by Maeve Binchy
'Brian, she wouldn't have given you a penny,' Annie said.
'You don't like Rosemary, Annie, do you?' Ria was surprised.
'You don't like Kitty,' Annie countered.
'Ah, but that's different. Kitty's a bad influence.'
'So is Lady Ryan on you, Mam, giving you things, patting you on the head. You can earn money to buy your own dresses, not wear her cast-offs.'
'Thanks, Annie, that's true. Now will you two be all right, I'll only be gone three hours?'
'It's so funny to see you going out to work, Mam, you're like a normal person,' said Brian.
Ria drove Marilyn's car to John and Gerry's, her knuckles white with rage. This was the thanks she got for staying in Tara Road to make the place into a home for them all. Danny had left her saying she was as dull as ditchwater and they had nothing to talk about. Annie thought she was pathetic and Brian thought she was abnormal. Well, by God, she was going to make a success of business anyway.
She parked with a screech of brakes and marched into the kitchen.
'What thought have we given to making special alumni cakes?' she barked. The two men looked up, startled. 'None I see,' she said. 'Well I suggest we have two kinds, one with a mortar board and scroll of parchment, and one with hands of friendship entwined.'
'Special cakes for the weekend?' Gerry said slowly.
'Everyone will be entertaining, won't they need something festive? Something with a theme?'
'Yes but…?'
'So we'd better get started on them at once, hadn't we? Then I can get the graphics up and running and get young people at home to do work on the advertisements, posters for the window and leaflets.' They looked at her open-mouthed.
'Don't you think?' Ria said, wondering had she gone too far.
'We think,' said John and Gerry.
'I'm finding it real hard to see you alone,' Hubie said to Annie. 'Last weekend there was the party with all the other guys around, and then Sean Maine was everywhere like a shadow, next weekend is the alumni weekend and then you're going off to stay with the Maines.'
'There's plenty of time left.' They were lying by the pool sailing a paper boat from one side to the other by flapping the water with their hands.
Brian was practising his basketball at the net.
'Perhaps I could take you to New York City?' Hubie asked.
'I'd better not. Mam wants to show it to us herself, it's a big deal for her.'
'Do you never say no to her, Annie, and do what you want to do?' Hubie wanted to know.
'Yes I do, quite a lot. But not at the moment. Things are hard for her. My dad went off, you see, with someone not much older than me, it must make her feel a hundred.'
'Sure I know. But somewhere else then?' He was very eager that they should have a date.
'Look, Hubie, I'd love to but not at the moment, we've just got here, okay?'
'Okay.'
'And another thing, I was writing to Marilyn and Mam said I wasn't to say you come here.'
'Marilyn?'
'Mrs Vine. This is her house, you know that.'
'You call her Marilyn?'
'That's what she wanted.'
'You like her?'
'Yes, she's terrific.'
'You're so wrong. You have no idea how wrong you are, she's horrible and she's mad.' Hubie got up and gathered his things. 'I have to go now,' he said.
'I'm sorry you're going. I like you being here but I have no idea what all this is about.'
'Think yourself lucky.'
'I know you were with Dale when the accident happened, my mother told me, but that's all. And I'm not going to say that Marilyn is horrible and mad just to please you, that would be weak and stupid.' Annie had stood up too, eyes flashing.
Hubie looked at her in admiration. 'You're really something,' he said. 'Do you know what I'd really like?'
Annie never discovered what Hubie would really have liked just then because at that moment Brian arrived on the scene. 'You were very quiet up here, I came to see were you necking,' he said.
'What?' Hubie looked at him, startled.
'Necking, snogging, you know, soul kissing. What do you call it here in America exactly?' He stood there, his shoulders and face red, his spiky hair sticking up and his round face as always interested in something entirely inappropriate.
'Hubie…' said Annie in a dangerously level voice '… is just leaving and the way things are he may never come back.'
'Oh, I most definitely will be back,' said Hubie Green. 'And as a matter of interest I would like you to know that the way things are is just fine with me.'
