‘Imagine,’ she said, in a voice so low Cate could scarcely hear her. ‘Imagine never having had a father.’
As Cate now explained to Sally, this was all somehow infinitely worse than the row she had been expecting.
‘I worry about Helen,’ Sally said. ‘Her work’s getting in on her at the moment, if you ask me; but you know what she’s like, you daren’t say a word. As far as you’re concerned, though, I wouldn’t take too much notice. She’ll come round in due course, Mammy too. As for me, I’m delighted already.’
‘I know you love children,’ Cate replied; and Sally didn’t know how to respond to this remark. To say how much she felt the family needed something like this would have been to point up how haunted and threatened she had felt herself to be over the past two years. She glanced around the classroom uneasily, not liking to remember a strange incident which had taken place there about six months earlier. The children had been sitting at their tables one morning drawing pictures with thick crayons, and Sally had been going from one to another, admiring their work and helping them when necessary. Straightening up from one child’s desk, she saw a van stop at the school gates. The man in it, whom she didn’t recognise, got out and ran across the playground towards the door of the school. Something closed in her heart. ‘This is it,’ she thought.
‘Put your crayons down,’ she said to the children. ‘Fold your arms, put your head on your arms and close your eyes.’ It was a wholly inadequate response, she realised, but even afterwards, she couldn’t think of what she should have done instead. She stood there looking at the door, waiting for the man to burst in. But nothing happened, and nothing happened; the children fidgeted and some of them peeped through their eyelids and they shifted uneasily on their low chairs, because they could sense Sally’s anxiety. And then suddenly through the window she saw the man again, running away from the school now, through the steady rain … the rain!
Sally started to laugh, a shrill, edgy laugh with no mirth in it. All the children sat up now, and opened their eyes. ‘Stand up,’ she said to them. ‘We’re going to sing a song.’ She started them off, her own voice quavering and unsteady, ‘Head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,’ and the children joined in. Their off-key mewing voices calmed her as they did the actions, pointing to the parts of their body in turn as they named them: ‘Ears and eyes and teeth and nose.’ And then they stopped singing, and the bell rang for break; she let them out of the classroom and locked the door behind them, and she sat down at her desk, put her head on her folded arms and wept uncontrollably.
She cried because she might not have been wrong. Over the past twenty-odd years, all kinds of people had been killed or maimed. Many of them might have thought that the tasks in which they were engaged would have nullified their risk of danger, but they would have been wrong. Bricklayers and binmen on their tea break had been shot. They’d killed a man driving a school bus full of children; opened fire on supporters at a football match; and shot people sitting in a bookie’s watching horse racing on television. Men lying in bed asleep beside their wives or girlfriends had been woken up and murdered. At each new variation, Sally had shared in the shock of those around her. To kill the members of a showband! How could anyone go into a church and start shooting at the congregation? And yet each event seemed to be no preparation, no warning for the next. Until someone attacked mourners at a funeral, and threw hand grenades at them, it seemed impossible that this should ever happen. So no one had ever gone into a primary school in Northern Ireland and opened fire on a gaggle of five-year-olds and their female teacher: what did that prove? Nothing, Sally thought. Just because a thing hasn’t happened doesn’t mean that it never will.
It would have upset her too much to try to explain all of this to Cate; possibly it would have upset Cate too, and there was no point in that. Sally looked at her sister, who was standing at the window. Cate also wanted to explain something to Sally, but didn’t know how to go about it without revealing more than she wished. She was afraid that underneath it all even Sally disapproved of her having a baby without her being married, without her being in a long-term relationship, in fact without now being in any relationship at all. She found it slightly alarming that Sally’s attitudes could have become so tolerant, so liberal, without Cate having been aware of it. She’d always taken it for granted that her family thought it was only a matter of time before she, Cate, met someone with whom she would want to spend the rest of her life. Cate, too, had expected that for many years, and had been increasingly dismayed as, time and again, things fell apart. Worst of all, she couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t that she was attracted to men who were violent or cruel and with whom a relationship was inevitably doomed. No matter how good things were, there was always a nagging voice in the back of her mind saying that it wasn’t good enough. No matter how much she loved someone, she would inevitably find herself lying awake in the middle of the night, unable to avoid the thought that something was missing. Enlightenment, when it finally came, was abrupt and painful.
She’d been having lunch in a restaurant with a man whom she’d been seeing for about six months, chatting to him about Sally, from whom she’d had a letter that morning, when suddenly the man interrupted her. ‘Cate, I can’t tell you how sick I am of hearing you go on and on about your bloody family. Do you ever think of anything else?’
Cate stared him hard in the face, then apologised with icy formality. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t have to listen to me going on about my bloody family in future, I can promise you that.’ He knew what he’d said had been thoughtless and he retracted it at once, but the damage had been done, and more than he could realise. Unwittingly, he’d gone straight to the root of the problem, like the doctor who asks, mildly, ‘Does it hurt if I touch you here?’ whereupon the patient shrieks and all but passes out. It wasn’t just that the man had slighted her family: Cate was shocked to realise that the point he made was valid.
