Authors: Maeve Binchy
Linda Casey wished she had lived at another time. A time when her talents would have been appreciated. She could have been a royal mistress, or a kept woman in a luxury apartment or even a wife to some gentleman landowner who encouraged her to have a small town house in Dublin.
But no, she was of the here and now, in a world where everyone, men and women, had to go out and work for a living. Were they meant to thank the Women's Lib people for this? A world where relationships were full of compromise, where marriages didn't last. And a world that said you should be grateful day and night because you had a place to live, an education and were young and reasonably good-looking.
Linda didn't think that was nearly enough.
But try telling that to anyone and see how far you got. Not very far with her mother. Mam seemed to have transformed herself into some kind of advertising campaign for how a well-groomed, middle-aged woman should live. She had seen her mother sponging jackets with lemon juice, putting shoe trees in her shoes to keep their shape, polishing her handbag, and creaming her neck with some heavy unguent. And for
what?
Mam was still a sad, driven person. So what if she looked good? Inside, she was like everybody else—a mess.
Linda couldn't really remember when Mam and Dad had got on well. Her sister, Adi, who was two years older, said she could, but then Adi was so sentimental: trees had feelings and we shouldn't sit on leather sofas because an animal had died to make a covering for us to sit on. And as for Adi's boyfriend, Gerry—he was a total nutter! Adi had made herself into a complete doormat for him.
Linda would never put on an act like that for any man, no matter how wonderful he was. But she hadn't met many wonderful men. Or any wonderful men, to be honest. Wherever they were, they weren't in Dublin.
She had been out three times with this fellow called Simon, which by Linda's standards was almost a life commitment. Simon was attractive. He had a rich daddy, a doting mummy and a job in his uncle's estate agency, where he had very little to do. But Simon was accustomed to going out with women who paid their way. They didn't actually halve the price of meals or anything, but sometimes these girls would host a couple of hours’ drinks in a hotel or take half a dozen people to lunch in an Italian place. Linda hadn't a hope of being able to keep up with that pace.
“You're basically a daddy's girl, Linda. You're looking for someone to look after you,” he had said, before heading off to new conquests.
He was so wrong. She was
nota
daddy's girl. She called her father “Alan,” for heaven's sake. That showed you how little she thought of herself as his baby daughter.
Her father had been selfish and childish always. Her mother had been
mad
to stay with him for as long as she had. Linda would have thrown him out much earlier. Dad was so immature. He wasn't going to stay the distance with Cinta, the one they called the “bimbo,” especially now that there was a new baby imminent. It was so gross to have a baby stepsister or stepbrother. And Dad would expect lots off ootchy-kootchy gurgling once the baby was born. He would eventually lose interest in it, as he did in everything.
Linda's mother had once said bitterly that Alan's philosophy was “yours till death do us part or something marginally more interesting
comes along.” Mam could be quite funny sometimes. Most of the time, of course, she was like a sergeant major running the household as she did her clinic.
She had recently gone on an economy drive. There was hardly anything to eat in the fridge. And also there was this emphasis on Linda getting a job. That had never been important before. She had intended to take a year off and travel the world before looking for a job. But her mother had been very forceful about it. Either Linda went off and saw the world, leaving her room ready for her mother to let to someone else, or else she stayed and contributed to the household.
There
was
no decision. Linda didn't have any money to travel the world and neither parent was going to donate anything to the trip to Thailand, Cambodia and Australia that she had been hoping for. She didn't want to get a job in the civil service or a bank or an insurance office. She wasn't like her mother, with a passion for medicine in general and cardiology in particular. She didn't want to teach like her sister, Adi. She was so different from her sister that she often wondered if she might be adopted. Adi was so easily pleased with everything and she loved all those screeching children in the school. She gave a portion of her salary to Mam every month and then put some toward Saving the Whale or whatever.
