Authors: Maeve Binchy
'Won't they expect you to go back?'
'They'll leave it to me.'
She wanted to ask about his brothers over in England and what kind of a family was it if they didn't all gather around a table for a turkey on Christmas Day. But she knew she must not sound too inquisitive. 'Sure,' she said unconvincingly.
Danny took both her hands in his. 'Listen to me, Ria. It will be different when you and I have a home. It will be a real home, one that people will want to come running back to. That's what I see ahead for us. Don't you?'
'Oh yes, Danny,' she said, with her face glowing. She did understand. The real Danny was a loving person like herself. She was the luckiest woman in the world.
'Ask him for Christmas Day so that we can get a look at him,' her mother begged.
'No, Mam. Thank you, but no.'
'Is he going back down the country to his own people?'
I'm not sure, he's not sure.'
'He sounds a real fly-by-night to me,' her mother sniffed. 'No, Mam, he's not that.'
'Well, a mystery manGCa he won't even put in an appearance to give the time of day to his girlfriend's family.' 'He will, Mam, when the time comes,' Ria said.
Someone always behaved badly at the office party.
This year it was Orla King, a girl who had drunk half a bottle of vodka before the festivities had even started. She tried to sing, 'In the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight'.
'Get her out before the top guys see her,' Danny hissed.
It was easier said than done. Ria tried to urge Orla to come with her to the ladies' room.
'Piss off!' was the response.
Danny was there. 'Hey sweetheart, you and I have never danced,' he said.
She looked at him with interest. 'That's true,' she agreed.
'Why don't we go out and dance a bit where there's more room?'
'Yesh,' said the girl, surprised and pleased.
In seconds Danny had her out on the street. Ria brought her coat. The cold fresh air made her feel sick. They directed her to a quiet corner.
'I want to go home,' she cried afterwards.
'Come on, we'll walk you,' Danny said.
Between them they supported her. From time to time Orla tried a chorus of 'The lion sleeps tonight' without much success.
When they let her in the door of her flat she looked at them in surprise. 'How did I get home?' she asked with interest.
'You're fine, sweetheart,' Danny said soothingly.
'Will you come in with me?' Orla ignored Ria entirely.
'No, honey, see you tomorrow,' he said, and they were gone.
'You saved her job, getting her out of there,' Ria said as they walked back to the office party. 'She's such a clownGCa I hope she knows how much she owes you.'
'She's not a clown, she's just young and lonely,' he said.
Ria got a stab of jealousy as sharp as a real pain. Orla was eighteen and pretty; even drunk and with a tear-stained face she looked well. Suppose Danny was attracted to her? No, don't suppose that.
Back at the party they hadn't been missed. 'That was very smart of you, Danny,' Rosemary said with approval. 'And even smarter, you missed the speeches.'
'Anything we should know?'
'Oh, that we had a profitable year and there would be a bonus. Onwards and upwards sort of thing.'
Rosemary looked magnificent, with her blonde hair swept up in a jewelled comb, a white satin blouse, tight black skirt and those long slim legs. For the second time that evening Ria felt a pang of envy. She was dumpy and fuzzy-looking. How could she keep a man as gorgeous as Danny Lynch? She was foolish even to try.
He whispered in her ear, 'Let's circulate, talk to the suits for a bit and then get away.'
She watched him joke easily with the senior figures in the agency, nod respectfully to the managing director, listen courteously to their wives. Danny had only been there a matter of weeks. Already they liked him and thought he would do well.
'I'm getting the Christmas Eve bus tomorrow.'
'I'm sure it'll be nice, lots of returned emigrants and everything,' she said.
'IGCOll miss you,' he said.
'Me too.'
'IGCOll hitch-hike back the day after ChristmasGCa there's no buses.'
'That's great.'
'I wonder could I come and see you at home and, you know, meet your mother maybe?'
He was asking, she hadn't dragged him or forced him.
'That would be great. Come and have lunch with us on the Tuesday.' All she had to do now was force herself not to be ashamed of her mother and her sister and her dreary brother-in-law.
It wasn't a military inspection on Tuesday. It was only lunch. They were going to have soup and sandwiches.
Ria tried to see their home through Danny's eyes. It was not the kind of place where he would have liked to live, a corner house in a long road of the big estate. He's coming to see me not the house, she told herself. Her mother said she hoped he wouldn't stay after three because there was a great movie starting on the television then. Ria gritted her teeth and said no, indeed, she was sure that he wouldn't.
Hilary said she was sure he was used to fancier meals but he'd have to put up with this like anyone else. With a huge effort Ria said that he would be delighted to put up with it. Martin read the paper and didn't look up at all.
She wondered would Danny bring a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates or a plant. Or maybe nothing at all. Three times she changed her dress. That was too smart, this was too dowdy. She was struggling into the third outfit when she heard the doorbell ring.
He had arrived.
'Hallo Nora, I'm Danny,' she heard him say. Oh God, he was calling her mother by her first name. Martin always called her Mrs J. Mam would just hate this.
But she heard in her mother's voice the kind of pleased response that Danny always got. 'You're very, very welcome,' she said, in a tone that hadn't been used in that house for as long as Ria could remember.
And the magic worked with Hilary and Martin too. Eager to hear about their wedding, interested in the school where they worked, relaxed and easy-going. Ria watched the whole thing with amazement.
And he had brought no wine, chocolates or flowers. Instead he gave them a game of Trivial Pursuit. Ria's heart sank when she saw it. This was not a family where games were played. But she had reckoned without Danny. Their heads were bent over the questions. Nora knew all the ones about film stars and Martin shone in general knowledge.
