Echoes (10 page)

Not Clare of course. She was the one that would keep you going. Imagine teaching a class full of Clare O'Briens or of David Powers for that matter. She sighed. It was a pity as David had said that she hadn't been born a man. She could have become a priest and taught bright boys in a school where the principal would not go into shock if she asked for a globe.

She wondered did Sean ever regret his choice in teaching the children of Chinese and Japanese workers in pidgin English. Would he have liked the days spent in an ivy-covered college like the one that David and young Nolan went to? Would Sean have liked the evenings in study and chapel and walking reading a breviary in cloisters or discussing philosophy in a dining hall? It was a question that couldn't really make sense, since her brother Sean had never shown interest in any other life except the missions. He had followed the road that got him there without pausing to think or to wonder did people miss him. She missed him from time to time, his letters were no way of knowing him, and recently they had become very static.

You couldn't even hint at that to her mother. Every letter was kept in a box with the date it was received written laboriously on the envelope. As if someone was going to check them some time. The stamps were neatly cut off to add to the school stamp collection, they were never reread but Mrs. O'Hara knew almost by heart the names of the villages and the settlements and the places up country and down country. She knew them better than she knew the countryside around Castlebay, for it had been a long time since she could walk and see it. Angela wondered sometimes what her mother would think about all day if she hadn't a fine son who was a missionary priest to fill her mind.

 

Back at school Nolan told everyone that Power was a dark horse. They should see the great place he lived in, a big house on a cliff with its own private way down to the sea. They had a maid and a Labrador and every single person in the place knew them by name and saluted them. David felt it was going a bit far to call Bones a Labrador, but he agreed that the rest was mainly true. He also found himself the center of attention because of having taken Nolan to a party where real sex games were played. This was the cause of a lot of questioning and David wished he knew how much Nolan had elaborated on the innocent kissing games they had played by the firelight before the drink had taken over and everyone had been too dizzy and confused to play any games at all. But it was good to be a hero, and he laughed knowingly about it all.

He was pleased too when Father Kelly said that he was an exemplary pupil and had kept up meticulously with the suggested course of study which had been handed out to all pupils on the day the school had closed because of the scarlet fever. The essays had been written, the poems had been learned, history questions had been written out and illustrated with neat maps and family trees, the maths and geography were completed, and the Irish and Latin exercises done in full.

“You got private tuition? Well, he was a good man whoever he was,” Father Kelly said in one of his rare moments of approval.

“It was a she actually, Father,” David said apologetically.

Father Kelly's brow darkened: he had been too swift with his praise. “Ah, some of them are competent enough I suppose,” he said, struggling to be fair, but losing interest.

David told Nolan that Gerry Doyle had a smashing-looking sister, really beautiful, but that he wouldn't take her to the cave that night.

Nolan was very positive about this, as he was about everything. “Of course he couldn't bring his
sister,
” he said as if it were obvious to a blind fool, “I mean I wouldn't have let
my
sister go. We couldn't have taken Caroline to a party like
that,
where people would be . . . well you couldn't take Caroline there. Gerry Doyle was quite right. Is she going to write to you?”

“I didn't ask her.”

“Right, Power, you've got the technique. Don't be too easy to get. Don't be a pushover. Leave them wondering. That's what I always do.”

“Will Alice be writing again this term?”

“No, I think I've grown out of Alice,” said Nolan in a voice which revealed that Alice had grown out of him.

Nolan said his mother had got a bit better about things and that she had agreed to go away next summer for a holiday by the sea. Nolan's whole family had been wanting to do this for ages but his mother had always said the seaside was full of rats and beetles and sea snakes. St. Patrick had only got rid of the land snakes according to Nolan's mother, but he had no power over the huge snakes calling themselves eels which came in on beaches all over the country. But now the tablets she was taking had made her forget, and they were going to inquire about renting one of those cliff houses in Castlebay. Because Nolan had come home with such glowing reports they were going to try there first. David was delighted: the summer would be full of adventure if Nolan and his family came to Castlebay.

Angela said that Clare must write the letter herself, it was no use putting grown-up words into a ten-year-old head. But she would monitor it for spelling, and style. She found Clare a writing pad that had no lines on it, but with a heavily lined sheet you put under the page you were writing on. Clare should ask the convent whether there was any particular course of study she should concentrate on, since she was very anxious to prepare herself as diligently as possible for the open scholarship in 1952. Clare tried to remember the words diligent, concentrate, but Angela said no, she must use her own words, and she must sound like a real person, someone they would remember when the time came. She said to tell the nuns that her parents were business people. Clare wondered was that true; but Angela said, years ago she had told them her father was a substantial farmer who had fallen on hard times because of the Troubles, and since that was way back in 1932 it sounded reasonable. It would have done her no good to say she was the daughter of the town drunk and she was burning to get herself on in the world.

“Do you think there's any hope I might get it? You see, I don't want to get myself all excited like I did . . . well . . .”

“Over the history essay.” Miss O'Hara nodded. “No, I think you have a chance, a good chance if you work like the hammers of hell. Oh and don't tell anyone. It's easier somehow if you don't.”

“But David Power knows.”

