by Maeve Binchy
Not long after this they were invited to a party at the McCarthys' home. Ria recognised a lot of faces there. Politicians, a man who read the news on television, a well-known golfer.
Barney's wife was a large comfortable-looking woman. Mona moved with ease and confidence amongst the guests. She wore a navy wool dress and had what must have been real pearls around her plump neck. She was probably in her mid-forties, like her husband. Could Barney really have a fancy woman called Polly Callaghan? Ria wondered. A settled married man with this comfortable home and grown-up children? It seemed unlikely. Yet Gertie had been very definite about it. Ria tried to imagine what Polly Callaghan looked like, what age she was.
Just at that moment Mona McCarthy came up to her. 'I understand you work at Polly's,' she said pleasantly.
Ria suddenly felt an insane urge to deny it and say she had never heard of Polly. She told Barney McCarthy's wife that it was a most interesting job and that she and Gertie loved getting involved in all the dramas of the people who came in and out.
'Will you continue working after you've had the baby?' Mona asked.
'Oh yes, we need the money and we thought we'd give a foreign student one of the bedsitters and she could look after the baby.'
Mona frowned. 'You don't need the money surely?'
'Well, Mrs McCarthy, your husband has been most generous to Danny but we have a huge house to keep up.'
'When Barney was starting out I went out to work. It was to make money to keep Barney's builder's van on the road. I always regret it. The children grew up without me. You can't have that time back again.'
'I'm sure you're right, we'll certainly talk about it. Maybe the moment I see the baby I won't want to go out to work ever again.'
'I didn't certainly, but I went out after six weeks.'
'Was he very grateful, Mr McCarthy? Did he know how hard it was for you?'
'Grateful? No, I don't think so. Things were different then. We were so anxious to make a go of it, you know, we just did what had to be done.'
She was nice, this woman. No airs and graces, and they must have been a little like herself and Danny years ago. How sad that now when they were old he fancied someone else.
She looked across the room. Danny was at the centre of a little circle telling them some funny story.
Danny's parents could never have been guests in a house like this. Barney McCarthy when he was growing up would not have been in places of this grandeur. Perhaps he saw in Danny some of the same push and drive that he had in his youth, and that was why he was encouraging him. In years to come they might be entertaining at Tara Road and everyone would know that Danny had another lady somewhere.
She gave a little shiver. Nobody knew what the future had in store.
'What does she look like, this Polly?' Ria asked Gertie.
'Mid-thirties, I imagine. Red hair, very smart, keeps herself well.
She comes in about once a month. You'll like her, she's really nice.'
'I don't think I will like her. I liked the wife.'
'But she's old the wife, isn't she, I mean really old?'
'I suppose she's about the same age as her husband. She went out to work, you know, so that he could afford a van.'
Gertie shrugged. 'That's life,' she said. 'It's hard on old Polly too at Christmas-time and Sunday lunches, he doing the family man bit. I suppose I should be congratulating myself that at least my Jack is single. He may not be much else but single he is.'
Gertie was back with Jack again. He was meant to be seriously off the drink this time but nobody was holding their breath.
Barney McCarthy was looking at some land in Galway and he needed Danny to go with him. Barney drove fast and they crossed the country quickly.
A table had been booked in advance and waiting for them was an attractive woman in a cream-coloured suit.
'This is Polly Callaghan.' Barney gave her a kiss on the cheek and introduced her to Danny.
Danny swallowed. He had heard about her from Ria. He hadn't expected her to be so glamorous.
'How do you do,' he said.
'The boy wonder, I'm told,' she smiled at him.
'No, just born lucky.'
'Was it Napoleon who said he wanted generals that were lucky?' she asked.
'He was bloody right if that's what he said. Now, what drinks?'
'Diet Coke, please,' Danny said.
'No vices at all?' she asked.
'I want to keep a clear head if I'm to work out how much apartments would go for in the area.'
'You weren't born lucky,' Polly Callaghan said. 'You were born sharp, that's much better.'