Adi and Gerry wanted to go to some desperate place to protest about clubbing seals or frightening deer or something. Imagine! They were
saving
to do that! Linda wouldn't have gone if someone had paid her to go. And if she had any money at all she was out to buy shoes or to go through a thrift shop. She had found the sweetest little foxtail thing, which of course she had to keep well hidden in case the two Friends of the Earth saw it and brought a pack of baying protesters around her. She had hidden it from her mother also. It wasn't Clara's kind of thing, and anyway she would undoubtedly wonder aloud how it was that Linda had money to buy this kind of nonsense but not enough to contribute to her keep.
But now she had a part-time job in the record store, so at least her mother couldn't grizzle as much as she used to. Sometimes there
was even cooked ham or a casserole in the fridge, which Linda was allowed to share.
And of course Mam had been very good-tempered because of this sort of dalliance she had with Peter, the handsome chemist man. A dalliance was a good way to describe it. They went to the theater, on picnics and entertained each other to meals. They even went on holiday together, to Italy. Adi and Linda had thought he was perfectly fine, but then it had all ended suddenly. Probably because Mam was pushing for an engagement ring. But even if she
had
been dumped, her mother was in remarkably good form. She was very hyper about some ghastly fund-raising thing at the clinic. Linda had referred to it as a cake sale and her mother had gone apoplectic.
“It is
not
a cake sale! It's a serious attempt to raise money that the hospital should have given us in the first place. We want to publicize the lecture course and so we're inviting the media and all the movers and shakers in the medical world and businesspeople. Everyone in the clinic is giving their all to it and I will
not
have you dismiss it as a cake sale!”
Linda had been startled. “Sorry, I wasn't listening. I got it wrong.”
“You never listen. You care about nothing and nobody, except yourself.”
“Hey, Mam, that's a bit strong.”
“Don't ‘Hey, Mam’ at me. You're an adult, Linda. Stop putting on that baby voice.”
“Right, I'll stop calling you ‘Mam’ altogether. I'll call you ‘Clara.’”
“I don't care what you call me. Just have something intelligent to say!” Clara banged out of the house and revved up her car.
Linda watched from the window. She had really annoyed her mother for some reason. She shrugged. No point in trying to work out why. The old were impossible to understand.
Clara came into the clinic with a brisk step.
“You're in a bad mood,” Hilary said.
“Oh boy, are you right,” Clara said.
Ania had seen it too, and hastened in with the coffee.
“Have we anything terrible this morning?” Clara asked.
“Frank is coming in for what he calls a chat at eleven,” Hilary said.
“As if that man ever had a chat with anyone.” Clara sighed.
“Well, it's about the money that poor Jimmy from Galway left us in his will,” Hilary explained. “He sees a problem.”
“Of course he does,” Clara agreed. “Every time he looks in the mirror, he sees the main problem around here.”
Ania giggled.
Clara sighed again. “Right, hit me with what else there is,” she said in a resigned voice.
“Isn't today one of Lavender's cookery demos?” Hilary asked.
“Yes, it starts at eleven-thirty. We must all put in an appearance to support Lavender.” Clara was adamant. “So let's try and get the dreaded Frank off the premises before she starts. Let's try to bring his little chat to an amicable end. He's going to go mad if he gets a whiff of Lavender grilling mackerel.”
“Is that what she's doing?” Hilary was interested.
Clara nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. She runs all the recipes past me. It sounds nice. Maybe we should have an early lunch and eat it all.”
“You know, I never cooked mackerel in my whole life,” Hilary said.
“Makrela?
That's what it's called in Polish too. Is it a good fish?” Ania asked.
“It's a forgotten fish,” Clara said. “My grandmother used to eat it four or five times a week. Then people went off it. I suppose when they could afford meat and chicken.”
“I learn so many things from you, Clara.” Ania went off about her work, pleased to have new information.
“Lord, isn't
she
a nice child! Why couldn't I have had a daughter like that, rather than an obstinate, bad-tempered brat like Linda, who refers to our big reception here as a ‘cake sale.’”
Clara was so indignant that Hilary had to laugh. “Sorry, Clara, but if you could see your face! Maybe we should refer to it as the cake sale from now on. It might calm us down. What else has Linda done?”
