by Maeve Binchy
‘Your wife on the line, Mr Murray.’
He jumped physically. ‘What? What?’
‘Shall I put her through?’
‘Of course …’
Carmel never rang him at the bank; what could have happened?
‘Hallo, Dermot, I’m awfully sorry for bothering you, were you in the middle of someone’s bank account?’
‘No of course not. What is it, Carmel?’
‘Do you remember Joe Daly?’
‘What? Who?’
‘I was asking you did you remember Joe Daly, he used to write for the paper here, then he went off to London … remember?’
‘Vaguely, I think. Why?’
‘Well, I met him quite by chance today, and he’s been doing interviews with Ruth O’Donnell, he knows her quite well it turns out … anyway I thought I’d ask him tonight, isn’t that a good idea?’
‘Joe who?’
‘Daly, do you remember, a mousey little man … we knew him ages ago before we were married.’
‘Oh he’s our age … right, whatever you say. If you think he’s nice, then do. Whatever you like, dear. Will he fit in with everyone else?’
‘Yes, I think so, but I wanted to check.’
‘Sure, sure, ask him, ask him.’
Thank God, he thought, thank God, a mousey little failed journalist to talk about things that none of them were tied up in. There was a God in heaven, the night might not be so dreadful after all. He was about to dial Ruth when he realised she was probably on her way to the studio.
‘Can you record Day by Day, please, on the machine over there,’ he said to Miss O’Neill. ‘There’s going to be an item on banking I’d like to hear later.’ He watched as she put on the cassette, checked her watch and set the radio tape recorder to begin at eleven.
* * *
Joe rang her at noon on the day of the party.
‘Can I come up now?’ he asked.
‘Be very careful, look like a tradesman,’ she said.
‘That’s not hard,’ he said.
She looked around the house. It was perfect. There were flowers in the bathroom, lovely dahlias and chrysanthemums, all in dark reds, they looked great with the pink soaps and pink towels. The bedroom where they were going to leave their coats was magnificent, with the two thick Kilkenny Design bedspreads freshly cleaned. The kitchen had flowers in it too, orange dahlias and rust chrysanthemums; she had bought teatowels just in that colour. Really, it was such fun showing off. She didn’t know why she hadn’t done it ages ago.
* * *
He came in very quickly. She looked left and right, but the houses weren’t near enough for anyone to see.
‘Come in and tell me everything,’ she said.
‘It’s worked … so far.’
She poured a coffee for him.
‘Won’t it spoil the beautiful kitchen?’ he teased.
‘I have five hours to tidy it up,’ she laughed.
‘So, I’ll tell you from the start. I arrived at her flat, your man was in there, I could hear his voice. They were arguing …’
‘What about?’ Carmel was interested.
‘I couldn’t hear. Anyway, I waited, I went down to the courtyard place. I sat on the wall and waited, he left in an hour. I pressed her bell. I told her who I was, that I had an interest in a gallery in London, that I didn’t want to set up huge business meetings and press her in the week of her exhibition but I was very interested in seeing whether it was the kind of thing we could bring to London.’
‘Did she ask why you were at the door?’
‘Yes. I said I’d looked her up in the phone book … she thought that was very enterprising …’
‘It is,’ laughed Carmel. ‘Nobody ever thinks of it.’
‘Anyway I told her I was staying at the hotel but that if she liked we could talk now. She laughed and said why not now, and let me in …’
‘And …?’
‘And it’s very nice, all done up as a studio, not a love nest at all … hardly any comfort, nothing like this …’ He looked around the smart kitchen and through the open door into the dining room with its dark polished wood. ‘So we had a long talk, all about her work. She showed me what she was doing, showing, we went through the catalogue. I explained what I could do … Jesus, if you’d heard the way I dropped the names of galleries and people in London – I even impressed myself. I promised nothing. I said I’d act as a middleman. I even sent myself up a bit and said I saw myself as a Mister Fixit … she liked that and she laughed a lot …’
‘Yes,’ said Carmel before he could say it. ‘I know, I know, I’ve heard. She’s very nice. Go on.’
