Echoes (21 page)

At the beginning of term Fiona Doyle shyly presented her with an envelope: it was a picture of Angela, sitting on a rock looking at the sea. Taken completely unawares.

“Gerry's very pleased with it. He says it's a bit artistic,” Fiona said.

“Tell him it's very artistic and I'm very grateful, I'll put it on my wall at home,” Angela said. She looked at it again; it looked like a picture to illustrate the Lonely or the Mad or the Outcast.

 

That was the summer when Father O'Dwyer went out on a sick call one night and unfortunately passed a lot of parked cars on the Far Cliff Road over the other side of town. He was surprised to notice that there seemed to be people in all of them. Precisely two people, one male and one female. Father O'Dwyer was horrified by what he saw, and he wished he could think it had only been the trippers, the people from big towns whose morals might already have been in danger, but there was ample evidence to convince him that some of his own flock might have been involved.

At the beginning of September when the visitors had gone home he preached his horror and warnings and his threats about what would happen if any of this was noticed in wintertime. Parents and guardians were urged to be forever vigilant, young people were teetering on the edge of an abyss, and alas the world we lived in had lowered its standards and debased its values. Next year there might be a radical change in the leisure pursuits, the whole ethos of the Dance would have to be looked at again. Father O'Dwyer was purple in the face about it for three weeks and his housekeeper the Sergeant McCormack went round with her mouth in a thin line of disapproval that His Reverence should have been vexed so severely.

That was the summer when Josie Dillon and Clare O'Brien learned to play tennis at the hotel. They used to go to the courts early in the morning when Mrs. Power and Mrs. Nolan were having lessons; they would act as ball boys, and then afterwards because of their help and because Josie was a daughter of the house they got a short lesson as well. Chrissie was disgusted with this, especially since she and Kath and Peggy had been asked formally by Young Mrs. Dillon not to come into the bar again. Barred from the hotel at the age of fourteen. It was so unfair, and there was goody goody Clare who was only eleven and the awful white slug Josie playing tennis as if they were somebodies. Clare had a pair of white shorts that Miss O'Hara had found at home, and she unearthed an old pair of Ned's games shoes which she whitened up with Blanco every night. Josie had got her an old racquet from the hotel, and with her white school blouse she was the equal of any of them. Angela saw her one morning as she ran earnestly up to the net to return a difficult shot and she paused, pleased that she had bought the child a pair of shorts in the Misses Duffy's shop. Angela had washed them once or twice and turned up the hem on the legs in order that Clare wouldn't think they were new. It was well worth it to see the child looking so confident, and was it her imagination or had Josie Dillon lost some weight? Certainly she was able to move around the court better than Angela would have expected.

That was the summer when David Power seemed very disconsolate. Angela had met him once or twice on his own, mooching around hands in pockets. Nolan was with Fiona Doyle morning noon and night, and Nolan's sister? Oh she seemed to have developed an interest in photography. Ha Ha. David laughed bitterly at the poor joke and the poorer situation. Maybe they could all have a double wedding, you saw that sometimes, didn't you, brother and sister marrying sister and brother. Angela said you didn't see it all that much actually; and that the Doyles were like summer lightning; they were different to everyone else. They weren't
real
like everyone else. They didn't get involved in anything. They just floated around on the outside. David didn't understand. The Doyles had got pretty involved with the Nolans as far as he could see. No, Angela insisted, Fiona just goes her way and James follows along carrying the milk can, carrying the shopping, paying for the bumpers rides or whatever. Gerry goes around the beach with the camera, and Caroline trots behind him. Their father Johnny Doyle was the same years ago. Everyone was fascinated with him. He was like a gypsy. David said he didn't think Angela understood. Angela said she was willing to have a bet with him, but it was unfair to take money off minors.

 

That was the summer Tommy and Ned O'Brien stopped sending home money from England. Mrs. Conway noticed of course, almost before Agnes and Tom O'Brien did.

“Not helping out are they nowadays?” she asked with a show of great concern.

“Oh, we told them to keep that. They had to set themselves up a bit better over there, give themselves a bit of comfort, a start you know,” said Agnes O'Brien with a big smile that didn't manage to cover the hurt and worry.

