Barefoot Over Stones (6 page)

‘In a while. I’m not hungry.’

‘Look, none of us are hungry for Mammy’s food but at the rate he is roaring at those poor cows’ – she nodded at the cow shed – ‘he will let half of them out without milking them at all. So it depends if you want to get the dinner thing over before he comes in like a bear. I know I do.’

Michael took one more pop at the wall with a resounding kick that missed his bedroom window by a hair’s breadth. Inside they pushed the stew around the plate. It wasn’t their mother’s worst offering but they had both learned that a packet of crisps and a bar of chocolate from the tuck shop at lunchtime would best serve as the main meal of the day. Aggie rarely ate dinners at the family table. She preferred to munch on crackers or raisins at an open cupboard, leaning on the kitchen counter for support. Michael and Leda heard the milking machine stop and they got immediately to their feet and cleared their plates into the bin. Aggie was already filling the sink with hot soapy water to do the washing-up.

‘I’ve homework to finish, Ma,’ Michael murmured before he left for his room.

‘And I’m off to Shanahan’s. I told Paddy I would get in early to help him,’ Leda lied with the greatest of ease.

In his room Michael found a plastic bag filled with chocolate and crisps and a bottle of Coke that Leda had deemed was his share of the stolen kitty money. He managed his first smile of the day.

Con made Shanahan’s for last orders as he habitually did on a Thursday night. Leda made sure that she was out from behind the counter so he could get a good look at what he had hitherto resisted. Fair play to Ciara’s skirt, it seemed to be doing the trick. By the time the pub closed Con was making no secret of the fact that he couldn’t keep his eyes off her and when she asked him for a lift home she was sure he was about to oblige until Columbo, his sidekick, put his spoke in and said he would make the trip to save Con the trouble.

‘Another time,’ Con said to a disappointed Leda.

‘I hope you are the type of man to keep your promises,’ she said, loosening her dark curls from where she had pinned them back for work.

‘You can count on that,’ Con said, drinking in one last look at her as she walked out of the door behind Columbo.

‘I know I can’t return the invitation so I can’t accept it.’ Ciara was touched by the kindness of Alison and she did appreciate being asked to spend the weekend in Caharoe in Alison’s parents’ house. But she wouldn’t go, of course; couldn’t go in fact. Since the minute that she had left Leachlara for the first week of term she had decided that her life was now going to be in Dublin and beyond. Having her new-found friend expecting visits to her parents’ house was not part of the plan. She hadn’t, however, counted on Alison’s determination.

‘Oh, Ciara, I would just love you to come. My folks would relax a bit if they saw that I hadn’t shacked up with a total floozy. My dad is having a tough time coping with the fact that I am not in digs being overseen by an adult at all times.’

‘Look, I feel bad, Ali, ’cause my crowd are nuts and I would rather die than take you home.’

‘Oh, would you forget about asking me back? Just say you’ll come. Please?’

‘Well, OK, I suppose I could turn on the charm to your dad, make him realize the smart move you made landing Ciara Clancy as a flatmate.’

‘Brilliant! I’ll tell my mam. She will start piling high the buns and the brown bread. She goes a bit into overdrive when anyone visits. I think running a guest house would suit her a lot better than running my dad’s surgery. Do you want to check with your folks first to see if it’s all right?’

‘I’ll give them a call on Friday just to say I won’t be home. It’s no big deal at all.’

Alison was a bit puzzled. She would never forget her mother’s reaction the first time she told her she was going to stay away for the weekend. Her going to college in Dublin was firmly based on the contract that she would return home at the weekends to Caharoe. Things were very different in the Clancy house. Ciara seemed to think they didn’t care one way or the other, which couldn’t really be true, Alison decided. Her friend sometimes tried to be too cool for her own
good.

