Dear Maeve

  Contents

  Part 1 Manners, Mores and Get Real Etiquet

  Part 2 Principles and Prejudices

  Part 3 On Kith, Kin and Close Encounters

  Part 4 In the Public Domain

  This edition published 2013

  by Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle,

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  Email: [email protected]

  © Maeve Binchy 1995

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  1

  Copyright for typesetting, layout, design, ebook

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-78199-142-8

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  For Gordon Snell and all my friends with love

  Introduction

  Drama, someone is supposed to have said, is life with the dull bits cut out. There are those, however, and not just Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes, who contest such a simplistic notion and creatively demonstrate that it is in the nooks and crannies, the holes and the corners of daily living that we can discover ourselves, find some clues to the riddle of human existence and so keep plodding on. Maeve Binchy’s extraordinary talent lies in her ability to take the little tics and habits, the murmurs and queries of life and, with a neat creative twist, use them to confront us with our own absurdities. Her column is itself a veritable psychopathology of everyday life.

  But do not be deceived. Behind the apparent ordinariness, the airy grace and the fluent style lies genuine wisdom. Important issues bearing on the successful navigation of life’s stormy seas are considered, summarised and dispatched. How do you tell someone that they’ve tucked their dress into their knickers? Should you correct your wife when she says “commodium” instead of “condominium”? What should you do if you see your son-in-law nuzzling a woman not your daughter at a nearby lunch table? When the rest of a newspaper bulges with news about confrontations in the Balkans, disasters in East Africa and stand-offs in the Middle-East, when politicians assume that every citizen is gripped by talk of balanced budgets and constituency crises, Maeve takes a subtle glance at the practical problems that confront us all – when if ever to put an elderly relative in a nursing home, how to avoid a Christmas argument that lasts an entire New Year, just what to do for and say to a friend who is about to die. When she does turn her sceptical eye on politicians it is to hold up their posturings, policies and proposals to a similar scrutiny – how do they affect the lives of what those in high places call the ordinary people but Maeve calls her friends.

  Despite her reference to unasked-for advice, she does not advise so much as ruminate out loud like a sagacious therapist leaving you to take it or leave it. The best friends, she reminds us, are those who let you tell your unhappy story over and over again until you have decided what you must do. Just listen and murmur and resist the enormous temptation and the inevitable request to advise. Absolutely dead right and so difficult to do. The curse of today’s living is not that there is nobody around to give advice but too many giving it too readily. She is not one of those urbane, emollient writers who manages to manoeuvre their way through a weekly column without offending a soul. She makes it perfectly plain she cannot stand unpunctuality, stoutly defends Dubliners’ rights to be Dubliners in Dublin, even if that means preferring friends and neighbours to let you know before they drop in for a casual chat, and, in her now famous assault on Aer Rianta’s decision to remove the buggy on Pier A in Dublin Airport, she provides a vivid demonstration of how unasked-for advice can pack more punch than a plethora of carefully implemented opinion surveys. Aer Rianta promptly restored Binchy’s buggy and its daily peregrinations are a testimony to the power, passion and the persuasiveness of her prose!

  Professor Anthony Clare

  Foreword

  A very elegant French woman I know once said to a total stranger in a café that he’d look much better if he wore his shirt loose over his trousers instead of belting himself in. I put the menu over my head in fright and thought we were both going to be thrown out, but the man accepted the advice for what it was, and we later saw him looking at his reflection approvingly in the window.

  A journalist in London told me once that she was sitting minding her own business on a train reading a book and just twiddling with her hair. A man opposite her, who was just about to get out of the train, said “I hope you don’t mind, but that is such an infuriating habit, twisting your hair around your finger, that someone may well murder you for it one day.” Then he scuttled out, back to his suburban life. She checked with other people, and indeed he was right. It was the most maddening thing, it made her look as if she was auditioning for Little Miss Muffet. He may well have saved her life.

  I didn’t like the letter from Anon in Mayo who said that he or she quite liked me but why was I constantly picking my nose on television? I looked at the repeat of the offending programme and it was sort of a nervous tic. I kept rubbing my face, and it did look awful. So I don’t want to get down on my knees and thank old Anon in Mayo, but at least Anon was more involved than anyone else.

  And it was more or less thanks to Anon that the Unasked-For Advice column in The Irish Times came about, from which this book is distilled. One thing, Anon, does not lead to the other.

  Clear-sighted, far-minded and practical, I could solve other people’s problems at a stroke. What to do about my own emotional catastrophes, real or imagined hurts, maelstroms of indecision and confusion, of course, I have absolutely no idea . . .

  Part 1 Manners, Mores and Get Real Etiquette

  Workers at Play

  “It is true, true freedom to know that you are not and will

  never be the centre of all attention.”

