by Maeve Binchy
'If your friends own that house, ma'am, they're sitting on half a million,' he said confidently as he drove in the gateway and drew up at the foot of the steps.
The door was opened by a dark, good-looking man in his early forties. He came down the steps, hand stretched out. 'On Ria's behalf you're very welcome to Tara Road,' he said, while Marilyn frantically searched for his name from the cast of thousands she had been presented with. Somehow she had thought it would be the sister Hilary, or one of the two women friends. 'I'm Colm Barry, neighbour and friend. I also dig the back garden but I use a back gate so I'll be no intrusion in your time here.'
Marilyn looked at him gratefully. He seemed to tell her what she needed to know and not too much. He was courteous but also he was cool in a way that she very much liked. 'Indeed, the man who runs the restaurant,' she said, placing him at last.
'The very one,' he agreed. He carried her cases up the granite steps.
Ria's photographs had not lied. The hall was glorious with its deep glowing wooden floor, and elegant hall table. The door to a front room was open, Colm pushed it slightly. 'If it were my house I would never leave this room,' he said simply. 'It runs the whole depth of the house, windows at each end. It's just lovely.' On the table was a huge bowl of roses. 'Ria asked me to leave those for you.'
Marilyn felt a gulp in her voice as she thanked him. The place was so beautiful and these rich pink and red roses on such a beautiful table were the final touch.
He carried her bag upstairs and showed her the main bedroom. 'I expect this is where you'll be, I'm sure all the details were written out for you. Ria's been getting ready for weeks. I know she's gone to huge trouble.'
Marilyn knew it too. Her eyes took in the immaculate white bedcover, brand new, must have been put on this morning, the folded towels, the shiny paintwork and the empty closet. This woman had worked at getting her house ready. Marilyn hoped guiltily that hers would match up. They went down to the kitchen and at that moment the cat flap opened and a large ginger cat came in.
'This is Clement.' Colm introduced the cat formally. 'An excellent cat, he has a little weakness sometimes of killing a perfectly innocent bird for no reason, and then he'll bring it back to you as a trophy.'
'I know, I have to say well done Clement how lovely,' Marilyn said with a smile.
'Good, just so long as you know the drill. Anyway Clement isn't very competitive, usually he just opens one eye and looks at the birds, then goes back to sleep.' Colm continued his tour of the kitchen, opening the fridge. 'Ah, she's left you some basics I see, including a soup made from vegetables grown in that very garden. Shall I take some out for you to heat up? You've had a long journey, you'll want to settle in.' And he was gone.
What a restful pleasant neighbour, Marilyn thought, exactly the person she would like to live near. There would be no problem in keeping someone like Colm Barry out of your life. He would never be like Carlotta, aching to come over the fence and get involved. And he was right, she did want to settle in. She was pleased that it had been this man rather than one of the women she had expected. He was a fellow spirit, a soul mate. He somehow understood that she wanted to be alone. She was glad he had been there to welcome her.
She wandered slowly about the house that would be hers until September. The children's rooms had been tidied, pictures of soccer players on Brian's wall, pop stars on Annie's. Plastic models of wrestlers on Brian's window-sills, soft furry toys on Annie's. Two well-kept bathrooms, one with what looked like genuine Victorian bathroom fittings. And one empty, lifeless room, a lot of shelving on the wall but nothing on display. This must have been a study or office that belonged to Danny in what Ria would have called happier times.
A warm, almost crowded kitchen, shelves of cookbooks, cupboards full of pans and baking dishes, a kitchen where people baked, ate and lived. A house full of beautiful objects but first and foremost a home. There was very little wall space that did not have pictures of the family, mainly of the children but some which included the handsome Danny Lynch as well. He had not been cut out of their lives because he had gone away. Marilyn looked at his face for some clues about this man. One thing she knew from being in his home: he must love this new woman very much or have been very unhappy in his marriage to Ria to enable him to leave all this without a backward glance.
