Maeve's Times by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online

young second arts student, and only when worn over the briefest of midi skirts so that everyone got the best of both worlds. They are afraid that their girlfriend’s midi might be mistaken for someone else’s leftover skirt, or worse still for a foolish attempt to be ahead of fashion, which is considerably more sinister than being behind it.
    4. Everyone looks better in summer than in winter. Completely untrue. Everyone has more courage in summer, that’s all. In winter you wouldn’t dare to show veiny legs that had undergone a half-hearted attempt at instant tanning, and wear sleeveless dresses that showed the most ageing part of the body – the flesh on the top of the arms. For all those who turn that mythical brown, thousands more go red, or freckled, or that attractive shade of peel that can be a menace to anyone who sits beside you. Winter is safer, much.
    5. Pregnant women are beautiful. They are, if they are sitting in a Chanel dress with a white collar framing an unworried face, thinking beautiful thoughts about a wonderful and miraculous event that is going to change everyone’s lives. They are considerably less than beautiful if they are wearing their sister-in-law’s maternity dress, elastic stockings, bemoaning the fact that they can’t drink gin, and wondering how on earth they are going to afford another child.
    6. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t beautiful. You are quite right, it doesn’t matter a damn to anyone else, but it matters quite a lot to you.

Baby Blue
24 December 1971
    M y first evening dress was baby blue, and it had a great panel of blue velvet down the front, because my cousin who actually owned the dress was six inches thinner everywhere than I was. It had two short puff sleeves, and a belt which it was decided that I should not wear. It was made from some kind of good taffeta, and had, in its original condition, what was known as a good cut.
    It was borrowed and altered in great haste, because a precocious classmate had decided to have a formal party. A formal party meant that the entire class turned up looking idiotic and she had to provide 23 idiotic men as well.
    I was so excited when the blue evening dress arrived back from the dressmaker. It didn’t matter, we all agreed, that the baby blue inset was a totally different colour from the baby blue dress. It gave it contrast and eye-appeal, a kind next-door neighbour said, and we were delighted with it. I telephoned the mother of the cousin and said it was going to be a great success. She was enormously gratified.
    I got my hair permed on the day of the formal party, which now many years later I can agree was a great mistake. It would have been wiser to have had the perm six months previously and to allow it to grow out. However, there is nothing like the Aborigine look to give you confidence if you were once a girl with straight hair, and my younger sister who hadn’t recognised me when I came to the door said that I looked 40, and I thought that was good too. It would have been terrible to look 16, which was what we all were.
    I had bought new underwear in case the taxi crashed on the way to the formal party and I ended up on the operating table; and I became very angry with another young sister who said I looked better in my blue knickers than I did in the dress. Cheap jealousy, I thought, and with all that puppy fat and navy school knicker plus awful school belted tunic as her only covering, how could she be expected to have any judgment at all?
    Against everyone’s advice I invested in a pair of diamante earrings, cost 1s. 3d. old money in Woolworths; they had an inset of baby blue also, and I thought that this was the last word in coordination. I wore them for three days before the event, and ignored the fact that great ulcerous sores were forming on my earlobes. Practice, I thought, would solve that.
    The formal party started at nine p.m. I was ready at six, and looked so beautiful that I thought it would be unfair to