The Teacher at Donegal Bay

by Anne Doughty

  Over the years now, mostly when drunk, Maisie had confided to me the secrets of her family history, a history which Colin appeared to have no knowledge of at all. Her father, Hugh Dalzell, had been a seaman. Hard-living and hard-drinking, he had beaten up her mother regularly when he was on shore and kept them so short of money when he wasn’t that often they had little to eat. When he fell off a harbour wall in a drunken stupor, onto the deck of a coal boat at low tide, his wife collected his tiny insurance and pawned everything she possessed to buy new clothes for herself and her daughters.

  She then signed on at an agency for superior servants and found a position as a daily housekeeper with an elderly gentleman living alone in a large house, barely a mile away from the tiny house where she had eked out such a miserable existence. Within three months, her employer had suggested that she become resident. He made no objection when she said she could only move in if she could bring her two daughters with her.

  From the minute the girls set foot in the Cliftonville house, Mary Dalzell set about making a new life for them. Maisie was no longer to be called Maisie, but Margaret. She was sent to a different school, attended a different church, and had elocution lessons. Edith, who had a good voice, had piano lessons and later the old gentleman paid for singing lessons as well. Both girls were instructed to devote their time and attention to the old gentleman.

  They did so. When he died, he left their mother his house and both Edith and Margaret had generous legacies. Edith, the elder, used hers to go to London and pursue her singing career, but before she was there for very long she met a young barrister and got married. Margaret was summoned to visit the newlyweds and went to the large house in Bromley where Edith was now happily settled with new friends and a baby on the way. Margaret hated England, didn’t like Edith’s friends and felt awkward and uncomfortable all the time she was there. When she returned to Belfast, she went off to dances in the Orange Hall near her old home when her mother thought she was at church socials or the Floral Hall. And that was how she met William John whom she’d been at school with and who had been born in the next street to the one where she herself had lived.

  What few people knew was that it was Maisie’s money that had helped William John to get started and that it was William John, not Maisie, who had insisted they move out of the district where they had both started life and into the affluent suburb where they now lived.

  Maisie never seemed easy with the life she had acquired. Sometimes, like that awful first Christmas when Colin and I stayed with them, she would act the lady and entertain generously, taking a huge amount of trouble and spending a great deal of money on the best of food and wine. Her voice would soften, her vowels round out and she would think before she spoke. When she put her mind to it, she could be quite charming. But it never seemed to bring her any pleasure. More often, she reacted to the effort she’d made and for days afterwards she’d tramp round the house in pink furry slippers, something which her mother had strictly forbidden her ever to do and something which she knew really irritated and upset William John.

  ‘Least ‘e got what he disurves,’ she announced firmly as she sat down again, so abruptly that the gin slopped in her glass. ‘Maybe whin he comes roun’, he’ll have had a bit of sense knockt intil him.’

  A wave of nausea flooded over me. ‘What do you mean, Maisie, “comes round”,’ I asked quietly, my whole body rigid with tension.

  Coping with my sheer fury at her behaviour had already stretched me to the limit, but now I wondered desperately how I was going to go on keeping up any appearance of civility.

  She turned towards me, her eyes sharp and malevolent. ‘I mean, Jennifer, when he regains consciousness – since you are so very interested in his welfare,’ she said, enunciating every word carefully, as if I couldn’t understand what she’d said in her unmodified accent.

  ‘Yes, Maisie, I am,’ I said firmly.

  Something snapped when I heard the heavy sarcasm of her tone. I just couldn’t go on sitting in silence, listening to her talk like this, whatever the consequences. ‘Are you saying, Maisie, that Keith is still unconscious after yesterday’s baton charge?’ I asked in a whisper.

  ‘How shud I know?’ she shouted across at me. ‘All the informashun I git is frum some Cathlick bitch who rings me up, thinkin’ I might wanta know.’

  ‘Do you mean Siobhan?’

  ‘Shove-on? Shove-on? Don’t you Shove-on me,’ she cried, her voice rising to a hysterical scream. ‘Don’t you iver minshun that name in this house. A filthy little bitch frum some back street, runnin’ after our Keith and gettin’ him inta all this socialiss nonsense. I wonder ye haven’ a bit more sense, Jennifer. You oughta know the kine she is.’