'Hubie fancies Annie,' Brian said at lunch.
'Of course he does. He fancied her before he met her, he was always looking at that photograph.'
'That's nonsense, Mam. Stop encouraging Brian.' Annie was pink with pleasure from it all.
'Well, we need Hubie here tonight, so you'll have to use all your powers of persuasion to get him to come over.'
'Sorry, Mam, impossible.'
'I need him, Annie. I want him to design a poster for my cakes on the computer.'
'No way, Mam, he'll think I put you up to it.'
'No, he won't. It will be a professional job, I'll pay him.'
'Mam, he'll think you're paying him to come and visit me. It would be terrible. It's not going to happen.'
'But it's my job, Annie, I need him here,' she stopped suddenly. 'I’ll tell you… suppose you go out somewhere then he can't think that you're after him, can he?'
Annie thought about it. 'No, that's true.'
'In fact it might be playing hard to get, he'd wonder where you might be.'
'And where would I be, Mam?'
Ria paused to think up a solution to this problem and then suddenly it came to her. 'You could go to work in Carlotta's salon for two or three hours, you know, folding towels, sterilising hairbrushes, sweeping up, making coffee… you know the kind of thing?'
'Would she let me?'
'She might if I asked her nicely, as a favour for tonight, since I know you want to be out of the house.'
'Please, Mam, would you? Please?'
Ria went to the telephone. Carlotta had suggested it days back, but Ria knew better nowadays than to tell her daughter straight out. She came back from the phone. 'Carlotta says yes.’
'Mam, I love you,' Annie cried.
Barney McCarthy said he would meet Danny any place and any time. How could there be hard feelings about what was said last night? By either of them. They had both been in shock, they knew each other far too well for mere words to create a barrier. They met in Stephen's Green and walked around the park where children were playing and lovers were dawdling. Two men walking, hands clasped behind their backs, talking about their futures and their past.
On the surface they were friends. Danny said that he would never have had the start in business without Barney McCarthy. Barney said he owed Danny a great deal for his insights and hard work, not to mention his quick thinking the night of the heart attack in Polly's flat.
'How's Polly taking it?' Danny asked.
'On the chin, you know Poll.' They both thought for a few moments about the elegant dark-haired woman who had let any chance of marriage pass her by just waiting in the background for Barney. 'Of course she's still young, Poll,' Barney said.
'And with no dependants,' Danny agreed. There was another silence. 'Have you told Mona?' Danny asked.
Barney shook his head. 'Not yet.'
He looked at Danny. 'And Ria?'
'Not yet.'
And then they walked in silence because there was nothing left to say.
'I think Sean is greatly taken with your Annie,' Sheila said on the telephone.
'I know, isn't it amazing?' Ria said. 'It only seems such a short time since they were both in prams, now they're talking romance.'
'I guess we'll have to keep an eye on them.'
'Much good it did anyone keeping an eye on us,' Ria laughed.
&nbs
p; 'But we weren't as young as they are,' Sheila said. 'I don't expect Annie's on the pill?'
Ria was shocked. 'Lord no, Sheila. For heaven's sake, she's not sixteen yet. I was only talking about kissing at the cinema and all that.'
'Let's hope that's all they're talking about too. Anyway you're coming to stay with us the weekend after next.'
'Indeed we are.'
Ria was troubled by this conversation, but she hadn't much time to think too deeply about it. The orders for her alumni cakes were unprecedented, they had to take on extra help in the shop, and she had to organise the house for her guests and prepare a huge buffet lunch for the friends of Greg and Andy Vine while trying to keep a low profile so that Marilyn's nose would not be put out of joint by it all. Apparently Marilyn had served olives and pretzels any time people came at alumni weekend.
And she had to make sure that the children had activities. Oddly, Annie and Brian were the least of her worries. Brian had found a new friend called Zach four houses away, and had taken to wearing a baseball cap backwards and using phrases he didn't understand at all. Hubie was always calling for Annie and taking her out to see cultural things, and since it was always in broad daylight Ria could not object. Every afternoon at four o'clock Annie went to Carlotta's salon, and came home with amazing stories about the clientele. Ria had rented a chest freezer for a week and she cooked, labelled and stored way into the night.
