Tara Road (53 page)

It would have been awkward getting undressed in front of this man. How did people do it? Be so instantly intimate with people they hardly knew? People like Rosemary. But then Rosemary looked like Rosemary. As near perfect as possible. Ria was afraid that her own bottom might be a bit saggy, that she would look floppy when naked. In a way it was a relief not to have to go through the motions of getting to know another body and fear the possible criticism of her own. Yet it would have been nice to have had arms around her and someone wanting her again.

She sighed and went into Dale's room. She turned over the pages of Dale Vine's scrapbook, the pictures of motor bikes, the advertisements, the cuttings about various motor-cycle heroes. Marilyn had been strong enough to leave these here, reminders of the machines that had killed her only child, and yet she had not been able to tell the woman who was going to live in her house that her son was dead. This was a very complicated person indeed.

Marilyn had refused so many invitations that she feared she might now be causing offence. She had better go out with Hilary, Ria's discontented and unprepossessing sister. The woman had been very insistent, she had called several times to mention a picnic on the coast. It would be good to swim again, and Marilyn told herself she was a match for any of these inquisitive Irish. Just answer vaguely and ask them about themselves, then they were off, all you had to do was sit back and listen.

Hilary arrived bristling with energy and fuss. 'We'll miss the rush hour on the train which will be good,' she said.

'Good. I'm ready whenever you are.'

'Merciful God, Ria'll go mad when she sees all that work in the garden. Are they digging for treasure or what?'

'Just a bit of clearing-out the undergrowth, it will be perfect when she comes back. Your sister has a very beautiful house, hasn't she?' Marilyn said.

'I'll tell you straight out what I think. I think that Ria and Danny got their money too easy and these things have a habit of coming home to roost.'

'How do you mean exactly? Should we have a cup of coffee or would you like to get on the road, the train?'

'We could have a cup of coffee, I suppose. Were you not cooking, baking like?' Hilary seemed to look around the kitchen with the same disapproval as Brian had, searching for something which was not there.

'Well no. We're going out, aren't we?' Marilyn was startled.

'I thought we might have a picnic out there.'

'Yes, yes what a good idea, will we pass a delicacy shop on the way?'

'A what?'

'You know, somewhere we could buy the picnic.'

'But it would cost as much to buy a picnic in one of those places as to have a meal out. I really meant sandwiches.' Marilyn was beginning to regret this bitterly, but it was too late to turn back. 'We could hard-boil two of those eggs, and take a couple of tomatoes and two slices of ham, bread and butter, and aren't we fine then?'

Hilary seemed to be restored to good humour. The two of them prepared the very basic picnic and caught a bus to the station and then took the little electric train out to Dun Laoghaire. It travelled south along the coast and Marilyn commented with pleasure on all that she saw.

'Martin and I knew you'd enjoy this.' Hilary was pleased.

'Tell me how you met Martin,' Marilyn asked. She listened to the strange downbeat story, told with great pride, of a house saved for and bought, investments made, savings tucked away, economies arranged. They got out of the train and walked along the coast to the place where they were going to swim. And as they walked by the shining but very cold-looking sea Hilary talked about property prices, about Martin's brothers getting the small farm in the west, about the children of fourteen getting pregnant in the school where Martin taught and where she worked in the office.

When they got to the swimming place Marilyn cried out in delight. 'Look at the Martello tower, and the Joyce Museum! I know where we are. This is where Ulysses opened. It's the very spot.'

'Yeah, that's right.' Hilary was not very interested in James Joyce.

She pointed out the much photographed sign that said Forty Foot Gentlemen Only, and said she remembered her mother telling her about the feminists first swimming in there to claim it back for everyone.

'But that can't have been in your mother's time surely?'

'It was probably in my time! I'll be forty this year,' Hilary said gloomily.

'So will I,' Marilyn said.

A first mark of solidarity between two totally different women. They had a swim which froze Marilyn's blood to the marrow, and then ate their makeshift picnic. Hilary did most of the talking.

'Tell me about Ria's marriage,' Marilyn asked.

They talked about Ria. Hilary told the whole story as she knew it. The sudden announcement and he was gone overnight. The utter folly of it all, the comeuppance which was near at hand. Barney McCarthy wasn't a golden boy any more, and his political pals were not in power. It was curtains for Mr Danny Lynch.

'Did you ever like him?'

'I was nervous about him, he was too smart for Ria, too good-looking. I always said it and it turned out I was right in the end. It gave me no pleasure being right. I'm happily married myself, I'd prefer her to have been. Are you happily married?' Hilary asked suddenly.

'I don't know,' Marilyn said.

'You must know.'

'No I don't.'

'And what does your husband think?'

'He thinks we're happily married. We have nothing to say to each other. But he wants to go on as normal.'

'Sex, do you mean?' Hilary asked.

'Yes. It was good once. But no, it would be empty. I had a hysterectomy two years ago, so even if a forty-year-old woman could conceive, which they can, there's no chance for me.'

'I think you're lucky that he still wants to be with you in that way. I can't have children and so Martin thinks we shouldn't have sex. And so we don't.'

'I don't believe you,' Marilyn said.

'It's true.'

'But since when?'

'We're married sixteen yearsGCa about eight years I'd say, since he knew we couldn't have children.'

'And did you know before?'

'I always knew. I went to a fortune-teller, you see. She told me.'

'Did you believe her?'

'Totally. She's been right about everybody.' Hilary tidied up the remains of their food, and put it into a paper bag.

