Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'Mother, don't be ridiculous,' Rosemary said, neither confirming nor denying anything that had been said. There was not a great deal to confirm or deny. Rosemary had slept with very few men, only three in fact. This was more because of her own personality, which was aloof and distant, than from any sense of virtue or innate cunning.

She had enjoyed sex with a young French student and had not enjoyed it with an office colleague. She had been drunk on the two occasions when she had made love with a well-known journalist after Christmas parties, but then so had he been drunk so she didn't imagine it had been very successful.

But she didn't burden her mother with any of these details.

'I saw that Ria coming out of the Shelbourne Hotel as if she owned it the other day,' Mrs. Ryan said.

'Why don't you like her, Mother?'

'I didn't say I didn't like her, I just said she played her cards right. That's all.'

'I think she played them accidentally,' Rosemary said thoughtfully. 'Ria had no idea it was all going to turn out for her as well as it did.'

'That kind always know they don't take a step without seeing where it leads. I suppose she was pregnant when she married him.'

'I don't really know, Mother,' Rosemary said wearily.

'Of course you know. Still, she was lucky, he could easily have left her there.'

'They're very happy, Mother'

'So you say.'

'Would you like to come out and have lunch in Quentin's one day next week, Mother?'

'What for?'

'To cheer you up. We could get dressed up, look at all the famous people there.'

'There's no point, Rosemary. You mean well but who would know us? Who would know what we came from or anything about us? We'd just be two women sitting there. It's all jumped-up people these days, we'd only be on the outside looking in.'

'I have lunch there about once a week. I like it. It's expensive, of course, but then I don't eat lunch any other day so it works out fine.'

'You have lunch there every week and you haven't found a husband yet?'

Rosemary laughed. 'I'm not going there looking for a husband, it's not that kind of a place. But you do see a different world there. Come on. Say yes, you'd enjoy it.'

Her mother agreed. They would go on Wednesday. It would be something to look forward to in a world that held few other pleasures.

In Quentin's Rosemary pointed out to her mother the tucked-away booth where people went when they were being discreet. A government minister and his lady friend often dined there. It was a place where businessmen took someone from a rival organisation if they were going to offer him a job.

'I wonder who's in there today,' her mother said, drawn into the excitement of it all.

'I’ll have a peep when I go to the loo,' Rosemary promised.

At a window table she saw Barney McCarthy and Polly Callaghan. They never bothered with a private booth. Their relationship was known to everyone in the business world. She saw the journalist that she had met so spectacularly at two Christmas parties; he was interviewing an author and taking some scrawled notes which he would probably never decipher later. She saw a television personality and pointed him out to her mother who was pleased to note that he was much smaller and more insignificant than he looked on the box.

Eventually she went to the ladies' room, deliberately taking the wrong route so that she could pass the secluded table. You would have to look in carefully to see who was there. With a shock that was like a physical blow Rosemary saw Danny Lynch and Orla King from the office.

'Who was there?' her mother asked when Rosemary returned to the table.

'Nobody at all, two old bankers or something.'

'Jumped-up people,' her mother said.

'Exactly,' said Rosemary.

Ria was anxious to show off the new cappuccino machine to Rosemary.

'It's magic, but I'll still have mine black,' Rosemary said, patting her slim hips.

'You have a will of iron,' Ria said, looking at her friend with admiration. Rosemary, so tall and blonde and groomed, even at the end of a day when everyone else would be flaking. 'Barney McCarthy brought it round, he's so generous you wouldn't believe it.'

'He must think very highly of you.' Rosemary managed to lay a tea towel across her lap just in time to avoid Annie's little sticky fingers getting on to her pale skirt.

'Well, of course Danny nearly kills himself working all the hours God sends.'

'Of course.' Rosemary was grim.

'He's so tired when he gets home he often falls asleep in the chair before I can put his supper on the table for him.'

'Imagine,' Rosemary said.

'Still, it's well worth it, and he loves the work, and you're just the same; you don't mind how many hours you put in to be successful in the end.'

'Ah yes, but I take time off too. I reward myself, go out to smart places as a treat.'

Ria smiled fondly at the armchair where Danny often slept after all the tiring things he had been doing. 'I think after a busy day Danny regards getting back to Number Sixteen Tara Road as a treat. He has everything he wants here.'

'Yes, of course he has,' said Rosemary Ryan.

Hilary told Ria that one of the girls in fourth year was pregnant. A bold strap of fourteen, and she was the heroine of the hour. All the children envied her, and the staff said wasn't it great that she didn't go to England and have an abortion. The girl's mother would bring up the baby as her own so that the fourteen-year-old could return to her studies. Wasn't it very unfair, Hilary said, that some people could have a child quick as look at you, while others in stable marriages who could give a child everything didn't seem to be so lucky.

'I'm not complaining,' Hilary said, even though she rarely did anything but complain. 'But it does seem an odd way for God to have sorted out the whole business of continuing the human race. Wouldn't you think He would have arranged something much more sensible, like people going to an agency and giving proof that they could bring up a child properly, instead of teenagers getting pregnant from gropings in the bicycle sheds.'

'Yes, in a way,' Ria said.

'I don't expect you to agree with me. Look at what getting pregnant did for you, a marriage to a fellow like a film star, a house like something out of Homes and Gardens …'

'Now hardly that, Hilary,' Ria laughed.

Nora Johnson pushed her granddaughter up and down Tara Road in a pram, getting to know the neighbours and everyone's business. She had settled very well into the compact mews at Number 48A Tara Road. Small, dark, energetic, almost bird-like, she was an authority on nearly everything. Ria was amazed at how much her mother discovered about people.

'You just need to be interested, that's all,' Nora said.

In fact, as Ria knew very well, you just needed to be outrageously inquisitive and direct in your approach. Her mother told her about the Sullivan family in Number 26; he was a dentist, she ran a thrift shop. They had a daughter called Kitty just a year older than Annie, who might be a nice playmate in time. She told Ria about the old people's home at Number 68, St Rita's, where she called from time to time. It did old people a lot of good to see a baby; it made them think there was some continuity in life. Too many of them saw little of their own grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

Nora brought her clothes to Gertie's launderette for the sociability of it, she said. She knew she could use Ria's washing machine but there was a great buzz in a place like that. She said that Jack Brennan should be strung up from a lamppost and Gertie was that extraordinary mixture of half-eejit half-saint for putting up with him. Gertie's little boy John spent most of his time with his grandmother.

She reported that the big house, Number 1 on the corner, was for sale, and people said it might be a restaurant. Imagine having their own restaurant in Tara Road! Nora hoped it would be one they could all afford, not something fancy, but she doubted it. The place was becoming trendy, she said darkly.