by Maeve Binchy
In a way Carmel had only herself to blame if she was miserable and wretched over all this business about Ruth O’Donnell. Carmel was a lady of leisure with too much time to think about the too little she had to do. Then with a jolt Sheila remembered that it was she and Martin and Dermot who were wretched. Carmel had been very cheerful, and was in fact busy organising a dinner party and smartening up her wardrobe. Not at all what this wronged wife would have been expected to do.
* * *
Ethel and David had people in to bridge on Sunday night. They always had what they called a curfew on Sunday nights, and everyone had to have played the last card by eleven-thirty.
When the car had driven off and they were emptying the ashtrays, opening the windows and taking out the dirty glasses to the dishwasher, Ethel said: ‘I have the most awful feeling, like doom, as if something dreadful is going to happen. Do you know that feeling?’
‘Every day going into work, and it’s always accurate,’ said David.
‘Don’t be trivial, you love your work, and why wouldn’t you? People fussing over you, fuss fuss fuss all day. No, I have a sense of foreboding and I can’t think what’s causing it.’
‘Maybe you feel guilty about something,’ David said.
‘It’s that kind of feeling, that sort of heavy feeling in the chest, but I’ve nothing to be guilty about.’
‘I think it’s the bank manager’s bit of skirt. I honestly think that’s what’s making us all so uneasy. I feel a bit edgy myself.’
‘But we’ve known about it for ages.’
‘Yes, but the poor sad wife must have only just found out.’
Ethel stood looking at a plate of peanuts thoughtfully. Eventually she tipped them into the pedal bin. ‘I’d only eat them,’ she said as an explanation, ‘and they’re more fattening than large g’s and t’s. I suppose that is what’s making us nervous. It’s such a mad thing to do. Such a very men in white coats mad thing to do. Ask the woman to dinner and have a public scene.’
‘She won’t go of course,’ said David.
‘No, but the fact that poor Carmel actually asked her is so mad. That’s what’s upsetting. Who knows what she’ll do next, walk down Grafton Street in her knickers?’
* * *
Deirdre O’Donnell had no trouble in getting the porter to give her a key to her sister’s flat. She said that Ruth wanted her to post on some things.
She wandered around, luxuriating in being alone among someone else’s possessions. Now you could look and stare and ponder to your heart’s content. Everyone else in the block had their sitting rooms carefully draped and framed. They looked like the rooms in a doll’s house from outside. But Ruth’s sitting room was bare, it was in fact her studio, and what other people regarded as the master bedroom and decked with fitted cupboards and thick carpets, Ruth used as a secondary studio and office. The small spare bedroom was her bedsitting room; a sofa that turned into a bed sat neatly in its sofa role, and in the kitchen the saucepans sat shining in a row.
For an artist her sister was very neat, Deirdre thought. Spinsterish she had once believed … that was before she knew about the regular visits of Anna Murray’s father. FATHER. A bank manager. Maybe she should go to him to authorise an overdraft. Seriously, that’s not a bad idea at all.
On the mat there were a dozen envelopes. Some were obviously brochures or advertisements. Then she saw the letter in the neat round handwriting. She eased it out carefully. It might be full of terrible intimate things … things that Ruth would not want her to have read. She must steam the envelope; she could stick it all back with glue if it really was too yucky and Ruth would get into a temper.
Dear Ruth,
I don’t know whether you remember me or not, but we met a couple of times with David and Ethel O’Connor and you also know my friend Sheila Healy who says you gave a wonderful lecture at her school. Anyway, we are great admirers of yours and so looking forward to your exhibition on October 8th.
I’m going to try to steal you for that night to come to dinner with us. This is why I’m writing to you so far in advance; I am sure you will get many invitations nearer the time but I want to be first in with mine. We will have the O’Connors and the Healys as well, so you will be among friends.
Please let me know soon if you can come. I’m one of these middle-aged fussy sort of women who spend ages getting things organised, not like you and your friends. I’m sure you can combine about three lives successfully, but I’ll be setting and resetting the table for days before you come, and then I’ll pretend it all happened of its own accord. It will give us all a great deal of pleasure if you say yes, and I know Dermot my husband would be thrilled. He has bought three of your paintings for our home. I hope you will like the way we have had them hung. So looking forward to seeing you.
Yours cordially,
Carmel Murray
Poor old cow, thought Deirdre, probably something wrong with her glands. She must know about Ruthie, half the country does. I don’t think there’s anything for old Dermot to get his knickers in a twist about, but I’d better ring her just in case.
Because Deirdre O’Donnell was essentially a frugal person she saw no reason why she shouldn’t make the call from Ruth’s own telephone. After all, it was Ruth’s romance. It was Ruth’s fellow’s wife who had gone off her head … why not let Ruth pay for the call?
* * *
The farmer’s wife knocked on her door and said there was a telephone call from Dublin.
‘Your sister said you mustn’t get alarmed. She says there is no problem.’
Ruth got up. She had been lying on the bed over the covers, reading. It was very luxurious somehow to do that, like going to the pictures in the afternoon.