'And did they have the same room?' Ria asked.
'I don't know, I didn't check.'
'But, you know, were they lovey-dovey?' she was eager to know.
'Not so you'd notice. They were more like a married couple really. They acted as if they knew each other very well.'
'Poor Mona, I wonder does she know,' Ria said.
'Poor Mona, as you call her, probably doesn't give a damn. Hasn't she a palace of a house and everything she wants?'
'She may want not to share him with a mistress.'
'I liked Polly Callaghan, actually. She was nice.'
'I'm sure,' said Ria, a little sourly.
Polly came into the shop next day. 'I met your husband in Galway, did he tell you?'
'No, Mrs Callaghan, he didn't.' For some reason Ria lied.
Polly seemed pleased, she nodded approvingly. 'Discreet as well as everything else, or maybe you are. Anyway he's a bright lad.'
'He is indeed.' Ria smiled proudly.
Polly looked at Gertie carefully. 'What happened to your face, Gertie? That's a terrible bruise.'
'I know, Mrs Callaghan. Didn't I have a fall off my bicycle. I hoped it wasn't too noticeable.'
'Did you have to have a stitch?'
'Two, but it's nothing. Will I get you a cup of coffee?'
'Please.' Polly looked after Gertie as she went upstairs for the coffee tray. 'Are you two friends, Ria?'
'Yes, yes indeed.'
'Then talk her out of that lout she's involved with. He did that to her, you know.'
'Oh, he couldn't have…' Ria was shocked.
'Well he did it before, that's why she wears her hair long to hide it. He'll kill her in the end. But she won't be told, not by me anyway. She thinks I'm an interfering old bat. She might listen to you.'
'Where's Mister Callaghan?' Ria asked Gertie when Polly had left the shop.
'There never was one, it's only a courtesy title. Did she tell you that Jack did this to me?'
'Yes. How do you know?'
'Because I see it in your face. And she's always on at me to get rid of him.'
'But you can't go back to him if he hit you.'
'He doesn't mean it. He's so sorry, you have no idea.'
'Did he just come in and punch you in the face?'
'No, it wasn't like that. It was an argument, he lost his temper. He didn't mean it.'
'You can't take him back.'
'Look, everyone in the world's given up on Jack, I'm not going to.'
'But you can see why everyone in the world's given up.'
'I tell you, he cried like a baby he was so ashamed. He said he didn't remember picking up the chair.'
'He hit you with a chair? Jesus, Mar, and Joseph.'
'Don't start, Ria. Please don't start. I've had my mother and my friends and Polly Callaghan. Not you as well.'
Just then Rosemary came in to look at wedding hats and the matter had to be dropped. Rosemary had been invited to a society wedding, she said. It was now seriously time to get a man. She wanted a hat that would take every eye in the place away from the bride.
'Poor bride,' said Ria.
'It's a jungle out there,' said Rosemary.
The baby was due in the first week of October.
'That will be Libra, that's a good star sign. It's got to do with being balanced,' Gertie said.
'You don't believe all of that, do you?'
'Of course I do.'
Ria laughed. 'You're as bad as my sister, Hilary. She and her friends spent a fortune on some woman in a caravan, they believed every word out of her.'
'Oh, where is she? Let's go to her.'
'I will in my foot go to her.'
'She might tell you if it's going to be a girl or a boy.'
'Stop it. I don't want to know that badly.'
'Ah, come on. And we'll get Rosemary to come too. What'll she say?'
'She'll tell me that I'm pregnant, she'll see that from my stomach. That you're involved with a fellow who can't keep his fists to himself; she'll see that from your face. And that Rosemary's going to marry a rich man, it's written all over her. And we'll have given her good money for that.'
'Please,' Gertie said. 'It'll be a laugh.'
Mrs Connor had a thin, haunted face. She did not look like someone who was being handed fistfuls of fivers and tenners by foolish women in exchange for a bit of news about the future. She looked like someone who had seen too much. Maybe that was all part of the mystique, Ria thought, as she sat down and stretched out her hand.