She was so sure and confident in everything, including the fact that this psychic had told her she wasn't fertile. This was a very strange country. 'Is she a psychic?'

'I don't know, she just knows what's going to happen.'

'Is she a medium? Does she get in touch with the dead?'

'I don't think so,' Hilary said. 'I didn't want to anyway, I only wanted to know about the living.'

'And what else did she tell you?'

'She said I'd be happily married, which is true, and that I'd live in a place with trees but that hasn't happened yet.'

Marilyn paused for a moment to think about a woman who considered herself happily married to a man who thought about nothing except interest rates and didn't believe in sex without the possibility of procreation.

'Is she still around, this woman?' Marilyn asked.

They were getting the best weather ever known for a week in July. Everyone said so. The children were sun-tanned and loving it all.

'Can we take the dinghy out, Dad?' Annie asked.

'No, Annie, it's too dangerous.'

'Why did they give it to us then?'

'They gave it to us, Princess, not to you, not to children.'

'Let them, Danny,' Bernadette said.

'No, sweetheart, they don't know about boats.'

'Well, how will they ever learn?' Bernadette asked. 'Suppose they go where we can see them, would that do?' It was a compromise that did fine. Danny looked on proudly as his son and daughter rowed the little boat along the shore.

'You're so good with them, but you're fearless. Ria would have wanted to swim along beside them like a mother duck.'

'You have to let children go free,' she said. 'They hate you otherwise.'

'I know but when we have our baby will you feel the same?' He laid his hand on her stomach and thought about the son or daughter that would be in their home, a real person, by Christmas.

'Of course!' She looked at him in surprise. 'You don't want children, free spirits, all herded into some kind of corral, do you?'

Danny realised that this was exactly what he and Ria had built and why he so badly needed to escape. He lay with his head in her lap and closed his eyes. 'Sleep on, I'll look out at the dinghy,' she said.

'Isn't that amazing?' Finola Dunne was reading them extracts from the newspaper.

'What's amazing?' Danny asked. He was still lying in the grass and Bernadette was making a series of daisy chains which she was spreading over him like threads tying him to the earth.

'Polly's is for sale! That's been the main dress-hire place in Dublin for years.'

'It's never for sale.' Danny sat up suddenly.

'Well, so it says here.'

He took the paper and read the paragraph. 'I have to make a phone call,' he said. 'Where are those goddamn children on their bloody boat, and what the hell did you let them go off for?'

'Danny, they've tied up the dinghy. You were asleep. They've gone to get ice creams. Please, please be calm. You have no idea what's going on.'

'I have a fair idea.'

'Well, what do you think it is? Do you think that if Polly's is being sold Barney's running out of money?' Bernadette asked.

'And you can sit there making daisy chains if you think that?'

'I'd prefer to make daisy chains than to have a heart attack,' Bernadette said.

'Darling darling Bernadette, the world might be about to end for us. You don't understand, you're just a child.'

'I wish you wouldn't say that, you've always known what age I am,' she said.

'I have to talk to Barney, find out what's happening.' Danny's face was white.

'I should wait until you are calmer. You won't understand anything the way you are now.'

'I won't be any calmer, not until I know. And maybe not even then. I can't believe he wouldn't tell me, we're friends. I'm like a son to him, he's said so often.'

'Then if he is in trouble maybe it was harder to tell you than anyone else.' She saw it quite simply.

'And aren't you worried, frightened?'

'Of what?'

'Of what might be ahead?'

'You mean being poor? Of course not. You've been poor before, Danny. You'll live, you did before.'

'That was then, this is now.'

'You've a lot more to live for now.'

He held both her hands in his. 'I want to give you everything. I want the sun, the moon and the stars for you and our baby.'

She smiled at him, that slow smile that always made him feel weak. She said nothing more. This was what made him feel ten feet tall.

Bernadette didn't busy herself wondering was this strategy better than that. Having urged him to be calm she was now staying out of it. She was leaving it all to him.

'Where's Dad? Annie asked. 'We got him a choc-ice?'

'He went to make a phone call,' Bernadette said.

'Will he be long do you think or should we eat it?' Brian wanted a ruling.

'I think we should eat it,' said Bernadette.

'It's Danny.'

'Didn't you get the weather! I bet it's beautiful down there.' Barney sounded pleased for him.

'Barney, what's happening?'

'You're worse than I am about not being able to cut off and take a holiday.'

'Were you looking for me? My mobile's not charged up, I'm ringing from a bar.'

'No, I wasn't looking for you, I was letting you have your holiday in peace.' He sounded very unruffled.

'I saw the paper,' Danny said 'The paper?'

'I saw Polly's is on the market.'

'That's right. Yes.'

'What does it mean, Barney?'

'It means that Polly wants a break from it, she got a good offer and we're just testing the market in case there's an even better one out there.'

'That's bullshit. Polly doesn't want a break, she's hardly ever in there anyway.'

'Well, that's what she says. You know womenGCa unpredictable.'

Danny had heard Barney so often talking to clients like this. Or when speaking to accountants, lawyers, politicians, bank managers. Anyone who had to be kept at bay. Simple, homespun, cheerful, even a little bewildered. It had always worked in the past. But then he had never talked like that to Danny before. Suddenly he thought of something. 'Is there anyone with you as we speak?'

'No, no one at all, why?'

'Are we okay, Barney? Tell me straight out.'

'How do you mean?'