‘Yes, well. I think I played it well. I must have. When I was leaving I said that we must keep in touch, that I could be here for a week and perhaps she would like to have a lunch one day. She said that would be nice, and I said the next day and we picked the place you said … I said I’d heard it was good.’
‘Was it?’ asked Carmel with interest.
‘It was and so it should be, it cost you an arm and a leg. I kept the receipt for you …’
‘Joe, I don’t need receipts.’
‘I know, but it is astronomical.’
‘Was it the right place … ?’
‘Yes, we sat on and on. She doesn’t drink much but they kept bringing pots of coffee … nobody rushed us … it was very relaxed and we broadened the conversation … she told me about how she began and how this nun at the school she went to had great faith in her even when her parents didn’t really believe she had talent.’
Joe paused. ‘I kept leaning heavily on the notion that I was just passing through, not a permanent fixture. She was quite anxious to talk actually, I don’t need much congratulation.’
‘So she did tell you …’
‘Yes, I sort of squeezed it out of her bit by bit … not with crude questions like, “Why isn’t a girl like you married?” More about Dublin being full of gossip and disapproval … I told her I’d never be able to live here nowadays because of my own life. She said no, it wasn’t too bad … things had changed, but people did let others go their own way. I argued that with her, and then she had to get down to specifics. She had a false start, then she said she didn’t want to be unburdening her whole life story to a total stranger.
‘I said that total strangers were the only people you could possibly unburden things to. They passed like ships in the night. Sometimes it happened that you got a bit of advice from a passing ship but even if you didn’t, what the hell, the ship had passed on … it wasn’t hanging around embarrassing you every time you saw it …’
‘And?’
‘And she told me … she told me about her married man.’
‘Was it anything like the truth? I mean, did she describe things the way things are?’
‘Very like the way you told me. She met him when she was doing a job for the bank. He had taken her out to lunch, she had been lonely, he had under-stood … her father had died recently. Her mother was dead years ago. The married man was very sympathetic.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Carmel.
‘They met a lot and he was so interested in her work and so encouraging … and he believed in her – and the reason she liked him so much …’
‘Yes … ?’ Carmel leaned forward.
‘He didn’t want to hurt people or do people down. He never wanted her to score over other people. He wanted her to be content in herself and with her work … she liked that most about him.’
Joe paused. ‘So I put it to her that he must have a bit of the louse in him to maintain two ménages, he must be a bit of a crud to have it both ways … you know, not disturbing his own lifestyle …’
‘What did she say?’
‘She thought not, she thought he was a victim of circumstances. His wife hadn’t been well, she had been – sorry, Carmel – the phrase she used was “suffering from her nerves” …’
‘Fine, fine,’ said Carmel.
‘The
n I talked about Henry a bit, I didn’t want her to think that she was confiding too much, you know … people turn against people when they tell them too much.’
‘Yes I know,’ Carmel agreed.
‘So anyway it went on from there … could she guide me around Dublin a bit? We had lunch at the National Gallery … we went in and out of the place that’s giving her the exhibition, we went – oh, God knows where … I kept her occupied during the days, and I faded out a bit at night because I knew she’d be meeting your man after work. On Wednesday she asked me would I like to meet him. I said no.’
‘Wednesday,’ Carmel said softly to herself.
‘Yes. I said no way did I want to get involved in peoples’ private lives. That was the night she told me that she had been invited here and she was worried sick, she couldn’t think why … She said she didn’t want to come and hurt you.’
‘No. No, indeed,’ said Carmel.
‘So she said she didn’t know how to get out of it, the Man wouldn’t hear of her refusing. I said the married man wanted to get a kick out of seeing you both together. She went quite white over it all … “He wouldn’t want that,” she said. “I don’t know, it gives some fellows a real charge,” I said, “seeing the two women there and knowing they’ve screwed both of them.”’
