Echoes (14 page)

“Your mother said . . .”

“My mother doesn't know what time of day it is.”

“She said you paced round the house all night planning to leave.”

“Oh, Christ Almighty, is that what she's on about?”

“So you're not?” Clare had brightened a little.

“I'm not, but unless I see a marked change in your attitude, I might as well have left as far as you're concerned. Come up to me this evening and we'll make a start. I need a bit of distraction, to tell you the truth.”

“It'll soon be the bright weather and the long nights will be over.”

“Why do you say that?” Angela sounded startled.

“My mother always says it to cheer people up. I thought it was a nice thing to say.”

“I think it is.”

She decided not to send him a telegram, and it took her five weeks from the day she got the letter before she was able to reply. Only the thought of him waiting and watching for a Japanese postman to bring a letter made her put pen to paper at all. She began the letter a dozen times. The words didn't ring true. She couldn't say she was glad he had confided in her, she would prefer never to have known a thing about it. She couldn't say she sympathized with him because she didn't. She could find no words of welcome for her sister-in-law Shuya, her new nephew Denis, nor any enthusiasm about the arrival of the next child. Instead, her mind was full of snakes and worries slithering around. Would her mother have a stroke if she heard the news? Was there a possibility that the family might have to pay back some of the money spent educating Sean to be a priest, now that he had abandoned it all? Was it something that he might be excommunicated for, and the excommunication made public? Would all the priests in Ireland hear about it? Would Father O'Dwyer get to know through some clerical bulletin? She knew she should think kinder thoughts and treat him as a lonely frail human being; those were the words he used about himself, but then in the next sentence he said that he now knew perfect happiness, and understood for the first time why man and woman were put on this earth.

Several times she had her foot on the doorstep of Mrs. Conway's post office prepared to send the wire telling him that his news had been received and urging him to communicate no further. But what would the town make of
that
piece of intelligence. The houses and shops up and down Church Street and up the golf-course road and across on the far cliff road would buzz happily with speculation. If Angela wanted to send a telegram like that it would have to be sent from the next town. And it might provoke Sean into doing something really foolish. After all he had talked fondly, and insanely, in his letter of the day when he could come back to Castlebay and show it to his wife and children.
Father
Sean O'Hara show Castlebay to his wife and children! He must be raving mad! Not just
mad,
but sheer raving
lunatic
mad!

She tried to imagine what she would advise if it were somebody else. Her friend Emer back in Dublin, whom she had taught with and prowled the likely places with looking for husbands. Suppose it were Emer's brother. What would she say? She would probably urge a noncommittal kind of letter to tide things over. Fine. But once you started to write to your own brother about something like this you couldn't remain uncommitted. It was ridiculous to expect that you could behave like an outsider. So eventually she wrote from the heart.

She wrote that she was shocked that he had given up his vocation, and that he must realize everyone in Ireland would be shocked too, no matter how good and supportive his fellow priests in the mission field had been. She said that if he was absolutely certain that this was not a temporary loss of faith, then she was glad that he had found happiness in his relationship with his Japanese friend, and pleased that the birth of their son had given them both so much pleasure. She begged him to realize that Castlebay in 1950 was a place where understanding and casual attitudes toward married priests simply did not exist. She wrote that, as she sat in the dark room with the rain outside the window, and with her mother poking at the open door of the range with a rough old poker that she held in two hands, it became more and more obvious that their mother should never know. After her time, then they might all think again; but it would destroy the woman's life, and they had all agreed that when lives were being handed out Mam had had a very poor one given to her. She said she knew it was hard; but could he as a higher kindness write letters that assumed he was still in the Order. And because Mrs. Conway looked at every envelope that went through her post office, Angela had decided she was going to address hers in the way she always had done. Could he imagine the excitement if she were to drop the Father bit? She said she knew this was not the warm, all-embracing letter he had hoped for, but at least it was honest and it was practical and for the moment that was the best he could have.

It was on the dresser for two days before she could put it in the post-box. It was sealed and there was no fear that her mother would open it—the old woman thought that it contained the usual letter and the four folded pound notes for Masses. She half hoped it would blow away or fall down and be lost so it would never be sent.

Clare O'Brien, looking around her with wonder as she always did, spotted it. “Can I post that to Father O'Hara?” she asked eagerly. “It would make me feel very important posting a letter to Japan.”

“Yes, you post it,” Miss O'Hara said in a strange voice.

“Will we look at the globe to see how many countries it will go over before it gets to him?” Clare asked. She loved getting out the old globe which creaked when it spun round.

“Yes.” Miss O'Hara made no move to pass the globe which was near her.

“Will I get it?” Clare was hesitant.

“What? Oh yes. Let's see.” Angela lifted the globe onto the table. But she didn't start to move it yet.

“Well, it will leave Castlebay . . .” Clare prompted.

Angela O'Hara shook herself. “That's the hardest part of its journey,” she said, like her old self again. “If it gets out of Mrs. Conway's sticky hands without being steamed open for Madam in there to read it, then the worst's over.”

