Echoes (51 page)

She contemplated not telling him. For two whole hours.

Then she told him. He asked for his three days' leave at that time.

“I hope we won't have to be doing any more novenas,” Valerie grumbled.

 

“Suppose I never want to see you again afterward?” she said as they went to the bedroom.

“Why wouldn't you want to see me again afterward?”

“Mary Catherine didn't with James.”

“They don't love each other. They're only just pretending to.”

“So being in love would make all the difference?”

“That's what I've always heard.”

 

David stroked her long fair hair on the pillow afterward. He kept moving his hand from the top of her head to the end of the hair. He was afraid to speak in case she was hurt or unhappy.

Her eyes were open as she lay there beside him but he couldn't read her face. Was she frightened? Or disappointed? Had she felt anything like the pleasure that he had, or the peace he felt now?

“David,” she said. Her voice was very small.

He gave a great cry of delight and gathered her up in his arms and held her to him. He couldn't believe that it was possible to be so happy.

James Nolan tracked David down eventually.

“I thought you'd been murdered and the body buried,” he said. “Nobody knew where you were.”

“Is anything wrong?” David asked quickly.

“Depends how you view it. Your mother's coming to stay with mine tomorrow. Both maternals are a bit shirty that you couldn't be found. I think you'd better ring your own to pat down ruffled feathers. Where were you anyway?”

“Wouldn't it
have
to be this weekend she was looking for me? Wouldn't you bloody know.”

James shrugged. “I did my best. I thought maybe you'd gone off with a bird. I said there was a match on and that you might have gone to that.”

“A match for three days!”

“I said it was in Northern Ireland.”

“OK, that'll do. Thanks, James.”

“Don't hang up. Where
were
you?”

“As you said. At a match.”

“I'll deal with you. You're meant to be coming to lunch with us on Sunday.”

 

Molly Power was martyred, on the phone.

“Please don't think I'm checking up on you. I don't mind where you go on your time off. Your father's always saying you're a grown man. I agree entirely.”

“I'm glad to know you're coming up to Dublin,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“It's just that the Nolans thought it was so
odd
that you couldn't be found. I mean, David, nobody wants to keep checking up on you. I've told you that. It's just that if anything happened to your father—God forbid that it should—and we were looking for you . . .”

He held the receiver at arm's length. He would like to have smashed it against the wall.

“. . . do you think you'll be able to
tear
yourself away from
whatever
is occupying you so much to come and meet us when I'm in Dublin?”

“I'm really looking forward to Sunday lunch,” he said, willing an eagerness into his voice.

“Am I not going to see you
until
Sunday?”

“No . . . I meant that, in particular. . . . Of course, I'll see you before then.”

He leaned his head against the wall when the three minutes were up. “Clare,” he whispered to himself. “Clare, Clare.”

“Are you all right, Doctor?” A young nurse with freckles was looking at him. A lot of the young housemen went a bit loopy, she had been told, and she thought it could well be true.

 

Angela read the letter with great surprise. If Clare had got into a political group, or become very active in a cause, she would not have been so surprised, but David, lovely big nice David Power who was coming back to Castlebay next year to share the work with his father? How had it happened? And what would Clare do if she married him? She would marry him, it seemed, reading between the lines. Clare had said how they both felt as strongly as each other and they couldn't bear to be apart. She said he had it as badly as she did. Angela was bewildered, reading the outpourings. Bewildered because there seemed only one thing to say. So she said it:

 

Clare read the letter in dismay. She had been
stupid, stupid, stupid,
to tell Angela. The woman understood
nothing.
There was
no
question of going back to Castlebay. That was what all the
agonizing
was about. David didn't want to, she didn't want to. The
root
of the problem was how to explain this to David's father without breaking his heart. In a million
years
Angela wouldn't understand. She had been too long in Castlebay; that was her trouble.

 

“I'm going to meet your mother-in-law and your intended on Sunday,” Mary Catherine said.

“How on earth . . . ?”

“James has asked me to lunch. He said Mrs. Power was coming and that David would be there too. Didn't he tell you?”

“Yes. It slipped my mind.” David hadn't told her. She was furious.

 

“I didn't want to talk about anything bad, that's all.”

“Your mother coming to Dublin isn't bad.”

“Yes, it is. It makes it all more real, it brings that side of things into our life here.”

“She comes every year. You don't have to announce to her at lunch in the Nolans' house that your plans for the future have changed.”

“No. But I'd prefer to be with you on Sunday. Not there.”

“Mary Catherine's going. They must be having a big do.”

“
That's
an idea. Why don't I get James to ask you too?”

“Are you stark staring mad?” she asked.