'What hope have I against a teacher?' Danny groaned in despair.
He said he was leaving long before they wanted him to go. 'Ria promised to come and see the place I live,' he said apologetically. I want us to go while there's still light.'
'He's gorgeous,' Hilary whispered.
'Very nice manners,' her mother hissed.
And then they were free.
'That was a lovely lunch,' Danny said as they waited for the bus to Tara Road. And that was all he would say. There would be no analysis, no defining. Men like Danny were straightforward and not complicated.
And then they were there. And they stood together in the overgrown front garden and looked up at the house in Tara Road.
'Look at the shape of the house,' Danny begged her. 'See how perfect the proportions are. It was built in 1870, a gentleman's residence.' The steps up to the hall door were huge blocks of granite. 'Look how even they were, they were perfectly matched.' The bow windows had all the original woodwork. 'Those shutters are over a hundred years old. The leaded glass over the door has no cracks in it. This house was a jewel,' Danny Lynch said.
There he was living in it, well, more or less camping in a room in it.
'Let's remember today, the first day that we walked together into this house,' he said. His eyes were bright. He was just as sentimental and romantic as she was in so many ways. He was about to open the peeling front door with his key and paused to kiss her. 'This will be our home, Ria, won't it? Tell me you love it too.' He meant it. He wanted to marry her. Danny Lynch, a man who could have any woman. And he meant he was going to own a huge house like this. A boy of twenty-three with no assets. Only rich people could buy houses like this, even one in such poor repair.
Ria didn't want to pour cold water on his dreams, and particularly she didn't want to sound too like her sister Hilary with her new obsession with the cost of everything. But this was fantasy. 'It's not possible to own a place like this surely?' she said.
'When you come in and see it you'll know this is where we are going to live. And we'll find a way to buy it.' He talked her through the hallway with its high ceiling. He pointed out the original mouldings on the ceiling to take her eyes off the bicycles clogging the hallway. He showed her the gentle curve of the stairs, and made no mention of the rotting floorboards. They passed the big room with its folding doors. They couldn't go into it. Sean O'Brien, the eccentric landlord, was using it as some kind of storeroom for giant-size containers.
They went down the steps to the huge kitchen with its old black range. There was a side door here out to the garden, and numerous storage rooms, pantries and sculleries. The magnitude of it all was too great for Ria to take in. This boy with the laughing eyes really thought that he and she could find the money and skills to do up a house of this size.
If it were on their books back at the office it would have the customary warnings printed all over it. In need of extensive renovation, suitable for structural remodelling, ready for inventive redesign. Only a builder or developer or someone with real money would buy a property like this.
The kitchen had an uneven tiled floor. A small cheap tabletop cooker had been laid on the old black range.
'IGCOll make us some coffee,' Danny said. 'And in years to come we'll remember the first time we had coffee here together in Tara RoadGCa' At that moment, as if on some kind of cue, the kitchen was suddenly lit up with one of those rays of watery winter sunshine. It came slanting in at the window through all the briars and brambles. It was like a sign.
'Yes, yes I will remember my first coffee with you in Tara Road,' Ria said.
'We'll be able to tell people it was a lovely sunny day, December the 28th 1982,' said Danny.
As it happened it also turned out to be the date of the first time Ria Johnson ever made love to anybody. And as she lay beside Danny in the small narrow bed she wished she could see into the future. Just for a moment. A quick look to see would they live here together for years and have children and make it the home of their dreams.
She wondered if Hilary's friend Mrs Connor, the fortune-teller on the halting site, would know. She smiled at the thought of going to consult her. Danny stirred from his sleep on her shoulder, and saw her smiling.
'Are you happy?' he asked.
'Never more so.'
'I love you, Ria. I'll never let you down,' he promised.
She was the luckiest woman in the country. No, she told herself, think generously, who was luckier anywhere? Make that the world.
The next weeks went by in a blur.
They knew that Sean O'Brien would be glad to get rid of the place.
They knew that he would prefer to deal with them, young people who wouldn't make a fuss about the damp and the roof, and would not tut-tut over the decay. But they still had to give him what the house was worth. So how could they get it together?
There were sheets of paper building up into piles as they did their sums. Four bedsitters upstairs would bring in enough to pay the mortgage. It would have to be done very quietly of course. No need to burden the planning authorities with any details, or indeed the tax people either. Then they would approach the bank with their proposition. Ria had a thousand pounds saved; Danny had two-and-a-half thousand. They had both seen couples with less than they had get their hands on property. It all depended on timing and presentation. They would do it.
They invested the price of a bottle of whiskey when inviting the landlord to discuss the future. Sean O'Brien proved to be no trouble. He told them again and again the story they knew already. He had inherited the house when his uncle died some years back. He didn't want to live in it, he had a small cottage by a lake in Wicklow where he fished and drank with congenial people. That's where he wanted to be. He'd only held on to Tara Road in case there was going to be a property boom. And indeed there had been. It was worth much more now than it had been ten years ago, so he had been clever, hadn't he? A lot of people said he was an eejit but that wasn't so. Danny and Ria nodded and praised him and filled his glass.
Sean O'Brien said he had never been able to keep the house up to any standard. It was too much effort and he didn't have the skills to restore it and let it properly to people who would look after it. That was why he had been happy to hand it to young fellows like Danny and his pals. But he took their point that it wasn't going to be such a great investment if it kept falling down and deteriorating the way it was.
He thought that the going rate would be in the neighbourhood of seventy thousand pounds. He had asked around and this is what he had heard. However he would take sixty thousand for a quick sale, and he'd get rid of all the old furniture and containers and boxes that he was storing for friends. Danny could have it when he produced sixty thousand.