A Few of the Girls by Maeve Binchy

happened to Ruth?” I wanted to know.
    “Marvelous things,” said Mavis, wobbling with pleasure. “Her mother got heavily involved with three handsome young men from the market—nobody knows which, if any of them, is her lover. She has calmed down totally and is a businesswoman extraordinaire. Ruth met this wonderful man who works in the museum—they’re doing that big dinosaur exhibit, you know, the one that’s getting all the publicity?”
    “And they’re getting married! I saw it in the papers,” I cried excitedly. “They’re going to have the ceremony in the Prehistoric Hall.”
    “She invited Fenella but Ruth knows she won’t get an answer.”
    There was a little silence. I had to speak quickly lest someone take Mavis Ormitage away from me.
    “Was it when you got better, you know, stopped being a stricken ship, that you felt it a bit…”
    “She was a wonderful person for her time,” Mavis repeated.
    “Will I give her your love, say you were asking for her?” I knew it was a hollow kind of thing.
    “No, no. Wiser not. Anyway, the ocean is full of stricken ships, you’ll discover that later…I mean, before me there was that marvelous woman who wrote
Open Windows,
who had that devil of a mother, and then there was Ruth and then there was me, and between me and you there were plenty.”
    —
    A few weeks later, the phone rang and I hoped it was Cyril, but my heart sank when it was Fenella. I listened to the message.
    “Oppressive day today, I suppose it’s brought you down,” she said.
    Then I deleted the recording.
    I remembered something Mavis Ormitage said to the principal about her answering machine. “You can’t get brought down by a recorded voice on a machine, like you can by a live voice. A voice whose time is past.”
    The principal had nodded vaguely and confusedly, unaccustomed to the tot of brandy in the coffee. But I knew now what Mavis had meant. And anyway, Cyril said he loved leaving messages on machines. It made him feel inventive, creative, and even, when the mood called for it, it made him feel loving.

Giving Up Men

    When Eileen decided to give up men she did it in style. She was also going to give up her home, her country, and her job, she said. Her friend Katy thought that this was very extreme.
    “You could still give up men here and keep teaching,” she said.
    Eileen was adamant. No, the school was full of danger. This was the second father she had fallen in love with. The second rat that had promised the moon and delivered nothing at all. No, she must get well away from deceiving fathers who pretended to be serious about the parent-teacher association and then suggested wine bars.
    “Couldn’t you change your job and still stay in Ireland?” Katy begged.
    No, apparently the whole country was filled with villainous men who would be her undoing.
    “Where are you going to go?” Katy would miss her friend dreadfully and she also had this dark foreboding that wherever Eileen went she would, like a heat-seeking missile, find the rat and the bounder waiting for her. It was more a question of changing attitudes than locale, but there was no persuading her.
    “I’m going to Scotland,” Eileen said triumphantly. “Tomorrow!”
    “Scotland?” Katy was dumbfounded. “Who on earth do you know there?”
    “Nobody. That’s the point. I can start afresh.”
    Eileen’s eyes were shining. She looked like a child instead of a teacher. No one would have thought she was twenty-six. She looked like a typical illustration for a brochure about Ireland with the freckles on her nose and the long, red curly hair.
    “And what part of Scotland?” Katy was resigned now.
    “Which is nearer, Glasgow or Edinburgh? One of them is on this side.”
    “Glasgow’s on this side.” Katy felt the outing was doomed.
    “That’s where I’ll go then. I’ll get on the boat from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead tomorrow.”
    “That’s Wales, you fool!” Katy said.
    “I’ll take a train up the