‘Ruthie?’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing, I told the old dame that. Nothing. Listen, Romeo asked me to contact you …’
‘I told you I didn’t want any messages. Any.’
‘I told him that, he said that his wife has gone off her head, and she’s written to you.’
‘Oh no.’
‘It’s all right, she hasn’t called you the whore of Babylon. She’s inviting you to dinner actually, the night your exhibition opens.’
‘She’s WHAT?’
‘Do you want me to read it to you? “Dear Ruth, I don’t know whether you remember me or not” …’
‘Stop, stop. Is this serious?’
‘Yes, but there’s no abuse in it. Honestly, it’s all full of admiration.’
‘Oh Lord. What does Dermot say?’
‘He wants to get in touch with you about it. I told him to leave you alone, but he said …’
‘And did he say that she knows?’
‘Ruthie … of course she knows. What are you talking about? She must know.’
‘Dermot always said she didn’t, or that if it came into her head she put it out again.’
‘You must be mad. Do you think you’re invisible or something, Ruthie? The two of you go everywhere together.’
‘But if she knows, what’s she inviting me to dinner for?’
‘Well, that’s the point, that’s what Lover Boy was so much in a tizz about.’
‘What does he think?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose he thinks that she’s gone over the top, poor old thing. Do you want me to read it to you?’
‘Yes, I suppose you’d better. If I’ve got to ring Dermot about it I’d better know what she says.’
‘Right: “I don’t know whether you remember me” …’
‘Hey, Deirdre. This must be costing you a fortune.’
‘No, it’s costing you a fortune … the wages of sin, you know.’
‘Oh go on, read it.’
* * *
Carmel planned her week carefully. It was nice to have so many things to do, it reminded her of being young again, when every day was so full and there seemed to be no waiting about. She would have to choose the main course and the dessert too. That
would take two mornings in the bookshop reading the recipes. She was going to have a facial twice a week … oh, over on the North side of the city where she wouldn’t be known … she would take the bus. She was going to spend two mornings shopping for her shoes. She had the dress already; the very good black dress which she had bought when Anna was 21 five years ago. She had worn it that evening … the first time … that first time when she had discovered about Dermot and the other girl … the time she had got so upset. She had never worn it again. But this time she would wear it and it would look magnificent. She would be much thinner … she was going to lose a stone this month. Her hair would be much more attractive … that man in Grafton Street who had done Ethel’s hair was going to put highlights in for her a week before the party. She had telephoned and asked him what would be the best time. She had even told him she was a middle-aged lady, not a dollybird. ‘I like coiffing mature ladies,’ he had said.
Coiffing. It had sounded vaguely suggestive.
And there were so many other things to do. Window cleaners to come in. That firm which came and shampooed your carpet in the house. And her notebook to fill in.
She had written down anything anyone said about successful entertaining, like that thing Ethel had mentioned about the prawn cocktails and the roast beef.
She remembered Anna once talking about a house she had visited. They had fresh flowers in the bathroom, Mother, in the bathroom!’ That had been included in the notebook. She had read an interview with a famous hostess who had said that the whole secret of successful entertaining was to have plenty of highly-polished glass and thick damask napkins on the table. That was noted, beside the advice about having a lot of salts, peppers and butterdishes so that people didn’t have to keep passing them from one end of the table to the other.
Happier than she had been for a long time and armed with a list of the better cookery books, she started off for Donnybrook. At the hall door she met Anna.
‘Oh dear! Why didn’t you let me know you were coming, dear? I’m just off,’ she said, regretfully but firmly pulling the door behind her.
‘Hey, that’s very welcoming,’ Anna said, surprised. ‘I bring your only grandchildren to visit you and that’s what we get shown … the door.’
‘Hallo Cilian … hallo Orla …’ she waved at them through the window.
Cilian struggled with his harness. ‘Grandmama, Grandmama,’ he called.
‘Ah look, he wants to come to you,’ Anna said.
‘I’m sorry, darling, Granny’s got to go out. Hallo Orla, blow Granny a kiss.’
‘You might just ask us in for a cup of coffee.’ Anna sounded huffed. ‘We drove all the way in from Sandycove to see you.’
‘Oh, I am sorry,.’ Carmel was on her way to the gate.
‘But where are you going to, Mother?’
‘I’m going out dear, I have things to do. Will you still be in town this afternoon? Bring them in then and we’ll have afternoon tea. Wouldn’t that be nice?’
‘Yes, but Mother, I wanted to have a little chat …’
‘Grand. We’ll have a little chat this afternoon.’
She was gone. Walking purposefully off towards the main road and the good brisk invigorating stretch towards the shops.
Anna looked after her, bewildered. Normally Mother was almost pathetically grateful for a visit, and fussed and ran about like an overgrown puppy. Here she was, striding off with no explanation. She looked after her, and Mother, as if she felt her eyes, turned and waved before she went around the corner. It was funny how people looked much younger when they moved quickly. Mother didn’t look bad at all in her navy jacket and her check skirt. She didn’t look fifty or fifty-one or whatever she was. Sometimes when she sat in that chair looking out into the back garden she looked seventy. Poor Mother, wasn’t Dad awful to be fooling around with a young girl? Ruth O’Donnell too … but James was wrong, it couldn’t be sex … it was just the thrill of the thing, the illicit excitement. Dad in bed with a girl? It was hard enough to imagine Dad being in bed with Mother years ago, but now … these days … Dad was so old he wouldn’t even be interested in it, would he? And suppose he was, who in their right mind would go to bed with Dad?
