Echoes (70 page)

“I came back and sewed up the eye of a child of five whose father hit her with a chair. The father is in a worse state than the child. I have to write a report of it all for Frank Conway. Frank Conway asked me how his mother was and I had to tell him she won't come out of hospital.

“Then Dad asked me if I'd mind looking after everything on my own for a week in about a month's time. He's feeling very tired he says. He wakes at night with his heart racing. He'd like a little rest.

“Rest? He's hardly doing a quarter of the load, so if he wants a rest at this level of work, the man is really bad. Then I come back here and I'm met with pleas and beggings to come to Dublin, which I can
not
do much as I might like to. And now the whole fabric of life has to be analyzed.”

There was a silence.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“There's no reason why you should be. These are the joys and horrors of my day, not yours.”

“What
would
you like from me? What would have been best tonight? Tell me.”

“I suppose a bit of peace, chat about other things, not about us and where we were going and who loved whom more.”

He stood up and put his arm around her. “It's all right, Clare. It's not magic all the time, but people in jobs like ours, well, like mine and when you were studying feverishly you were the same, you understood . . . in the time off you need just to relax, not to have to think of what love is and what it isn't.”

“I see. I do,” she said.

The telephone rang. David answered it.

“Oh, hallo.” His face broke into a smile. She knew it was Caroline Nolan, who understood what people wanted in their time off. They didn't want
concepts,
they wanted a nice effortless exchange of words and an arrangement to play golf.

 

She wrote to Emer and said she wouldn't come just yet, she wanted to stay at home to sort out a few things. Emer said there was no bother, the bed was always there. Mention of the beds in Emer's house always caused Clare to feel a little guilty.

 

Angela was a very good golfer, Jimmy the Pro said. She had a swing like a man. Angela did not regard this as the high praise which Jimmy intended it to be.

“Your little friend here now isn't too bad either.” Clare made a face at him. “Try to keep your head still and you wouldn't be a disgrace at all.”

“Great,” Clare said.

“Why don't you come out and play with that husband of yours sometimes? When the solicitor lady isn't around. I bet David would love a good game of a Saturday.”

“I must, but I'd be no match for him.”

“Oh, you'd give him a game. You did quite well there at the second. You were on the green in three and you only took two putts.”

“But it's a par three.”

“It's very respectable, I tell you.”

 

“Was it good, the golf today?” she asked him when he came home next time.

“No. I couldn't hit a ball out of my way.”

“What did you get on the second?” she asked innocently.

“Don't talk to me about the second. It's a par three. I took seven,” he wailed.

“Never mind. There are days and days, aren't there?”

He looked at her gratefully.

 

In women's magazines they told you to smarten up your appearance, lose weight and turn back into the girl he married. She tried wearing makeup but rubbed most of it off again; it looked heavy on her and unnatural in this part of the world. Her clothes were all right; she had a few nice jumpers and skirts and she wore smart blouses as well. She didn't need to lose weight. She was almost too thin if anything, and she was better-looking than the girl he had married. So there was no joy there. The women's magazines had never met a wife who was so tense and irritating that she had driven her husband into the arms of a country solicitor. That wasn't one the agony aunts could handle.

But still she would try. She followed every bit of an article in
Woman's Own
about how to do a perfect evening makeup.

She used the shadow and the eyeliner exactly as they directed.

She put on the taffeta skirt she had worn only once at the dance. And a nice top. She got her hair set in big loose ringlets.

Chrissie came over to the hairdresser's and stood in her dirty overall.

“I saw you coming in here. Where are you going tonight?”

“Nowhere,” Clare hissed from under the dryer.

“You must be going
somewhere
. Why else are you getting your hair done?”

“Oh, go away, Chrissie,” she said.

“This is a public place. You can't order me around here.”

Clare knew that everyone would hear of the pleasant sisterly exchange between the young doctor's wife and the assistant in Dwyers' butchers.

 

She called in to her mother.

“Are you all right, Clare? You look as if you've been crying.”

“It's makeup, Mum.”

“Where's Liffey?”

“Nellie's minding her. I was getting my hair done.”

“Waste of money in this wind. It will be blown out before you get home.”

Jim came into the shop. Clare turned around and spoke to him, moving her lips deliberately.

“I wish you wouldn't speak to Jim like that,” her mother said. “You make it sound as if he's a halfwit. Jim's not a halfwit. He's only idle—aren't you, Jim?” Her tone was affectionate but she got no reply. Jim hadn't seen her lips move and he hadn't realized that anyone had spoken to him.

 

She had slaved over a good dinner for David, he was tired and distracted, he didn't notice her hair, her eyes, the food or the way she had made everything look nice.

He said he was exhausted, they went to bed early, and David fell asleep as she was about to move toward his side of the bed.

 

“Caroline?”

“Oh, David, don't tell me you're going to cancel the golf. I've been looking forward to it all morning.”

“So have I. No, of course, I'm not canceling it. Look, I was thinking. It's such a long drive back for you after the game. Why don't we have a meal before you head off?”

“Oh, that's very nice, but I don't want to put Clare to too much . . .”

“No, I thought we'd go out somewhere, you know.”

A pause.

“Yes, that would be super. Where did you think?”

“Well, I don't know why I said somewhere. There only is one place, the hotel. We can get a nice enough meal there.”

“Great, that's very nice. Give me the strength to drive back here again.”

“Good, good. I'll book us a table then. I'll ring them and reserve a table for the two of us.”