 

The ideal thing would have been to find somewhere near the hospital, but the roads were too posh and the prices of flats were too high. If they went far out of the city they could afford somewhere nice but then it would be pointless, David would hardly ever be able to escape to somewhere so far away. They read the small ads in the evening papers and couldn't believe how quickly any reasonable-sounding bed-sitter was snapped up. Sometimes they found long queues on the doorstep of a place that had only been advertised that very day. They got to know other young people and exchanged information. Rathmines wasn't too bad, people said. It was about twenty minutes walk from UCD. Lots of people had bed-sitters there. They went on an expedition, just knocking on every door: that was meant to be as good a way as any. Clare looked around at the area. There was a big main street and a lot of tall houses which had once been family homes but now housed several families. Some were very well kept with well-painted halls, nice half-moon tables where the post for each flat dweller was laid out in neat rows. Others had torn lino, walls badly in need of papering and a faintly unpleasant smell about them. These were the ones they were going to be able to afford.

It was a nice area, they decided. A bit like a village or a place all on its own rather than part of the Dublin they knew. But there were buses constantly back and forth, it was near the canal for walks and, because this was where a lot of young people had flats, the shops stayed open later. There was also a chip shop nearby. Clare looked at it gratefully. This might be very useful indeed.

They looked at the small grimy room up three flights of stairs, in the big house with the uncared-for garden and the peeling paintwork. They looked at each other and said yes. They handed over the first month's rent and moved in on Saturday. The landlord said he hated students usually but seeing that this was a young married couple, that was quite different. He did hope that there was no question of a child yet because they would understand he had to run a quiet house. They shook their heads. No, there would be no question of that and they quite understood.

David had given her a plain ring which cost fifteen shillings; one day it would be a proper one. Like one day it would be a proper place to live. They had an oil stove, and the place smelled of paraffin; the bed was a bit lumpy and the little cooking ring was very dirty after the last tenants. The bathroom was down two floors. But it was their own. And apart from Valerie and Mary Catherine who had to know everything, nobody else in the world knew where they were.

They went out to buy bacon and sausages and a bottle of red vermouth for their first supper. They bought a bookcase at a secondhand shop because the landlord said he didn't like his walls being mutilated. The walls were so rough and uneven, and had such shaky plaster, they would have been hard put to take a nail let alone a shelf. Clare felt settled when the books were in place.

He kissed her hands and looked up at her face. “Look, it's all going to be all right. You'll study and I'll come to you every minute I can. You'll get your First and I'll finish my year and start somewhere else, just as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I won't be an intern, we can live together like this, only better. I'll be getting real money.”

“So will I,” Clare said excitedly, “if I'm tutoring.”

“We haven't a worry in the world. If we can do this”—he waved his hand expansively around the small shabby room—“if we can do this in a few days, can't we do anything?”

 

It was a lonely Sunday, but all Sundays could be a bit down in Dublin.

Clare scraped at the cooking ring for a while, then she went out to buy a Sunday paper. A bell was ringing and great crowds were going into the big church in the main street of Rathmines. She hurried past. There had been five Sundays since she was in mortal sin. She had gone to Mass as usual the first Sunday, but it was ridiculous, she couldn't say any prayers, it was hypocritical to kneel there knowing that she was going to commit further mortal sin. For all her brave words to David, it
was
a sin, and that was that. There was no point in acting the part of a person who was praying. If Clare were the Lord she'd prefer those kind of people not to come to church at all.

Val had gone to a lunch where six people were going to make a curry. It sounded awful, yet Clare would like to have been there. She didn't feel she could ask Emer and Kevin if she could call, it seemed like using them, and anyway she did feel slightly embarrassed going back to their place even though they had no idea why she should be. Mary Catherine was at this Nolan lunch and so was David. Perhaps she should have said yes, and agreed when, in his innocence, he had suggested she should be invited too. It would have been hard to take: Mrs. Power's rage and scorn would have communicated itself to everyone there and Clare didn't really like James or Caroline Nolan enough to think they might have supported her. But still this was very hard too, this hanging around and waiting.

It was like being in love with a married man, like that girl who was so depressed in the hostel last year. She had been having a romance with one of the lecturers; she was suicidal at weekends.

“Don't be so silly,” Clare told herself aloud. “There is no comparison. We have a flat together of our own. He'll be coming back here. It's his
mother
he's seeing, for God's sake, not a wife. Why feel so chilly? Why this awful sense of doom?”

 

There were five cars parked in the drive in front of the Nolans' house: Mr. Nolan's, his wife's, Caroline's and James's. David didn't know who the last one belonged to. He ran lightly up the steps. Breeda opened the door. She took his coat, and put it in the breakfast room, where a lot of other coats were already hanging and draped.

He went up the stairs to the first-floor drawing room. His mother was standing by the fireplace, leaning on the mantelpiece. She looked very made-up and a bit fussy, David thought. Too many frills at her neck and her cuffs. He didn't have time to see who else was there, since Molly gave a scream of welcome.

“The
prodigal
! He's torn himself away!”

He wished she hadn't. It made such a commotion. He should have gone in quietly and greeted James's mother and father. But now because she had called such attention to him, he had to go straight to her.

“You're looking marvelous, Mother,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.