Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'What do you mean?' Annie's eyes were wary.

'The fall, it jars the system even at your age.'

'Oh that. No, no I'm fine.'

Ria kissed her daughter's flushed face and closed the door. She had spoken only the truth, it had been a killing day. But then wasn't she so well off compared to everyone else? Her mother going home alone with that absurd little dog. Hilary crossing the city with her dartboard in a big carrier bag to a man who wouldn't hold her in his arms any more because they couldn't make children. Gertie facing who knew what horrors in the flat above the launderette. Rosemary alone in that marble palace of a penthouse.

While she, Ria, had everything she could ever have wanted.

CHAPTER THREE

Sometimes they saw mothers and daughters together in the shops. Talking normally, holding up a skirt or a dress. Nodding or frowning but concerned. Like friends. One going into a cubicle to try something on, the other holding four more outfits outside. Perhaps they weren't real people, Ria told herself. Maybe they were actresses or from advertising. Judging from the eleven confrontations she had had with her own daughter in an hour and a half it was very hard to believe that any teenager and her mother would go shopping together from choice. These other people were only playing at being Happy Families. Surely?

Annie had this gift token from her grandmother. It was for more money than she had ever spent before on clothes. Up to now Annie had only bought shoes, jeans and T-shirts on her own. But this was different, it was for something to wear for all the parties this summer. It had seemed normal for Ria to go with her and help her choose. It had even seemed like fun. That was some hours ago. Now it seemed like the most foolish thing either of them had ever done in their lives.

When Annie had looked at something with leather and chains, Ria had gasped aloud. 'I knew you were going to be like that, I knew it in my bones,' Annie cried.

'No, I mean, it's just… I thought…' Ria was wordless.

' What did you think? Go on, Mam, say what you thought, don't just stand there gulping.' Annie's face was red and angry.

Ria was not going to say that she thought the outfit was like an illustration in a magazine article called 'Sado-Masochistic Wardrobe Unearthed'. 'Why don't you try it on?' she said weakly.

'If you think I'm going to put it on now that I've seen your face, and let you make fun of me…'

'Annie, I'm not making fun of you. We don't know what it looks like until you put it on, maybe it's…'

'Oh Mam, for God's sake.'

'But I mean it, and it's your token.'

'I know it is. Gran gave it to me to buy something I liked, not some awful revolting thing with a butch tartan waistcoat like you want me to wear.'

'No, no. Be reasonable, Annie, I haven't steered you towards anything at all, have I?'

'Well, what are you here for then, Mam? Answer me that. If you have nothing to suggest, what are you doing? What are we doing here?'

'Well, I thought we were looking…'

'But you never look. You never look at anything or anyone, otherwise you wouldn't wear the kind of clothes you do.'

'Look, I know you don't want the same clothes as I do.'

' Nobody wants the same clothes as you do, Mam, honestly. I mean, have you thought about it for one minute?'

Ria looked in one of the many mirrors around. She saw reflected a flushed angry teenager, slim with straight blonde hair, holding what appeared to be a bondage garment. Beside her was a tired-looking woman with a great head of frizzy hair tumbling on to her shoulders, and a black V-neck sweater worn over a flowing black-and-white skirt. She had put on comfortable flat shoes for shopping. This was not a day when Ria had rushed thoughtlessly out of the house, she had remembered the mirrors that came on you suddenly in dress shops. She had combed her hair, put on make-up and even rubbed shoe cream into her shoes and handbag. It had all looked fine in the hall mirror before they had left Tara Road. It didn't look great here.

'I mean, it's not even as if you were really old,' Ria's daughter Annie said. 'Lots of people your age haven't given up.'

With great difficulty Ria forced herself not to take her daughter by the hair and drag her from the shop. Instead she looked thoughtfully back into the mirror. She was thirty-seven. How old did she look? Thirty-five? That's all. Her curly hair made her young, she didn't look forty or anything. But then what did she know?

'Oh Mam, stop sucking in your cheeks and making silly faces, you look ridiculous.' When had it happened, whatever it was that made Annie hate her, scorn her? They used to get on so well.

Ria made one more superhuman effort. 'Listen we mustn't talk about me, it's your treat, your gran wants you to get something nice and suitable.'

'No she doesn't, Mam. Do you never listen? She said I was to get whatever I wanted, she never said one word about it being suitable.'

'I meant…'

'You mean anything that would look well on a poodle at a dog show.' Annie turned away with tears in her eyes.

Near by a woman and her daughter were looking through a rail of shirts. 'They must have a pink one,' the girl was saying excitedly. 'Come on, we'll ask the assistant. You look terrific in pink. Then we'll go and have a coffee.'

They seemed an ordinary mother and daughter, not just a couple sent over by central casting to depress real people. Ria turned away so that nobody could see the tears of envy in her eyes.

Danny had organised the people to deliver the sander at eleven o'clock. Ria wanted to be home to greet them. It was such a peculiar idea, to take up their carpets and bring out the beauty of the wooden floors. They didn't look a bit beautiful to her, full of nails and discoloration. But Danny knew about these things, she accepted this. His work and his skill was selling houses to people who knew everything, and these people knew that exposed wooden floors and carefully chosen rugs were good, while wall-to-wall carpeting was bad, and obviously concealed unmerciful horrors beneath. You could rent a sander for a weekend and walk around behind it while it juddered and peeled off the worst bit of your floor. That was what lay ahead today and tomorrow.

Would Annie think she was sulking if she left her now? Would she be relieved? 'Annie, you know your father arranged that this sanding machine come today?' she began tentatively.

'Mam, I'm not spending the weekend doing that, it's not fair.' 'No, no, of course not, I wasn't going to suggest it. I was going to say I should go home and be there when they arrive, but I don't want to abandon you.' Annie stared at her wordlessly. 'Not that I'm much help, really. I'm inclined to get confused when I see a lot of clothes together.’ Ria said.

Annie's face changed. Suddenly she reached out and gave her mother an unexpected hug. 'You're not the worst, Mam,' she said grudgingly. From Annie this was high, high praise these days.

Ria went home with a lighter heart.

Ria had just got in the door of her house in Tara Road when she heard the gate rattle and the familiar cry: 'Ree-ya, Ree-ya'. A call known all over the area, as regular as the Angelus or the sound of the ice-cream van. It was her mother and the dog, the misshapen and unsettled animal Pliers, a dog never at ease in Ria and Danny's home in Tara Road, but because of circumstances forced to spend a lot of his disturbed life there. Ria's mother was always going somewhere where dogs weren't allowed, and Pliers pined if left at home alone. Pliers yowled in Ria's house, but for some reason this was not regarded as pining and was considered preferable.

Ria's mother never came in unannounced or uninvited. She had made a great production out of this from the time she had moved to the little house near them. Never assume that you are automatically welcome in your children's homes. That was her motto, she always said. It seemed a loveless kind of motto and also totally inappropriate since she called unannounced and uninvited almost every day at Ria and Danny's house. She thought that this shout at the gate was somehow enough warning and preparation. Today reminded Ria of being back at school when her mother would come to the playground or to the park where her pals had gathered, always calling 'Ree-ya'. Her school friends used to take up the cry. And now here she was, a middle-aged woman and nothing had changed, her mother still calling her name as if it were some kind of a war cry.