Echoes (29 page)

“Well will we head off then?” Gerry was a great person to drive them. He didn't care enough about Mrs. O'Hara to be making inquiries about how she felt, and he had plenty of good casual chat to keep Angela distracted. Dr. Power had said that since he went into the town every Tuesday to get equipment and supplies, he'd be the very man to give them a lift. Dr. Power had even gone and called on Doyle's Photographies himself to save Angela the business of asking him for a lift.

He was kind and practical about getting the old woman into his van. “Tell me first what movements hurt you most, and I won't drag you the wrong way,” he said.

Mrs. O'Hara had to pause and think. The worst bit was having to bend her legs. Right, that was easily organized, Gerry got a box for her to stand on, then she sat into the front seat of his van and Angela eased her legs in as straight as it was possible to do. Mrs. O'Hara settled in fairly cheerfully. Angela climbed into the back.

“You're very agile for a woman of your age,” Gerry said, smiling at her in the driver's mirror.

“Will you stop that nonsense? I could run rings round you. Your generation have no stamina.” She grinned back at him through the mirror. He was a handsome lad. She had always liked him. Much more than his sister, and she had often asked herself why she didn't take to Fiona Doyle, without ever coming to a satisfactory conclusion.

They were good youngsters both of them. Since their father's death, they had not only kept the business going, they had made it boom. The big increase in visitors had meant a huge demand for snaps. During the summer the Doyles hired another photographer to help out. They had smartened up their little booth on the cliff with bright paint, and they had been doing great business calling to the houses along the Cliff Road and the Far Cliff Road taking family pictures, which they enlarged and presented in a little cardboard frame. Nearly every family wanted to have a souvenir like that, something to show at home, the family in their own place. Messages used to be sent urgently to get young Jimmy back from the amusements, or call young Eddie up from the beach; Mother would change into her best dress and the milk bottle would be hidden away while the picture was being taken.

“I see your star pupil is home from school,” Gerry said.

“She is a star pupil,” Angela said proudly. “I have great hopes for her. I really do.”

“So do I,” said Gerry, smiling roguishly. “Great hopes altogether.”

“Stop sounding like the villain in a pantomime,” Angela said crossly.
Please,
she thought, don't let Gerry Doyle distract Clare before the interview. Don't let him get his hands on her until she's won the Murray Prize.

 

They were very nice to Mrs. O'Hara in the hospital, and the change suited her. Everything was new and interesting: the Little Flower ward with the big statue of St. Theresa and the roses falling around the crucifix in her arms. Mrs. O'Hara had always had a great devotion to the Little Flower. The woman in the next bed was some distant relative by marriage so they spent hours tracing people long dead and lowering their voices about people whose careers had not been too glorious. Angela felt nothing but relief that her mother was being well looked after. Dr. Power had been right: the change would do Mam good. She spent the first few days after her mother left doing a kind of spring-clean. She never liked to paint the place while the housebound woman was there; the smell would be hard to bear. She pulled all the furniture into the middle of the floor and began to take down the books and ornaments. It was a much longer job than she would have believed but it was a very peaceful one. She sat on a ladder dusting books and reading them at the same time, polishing ornaments and remembering who had given them or where they had come from. It was days before she actually began to paint. She had gone in twice and been reassured that her mother was happy and well looked after. This was a good break for her, housepainting in the morning, a stroll down to the hotel, a sandwich sometimes with Dick Dillon, still mourning the fact that he had been put off drink and pushed sideways in the chain of command in the hotel. Then she would go down to the beach, and swim. She would know at least twenty people that she passed, pupils present and past, people from Castlebay sunning themselves. But usually she took a book and sat on the grassy cliff base. Then when it got very hot she would run down into the sea and battle with the breakers. Once she came across a small child who was being constantly buffeted by the waves and knocked down every time she got to her feet. Angela swooped her up and carried her out of the water. She was just the kind of child who could be one of Dr. Power's casualties. The kind of thing he was always worrying about, visitors who didn't know the pull of the current, the strength of the waves. She found herself telling the family tearfully that they must pay more attention to a child of that age or she would be swept out to sea. The child's parents were grateful and startled, and she overheard them saying as she left that possibly she had a child that was drowned herself and that's what had unsettled her so much. Angela didn't
feel
unsettled. She felt fine. But she realized that it was the first summer she had ever got a tan, been to the pictures regularly and gone to the dance.

She hadn't intended going to the dance. She thought women of thirty-five were pathetic in their summer dresses, their white cardigans and their newly lacquered hair queueing up at the ticket desk with the hope of a starry and glittery night ahead. Even when she heard that the Castlebay Committee were having a special dance to raise funds she didn't think of going. The Committee was going to charge a big price for the ticket, but there were going to be enormous spot prizes. Every business in the place was giving something. Gerry Doyle was going to take a family or group portrait free, Mrs. Conway in the post office was offering a set of a dozen views of Castlebay on postcards with a small frame as well. Dwyers' were giving a leg of lamb. Miss O'Flaherty was offering a writing case with pad and envelopes. The O'Briens were giving two big tins of Afternoon Tea assortment, the best biscuits there were. The money they raised would go to make the place look more attractive, to build a proper car park possibly and prevent the road being cluttered with cars making it impossible to get in or out of Castlebay. Or maybe plant a big flowerbed on the way into town where the three roads met. Some people wanted to put up fairy lights down Church Street, and others wanted to have public lavatories built on the beach. It would all be debated long and excitedly during the winter, and the money raised would sit in Mrs. Conway's post office for ages. Angela, as a teacher and respected member of the community, had been on the Castlebay Committee but it never occurred to her that she was expected to go to the dance. Dick Dillon said that this is what always happened when you had a bunch of old meddlers and busybodies running things, now they were all nicely stuck and had to go to the wretched dance or their lives wouldn't be worth living.

