by Maeve Binchy
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 want
ed 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.
“We could see that a proportion of it comes this way …” Frank began, and Clara knew she had him on the ropes.
“This is where he wanted his money to go. It comes here,” she said.
“The art of the deal is knowing when to compromise,” Frank said.
“That's balls,” Clara said pleasantly. “Something is either right or it's wrong. I don't look at a patient and say his arteries are all clogged up and he needs angioplasty, but then, on the other hand, I don't feel able to do all the paperwork so we'll compromise and I'll ask him to come back in three months and we'll get it started then. That's not the way things work in the real world, Frank.”
“I'm sorry, that is the way.” He went on to raise his offer from one-third of Jimmy's estate to half. He met nothing but a shake of Claras glossy head of hair.
“It's not a fair comparison,” he blustered. “You took an oath to help people. It's different for you.”
“I did take an oath and I'm keeping to it.”
“I didn't take any such oath,” he said.
Clara laughed aloud. “Oh, yes, you did. You vowed you would make life as difficult, as penny-pinching, nitpicking and bureaucratic as it could possibly be. You promised yourself that the spirit of a hospital should never be considered when the real thing, the letter of the law, can be brought into play But you picked the wrong one in me, Frank. I'm not going to lie down and roll over.”
“I didn't pick you at all. I was landed with you!” Frank had some spirit at least. “And I would remind you that this clinic didn't exist before and may well not exist after your time. You refer to it as if it were an important entity in its own right instead of very small potatoes, which is what this place is.”
“It's what this place was and would have still been if you'd been allowed your way. But it's not now and it's going to be even better and Jimmy's money will bring it to the next stage.” She was very angry now.
“The place is funded by the hospital—” he began.
“If you think, Frank Ennis, that I am going to waste one more minute of time arguing with you about whether we rent chairs for a lecture or buy them and store them, if you think that I will ever again go through the humiliating experience of pleading with you to pay what are very low fees to visiting experts for this series of lectures …If you think that I am going to spend hours talking to you and your bonehead colleagues about the feasibility—God, I hate that word, feasibility—of having a youth program so that schoolkids could come in and learn about their bloody hearts and how to keep them beating properly—”
“You never mentioned having children come in here!” Frank could see a thousand problems already.
“I didn't because I am weary to the soles of my feet dealing with you on any subject, and so Jimmy's money will buy us time and freedom to set this up on our own.” She actually sounded weary.
“But you can't—”
“I can and I will, Frank. And now I'm going to a cookery demonstration. We have over fifty people waiting in Lavender's room, the dietitian's space which you said need only be a desk and a chair.”
“She's not cooking with a live flame, is she?” Frank said, horrified.
“I very much hope so, Frank. She has a two-ring gas grill and a big mirror behind her set at an angle.”
“And who paid for the mirror, if I might ask?”
“You might ask, even though it's actually none of your business. Hilary and I bought it at an auction. Johnny and Tim put it up on the wall for us. It cost you and the money boys and girls precisely nothing!”
Lavender was a born performer. She could have had her own television program. Clara's mind raced ahead. Maybe Lavender could have a slot on someone's talk show, “Five Minutes for Your Heart.”
There was a small lecture on salt and the Irish obsession with spreading a salt shaker over all food. Lavender suggested having no salt on the table. If you thought up enough other harmless seasonings there was no need. She took fillets of mackerel, showed them to the audience. You could buy packets or else ask a fishmonger to fillet them for you. In a glass you mixed the juice of an orange, a lime and a lemon and a spoonful of vegetable oil, and you brushed the mackerel with this and then grilled them.
They smelled terrific and as the plate was passed around for people to taste, Lavender was busy grilling more. Everyone would want a taste and some people were taking seconds. There was an easy salad that went with it and Lavender said that their hearts would thank them warmly for such food.
In spite of himself, Frank was impressed. The bright cheery room, the no-nonsense Lavender, the general air of hope and of being in control of their own lives. When this clinic had been first considered, that was the mandate, the mission statement; and for all her annoying ways, Clara was getting it done.
