by Maeve Binchy
‘Doesn’t she keep in touch?’ Pat was shocked again.
‘No, she said she didn’t want to. Said she wanted to be free.’
‘But …?’
‘But what?’
‘Doesn’t she keep you informed … let you know?’
‘Know what?’
Pat paused. Now, it had been definitely said, definitely, about six months ago, that Ian had been told of her decision to go to England on account of the pregnancy. Yes, Ian had even been in the house. He had said to Dad that he was very happy indeed to acknowledge that he was responsible for the child, and to marry Cathy if she would have him. Pat knew that he had said he wanted to support the child, and to see it when it was born; he couldn’t have forgotten about all that, could he?
‘I’m sorry for being silly,’ Pat had said. ‘I’m the baby of the family and nobody tells me anything.’
‘Yes?’ Ian smiled kindly.
‘But I thought she’d be having the, er, baby, now and I wanted to know how she was … that’s why I’m here.’
‘But didn’t she tell you? She must have told you?’ Ian’s face was lined with concern.
‘What? Told me what?’
‘It was a false alarm – she wasn’t pregnant at all.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Of course! Hey, you must know this. She wrote and told everyone just after she went to London.’
‘It’s not true …’
‘Of course it’s true. She wrote and told us all. It was a very early test she had here, not a proper one.’
‘So why didn’t she come back?’
‘What?’
‘If it was a false alarm why didn’t she come back to her job and home and to you and everything?’
‘Oh, Pat, you know all this … she was a bit peeved with your Mum and Dad. She thought there’d be more solidarity, I think. And she was very pissed off with me.’
‘Why was she pissed off with you? You said you’d marry her.’
‘But that’s not what she wanted, she wanted … oh, I don’t know … anyway, it wasn’t necessary.’
‘So why isn’t she back?’
‘As I said, we all let her down. She was annoyed. She wrote, when she told me about the false alarm bit, and said she didn’t feel like coming back. She must have written to your family too. Of course she did.’
‘She didn’t,’ Pat said definitely.
‘But whyever not? Why didn’t she put them out of their agony?’
‘Their agony?’
‘You know what I mean. It’s an expression.’
‘She never wrote.’
‘Oh Pat, nonsense, of course she did. Maybe they didn’t tell you. You said yourself they kept things from you.’
‘They don’t know it was a false alarm, I know that much.’
She said goodbye to Ian, and she promised she wouldn’t make a lot of trouble for everyone, she’d be a good little girl.
‘You’re a real enfant terrible, you know. You’re much too grown-up and pretty to be playing that Saint Trinian’s kind of thing.’
She put out her tongue at him, and they both laughed.
* * *
Mum said she didn’t want to discuss Cathy. Cathy had found nothing to discuss with her, why should she spend time talking about Cathy?
‘But Ian says he heard from her as soon as she went. It was all a false alarm, she never had a baby, she was never pregnant at all. Aren’t you pleased now, isn’t that good news, Mum?’ Pat pleaded with her.
‘That’s as may be,’ Mum had said.
* * *
Just as she was dropping off to sleep that night, Pat thought of something that made her sit up again, wide-awake.
Now she knew why Mum hadn’t been pleased. Cathy must have had an abortion. That’s why there was no baby, that’s why Cathy had not come back. But why hadn’t she told Ian? Or Mum? And mainly why hadn’t she come back?
* * *
‘Do you think the other nuns read Ethna’s letters?’ Pat had asked a few days later when the green aerogramme was being sealed up and sent off.
‘Very unlikely,’ Dad had said.
‘It’s not the dark ages. They don’t censor their correspondence,’ Mum had said.
‘Anyway she can be fairly critical of some of the other nuns; she gives that Sister Kevin a hard time,’ Dad said. ‘I don’t expect she’d do that if they read her outgoing letters anyway.’
Pat thought that it was nice that Dad read Ethna’s letters so carefully that he knew which sister was which.
