Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'Yes indeed I finished it, and you found the Chablis?'

'Sure I did. I haven't finished it yet but I will.'

'And Gertie let you in?'

'I got in fine and I love the place. You have one beautiful home. And Carlotta gave you the keys and everything?'

'She did, it's a dream house, you undersold it.'

There was a little pause. Then they both said goodnight. Marilyn did not know why she had pretended Gertie had been there. Ria had no idea why she did not say to Marilyn that her friends Carlotta and Heidi were about to open a third bottle of wine. If anyone had asked them they would have been hard put to explain.

'I'm going to see my granny today, Bernadette.'

'Oh good.'

'So I don't know exactly what time I'll be back.'

'Sure.' Annie gathered up her tote bag of things which included a very short lycra skirt and a halter-neck top. 'Before you go, call your dad in the office, will you?'

'Why should I do that?'

'Because you forgot to tell him at breakfast that you were going to your grandmother's.'

'Oh, he doesn't want to be bothered with every detail.'

'He does actually.'

'I’ll tell him tonight.'

'Would you prefer me to tell him for you?' Bernadette's voice was without any threat. It sounded like a simple question, which it most definitely was not.

'There's no need to behave like a gaoler, Bernadette.'

'And there's no need to lie to me either, Annie. You're not going to your grandmother's with all that gear. You and Kitty are off somewhere entirely different.'

'What's it to you if we are?'

'It's nothing to me, I couldn't care less where you go or what you do, but your father's going to be upset and that I don't want.'

It was the longest sentence that Annie had ever heard from Bernadette. She considered it for a while then she said enquiringly, 'He won't be upset if he doesn't know.'

'Nice try. No way,’ Bernadette said.

'I have to ring Kitty,' Annie said defeated.

Bernadette nodded to the phone. 'Go ahead,' she said and went back to her book.

Annie looked around once or twice during the conversation but there was no evidence that Bernadette was listening. 'No, I can't explain,' Annie said mutinously. 'Of course I tried. Don't you think I did? Who do you think? Yeah. Yeah. Even worse than Mam if you ask me.'

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.