 

At first it was just a game of golf with Caroline; then it was golf and a couple of drinks at the club. Now it was golf, drinks and dinner. Josie was on the phone next day. Just for a chat.

“I hope the food wasn't too good last night. You'll be setting me impossible standards,” Clare laughed.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I'm going to ask the golfers to come
here
next week. Would you and Martin join us as well?”

Josie thought that would be great. She was relieved to know that Clare was in the picture about David playing golf and being seen with Caroline. Her sister Rose had come in all excited from the dining room last night to say that David Power and Caroline Nolan were holding hands under the table. But that mightn't be true. Rose had always had a soft spot for David, and Rose had been very bitter and odd since Josie had announced her engagement.

 

Clare asked Molly if she'd like to come to dinner next Thursday.

“It's a bit far in advance to be planning that, isn't it?” Molly said. “But that would be very nice. Do you think you could manage it?”

 

Angela said that under any other circumstances she would drop everything and come, but the Mother Provincial of the order was visiting the school and the nuns were having a sort of feast for her. In all the years she had worked in that school since 1945 they had never offered them a bit of food and now it was happening. “It will be horrific. I'll take notes in a jotter and tell you later.”

“In all the years you've known
me
this is the first time I've ever offered you a bite of food, and it would be the same night,” Clare sighed.

“Is it for anything special?”

“Survival or something,” Clare said.

“Oh, you're inviting your mother-in-law?”

“And my husband's golf partner.”

“That's ambitious. What are you giving them to eat?”

“I haven't thought yet.”

“Let me give you a hint. Give them something cold to start, like hard-boiled eggs with stuffing in them. Emer said that she went out to a house to dinner in Dublin and they had a whole lot of tins of sardines and lemon juice mashed up and served in a china bowl and people helped themselves and spread it on bread and it was lovely.”

“That might be fine in Dublin, but if you didn't give them soup here they'd have you taken to the county home.”

“Soup's hard to concentrate on and serve if you've got to think of the next bit.”

“Keep your fingers crossed for me, will you?”

“You'll be fine,” said Angela with no confidence in her voice.

 

Old Mr. Kenny said that it was very nice of the young people to think of inviting him to dinner, he was very touched. And that made up her eight.

She asked Nellie to help her bring two chairs from the big house and she went through all her dishes and cutlery to make sure she had enough. She did all her preparations secretly when David wasn't there. Any time he came home she dropped the fussing. He was pleased about the dinner, that meant that he couldn't really have a great deal to hide, she thought. If he and Caroline had been up to anything more than these long relaxed conversations, the quick peck on the cheek as they said goodbye, surely he couldn't bring her into the house and act as if nothing was going on. She had phoned Caroline at work, and she too had been pleased at the idea of dinner after golf.

“What a lovely thing to suggest, Clare. Will you be able to manage?”

“Manage what?” Clare asked pleasantly, seething with rage.

“Oh, dinner and everything.”

“Gosh, I hope so,” Clare said and went back to the kitchen in a fury.

She took Liffey out of the pram and spoke to her seriously. “Listen to me, kid. This world is full of bullshit, as my friend Mary Catherine, who is your godmother, used to say in her less refined moments. Now you and I aren't going to put up with that. We are not going to be walked on, Liffey Power. And I make you a solemn promise. If you are a good baby on Thursday, if you don't wet anyone or get sick over them or cry, I will give you a great life full of freedom and adventure, and if you want to go up in a Sputnik and your father says no, I'll fight that you can go up in a Sputnik.”

Liffey clapped her hands, pleased with all the concentration.

“So that's it, a deal. Good.”

Bones came into the kitchen.

“And you too, friend, no scratching your bum when they're here, no huge unexpected howls because you've seen a bluebottle or the light-house or anything. Just look like a sweet affectionate hound who loves the young mistress. Of course, you could take a bite out of Miss Nolan's rear end but make it look as if she attacked you first. What will I give you? I'll tell you. I'll save you from the knacker's yard. David said you might have to be put down, I won't hear of that.”

Bones smiled at her and she went back to the cookery book.

 

It would have been so easy if she could have had Nellie, and Nellie would love to have helped, but the whole point of it was that she couldn't. She
had
to do it on her own. She couldn't even let Nellie know how nervous she was. Nellie's first loyalty was to her own household, she could well tell Molly that there was pandemonium out in the Lodge. That would defeat the whole thing. She had phoned Valerie for tips, and Val had said keep it simple and give them so much to drink they won't remember what they had to eat, which might have been fine for Val's people but was not much help here. Val said that she should warm the bread rolls and put cream in the soup, and to have mashed potatoes or roast potatoes because they couldn't let you down.

Chrissie said wasn't it great to be able to afford huge lumps of beef like this.

“Why didn't you ring up and we'd have sent it over to you?”

“I hoped if I came you might give me a nice cut and show me what direction to carve it in,” Clare said humbly.

“Carve it? Just cut a lump off for each person like you always do,” said Chrissie, helpful and sensitive butcher-sister who could be relied on to put your nerves at ease before an occasion.

 

Thursday was early closing day in the town twenty miles away. It was David's golf day, and it was the day of the dinner.

Clare thought the women's magazines would be proud of her and the way she said to David that he must bring Caroline back to the house whenever he liked, she would want to change for dinner. The others were coming about seven, so after they had a few drinks in the club . . .

“Won't we be in your way?”

“Not at all,” Clare trilled.

He kissed her goodbye on the nose and then kissed Liffey.

“Bones is creaking a lot, isn't he? I wonder if he is in pain. The problem is he always seems to be smiling—you wouldn't know.”