Tara Road (9 page)

And on the first night she met a man called Colm Barry. He was single, handsome and worked in the bank. Colm had dark curly hair and dark sad eyes.

'You don't look like a banker,' Orla said to him.

'I don't feel like a bank clerk, I'd rather be a chef.'

'I don't feel like being a typist in an estate agency, I'd like to be a model or a singer,' Orla said.

'There's no reason why we shouldn't be these things, is there?' Colm asked with a smile.

Orla didn't know whether he was making fun of her or being nice, but she didn't mind. He was going to make these meetings bearable.

On that night when Gertie saw Jack raising the great scrubbing-brush that might have split her head, she picked up a knife and stuck it straight into his arm. They both watched helplessly and amazed as the blood poured on to the packet of fish and chips he had flung to the floor. Then she took off her engagement ring, laid it on the table, got her coat and walked out of the house. From a phone box at the corner of the road, she rang the police and told them what she had done. In the emergency ward Jack assured everyone that it had been purely domestic and that nobody was making any accusation against anyone whatsoever.

For a very long time Gertie refused to see Jack, and then, to everyone's disappointment, she agreed to meet him just once. Jack had been put off the road for drunken driving and consequently sacked from his job. Gertie found a chastened and sober man. They talked and she remembered why she loved him. They asked two strangers to be their witnesses and they were married in a cold church at eight o'clock one morning.

Gertie left Polly's just before Polly Callaghan sacked her. She was absent too often; it was no longer reasonable to expect them to keep her on the payroll. Jack had bouts of sobriety, never lasting very long. Gertie grew white-faced and anxious. She got a job in a launderette just round the corner from Tara Road where there was a flat upstairs. It was a living but only a bare living.

Gertie's own mother washed her hands of the whole situation. She said that she just hoped Gertie had good friends who would tide her over when times got really bad. Gertie had one friend who tided her over a great deal: Ria Lynch.

Hilary Moran never fully forgave Danny Lynch for not being with his wife that night. Oh, she had heard that there were explanations and confidences that had to be kept, and Ria certainly bore no grudge. But nobody else had heard the great wailing as Ria had waited for him to come to her during the long hours of labour. It made her feel even more strongly that she had got a good man in Martin. He might never reach the dizzy heights of Danny Lynch; he was certainly not as easy on the eye. But you could rely on him. He would always be there. And when Hilary had a child Martin would not be missing. She hoped that they would have children. The fortune-teller had been wrong about living amid trees. She might be wrong about them having no children as well.

Barney McCarthy recovered from his heart attack. Everyone said that he had been so fortunate to have it come upon him when he was with quick-witted, resourceful Danny Lynch who wasted no time in getting him to hospital. He had to take things a little more easily these days.

He had wanted to involve Danny more in his business, but met with unexpected resistance from his family. Perfectly natural resentment, Barney thought to himself. They obviously feared that Danny was getting too close to him. He would have to be more diplomatic. Show them that he was not going outside the family.

Sometimes he felt that his daughters seemed sharper with him, less loving. Less uncritically supportive. But Barney did not allow himself the luxury of brooding about people's moods. These girls owed him everything. He had slaved long hours and years to get them their superior education and degrees. Even if they had heard something about Polly Callaghan they were unlikely to rock the boat. They knew that he would not leave Mona, that the household would continue undisturbed. He enjoyed his dealings with Danny Lynch, but for everyone's sake he just had to make sure they were less public as time went on.

For Nora Johnson the day that her granddaughter was born was also the date that she had been told her job was over. She made a decision not to tell any of the family about it, not until she had tried to find another position at any rate. But it wasn't easy, and in the first weeks of Annie Lynch's life her grandmother was facing rejection after rejection. There were few openings for a woman of fifty-one with no qualifications.

Wearily and without much hope she went for an interview as a carer-companion to an elderly lady who lived in a big house in Tara Road which had a purpose-built little granny cottage in the grounds. It turned out extremely well. They took to each other on sight. When it became known that Nora had a daughter living in Tara Road the old lady's family suggested that maybe the post should be a residential one. Nora could sell her own house, have a nest egg and live close to her daughter Ria.

Ah, but what about her security and her future? Nora had wondered. Where would she live when, in the fullness of time, the old lady she was looking after had left this earth? It was arranged that she should have first refusal on buying the little house when that day came.

Polly Callaghan remembered the night that Annie was born because it was the night she thought she was going to lose Barney for ever. She had loved him without pausing to count the cost for twelve years, since she was twenty-five years old. Not once did she stop and say that it was folly to love a man who would never be free.

She did not weigh up the very likely possibility of finding herself a single man who would be delighted to provide her with a home and family. Polly Callaghan, glamorous, articulate and successful, would have been the object of interest to many a man.

But the thought had not crossed her mind. She knew she had had a lucky escape that night. Barney had only just been got to Intensive Care in time, but he had agreed to change his lifestyle, give up the cigarettes and brandy. Walk more, behave like he might actually be mortal instead of invincible. Polly had been urging this for years, while his wife had provided comfort food and no such structure.

Now at last he had got the warning that he needed to jolt him into action. Barney McCarthy was only in his forties; he had years of living ahead of him.

Polly had been grateful to Danny Lynch for his speedy response. Grateful yet disappointed in him. He obviously had a girl with him in his office when she had called that night. Polly had heard her giggling. Polly was not one to sit in judgement on a man having an affair outside marriage. But she thought that Danny was fairly young to have started. And it was, after all, a night when you might have expected him to be with his wife who was having their first baby. Still, Polly was philosophical. That's men.

