Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

Barney listened open-mouthed. 'You can't make these demands,’ he said eventually.

'You don't have to accept them,' she countered.

He looked at her for a long time. 'You hold all the cards,' he said.

'People can always get up and leave the card table, they don't have to play.'

'Why are you doing this, you don't need me, Mona? You don't have to have me hanging around the place as some kind of an accessory.'

'You have no idea what I need and what I don't need, Barney.'

'Have some dignity, woman, for God's sake. At this stage everyone knows about me and Polly, we're not hushing anything up that isn't widely known already.'

'And they'll know when it's over too,' she said.

'This will give you pleasure?'

'These are my terms.'

'Do we have lawyers to fix it up?' He was scathing.

'No, but we do have the newspapers. You've used them already, I can do the same.'

If anyone had ever suggested to Barney McCarthy that his quiet compliant wife would have spoken like this to him Barney would have laughed aloud.

'What's brought this on, the thought of being poor?' His lip was twisted as he spoke.

'I pity you if you really think that. I never wanted to be rich. Never. It always sat uneasily on me. But anyway as it happens I am rich, and I'll be richer if I don't help you out of the hole that you are in.'

'So why then?'

'Partly from a sense of fairness. You did work hard for what you got, very hard, and I enjoyed a comfortable life as a result. But mainly because I would like us to move with some grace into this period of our lives.'

He looked at her with tears in his eyes. 'It will be done,' he said.

'As you choose, Barney.'

Hubie left them at the carport.

'Nothing is ever the way Brian says it is,' Annie said to him sadly.

'I know.'

'So will I see you again?'

'Of course. Anyway neither Sean bloody Maine nor I will ever see you again after this summer, so what the hell?'

'I'd hate to think that,' she said.

'About which of us?'

'About both of you,' she said.

And they ran inside. They saw Danny's grip bag packed.

'You really are going then?' Annie said.

'Did you think I was making it up?'

'I thought you might want to get us back from the Maines,' Annie said.

'You'd want to have seen Annie and Sean Maine…' Brian began.

'No we wouldn't,' Ria said. 'We wouldn't have wanted to at all, any more than we'd want to have seen the way you left your bedroom here, Brian. But let's not waste time, we only have an hour before I take your dad to the bus station. There are a lot of things to be said so we must all talk now.'

'Zach might have seen me coming home, he could call in,' Brian began.

'Well, he'll just be asked to call out again,' Annie said.

Danny took control. 'I came over here to tell you that there are going to be a lot of changes, not all for the better.'

'Are any of them for the better?' Brian asked.

'No, as a matter of fact,' his father said. 'They're not.'

They sat silent, waiting. Danny's voice seemed to have failed him. They looked at their mother, but Ria said nothing, she just smiled encouragingly at Danny. At least she wasn't fighting with him and it reassured them. A little.

He cleared his throat and found the words. He told them the story. The debts, the gambles that hadn't worked, the lack of confidence, the end result. Number 16 Tara Road would have to be sold.

'Will you and Bernadette sell the new house too?' Brian asked.

'Yes, yes of course.'

'But Barney doesn't own that one?' Annie asked.

'No.'

'Well, maybe we could all live there, couldn't we?' Brian enclosed the whole room in his expansive gesture. 'Or maybe not,' he said, remembering.

'And I would have told you all this tonight, with more time for us to discuss what was best and to tell you how sorry I am, but I have to go home.'

'Is Mr McCarthy in gaol?' Brian asked.

'No, no it's not that at all, it's something else.' There was a silence. They looked at Ria again; again she offered nothing but a look of encouragement for Danny to speak. 'Bernadette isn't well. We've had a message from Finola. She's had a lot of bleeding and she may be losing the baby, she's in hospital. So that's why I'm going home early.'

'Like it's not going to be born after all, is that it?' Brian wanted to make sure he had it straight.

'It's not totally formed yet so it would be very weak and might not live if it were born now,' Danny explained.

Annie looked at her mother as she listened to this explanation, and bit her lip. Never had things been so raw and honest before. And Dad had been telling the truth on the phone, they were not rowing and fighting.

Brian let out a great sigh. 'Well, wouldn't that solve everything if Bernadette's baby wasn't born at all?' he said. 'Then we could all go back to being like we were.'

Danny gave the taxi-driver the address of the maternity hospital. 'As quick as you can, and I have to pay you in US dollars, I don't have any real money.'

'Dollars are real enough for me,' said the taxi-driver, pulling out in the early-morning sunshine and putting his foot down on the empty road.

'Is this the first baby?' the driver asked.

'No.' Danny was curt.

'Still it's always the same excitement, isn't it? And every one of them different. We have five ourselves, but that's it. Tie a knot in it, they told me.' He laughed happily at the pleasantry and caught Danny's eye in the mirror. 'Maybe you're a bit tired and want to have a bit of a rest after the flight.'

'Something like that,' Danny said with relief, and closed his eyes.

'Well, make the most of it, you'll have plenty of broken sleep for the next bit, there's a promise,' said the driver, a man of experience.

Orla King was having a routine check-up at the hospital. Something had shown up on a smear test but it had proved to be benign. Her blood tests had also showed much improved liver function. Apart from the catastrophic lapse at Colm's restaurant she was keeping off alcohol.

'Good girl,' said the kindly woman specialist. 'It's not easy but you're in there winning.’

'It's a funny old world. I stay off the booze and God says: okay, Orla, you don't have cancer this time.' Orla was cynical.

'Some people find that kind of attitude helps.' The doctor had seen it all and heard it all.

'Fantasists.' Orla dismissed them.

'What would help you?'

'I don't know. A singing career, the one fellow I fancied to fancy me…'

'There are other fellows.'

'So they say.' Orla went out into the corridor and walked straight into Danny Lynch. 'We do meet in the strangest places,' she said.

'Not now, Orla.' His voice was hard.

'It can't be baby time yet surely?'

'Please, excuse me.' He was trying to step past her.

'Come and have a coffee in the canteen and tell me all about it,' she pleaded.

'No. I'm meeting someone, I'm waiting.'

'Go on, Danny. I'm sober, that's one bit of good news, and a better one I don't have cancer.'

'I'm very pleased for you,' he said, still trying to escape.

'Look, I behaved badly some time back. I didn't ring or write or anything, but you know I didn't mean it, it's not the real me when the drink takes over.’

Across the corridor was a men's toilet. 'I'm sorry, Orla,' he said and went in the door. When he was inside he just leaned over the hand-basin and looked at his haggard face, sunken eyes from a sleepless night on the plane, crumpled shirt.

He had been told she was still in Intensive Care, and he could see her in an hour or two. Her mother would be back shortly, she had been there most of the night. Oh yes, she had lost the baby; there had been no possibility of anything else. Bernadette would tell him everything herself, it wasn't hospital policy to tell him whether it had been a boy or a girl, the woman would do all that. In time. Go and have a coffee, they had urged him, and then he had met Orla King of all people in the universe.