Dublin 4 by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online Page A

as often as not it was their father who had done them.
    In a way Carmel had only herself to blame if she was miserable and wretched over all this business about Ruth O’Donnell. Carmel was a lady of leisure with too much time to think about the too little she had to do. Then with a jolt Sheila remembered that it was she and Martin and Dermot who were wretched. Carmel had been very cheerful, and was in fact busy organising a dinner party and smartening up her wardrobe. Not at all what this wronged wife would have been expected to do.
    *   *   *
     
    Ethel and David had people in to bridge on Sunday night. They always had what they called a curfew onSunday nights, and everyone had to have played the last card by eleven-thirty.
    When the car had driven off and they were emptying the ashtrays, opening the windows and taking out the dirty glasses to the dishwasher, Ethel said: ‘I have the most awful feeling, like doom, as if something dreadful is going to happen. Do you know that feeling?’
    ‘Every day going into work, and it’s always accurate,’ said David.
    ‘Don’t be trivial, you love your work, and why wouldn’t you? People fussing over you, fuss fuss fuss all day. No, I have a sense of foreboding and I can’t think what’s causing it.’
    ‘Maybe you feel guilty about something,’ David said.
    ‘It’s that kind of feeling, that sort of heavy feeling in the chest, but I’ve nothing to be guilty about.’
    ‘I think it’s the bank manager’s bit of skirt. I honestly think that’s what’s making us all so uneasy. I feel a bit edgy myself.’
    ‘But we’ve known about it for ages.’
    ‘Yes, but the poor sad wife must have only just found out.’
    Ethel stood looking at a plate of peanuts thoughtfully. Eventually she tipped them into the pedal bin. ‘I’d only eat them,’ she said as an explanation, ‘and they’re more fattening than large g’s and t’s. I suppose that is what’s making usnervous. It’s such a mad thing to do. Such a very men in white coats mad thing to do. Ask the woman to dinner and have a public scene.’
    ‘She won’t go of course,’ said David.
    ‘No, but the fact that poor Carmel actually asked her is so mad. That’s what’s upsetting. Who knows what she’ll do next, walk down Grafton Street in her knickers?’
    *   *   *
     
    Deirdre O’Donnell had no trouble in getting the porter to give her a key to her sister’s flat. She said that Ruth wanted her to post on some things.
    She wandered around, luxuriating in being alone among someone else’s possessions. Now you could look and stare and ponder to your heart’s content. Everyone else in the block had their sitting rooms carefully draped and framed. They looked like the rooms in a doll’s house from outside. But Ruth’s sitting room was bare, it was in fact her studio, and what other people regarded as the master bedroom and decked with fitted cupboards and thick carpets, Ruth used as a secondary studio and office. The small spare bedroom was her bedsitting room; a sofa that turned into a bed sat neatly in its sofa role, and in the kitchen the saucepans sat shining in a row.
    For an artist her sister was very neat, Deirdre thought. Spinsterish she had once believed … that was before she knew about the regular visits of AnnaMurray’s father. FATHER. A bank manager. Maybe she should go to him to authorise an overdraft. Seriously, that’s not a bad idea at all.
    On the mat there were a dozen envelopes. Some were obviously brochures or advertisements. Then she saw the letter in the neat round handwriting. She eased it out carefully. It might be full of terrible intimate things … things that Ruth would not want her to have read. She must steam the envelope; she could stick it all back with glue if it really was too yucky and Ruth would get into a temper.
Dear Ruth,
I don’t know whether you remember me or not, but we met a couple of times with David and Ethel O’Connor and you also know my friend