Rosemary remembered very well the time that Annie Lynch was born. It had been something of a turning-point in her life. First there was that loutish man who had booked a hotel bedroom and had assumed that she was going to share it. And this was the time she felt unexpectedly attracted to a man called Colm Barry who worked in the bank near where she worked. He had always been helpful and encouraging about how she should handle her business. Unlike some people in that branch he had never urged caution and restraint, which was the immediate response of others in the bank. He seemed even a little disenchanted with the whole idea of the bank. He was just genuinely helpful, and seemed admiring of Rosemary's skills in expanding the business. He must be about thirty, a tall man with black curly hair which he wore a little long on his collar. The bank didn't approve, he said with some satisfaction.

'Does it bother you what the bank thinks?' Rosemary asked.

'Not a bit. Does it bother you what other people think?' he asked in return.

'It has to a bit at work because if they see a youngish woman they're inclined to ask to speak to a man. Still! In this day and age I have to try and give off some kind of vibes of confidence I suppose. So in that way it bothers me. Not about other things though.'

He was easy to talk to. Some men had that way of listening to you and looking at you, men who really liked women. Men like Danny Lynch. Colm had sorrowful eyes, Rosemary thought. But she really liked him. Why should women always wait to be asked out? She invited Colm Barry to have dinner with her.

'I'd love to,' he said. 'But sadly I'm going to a meeting tonight.'

'Come on, Colm. The bank will survive without your being at one meeting,' she said.

'No, it's AA,' he said.

'Really, what kind of car do you have?' she asked.

'No, the other lot, Alcoholics,GCO he said simply.

'Oops.'

'No, don't worry. Think me lucky that I do go, that I get the support that's there. That's why I'm able to refuse a beautiful blonde like you.'

'For tonight,' she said with a big smile. 'There'll be another night, won't there?'

'Yes, of course there could be another night. But now that you know the score you might be a little less interested in having dinner with me.' He was wry but not apologetic, just preparing himself for a change in attitude. Rosemary paused long enough for Colm to feel that he could speak again and end things before they had begun. 'We both know that you must find someone who isGCa let's say substantial. Don't waste time on a loser like a drinky bank clerk.'

'You're very cynical,' Rosemary said.

'And very realistic. I'll watch you with interest.'

'IGCOll watch you with interest too,' she said.

Mona McCarthy always remembered where she was when she heard that Barney had been taken into Intensive Care. She was in the attic rooting out a children's cot for young Ria Lynch. She had just got an anxious phone call from Ria's sister saying that the girl had gone into labour and they were looking for Danny. Then half an hour later Danny had rung to say that Barney was absolutely fine but they had thought it wise to err on the side of caution and have an ECG. And she could come into the hospital whenever she liked; he was sending a car for her straight away. 'Where did it happen? Is it bad?' Mona asked.

Danny was calm and soothing. 'He was at home with me, in Tara Road, we were working all evening. It's fine, Mona. Believe me, he's in great shape, telling you not to worry. You'll see for yourself when you come in.'

She felt better already. He was an amazing boy, Danny, so well able to calm her down while he should be in high panic himself over his wife's labour.

'And Danny, I'm delighted to hear the baby's on the way, how is she?'

'What?'

'Ria's sister brought her in, sheGCa'

'Oh shit, I don't believe it.' He had hung up.

'Danny?' Mona McCarthy was confused. Hilary had said she couldn't find Danny at Tara Road. Now Danny had said he had been there all evening. It was a mystery.

Whenever Mona McCarthy had been faced with a mystery she reminded herself that she was not a detective and there was probably some explanation. And then she put it out of her mind. She had found this to be a satisfactory way of coping with a few mysteries over the years. And after Barney recovered, she never asked him any details about that night.

Any more than she ever asked him to tell her about where he had dinner when he came home late or how he spent his time in hotels when he travelled. On several occasions she had to side-step conversations with her husband, conversations which looked as if they were heading towards a definition of mysteries and even confrontations. Mona McCarthy was much less simple-minded than most people believed.

Danny Lynch never forgot the frantic rush from one hospital to the other. And the look of reproach in his sister-in-law's face and the sight of his little daughter in the arms of an exhausted and tearful Ria.

He cried into Ria's dark hair and took the baby gingerly into his arms. 'IGCOll never be able to make it up to you but there is a reason.' And of course she understood. He had to do what he did, he hadn't known her time had come.

He had not known it was possible to love a little human being as he loved Annie. He was going to make his little princess a home that was like a palace. Princesses deserve palaces, he said.

'You'd never think we lived in a Republic with all this chat about princesses,' Ria would tease him.

'You know what I mean, it's all like a fairy tale,' Danny would say.

And in so many ways it was.

There was enough business coming in. It meant plenty of hard work but Danny was able for that. Barney was being a little more discreet about his involvement with him.

Ria was wonderful with little Annie. She even put her into the car regularly and drove her down to see her grandparents in the country. Danny's parents seemed very touched by that. His mother knitted the baby silly hats and his father carved her little toys. There had been no knitted hats and carved toys when Danny and his brothers were growing up.

He had a truly beautiful daughter, a house that someone of his education and chances could only have dreamed about. He had a wife who was loving and good to him.

Life had been very good to Danny Lynch.

Ria had never forgotten that Danny was not at her side when the baby was born, but she had heard the story of how Barney McCarthy's life and reputation had been saved. There was no way Danny could have known that the baby would come so early. Ria had very mixed feelings about the way Barney was being protected in his double life. She hated being a party to deceiving the kindly Mona McCarthy.