Anna shrugged and got back into the car.
‘Wasted journey,’ she said to the children, who set up a simultaneous squawk of disappointment.
* * *
‘Private call, Mr Murray, will you take it here or …?’
‘That’s all right, put me through …’
He knew it was Ruth from the way she spoke. She had a way of saying ‘private call’ that was almost lascivious.
‘Dermot, can you talk?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘In other words you can’t.’
‘Not yet.’
‘I got a call from Deirdre.’
‘So she told you the situation …’
‘She read me the letter, it sounded as if she doesn’t have a clue.’
‘Yes, well that’s what I’ve always been saying …’
Dermot Murray’s secretary felt she had tortured him enough. ‘Excuse me,’ she murmured and left the room.
‘So what will I do …?’
‘Listen, darling love, when are you coming back?’
‘In ten days, two weeks …’
‘I love you.’
‘You’re alone now presumably …’
‘No I’m in the board-room, and the board all agree. They love you too.’
She giggled. ‘Dermot, what will I do, will I write and say I’m tied up?’
‘It means a lot to her, it means a great great deal. She’s so lively and happy since she thought of the party, you have no idea, it stops that deadness. When I see her like this I can really imagine her living a life, a normal life of her own …’
‘So what do you want … ?’
‘Could you accept?’
‘Say I’d love to, and then sort of opt out at the last moment?’
Dermot paused. ‘Yes … and, well, maybe in the end, if you could come, could go to the dinner. Could you?’
‘WHAT?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t mean all that much to you … to us. We have so much, and there you are, a brilliant young girl with your life before you and all that …’
‘You can’t seriously expect me to come into your house as a guest, and say how nice, how delicious, you must give me the recipe for that boiled cabbage.’
‘Ruth, please.’
‘No, no please about it, you’re sick, that’s what you are. I couldn’t possibly do it. I wouldn’t dream of doing it to another woman, go in triumphantly and sit down with a lot of people who are in the secret. It’s monstrous!’
‘You don’t understand …’
‘I don’t like what I do understand. Why are you going along with it?’
Her voice was upset; the pips went.
‘We can’t talk on the phone, let me come to see you.’
‘NO. I wanted to be alone. You set all this up as a trick didn’t you … admit it.’
‘I swear to God I didn’t, I swear I only heard about it on Friday. I might never have heard if I hadn’t met David in the club. I don’t think she was going to tell me.’
‘You mean you were going to come home and find everyone there?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘But she must have known that I would have told you … she must have known that …’
‘She doesn’t know about you and me! I keep telling you!’
‘Deirdre says that’s lunacy … half of Dublin knows.’
‘Deirdre doesn’t know anything – anyway, Carmel never meets half of Dublin.’
‘Oh God, I knew you couldn’t let me have this time without spoiling it. I knew you’d have to do something to balls it up for me.’
‘That is so unfair. I don’t even know where you are. I won’t talk to you again until you come back. I just wanted you to know what happened. If I hadn’t told you, you’d ha
ve said I was being devious, wouldn’t you? Well, wouldn’t you?’
She softened. ‘I know.’
‘So if you could do one thing for me, just one. Write a note and say that you are away in the country, that the letter was forwarded to you, and that you’d love to come. Can you do that?’
‘No, Dermot, I am not a puppet, I will not be manipulated into awful, sordid, cruel scenes like that. I will not do it.’
‘Just say you’ll come, accept, people are always accepting things they don’t go to in the end. Accept, and when you come back you and I will talk, and then you’ll do whatever you like …’
‘And you won’t steamroll me into doing what I don’t want to do?’
‘No, Ruth my love, I will not.’
‘And if I write this hypocritical note saying yes, you really think this is for the best … ?’
‘I do.’
‘For all of us, for her and for me, as well as for you?’
He paused. ‘Yes. Seriously I do. For her, because she can go on planning her party and it will make her, well, busy and active again, and that’s what we want. We want her to have a life of her own.’
‘And how will it help me, to accept?’
‘Well, you can stop worrying about it. Once you’ve written a letter saying yes, then a decision is made. You can unmake it any time, but you don’t have to dither.’
‘And how will it help you?’
‘Then I can see her absorbed in something, and that’s a hell of a lot more positive than seeing her sitting staring out the window and wondering what the future has in store.’
‘What does the future have in store?’
‘It has you coming home to me soon. It has your exhibition and all that means …’
‘I wish I didn’t love you.’
‘I’m very glad you do.’
‘A ridiculous married bank manager, hundreds of years older than me, knowing nothing about painting …’
‘I know, I know.’ He sounded soothing. He was happy now; once Ruth got on to the groove of how unsuitable he was, he felt safe.