Tara Road

by Maeve Binchy

  She hung up disconsolately and looked over at Bernadette curled up in her armchair. She thought she had seen a flicker of a smile but she might have only imagined it.

  'What's she like?' Myles and Dekko wanted to know.

  'She's all right, I suppose,' Brian said grudgingly.

  'Do they have lots of sex all the time?'

  'Oh no, of course they don't.'

  'Well, why else did he go and live with her and get her pregnant?' Dekko asked.

  'That was all in the past. I don't think they do that sort of thing now.' Brian was puzzled at the notion.

  'They never stop doing it.' Myles was still gloomy about the new baby that had blighted his own life. 'They go on and on until they drop dead from it.'

  'Do they?' Dekko was interested.

  'I know they do.' Myles was an authority on this. 'But in your house, Brian, they must be at it all the time. What with the situation and everything.'

  'Yeah, I see what you mean.' Brian considered it carefully.

  'Don't you hear them gasping and being out of breath from it?'

  'No,' he shook his head. 'Not in front of us anyway.'

  'Of course it's not in front of you, you eejit. It's when they go to bed… that's when you'd hear it.'

  'No, they just talk in low voices about money.'

  'How do you know?'

  'Annie and I listened. We wanted to know if they were talking about Mam, but they never mentioned her, not once.'

  'What kind of talk about money?'

  'Oh, desperate boring things about second mortgages. For hours and hours,' said Brian.

  'Are they total monsters?' Finola Dunne asked her daughter on the phone.

  Bernadette laughed. 'They're not too bad, very loud of course, and restless.'

  'That's all ahead of you,' her mother said sagely.

  'I know.'

  'Anyway, it's swimming today. I'll be able to report myself. I like the boy, he's got a sense of humour.'

  'It's much harder on Annie.' Bernadette sounded sympathetic.

  'Yes, she needs watching.'

  'That's always been your motto, Mum.'

  'Fine lot of good it did me with you!' Bernadette's mother rang off.

  At the swimming pool Annie was astounded to see her friend Kitty.

  'What a coincidence!' she said four times.

  Kitty was equally amazed. 'Who would have thought it?' she asked the air around her.

  'This is my friend Mary, Mrs Dunne.' Annie introduced her. 'She's been feeding my cat Clement. Can I go around to Tara Road with her to see Clement after the swimming lesson?'

  'I don't see why not,' Finola Dunne said. There was an easy bus service back to Danny and Ria's house. Mary seemed a nice little thing, kind of the child to feed the cat.

  'Why are you calling her Mary?' Brian asked.

  'Because it's her name, you fool,' Annie hissed.

  'It never was before,' Brian protested.

  'It is now, so will you shut up?'

  The swimming coach was blowing a whistle to get their attention.

  'See you later, Kitty,' Annie called.

  'I'm sorry, I got her name wrong, I called her Mary,' Finola Dunne said.

  'Oh, um, she's both… really.' Annie's face was red.

  Brian grinned in triumph.

  While the swimming lesson was in progress Finola Dunne made a phone call. Her eyes were steely when it was time to go. 'Tell Mary that the American lady is feeding the cat in Tara Road and that you won't need to go and visit it at all.'

  Annie hung her head. 'Did you ring Bernadette?' she said eventually.

  'Yes, and she had a message for you.'

  'What did she say?' Annie was apprehensive.

  'She said I was to say to you nice second try, third try your dad deals with it.'

  Heidi and Carlotta told Ria that they had never in their whole lives drunk a bottle of wine each. They were astounded with themselves and each other. They blamed it entirely, they said, on the bad influence of their new Irish friend. Ria assured them that she had never done anything so outrageous herself and that at home she was very much a one-drink-a-night person.

  'But this is the United States,' wailed Carlotta. 'We count units, we count calories, we all know people like about half my clients in the salon at a rough guess… who are in recovery and detox and now we're heading that way ourselves.'

  'And I'm a middle-aged faculty wife. We all hear tales of how they go on the bottle at exactly this time of life. And rot away. Our husbands don't have the salary cheques to get us into the Betty Ford Clinic.'