As she was going to bed at 2 a.m. on the Thursday before the big weekend she remembered suddenly that she hadn't thought about Danny all day. She wondered could it be that she was getting over him, but then when his face did come back to her, the whole bitter loss was as hurtful, lonely and sad as ever. She missed him as much as she always had, it was just that she had been too busy to think about it until now. Maybe this was as good as it was ever going to get.
Marilyn brought a cup of coffee out to Colm in the garden. 'What are you on today?' she asked.
'Sweet fennel,' he said. 'It's only to please myself, prove I can grow it. Nobody asks for it much in the restaurant.' He grinned ruefully.
Marilyn thought again what an attractive man he was and wondered why he hadn't married. She knew about his love affair with alcohol, but that never stopped people marrying. 'How long does it take?'
'About four months, or thereabouts. The books say fifteen weeks from sowing.'
'The books? You learned your gardening from books?'
'Where else?'
'I thought you came from a long line of committed gardeners, that you grew up with your hands in the soil.'
'Nothing as nice and normal as that, I'm afraid.'
Marilyn sighed. 'Well, which of us ever had the childhood we deserved?'
'It's true, sorry for the self-pity,'
'Hey, you don't have any of that.'
'Have you heard how they're all getting on, Annie and Brian?'
'Well just great, they seem to know half the neighbourhood, dozens of kids in our pool.'
'That doesn't bother you?'
'Why should it, it's their house for the summer.'
'But you're a very private person.'
'I have been since my son died last year.'
'That's a terrible tragedy for you. I'm very sorry. You didn't speak of it before, I didn't know.'
'No, I didn't speak of it at all.'
'Some things can be almost too hard to talk about, let's leave the subject if you prefer.' He was very easygoing, Marilyn knew that he would have left it.
'No, strangely. I find recently when I do talk about it now it becomes a little easier to bear.'
'Some people say that, they say let some light in on it, like plants your problems need light and air.'
'But you don't agree?'
'I'm not sure.'
'Which is why you don't talk about Caroline?'
'Caroline?'
'This country has unhinged me, Colm. In a million years I would never have interfered or intruded in anyone's life like this. But I'll be away from here in less than three weeks; I'll never see you again.
I think you should let a little light and air into what you're doing for your sister?'
'What am I doing for her?' His face was hard and cold.
'You're running a restaurant to feed her habit.’
There was a silence. 'No, Marilyn you've got it wrong, she works in my restaurant so that I can keep an eye on her. Her habit is paid for by somebody else entirely.' Marilyn stared at him. 'She is very well supplied by her husband Monto, a businessman—one of whose most thriving businesses is heroin.’
'Maria?'
'Hallo, Andy?'
'Just a quick question. When I come to stay next week are we meant to have met?'
'Oh I think so, don't you?'
'Certainly I do, but I was letting you call the shots.’
'It will be good to see you again, and have you meet my children.’
'Sure. Will we have any time alone together, do you think?'
'I feel that's going to be very unlikely, simply because I have so much to do.’
'I’ll keep hoping. See you Friday.’
'Zach says they're going to be very old and very boring,' Brian pronounced.
'Isn't it amazing the way Brian crosses the Atlantic Ocean and in minutes he finds a friend like Myles and Dekko!' Annie sighed.
Brian saw no insult in this, in fact he saw huge possibilities for the future. 'Can Zach come to stay in Tara Road?' he asked.
'Certainly, we'll discuss it next year,’ Ria said.
'Do you think we'll still be in Tara Road next year, Mam?' Annie was thoughtful.
'Why ever not? Did you have plans for moving anywhere?' Ria laughed.
'No, it's just… it's quite dear and everything… I was wondering would we all, Dad and everyone, be able to afford it?'
