by Maeve Binchy
“Didn’t you have any adventures and romances at the dance or anything?” Valerie asked interestedly.
“No. I hardly went to dances. I went to the Committee dance, because I had to, like everyone else, but I had no romances. I worked in the shop from morn to night, it was bloody exhausting. Do you know I find myself apologizing to Josie that I don’t have romances in Dublin and to you that I don’t have romances in Castlebay.”
It wasn’t a light year for David. This was the year of his finals. He told James that he was going to put his head down and study, and he must be counted out of any socializing. James was affronted: it was his final year too, he insisted, and the Law was every bit as sacred as medicine. Wouldn’t David come to this dance and make up a party? He had invited the American heiress who had played so hard to get during the summer.
David was resolute. He was going to work.
He found Caroline less than understanding these days. She had been very moody down in Castlebay, and had fought with her mother on every possible occasion. She had been obsessed with a rather trampish-looking girl called Sandra from Northern Ireland who seemed to be Gerry Doyle’s choice for parading around the town. Caroline had even worn her own shirts loose over her bathing suit and had bitten the head off her mother when Mrs. Nolan had complained mildly that Caroline seemed to have forgotten her skirt.
“Do you still find Gerry attractive?” David had asked her in exasperation. “I thought you got over all that as a child.”
“Oh, don’t be so patronizing,” she had snapped. “Nobody gets over Gerry Doyle. He’s just there driving everyone mad all the time, isn’t he?” She said it as if it were as obvious as night following day. He felt very irritated.
Or maybe he had just lost his way with girls. That could be it. He had taken Bones for long walks down the Far Cliff Road. Bones was nice and simple. He just wanted walks and for people to throw things which he would bring back. Bones imagined rabbits for himself and went happily in useless pursuit of them. It would be easier to have been a dog. Bones felt no guilt, no uncertainties. If he didn’t get what he wanted he sat panting and smiling with his foolish face, and sooner or later, someone took him for a walk, threw him a stick or gave him a bone. Bones didn’t sit smoking in his kennel at night and wondering what to do. Like David did. Well, his bedroom, but the principle was the same.
For the first time in his life he had not enjoyed the summer in Castlebay. He had grown away from Caroline so much that there was hardly any pleasure in being with her. She seemed to find him plodding, and yet she didn’t really know what she wanted either. She was restless and impatient, she wouldn’t talk about her career and her future. It was all too silly, she said, there she was with an M.A. degree and no chance of a job, she had to learn shorthand and typing like that patronizing halfwit Josie Dillon in the hotel who kept hanging on to her and giving her advice for some reason. A nice commercial course indeed! She had mocked Josie’s accent. David had always liked Josie: she was far more pleasant than her two older sisters. And she had been such an ugly duckling when she was young—but Caroline wouldn’t have known any of that. Anyway, David knew Josie was trying to cultivate Caroline from a deep interest in Caroline’s brother. It was very transparent; and futile.
But that hadn’t been the main problem of the summer: the main problem had been at home.
His mother had talked happily about his coming back to Castlebay to help his father in the practice. The way she put it reminded him of the times he used to help Nellie make shortbread, or help old Martin in the garden. She didn’t understand that he was almost a fully qualified doctor. You didn’t go round helping people if you were qualified, you practiced medicine. He had his intern year to do first in a hospital before he was even allowed to practice; then he was going to do a year in pediatrics and a year of obstetrics and . . . but his mother had said in that really irritating voice, that it really wasn’t necessary to do all that extra work. The best training was on the ground. His father needed all the help he could get. He even employed a young doctor to come and help in the surgery as a locum during the summer season—there was always something happening to the visitors. He had a heavy enough caseload with the people of Castlebay themselves . . .
David knew from Nellie all about the miscarriages and the two stillbirths that had gone before. He knew from unasked-for confidences from people like Mrs. Conway or Miss McCormack, what a precious child he had been. “To have come the full term, to have survived birth, to grow up strong and handsome.” To be nearly a doctor. It was a dream come true, people said. In his disgruntled moments, David had wondered how you got out of someone else’s dream and started dreaming your own.
Clare had a very satisfactory second year. She set herself a very disciplined plan of work, and kept to it. Since nobody else seemed to be doing any work at all her efforts brought her to the attention of the tutors, and this is what she needed. Her plan was to do an M.A. thesis in history, and she would need the enthusiasm and support of the various members of the History faculty, she would also need their advice about how to get money to survive. The Murray Prize was for a primary degree. Once she got her B.A., that was it, she would be on her own.
But she was determined to have a social life as well. Every Friday was late pass night and Clare made the most of it.
Living in such cramped discomfort—three in a bedroom that should really only have housed one—Mary Catherine and Valerie were also involved by necessity in everything she did. They were all more or less the same size; which was both good and bad. Good, because it meant that in dire need one good blouse could be worn by any of them. And they had even bought a black polo-necked jumper between them and insisted that anyone who wore it had to use dress shields, and it had to be washed after the third wear.