The baby would be a girl, a healthy girl, followed some years later by a boy.
'Aren't there going to be three? I have three little lines here,' Ria asked.
'No, one of them isn't a real child-line. It could be a miscarriage, I don't know.'
'And my husband's business, is it going to do well?'
'I'd have to see his hand for that. Your own business will do well, I can see there's a lot of travel, across the sea. Yes, a lot of travel.'
Ria giggled to herself. It was twenty pounds wasted, and the baby would probably be a boy. She wondered how the others had got on.
'Well, Gertie, what did she tell you?'
'Not much, you were right. She was no good really.'
Rosemary and Ria looked at each other. Rosemary was aware of Jack and his lifestyle by now.
'I expect she told you to walk out on your current dark stranger,' Rosemary said.
'Don't be so cruel, Rosemary, she did not say that.' Gertie's voice sounded shaky.
'Listen, I didn't mean it,' Rosemary said.
There was a silence.
'And what about you, Rosemary?' Ria wanted to break the tension.
'A load of old nonsense, nothing I wanted to know at all.'
'No husband?'
'No, but a whole rake of other problems. You don't want to be bothered with it.' She fell silent again and concentrated on driving the car. As an outing it had not been a success.
'I told you we were mad to go,' Ria said.
The others said nothing at all.
Barney McCarthy was a frequent visitor to Tara Road. Ria learned that he had two married daughters who lived in big modern houses out near the sea. Barney said that neither house had a tenth of the character that this one had. But the girls had insisted. They wanted places that had never heard of damp. They got no pleasure from going to auctions and sales and finding treasures. They just liked to accept delivery of brand-new suites of furniture, fitted kitchens, built-in bedroom cupboards. He spoke with an air of resignation, it was simply the way people were.
'It sounds as if he pays for it all,' Ria suggested to Danny.
'You can be sure he does, those two guys aren't lighting any fires anywhere—getting married to rich women, that's the only energy they used up.'
'Are they nice?'
'Not really, anyway not to me. And why should they be?
They're not in business with him like I am. They resent me like hell.'
'Don't you mind?'
Danny shrugged.
'Why should I mind? Listen, Barney's got us a perfect Victorian brass fender from an old house his people are demolishing, and proper fire-irons. He says they're just right, the genuine article; the fender would cost two hundred pounds at a sale.'
'And why do we get them for nothing?' Ria asked.
'Because to everyone else they're just junk from a house. They'd go on a scrap pile. We really are getting that front room into shape.'
Danny was right. It was unrecognisable now. Ria often wondered what would happen if old Sean came back and saw what they had done to his shabby old storeroom. They hadn't got the carpet of Danny's dreams yet, though they kept looking, but they had found what they thought was the perfect table. It was called a 'mahogany tripodular breakfast table' in the catalogue. That meant it had three feet, they realised; it was exactly right for this room. They discussed it for ages. Was it too small, should they go for a real, proper dining table? But four could sit around it easily and even six at a pinch. They would be entertaining more as time went on.
Ria said that she had lost all contact with what was real and what was fantasy. 'I never saw ourselves as owning anything like this, Danny.' Her arms swept in the whole house. 'I never thought we'd have a front room like this in a million years. How do I know whether we might not end up with a dining table for twelve and a butler.'
They laughed and hugged each other.
Danny Lynch from the broken-down cottage in the back of beyond, and Ria Johnson from the corner house in the big shabby estate were not only living like gentry in a big Tara Road mansion, they were actually debating what style of dining table to buy.
The day the round table was delivered they brought up two kitchen chairs and a bowl of flowers and sat across from each other holding hands. It was a warm evening, their hall door was open and when Barney McCarthy called he stood for a few moments looking in at them, happy and excited.
'You do my heart good, the pair of you,' he said.
And Ria realised how his two sons-in-law must indeed hate Danny, the favoured one, in many ways the heir apparent.