Ciara was caught off balance by an unusual wave of quietness when they were making their way from the bus stop to the square in Caharoe. She had literally not shut up all the way to Heuston station and then on the long journey on a packed Friday train she had kept Alison entertained with wild accounts of her school days in Leachlara. In five years in secondary school she had been suspended twice. The first time was for vociferously challenging the principal, Sister Agatha, that she owed it to the women’s movement to promote the existence of a female deity or, failing that, at least to entertain the idea. That she was a young lady who didn’t know her place in the school or in God’s holy universe was Sister Agatha’s reason for the suspension cited in a letter to the Clancy parents, which winged its way from Ciara’s schoolbag straight to the bin in the Abbey corridor toilets. The second suspension was for sharing a cigarette and a kiss with a fifth-year boy in the trees behind the school canteen. Ciara’s parents remained similarly unaware of that transgression. ‘He turned out to be an absolute louser though, not worth getting suspended for. Told all his friends that I was mad for him, spotty little upstart.’

Alison had never so much as received a detention or a note home in her six years in the community school in Caharoe and she had to admit that bringing Ciara home to Caharoe was the first step in showing everybody how sophisticated her life was in Dublin.

‘Holy fuck, is this your house? It’s huge!’ Ciara was stunned when Alison headed in the direction of one of the grandest houses, at the north edge of the square. Nobody she knew lived in a house this size. It looked unbelievably posh and she was dying to have a look inside.

‘It’s not that big really. Dad’s surgery takes up the entire front half of the house so we kind of live in the back bit and the basement,’ Alison explained. She didn’t want her friend to be put off by the size of the house.

‘Oh, let me guess: do the butler and the housekeeper have their quarters down there?’

‘Don’t be daft, Ciara!’

Before Alison got a chance to turn the key in the front door, Cathy Shepherd had opened it. She stood there beaming at her daughter and her friend. It had taken a fantastic feat of willpower for her not to walk to the bus stop to meet Alison but she had watched the girls’ relaxed saunter from Richard’s surgery window, pouncing on the Chubb lock at the moment she knew they would be standing there.

Alison had not been joking about her mother’s propensity for over-catering. Everywhere Ciara looked there was something good to eat. Scones with cream and raspberry jam, apple crumbles and brown bread, not to mention a delicious smell of dinner coming from the range, roast chicken maybe and garlic definitely. Whatever it was made her mouth water with hunger. The last thing she had eaten was a slice of chocolate biscuit cake in the arts block café before her twelve o’clock lecture. It hadn’t exactly filled the gap and she was thoroughly ravenous now.

‘You girls must be starving,’ Cathy Shepherd announced as if reading Ciara’s mind. ‘Alison will take your coat, Ciara. Pull up a chair and I will make us a pot of tea. You do drink tea, don’t you?’

‘We drink pots of it, don’t we, Alison?’

‘Yeah, loads, it’s an excuse for us to stop studying for a bit and meet up in what we rather grandly refer to as the sitting room. Where’s Dad anyway, Mam?’

‘He had a house call, love, but hopefully it won’t take too long. It’s Mrs Langton. She has taken a turn for the worse this last while I am afraid and she can’t make it to the surgery any more. He is dying to see you, and you too, Ciara, to find out what you are made of!’

Alison was in total awe of the performance Ciara put on for her parents. She was completely charming, funny and so opinionated on current affairs that for once Richard Shepherd had to take a back seat at his own dinner table. His normally razor-sharp critical faculties seemed to be totally suspended and Alison thought she might pass out when he suggested that they head over the road
to Lovett’s for an after-dinner drink. Alison had only ever been to Lovett’s for the odd Sunday lunch with her parents and she could not recall a time when her mother had accompanied her father on his routine Friday-night saunter across to the hotel. She was fairly sure that her dad thought his teenage charges were thirsting for a nice Fanta or 7up and a bag of crisps. His face was a total picture when Ciara coolly requested a pint of Heineken without pausing to register a shred of her host’s discomfort. In fairness, he recovered his composure eventually and made sure Ciara was introduced to the Lalors and anyone else they knew in the pub.

Alison was happy to see her mother looking so relaxed. She looked beautiful and seemed to have bought some new clothes. Maybe the shopping trips with Rena Lalor were not such a dead loss after all, though the lady herself resembled a burst sofa at a table opposite. She must give advice on fashion better than she takes it, Alison decided. In her own moments of loneliness, when Dublin threatened to overwhelm her, she worried that her mother might be finding her absence difficult to cope with. They had, after all, been inseparable for as long as she could remember. Tonight was definitely putting her mind at ease.