‘Really?’ Carmel said.
Joe laughed. ‘That’s what she said too. Anyway, it upset her. And she said he wasn’t like that. Well then, he shouldn’t force you to come to the dinner, I said. It’s being a real voyeur, isn’t it, having the both of you there?’
Joe paused for a gulp of his coffee.
‘Then I said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he forced the wife to ask you to dinner, after all why would the wife ask you? If she doesn’t know about you and him it’s an odd thing she should suddenly decide to pick you of all the people in Dublin and if she does know it’s even odder.” She said that’s what she’d been thinking herself. She’s just an ordinary woman you know, Carmel, just an ordinary female with a slow brain ticking through and working things out … she’s no Mata Hari.’
‘I know,’ said Carmel.
‘So I said then, and the others are his friends really, maybe they’re all in on it, they know about you and him, don’t they?’ Joe leaned over. ‘So that was part one over, she really believed he was setting her up, she was so convinced. I don’t know what kind of an evening they had that night, but it didn’t last long. He was out of there in an hour.’
‘Yes, he was home very bad-tempered and very early on Wednesday,’ Carmel said, smiling.
‘So Thursday I ring her and say come on, I’ll buy you lunch and no gloomy chat, because isn’t it a small world, I’ve just run into my old friends the Murrays and ha ha isn’t Dublin a village? I now know who the mystery bank manager is, it’s Dermot Murray. I didn’t know he knew you … She’s amazed.
‘“Oho,” I say, “can’t keep a secret in this town. No, really, isn’t it a scream, I knew brother Charlie years ago, long before he went to Australia or anything, and I remember Carmel, and Carmel was walking out with Dermot Murray, a lowly bank clerk then …” Oh she’s all upset, she can’t believe it, it’s too much. I say stop all that fussing and fretting, I’ll buy you a big lunch. I keep saying it’s a scream …’
Carmel smiled.
‘I arrive and collect her. She’s been crying, she’s so ashamed, she wouldn’t have dreamed of telling me all those intimate things if there was a chance I’d have known anyone … but I was a stranger in town and outside, someone who went away years ago … I kept laughing, the odds against it must be millions to one, forget it, anyway wasn’t it all for the best? Because now that I knew that it was Carmel and Dermot I could say definitely that they weren’t the kind of people who would be involved in anything sordid. Everyone had spoken very well of Dermot, and poor Carmel had always been very nice.’
‘Poor Carmel,’ Carmel said, smiling still.
‘You asked me to play it for all I could,’ Joe said.
‘I know. Go on.’
‘It took a lot of coaxing to get her back where she was. I reminded her of all the indiscretions I had told her, about being gay, about Henry. I told her that nobody in Ireland knew that about me, that we each knew secrets about the other. We shook hands over lunch. I felt a real shit.’
‘Joe, go on.’
‘She left more cheerful. I rang her yesterday morning and asked could I come by for coffee. I told her that I had heard at the hotel a man talking to a friend. I described David perfectly … he’s not hard to describe from what you told me.’
‘There’s only one David,’ said Carmel.
‘Yes, well she identified him, and oh I wove a long tale. It could have been something else entirely, but it did sound as if it could have been Dermot he was talking about … I kept pretending that it might have been imagination but she saw it wasn’t. She knew that if I had heard him talking like that it must be Dermot, and Dermot must indeed have told David that she was coming to the party and wasn’t it all very risqué.’
Joe looked at Carmel. ‘She cried a lot, she cried and cried. I felt very sorry for her.’
‘I cried a lot. I cried for four months the first time, the time he went off with that Sophie.’
‘But she has nobody to comfort her.’
‘I had nobody to comfort me.’
‘You had a psychiatrist.’
‘Great help.’
‘He cured you, didn’t he?’
