Dublin 4 by Binchy Maeve

Author:Binchy, Maeve [Binchy, Maeve]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781409049142
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2010-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

At twelve o’clock she was wider awake than she had ever been in the middle of the day; she thought she might as well go down as stay where she was. The noise was almost in the room with her. There was no question of sleep. She put on her black dress and her big earrings, then she took them off. Suppose her flatmates were in danger or dead? What was she doing dressing up and going to a party? It somehow wasn’t so bad going to a party without dressing up. She put on her grey skirt and her dark grey sweater, and went downstairs.

She arrived at the same time as four others who had been beating on the hall door. Jo opened it and let them in.

‘Which are you?’ said one of the men.

‘I’m from upstairs, really,’ Jo said.

‘Right,’ said the man, ‘let’s you and I go back upstairs, see you later,’ he laughed to the others.

‘No, no, you can’t do that, stop it,’ Jo shouted.

‘It was a joke, silly,’ he said.

‘She thought you meant it!’ The others fell about laughing. Then the door of the downstairs flat opened and a blast of heat and noise came out. There were about forty people crammed into the rooms. Jo took one look and was about to scamper upstairs again, but it was too late and the door had banged behind her. Someone handed her a glass of warm wine. She saw Phyllis in the middle of it all, her blonde hair tied in a top knot and wearing a very dazzling dress with bootlace straps. Jo felt foolish and shabby: she was jammed into a group of bright-faced, laughing people and she felt as grey as her jumper and skirt.

‘Are you a nurse too?’ a boy asked her.

‘No, I work in the post office.’

‘Well, can you do anything about the telephones, do you know there isn’t a telephone between here and …’

‘I don’t give a damn about telephones,’ she said and pushed away from him. Nessa and Pauline were dead, battered by drunks, and here she was talking about telephones to some fool.

‘I was only making conversation – piss off,’ he shouted at her, hurt.

Nobody heard him in the din.

‘Which are your flatmates?’ Jo asked Phyllis.

‘The one in the kitchen, Maureen, and the one dancing with the man in the aran sweater, that’s Mary.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jo. She went into the kitchen.

‘Maureen,’ she said. The girl at the cooker looked up with an agonised face. ‘I wanted to ask you …’

‘Burned to a crisp, both of them. Both of them burned to a bloody crisp.’

‘What?’ said Jo.

‘Two trays of sausages. Just put them in the oven, stop fussing, Mary says. I put them in the oven. And now look, burned black. Jesus, do you know how much sausages are a pound, and there were five pounds altogether. I told her we should have fried them. Stink the place out, frying them, she said. Well, what will this do, I ask you?’

‘Do you know the girls upstairs?’ Jo persisted.

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