'Oh that will be fine, I'm going to work when we get back to Dublin,’ Ria said airily.
'Work, Mam… ? What on earth would you do?' Annie looked at her mother surrounded by food.
'Something a bit like this probably,' Ria said.
Greg Vine was tall, slightly stooped and gentle. He was courteous and formal to the children. He seemed overcome at the hospitality that Ria was providing for his friends. 'You must have been slaving for weeks,' he said as she took him on a tour of the freezers, and the rented trestle tables and linen.
'I didn't want to use Marilyn's cloths in case something happened to them.'
'No, I don't think she'd mind,' he said, unsure, uncertain.
'She has been meticulous about my home they all tell me, I don't want to be any less with hers.' She showed him all the replies to the guest-list he had sent out. 'I’ll leave you to settle in your own house,' she said. 'I didn't put anyone to sleep in Dale's room… and on that subject I must apologise.'
He cut straight across her. 'No, it is we who must apologise, it was unpardonable for you to come here without being told the whole story. I'm very, very sorry. All I can say in explanation is that she doesn't talk about it to anyone, anyone at all.' His face was full of grief as he spoke. 'I think she genuinely believes that if you don't talk about a thing it hasn't happened… if you don't mention Dale at all then his horrific death didn't occur.'
'Everyone's different,' Ria said.
'But this has gone beyond reason, to let you into this house, to see that room without knowing what happened. It probably doesn't matter now what she and I have left to say to each other, but for Marilyn's own health she will have to acknowledge what has happened and talk about it. To someone.'
'She's talking about it now,' Ria said. 'She told my children all about him, everything. From when he got braces on his teeth to the time you all went to the Grand Canyon and he cried at the sunset.'
Greg's voice was a whisper. 'She said all this?'
'Yes.'
His eyes were full of tears. 'Maybe, maybe I should go to Ireland.'
Ria felt a pang of jealousy like she had never known before. Marilyn was going to be all r
ight. Her husband still loved her and he was going to go over to Tara Road. Lucky, lucky Marilyn Vine.
'I can't ask anything at all about his business,' Finola Dunne said to her daughter.
'No, that's true.'
'I accepted his apology for sharp words and he gave it generously so now you see my hands are tied. But you can, and you must, ask him, Ber. It's only fair, on you and the baby. You have to know is he bankrupt.'
'He'll tell me, Mum, when he thinks I need to know.'
The alumni picnic party in Tudor Dive was long talked of as one of the events of Westville. Ria had asked Greg if Hubie Green could come to the house as a waiter, and young Zach as an assistant.
'Hubie?'
'Yes, he taught us the Internet, and has been most helpful.'
'He's a wild and irresponsible young man,' Greg said.
'I know that he was with Dale that day. He says it was the worst day of his life.'
'I have no objection to his being here, I never had. Those were all Marilyn's… I suppose in a way I'm advising you to keep him away from your daughter.' Ria felt a shiver of anxiety but she couldn't allow it to develop, there was too much to do.
When Hubie arrived he went straight to Greg. 'Mr Vine, if my presence here is unwelcome I quite understand.'
'No, son, I'm glad to see you in our home again,' said Greg.
Ria let out a slow sigh of relief. That was one hurdle safely crossed. And then, surrounded by friendly faces and food, Ria felt very much at home. She made sure that Marilyn's name was constantly mentioned. She said that she had been speaking to her the previous evening and she had sent her love to everyone.
'I think Greg's brother sort of fancies you, Mam,' Annie said after the party.
Annie and Hubie had been a delightful double-act filling the wineglasses and serving huge slices of the mouth-watering cake that had been such a success.
'Nonsense, we're geriatric people. There's no fancying at our age.' Ria laughed, admiring the sharp young eyes of her daughter.
'Dad was able to find someone else—why wouldn't you?'
'What a matchmaker you are. Now don't go encouraging me or I might stay over here cooking and fancying old men. What would you do then?'
'I suppose I could stay here studying and fancying young men,' Annie said.