* * *
Pat had written to Ethna; first of all a probing letter. ‘I’m getting older and a bit, though not much, wiser. One of the things that upsets me is the cloak of silence that hangs over Cathy, and where she is in England and what she’s doing and what the situation is. Could you tell me what the situation is as far as you know it and then I’ll take it from there …’
She had a letter from Ethna, not on an aerogramme but in an envelope. On the outside of the envelope it said, ‘The Stamps You Wanted’. That satisfied any curiosity Mum and Dad might have had. Inside it was very short.
‘I really think you are making a mystery about nothing. Poor Cathy has been punished quite enough, she thought that she was indeed going to have a child. And since she was not at all willing or ready to marry the father then it is merciful that this was not so. She is happy in London, where she is doing social work. She has hardened her heart to mother and father, which is a great pity, but in time I am sure she will feel ready to open up doors of friendship again. She doesn’t write to me, apart from that one letter which told me all these things; since nobody has ever mentioned anything to me about it in letters from home, I have never mentioned anything either. I pray for her, and I pray for all of you. Life is so short, it seems sad that any of it should be spent in feeling a grievance and a hurt when a hand held out would brush all the unhappiness away.’
Great help, Pat had thought at the time; punished enough, hardened her heart, brush all the unhappiness away; nun’s phrases, and not a word of blame about Mum and Dad who were always writing letters to the paper protesting about letting South African rugby teams into the country. They were always talking about itinerants, and they had raised money for refugees. Why were they so hard-hearted about Cathy?
Pat had decided that she was not going to allow Cathy to disappear without trace as if some terrible crime or shame had settled on the family and people hoped that by ignoring it things would return to normal. She had tackled them at supper the night she had got Ethna’s letter.
‘This family is becoming a bit like nine green bottles,’ she said.
‘What on earth do you mean?’ Dad was smiling.
‘First Ethna goes off to the other side of the world, and then we are four. Then six months ago Cathy disappears without trace and now we are three. Will I go off somewhere too?’
Dad was still smiling but he looked puzzled. He stood up to fetch the coffee percolator. He looked tired and a bit beaten. Not the cheerful doctor, always in a smart suit, always optimistic, always seeing the best for patients and neighbours alike. He wore his cardigan at home, and Mum wore an old jumper that was torn under the arms. They looked shabby and a bit dishevelled as they sat in the big dining room with its good furniture and its expensive cut glass decanters. Pat felt that somehow they didn’t make any effort when it was only just her. She was sure they had been far more elegant and lively when Ethna was at home and when Cathy was there.
‘Are you just waiting for me to go off and that will be the hat trick?’
‘What is this, Pat, what silly game are you playing?’ Mum was not very amused.
‘No, I mean it, Mum. It’s not much of a family, is it?’
‘Don’t speak to your mother like that.’ Dad was surprised and hurt. He had thought that talking about green bottles was going to be a joke; now it had turned into a row.
‘It’s not normal. People marry and have children, they
don’t have them just to export them off as fast as possible.’
Mum was very annoyed indeed. ‘Ethna was twenty-one when she left. She had wanted to join this order for two years. Do you think we wanted Ethna to go to that outlandish place? Or to be a nun at all? Don’t be so ridiculous, and have some thought for other people before you start your hurtful accusations.’
‘No, I know that’s Ethna, but then Cathy’s gone. This house used to be full of people, now it’s just us. And soon I suppose you’ll want me to go. Would you prefer if I tried to get into UCC or Galway or maybe England rather than Belfield, then you wouldn’t have to have me around the place and you could be all on your own?’ She stood up, tears in her eyes.
‘Apologise this minute to your mother, this minute, do you hear me!’
‘Why to Mum? I’m saying it to both of you.’
She was about to leave the room when Mum had said wearily, ‘Come back, Pat. Come back and I’ll talk to you about Cathy.’
‘You owe her no explanation, Peggy, none, not after the way she’s spoken to you.’ Dad’s face was red with disappointment.
