Dublin 4
Maeve Binchy
DUBLIN 4
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409049142
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2005
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Copyright © Maeve Binchy, 1982
Maeve Binchy has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1983 by Century
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ISBN 9780099498582 (from Jan 2007)
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Praise for Dublin 4
Also by Maeve Binchy
Dinner in Donnybrook
Flat in Ringsend
Decision in Belfield
Murmurs in Montrose
For Gordon
with all my love
DUBLIN 4
Maeve Binchy was born in County Dublin and was educated at the Holy Child Convent in Killiney and at University College Dublin. After a spell as a teacher in various girls’ schools, she joined the Irish Times, for which she wrote feature articles and columns. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in 1982, and since then she has written more than a dozen novels and short-story collections, each one of them a bestseller. Several have been adapted for cinema and television, most notably Circle of Friends in 1995. She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award at the British Book Awards in 1999. She is married to the writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell.
Visit her website at www.maevebinchy.com
Praise for Dublin 4
‘Maeve Binchy has a gimlet eye for the seething cauldron of emotions which lies beneath the surface of everyday life’
Irish Independent
‘An adept storyteller with a sharp eye for social nuances and a pleasing affection for her characters’
Sunday Times
Also by Maeve Binchy
Fiction
Light a Penny Candle
Echoes
Victoria Line, Central Line
The Lilac Bus
Firefly Summer
Silver Wedding
Circle of Friends
The Copper Beech
The Glass Lake
Evening Class
Tara Road
Scarlet Feather
Quentins
Nights of Rain and Stars
Non-fiction
Aches & Pains
1
DINNER IN DONNYBROOK
She drew the dinner table six times and it always came out the same. If you put the host at one end and the hostess at the other it didn’t work out. She would sit with her back to the window and have a man on either side of her. Fine so far. Dermot would sit opposite her with a woman on either side of him. Fine again, but what about the two places in between? Whatever way you did it you would have to have man sitting beside man, and woman beside woman.
She shook her head, puzzled. It was like those problems they had always done at school; if you have three missionaries and three cannibals on an island and the boat can only hold two … Not that it mattered of course, and anybody who knew how much time she had spent working it out would say she should spend a week in St Patrick’s, but still it was very irritating. There must be a way.
‘There is,’ said her daughter Anna. She had telephoned Anna to talk about something else but brought the conversation around to the perplexing dinner table. ‘At a party for eight, host and hostess can’t sit opposite each other. You sit opposite the most important lady … and put Dad on that lady’s left.’ Anna had gone on talking about other things, not realising that her mother was now drawing the dinner table again, with Dermot sitting facing the sideboard and the most important lady sitting at the other end of the table facing herself.
‘Are you all right, Mother?’ Anna asked. Anna used to call her ‘Mum’ but now she said ‘Mother’. She said it in a slightly jokey tone as if she had been saying Your Ladyship, it was as if the word Mother were equally unsuitable.
‘I’m fine, dear,’ said Carmel. It irritated her when people asked was she all right. She never asked anyone else were they all right, even when they sounded most odd or distrait. Everyone felt they could patronise her, and pat her on the head. Even her own daughter.
‘Oh good, you sounded a bit vague as if you’d gone off somewhere. Anyway, as I said, we’re off to the cottage at the weekend so you’ll have to tell me how the great entertaining went. I’m glad you and Dad are having people round. It’s good to see you stirring yourself to do something.’
Carmel wondered again why Dermot could still be ‘Dad’ and not ‘Father’, and why it was good to be stirring herself. Why should things be stirred? Particularly, why should people be stirred? They should be left to simmer or cool down or even grow a crust on top of them if they wanted to. She said none of this to her eldest daughter.
‘Oh no dear, the dinner party isn’t this weekend. It’s in a month’s time … I was just thinking ahead.’
Anna burst out laughing. ‘Mother, you are full of surprises. A month ahead! Not even James would insist on that much planning. Anyway, we’ll have plenty of time to talk about it before then.’ She made it sound like basketwork in an occupational therapy ward. Carmel hid her annoyance and hoped they would have a nice weekend. The weather forecast was good, and especially in the south-west.