It was also the summer when Angela got a letter from her friend Emer every week. Emer would just about forgive Angela for saying that she was too old to be a bridesmaid at the age of twenty-nine, she would overlook the insensitivity that was involved. After all didn't that make Emer a little bit old to be a bride at thirty? But what Emer would not forgive, or even countenance, was for Angela not to be at the wedding. They would be getting married next Easter; since Kevin and she were both teachers this was a very suitable time for them. The problem was that everyone seemed to be taking over the wedding on them. Emer's mother hadn't spoken to her for four weeks, her two married sisters were in and out of the house at all hours with advice that nobody wanted. Her father had said more than once in Kevin's hearing that he wasn't going to finance a great extravagant do for a third time. He had thought that all that was behind him now and since Emer wasn't exactly in the first flush of youth, he had thought it should be done quietly. Kevin's family were all religious maniacs; there were old nuns who were getting permission to leave convents for the ceremony, and war to the knife among various priestly cousins as to who was going to do the marrying. Emer said it was like a three-ring circus with a Greek tragedy going on in the wings. Angela was to miss it at her peril.

The letters were light relief compared to everything else. Angela said that she would be there, of course. Nothing would stop her. She had to force herself to remember that these were indeed all real disasters and crises for Emer; the letters were so funny and full of ridicule they hid the hurt and the humiliation. Well so did Angela's own letters, perhaps. Wry accounts of life in a one-horse town with the demon Immaculata and the horrific Mrs. Conway of the post office. Not a word about what it felt like to be trapped here forever with the shadow of a mad brother—who had left the priesthood, taken up with a Japanese woman and produced two children—hovering on the horizon.

 

Dunne was to be Head Boy in their last year. David and James had agreed not to compete for the honor because they had been too busy keeping up their postal romances and working for their exams. They explained this to Dunne at the beginning of term so that he wouldn't get any notions about himself. Dunne however had become very authoritarian. He said they were talking nonsense and the Community wouldn't have dreamed of appointing either Nolan or Power to any position of trust since they were both unreliable and dishonest, and were known to carry on illicit relationships with the opposite sex. Nolan said that Dunne was showing all the signs of becoming a roaring homosexual. People who got all steamed up and purple in the face over other people's relationships, illicit or licit with the opposite sex, were queers, and that was widely known. David said that he heard Dunne had been called Daisy as a child and maybe they should revive the name. Dunne waged a war on them and saw to it that their every activity was monitored, their letters scrutinized, and even if they were going for a quick cigarette they were sure to be caught and reported.

In a way it was no harm, it gave them time to study, for what else was there to do? And for Nolan it was particularly helpful because it took his mind off the faithlessness of Fiona. David was mightily pleased to hear that Caroline was suffering the same kind of deprivation at her school. She had been expecting to hear from Gerry Doyle but a similar lack of communication seemed to be occurring there also. Nolan said that Caroline had been pretty annoyed when they had been home at half term. He had been in a very poor temper indeed on his return; he had telephoned the Doyles in Castlebay and spoken to Gerry. When he had asked to speak to Fiona, he was told that she was studying. Where? Upstairs. Well could she come downstairs? No, not during term time, she had to work. As cool as a cucumber. The rat, and not a word about Caroline either, Nolan had mentioned that she was home for half term, and Gerry Doyle had just said that was nice.

A few weeks later David got a letter signed Charles. The letter in its heavy code seemed to be saying that she was sorry the summer had been a bit complicated and she saw things more clearly now. He read it several times and the message definitely was one of reconciliation. He wrote back a short letter, saying he was too busy to get into correspondence at the moment, with the Leaving and Matric coming up, but he looked forward to seeing her next summer. A distant letter, and he signed himself David not Deirdre, just so that she'd get into trouble in her convent. She needed a little punishment for all she had done to him.

 

Gerry and Fiona Doyle's father was taken off to hospital in the town, and it became known that he would not come back. For a while there was a lot of talk that Mrs. Doyle didn't go in to see him like you'd think she would have done. Then Dr. Power let it be known that the poor woman had a kind of temporary condition, something to do with blood pressure, which meant that she found it very oppressive to go out of the house at all. Dr. Power also suggested that poor Johnny Doyle was better not to be troubled with too many visitors since he found it hard to speak. Gerry drove his father's van everywhere now, and acted as an unofficial taxi service for anyone wanting to go into the town. The nurses said Gerry was an extraordinary visitor. He calmed not only his father but the three other men in the ward.