Clare was delighted to be made party to such outrageous accusations about awful Mrs. Conway, the awful mother of really awful Bernie Conway. She decided to take the letter to Japan by the westward route and brought it over the Atlantic to Nova Scotia where they said all Irish planes stopped first, and then she took it slowly across all the United States, going to Hawaii and then on to Japan. That's probably the way they'd take it, Clare thought, less land, less places to stop in. Could you choose whether it went one way or the other? Miss O'Hara shook her head. Clare supposed it depended on which way the planes were going first; she looked at Miss O'Hara for confirmation and to her surprise she thought she saw tears in her eyes.

“Will he be home soon at all?” she asked sympathetically. She realized that poor Miss O'Hara must miss her brother and maybe she shouldn't go on and on about how far away he was and how huge the world was. Maybe it wasn't tactful.

 

Chrissie said that Clare wasn't normal because her big toe was bigger than her second toe. This was discovered when Chrissie was painting her toenails and the bedroom smelled so much of lacquer that Clare had wanted to open the door.

“You can't do that,” Chrissie hissed. “Everyone will smell it.”

“But nobody can
see
it under your socks. What's the point of it?” Clare had wanted to know.

“It's the difference between grown-up and being a stupid eejit like you are,” Chrissie had explained.

Clare had shrugged. There was no use in trying to talk to Chrissie about anything, it always ended up with an explanation that Clare was
boring
and that seemed to be the root cause of everything. Chrissie taunted her about every aspect of her life.

“Your hair is awful. It's like a paper bag, it's so flat.”

“I don't put pipe cleaners in mine like you do,” Clare said.

“Well, that's it. You're so stupid you can't even put curlers in.” And then on another tack: “You've no friends at all at school. I see you in the playground on your own. You walk to and from school all by yourself. Even your awful stupid class must have sense—they know not to be friends with you.”

“I
do
have friends,” Clare cried.

“Who? Name me one friend. Whose house do you go to in the evening, who comes here? Answer me that! Nobody!”

Clare wished devoutly that Kath and Peggy didn't come so often—it meant that she couldn't go to the bedroom, and downstairs she was always being asked to do something.

“I've lots of friends, different friends for different things, you know. Like I'm friendly with Marian in domestic science because we're at the same table and then I'm friendly with Josie Dillon because I sit beside her in class.”

“Ugh, Josie Dillon, she's so fat, she's disgusting.”

“That's not her fault.”

“It is too. She's never without something in her fat hand eating it.”

Clare didn't like Josie all that much: she was very dull, she couldn't seem to get enthusiastic about anything. But she was harmless and kind and she was lonely. Clare didn't like all the faces that Chrissie was making.

“Ugh, Josie Dillon. Well, if you had to have a friend, I might have guessed that it would be someone like that big white slug.”

“She's not a slug, and anyway your friend Kath had nits in her hair. Everyone in the school knows that.”

“Aren't you
horrible
!” screamed Chrissie. “What a desperate thing to say about anyone. When I think how nice Kath always is about you.”

“She was never nice about me. All she said ever was shut up and go away, like
you
say.”

Chrissie was looking at Clare's feet. “Put your foot out.”

“Why? I won't,” Clare said.

“Go on, just for a moment.”

“You'll put that awful red paint on it.”

“No, I won't. I wouldn't waste it. Go on, let's see.”

Suspiciously Clare put her leg out of her bed and Chrissie examined her foot.

“Show me the other one,” she said after a while. Nervously it was produced. Then Chrissie pronounced that Clare was deformed. Her second toe should be longer than the big toe, Kath's was, Peggy's was, Chrissie's was, anyone you saw on the beach had feet like that. Clare fought back. Why was it called the big toe if it wasn't the biggest one?

Chrissie shook her head. “Oh well,” she said.

Clare was frightened now. “I think I'll go and ask Mam,” she said, scrambling off the bed. A hand thrust her back.

“You'll do nothing of the sort, Mam will want to know why we were talking about toes, she'll want to see mine maybe, keep your awful complaints to yourself, and don't be seen in your bare feet.”

Clare crawled back onto her bed.

Chrissie looked at her and decided to be sympathetic. That was worse than anything else that Chrissie had ever done.

“Listen, nobody'll notice, and I tell you, I won't give you away.”

Clare looked miserable still.

“And Josie Dillon's not
too
bad. It's better than having no friend, isn't it?”

 

“Did you have a friend at school, Miss O'Hara?” Clare wanted to know.

“Yes, several. Why?”

“I just wondered, what happened to them?”

“Well, Nellie Burke is working up in Dr. Power's house. She was a friend when I was about your age. And Margaret Rooney, she went to England and got married, she lives near my sister. And Cissy O'Connor became a nun God bless her, she's praying for all of us in a convent up in the North.”

“They weren't working like a demon like you were, like I am?”

“Oh no, they weren't working like demons at all. They thought I was mad.”

Clare was pleased with this, it made her path seem less odd.

“But when I got to the big convent, to the secondary school, it was different because there were lots of people there with the same interests. You didn't have to hide your work or anything. And when I went to the training college I had great friends altogether, still have in a way, but of course it's not the same now that I'm away, most of them teach in Dublin you see. But there'll be plenty of time for you to make friends, don't worry.”

Angela was being reassuring. Someone must have been getting at the child. Wouldn't you think they'd be delighted to see someone try to get on? Give some encouragement and support. But it had never been the way.