Barney said that Danny and Ria needed a car. They began to look at the ads for second-hand motors. 'I meant a company car,' he said. And they got a new one.
I'm really afraid to let Hilary see this,' Ria said, patting the new upholstery.
'Let me think… she'll say that the depreciation starts the moment you put it on the road,' Danny guessed.
'And my mother would say there was a car like this in Coronation Street or something.' Ria laughed. 'I wonder what your parents would say if they saw it?'
Danny thought for moment. 'It would worry them. It would be too much. They'd have to put coats on and take the dog for a walk.' He sounded sad but accepting that this was the way things would always be.
'They'll become more joyful in time. We won't give up on them,' Ria said. She thought she sounded a bit like Gertie, who despite everything was not going to give up on Jack. She was actually wearing his ring now and they would marry soon. That would give him confidence, she said.
They were invited to Sunday lunch at the McCarthys. Not a big party this time, just the four of them. Barney and Danny talked buildings and property all the time. Mona and Ria talked about the baby.
'I thought about your advice, and I think I am going to stay at home and look after the baby,' Ria said.
'Will you be able to rely on grandmothers for a bit of help?'
'Not really. My mother goes out to work and Danny's parents are miles down the country.'
'But they'll come up to see the child?'
'I hope so. They're very quiet you know, not like Danny.'
Mona nodded as if she understood very well. 'They'll mellow when the baby arrives.'
'Did that happen with you too?' You could ask Mona McCarthy anything, and she never minded talking about their humble origins.
'Yes, you see Barney was very different to the rest of his family. I think his parents didn't understand why he pushed himself so hard.
They didn't do much; his father just made tea in the builder's yard all his life. But they loved it when we brought the children round at a weekend. I used to be tired and could have done without it. They never knew why Barney worked so hard and they couldn't understand his head for business. But it's differe
nt when it comes to grandchildren. Maybe it will be the same in their case.'
Ria wished this kind woman didn't have the well-groomed Polly Callaghan as a rival. For the hundredth time she wondered whether Mona McCarthy knew about the situation. Almost everyone else in Dublin did.
Danny had to go to London with Barney. Ria drove him to the airport. Just as she kissed him goodbye she saw the smart figure of Polly Callaghan get out of a taxi. Ria deliberately looked the other way.
But Polly had no such niceties; she came straight over. 'So this is the new car. Very nice too.'
'Oh hallo, Mrs Callaghan. Danny, I'm not meant to park here, I should move off. Anyway I should be at work.'
'I’ll keep an eye on him for you in London . I won't let him get distracted by any little glamour-puss over there.'
'Thanks,' Ria gulped.
'Come on, Danny. The great man has the tickets, he'll start to fuss in a moment.' They were gone.
Ria thought of Mona McCarthy and how she had taken Barney's children every weekend to see their grandparents even though she was tired from working all week.
Life was hard on people.
Ria gave up work a week before the baby was due. They were all very supportive, these people she had not even known a year ago. Barney McCarthy said that Danny must be around Dublin , not touring the country so that he would be nearby for the birth. Barney's wife Mona said that they shouldn't waste money buying cots and prams. She had kept plenty for grandchildren; it was just that her own daughters hadn't provided her with any yet.
Barney's mistress Polly Callaghan said that Ria must know there would always be a part-time job for her when and if she wanted to come back, and gave her an outlandish pink-and-black bed-jacket to wear in hospital.
Rosemary, who had been promoted to run a bigger branch of the printing company, came to see her from time to time.
'I'm just no good at all this deep breathing and waters breaking and everything,' Rosemary apologised. 'I've no experience of it.'
'Nor I,' Ria said ruefully. 'I've never had anything to do with it either, and I'm the one who's going to have to go through with it.'
'Ah well,' Rosemary wagged her finger as if to say that we all knew why. 'Does Danny go to these prenatal classes with you? I can't imagine him…'
'Yes, he's as good as gold, it's idiotic really, but very exciting all the same; he loves it in a way.'
