Echoes (67 page)

“I'm very sorry. When you put it like that, it's indefensible.”

“Darling heart, I'm not blaming you. I'm only asking you as my best and dearest friend, can you tell me what's wrong?”

“I don't know. I didn't think anything was.”

“But we can't live like this. I mean, you can't go on like this—if I weren't a doctor I'd bring you to a doctor.” He smiled and put both his hands on her face.

“What do you think?” she looked like a worried child.

“I think it's a depression.”

“I'm not sad.”

“No, a clinical depression.”

“But I swear I'm not depressed.”

“And your exams?”

“Yes, but I've got over that. Honestly I have. I had harder things to fight against ten years ago. Now I'm a nice middle-class married lady, no worry about the fees. If I haven't the guts to do it again it's my own fault, not anybody else's. Not Liffey's fault, not yours, only mine.”

“And will you have the guts to do it again?”

“I think I'm too tired. There, I've said it again.”

“I'd like to give you an antidepressant.”

“More energy, like?”

“No, I'm not going to talk to you as if you were an ignoramus. They've got nothing to do with iron or energy. They work on the chemicals, on amino acid in the brain, and on the nerve endings. It would take about three weeks to make any difference.”

“What does your dad think?”

“I'll ask him.”

“I'm sure you have asked him. It doesn't matter. You have to ask him things.”

“He thinks you're just lonely and unsure of yourself here.”

“And you think it's a postnatal depression, and I think it's just tiredness.”

“It could be a bit of all of them,” David said.

“Well, feed me the medicine, Doctor, and let's hope we see a miracle cure.” She smiled at him, a smile from the old days, and he went to sleep feeling a little better than he had felt for some weeks.

Next day he suggested that they take Liffey to see Mr. Kenny, and Clare said that was a great idea; the nice old solicitor had sent them a lovely silver spoon for the baby. But when David got home expecting Liffey and Clare to be ready, the baby hadn't been changed or dressed, and Clare said she felt very tired today.

David said fine, they'd go another day, and without making any big drama out of it, he started her on a course of Tofranil.

 

“I was up this way and I wondered if there was a cup of tea going.”

“Nobody's up this way, but you can have a cup of tea,” she said.

“You never come downtown anymore,” Gerry said.

“And how would you know whether I do or not?”

“Your mother mentioned it to me, as it happens.”

“Oh, Lord. I meant to go to see her this week.”

“This week? Clare, she's only ten
minutes
away. She thinks you've joined the gentry.”

Clare felt very guilty. The days ran into each other, yes, it was a whole week since she had brought the baby over to her mother, it must be three days at least since she had seen her mother-in-law.

“Do you feel all right, Clare?” Gerry asked gently. He was sitting at the kitchen table.

She was pouring the kettle of water into a teapot.

“Thank you very much for all this interest, Dr. Doyle. Have you become a medical consultant now as well as a home counselor, bearing me advice from my family?”

“I'm serious, Clare.”

She brought the tea to the table.

“I'm tired, that's all. It's very exhausting looking after a baby.”

“That one doesn't seem to need much looking after. She's fast asleep.”

“Ah, but they wake up, Gerry. That's a little trick they have.”

They drank their tea.

“And is the handsome young doctor giving you anything for your tiredness?”

“Yes, of course, he is . . . a course of tablets.”

“Good. I'm glad he noticed.”

“Please don't speak badly of David, Gerry. It makes me very upset.”

“I'm not speaking badly of him. I'm just saying he's wrong for you.”

“Now you really must go.” She stood up, coldly. “Friend or no friend, Gerry, you are not coming into my house when David is not here and saying that. No, you bloody can't.”

“You're only getting upset because it's true.”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous. You can win any argument if you say things like that. The truth is, I am upset to hear any bad reference made to David at all, and if you ever knew what it was like to love someone rather than just . . . well . . . use them . . . then you'd understand.”

“I love you,” he said.

There was a silence.

Then she threw her head back. “Don't be idiotic. You only say that because you once or twice made a pass at me, and I didn't give in. You feel it's broken the track record for you—it's not one hundred percent. Bingo! Isn't that it? That's what it's all about. I pity any girl you really say that you love because you don't know what the word means.”

He sipped his tea. “In this case I suppose it means that I'd do anything to have you, anything.”

She felt frightened.

“Please . . .” she began.

“I saw David one day last week kneeling in the middle of the road. I thought of putting my foot on the accelerator. Nobody would have blamed me. He was in the middle of the street. Any court would have let me off. Then I saw he was looking after a puppy someone had run over. I couldn't do it.”

Clare stood up. “You aren't serious. You're just saying these things to make yourself sound like a villain.”

“No, it's quite true. Quite true.” His voice was calm.

“But
why
?”

“Who knows? Who knows anything about why people love other people? Anyway I decided that it could never be done that way, and even if David had an accident, a genuine accident, and you were a grieving widow, that mightn't work. It might take years for you to get over him. So it has to be a different way entirely.”

“This is a game, is it?”

There was another silence.

Clare didn't like him sitting there looking at her. “I'll tell you something. Maybe it's foolish but I'll tell you anyway. I don't feel all that well, I think I have a sort of depression, and honestly I can't take any more upset. I would be sitting here day and night in a panic if I thought that anything you were saying,
any
of it, were true. Can you reassure me that it's not? Please?”

