Echoes (62 page)

She learned that her own brother, Jim, was very hard of hearing—not just slow, and stupid, as they had all thought. He was going to have a hearing aid, and David said that there could well be total hearing loss.

“Maybe you could teach him lip-reading, after finals.”

“Teach him what?” Clare laughed. “I don't know how to lip-read.”

“But you could learn, couldn't you? It could make all the difference. Otherwise he'll just end up like Mickey Mack or someone.”

Clare was shocked. Yes, of course, she could learn. There must be books on the subject, and diagrams. Yes, of course, she would.

David was becoming like his father already, concerned and involved in everything that happened. In a few weeks people had stopped thinking of him as a boy helping his father and holding the fort until the real doctor arrived. The day came when a woman said to David's father that she had begun with young Dr. Power and she thought she would continue with him if that was all right, he had been so helpful.

David's father took out a bottle of sherry at lunch that day, and Molly had laughed with pride and told Nellie about it as the meal was being put on the table. And as they smiled about how well David was settling into the practice, no mention was made of his wife sitting fifty yards away, bent over her studies with a cup of soup.

 

There was no phone in the Lodge yet but there was a buzzer from the house, so that David could be woken for night calls. It was awkward, because it meant he had to go up to his parents' to hear the details before setting out. Still, they had been promised a phone soon, and were at the top of the priority list.

Clare heard the buzzer with surprise one morning; David had long gone on house calls, they must have known she was on her own. Resignedly she walked to the house. Molly was in the hall.

“There's a call from Dublin for you,” she said and held the receiver out as if it might contaminate her.

“I'm sorry for disturbing you,” Clare said.

It was Mary Catherine. She and Val had the most marvelous flat, they were installed now and they would keep it for a year. Val was going to do a Higher Diploma in education and Mary Catherine was going to do a Diploma to be a librarian. Any time Clare wanted to come and stay, there was plenty of room.

A longing so great came over Clare, it almost made her faint.

Miles and miles away from Dracula, who was sighing as if the phone were needed urgently. Molly was just in earshot, fiddling with some flowers that didn't need adjustment.

Clare sighed too.

“Well? Can you come up? Will you?”

“I'll write to you about it.”

“Can't you talk?”

“That's right.”

“Do your best. We'd love you to come. David, too, of course, if he can get away. We've got a big double bed in the spare room.”

“Sounds great.”

“So you'll try?”

“As I said, I'll write.”

She told Mrs. Power pleasantly that her friends were inviting David and herself to visit.

Mrs. Power gave a tinkling laugh. “That's
very
nice of them, Clare dear. But David's never been short of a place to stay in Dublin. Heavens
no.
We've
lots
of friends there, and the Nolans' house has always been a second home to him.”

Clare smiled. And before her face cracked with the effort, she returned to the Lodge and started to bang things, hard, with a ruler. She was so angry she was shaking. She tried to concentrate on her work but
that woman's
superior voice rang in her ears. She was going out.

She left a note on the table in case David called in, and marched out nearly taking the door from its hinges. She walked first to Bumper Byrne's lean-to shed that he called his office, and spoke to him sharply about their gate. It was meant to be a proper entrance, with a gate, and tarmacadamed path. What was it but a hole in the hedge? No. It was
not
perfectly adequate for the moment. She would like it done. This week. Could he tell her which day? No? Well, then, she'd wait here till he
could
tell her which day. No. She didn't mind waiting at all. In desperation Bumper said he'd have someone up there on Thursday, and she thanked him warmly.

Then she went to Peter O'Connor who had a saw and used to cut down trees. He'd be about the only person in Castlebay who could advise her on how to build a hedge.

“I want to plant a hedge that looks small and harmless now but will grow up like a flash and make a big forest,” she said to him.

He knew why she wanted the hedge.

“I'm not great on the pronunciation but I think it's called Cupressors that you want.”

“That's the Latin for a cypress tree—is that what you mean?”

“The very thing. I could get you a set of nice young plants . . .”

“Not
too
young, Mr. O'Connor.”

“When do you want them in?”

“This afternoon. And I'd like them to grow twenty feet tall by next week.”

“Come on, now. She's not as bad as all that?”

Clare laughed. “Of course not. Just as long as it's grown fairly soon.”

 

She called to see her mother. The shop was full.

“Do you want me to get behind the counter and give you a hand?”

“Are you out of your mind? The doctor's wife? Serving? Have some sense.”

 

She went into the hotel.

“Will you have lunch with me, Josie? A real lunch in the dining room? I'll pay. . . .”

“I can't, Clare, not in the middle of the season. Mummy'd go mad and Rose would make another scene. We're meant to leave those tables for the paying customers.”

“I would be a paying customer,” Clare said crossly.

“No, real people. Not us. It's ages since I've seen you. How are you, anyway?”

“Like a weasel,” said Clare and left with a wave.

 

She thought she would go up to Angela's cottage. She bought a bottle of sherry in Costello's, and snapped the head off Teddy Costello who called her Mrs. Power.

“God Almighty, Teddy, we were in mixed infants together—you called me Clare until a few months ago. Am I to start calling you Mr. Costello?”