The screens were put around while Johnny Doyle hissed with what was left of his voice that Gerry mustn't expand, he must listen to nobody telling him that Castlebay was a boom town, there was a living, a small living, nothing more. It wasn't something like a dance hall or a hotel or even like an ice-cream shop that you could make bigger. There were just so many people and so many snaps of themselves they would buy. Gerry agreed, he nodded, he promised.

The old man died more peacefully because Gerry was there easing away his worries. Gerry told him that the business was doing fine, which it was, that Gerry would never expand it, which he would, and that Mam was getting much better, which she was not. Her agoraphobia was so bad now that she didn't even go to answer the door. Gerry had eased her guilt about not going to see her husband by saying that Dad was too tired to talk. He only took Fiona three times because it was too distressing.

Gerry was there when they closed his father's eyes. He didn't cry, he asked the nun was it always as peaceful as this, and the nun said no, Mr. Doyle had been lucky. He had died with few worries. His son was reliable, his wife was cured and his business was in good hands. Not everyone had such peace at the end.

One of the old men in the ward asked Gerry Doyle to come and see them even though his father was gone. Gerry said he would come every week or so, but not regularly because he didn't want the men waiting on him. One of the young nurses who thought that Gerry Doyle was an extraordinarily attractive young fellow told him that he was quite right, and she congratulated him even more when another old man wanted to know if Gerry would take his picture. Gerry looked at the wasted face and the thin neck coming up out of the pajamas and decided against it, but he explained that it was very hard to take pictures indoors with these white walls and he would wait till the weather was better. The weather became better but there were no old men left to take pictures of.

Gerry put all his efforts into his work, his mother got a bit better sometimes and at other times she got worse. He never let Fiona come home from the pictures in the dark by herself, and he helped her to do the housework, especially cleaning the windows and polishing the brass knocker on the door so that the place looked well on the outside. Since nobody much came in, the inside wasn't so important.

But if you saw Fiona Doyle with her shiny ringlets and her well-ironed dresses, or Gerry Doyle with his elfin smile and easy ways, you would never know that there was a thing wrong in that house; or that their father had died from cancer, that their mother was in the grip of her nerves and that the bank manager had offered to give them a big loan to expand the business. Gerry told his mother that Dad had told him to go ahead with any plans and his mother fretted and worried about that, but since she worried about everything it didn't make any difference to him.

Fiona must have understood that his father's wishes did not include any kind of expanding, but she said nothing. She was quiet and smiled gently but said very little. That's the way Gerry thought it was best to be for a girl. Otherwise you got your name up with people and you got talked about, and people misunderstood. He didn't want any of that for Fiona.

 

The letter from Sean had an Italian stamp. He had been five weeks in Rome, he said, and had wanted to get settled in before he wrote. Things were progressing but very slowly. He had no idea that there would be such an endless form-filling and waiting about and answering the same questions twenty times for some underling and trying forty times to see the person one step up but not being able to. Still the process was under way. He and Shuya had got here pretty exhausted after such a long journey and he was working now as a tutor to a very ancient family, real nobility. They had a house in Ostia which was at the mouth of the river Tiber and on the sea. It was a huge villa, and Sean taught the boys for three hours a day, which gave him time to go up to the Vatican to see how things were getting on. Shuya helped in the linen room because she was a wonderful seamstress. The children loved the place, they had a little lodge of their own to live in, they were well established there. It was torturing to be so near and yet so far. Last week he had seen a group of Irish pilgrims; they had all carried Aer Lingus bags with the name of the travel agency added to it. He had been dying to talk to them, but he was keeping his word. If Angela said it was so desperately important that nobody must know until after the laicization then she must have her reasons, he had held himself back from chatting to his compatriots. Sometimes when little Denis said the sea was beautiful Sean got an urge to carry him in his arms right back to the beach at Castlebay. He was longing to hear from her, and of course letters would travel much quicker to Italy than to Japan.