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not accepting any more of it. Why hadn’t she just said ‘Come around to supper,’ the way Ruth did, the way anyone did … anyone except Carmel.
    It was fooling himself really to think she would be happier without him, fooling himself to say she wouldn’t really notice if he left. She would not be able to cope. She couldn’t even muster the politics of solidarity and hate, like that woman they had heard of in Ballsbridge, the wife of the man in the public relations agency. She had been so outraged when he left that she had aligned dozens of women on her side. You could hardly mention the man’s name now without hearing a sibilant hiss, so blackened had it become. No, Carmel would do nothing like that.
    Dermot stopped suddenly. Carmel would do nothing. And that was why he could never leave her. She would do nothing at all. For the rest of his life he would come home, tell lies, make up excuses, inventconferences, be telephoned by mythical clients who had to be seen after hours. And Ruth would do nothing. Ruth would not make a scene, demand that he choose between them, Ruth would confront nobody, insist on no showdowns. This had been the way things were for two whole years … everyone secure in the knowledge that nobody else would do anything; Ruth knowing she would never have to make her mind up about him fully, Carmel knowing that she would never lose him utterly and he knowing that he need never be forced to say ‘I’ll take this one’ or ‘I’ll take that.’
    He laughed wryly to himself. It was most people’s idea of a married man’s dream: an unquestioning wife and an unquestioning mistress. But it was a bad dream, he could write a book on what a bad dream it was. You were happy in neither place, you were guilty in both places. The very fact that nobody was making any move made it all the more insoluble. If Carmel had threatened and pleaded, perhaps, if Ruth had issued ultimatums, perhaps. Perhaps it might have been better. But nothing ever happened. Until now. Until Ruth had been invited to dinner.
    *   *   *
     
    Carmel must know, he said to himself for the five hundredth time. She must know. And yet the memory of last night had been like a vivid movie running through over and over.
    ‘Tell me, why have you decided to ask Ruth O’Donnell whom we hardly know, whom you only met twice, to dinner? Carmel, what are you playing at?’
    ‘I’m not playing at anything except being a better homemaker. She’s nice. Everyone says so.’
    ‘But why? Tell me, what made you think of a dinner? Why a month away?’
    ‘To give me time to prepare to get ready. I’m not like all these marvellous women you admire so much who can have the entire golf game round for a six-course meal with no notice. I like to take my time.’
    She had looked at him with a round innocent face. She had prattled on about Sheila having called in, about Anna and James driving off to the cottage, about how she wished she could get the Christmas presents months ahead in September when the shops were nice and empty.
    Four times he asked her in a roundabout way, four times she had answered him with a level look. She just liked the idea of having people to dinner; why was he finding fault with it? And he never answered that question, not even with a lie.
    *   *   *
     
    They went to Mass at eleven o’clock in Donnybrook church and bought the papers outside.
    ‘Do you need anything from the shops?’ Dermot asked. ‘Ice cream? A pudding?’
    ‘No, I’m on a diet, but you get some if you like,’ she said pleasantly. He had looked at her face as she prayed; he had watched her come back from Communion with her head down. She never asked him why he didn’t go to Communion, she never asked him anything.
    *   *   *
     
    Anna and James were happy. It had been a glorious day and they had had their lunch out in the open. Twelve of them had sat and looked out over the bay and said that this was the life and they must all be mad to live in