  Last year the office party was terrible. People became very bad-tempered. Her best friend got red in the face and shouted at the boss: “Why is it that we do all the work and you get all the money?” The boss replied mildly that this was the capitalist system and somehow, very unfairly, it was agreed that he won the round. The year before, this woman had entered into a short-term alliance with a colleague – so short-term that it was over before she had thought it had begun. But still there was the lingering shame, the embarrassment on her part, the quite uncalled-for smirk and belief that he was Jack the Lad on his part, and the vague office rumour that she was a bit of a goer after three glasses of wine.

  And now it’s party-time again. The restaurant has been booked for next Wednesday, the mini-bus has been hired, the expectations are growing, and she would give anything to get out of it. But nowadays she is more senior in the firm, and it would look bad if she didn’t turn up. As if she were trying to distance herself, make herself important even.

  She says she has played it totally wrong: she should have shown great enthusiasm for it, and then suddenly and unexpectedly got a diplomatic 24-hour flu. No one could have said she was lacking in spirit. But she has already let it leak out that she isn’t looking forward to it; she has managed to ensure for herself the worst of all possible worlds. She has to go and they know she’s going under pressure. If she does take a drink, she could well head, like an unguide
d missile, for Jack the Lad again; if she doesn’t, she’ll be called an old prune and a killjoy. Oh, she says, isn’t it well for you, Maeve, working at home, no office party.

  My eyes always narrow dangerously when I hear anyone saying isn’t it well for anyone else. An awful lot of the time I believe that we make it well for ourselves or we make it a pain in the neck. Many a home worker will confide to another that we miss the office parties, we get cabin fever, we yearn for the office, any office. I have even invented an office party for the two of us where we wear paper hats at the word processor all morning, have a drink the moment we hear the Angelus and then fall into the Sorrento Lounge for our office lunch.

  But enough about the increasingly eccentric and unasked-for details of my own private life, and back to the woman who has to go to the office party on Wednesday. Firstly, she should book a hair appointment in some place that stays open late . . . that will keep her out of the pubs for the warm-up drinks. No one could fault her for that . . . They’d have to say that God help her at her age, over 35 and everything, it’s nice to see that at last she’s trying, uphill struggle and doomed to failure though it may be. So that means she will arrive looking groomed, old but groomed.

  At the hairdresser’s, she should eat two sandwiches. To hell with years of being careful and avoiding carbohydrate. Great big sandwiches filled with things that will raise her blood sugar, like peanut butter and raisins and walnuts. Things that will give her instant energy but won’t cloud her brain. The lovely thick slices of bread will sit like sponges, or wodges of oasis, waiting to soak up the drink which she should accept and even buy with huge alacrity and enthusiasm.

  She should smile knowingly at Jack the Lad, ask about his wife and babies, and keep a half-pitying smile on her face as if she felt the wife had not done well in the brantub of life. She should be interested in everyone else’s lives and loves and draw them out and find out their woes and their office rivalries. She should wear an inexpensive dress in a dark colour which will not suffer unduly if someone knocks a plate of untouched spaghetti carbonara over her, or pours the dregs of the last bottle of Bulgarian over her knees rather than into her glass.

  She should know that, whether she is old or young, beautiful or like the back of a 46A bus, married or single, nobody at that office party next Wednesday is going to give her more than a moment’s thought. They are all obsessed with themselves. It is true, true freedom to know that you are not and will never be the centre of all attention.

  It is an amazing arrogance to believe that somehow you are the guest of honour at every happening, and that there is an interest and anticipation in what you will do or say, how you will look and where you end up at the end of the evening. Most people are far too interested in all these aspects of themselves to have more than the merest and most passing concern about anyone else.

  Unless she hits on Jack the Lad again in a spectacular way, or gets into a dramatic debate on the nature of the capitalist system with the Chief Executive. she will not be considered worthy of comment. She should bring a lot of tissues in a briefcase. In case other people are weepy or sick.

  She should have sticking plasters (people are always cutting themselves at office parties) and painkillers (you can see the headaches forming over heads like ectoplasm). She should bring safety pins – clothes always come apart on these occasions. She should tell herself 11 times that she will contribute no office gossip whatsoever. Amazingly, even the most howling drunk will have a moment of clarity for the one indiscretion that you most regret having let loose. I know this may make her into a cute hoor but the alternatives are being a self-centred diva or a party pooper. She should drink a glass of water for every glass of wine, she should not order anything that has to be flamed either at the table or on its way there – flaming dishes and office parties don’t mix.

  She should say that she’ll stick with the wine instead of port. No matter what anyone says about it being good with cheese, it’s the thing that crosses your eyes in your head. If anybody asks whether she would like a slammer, she should say no thank you. She doesn’t want to know about slammers. If they ask her to sing, she should say she will if someone helps her with the words, and she should begin with “I would do anything for love” because that’s all anyone knows of it anyway and they’ll all join in and roar it out and think she was a good sport and wasn’t it amazing for a geriatric in her thirties to know that this was the right song to sing.