'I wonder should I go and call on her?' Nora Johnson said to Hilary.
'Ah, isn't she perfectly all right where she is. Hasn't she a valuable house worth a fortune to sit in all summer for nothing?' Hilary sniffed.
'Yes, well, she still might be a bit lonely, and Ria said…'
'Oh Ria said, Ria said… there's many people she could have given that house to, to mind, if she had wanted to.'
Nora looked at her elder daughter with a flash of impatience. 'Listen to me, Hilary, if you're suggesting that you could have looked after the house and fed that very dim cat for Ria…'
'Yes, or you could have, Mam. She didn't have to go and get a perfectly strange American.'
'But Hilary, you great silly girl, the whole point of it was that Ria wanted to go to America. She didn't want to exchange houses with me down the road, and you across the city.'
Hilary listened, feeling very foolish. Somehow in her flurry of resentment she had forgotten this fact. 'We should give her tonight and tomorrow to rest anyway and maybe we might get in touch then,' she said.
'I'd hate her to think she wasn't welcome,' Ria's mother said. While Ria's sister hid the sniff she had been about to indulge in.
Carlotta pointed out all the amenities as she drove Ria to Tudor Drive.
Ria marvelled as they passed all the houses with their communal lawns in front. 'No fences,' she noticed.
'Well, it's neighbourly I guess,' Carlotta said.
'Is it like that in Tudor Drive?'
'Not our part, no, it's more closed in.'
Carlotta told her the names of streets and drives that would become familiar in the next days and weeks. She pointed out the two hotels, the club and the library, the good gas station, the one where the guy was a pain in the butt, the two antique shops, the florist, the okay deli, the truly great deli. And of course the garden centre, Carlotta gestured triumphantly.
'Oh well, that's not going to be of much interest to me, I barely know flower from weed.’
Carlotta was puzzled. 'But I thought you were crazy about gardening, that that's how you got to know each other.'
'Not at all, the reverse in fact.'
'Well, well, well. Just goes to show how you can get things wrong. It's just that Marilyn doesn't have any other interests, so I just assumed…'
They were nearly there.
'Look, I'd love you to come in and have something to eat and drink with me in my place, but you're here for the summer, you'll want to get into your own place, and see what it's like.' Carlotta took out the envelope with the keys in it and prepared to hand them over.
'But aren't you going to come in with me?' Ria was surprised.
'Well, no, honey, not really. I mean this is your house, Marilyn and Greg's house.'
'No, come in please, I'd love you to come in and show me around, won't you?'
Carlotta bit her lip in indecision. 'I don't really know where their things are…' she began.
'Oh please do, Carlotta. I'd feel much more at home if you showed me everything. And Marilyn said she was going to leave me a bottle of wine in her fridge. I left her one in mine. So it would be a lovely start for me.'
'I wouldn't want her to think…"
But further protest was useless. Ria was already out of the car and looking up at her new home. 'Do we go in this little gate or round by the carport do you think?'
'I'm not sure.' The previously suave and confident Carlotta looked flustered.
'But which way is the front door?'
'Ria, I've never been in this house in my life,' said Carlotta.
The pause was minimal. Then Ria spoke. 'So, it will be a new experience for b
oth of us,' she said.
And taking a suitcase each they went in to explore Number 1024 Tudor Drive, home of the Vines.
'Heidi? It's Greg Vine.'
'Oh hallo, Greg. And how are you?' Heidi was so relieved that he was still speaking to her after her indiscretion to him on the telephone some weeks back she didn't even pause to wonder why he had called.
'Well, I'm basically okay, Heidi, but a little confused. You did see Marilyn off to the airport, didn't you? I mean, she did go?'
'Yes, yes of course. And you do have her number there? She said you did?' Heidi's voice was rising a little anxiously.
'Sure, I have all that. I was just wondering if this person… has arrived in Westville? You know, the one who's going to be living in our home.'
