Free Dublin 4 by Maeve Binchy

man, but people say that it’s very old-fashioned nowadays making up the numbers. Ethel says that more dinners have been ruined by people struggling to make the sexes equal …’
    ‘Oh yes … I quite agree, really dreary men being dragged in, there are more really dreary men than dreary women around, I always think …’
    ‘So do I, but maybe we’re prejudiced!’ Mother laughed, and Anna laughed too. Mother was fine, what was all the fuss about? In order to let Mother think she was interested in the famous dinner, she asked brightly, ‘Who’s coming then, Mother? Aunt Sheila and Uncle Martin I suppose …’
    ‘Yes, and Ethel and David … and Ruth O’Donnell, that nice young artist.’
    Anna dropped her handbag.
    ‘Who … ?’
    ‘Oh, you must know her, the painting in the hall, and this one. And the one on the stairs. Ruth O’Donnell … her exhibition opens tomorrow, and we’re all going to it and then coming back here for dinner.’
    *   *   *
     
    Bernadette wasn’t in, but Anna told the whole thing to Frank and had a glass of parsnip wine to restore her.
    ‘Are there bits of parsnip in it?’ she asked suspiciously.
    ‘No, it’s all fermented, it’s all we have,’ Frank said ungraciously.
    Anna told the whole story, interspersed with explanations of how her heart had nearly stopped and she hadn’t known what to say, to think, to do. Frank listened blankly.
    ‘Isn’t she a fifteen-carat bitch,’ Anna said in the end.
    ‘Your mother?’ Frank asked, puzzled.
    ‘No, the woman. Ruth O’Donnell. Isn’t she a smug self-satisfied little bitch? It’s not enough for her to have her own exhibition which half the country seems to be going to, it’s not enough for her to have poor Dad like a little lap poodle running after her … she has to get him to get Mother to ask her to a dinner party and make a public humiliation of her in front of all Mother’s friends.’
    Frank looked unmoved.
    ‘Well, isn’t it appalling,’ she snapped.
    He shrugged. To me there are two ways of looking at it, and both of them are from your Ma’s point of view. Either she knows, in which case she knows what she’s doing, or she doesn’t know, in which case nobody’s about to announce it to her over the soup, so either way she’s all right.’
    Anna didn’t like the way Frank had emphasised the word she . If he meant that Mother was all right, who wasn’t? Could it be Anna, sharp and shrill and getting into a tizz? She drained her parsnip wine and left.
    *   *   *
     
    ‘For God’s sake, stay out of it,’ James said. ‘Don’t ring all those fearful old women up. Let it go its own way. You’ll hear soon enough if something disastrous happens.’
    ‘But they’re my own mother and father, James. It’snot as if they were just neighbours. You have to care about your own mother and father.’
    ‘Your own daughter and son seem to be yelling for you in the kitchen,’ he said.
    She flounced out. James came out after her and gave her a kiss. She smiled and felt better. ‘That’s soppy,’ said Cilian and they all laughed.
    *   *   *
     
    RTE rang and asked if Ruth would go on the Day by Day programme. She said she would call them back.
    ‘Should I?’ she asked Dermot.
    ‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘Absolutely. Go straight out.’
    Thank God, he thought, at least that will take her mind off Carmel and the dinner. This time tomorrow it would all be over, he told himself. This time tomorrow he would sit down and take stock of his life. He had all the information that anyone could ever gather about early retirement plans … or he could ask for a transfer.
    Ruth had often said she would like to live out of Dublin, but of course in a small place it wouldn’t be acceptable … anyway, no point in thinking about all that now; the main thing was that Carmel was quite capable of living a life of her own now … might even get herself a job like her friend Sheila. That was something that could be suggested, not