Two Heinekens for a teenage girl was the limit of Richard Shepherd’s tolerance and they were back at Michaelmas by eleven, drinking tea and eating biscuits by the dilapidated open fire in the living room.

Cathy had put Ciara in the spare bed in Alison’s room and they chatted late into the night. Alison found herself confiding about the customer in the Daisy May that she had only met twice but fancied like mad.

‘Jesus, girl, you sound like you have it bad. Take it from someone who has had experience of a few: they are all arseholes. None of them are ever as nice as they pretend to be the first time you meet them.’

‘I don’t know why you are trying to set me against men – you do a fair bit of window-shopping yourself around Trinity! What about Eoin from Waterford in our American history tutorial? Don’t tell me you don’t see a bit of romantic potential there?’

‘I suppose there are a few exceptions to my rule and little hotpot Eoin may indeed prove to be one of them, but a lot of lads our age are total eejits.’

‘Dan
is
older than us though, a good few years I’d say. He just seems really clever and nice. Did I say that Rose told me he was studying medicine?’

‘Oh, Dr Dan, is it now? Oh, sure that makes all the difference. A doctor’s daughter, sure of course you would be on the lookout for a medical student! And it follows that I will be trying to track down a big brawny lump of a farmer like Daddy dearest. Not.’

‘Ah, don’t be so cynical, Ciara! I didn’t even find out he was a medical student until yesterday. I think Rose is getting a bit of fun out of torturing me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, she is drip-feeding the information about him very slowly. She’s known him for ages, says he has been coming in and out of the Daisy May as long as she has been working there. She has sort of guessed I fancy him even though I haven’t said anything.’

‘Well, I’d say going puce every time the poor chap shows his face is a bit of a dead giveaway. If you want my opinion, the direct route is always the best. Tell Rose. If she is anyway decent at all she will put in a good word for you with the delectable Dr Dan!’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I can barely look at him when he comes in at the moment and that’s with Rose knowing nothing for sure. I think if I told her out straight I’d have to run out the back if he ever darkened the door again.’

Ciara sat up in the bed. She was going to have to seriously motivate Alison. ‘No point in letting this fella think he is God’s gift. You are a gorgeous-looking girl and you’d better start realizing it. You are just lacking a bit of gumption, that’s all. I’ll call in some day to you at the Daisy May
and see what I can find out from your one Rose. Give me the facts again. Dr Dan—’

‘Will you stop calling him Dr Dan, for God’s sake, he is a medical student not one of your Mills and Boon favourites.’

‘Actually, now that you say it,
The Ravishing Doctor Dan
would make a cracking title for my first oeuvre in the romantic genre.’

Alison lobbed a cushion from her luxuriantly plumped bed and caught Ciara in the side of the head.

‘OK, cool it. Plain old Dan it is then. Medical student. Any idea where he’s from?’

‘No idea but he sounds a bit posh. Could be from Dublin. Certainly not from somewhere like here anyway.’

‘Jesus, Caharoe is a grand spot. Want to see a backwater? Take yourself off to Leachlara in the arse end of Tipperary. This house is totally amazing and your folks are cool. This house has a name, for God’s sake. How posh is that? Our place is called the new bungalow and it’s been there for twenty years! This is a jammy set-up you have going here, Alison!’

‘I do love the house and my folks are sound. I’m just not all that keen on Caharoe, that’s all. The whole doctor’s daughter thing got a bit annoying very early on. I always thought people treated me differently, the teachers in school and that. To tell you the truth I wasn’t great at the whole making-friends thing in school. I was never in the gang – always standing outside looking on. Too good for my own good, if you know what I mean.’

‘Well, you are in my gang now and I am very glad to have you. So I’ll say it again. You are a lucky wench, Alison Shepherd!’

They spent Sunday helping Cathy sort the Christmas decorations, bringing them down from the attic and deciding what should go in each room. Ciara was stunned by the amount and quality of the decorations. There was no cheap tinsel here and the fairy lights were all tasteful white. When bulbs blew Richard had a stash of spares so nothing would spoil the beautiful display. All of Michaelmas’s windows were to have pillar candles surrounded by holly and ivy and, as a finishing touch, on the front door would hang a beautiful and imposing wreath finished with a burgundy-ribbon bow.