  And then on Thursday she might send me a postcard agreeing that nobody there took a blind bit of notice of her any more than they had done any other year. That it was all in her mind, and thanks to my good advice about the sandwiches and everything else, it wasn’t still churning around in her head and her stomach.

  Cancel the Show

  “I advise them to remember the marvellous song that Noel Coward once wrote asking ‘Why Must the Show Go On?’"

  They have had a lot of things to spend money on and business has not been good. The recession. But is it?

  Other people seemed to have survived the recession. They have new cars; they have Christmas plans that would make your head swim – a Sunday lunch party for 30 people; 10 kids going to the pantomime; New Year’s Eve, staying overnight in a hotel, 30 miles from Dublin.

  That doesn’t sound like recession. They have had a red alert on telephone and gas bills. And now it’s coming up to Christmas. They have to take part, they say, otherwise leave the human race. What explanation could they give that wouldn’t sound like being as mean as hell or moaning when others are able to put a face on it? Everything costs so much, but nobody else they know of or hear of or read about is drawing in horns, so what does that make them if they take this stand?

  They look at the shop windows – everything is so lush and extravagant. They read the suggestions for gift giving that seem to involve presents that would cost £15 to £20 a head, for people who are not immediate family. The toys and games and gadgets advertised on television, and everywhere, for children are even more pricy. Would it be ludicrous to put a notice in the paper saying you weren’t giving presents or sending cards? Well, yes of course, papers love advertisements; it’s what pays our salaries in fact.

  No, it wouldn’t be ludicrous. A lot of people do it for the best of motives. But is it necessary?

  I don’t think so. I think this angst-ridden and impoverished couple are making themselves over-important by going to such extremes. There’s no law saying they have to give people expensive presents or send them cards. There is, of course, the tradition and the feeling of guilt about not reciprocating someone’s generosity.

  Still, there are ways of lessening their guilt considerably and also of heading other people’s generosity off at the pass.

  Take cards for one thing. They used to send about 90 to 95, probably 100 this year, if the truth be told. Well they needn’t send any. That would save them 100 times 28 pence and, suppose the cards cost 30 pence, there is now a total saving of £58 in hand. But they’ll look so mean, so shabby, so forgetful, uncaring.

  I wonder. I really wonder. There may be about 10 they should send, to those who get few Christmas greetings and might be counting on them. But who else is going to be wandering around their over-garlanded house, pacing the floor, waiting for a Christmas card from this couple to drop onto the mat? Do they really believe that they are going to be worthy of gossip or even the passing hostile thought from anyone to whom they do not send a card?

  That way madness lies. I advise them to say nothing whatsoever about the drastic curtailing or even near abandoning of their Christmas card list. To draw attention to it is only to invite minor resentment. Exchanging Christmas cards is not an international treaty or a business deal, it’s meant to be a goodwill gesture, a kind of wish. If anyone is barking enough to feel slighted by the lack of a Christmas card, they don’t deserve one ever again.

  Now on to presents which are a bit different. Years ago, when I was on worse than red alert about the phones and had ac
tually reached red cut-off, I couldn’t give Christmas presents either. So I didn’t pretend. Nor did I give anyone a huge and pitiful explanation, because I was afraid it might look like self-pity or worse still, a plea for some kind of a hand-out.

  Instead I went out and got everyone I should have been giving a present to a great clump of holly. I went to a friend’s house down in the country with a big secateurs and I chopped and chopped, then he gave me six sacks and put me back on the train to Dublin, the most dangerous passenger they ever had.

  I tied them up in individual bunches and gave them to people with the slightest and most minuscule explanation about wolves being very vocal at doors and hoped they might find these early Christmas decorations nice, instead of a Christmas present. I said the words “instead of” fairly heavily so that you’d have had to be brain damaged not to know that this was your lot.

  But nobody ever gave me a food parcel or a pat on the hand or a lecture on the virtue of poverty. As far as I remember, they all professed themselves to be delighted with these dangerous bunches of holly. They said it was highly imaginative and maybe they gave me something a bit less than lavish that year, which was the way I wanted it.

  But the great thing is that I know in my heart that none of them gave two damns about it one way or the other and that, when times got better, presents would look up and, if times had not got better, it wouldn’t be the end of friendship.

  What might well be the end of friendship would be an inane getting-into-debt to give someone four cut-glass, brandy tumblers that they couldn’t put in the dish-washer, which would set the pair of them back the entire Christmas grocery bill. And that would only be one gift to cross off the list. I advise them to remember the marvellous song that Noel Coward once wrote asking the question “Why Must the Show Go On?” If the show is going to drain them, bleed them dry and worry them to death, it’s no show worth having.