  'Ah, but I'm a sadder case than either of you,' Ria laughed. I'm a deserted wife from Ireland over here to sort out my head and on my first day in America I fall in with two lushes and get pissed out of my brains.'

  They had learned a great deal about each other. Carlotta's alimony from her three husbands, all paid at the time in large, agreed lump sums, was revealed and even details of how well it had been invested. Heidi's first marriage was described. It had been to a man so totally unsatisfactory in every way that he was only equalled in horror by Henry's first wife. It would have been a wonderful poetic justice had they met and married each other but they had gone on to marry and upset other people. And of course Danny Lynch was introduced to Westville. The story was told of how Ria met him the day before her twenty-second birthday, the afternoon she first slept with him in Tara Road and the night he told her that he was indeed planning to be a father but not of her baby.

  'Let's see what Marilyn left in the icebox,' Heidi said.

  They could have talked for ever. But when they had eaten a spinach quiche which they found in the icebox, and had two sobering cups of coffee, Ria felt they were both slightly guilty and even embarrassed at the confidences shared. It was not that they regretted having talked so openly, more that this was an inappropriate place to have done so. She was disappointed to see the warmth of the evening beginning to trickle away. She had thought she had found two wonderful new friends the moment she arrived. Perhaps it wasn't going to be like that. She must learn to move more slowly, not to assume huge warmth where it might not exist. She let the evening wind down without begging to meet them again. This seemed to suit them. And Ria also felt that they were very pleased she had not mentioned to Marilyn that they were all sitting together having a little party in 1024 Tudor Drive. In all their revelations and discussions and debates, they had mentioned not once the woman who lived in this house.

  When they left at about ten o'clock, which was three o'clock in the morning at home, Ria walked slowly around Marilyn's house. In Ireland her husband Danny was in bed with a child who was expecting his child. Her son Brian was lying on his back with the bedclothes in a twist at the end of the bed, and the light on. Her daughter Annie would have filled her diary with impossible plans of how to escape to somewhere dangerous with Kitty. Her mother would be asleep surrounded by pictures of the saints and vague unformed plans to sell her little house and move herself into St Rita's.

  Hilary and Martin would be asleep in their pokey little house in the bed they had bought at a fire sale, the bed where they no longer made love because Martin said that unless you thought you were conceiving a child there was no point in it. Their big round red alarm clock would be set for six thirty. During the vacation Hilary still had to go up to the school to do secretarial work and Martin had a job marking exam papers to make ends meet. Rosemary would have been asleep now for four hours and as Gertie's life had obviously been tranquil enough to allow her to be at Tara Road to welcome Marilyn, so perhaps she too was asleep beside the big drunken boor that she thought of as some kind of precious and fragile treasure which it was her mission to protect.

  Clement would be asleep somewhere in the kitchen on a chair. He chose a different one every night with great care, and a sense of hurt. He was never allowed upstairs to the bedrooms no matter how much he had tried or no matter how often Annie had pleaded.

  Was Marilyn asleep? Maybe
she was awake thinking about her. Ria went into the room that she had just glimpsed before she had somehow instinctively shut the door against Carlotta. She turned on the light. The walls were covered with pictures of motor bikes, Electra Glides, Hondas.

  A bed had boy's clothes strewn on it, jackets, jeans, big shoes… as if a fifteen-year-old had come in, rummaged for something to wear and then gone out. The closet had clothes hanging neatly on a rail and on the shelves were piles of shirts and shorts and socks. The desk at the window had school papers on it, magazines, books. There were photographs too, of a boy, a good-looking teenage boy with hair that stuck up in spikes and a smile not at all impaired by the braces on his teeth, always with a group of friends. They were playing basketball in one, they were swimming in another, they were out in the snow, they were in costume for a school play. The pictures were laid out casually.