“I thought you had a depression,” he said sympathetically. “Remember Fiona did too, in England that time. But she got over it, and so will you. Is he giving you proper tablets for it?”

“Yes.”

“You'll be fine, and you'll be back at your books, and madam there will grow up to be a pride and joy to you.”

It was as if he hadn't said any of the other terrible things. Clare felt
dizzy.

“So put everything out of your head. I'll just love you quietly from a distance. Forever. You know?”

“Or until summer,” she said.

“No, forever. But you're right. There's no point in getting you upset. You're to get yourself better now.”

He got up to leave.

“Yes. Yes, I will. I'll be fine.”

“And go to see your mam, eh? And Josie, right?”

“Right. Goodbye, Gerry.”

The baby woke just then and began a little cry.

“Aren't you going to pick her up?”

“Yes, in a minute. I was just seeing you off. Hush, Liffey. I'm just coming.”

“Liffey?” he smiled from the door. “You call her the name I gave her.”

 

“I think we're going to have to come to terms with pastry,” Angela said.

“I came to terms with it years ago. I love it.”

“No, I think we should make it. We've been avoiding all these recipes that begin telling you to roll out the crust. Let's make the damn thing tonight.”

“Right,” he said. “Will I get the ingredients?”

“No, I'll call into O'Brien's on the way back from school. I think it's only flour and lard or something, but I might be wrong.”

“I can't think of any other woman of your age who doesn't know how to make pastry,” he said, teasing her.

“Less of that. You got yourself an intellectual as a girlfriend. You should be delighted with yourself and counting your blessings all the time.”

“Are you my girlfriend?” he said, pleased.

“Of course I am. I didn't mean to be but I am,” she said.

The following night they made the pastry. It was nightmarish. The book had said you could use lard
or
butter
or
margarine.

“Why doesn't it tell us what ordinary people use?” Angela fumed.

It had told them to
Rub the Fat into the Flour
.

“That actually is not English. You rub something out, or you rub something. You don't
rub in. God,
these people.” They made it look like breadcrumbs which is what it said, but it also said use a Light Hand.

“That's the most stupid thing I ever heard. How can you be light with all this rubbing?” Dick had an apron on over his good suit. Angela had insisted.

“I don't know what you wore a good suit like this for, just to do cooking,” she scolded. But she knew well . . .

It was the same reason that she had worn a smart blouse and washed her hair.

The question had to wait until they worked out what Bake Blind meant. By process of elimination they discovered it meant that you put the pastry into the oven and you cooked it by itself first. Angela wrote a short note to the book's publishers saying that it should be withdrawn for its general misinformation.

Then they sat down and poured themselves a drink. Dick stood up again and said he would like Angela to marry him.

“Dick, are you sure? You've been asking me a long time you know.”

He put his glass of orange squash down on the table and took her hands. “I thought that maybe when you let slip that you were my girlfriend that we had made a bit of progress,” he said.

“I'm very difficult,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

“And you're set in your ways of course,” she added.

“I am
not
set in my ways. When I got to know you, which is not today or yesterday, I was set in my ways. Now I do all kinds of things I'd never have done before. I read long books. I cook great meals. I'm cheerful instead of miserable. What do you mean, set in my ways?”

“Yes, please.”

“What?”

“I said yes, please. I'd love to marry you.”

 

Angela tried on the beautiful ruby ring—the ring that Dick Dillon had bought long ago hoping for the day it would be needed. It was perfect.

“I'll make you a good wife—not a peaceable one mind, but I'll be good to you, and love you and look after you.”

“The love bit is the most important one,” he said shyly.

“It is for me too. I just felt awkward saying it.”

“We don't need to feel awkward anymore,” he said, and they sat in the firelight, as the pastry burned black in the oven and the red ruby glittered and shone.

 

“Do you have this funny feeling that it's all over? It's all happened? Like everything went into the past tense instead of the future tense?” asked Clare.

David looked at her. He had no feeling like that at all. “I know, I know,” he said, his heart heavy.

“Oh, good. I was afraid it was just me. I suppose we'll get used to it, and adapt.”

“I think that's what happens to people,” he said.

“It's not regrets or anything. You know that?”

“Of course.”

“But you must find that too. I mean you don't regret coming back here, but the kind of work you do, the life we lead, it sort of happened a bit soon, didn't it?”

He patted her hand. She
was
much brighter than before, she was far more aware of Liffey and spent hours playing with her. She had taken driving lessons from Dick Dillon. David had even seen some of her history textbooks out by the window again.

Perhaps Clare was just too young and unprepared to settle down so quickly. Perhaps she would never settle down. It made it all the harder to tell her that he
loved
this life. He liked caring for sick, frightened people, and curing them with medicines from his black bag; or sewing up their wounds; delivering their children sometimes or closing the eyes of their dead. A couple of years ago he might have been mildly tolerant of his father's brand of medicine, preferring instead to think of a more scientific approach. Now he couldn't see anything that would be better for the patients than to see a face they trusted, an old face and his son a newer face. This gave them some confidence and very often that was three-quarters of the battle.

It all made him feel unsettled. He didn't worry about Clare's health anymore but he felt that the great closeness they had grown used to, and accepted as if it was their natural right, had disappeared. The words were the same, the interest was there, she was eager to hear about his cases and discuss them. But it was as if she believed that somehow they had been shunted into a siding and forgotten about, and they were trapped in this middle-aged world, so they had better play the role of old people as cheerfully as possible.