But it was bad when they were looking for a favorite garment and realized that it must already be on the body of one of the other two. They learned to dress for their dances and their hops and their social outings of various sorts, each sitting on her own bed: if they all stood up it was like the bear cage in the zoo.
The dressing table was an area of war. Valerie didn’t buy makeup. She claimed she didn’t use makeup, but she wore a great deal of heavy black eyeliner (Mary Catherine’s); she made heavy inroads into the Sari Peach lipstick (Clare’s); she was loud in complaint about spilled face powder but her own nose was suspiciously unshiny so she must have used it fairly regularly. Mary Catherine had a habit of leaving bits of cotton wool all over the room. Wool that had removed eye makeup, lipstick or the painted pancake which she sometimes spread on face, throat and shoulders.
Clare was accused of leaving combs filled with hair around the place. Just because she had long hair, they said, this was no reason why most of it should be distributed round the room.
But despite this, they never had a tiff that lasted longer than a few minutes—except the time that Mary Catherine discovered Clare had gone out wearing Mary Catherine’s only smart shoes, and that Valerie had not only broken her mascara box but what was left of it was swimming in water and was a revolting gray puddle. That argument lasted a long time, and included three threats on Mary Catherine’s part that she would go back to the United States where people were normal.
They would go to Bective, or Palmerston, or Belvedere or Landsdowne; they were the names of rugby clubs which held dances every weekend. It was funny to go to a rugby club; nobody in Castlebay knew anyone who played rugby. Possibly David Power’s school had, but even the school the Dillon boys had gone to played proper football and hurling; and anyone from Castlebay who ever came to Dublin to see a match would come for the All-Ireland finals at Croke Park; they wouldn’t dream of coming for rugby international at Landsdowne Road.
Clare went to a rugby match at Landsdowne Road, one cold afternoon, to cheer on UCD. It was called the Colours Match, played every year between Trinity College and University College. The Trinity students were very upper class; and in order to pinpoint the differenc
e even more all the UCD supporters would chant, “Come on COLLIDGE, C-O-L-L-I-D-G-E, college.” It got a laugh no matter how often they did it.
Clare had a date for the match, a law student called Ian. She had met him at one of her Friday outings; and he had taken her to the pictures twice, and once out to a bona fide, which was a pub three miles outside the city. If you were a bona fide traveler you could go there and drink late. Clare didn’t really like Ian—he seemed a bit pompous and superior. He didn’t talk about normal things, it was all “making an impression” and “how things sounded,” or “how they looked.” But she had been having discussions with the girls; both Valerie and Mary Catherine united against her saying that Clare was becoming the devil to please, and you’d expect a law student to go on a bit and show off. That’s what they were studying, for heaven’s sake. That’s what they’d be doing for the rest of their life in courtroom.
Ian had borrowed his parents’ car and they went to a pub after the Colours Match. Then he took her for bacon and eggs in one of the big cinemas and to the film. They did a bit of necking during the film, but Clare kept lifting her head away from him, which annoyed him greatly.
“Later then?” he asked.
“Later,” she said, staring at the screen.
They drove back to the hostel an odd way, through a lot of back streets. And then there was a bit of waste ground, where cars sometime parked during the day. Ian stopped the car.
It was all very embarrassing. Clare wept later, in the bedroom, while Valerie produced some vermouth to calm them all down. It wasn’t a bit like the films, where people were able to say no without offending. It was awful. It was like the rugby-tackles they’d been looking at during the match. And worse it was all her fault. She had said later, according to Ian. He called her all kinds of names. He had said she was a tease, and that it was physically bad for a male to be put into this state of excitement without being able to relieve it. That had worried her too. It was all her own silly fault. That’s why everyone said you shouldn’t go in for necking and groping and all. It just encouraged boys and made them sick if they couldn’t go the whole way.
Valerie said it was ludicrous that you couldn’t say yes or no, as you felt like it, like having sugar in your tea or not. But Mary Catherine said it was much more important than having sugar in your tea, and that it was so complicated because there were these limits. You were allowed to go so far, and it was all fine, you were a warm sweet responsive person; and then there was some line which, if you crossed it, meant you were going the whole way, and if you didn’t boys got this awful thing about being in distress.
Though they discussed it in great technical detail, they couldn’t agree from their limited experience where this line was, and how you crossed it. It had been different for all three of them. Maybe it was different for everyone, which was why there was always such an almighty fuss about the whole thing.
Clare said it had been a lesson to her. She was a scholarship girl, and the Murray committee had meant her to study, not to go round in people’s parents’ cars groping them and being groped and then being driven home in a black fury with accusations coming at her thick and fast. From now on, there was going to be no messing with men.