Was it possible to have too happy a childhood, to be loved too much? She had asked herself that one day, when she was travelling on the Underground and noticed a little girl with her mother. The child, aged about eight, was snuggled up close to the side of a woman whom she closely resembled and who continually stroked the child’s face with her fingertips, occasionally bending over to plant a kiss in front of the polka-dotted Alice band which spanned the small head. The little girl’s legs were curled up in such a way that her feet stuck out into the aisle, and once or twice the woman said, ‘Sit up straight, my treasure, you’re going to make people’s coats dirty with your shoes when they walk past.’ But although the child twitched her feet in vague response to this, she didn’t move. Instead she glanced around the carriage languidly, as though the people on whom her glance fell were barely worthy of her attention. Cate had stared at her, wondering how the child would adapt when she grew up, and was forced out of this bubble of maternal affection. What future love could ever match it? She would have to learn that others were indifferent to her, even that they disliked her, and would she grow to resent her mother for not having prepared her for this; for having given her so much that nothing could ever again be enough?
At the time, Cate had merely observed all this, making no connection between herself and the smug child. But when the man had pointed out how obsessed she was with her family, she’d remembered that day on the train, and although she’d tried to deny any connection in her mind, it didn’t work. She’d not, perhaps, been as spoiled or indulged as she imagined the other child to be, but the end result was the same. If it wasn’t true, why was she here now, why was she standing with Sally in the classroom where they’d been pupils so many years ago? Why, in London, was she always not just noticing, but actually looking for things which had in them something of the intensity, the wildness she remembered from those days? In the food hall of a large department store, she’d seen glass jars packed with tiny, brown-flecked eggs in fluid, as though memory itself could be preserved, like lavender, like fruit
. Certain quaint flowers: lupins, stock and snapdragons; or dim, chill rooms with mirrors and heavy furniture, could have the same effect. Even when the associations weren’t particularly pleasant, she appreciated them for the access they gave her to her own past. Best of all was the sky itself; the sky at which she now gazed through the classroom window, a watery lemon light splitting heavy, dark clouds.
‘When all this is over,’ she said to Sally, ‘they’ll probably want to make a memorial. I hope they do something original. They should build it around the sky.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean incorporate the sky into the design of it … whatever it is.’ Cate’s voice trailed away, and she continued to stare out of the window. She imagined a room, a perfectly square room. Three of it’s walls, unbroken by windows, would be covered by neat rows of names, over three thousand of them; and the fourth wall would be nothing but window. The whole structure would be built where the horizon was low, and the sky huge. It would be a place which afforded dignity to memory, where you could bring your anger, as well as your grief.
‘And what,’ Sally said, ‘makes you think it’s going to end?’
Cate turned to face her. ‘There are articles in the papers from time to time which suggest that there’s far more going on behind the scenes than we’re being told, and that things could suddenly change. I think Helen thinks the same.’
Sally shook her head. ‘I wish I could believe it. Living here, you see too much to expect anything to change quickly. I’ll believe it’s going to end when it ends. Didn’t you hear the news this morning, about that man being shot?’ Cate nodded. They sat in silence for a few moments. ‘I hope I’m wrong,’ Sally said again. She picked up the keys to the school. ‘Come and I’ll show you the other rooms, and then we can go home.’
Chapter Twelve
Helen, Sally and Kate arrived home from school at half-past four. This evening, as always, the first thing they did was to change out of their school uniforms, and put on jumpers and jeans. When they came downstairs again, their mother had a dinner of pork chops, mashed potatoes and peas ready for them. By the time this was finished, it was almost half-past five. Together with their parents, they watched the local news on television, and then at six, the international news from the BBC. Helen only watched the first quarter of an hour of this: by six-fifteen she was at her desk, preparing to start her homework.
Because their mother set such store by education, each of the three sisters had a proper place to study, unlike some of their friends at school, who had to do their homework at the kitchen table, or in a living room where the television was always on. Helen had a desk in her bedroom; Kate had a table in the bedroom she shared with Sally, and Sally did her homework in the parlour. When Helen went off to university in Belfast the following year, Sally would do her homework where Helen now worked.