“You don't want to know, believe me. She shrugs so much I think she has dislocated her shoulders. She has no get-up-and-go, no plans, no life plan.”
“You're being very harsh about this girl who is going to be my daughter-in-law one day,” Hilary said.
Clara was happy that Hilary remembered that they wanted to get Nick and Linda together in a way that did not include any possible involvement on the part of their mothers. It was good to see Hilary so recovered that she could think of discussing it again.
“We'll have a planning lunch about that,” Clara said. “But tell me first, apart from the mackerel demo, good, and the Frank chat, bad, what else does the day offer us?”
“Bobby Walsh's wife says that one of the drugs we've given Bobby has been withdrawn in the United States.”
“Did she say which one?”
“She did. I looked it up. No mention of it. I even asked Peter at the pharmacy. He said he would have heard and there's nothing.”
“Oh, God, is she coming in?”
“At ten a.m…. on the grounds—” Hilary began.
“On the grounds we get the lousy ones over with early,” Clara finished for her.
Mrs. Walsh came in with a clipping from a magazine that said that a medication, which was in the ACE inhibitor range, was being examined by the authorities in America.
Patiently, Clara explained what the drug needed to do, which was to reduce increased heart muscle thickness. She pointed out that there were dozens of these medications on the market and that they were checking one particular brand for side effects. It wasn't the brand that Bobby Walsh was taking.
“If I could explain exactly what ACE inhibitors are,” Clara began. “It's angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and—”
“Kindly don't patronize me, Dr. Casey.” Mrs. Walsh had a voice like an electric saw.
Clara longed to tell her to get out of the clinic and stay out, but that wouldn't be appropriate. It was Bobby Walsh's heart she was looking after. That's where her duty lay. She mustn't get sidetracked by this monstrous woman.
“I have no intention of patronizing you, Mrs. Walsh. I'm just telling you and Bobby that there's no cause to be alarmed. The main side effects of such drugs could be dizziness or a dry cough. Bobby has neither. So now, can you please tell me what additional help I can be?”
“I don't like your smart-aleck attitude, Dr. Casey, and believe me, this
will go
higher.”
“You are concerned with your husband's health, so, please, go as high as you like to reassure him and you.”
“Oh, Bobby isn't worried. He thinks you're all great here.” Mrs. Walsh's voice was withering in her scorn.
Clara stood up to show the meeting was finished. “That's good to know, Mrs. Walsh. And if there's anything else?”
“You
will be the one to hear if there's anything else. I have a personal introduction to Frank Ennis, who is on the hospital board. I'm sure he'll want to have a chat with you about all this.”
Clara was bright and positive. “Well, he's coming here in about forty-five minutes anyway for a little chat, so if you'd like to stay I can introduce you to him myself and then you can have your little chat.” Clara relished the thought of setting this terrible woman, with her grating voice, on Frank Ennis.
“No, that won't be necessary.”
“But
do,
Mrs. Walsh. We can make one of the consultation rooms available to you and I won't be in the area. I'll be going to Lavender's healthy heart cookery demonstration.”
Mrs. Walsh practically ran out the door of the clinic. Clara and Hilary did a high five in the air.
“Get the lousy ones over first,” they said happily.
• • •
Frank was adamant. The late James O'Brien had left his money to the hospital. The hospital was named in the man's will. The money would go to the charitable and fund-raising department of the main hospital. It would be spent wisely. Clara fought him strenuously.
Jimmy had come regularly to
this
clinic. He knew nobody in the main hospital, except the people he had met in A&E on his first visit.
“Well, then …” Frank began triumphantly.
“And because he was a man who took privacy to the point of madness, he refused to give them the name of his family doctor in the west. He went to a bed-and-breakfast when he was discharged and because A and E had to pass his care on to
someone,
he was referred here. He loved the clinic. He said so in his will. He thanked them for making his heart disease seem under control. That money is being used here, Frank, if I have to take you to the High Court or further.”
“There isn't any further,” Frank said in a sulky tone.
“Yes, there is. This could go to the Court of Human Rights!” Clara said, her eyes blazing.