“Will you come as my partner?” he asked Angela in a voice filled with such doom he might as well have been asking her to leap off the cliff with him in a suicide mission.

“Certainly,” Angela said.

He looked at her suspiciously. “You can collect me at the hotel then,” he said.

“No, Dick, a gentleman collects a lady at
her
house,” Angela said in a parody of every Doris Day film she had seen. If Dick had seen the films he didn't recognize the parody.

“Very well,” he said. “Seeing as how I don't drink anymore, I might as well get value out of the car by driving it.”

She hardly thought about the dance again, she was so busy painting the house. She decided that the only way to do it was to divide the big downstairs room into two halves, and when the first half was painted she would put back the books and knickknacks before starting the other side. It did look much brighter and more awake. She was standing in a paint-spattered smock and her hair in an old scarf admiring it, when a car stopped at the door. James Nolan and David Power had come to call. Better than that, they had brought a bottle of champagne cider.

She was delighted to see them. She had followed their careers with delight and when nobody else remembered what exams they were doing, Miss O'Hara always did. She used to know the names of their professors too and she never asked embarrassing questions like did they have girlfriends, did they spend much money on drink, and what exactly were they doing in France?

They picked chairs and stools out of the heap of furniture and sat happily telling her about everything. David was tall and fair-haired with a peeling nose, and James small and dark-looking like a little Italian, so tanned was he after whatever they had been up to in France. They were full of plans for the summer. It was going to be two hours' work every morning and then free as the air all day and all night. They wanted to know was there any talent in town. Any gorgeous blondes or redheads with tiny waists and huge bosoms. Angela said she wouldn't have noticed if the town was full of them, but they'd have to look sharp before Gerry Doyle grabbed everything that was going.

“That fellow, is he still at it?” James Nolan said. “I know I'm a small runt of a thing myself, but he's a dwarf. What
do
they see in him?”

“I can't believe he's
still
the Romeo,” David complained. “He was always getting the girls without having to lift a finger. I'd have thought they'd have seen through him by now.”

“Different crop every year of course,” Angela said.

“But seriously, Miss O'Hara, seriously.” David looked lovely when he was trying to be serious. He pushed the long lick of hair on his forehead back so that it stood up like a fan. “Now would you as a
woman
. . . well, as a
female
—would you tell us what's so attractive about him.”

“As a
female,
I would find it very hard to explain. He's good company. He has a nice smile. He smiles a lot. He doesn't try too hard to please, but he does seem to
like
women, without exactly flirting with them. Is that any help?”

She looked from one handsome student to the other as they sat in her upside-down house. They were both thoughtful.

“That's a great help, actually,” David said earnestly. “Not trying too hard to please. I think that's where I fall down.”

“I don't think I
like
women like he does. I think I like the idea of women more than I like them as people,” said James Nolan.

“I'm sorry I don't have a couch free,” Angela laughed. “You could lie down one by one and I could psychoanalyze you. Maybe I could psychoanalyze half of Castlebay, and I'd make a fortune. Your father could send me a few patients, David, and maybe Father O'Dwyer could too. Oh and anyone left roaring and bawling after the dance could always come here for a midnight session, I'd straighten them out.”

She was great at knocking down their pomposity. David had been glad to hear from his father that the old woman was in hospital for the summer, he didn't like calling to see Miss O'Hara when her mother was there, you felt you should talk to both of them. He remembered why he had come.

“I really wanted to know if you'd like to come with us to the Castlebay Committee dance next week. Mummy and Daddy are going too and the Nolans and we were all going to have a drink in our house first and go together.”

Angela was flattered to have been asked; but she regretted that she had a date already.

They were excited when they learned it was Dick Dillon. A romance? A local love affair possibly? A slow-flowering friendship blossoming into a late romance? Would there be wedding bells pealing out from the church before long?

She said they shouldn't be so cruel and heartless and tease an old maid, a poor spinster of the parish. David said it was just because she wasn't an old maid they could tease her. It was the best compliment she had ever got, even though anyone else hearing it might have thought it inexplicable.

 

Clare came twice a week to rehearse the interview for the Murray Prize. They had found out who sat on the board: an uncle of Josie Dillon on her mother's side was one of them. He was a bank manager and the Murray money was in his bank so that gave him some kind of right to be there when it was being handed out. According to Josie he was mad and snobbish, and thought that Dillon's Hotel in Castlebay was rather beneath him. Angela and Clare were still working on their strategy for him. Clare arrived shortly after the boys had gone.

“The place stinks of drink,” she said accusingly.

“It's my age. At the change of life we women become all funny. We start shifting the furniture around and drinking on our own.”

Clare laughed. “You're never at the change of life yet, Miss O'Hara?”

“
Of course, I'm not!
God, remind me never to make jokes talking to children. Please Lord, let me never be ironic again. The drink was a gift from two young gentlemen callers. They came and brought champagne cider and invited me to the Castlebay Committee dance. How about that for a poor, old, decrepit, barren geriatric?”

“Who was it?”

“David Power and James Nolan.”

“And are you going?”

“No, I thought I'd leave the field free for younger, plainer women. I'm going with Josie's uncle. He did ask me first. Are you going?”

“I suppose I will, Josie and I'll go together. You don't need a partner. I think she'd rather like it if James Nolan was around, she fancies him a lot.”

“Tell her to pretend she doesn't even notice him—that will work. Come on now. Do something to help me. Lift one end of this contraption with me. I'm going to paint it out in the back. If I paint it here I'll stick to it every time I pass by. It's not going to rain they say on the wireless, so that should mean we'll have a nice fine evening—”