  Suddenly, I was intensely aware of the hand clutching the gin. Its nails were long and immaculately painted in bright, pillar-box red. My head felt fuzzy as if I’d been downing the gin myself. And then, as if from a very long way away, I heard my own voice and wondered how I had managed to get it so cool and steady.

  ‘And I wonder that you can speak like that, Maisie, about someone you’ve never met. Far from coming from the back streets, Siobhan lives near the Bairds in Malone Park and her father is a consultant neurologist. It was Keith who introduced her to the Young Socialists, not the other way round.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I see,’ she said nastily, jumping to her feet and heading for the bar again. She banged an ice tray noisily on the stainless steel sink hidden behind the studded, leather-padded exterior of the bar. ‘I diden’ know she was such a great pal of yours,’ she said sarcastically.

  ‘Of Colin’s and mine, Maisie,’ I replied, stressing the ‘Colin’. ‘Keith and Siobhan come to supper with us regularly.’

  ‘I’d ‘ave thought you an’ Colin had plenty of fren’s without the likes o’ them. An’ I’d ‘ave thought you’d show a bit more simpathy for your own husban’s famlee at a time like this,’ she said sharply as she tipped up the last dregs from the gin bottle into her glass.

  ‘But surely that includes Keith, doesn’t it?’

  Maisie’s lips tightened to a thin line and her shoulders hunched as she dropped more ice into her drink.

  ‘I think yer husban’ shud come before any good-for-nothin’ Cathlick, Jennifer, but ye’ve yer own ideas about that, an’ yer father both, don’t ye?’ she said, as she marched past me and dropped down into her chair.

  There was an extra edge to her voice that warned me I’d better not go any further down that road. I’d made it clear I wouldn’t listen to her abusing either Keith or Siobhan any longer. As regards the subject of me and my husband, it was definitely back to Thompson’s Law again.

  I jumped up restlessly, went to the window and looked out over the nearby gardens to the bottom of the quiet avenue. I knew there was precious little hope they’d be here yet but I had to do something. ‘I thought that was the car,’ I said, turning back towards her. ‘But I expect it’s too soon. Why don’t I make us a cup of tea? They could be ages yet.’

  ‘Oh, make tea if ye like, Jennifer,’ she said dismissively. ‘I’m not sure I’ll want ony. Ye know yer way roun’ the kitchin by now.’

  The relief of escaping to the kitchen was short-lived. I’d thought if I could just get away from her, I might feel easier, but as soon as I left the room I found myself calculating how much longer I would have to cope before Colin and William John arrived to create a diversion.

  Given Colin had rung from Heathrow, I had to allow an hour’s flight time, perhaps as much as half an hour for baggage and at least a half-hour’s drive. As I didn’t know what the flight times were on a Sunday, I tried to calculate from shortest possible to longest. As I pursued my calculations, agitated and weary, the simple business of laying a tray the way Maisie liked it to be laid and finding her second best china was almost too much for me.

  Jenny, calm down. All you have to do is survive till they come, I told myself. This isn’t the moment to deal with any other issue. Let her get stoned. Ignore her. Y
ou’ve done all you dare. Let it go.

  It was while I was waiting for the tea to brew that I faced the fact I was seeing Maisie in a new light. At the same time, I could see that her view of me had also changed. She was no longer treating me as ‘a nice wee girl’. I couldn’t say exactly when the change had come. Perhaps when I had failed to wear the knicker-pink twinset, or perhaps the day she found the half-knitted matinee coat and was so upset when I told her it was for Karen’s first baby. That was back in the early days at Loughview, when I was still trying to take the kindest view of Karen, along with a lot of other people.

  I looked up at the white, steam-proof electric clock, its large, red second hand stopping momentarily between the individual seconds and then clicking rhythmically on. Suddenly I thought of the luminous dial of the clock in Alan’s car.