  She looked at the photographs. It must have been intentional. She longed to know more about the woman who was asleep in her bed back in Tara Road. There must be something in this house which would give her an image of what Marilyn Vine looked like. And then she found it. It was attached with sticky tape to the inside of his sports bag. A summer picture of a threesome; the boy in tennis clothes, all smiles, with his arm around the shoulders of a man with thinning hair and a check open-necked shirt. The woman was tall and thin and she wore a yellow track suit. She had high cheekbones, short, darkish hair and she wore her sunglasses on her head. They were like an advertisement for healthy living, all three of them.

  Rosemary left a note in the letterbox.

  Dear Marilyn,

  Welcome to Dublin. When you wake up I'm sure you may want to go straight back to sleep and not to get involved with nosy neighbours but this is just a word to say that whenever you would like to come round for a drink or even to have a lunch with me in Quentin's which you might enjoy, all you have to do is telephone.

  I don't want to overpower you with invitations and demands but I do want you to know that as Ria's oldest and I hope dearest friend I wanted to welcome you and hope you have a good time here. I know she is very excited about going to your home.

  Most sincerely, Rosemary Ryan.

  Marilyn had the note in her hand before Rosemary had run back to her car which was parked outside the gate. She had felt wide awake after her conversation with Ria in the night, and knew that sleep would not come again, despite the hugely affectionate purring of Clement who had reluctantly come downstairs again to be with her and sat on one of the chairs in this beautiful old room. Through the window Marilyn saw the tall blonde elegant woman in a very well-cut suit that was most definitely power-dressing. With a flash of very elegant smoky tights and high heels she was getting into a black BMW and driving away. This was the woman that Ria had described in her letters as her great friend, who was a business tycoon and Ms Perfect but absolutely delightful at the same time.

  Marilyn read the letter with approval. No pressure but generous. This was a woman who went to work at six thirty in the morning, owned her own business and looked like a film star. Rosemary Ryan drove the streets in her BMW. Marilyn read the note again.

  She didn't want to meet this woman, make conversation with her. It didn't matter how important these people were in Ria's life, they weren't part of hers. She would leave the letter unanswered and eventually if Rosemary called again they would have a brief meeting.

  Marilyn hadn't come to Ireland to make a whole set of superficial acquaintances.

  'I dreamed about you, Colm,' Orla King said as he came into the restaurant.

  'No you didn't. You decided you wanted to ask me could you sing here on Friday and you needed an excuse to come and see me.' He smiled at her to take the harm out of his words.

  Orla laughed good-naturedly. 'Of course I want to sing here on Friday and Saturday, and every night in August during Horse Show week when you'll be full. But I actually did dream about you.'

  'Was I a successful restaurant owner, tell me that?'

  'No, you were in gaol for life for murdering your brother-in-law Monto,' Orla said.

  'Always very melodramatic, Orla,' Colm said, but his smile didn't quite go to his eyes.

  'Yeah, but we don't choose what we dream, it just happens,' Orla said with a shrug. 'It must mean something.'

  'I don't think I murdered my brother-in-law,' Colm said as if trying to remember. 'No, I'm sure I didn't. He was here last night with a big crowd from the races.'

  'He's a real shit, isn't he?' Orla said.

  'I'm not crazy about him certainly, but I definitely didn't murder him.' Colm seemed to find it hard to hold on to the light banter of this conversation.

  'No, I know you didn't, he was on the phone to me today trying to get me to go to a stag night. Singing, he said. We all know what he means by singing at a stag night.'

  'What does he mean, Orla?'

  'It means show us your tits, Orla.'

  'How unpleasant,' Colm said.

  'Not everyone thinks so, Colm.'

  'No, I mean how deeply unpleasant of the man who is married to my sister asking a professional singer to do anything like that at a stag night. You misunderstood me totally. I'm obviously sure that the sight of your breasts would be a great delight to anyone but not under such circumstances.'

  'You speak like a barrister sometimes.'

  'Well I might need one if your dreams come true.' Colm spoke in a slightly tinny voice.

  'Monto told me that… well, he sort of said that…' Orla stopped.

  'Yes?'

  'He sort of hinted that he had a few problems with your sister Caroline.'