She thought that Anna and James were quite insane to drive two hundred and nine miles on a Friday afternoon and the same distance again on Sunday. She could see no point in having a house and garden out in Sandycove and never getting to spend a weekend there. The cottage in Kerry had been an albatross around their necks as far as Carmel could see. She never believed that they could enjoy the five hour drive. ‘Four hours thi
rty-five minutes, Grandmama, if you know the short cuts …’ James always made her feel even more foolish with his Grandmama; she felt like a grand duchess. But still Anna never complained, she spoke of it eagerly: ‘Oh Mother, it’s so great, we get there around nine-thirty and light a fire, take out the steaks, open the wine, kiddies half asleep already, pop them into bed … it’s so free … the country … our own place … you can’t believe it.’
Anna had heard the weather forecast too. ‘Yes I am glad, because we’re having a huge lunch there on Sunday and it will be so much nicer if we can have them all out of doors.’
A huge lunch, down at that cottage, in the wilds of Kerry, miles from her kitchen, her deep freeze, her dishwasher. No wonder Anna must think her pathetic worrying about seating people at a dinner party a whole month away. But of course Anna didn’t have the same kind of worries. Anna would never let herself get into a situation where she would have those kind of worries.
Carmel drew the table plan again. She wrote in the names of the guests carefully. At one end of the table with her back to the window she wrote Carmel, and at the opposite end she wrote out Ruth O’Donnell, Most Important Lady. She filled in the other names and wrote things under them too. Dermot, Loving Husband. Sheila, Wise Friend. Ethel, Upper Class Friend. Martin, Kind Husband of Wise Friend. David, Pompous Husband of Upper Class Friend. And then on the right hand side of Ruth O’Donnell she wrote, slowly and carefully, Joe, Life-Saver. She sat and looked at the plan for a long time. It stopped being a drawing of a rectangle with little squares around it holding names and descriptions. It became a table with glasses and flowers and good china and shining silver. She could almost smell the food and hear the conversation. She learned it off by heart, the order they sat in, just like she had learned the Great Lakes or the towns of Cavan when she was a child, by rote with her eyes tightly closed, relating not to things as they were but as they were written down.
Then she took all the bits of paper and put them into the firegrate. There were still a few old clinkers and some bits of red from last night’s fire, but she didn’t trust them to burn. She took out half a firelighter and set a match to it. And there in the room where she would give the party in a month’s time, she sat and watched the flames burn the lists and the table plans. They burned away until there were only powdery ashes left on top of yesterday’s clinkers.
* * *
‘I think Carmel Murray is losing her marbles,’ said Ethel at breakfast.
David grunted. He was reading his own letters and he did not want to be distracted by Ethel’s chat.
‘No seriously, listen to this …’ Ethel went back to the start of the letter.
‘In a moment, Ethel …’
‘No, you’ll just leap up and go off, I want you to hear.’
He looked at her and knew he might as well give in. Ethel got her way in everything, and it made for an easy life to accept this.
‘Carmel has lost her marbles? Go on from there.’
‘Well, she must have. She’s written to us. Written to ask us to dinner … next month … can you believe it?’
‘Well, that’s nice of her,’ said David vaguely. ‘I suppose we can get out of it, what’s the fuss, what’s so mad about that? People do ask each other to dinner. They do it all the time.’
He knew he was courting trouble to try and be smartalecky with Ethel. He was right; it had been a mistake.
‘I know people do it all the time, dear,’ she said. ‘But Carmel Murray has never done it before. Poor Carmel that we have to be nice to because Dermot’s a good sort … that’s why it’s unusual. And did you ever hear of anything so strange? A letter when she only lives five minutes away, when she may have heard of the telephone.’
‘Yes, yes. It is odd. I do agree. You must do what you wish, say we’re away, say it’s a pity … some other time. What?’
‘She’ll know we’re not away. That’s what’s so odd, it’s on the day of Ruth O’Donnell’s exhibition, she’ll know that we won’t be out of town for that …’
‘How do you know it’s that day?’
‘Because she says so in the letter … she says that she’s asked Ruth as well. Now do you see why I think she’s losing her marbles?’
Ethel looked flushed and triumphant, having proved her point. She sat imperiously at the breakfast table wearing her silk breakfast kimono and waited for the apology from her husband. It came.
‘She’s inviting Ruth … Oh my God. Now I see what you mean.’
* * *
Sheila hated being disturbed at school. It made the nuns so edgy and uneasy to call someone to the telephone. They hadn’t moved into the modern age in terms of communications, their telephone was still in a cold and draughty little booth in the main entrance hall, inconvenient for everyone. She was alarmed when she heard that her husband wanted her …
‘Martin, what is it, what’s happened?’ she said.
