Echoes (11 page)

“Right, get a bowl of hot soapy water, will you? And come with me. These windows are a disgrace. You can't see through them in or out.”

 

“Clare, child, I know you work hard at your books but couldn't you give your mother a hand with the washing? She's got very thin on us altogether.”

“The washing, Dad?”

“Washing the clothes. I asked her to sit down and have a cup of tea and she said she couldn't, there was a pile of washing to do. You'll have to do washing when you have a home of your own. Why don't you take a turn now and learn how to do it properly? There's a good girl.”

“What about Chrissie, Dad, could she do it tonight, and I'll do it the next time, I've this legend to learn. There's all kinds of desperate names in it.”

“Chrissie's gone to do her homework with Kath.”

“Uh,” Clare said.

“You could go on saying the names to yourself as you did the washing,” her father said.

“No, the book would get wet. Do I
have
to, Dad?”

“You don't
have
to. I thought you'd be glad to help your mother.”

“Tommy or Ned?” She asked without much hope.

“Well, if that's the kind of thing you're going to be saying . . .” He turned away in disgust. To suggest that
boys
would do the washing! Clare was being very difficult altogether.

“Oh, all
right!
” Clare slammed closed the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. She only knew Jason, his father, his two wicked step-uncles and the name of the ship. There was a huge cast still to master, so it would mean waking up early . . . again.

 

“Clare, come here till I teach you to darn.”

“No, Mammy, I don't want to learn to darn.”

“You that wants to learn everything? Look, it's very simple. Do you see this hole, what we have to do is to make a criss cross . . .”

“No, Mam, I'd like not to know how to do it. Ever.”

“Why, child? When you have a home of your own you'll want to know.”

“But if I know now, I'll be darning Tommy's socks, and Ned's, and Dad's, and Jim's, and Ben's, and maybe even Chrissie's.”

Agnes put her arm round the thin little figure, and smiled. “Aren't you the funny little thing?”

“No, Mammy, I'm the sensible little thing. I'll never learn to darn, never.”

Agnes was annoyed to see her affection rejected. “Have it your own way, and you can go and do the washing up if you're not going to take advantage of the lessons I was going to give you.”

“But . . .”

“Chrissie won't be in—their class have a special extra class today.”

“That's right,” Clare said glumly. “Of course they do.”

 

“Have you a cold, Clare?”

“No, it's just a cough, Mam. Dust or something in my throat, I think.”

“Have a drink of water then.”

“Right.”

“Clare, don't spend all day in the kitchen. Come back and help me with these boxes, and put a scarf or something round your mouth if you're breathing in all the dust.”

“Mam, when we've finished this lot, can I go and do—”

“Do your homework, do your homework. Why is it that you're the only one in this family who has to make the excuse of doing your homework? Look at the rest of them.”

“I know. Look at them, Mam.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

 

Often Clare had to do her homework in bed, there was literally no other place and no other time. This made Chrissie very cross. She grumbled loudly if Clare turned on the torch.

“You're spoiling my sleep and ruining your own eyes. You'll be blind soon and we'll have to take you round by the hand and you'll have a white stick,” Chrissie said with satisfaction.

“Shut up, Chrissie. I'm learning something. I can't get it into my head if you keep distracting me.”

Chrissie was surprised at the strength of the reply. “I'll tell on you. If you don't stop that mumbling and learning and having a light on, I'll tell.
That
will put a stop to it.”

There was no reply. With her hands in her ears and eyes closed Clare was repeating under her breath the words,
“Do Ghealadh mo chroi nuair chinn Loch Greinne,”
over and over.

“You're as thick as the wall,” said Chrissie. “You mean you don't even know one line after all that saying of it?”

“I don't know what
Ghealadh
means. It's hard to learn when you don't know what something means.”

“Ah, will you come on out of that. You don't know what
any
of it means. How would people know what Irish poetry meant? It's just words.”

“It means something happened to my heart when I saw Loch Greinne, but I don't know what happened.
Ghealadh,
what would that mean?”

“It might mean Stop. My heart stopped dead when I saw Loch Greinne.” Chrissie laughed at her own wit.

“Didn't you learn it when you were in our class?”

Chrissie shrugged. “We might have. I forget. I forget all of it. What's the point?”

Clare had gone back to her book.

“I mean it. I'll tell, and you'll be in right trouble then. I'll say you kept me awake with your caterwauling of poetry pretending you understand it. Wait and see. You'll suffer for it.”

“No I won't,” Clare said. “I won't suffer from it at all,
you
are the one who'll suffer. It will be wondered why you do no homework, why you don't know anything. It might even be wondered what you and Kath and Peggy get up to. You're not going to say anything, and you know it so will you shut up and let me get this learned so that I can go to sleep.”

 

Angela waited in the surgery. There was only one other patient, old Mrs. Dillon from the hotel. Angela would have thought that the doctor would have visited her privately, but Mrs. Dillon whispered that she had come to see him secretly. She had pretended to her family that she was going to say the thirty days prayer in the church, but in fact she had come to explain that her daughter-in-law was poisoning her. Angela sighed. Poor Dr. Power. He probably got as much of this as Father O'Dwyer did in the confessional. Angela settled down with an old copy of
Tatler and Sketch
and began to read about the happenings up in Dublin. She was in for a long wait. But in a few moments, Dr. Power was ushering old Mrs. Dillon out the door, and the woman was smiling ear to ear.