  'Yes, I think he has a problem remembering he is married to her.'

  'He says more than that. He sort of says there's a dark secret.'

  'There is, you know, it's called Bad Judgement. She married a man whom you so rightly describe as a shit. Not much of a dark secret, but there you go. Anyway, Orla, you'd like to sing on Friday? A couple of pointers. You sing as background not as foreground. They want to talk to each other as well as listen to you. Is that understood?'

  'Right, boss.'

  'You'll sing much more Ella and lots less Lloyd Webber. Okay?'

  'You're wrong, but yes, boss.'

  'You keep your hands and eyes off Danny Lynch. He'll be here with his new wife and his two kids and his mother-in-law.'

  'It's not a new wife, it's his pregnant girlfriend so don't be pompous, Colm.'

  'Hands and eyes. A promise or no slot and you never work again here or anywhere else.'

  'A promise, boss.'

  Colm wondered why he had warned Orla off, after all it might be some small pleasure for Ria out in America to hear that the love-nest was less secure than everyone imagined. But business was business and who wanted a scene in a restaurant on a Friday night?

  'We're going to take Mrs Dunne out to dinner on Friday night,' Danny told his children.

  'Mam's going to ring on Friday night,' Brian objected.

  'She told us to call her Finola, not Mrs Dunne,' Annie objected.

  'She told me to call her Finola, she didn't tell you.'

  'Yes, she did.'

  'No, Annie, she didn't. She's a different generation.'

  'We call Rosemary Rosemary, don't we?'

  'Yes, but that's because she's a feminist.'

  'But Finola's a feminist too, she said she was,' Annie insisted.

  'Okay, so she's Finola. Fine, fine. Now I thought we might go to Quentin's, but it turns out that she… Finola… wants to go to Colm's so that's where we're going.'

  'Dead right too,' Annie said. 'Colm has proper vegetarian food not some awful poncy thing that costs what would keep a poor family for a month like the token vegetarian dish in Quentin's costs.'

  'But what if Mam rings?' Brian asked.

  'There's an answering machine and if we miss her we'll call her back.' Danny was bright about it all.

  'She might have been looking forward to talking to us though,' Brian said.

&n
bsp; 'We could change the message and say we were all at Colm's maybe?' Annie suggested.

  'No, I think we'll leave the message as it is.' Danny was firm.

  'But it's so easy, Dad.'

  'People ring Bernadette too, and they wouldn't want to hear all about our fumblings and foosterings.'

  'It's not fumbling just to let Mam know that we hadn't forgotten she was going to call,' Annie said.

  'Well, call her! Say we're going out.'

  'We can't afford to phone her,' Brian said.

  'I just told you you can. A quick call, okay?'

  'But what about the second mortgage and all the debts and everything?' Brian asked.

  'What do you mean?' His father was anxious.

  Annie spoke quickly. 'You know you often said that everything costs so much we might have to get a second mortgage, but Brian doesn't realise how cheap it is to call for thirty seconds.'

  'I didn't say anything about…'

  'Dad, we're just going to love a night out in Colm's, and Finola will love it and so will you. Stop worrying about Brian, who as I have so often told you, is totally brain-dead. And let's get on with it.'

  'You're a great girl, Princess,' he said. 'I look around Dublin and I see all the bright young men who are going to take you away from me one day.'

  'Come on, Dad, who are you fooling? You don't meet kids of my age anywhere.'

  'No, but you're not going to run off with a kid, are you, Princess?' her father asked.

  'You did, Dad.'

  There was a silence.

  'Who will I marry?' Brian asked.

  'A person who has been deprived of all their senses, but very particularly the sense of smell,' Annie said.

  'That's not right, is it Dad?'

  'Of course not, Brian. Your sister is only making a joke. You'll marry a great person when the time comes.'

  'A lady wrestler, maybe,' Annie suggested.

  Brian ignored her again. 'Is there any way of knowing it's the right person, Dad?'

  'You'll know.' His father was soothing.

  'You didn't, Dad. You thought Mam was the right person and she turned out not to be.'