Helen’s desk was beside a window which looked out on the back of the house; and in the spring and autumn it was a great distraction to her. She could see the field behind the house and the lough in the distance, and what she could see beyond that depended on the weather: sometimes the houses on the far shore would stand out, vivid and white; sometimes mist and rain would lock everything in greyness, and the shore, even the lough itself, would be obscured. Often when she should have been working her mind would wander, and she would day-dream, gazing out at the sky, or at the cattle walking slowly through the field. It was a strange and, Helen realised, an unfair thing that she was always treated as the paragon of the Quinn family, for Kate was every bit as bright as her elder sister. She was that rare thing: a studious rebel, and her powers of concentration were far superior to Helen’s. Kate worked with her back to the window and a lamp on her desk. She completed her homework in half the time it took Helen, and spent the rest of the evening watching television, leafing through the fashion magazines she bought with her pocket money; or locked in the bathroom conditioning her hair, or giving herself face-packs. With Helen it was pure will, and no matter how much she did, she never felt that it was enough. She was a straight A student: but then so was Kate.
From six-fifteen until seven-fifteen this evening, she worked on an essay about first-person narrative in Great Expectations. From seven-fifteen until eight o’clock, she read a chapter of La maison de Claudine, looking up in her dictionary the French words she didn’t understand, and copying them into her vocabulary notebook. At eight o’clock, she went down to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. She took it back up to her room, switched on the radio, and twiddled with the dial until she found some music she liked. As she sat listening to it, she let her mind wander around the day’s events. She realised how tired she was, but she still had her History homework to do.
This afternoon, she had had to go and see the headmistress, Sister Benedict, in her office, to discuss the choices she had made on her UCCA form. All the girls in her year had to do this, and lots of them dreaded it because the nun could be harsh, scolding them for vanity in applying to do subjects for which they had no hope of being accepted. Sometimes people would be castigated for the exact opposite, for not being sufficiently ambitious, for not fulfilling their potential.
‘Maybe she’ll try to coax you into being a nun,’ Kate had said to Helen on the bus to school that morning, and Helen had snorted with laughter at the idea of it. ‘You never know,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t think anyone’s ever going to waste their time trying to persuade me. The thought of it! Living in a big house with a pack of other women and all of them dressed exactly the same as me, and no men allowed. No chance!’
Helen had been working in the library when one of her classmates came and said that Sister Benedict wanted to see her. To reach the headmistress’s office required Helen to walk almost the full length of the school, along wood-panelled corridors, past coloured-plaster statues on plinths, with posies of flowers before them, past closed doors from behind which came the sound of singing, or chanted verbs, or the solitary voice of a teacher explaining something to her class. Once, when Granny Kate had visited the school, she had remarked, ‘You’d nearly think a place like this ought to be more untidy than it is, with a couple of hundred girls in it, five days a week.’ Helen agreed, as she noted the neat cloakrooms, the posters pinned up along the corridors, the carefully tended plants on the window-sills. There was a smell of warm apple pie coming from the Domestic Science kitchens. That was probably Kate’s class: she’d had with her on the bus this morning the old Kimberly biscuit tin in which she carried her apron and the covered dish in which she would bring home the fruits of her labours. Kate had insisted on doing Domestic Science Ο level, because she wanted to study Needlework. She had had a difficult time persuading Sister Benedict to allow her to do this. Far from encouraging home-making skills in her pupils, the nun regarded it as a course of study suitable only for those who weren’t bright enough to do an extra science subject. She’d wanted Kate to do Physics. But whatever Kate’s skill was at Needlework, she was a hopeless cook. God, the thing she’d brought home last week! Kate had claimed it was a steamed suet pudding. Helen had seen her down at the back of the bus, trying to get some of the boys from the Academy to taste it, as a dare.
Sister Benedict’s office, when Helen went into it, was noticeably warmer than the corridor outside. It was a classic autumn day in Northern Ireland. Beyond the window, leaves were streaming down from the trees in a strong wind, and heavy rain poured down the glass. Sister Benedict, who had been staring at this, turned when Helen came into the room. The nun was wearing a thick black cardigan over her habit. She had spent over twenty years in Africa, and had never been able to get used to the Irish climate again. Every child in the school knew of this foible. ‘Isn’t it terribly cold, girls?’ she would say when she passed them in the corridor, tapping the radiators to make sure they were switched on. She used to complain about draughts, and was at loggerheads with the vice principal, Sister Philomena, who was forever opening doors and windows, and who was as obsessed with fresh air
as Sister Benedict was with warmth. But then, the two nuns were frequently at odds over many things, and the temperature of the school was one of their least significant points of difference.
Although it was Sister Benedict who, as principal, finally assessed and signed the university application forms, it was Sister Philomena, the form teacher of the final-year class, who helped the girls to fill in the forms correctly. A few years ago, she had poured scorn on the pupils who put ‘British’ in the space where they were to put their nationality, and instructed them to change it to ‘Irish’. This had not gone down at all well in the home of one girl, whose father was a policeman. He made a special visit to the school to express his displeasure to Sister Benedict, who had, in turn, so rumour had it, given Sister Philomena a ferocious lecture about what she had done. Ever since then, when they came to the section of the form dealing with nationality, Sister Philomena told the girls to ask their parents what they should put there; and ever since then, the pupils had been divided in their allegiance, admiring and supporting either one nun or the other.
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