He stammered, he thought it was what she'd like, what Mrs. Power senior would like. He was sorry.

“You know what they say in the films: ‘You're beautiful when you're angry, Miss Jones.' ” It was Gerry. He had been behind her, and she hadn't noticed.

She laughed, in spite of herself. “No,
really,
Gerry, this Mrs. bit is the last straw.”

“Fiona likes it. She says it makes her feel grown-up.”

“It doesn't do that for me. It makes me feel we're all in some school play or other.”

“You see, I told you,” he sighed. “You should never have married him. Go off and abuse the rest of the town. You've demolished Teddy fairly successfully,” he added good-naturedly, and disappeared.

Just as she was leaving the shop she saw Angela carrying fruit and a big bottle of orange over to the back of Dick Dillon's car.

“Are you going on a picnic?” she asked enviously.

“Just a few miles down the coast. Dick has a day off, we thought we'd explore a bit.”

“Great.”

“Why aren't
you
at your work by the way?”

“I came out for a bit of air.”

“And a something to keep you going?” Angela eyed the bottle-shaped parcel.

“Yes. Well.”

“I hope it helps the studying,” Angela said cheerfully and waved goodbye.

Disconsolately Clare walked back to the Lodge. Her anger with her mother-in-law was gone. But so was a lot of her good spirits. She hoped that David had been in and out while she was on her travels. She didn't feel like talking to him now, she wouldn't be able to get the despondent note out of her voice. There was a note on the table beside her books.

He wrote his name with a heart round it.

She sat down at her table and cried till the tears showered down on her big handwriting in all the files of notes.

He was the most generous and loving man in the whole world and here she was marching around the town trying to build a drawbridge and moat between him and his family. She felt wretched and shabby: maybe some of the things that Dracula believed about her were right? She just wasn't good enough for David.

 

They had their picnic down the coast. There were gulls and two small seals, and a school of porpoises too. They lay in the sun, happy and rested; they ran in and out of the sea; they drank their bottle of wine and their flask of coffee and ate their hard-boiled eggs and brown bread and butter. And the ice cream, which hadn't melted, wrapped up in six newspapers.

They kissed and laughed, and David accused her of having given Peter O'Connor unmentionable favors in order to make him do the hedge so quickly, and even more favors to Bumper Byrne and his gang, who had suddenly produced a very presentable entrance, having promised it since last April.

Clare said all his female patients were in love with him and that Rose Dillon at the hotel was definitely out to get him, married man or not. They wished they had taken old Bones with them; he would have loved this beach but he was getting a bit creaky now and he might have found the walk down and back too much for him.

They were as happy as they ever had been.

 

On September first she went to Dublin on the train. She had fourteen days before her exams began. David was going to come up for two weekends, and then to collect her and take her home when the exams were finished. She said it would be a waste for him to come with her now.

“I wish you all the luck in the world, my girl,” Dr. Power had said, “but you've never done anything except come in the top league in every examination you ever did. Do you remember my driving you into the town all those years ago, to do your scholarship? I remember it as if it were yesterday . . .” Dr. Power beamed at her, and sighed at the way the years had flashed by.

Molly had decided to be charming. “I hope you get all the questions you're looking for,” she said. “Maybe that's not a very intellectual way of putting it but you know what I mean . . .”

They drove round by O'Brien's and she went in to kiss her mother goodbye.

“Lord, child, it's not the ends of the earth you're going to,” Agnes said.

“I know, Mam, but this is
it,
this is the B.A., the degree.”

“Well I know, Clare, and we all hope you'll do very well, but that's all behind you now, isn't it?”

Her mother came to the door and waved, puzzled at the exasperation that had come into Clare's face. After all, she had only said what was true. A lot of people didn't think that Clare should have bothered to go back to college to do that exam after getting married.

It was somehow like showing off.

 

“Will we have to learn first aid?” Val asked fearfully as Clare took off her shoes and eased her back with a cushion.

“What do you mean?”

“In case your man gets born here, what do we do? I know you need a watch to time things.”

“Not a chance. Week beginning October fifteenth. David's father hopes it's going to be the eighteenth, that's the feast of St. Luke apparently, and Luke was a doctor in his time. What is it?” she asked suddenly as she saw Mary Catherine looking at a diary.

“Oh, dear. You'll miss Conferring,” she said.

“I will
not
miss Conferring. I will bloody not. If Patrick Thomas is three days old, I'd be well enough to travel, wouldn't I? I
can't
miss Conferring. Maybe he'll come early. . . .” Clare addressed her stomach. “Be a good boy now and please your Mammy. . . . Arrive around the end of September, maybe the twenty-ninth, so that Mammy will be ready to come back up to Dublin and get Conferred.”

Mary Catherine was still looking at her diary. “That would be quite a good day, actually. Feast of St. Michael and all the angels.”

Clare clapped her hands. “Right! Did you hear that? Be here on September twenty-ninth and we'll add Michael to your names.”

“I thought this yucky mumsy stuff only started
after
they were born,” said Valerie.