That didn't matter, Miss O'Hara thought, he'd have it long forgotten. But Clare shouldn't mention it at school, or at home, it only got people into a state. Clare had thought there was too much going on at home without letting them get into another state over a scholarship in the distant future.

Tommy and Ned had been for interviews and they couldn't wait to go to England. They had heard that there was massive reconstruction being done over there since the war, the place was full of bombed sites only waiting to be built up again, and roads from one place to another planned for, and housing for all those who lost their places during the raids.

The man who had come to Dillon's Hotel for two hours had taken their names and addresses. He had asked them very little but said they should report to him when they got there; they should wait till the fine weather until they came over. There'd be no trouble at all finding digs; the roads around Kilburn and Cricklewood were filled with Irish households only delighted to have lads from home in to stay. They'd be like mothers to them, they wouldn't need to go near English strangers at all. The man said he was a businessman who could get a good deal for his own countrymen; he didn't like to see Irish lads being made fools of, he'd see them right when they came over.

Clare's father wondered could the man be a chancer. Why would he be doing all this for love? Why wasn't he an agency like any other agency that took fees? That way made sense, a person could understand that, but this way was hard to fathom. A man with an open shirt coming to Dillon's Hotel and giving them all a piece of paper with his name on it and saying he could be found any Friday night in one of two pubs in Kilburn—it sounded a bit suspicious.

But Tommy and Ned would have none of it. What had they to lose? If, after one week, he turned out not to be getting them their full wages, they could leave him and go on to one of these agencies that Da was talking about. They weren't bound to him. He had said he wanted nothing in writing, no complications of any sort. They should be delighted to have his name, and have him as a friendly contact over there instead of making such a fuss about everything.

Tommy had left school. He had no exams, no certificates and, after all his years in the Brothers, he could barely read and write. Clare thought wistfully of David Power that night up in Miss O'Hara's kitchen and the book he had given to her as a present. Tommy would have thrown it aside. He couldn't even read what was written on a packet in the shop, if someone asked him. He didn't read the paper and he never opened a book of any sort now that he had been released from the classroom. He was meant to be helping his father get the shop to rights before he went off to London to seek his fortune. A lot of the time he spent just hanging around.

Clare's father was rearranging the shop, and that was hard to do while people were still being served. It meant that a lot of it was done in the evening when they were meant to be closed. Of course a place like O'Brien's could never close properly: if Mrs. Conway came for a pound of sugar, or Miss O'Flaherty decided that she wanted some biscuits with her late night tea, there was no refusing them.

But there was less of a flow after six o'clock, less of the sound of the ping when the door opened and a figure stood letting in the cold sea winds until the door swung closed.

Last summer it had been so crowded trying to sell ice cream in the middle of everything else, that this year he was going to move the ice-cream cabinet down to one side of the little shop. Chocolate and sweets would be high up over it, and fruit beside it, so the beach people could be served all in one area; while the people who had rented houses on the cliff road could ponder and deliberate and finally settle for cooked ham and tomatoes as they always did, on a less cluttered side of the shop. It was all fine in theory but it was hard to do and still keep track of where everything was. Each evening they scrubbed shelves and tacked on new oilcloth. The floor was a constant disappointment to them; the lino needed to be replaced but of course there wouldn't be funds for that, so instead new bits were nailed down near the door where the wear and tear was most obvious. Boxes that only contained a few things were emptied out and stored neatly in the storeroom. In the summer, visitors were mad for boxes and lots of the suppliers didn't leave any behind. It was best to have a pile of them ready.

It was worthy work but it ate into homework time. Miss O'Hara had drawn everyone in the class a map of Ireland, a blank map. They were to trace it or copy it and reproduce it every fourth page of their history exercise book. Then, when they learned of the battles and the treaties and the marches and the plantations, they could fill them in on their own maps and they would know what happened where. Clare was lost in the Battle of Kinsale, drawing little Spanish ships and Red Hugh's army on its way down from the north when she heard the voice calling. Perhaps if she pretended she didn't hear . . . This was the wrong thing to do. The door was thrown open and her mother stood quivering with annoyance.

“Aren't you a fine lady thrown on the bed when you're needed?”

“I'm not thrown. I'm filling in this map, look.”

“I've looked at enough of that childish nonsense. You're a grown girl. Get downstairs and help your father at once. We've been calling and calling and not a word out of you.”

“It's my homework.”

“Don't be ridiculous. Nobody has homework drawing ships and little men. Stop that act and come down
at once.
Your father wants a hand to clean those top shelves before we put things up there.”

“But how will we reach them—what's the point of putting things up there?”

“Are you going to debate this from up here or come down like you're told!”

 

“Where are you off to, Chrissie? We'll be taking down all those old notices stuck to the windows this evening . . .”

“Oh, I can't stay, Mam. I'm going up to Peggy. . . . She's going to teach me how to make a frock.”

“A frock?”

“Yes, she's got a pattern. She says it's easy to cut around it. Soon we'll be able to make all our own clothes.”

“Well, all right, but don't be late home.”

“No, I won't. Bye, Mam.”

“Clare, what are you doing?”

“The trade winds. We've got to know all about where they come from and why they blew the fleets of . . .”