‘Sit down, Pat. Please.’ Grudgingly and shrugging, Pat sat down.
‘I’m not going to fight with you. I’m going to agree with you. It’s not much of a family, it certainly isn’t. When your father and I got married this is not what we had in mind at all.’
‘Now Peg, now Peg,’ Dad said warningly.
‘No, the girl is right to question what’s happened. We question it ourselves, for God’s sake. Not at all what we had in mind. I suppose we had in mind the practice getting bigger and going well. It has. That’s all fine, that side of it. And we had in mind our friends and all the people we like being around, and that’s gone well. And our health has been fine. But mainly what we had in mind was the three of you. That’s what people do have in mind actually, Pat, that’s what they have in mind most of the day and night when they have children. From the time that Ethna was here we’ve had you three in mind more than anything else.’
Pat gave a very slight shrug. It was a disclaimer. It was meant to say, you don’t have to tell me all this. I know you tried. As a shrug it worked. Mum had known what she meant.
‘I know you think I’m just saying this to be nice to you, or maybe perhaps that we started out with good intentions and lost them on the way. But it wasn’t like that. I think some of my best times, and yours, Hugh, were when Ethna was about six or seven, and Cathy was five, and you were a baby. Three little girls totally dependent on us, all lighting up with enthusiasm …’
‘Sure Mum. Yes. Sure.’
‘No, give me a very short minute for the sentimental sugary bit because it didn’t last long. Then you were all so bright. This was another joy, some of our friends had problems. Well, we didn’t call them problems but so and so’s child couldn’t read until he was seven, or someone couldn’t settle at school, or another wouldn’t manage to get on with the teachers, or failed the third Honours in her Leaving. Not you three, from Ethna on we knew, top of the class, exams no real problem. Do you remember Ethna’s conferring?’
‘Yes … I got the day off school.’
‘And she looked so bright … that’s a funny word, but she did, you know, clear eyes and alert face, compared to a lot of the others. I thought, ours is very bright, there’s so much before her when she gets this ridiculous nunnish thing out of her system …’
‘But I thought you approved?’
‘We had to approve in the end.’ Dad spoke for the first time. ‘Of course we didn’t approve. Use your head, Pat, suppose you had brought up a lovely girl like Ethna, as bright as a button as Mum says, who has just got a First class honours degree in history and who wants to go with a crowd of half-educated women to a school in the outback of somewhere because she read a book about the damn place and she met a recruiting team!’
‘But you never said. I don’t remember …’
‘You don’t remember. How old were you – twelve, thirteen? What discussions could we have had with you about it that would have helped anything except add to the argument?’
Mum had interrupted. ‘We didn’t even discuss it with Cathy because we didn’t want gangs forming and pressure being put on Ethna. We just talked to her.’
‘And what did you want her to do?’ Pat wanted to know.
‘I’d have liked her to do an M.A. and then a doctorate. She was very, very good. I spoke to some of the people in there, they said she had the makings of a scholar, and I’d have liked her to have had a good lively life here, instead of putting up with Sister Kevin’s tantrums in a jungle.’ Dad had sounded very defeated when he said that, as if remembering the whole battle and how it was lost.
‘Yes, that’s what I’d have liked too. I’d have liked her to go on living here, it was so near and handy, and got a small car and had friends and gone off to the West for weekends. And then married someone in her own field, some professor, and got a house near by and I could have seen the whole thing over again with her children, growing up and learning to walk …’
‘It’s a fairly normal, reasonable wish, isn’t it?’ Dad had asked defensively. ‘Rather than see a whole life, a whole education, and talent, thrown away.’
‘She’s happy though, she says she is,’ Mum had said.
‘I suppose her letters to us are about as near the truth as ours are to her,’ Dad had said. And there was a silence as they thought about the implications of that.
‘So Cathy … ?’ Pat spoke softly, hoping that the mood hadn’t been broken, that she could still get her mother to talk.