‘Nothing. Nothing, relax.’
‘What do you mean, nothing? What is it?’
‘Stop fussing, Sheila, it’s nothing.’
‘You brought me the whole way down here from third years for nothing? Sister Delia is looking after them as a great favour. What IS it, Martin? Are the children … ?’
‘Look, I thought you ought to know, we’ve had a very odd letter from Carmel.’
‘A what … from Carmel?’
‘A letter. Yes, I know it’s sort of out of character, I thought maybe something might be wrong and you’d need to know …’
‘Yes, well, what did she say, what’s the matter with her?’
‘Nothing, that’s the problem, she’s inviting us to dinner.’
‘To dinner?’
‘Yes, it’s sort of funny, isn’t it? As if she wasn’t well or something. I thought you should know in case she got in touch with you.’
‘Did you really drag me all the way down here, third years are at the top of the house you know, I thought the house had burned down! God, wait till I come home to you. I’ll murder you.’
‘The dinner’s in a month’s time, and she says she’s invited Ruth O Donnell.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’
* * *
Henry shouted out to Joe, ‘Hey, that letter’s come from Ireland. She must have fixed the date, poor old bat.’
Joe came in and opened it.
‘Yeah, in a month’s time, she says it’s all going according to plan. She sent the ticket and the money.’
‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’ Henry sounded approving.
‘Oh, she’s really fine, and I owe her, I owe her in a big way. I’ll make it work …’
‘Well, if you can’t, I don’t know who could,’ Henry said admiringly and Joe smiled back as he fetched the coffee percolator.
* * *
‘I think Mother’s coming out of herself a bit more, darling,’ Anna said to James as they negotiated the early evening traffic.
‘Good. It’s no wonder this country’s going to the dogs. Look at the build-up of traffic here and it’s not even four o’clock. I mean half of them must be taking the whole afternoon off. Never mind, we’ll lose them in a few minutes. What were you saying about Grandmama?’
‘She’s talking of having a dinner party, you know, with a proper dining table, and a seating plan. It all sounds good.’
‘I’ve always said that she’s not nearly so sleepy and dozey as you and Bernadette make out. I find plenty of things to talk to her about.’
‘No you don’t, you just talk at her … she sits enthralled because you’re so interesting, but it’s not a real conversation.’
James didn’t agree. ‘You’re wrong, she tells me things. No, I can’t remember anything immediately … that’s silly, looking for examples. But I do get on well with her … she just needs a bit of flattery, a few cheerful things. “You look very dishy, Grandmama” and she blossoms … she doesn’t like people telling her she’s silly.’
Anna thought for a while.
�
��I suppose people do tell her she’s silly. Yes, you’re right. I always say “Don’t be silly Mother”, but I don’t mean it. It’s just that she fusses so much, and I think that if I say she’s not to be silly, then it’s sort of reassuring to her. I’ll be very supportive about her poor old dinner party … I’ll give her a tactful hand here and there.’
James patted her knee.
‘You’re marvellous, sweetheart. And talking about parties, tell me what you’ve arranged for Sunday …’
Anna settled back happily in her seat and told him about all the good things that were foil-wrapped, vacuum-packed and air-tight in the huge cardboard box which they had loaded carefully into the boot of the car.
* * *
Bernadette said, ‘That’s great, Mummy. Great. I’m sure it will be marvellous.’
‘I just thought you’d like to know …’ Carmel said.
‘Well, of course I’m thrilled, Mummy. Is it tonight, or when?’
‘Oh no dear, it’s a dinner party … it’s not for a month.’
‘A month! Mummy, are you all right?’
‘Yes dear, perfectly.’
‘Oh. Well. I mean, is there anything … do you want me to come and help you plan it, or anything?’
‘No, no, it’s all planned.’
‘Or serve it? You know, keep you calm and stop you fussing on the night?’
‘No no, dear, thank you, but I won’t fuss at all.’
‘Well that’s great, Mummy, and is Daddy pleased that you’re sort of getting into entertaining and everything?’
‘It’s not exactly getting into entertaining … it’s just one dinner party.’
‘You know what I mean. Is Daddy thrilled?’
‘I haven’t told him yet.’
‘Mummy, are you sure you’re all right, you’re not getting upset or anything like …’