  Oh Alan, I thought, how I wish you could spirit me out of this, like the way you did last night at the party. I smiled to myself, the very thought of him bringing me comfort. I remembered him standing in my study and saying that I thought if I couldn’t see him he wouldn’t be there. But he would. Yes, he was quite right. The very fact of his existence, someone who would understand the nightmare of being shut up in this house with this awful woman, made me feel better. I could imagine myself telling him how awful Maisie was, just like I’d told him about my mother. And he would listen. Avoidance, not evasion, that was the thing.

  I thought of Alan’s Uncle John and Aunt Audrey and how long it was since I’d seen them. I’d taken Colin to meet them when we were engaged and they’d come to our wedding, but somehow we’d never managed to visit them since we got back. I smiled wryly. No, Jenny, no more thoughts. Just avoidance. It can’t go on for ever. Thus encouraged, I picked up the tray.

  ‘Milk or lemon today, Maisie?’ I asked pleasantly, as I put the tray down. To my surprise, the gin glass had disappeared, the papers had been tidied up, and the chocolate box was nowhere to be seen. Even more surprising, she had brought out some glossy building trade literature from the magazine rack and had left an illustration of the McKinstry development in Antrim lying open on the coffee table.

  ‘There was cake in the tin,’ she said as she ran her eye over the tray, noting that I had taken a fresh traycloth from the drawer and remembered the paper doily for under the biscuits.

  ‘Oh, would you prefer cake?’ I said, half rising.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said dismissively. ‘A biscuit’s enough for me. I thought maybe you’d be wantin’ cake. You needn’t have bothered wi’ the lemon.’

  I found my hand was shaking, so I concentrated on pouring the tea while we played the game I had become familiar with in recent months. The no-win game, I call it. Do it this way, and I’ll tell you not to bother. Do it any other way, and I’ll point out what you’ve missed. Well, playing the games Maisie wanted to play was all part of the job today. But letting myself play them didn’t mean I didn’t observe or didn’t care.

  ‘There they are. There they are,’ Maisie shouted, jumping up so quickly that I nearly dropped her cup.

  I turned and looked down the drive and caught a glimpse of Colin in shirtsleeves, swinging the car between the stone pillars. William John was in the passenger seat, a cigar between his fingers. Maisie disappeared at speed into the hall, leaving me holding the teapot. I put it down carefully and sent up an earnest prayer of thanksgiving.

  ‘Hello, Jenny. Sorry about all this.’ William John strode into the room, picked up the telephone directory and went over to the phone. ‘Colin’s putting the car away,’ he said over his shoulder as he started to dial.

  I took the hint and went out into the hall. Maisie was already at the front door.

  ‘Colin. Colin,’ she cried and flung herself at him as he came into the hall. She wrapped her arms round him and started to cry.

  ‘There now, Mum. Don’t worry. You mustn’t be upset. It’ll be fine, just fine,’ he said in his most soothing manner.

  He dropped his briefcase, kissed her on the lips and bent his head to hear what she whispered in his ear. He smiled and nodded reassuringly. She looked very satisfied and added something more.

  I stood at the lounge door, an unwilling and embarrassed spectator. The sight of the two of them with their heads together and their arms entwined, whispering confidences, quite nauseated me. I’d never before been just so aware of this sickening performance they put on when they were doing their Mummy’s best boy routine. I couldn’t step back into the lounge and I could hardly go and greet Colin, but I had to do something. I turned away and headed for the kitchen, but Colin caught the movement and called out a cheery, ‘Hello. Where’s my Jen then?’

  His arm still round his mother’s shoulders, he walked her towards me and held out his free arm. Reluctantly, I waited for it to close round my waist. I felt his lips brush mine.

  ‘Now what have you two girls been up to?’ he asked as he drew us both into the lounge.

  ‘I’ve just made some tea,’ I said, rather too brightly.

  ‘Yes, Colin dear. Do come and have a cup. I’m sure Jenny won’t mind making some more.’

  I noted the transformation in Maisie’s accent, and as Colin’s arm released me instantly, I made for the kitchen.

  No, not a bit, I said to myself. No, indeed. Jenny doesn’t mind making more tea, or making more dinner, or making more anything, but what she’d really like to make is her escape. And she will. All in good time.