'I'm not sure of all the details, but I think she should have got there an hour or two ago, Greg.' Heidi wasn't saying so but it had been like drawing teeth out of Marilyn getting any information whatsoever about the arrival of Ria.
'I see.'
'Was there anything?'
'No, not really.' He sounded very bleak. Despairing almost.
Heidi's heart went out to him. She tried hard to guess what he might want to know. 'You'd like to know if she arrived safely and got in, is that it?'
'In a way, I suppose,' he said.
'So would you like me to call and see is she there?'
'It's going to be on the answering machine apparently for the first week with our message on it, and then if this person wants to change it she may.' He sounded very bitter and hurt.
'You want to know if she has arrived and what she's like, what kind of a person she is, Greg? Is that it?'
'Well, I think it's more it than anything I've come up with so far,' he said. And there was a wry near-laugh in his voice.
'I'm not sure if I should drive by, she may be asleep. But if I call and then it's only the machine…?'
'Look, whenever you can, Heidi, that's all. I feel so helpless out here, it's so strange, things sort of multiply in your mind.'
'I know.' She was sympathetic.
'I don't think you do. You and Henry can talk about anything and I think we used to once also. But now we can talk about nothing without upsetting each other…" He broke off.
'It'll get better, Greg.'
'I'm sorry, I sound like someone on the Oprah show.'
'Is that so bad?'
'No, it's just not the way I am. Listen, I don't want to upset any kind of confidence between you and Marilyn, believe me I don't.'
'There is nothing to upset, just give me the numbers to call and I'll get in touch as soon as I have something to report.'
'Call collect, Heidi.'
'No, I will not do that, but you buy me a nice bright-coloured muu-muu to wear at the alumni picnic.'
'Oh God, I'd forgotten that.'
'You'll be back for it, Greg. You've never missed one yet. We rely on the History Department.'
'But where would I live even supposing I did come back for it?' He sounded totally bewildered.
'Listen, Greg, that's not for weeks yet. Let me report on the situation in Tudor Drive before you make any decisions.'
'You're a real friend, Heidi.'
'We all were and all will be, the four of us, mark my words,' she said with no conviction whatsoever.
Carlotta and Ria toured the house.
'Everything is so beautiful and she had no help coming in, she must have had contract cleaners,' Carlotta said admiringly.
They moved from the big open-plan living room with its coloured rugs on the floor, also three white leather sofas circling an open fireplace, into the huge kitchen with its breakfast bar and dining table, into Greg's study room lined with books from ceiling to floor on three walls and with a red leather desk and big black swivel chair under one window. There was no room for pictures on the walls but three tables stood around, all of them with little sculptures, ornaments, treasures of some sort.
'What a beautiful room,' Ria said. 'If you could see my husband's study now… it's like, well it's like a shell.'
'Why is that?' Carlotta asked reasonably.
Ria paused and looked at her. 'Sorry, he's my ex-husband, and he's just moved out so his study's empty. But it was never like this, not even in our heyday. Should we tour the garden, do you think?'
'The garden will be there tomorrow,' Carlotta said.
'Then let's hit Marilyn's bottle of Chardonnay,' Ria suggested.
'If aromatherapy can cope with jet lag the way it's working with you, we're only in the foothills of discovery,' Carlotta said and they went into the kitchen.
Just at that moment there was a knock on the door. Carlotta and Ria looked at each other, and went together to answer it. A woman in her forties stood there carrying a gift-wrapped bottle.
'I'm Heidi Franks, I work with Marilyn and I wanted to welcome you… well, hallo Carlotta, I didn't know you'd be here…'
'Ria insisted that I came by.' Carlotta seemed to be apologising, as if she had been discovered intruding.
'Come on in, Heidi,' Ria said. 'You arrived at a great time, we were just about to have a drink.'
'Well I don't really like to…'
Ria wondered what made them both apologise for coming into this home. Americans were meant to be legendary for their friendliness and their ease yet both Carlotta and Heidi seemed to be looking over their shoulders in case the shadow of Marilyn Vine might fall on the place and they would have to run away.