“You'll have time for the thirty days prayer after all, and say a few Hail Marys for me,” he called out after her.

“Sure you don't need them, Doctor. Aren't you a walking saint?” called Mrs. Dillon.

“She's only saying what's true.” Angela stood up and walked across the corridor with him.

“No. I'm a walking liar, that's all.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her I was in there during the week inspecting the place for hygiene and I have instruments that could detect poison a mile off. But there wasn't a trace of it in Dillon's Hotel. I said that the cold weather often made people think the taste of food had changed, that it was a common belief, then I gave her a bottle of rose-hip syrup and she's delighted with herself.”

Angela laughed: he looked like a bold boy who'd been found out telling a fib.

“And who's poisoning
you,
Angela? Mother Immaculata up at the convent, maybe?”

“Not a bad guess. I think she'd like to a lot of the time. No, it's not poison. It's sleep.”

“Too much of it or too little of it?”

“Hardly any of it.”

“Since when?”

“Three weeks, now.”

“Do you know what's causing it? A worry, a problem?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And is there anything that can be done about it?”

She shook her head wordlessly.

He waited, but nothing came. He reached for a prescription pad, shaking his head. “I won't have you lying awake at night. Of course you can have something. But, Angela, child, it's no use just knocking yourself out with these.”

“I know. Thank you, Doctor.”

“And I'm not always such a blabbermouth, like I was there about old Mrs. Dillon. If it would help to talk about it at all, I
could
keep it to myself. In fact I usually do.”

“You don't have to tell me that, Dr. Power. Don't I remember always how good you were about my father.”

But she was resolute. She thanked him and said she would go straight to the chemist now before they closed. She smiled a tired smile at him and he noticed she did indeed have the dark circles of sleeplessness under her eyes. As far as he knew it wasn't a man, he'd have heard in a small place like this. It was even more unlikely to be a casual sexual encounter resulting in a pregnancy—and anyway, Angela O'Hara wouldn't lie awake sleepless over something like that. She had been a Trojan in all that business of the child up in the convent who was pregnant: she had been so practical and down-to-earth when everyone else had been flying about in the air. It was Angela who thought of explaining to the girl how the infant would be born, and it was Angela who suggested that the girl's uncle should be shipped off to England with a warning delivered from enough tough people to make him believe that his life would not be safe if he were ever to return to Castlebay. That had been about four years ago; surely Angela herself couldn't have brought such a disaster on herself? He sighed and went in to the sitting room. Molly was reading by the fire.

“Nothing changes. Nothing gets much better,” he sighed.

She looked up surprised. Usually he was an optimistic man, seeing hope where there was any kind of life. “Is anybody dying?” she asked.

“No, nothing like that. Wasn't it a pity I wasn't a ship's doctor?”

“Paddy, don't be ridiculous, you can't dance well enough to be a ship's doctor. That's all they do. They don't have anything to do with sickness or curing people.”

She looked nice, he thought, when she was being enthusiastic and cheering him up, she looked young herself. It was when her face was discontented that she developed the pouting, double-chinned look of her mother—a woman who had been born disagreeable and lived to make life disagreeable for everyone round her until last year when she got a coronary right in the middle of complaining that she hadn't got enough presents for her seventieth birthday.

“I'm very ignorant all right,” he said and went over to the drinks cupboard. His hand hovered for a moment over the sherry but settled round the bottle of Irish. What could be so bad that Angela O'Hara couldn't tell him?

 

Angela got the sleeping tablets in the chemist and didn't correct Mr. Murphy there who thought the pills were for her mother.

“It's a terrible curse, that arthritis, and you know there's no cure for it. Years ago people didn't know what it was; now they know what it is but they can't cure it. Not a great advance, when you come to think of it. These will give her a good night's sleep, anyway,” he said.

“Oh yes,” Angela said.

“You're not looking all that well yourself, Angela. You want to get a bit of rest too you know. Up in that school all day with the voices of those children, I don't know how you stick it. When we come up to see Anna and Nan in the concert we're nearly deaf from the shrieking of them all round the school, and then you have the poor mother . . .”

“I'm as strong as a horse, Mr. Murphy,” said Angela and she dragged herself out of the chemist and into the post office. She had her foot on the doorstep when she realized she couldn't take Mrs. Conway this evening—the bright artificial voice, the inquiries about how well Bernie was doing, the mention once more of the history prize. Angela would never get an answer to the question she wanted to ask, and today she wasn't strong enough to take Mrs. Conway head on. Some days she'd be able to deal with ten Mrs. Conways before breakfast. But that was all before she had got the letter.

 

The letter had arrived three weeks ago, with all the beautiful stamps which she usually cut off and put in the envelope on the mantelpiece at once. They saved stamps for the missions, foreign ones in one section and Irish ones in another. Once a year they got a letter at the school thanking them for their great Missionary Effort. Angela would always pin this up on the wall, knowing that somehow it annoyed Immaculata but there was no way she could fault it. She hadn't noticed that this letter was different to the others, that it had been addressed to her alone and not to her mother. She hadn't seen the word
Confidential
all over it. She could easily have opened it as she sat beside her mother.