‘Cathy,’ Mum had said.
‘Cathy was no trouble either. Everyone else told us of all their sleepless nights over their terrible teenage children. We never had any,’ Dad smiled at Pat as if he was thanking her. She felt a twinge of guilt.
‘And Cathy did have her friends around much more than Ethna, and they used to laugh, and they were full of life. Do you remember the summer they did the whole garden, Hugh?’
Dad had laughed. ‘All I had to do was provide one of those big cans of beer at the end of the day. They dug and they weeded and they cut hedges and grass.’
‘It never looked back since,’ Mum had said. ‘It used to be a wilderness and they tamed it.’
‘All for a few cans of beer,’ Dad had said. They stopped talking for a moment. Pat said nothing.
‘So Cathy was going to be the one who might be with us, when Ethna went. It wasn’t a transfer of love. I suppose it was changing the plans or hopes. And she was so enthusiastic, about everything.’
‘We felt we were qualifying with her, she was so entertaining about it all – the lectures, the course, the solicitors’ exams down in the Four Courts, the apprenticeship … it was all so alive,’ Dad had said.
‘And she seemed to get on so well with Ian. I kept thinking, she’s only twenty-two, she’s far too young to settle down but then of course I told myself I was only twenty-two when I married. Then on the other hand, I didn’t have a career to decide about. Then I went back to the first hand and said since Ian and Cathy were both solicitors and Ian’s father had a firm, well then, surely if they did have a couple of children and she wanted to work part-time it couldn’t be too hard to arrange.’
Dad had interrupted. ‘This is what your mother meant about you children always being in our minds. We had Cathy married to Ian in our minds long before they even kissed each other.’
‘But why couldn’t you accept Cathy’s decision like you did for Ethna? You didn’t want Ethna to go off and be a nun but when she did you sort of acknowledged it.’
‘Yes,’ Mum had said. ‘Yes, it made her so happy and it was her life. Much as I wanted to I couldn’t control it any more … she had to do what she wanted.’
‘So why couldn’t Cathy do what she wanted?’
‘That was different.’
‘But why, Mum, why? It’s not as if you and Dad were prudes or anything, it’s not as if your friends would c
ut you off, or as if you’d be ashamed to lift your heads. Why can’t Cathy bring her baby home?’
‘It’s different,’ Dad had said.
‘I can’t think why, I really can’t. Nobody minds. Ian doesn’t mind. I talked to him. He’s very casual about Cathy – “send her my love” he said. Ethna won’t mind. I wrote to her about it, but, but …’
‘You wrote to Ethna?’ Mum had said, surprised.
‘Yes, to try and clear things up.’
‘And did it?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘What did you want cleared up?’ Dad had asked.
‘Whether Cathy is having a baby or is not. Something very basic and simple like that, which most normal families would know.’
Dad had looked at Mum, and she had said, ‘Tell her.’
‘The answer is … that we don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No. That’s the truth.’ Mum had continued, ‘We were very shocked by Cathy’s attitude. She was very harshly critical of us, and the way we lived, and thought that our attitudes were hypocritical, you know, to preach some kind of broadmindedness and then not to follow it.’
‘But we didn’t see it like that. You see, it was nothing to do with acceptance or reputations, we thought Cathy was being silly and making extravagant gestures, turning herself into a Protest just for the sake of it. “Look at me, I’m too modern to do like anyone else, give my child a name and a home and a background, no, I’m far too sophisticated for that!” We didn’t like it, Pat, it was too studenty …’
‘There’s no need to go over all that was said, you probably heard most of it, but to cut a long story short we have only heard from Cathy once since she went to London. I always imply – well, let’s be honest, I always tell people lies and say that we’ve heard from her, but she wrote only once two weeks after she left.’
‘Did she say … ?’
‘She said that it had been a false alarm, that her dates had been wrong, that she was only a shorter time overdue than she thought and that everything was fine.’
There was a silence.
‘And did you believe her, Mum?’