She put away the fanciful thoughts and ushered them back into the kitchen.
Marilyn unpacked everything and had her soup. And a glass of the expensive French wine that Ria had left her. Then she lay for a long time upstairs in the claw-foot bath and soaked away the hours of travel followed by hours of walking around Dublin.
She thought she might sleep, but no, all during the long afternoon her eyes were open and her mind was racing. Why had she come to this house, full of the past and the future? This was a Victorian house, for heaven's sake. Marilyn didn't know exactly what date it was, but people could well have lived here when the Civil War was taking place, when Gettysburg was being fought!
There was hope in this house, which there was never going to be in 1024 Tudor Drive. Two sunny children smiled out of photographs in every room in Tara Road. A boy with a grin as wide as a water melon, and a girl who would be almost the same age as Dale.
Marilyn lay under the white bedspread in the master bedroom of this house which had everything, and thought of her life which had nothing.
There was a small sound and the anxious face of the great marmalade cat came around the door. With a leap he landed and laid himself on the bed beside her. He had a purr like the engine of a small boat on the lakes in Upper New York State. Marilyn neither loved nor hated cats, she approved of all animals in a vague way. But Clement was a knowing sort of cat. He seemed to understand that she was not happy. He nestled in beside her, purring louder and louder. Like some kind of lullaby or a mantra it sent Marilyn Vine to sleep and when she woke it was twelve midnight.
In Westville it must be seven o'clock in the evening. She would call Ria and thank her for this restful home. The arrangement was that Ria would pick up if she wanted to answer the call. Marilyn dialled the number. After three rings she heard her own voice respond. 'It's Marilyn,' she said. 'It's midnight here and everything's wonderful. I just wanted to thank you.'
Then Ria's voice came on the line. 'It's only twilight here, but it's even more wonderful. Thank you very, very much.'
'You found the Chardonnay?' Marilyn asked.
'Yes indeed I finished it, and you found the Chablis?'
'Sure I did. I haven't finished it yet but I will.'
'And Gertie let you in?'
'I got in fine and I love the place. You have one beautiful home. And Carlotta gave you the keys and everything?'
'She did, it's a dream house, you undersold it.'
There was a little pause. Then they both said goodnight.
Marilyn did not know why she had pretended Gertie had been there. Ria had no idea why she did not say to Marilyn that her friends Carlotta and Heidi were about to open a third bottle of wine. If anyone had asked them they would have been hard put to explain.
'I'm going to see my granny today, Bernadette.'
'Oh good.'
'So I don't know exactly what time I'll be back.'
'Sure.' Annie gathered up her tote bag of things which included a very short lycra skirt and a halter-neck top. 'Before you go, call your dad in the office, will you?'
'Why should I do that?'
'Because you forgot to tell him at breakfast that you were going to your grandmother's.'
'Oh, he doesn't want to be bothered with every detail.'
'He does actually.'
'I’ll tell him tonight.'
'Would you prefer me to tell him for you?' Bernadette's voice was without any threat. It sounded like a simple question, which it most definitely was not.
'There's no need to behave like a gaoler, Bernadette.'
'And there's no need to lie to me either, Annie. You're not going to your grandmother's with all that gear. You and Kitty are off somewhere entirely different.'
'What's it to you if we are?'
'It's nothing to me, I couldn't care less where you go or what you do, but your father's going to be upset and that I don't want.'
It was the longest sentence that Annie had ever heard from Bernadette. She considered it for a while then she said enquiringly, 'He won't be upset if he doesn't know.'
'Nice try. No way,’ Bernadette said.
'I have to ring Kitty,' Annie said defeated.
Bernadette nodded to the phone. 'Go ahead,' she said and went back to her book.
Annie looked around once or twice during the conversation but there was no evidence that Bernadette was listening. 'No, I can't explain,' Annie said mutinously. 'Of course I tried. Don't you think I did? Who do you think? Yeah. Yeah. Even worse than Mam if you ask me.'