Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'What did she tell you about it all?' Andy asked.

'Nothing at all. She never mentioned she had a son at all.'

Andy looked upset and a little silence fell between them. And then they didn't speak about the matter again. There were plenty of other things to talk about. He told her about his childhood in Pennsylvania, she told him about her mother's obsession with the movies, he explained the passion for baseball and she told him about hurling and the big final every year in Croke Park. He told her how to make a great Caesar salad and she explained about potato cakes. She enjoyed the evening and knew he had too.

He drove her back to Tudor Drive and they sat awkwardly for a few moments in the car. She did not like to invite him in in case it would be misunderstood. Then they both spoke at once.

'If ever business takes you to Ireland…' Ria began.

'The conference ends on Wednesday at lunchtime…' Andy said.

'Please go on…' she said.

So he finished what he was going to say. 'And I was wondering if I drove back this way and made you a Caesar salad would you cook those potato cakes?'

'It's a deal,' Ria said with a big smile and got out of the car.

Years ago when they went out with fellows the big question always asked was 'Are you seeing him again?' And now she was back in that situation, a fellow had asked to see her again. With all that implied.

Ria stood in her bedroom and looked out on the beautiful garden that this strange woman had created. From what she had heard, Marilyn Vine spent every waking moment with her hands in the earth pulling and changing and turning the soil and coaxing the flowers and climbers to come up out of the ground.

She felt very out of place here. The friendship that she had thought she might have with Carlotta and Heidi had not bloomed. Both women seemed embarrassed at the effusion of the first night, and had made no attempt to arrange another jolly threesome. Despite the admiration in Andy Vine's eyes she felt no real sense of being pleased and flattered. He was just a strange man from a different world to hers. True, Westville was peaceful and beautiful, a place of trees and a river and a gracious easygoing lifestyle with superficial courtesy and warmth everywhere. But it wasn't home. And at home her children had gone out to Colm's restaurant for a hilarious evening with their new family. And Marilyn Vine had been across the room at a table with Rosemary. And I was here alone. Tears came down her face. She must have been mad to think this was a good idea. Totally mad.

It was dawn in Tara Road. Marilyn had not slept well. What an ugly scene that had been at the restaurant. Everything had suddenly slipped out of control. All these people were like characters playing their parts in a drama. And not a very pleasant drama. Rosemary and Gertie had filled her in on some of the background. Stories of Ria's broken marriage, the new relationship, the puzzlement of the children, the known unreliability of that offensive drunken singer, the possible criminal connection of the heavy men who had eventually taken her away. These people knew everything about everyone and were not slow in discussing it. There was no dignity, reserve, self-preservation.

Rosemary had talked about it being natural that people might assume she was gay since she was single and had a sister who was already 'out' with a partner who was a lawyer. Gertie had told her about her husband's problems coping with drink and violence. She spoke as if Jack had been prone to getting chest colds in the winter. Colm had approached their table with a casual apology over the incident as if it had not been the most excruciatingly embarrassing moment of her life. The two women had told her how they had initially thought Ria was mad to go to America and leave her children but they hoped it would all work out for the best.

Marilyn could not take in the degree of involvement and indeed interference that these people felt confident to have in everyone else's life. They thought nothing of discussing the motives and private sorrows of their friend with Marilyn who was after all a complete stranger, here purely because of an accidental home exchange. While she felt sympathy for Ria and all that had happened to her, she also felt a sense of annoyance.

Why had she not kept her dignity, and refused to allow all these people into her life? The only way to cope with tragedy and grief was to refuse to permit it to be articulated and acknowledged. Deny its existence and you had some hope of survival. Marilyn got out of bed and looked down on the messy garden and the other large redbrick houses of the neighbourhood. She felt very lost and alone in this place where garrulous people wanted to know everything about you and expected you to need the details of their lives too.

She ached for the cool house and beautiful garden in Westville. If she were there now she could go and swim lengths of her pool safe in the knowledge that no one would call and burden her with post mortems about last night. Clement the cat who slept on her bed every night woke up and stretched and came over to her hopefully. He was purring loudly. The day was about to begin, he was expecting a game and a bowl of something.

Marilyn looked at him sadly. 'I don't usually talk to animals, Clement, but I'm making an exception in your case. I made the wrong decision coming here. It was the worst decision I ever made in my life.'

CHAPTER SIX

'Do you think when we're talking to Granny we should call her Nora?' Brian asked.

'What?' Annie looked up from her book.

'You know… if we call Bernadette's mother by her first name maybe we should do the same with Granny.' Brian wanted to be fair.

'No, Brian, and shut up,' said Annie.

'You always say shut up, you never say anything nice, not ever at all.'

'Who could say anything nice to you, Brian, honestly?'

'Well, some people do.'

'Who apart from Mam and Dad? And they have to because you're what they got.'

'Finola often says nice things.'

'Tell me one nice thing she said to you today, go on tell me.'

'She said it was good that I had remembered to let my knights command the centre of the board.'

'And had you?' Annie still refused chess lessons and she couldn't accept that Brian had mastered it.

'Well, only by accident in a way. I just sort of put them out there and they were commanding and she was very pleased with me.' Brian smiled at the triumph of it all.

Sometimes he was more pathetic than awful, Annie thought, you'd feel sorry for him. And he didn't really understand that their lives were going to change. He thought that after the summer everyone would go back to their own homes. He had even asked Bernadette's mother if they could go on playing chess in the autumn when they came back from America. Their games wouldn't have to end then, would they? Finola had said that they could surely continue to play whenever he came to visit his dad and she happened to be around. Stupid Brian had just looked bewildered. In his heart he thought that Dad might be coming home. He hadn't taken on board that this was the way things were always going to be.

Kitty had said that Bernadette must be very, very clever to have got her claws into Annie's father. Despite the ban Annie still managed to see Kitty by dint of visiting the library. Since Annie read a lot now, from sheer lack of anything else to do as she kept telling them, it was considered legitimate that she visit the library. Kitty would come along too and report on the real world of motorbike rallies, of discos and of great crowds who hung out in bars. Annie listened wistfully to the freedom of it all.

But Kitty was more interested in the sexual side of it all, and was fascinated by Bernadette. 'She looks so dumb and half asleep you'd never have thought it. She must be like one of these sirens, one of these famous courtesans who had captured people by wiles. There were women who could make men their sexual slaves. It would be interesting to know exactly how.'