Echoes (36 page)

Full of food and confidences and friendship they stood up to go back to the room they were going to transform. They were going to buy a secondhand bookshelf on the Quays, they were going to buy coat hooks and screw them into the wall so that there would be more space for their clothes. They were going to price cheap reading lamps and buy one between them.

Just as they were leaving the restaurant, someone called from a crowded table. “Hey, it's Clare, Clare O'Brien!”

She was startled. All she could see was a sea of young men in duffle coats and scarves. One was waving. It was James Nolan. He stood up and came over to them.

“Well, well, well,” he said.

It seemed to be very little to say after coming all the way across the restaurant.

She introduced him to Mary Catherine and Valerie, smiling at him politely as if to assure him that she wasn't claiming any friendship.

“Well, well,” he said again. “Is the rest of Castlebay up in Dublin too?” His eyes roamed over Mary Catherine and Valerie, assessing them.

“Josie Dillon might be coming up for a few days,” Clare said eagerly.

Josie had begged her to find out James Nolan's haunts, and said that she would love to come to Dublin if Clare could track him down. Imagine meeting him on the very first night!

“Josie?” He looked blank.

“Josie Dillon from the hotel.”

James Nolan shook his head absently.

“You must remember her, you were often with her in the summer,” Clare blurted out, and could have kicked herself.

“I don't think I do.” James was polite but bored by the subject. Clare would have liked to hit him hard.

“It's my mistake. I'm sure she doesn't remember you either.” Her eyes flashed a bit and he looked at her with surprise.

“No. Well. Listen, it's nice to see you girls. Oh, and there's a party on Saturday. All three of you of course. Here, I'll write it down.” He scribbled an address and tune on a piece of paper.

“Ten o'clock! We have to be
back
at that place we're staying by eleven o'clock,” Valerie said, disappointed.

“Late pass. Ask them for a late pass. Cousin invited all three of you to twenty-first. The nuns love cousins. They think they're safe, sign of a big united family. They love twenty-firsts. It gives them a sense of continuity.”

They promised to be there and they linked arms, giggling as they went down the dark unfamiliar streets, and said that they'd all be lost if it had not been for Clare to guide them and tell them where they were and get them invited to a party on their very very first night in Dublin.

 

It was a great alliance. When other girls were lonely and self-conscious, they often looked with envy at the three girls; the tall fair one from the back of beyond with the dark brown eyes, the American with her outlandish clothes, and Valerie, the curly-headed terror. It was Valerie who made friends with a workman doing some building work on the outside of the hostel wall. She pointed out that if he were to put three very sturdy bars jutting at intervals they could climb back into their room at night.

He was very nervous about it. “You might get fellas climbing in to attack you,” he had protested. Nonsense. Valerie explained that there were three of them in the room, and any fellow climbing in uninvited would meet his match. She supervised the placing of the rungs carefully, and also their disguise. No passing nun could see them and realize what they were, a stairway to freedom. Valerie very cunningly asked that one or two extra rungs leading nowhere be hammered in as well. That way the purpose would never be discovered. And indeed it wasn't. They allowed very good friends to know the route, and regularly the light step of a girl was heard to fall into their room and someone, shoes in hand, would creep through, whispering a sorry or a thank you, but giving no explanations.

Clare and Mary Catherine didn't really use their escape route all that often but it kept them sane just knowing it was there. Only Valerie got real value from the contraption. She went dancing and to parties, and needed the footholds she had so cleverly organized at least three or four times a week. Valerie usually lay with her curls barely peeping from above the sheets when Clare and Mary Catherine were heading off to lectures. It was always kept as a polite fiction in front of nuns and other girls that Valerie was very lucky to have late lectures. Valerie rarely attended any of them anyway, no matter what time of the day they were held. As she told Clare and Mary Catherine, her mother had said nothing about passing exams, only about using up the money for fees at university.

 

At Christmas, Valerie went home to her mother, who was going to sit and curse her father all the time; Mary Catherine went to stay with American friends. Clare caught the train home. Her mother had asked Gerry Doyle to pick her up; he sent her a postcard, saying:

 

The other girls were intrigued. Even more when they heard that he was the heartbreaker of the country who had twice invited Clare to his caravan.

She felt cheerful going home. There was no guilt—she had written to her mother every single Friday, and to Tommy as well. She had written less to Angela. She had thought she would write more to her than anyone but it was very hard to describe it all: the National Library every afternoon, where it was peaceful and studious—you felt that everyone there was a real scholar, not just learning things with their hands in their ears for exams. She had read a great deal around the courses and everything on the course. She could meet every member of the Murray Committee, look each one in the eye and say truthfully that their money had not been wasted. Funny that she couldn't seem to write this to Angela.

She saw David Power on the train, and put her head back into her book so that he wouldn't notice her as he came along the corridor. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to him, but it was silly, there she had been three months in the same city and never laid eyes on him, only to meet on the way home—it would be very forced.

He saw her only as they were getting out of the train and his face broke into a great smile. He thought she looked very nice, in her navy duffle coat, knitted navy and white scarf and her hair in a jaunty ponytail with a white bow on it. It was only the other day that she had been a kid. But then, his mother kept saying it was only the twinkling of an eye since he was in rompers.

He saw his father waving from the other side of the gate. “Can we drive you home?” he said. “I'm delighted I saw you in time.”

“I have a lift actually, but thank you very much,” and as they came to the barrier he saw Gerry Doyle leaning casually against the machine that wrote your name in metal.