‘No he didn’t, he asked me to ask myself was my marriage with Dermot so important that I should save it at all costs. What the hell does he know about marriage and importance, and all costs? What else is there for me but to be married to Dermot? There is nothing else. It’s not a choice between this and something else, it’s this or nothing.’
‘You’re fine, you could live on your own. You don’t need him. I can’t see what you want him around for. He hasn’t been any good to you for years, he hasn’t been kind or a friend. You haven’t wanted any of the things he wanted. Why didn’t you let him go then, or indeed now?’
‘You don’t understand. It’s different for … er … Gays, it’s not the same.’
‘Hell, it’s not the same, of course it’s not the same. I love Henry, Henry loves me. One day one of us will stop loving the other. Hopefully we’ll split and go our own ways … but the worst is to stay together bitching.’
‘But your world, it’s so different … so totally different … I couldn’t do that.’
‘Well you didn’t. And you’ve won.’
‘I have, haven’t I?’
‘Yes … it’s all fixed up. I told her this morning that I’d been asked here, that I’d be here for moral support if she wanted to come. She said no, she didn’t want to make a fool of herself in front of everyone. She’ll tell you tonight at the exhibition that she can’t come after all. She says she’ll do it gently, she knows you are just as much a pawn as she is …’
‘Good, good.’
‘And she’s not going to tell him at all. She’s going to leave him stew, let him think what he likes.’
‘Suppose he runs after her, suppose he won’t let her go?’
‘I think she’ll make it clear to him. Anyway, she’s already set up some other friends to go out with. She says she’s sorry for you because you’re a timid sort of person and you’d been planning this for a month … she’s afraid that the whole thing will be a damp squib …’
‘That’s very nice of her.’
‘It is actually, Carmel, she’s a very nice person.’
‘So you keep saying, but I’m a very nice person. I’m an extremely nice person, and very few people ever realise that.’
‘I realise it. I’ve always realised it,’ Joe said.
‘Yes,’ Carmel said.
‘I’d have done this for no money, you were always good to me.’
‘I sent you money because I have it, you don’t. It seemed only fair that your week should be subsidised …�
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‘You were always a brick, Carmel. Always. I’d have had no life if it weren’t for you.’
There was a silence. In the gleaming kitchen they sat and remembered the other kitchen, the kitchen where Carmel’s brother Charlie and Joe had stood scarlet-faced in front of Carmel’s father. Words that had never been used in that house were used that evening. Threats of ruin were made. Joe would be prosecuted, he would spend years and years in gaol, the whole world would know about his unnatural habits, his vile seduction of innocent schoolboys … an act so shameful not even the animal kingdom would tolerate it, and Charlie might grow up warped as a result. Joe’s father who worked as the gardener would be sacked, and the man would never work again. He would be informed this night of his son’s activities.
It was then that Carmel had found her voice. She was five years older than Charlie, she was twenty-two. She had been a quiet girl, her father had not even noticed her in the kitchen so great had been his rage.
‘It was Charlie’s fault, Dad,’ she had said in a level voice. ‘Charlie’s been queer for two years. He’s had relationships with a lot of boys, I can tell you their names.’ There had been a silence which seemed to last for an hour. ‘I don’t like unfairness. Joe Daly has done nothing that Charlie didn’t encourage. Why should his father be sacked, why should he be disgraced, why should Charlie get away with it, Dad, because Mr Daly is a gardener and you’re a Company Director?’
It was unanswerable.
Charlie went to Australia shortly afterwards. Mr Daly was never told, and Joe Daly got a little assistance from Charlie’s father indirectly, so that he could go to a technical school and do English and commerce and book-keeping. During that time he wrote the odd article for evening papers, and Carmel had seen him casually around Dublin. He had sent her a wedding present when she married Dermot two years after the distressing events in the kitchen. It was a beautiful cut glass vase, nicer than anything she had got from any of her father’s friends, or any of Dermot’s side. It would be on the dining-table tonight, with late summer roses in it.
