Dublin 4 (9 page)

‘Don’t be coarse.’

‘Isn’t it bad enough to deceive her without rubbing her nose in it?’

‘Ruth, I love you, don’t you know?’

‘I think you do, but it’s like believing in God – sometimes it’s very difficult to remember why you ever did …’

*   *   *

‘Aren’t you having even numbers, Mother? I thought you were asking me once about how to seat eight at a table.’

It was the day before the party. Anna had dropped in to check up on Mother. Bernadette was right, Mother had never looked better, slimmer and with colour in her cheeks, or could that possibly be a blusher? And what smart shoes! Mother said she had bought them for tomorrow and she was running them in. They were super, they cost about twice as much as Anna would have paid for a pair of shoes and ten times what she thought Mother would have paid.

‘No, just seven … I suppose I did think of getting an extra man, but people say that it’s very old-fashioned nowadays making up the numbers. Ethel says that more dinners have been ruined by people struggling to make the sexes equal …’

‘Oh yes … I quite agree, really dreary men being dragged in, there are more really dreary men than dreary women around, I always think …’

‘So do I, but maybe we’re prejudiced!’ Mother laughed, and Anna laughed too. Mother was fine, what was all the fuss about? In order to let Mother think she was interested in the famous dinner, she asked brightly, ‘Who’s coming then, Mother? Aunt Sheila and Uncle Martin I suppose …’

‘Yes, and Ethel and David … and Ruth O’Donnell, that nice young artist.’

Anna dropped her handbag.

‘Who … ?’

‘Oh, you must know her, the painting in the hall, and this one. And the one on the stairs. Ruth O’Donnell … her exhibition opens tomorrow, and we’re all going to it and then coming back here for dinner.’

*   *   *

Bernadette wasn’t in, but Anna told the whole thing to Frank and had a glass of parsnip wine to restore her.

‘Are there bits of parsnip in it?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘No, it’s all fermented, it’s all we have,’ Frank said ungraciously.

Anna told the whole story, interspersed with explanations of how her heart had nearly stopped and she hadn’t known what to say, to think, to do. Frank listened blankly.

‘Isn’t she a fifteen-carat bitch,’ Anna said in the end.

‘Your mother?’ Frank asked, puzzled.

‘No, the woman. Ruth O’Donnell. Isn’t she a smug self-satisfied little bitch? It’s not enough for her to have her own exhibition which half the country seems to be going to, it’s not enough for her to have poor Dad like a little lap poodle running after her … she has to get him to get Mother to ask her to a dinner party and make a public humiliation of her in front of all Mother’s friends.’

Frank looked unmoved.

‘Well, isn’t it appalling,’ she snapped.

He shrugged. To me there are two ways of looking at it, and both of them are from your Ma’s point of view. Either she knows, in which case she knows what she’s doing, or she doesn’t know, in which case nobody’s about to announce it to her over the soup, so either way
she’s
all right.’

Anna didn’t like the way Frank had emphasised the word
she
. If he meant that Mother was all right, who wasn’t? Could it be Anna, sharp and shrill and getting into a tizz? She drained her parsnip wine and left.

*   *   *

‘For God’s sake, stay out of it,’ James said. ‘Don’t ring all those fearful old women up. Let it go its own way. You’ll hear soon enough if something disastrous happens.’

‘But they’re my own mother and father, James. It’s
not as if they were just neighbours. You have to care about your own mother and father.’

‘Your own daughter and son seem to be yelling for you in the kitchen,’ he said.

She flounced out. James came out after her and gave her a kiss. She smiled and felt better. ‘That’s soppy,’ said Cilian and they all laughed.

*   *   *

RTE rang and asked if Ruth would go on the
Day by Day
programme. She said she would call them back.

‘Should I?’ she asked Dermot.

‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘Absolutely. Go straight out.’

Thank God, he thought, at least that will take her mind off Carmel and the dinner. This time tomorrow it would all be over, he told himself. This time tomorrow he would sit down and take stock of his life. He had all the information that anyone could ever gather about early retirement plans … or he could ask for a transfer.

Ruth had often said she would like to live out of Dublin, but of course in a small place it wouldn’t be acceptable … anyway, no point in thinking about all that now; the main thing was that Carmel was quite capable of living a life of her own now … might even get herself a job like her friend Sheila. That was something that could be suggested, not by him, of course … Oh God, if she only knew how he wanted
her to be happy, he didn’t want to hurt her, or betray her, he just wanted her to have her own life.

‘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.

‘Then 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.’