Gerry wasn't bothering to move and wave and position himself as everyone else was doing, as David's own father was doing. Gerry knew he would be seen when the time came. Clare raised her hand in salute.

“Second fiddle to Gerry Doyle, winter and summer, it's the story of our lives,” David said and went over to his father.

“Your mother's in the car. It's very cold. I didn't want her waiting in the draft.”

“Quite right,” David said. For some reason he couldn't explain to himself he was glad Clare hadn't accepted the lift. His mother didn't really get along with her. All right in her place of course, but David felt that his mother thought her place was behind the counter in O'Brien's, not as a university student and certainly not as a passenger in the doctor's car.

 

She had forgotten it would be so quiet, that it had always been so quiet at this time of year. There were no lights or Christmas trees in the windows, there was no traffic bustling up and down the street. She had forgotten how few people there were there, and how the wet spray stung your face when you went outside the door.

She had forgotten too how handsome Gerry Doyle was. He wore a leather jacket and his hair was long and shiny. In the station he had looked like a film star. He had brought a rug for her to wrap around her knees.

“Is there anything wrong?” Clare asked suddenly.

“Your mother had a fall. But she's fine. Fine,” he said.

“How fine?” Her voice was clipped.

“She nearly came to meet you with me—that's how fine.”

“Why didn't they tell me? Why did no one tell me? Where did she fall?”

“She fell on the cliff path. She broke her ankle. She wasn't even kept in hospital more than one night.”

Clare's eyes filled with tears.

“No, it's not bad. Honestly, she hobbles a bit and that's all. Your dad's being very nice to her and he brings her tea in the morning.”

“She must be bad then. When did it happen?”

“About three weeks ago. Listen, Clare, will you stop? I was going to tell you just as we came into Castlebay so that you'd have no time to be going through all this useless kind of nonsense. So as you'd see her in five minutes and know she was all right.”

“She could have been killed.”

“She couldn't. Don't make it so dramatic. She's been through all that now, it will only make it worse if you start attacking them for not telling you and saying what could have happened.”

He was right. She admitted it grudgingly.

“Very well, tell me about other things. I'll see Mam soon enough.”

He told her that business was changing, as he had always suspected it would. More and more people were bringing their own cheap cameras to the beach, Murphy's chemist was demented with visitors wanting their holiday snaps developed. The demand for beach photographs was growing less.

But then he had always known it would, so the thing to do was to change direction, to expand. He was in portrait photography now, and doing special commissions for hotels and new buildings which wanted prestige pictures of their premises. It meant of course that he would have to improve his own premises. Big important places only came to you if they thought you looked big and important too.

Wasn't that risky? Clare had wondered. No, it was business, Gerry assured her.

He told her that Josie Dillon had managed to get a whole lot of people to come to the hotel for a bridge weekend, and it was such a success that bridge people from all over were going to come there regularly. Josie's uncle Dick had learned to play bridge when he'd been ordered off the drink apparently, and he had been saying for years that they should do this but he'd done nothing about it. Now he and Josie were as pleased as punch. Josie's sisters were hopping mad and her grandmother claimed that it was all
her
idea in the first place.

She told Gerry about the size of the university and about the Annexe where they had coffee every morning and how there were hundreds and hundreds of nuns and priests studying too, which she had never expected.

Was Fiona back yet for Christmas, she wanted to know. It would be interesting to compare notes with her about what her polytechnic was like.

No, she wasn't coming home apparently—in fact Gerry thought he might go over and see her.

“Not coming home for
Christmas?
” It was unheard of.

Gerry kept looking at the road.

“But what's she doing that she's not coming home?”

He sighed, almost his whole body went into the sigh. “Jesus, Clare, you're not an old biddy. Why do you sound so amazed? She wants to stay there, that's all. Do I have to build up a story for you too, an explanation? Will everyone in Castlebay want a full account of what everyone else from Castlebay is doing for the rest of their lives?”

“I'm sorry. You're quite right,” she said contritely. “I don't talk like this in Dublin. It must be coming home that makes me do it.”

“Yeah, well some of us never left home. Don't forget that. But we grow up too in our own way.”

She wasn't sure what he meant but it sounded like a criticism. She nodded apologetically. They drove on in silence for a while.

“I'm going tomorrow in fact,” he said. “I haven't told anyone else. I'll just go.”

“Sure,” she said, “that's a good idea.”

“I might go to see Tommy and Ned while I'm in London,” he said unexpectedly. “I haven't laid eyes on them in years.”

She jumped a little but he couldn't have noticed.

“Do you have their address to give me?”

“No,” she said. “No, I don't.”

“Would your mother . . .”

“I think not.” Her mouth closed like a trap. She too stared ahead of her.

“Right,” he said eventually. “As we were saying there's no reason why being brought up in Castlebay means you've got to be at everyone's beck and call the whole time.”

She smiled, biting her lip. She had as good as told him now, hadn't she? She might as well have said the whole thing. It would have been easier in the long run.

 

Chrissie had got the ring for Christmas, she and Mogsy—whom she would now like to be referred to as Maurice—would be married next June. Mogsy—or Maurice—was building a house for them, a small place up near the creamery. Dwyers' had said Chrissie could go on working until there was a sign of a little Byrne coming along. They couldn't do fairer than that.

Clare's mother looked tired. “Aren't you going to hare up and see your friend Miss O'Hara before you even sit down to talk to us?” she said the first night.

“Don't be giving out to me. I'm only just home.”

“Home! It's not much we'll see of you. Up there with the books, hardly a word to your own flesh and blood.”