  I put the kettle on again and looked back up at the clock. A single hour had passed since Daddy dropped me off and already it seemed like an eternity. There would be worse to come, of that I felt quite sure. But if I could survive the last hour, I could probably survive the next one. And that was all I needed to do, an hour at a time, just for the moment.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Hello, hello, Bill. McKinstry here. How are you? Sorry to butt in on a Sunday afternoon . ..’

  I winced as William John launched yet again into his now familiar routine. Each time he boomed into the mouthpiece his voice seemed to expand inside my head so that the pain of my headache oscillated unbearably. Could there be anybody left to telephone? Since teatime, either he or Colin had been talking to someone, establishing the position, considering its implications, and attempting to rearrange it more to their liking.

  ‘A spot of bother, old man. I’d be grateful for a bit of help. You know how these things are . . .’

  Maisie stood up suddenly. ‘I’ll away and see how that chicken’s doing.’

  I cursed the bloody chicken. I wasn’t remotely surprised when Colin agreed to stay for a meal. But having accepted my fate, I discovered Maisie had decided to cook a chicken she’d extracted, rock-hard, from the freezer. Bluish and unappetising, the corpse now lay under a white napkin, a small puddle of water marking its slow progress to the point where it could decently be put in the oven.

  I watched her go, tottering slightly on her very high heels, as she always does whether she’s drunk or sober. Any last shred of sympathy I might have found for her had vanished entirely when Colin rang Altnagelvin Hospital. His brother, they said, was now conscious but still suffering from concussion. He’d had thirty stitches to the gash just above his right eye and they were now about to X-ray his ribs. Colin had repeated these details to her with about as much emotion as if he’d been passing on a train timetable. He hadn’t actually said ‘Fine, fine,’ but his whole manner indicated the problem had been solved, there was nothing for any of them to worry about any more. And Maisie had just nodded, as much as to say, ‘Well, that’s that. As long as I have you, Colin dear, what does it matter?’

  ‘Splendid, old man, splendid. I’m sure we’ll be able to show our appreciation, if you can do that.’ William John’s voice filled the room. ‘Gotta see these things in perspective. Boys will be boys. We’ve all done damn fool things in our time before we learnt a bit of sense, haven’t we? Right then, we’ll be in touch again about Beechcroft next week. Good. Right-oh. I’m sure it’ll be good for both our comp
anies. Gotta stick together these days, haven’t we?’

  He dropped the phone and clapped his hands so loudly that I jumped.

  ‘That’s done it, Colin lad,’ he roared triumphantly. ‘Good job we’d tipped off Me Watters about the Beechcroft contract. He owes us a few favours.’ He looked round at us both, radiating self-satisfaction. ‘What we need is a drink,’ he declared. He took out a fresh cigar and began the elaborate preliminaries before he actually lit it.

  Colin looked up sharply from where he’d been scanning directories and making notes, slid the volumes off his knee, and immediately strode across to the bar and touched a switch. A battery of fluorescent lights stabbed the gathering dusk in the room. I swivelled round towards the window, trying to escape their glare, but I found the bluey-white light and the room itself, reflected back at me, a mirror image set against the dark mass of the lawns and the shrubbery.

  ‘The usual, Dad?’

  ‘Just show it the tonic, son.’

  ‘What about you, Jen?’

  ‘Just tonic, please, with lots of ice and lemon.’

  The light had almost gone. Only to the west could I distinguish a long streak of pale gold broken by the bands of grey-blue cloud that had begun to appear as the afternoon wore on. I stared out across the mature gardens and well-kept properties surrounding Myrtlefield House. Beyond the confining buildings and across the wide swathe of Belfast Lough lay the County Down shore. From the front bedrooms of Myrtlefield you can see Loughview and the low coastline as it continues eastwards to Bangor. But then the coast swings south and the long peninsula of Ards stretches protectively around Strangford, the inland lough with its scatter of tiny islands. Sheep graze in summer on the larger islands, but in winter only the wind disturbs the grass. How far, as the crow flies, I wondered, to one of those islands lying deserted amid the grey water? Fifteen miles. Maybe twenty. But at this moment it might as well be a million. Distance, like time, is such a variable thing. It is the situation of one’s own life that determines whether you can travel those miles or be forever confined in someone else’s reality.