frances would not consider hiring more staff so Rita went to classes. She learned how to move zip fasteners, loosen waistbands, lower hems.
Madame Frances did not have to pay Rita any more money for this skill so it was included in the price of the garment.
The number of customers increased again.
Again no gratitude was shown to Rita.
“Why do you stay?” Wendy wrote to her.
“Because I like the customers that come in. I know them and because I built the place up, I don’t want to hand it over to her.”
“But you have handed it over to her,” Wendy said.
“Why didn’t you go to the courts and get child support from Mac, then, if we are talking like that?” Rita wrote with spirit.
“I didn’t want to let him think he’d won, that I ended up squabbling about money,” Wendy said, defending herself.
“But he has won; he is going from strength to strength in his career while yours is on hold as you are raising his son for free.”
They had one of their rare phone calls after that. Usually they kept to e-mail; it was much cheaper. But they seemed to have a need to speak.
“I’d love to kill Madame Frances for you, Rita,” Wendy said suddenly to her friend.
“And I’d love to kill Mac for you, Wendy—believe me, I would,” said Rita in return.
There was a silence.
“I think there was a movie about this once,” Wendy said.
Rita remembered. “Strangers on a Train.”
“It ended badly, I think,” Wendy said.
“Well, murder usually does,” Rita said. “Maybe we could just wound them. Quite badly.”
“I hate blood,” Wendy said.
They decided to meet and have a planning session. Which bed-sitter should they choose?
“Imagine, we once thought we would be company directors and tycoons at this stage,” Rita said with a laugh as she agreed to come to London to see Wendy; at least the baby might be less disturbed in his own surroundings.
“We could still set something up, you know. ‘Wrongs Righted,’ that sort of thing. Avenging-angels type of business. It’s even got our initials, WR … Wendy and Rita, for heaven’s sake!”
“I’ll think of woundings without too much blood in them all the way up in the bus,” promised Rita.
It was as if they were back at school again, the conversation between red-haired Wendy and dark-haired Rita was so easy.
Rita envied Wendy the bouncy little Joe, who smiled and gurgled and did not bellow at all. Wendy envied Rita’s skill, the way she had made herself such an elegant skirt from a remnant of material and was able to mend the curtains and put a trim on the cushion covers as they chatted. By the time they had finished the second bottle of wine they had the plan sorted. The wounding was not going to be physical. This way there would be no blood but a great deal of satisfaction.
They decided it would take a month, so in thirty days’ time they would meet again and discuss how their wrongs had been righted. It would need a bit of homework. So each would give the other a dossier as background. The very bad Mac and the very bad Frances were not going to sail any longer unpunished through life. Not now that Wrongs Righted was on the case.
It had not been difficult for Wendy to find out Mac’s movements from the university office. All she had to do was to pretend that she was organizing a conference and to wonder when he might be free to attend. It could not be in the next three weeks, since his department was hosting a series of lectures on politics with some very well-known public figures attending. But afterwards, maybe …?
Wendy expressed huge interest in the series of lectures. Who would attend? Just students of politics or the general public? Would the press be there? She got all the information she needed and typed it out for Rita.
Meanwhile, back at the Madame Frances Boutique, Rita had begun her own research and activity. She left out in a prominent position several brochures for a wholesale fashion fair in London. Eventually Frances was tempted. She thought she owed it to the boutique to attend.
“Could I go instead, Frances? It might give me some of that polish you say I need?” Rita knew that she could ask, as it was totally out of the question.
“Certainly not, Rita, but I think I will take three days there—you’ll manage for three days, surely?”
“I can’t do it on my own, Frances. Suppose I have to do alterations? Who’ll look after the boutique? You’ll have to get someone to cover for you.”
Frances bit her lip. She didn’t want to get a stranger in, someone who might realize just how much she owed to Rita, just how truly this shop was Rita’s creation.
So exactly as Rita had suspected she would, Frances decided to keep it in the family. She would ask her sister, Ronnie Ranger, to come over from Dublin to step in for three days. Ronnie would know how to keep that young Rita in her place and not allow her to become too familiar with the customers.
Frances booked her hotel in London.
“Will you be making appointments with the press?” Rita asked innocently.
“I hadn’t thought of it—why?”
“No harm in telling them about your success story here.” Rita’s eyes showed no guile. “It would get the boutique a lot of attention, you know.”
“Well, I might,” Frances said and settled down at the computer to write a glowing account of herself, which she would circulate to the press.
Later Rita read it all on the machine with a grim smile and copied it, with her own notes and details of the wholesale fashion conference, to Wendy.
Mac was pleased with the coverage that his lecture series was getting, and in particular with his own publicity.
He had been described as the handsome young firebrand lecturer. That couldn’t hurt him. It was the kind of thing that Wendy used to get said about him way back.
Wendy.
It was a pity it had all turned out the way it had. But then she couldn’t have expected him to settle down. He missed her from time to time. No one else had been able to get him such publicity, media attention and write such a dazzling CV for him. But then again look at all the fuss that was being made of this lecture series; it was almost as if Wendy had been there at his side.
What was creating most interest was that Mac had thrown it open to all young people, not only the registered students. He had said that if the young were to become interested in politics it must not be confined to the privileg
ed few who got the benefit of university education.
Mac didn’t actually remember having said that, but he must have, and anyway it had resulted in live television coverage on Sunday, so he was very glad that he must have said it. All he had to do now was to look brooding and firebrandish at the same time. He would buy a new black leather jacket.
Frances was disappointed with the response from the fashion magazines. There was no reply from some, while others had said that since this meeting was for trade buyers only it wasn’t of any interest to their readers. One woman telephoned, however, saying that Frances’s letter had been passed on to her and she was most interested in doing an exclusive on it all. The boutique from a market town that could lead the way and show its London competitors how it was done! A story of personal triumph.
Frances flushed with pleasure. This was what she wanted. She wanted to do the interview in London, far away from Rita and her giddy, eager ways. But the journalist wanted to come to the boutique.
“Perhaps we could meet socially first in London while I’m there,” Frances begged.
The woman journalist said fine, and suggested a very elegant bar. She was a handsome young woman, red curly hair and freckles, wearing an emerald-green outfit that Frances knew cost a fortune; they had one back in the boutique and so far no one had been able to afford it.
The journalist seemed very familiar with the Madame Frances Boutique and the fact that it was a one-woman operation.
“With a seamstress,” of course Frances had explained.
“A what?”
“You know, a person who does alterations, helps here and there, makes coffee.”
She didn’t want to talk up Rita’s role but she couldn’t pretend that she worked single-handed.
“Not important to the operation, then.”
“Oh, no, they grow on trees, these sort of people,” Frances had said with a tinkling laugh. She thought she saw the journalist’s face harden momentarily, but she must have imagined it.
Mac thought he looked rather well in the new jacket on the Sunday morning, and certainly he had no trouble in getting any girl to return his glance at the brunch that the university hosted for his guests. There was a particularly bright little number with jet-black hair straight down her back, short skirt and high boots, a real looker, but she was more than just a pretty face.