She had it all planned out. She would get her B.A. in autumn 1960; then she would study for two years for her M.A. That would bring her up to 1962. Yes, fine. Then she would go to Oxford or Cambridge to do a doctorate, her Ph.D. She would tutor, of course, while she was there. That would get her to 1964. Then she would go to America, to Vassar or Bryn Mawr, for three years as a visiting fellow. In 1967, she would return and she would take a position as Professor of Modern History in either Trinity College or UCD—wherever the History professor died first. To make her mark on the place she should serve a seven-year term, writing, of course, all the time. Then, at the age of thirty-four, she would marry. It would be just in time for her to have two children, and no more. She would marry a don in some other field, and they would have a small unpretentious house covered with ivy, and lined with books. They would live near a café and they would eat out most evenings, all of them, including the babies as soon as they were old enough to get their hands around chips.
Valerie and Mary Catherine rocked with laughter at the long-term plan, it was so detailed—the names of the most prestigious universities in the world, the age at which everything would happen, and the need for chips nearby.
“It’s not a joke,” Clare said, her brown eyes full of determination. “I will not teach children in a school. I’m not going to have all this open to me and end up teaching rotten, stupid children who don’t want to learn. I will not teach. And I will not get married until I’m good and ready. If I wanted to get married, I could have stayed at home in Castlebay and picked my nose like Chrissie.”
“She feels very strongly about it.” Valerie spoke as if Clare weren’t in the room.
“I tell you, when she’s settled down with a nice job, and a nice engagement to a nice young man, she’ll remember this and laugh,” Mary Catherine said.
“You’re nearly as stupid as boys, the pair of you,” Clare said, and drank some more vermouth.
Clare had a phone call from Dr. Power next morning. She caught her throat in alarm, but he came quickly to the point.
“Mrs. O’Hara died—Lord rest her—and since you and Angela were such friends, I thought you’d like to know.”
“When is the funeral, Doctor?”
“On Sunday, but don’t you go spending all your money coming back now. It was just in case you wanted to send a Mass card.”
She rang Emer, who said she would send a telegram at once. Then Clare walked up to University Church.
The priest wrote Mrs. O’Hara’s name down in his notebook so that he would remember to include it in his prayers at Mass. Clare had two half-crowns in her hand. He shook his head.
“Isn’t it five shillings, Father? I thought that’s what it was for students?”
“It’s nothing, child. I’ll be glad to say a Mass for the repose of the woman’s soul. Was she a friend of yours? A relation?”
“No, she wasn’t really a friend. She was my teacher’s mother. She used to sit there while this teacher used to give me extra lessons. She has a son a priest, and that used to give her a lot of happiness even though she was a sort of cripple.”
The priest was pleased to hear that. “Well, she’ll have a lot of Masses said for her soul by her own son, but don’t you worry. I’ll say a Mass for her as well.” He wrote his name on a Mass card, on the dotted line beside the word “celebrant,” and Clare thanked him for his generosity. She wouldn’t have minded paying five shillings for Angela’s mother’s Mass, but it did make things a lot easier now that she didn’t have to. Guiltily she bought a stamp, and stood in the post office, writing a letter of sympathy. She wondered what would Angela do now.
It took a long time to answer all the letters of sympathy and to send notes of thanks for the Mass cards and the flowers. Angela did it methodically each night. She changed the position of the furniture in the cottage and put her mother’s chair upstairs so that she wouldn’t find herself looking over at it.
People had been so generous—even Immaculata had been human and offered her more days off than she was entitled to. Angela had said no, thank you, she would prefer to take a couple of days at the end of term. Immaculata hadn’t liked that. Christmas, and the concert, and everything. That was it, Angela said. She would find it hard to put her soul into the Christmas concert this year. So Immaculata had to agree.
Geraldine and Maire had been more helpful than she could have hoped during the whole time of the funeral. And they distracted people, in their black coats and their English accents, and their innocent and transparently honest concern that Father Sean hadn’t been able to come home for his mother’s funeral. Guiltily they admitted to each other that they hadn’t written to him much and that they never got more than a Christmas card from him these times. Geraldine even went so far a
s to wonder was he happy in the priesthood; he had been so full of it all in the early days.
But Angela was never in the position where she had to answer a direct question about him, only mumble a regret that he wasn’t there to say the Mass.
There was so much to organize: food for the people who would call, beds for Geraldine and Maire, dividing Mother’s things so as to give the girls something to remember her by. They even had to talk about the cottage itself. It had been very hard to sit down with her two sisters who were almost foreign to her with their talk of shops and towns and seaside resorts she had never heard of in England. But it had to be done, they were entitled to a share of what small amount their mother left.
She showed them their mother’s post office book: there was just over £100. She also had a burial policy so her funeral was paid for. Angela said they would divide the £100 into four. Maire wondered should they send it all to Sean for the missions: that was what their mother was most concerned about always.
For a short minute Angela was tempted to tell them. It was late: there would be no more callers to interrupt them. It would take it from her shoulders a little if she could lay it on theirs too. They lived in England, for God’s sake, they could go to see him, decide for themselves about his plight and what their attitude should be. But something about Sean and Shuya seemed too vulnerable to let them be exposed to Maire and Geraldine and their strange, enclosed worlds. She wouldn’t tell them yet.
