by Maeve Binchy
“Oh, I hope so, but do you see what I mean, it’s no good my talking about it, I can only use these awful, sickening words.” She looked from one to another.
“It’s going to be very hard,” said Val. “In the middle of a perfectly normal conversation about sex or about who we’re going to set our sights on at a party we’ll remember that you’ve had this coming home feeling about the boy next door.”
“Will you do me one favor? Will you get it into your heads that he is not the boy next door? Whatever he is, he’s not that.”
He was hungry for every detail of her, he told her that he used to envy the O’Briens as children going off with their jam jars picking blackberries, or with the same jam jars on strings trying to catch pinkeens. There were always children running in and out of the shop and calling to each other winter and summer while his own house was very big and you could hear the clock ticking in the hall.
She told him about how terrible Chrissie had been and somehow they made her into a comic character. All her cruelty, and pulling Clare’s hair, and trying to persuade her she was abnormal didn’t matter anymore.
He told her about his father and how he tried hard not to drag David back to the practice but he really wanted him there. Tomorrow. David admitted that his mother sometimes drove him mad. She was full of childish nonsenses; but years ago in a man-to-man talk his father had urged him not to be impatient, and said that Molly had given up a lot of bright lights and fun to come to a backwater as a country doctor’s wife. It irritated David greatly that his father should be somehow grateful to his mother for this. It was her choice after all. And there was the history of miscarriages and stillbirths so she had to be forgiven her little silliness from time to time.
He told her that his mother came to Dublin every year to spend a few days with the Nolans; and he used to be ashamed of her carry-on, sitting in the lounge of the Shelbourne, or the Ibernian or the Gresham having afternoon tea. Far too dressed up, and asking at the top of her voice who all the other people were, then trilling with affected laughter when David hissed that he didn’t know and saying that really he was quite a recluse. Clare was sympathetic. It was probably because Mrs. Power wanted to feel important just for a couple of days; she could go home and remember that so and so had saluted her and so and so had made a fuss of her. It was like a child really. David’s father indulged her just like a child. Some people always got that kind of treatment.
After a while she told him about Tommy. She wasn’t going to. He didn’t need to know and it seemed disloyal to them all at home with this sad secret they hugged to themselves. It seemed somehow indulgent to confess it in the great heat of love. Maybe David shouldn’t have to hear it either. But she told him suddenly, when he had been talking so honestly about his own life and hiding nothing. She told him quickly and unemotionally. He reached across the table and held both her hands tight. He was upset but not shocked. If Tommy were such an eejit as to get in with this kind of a crowd, maybe the safest place for him was in jail. And since he’d always been such a nice fellow he wouldn’t get beaten up by the other prisoners or the warders or anything.
“When you and I go to London some time . . . we’ll go to see him,” David said expansively. “And that’ll show him that he’s not cut off or anything.”
Go to see Tommy? In a prison, on visiting day? She nodded at him, unable to speak.
He reached out and stroked her face. “I don’t think you have any idea of how much I love you. You are part of my soul. I would do anything for you. Going to see Tommy would make me happy if it were to give you some ease and pleasure. I’d go tonight on the mailboat.”
She closed her eyes and held his hand to her face. “I don’t deserve you. I’m so narrow and one-track and self-obsessed. Why do you love me so much?”
“I’ve no idea. It’s just there. Filling all those empty spaces I used to have. There’s no more doubt now. I just want you and what’s good for you.”
He sat opposite her in the little café, his face tired from lack of sleep, his shirt collar open at the neck, his smile enormous and all over his face, lighting it up.
“You look like a man who’s won the Sweep,” she said admiringly.
“Now you’re just feeding me lines so I’ll say that I have won the Sweep when I’ve won you,” he said.
As they left the café he asked whether anyone else knew where Tommy was.
“Angela. She was the one who insisted I write to him every week. Oh, and Gerry Doyle,” she said.
He frowned. Why had she told Gerry? He tried to keep his voice casual but she knew he hated Gerry knowing the family secret before he did.
“It was a long time ago. Gerry was going to London and my Mam asked him to go and find Tommy. I had to tell him what was happening. I couldn’t have him going around investigating it and turning it up for himself, and then not knowing what to say. It was easier to tell him straight out. He never said a word, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“Why are you studying in bed?” Valerie complained.
“Because I did nothing today. I met David for two hours, I went back to the library and I wrote him a letter. That was another hour. Then I spent an hour thinking about how nice it would be to go to London with him. Then I spent about half an hour working out how he should tell his father he can’t possibly go back to Castlebay until he’s done three years at least in Dublin hospitals. Then I went to this place where they do your hair cheaply in the afternoons, then I went out to the hospital with my new hairdo and had a cup of tea in the canteen with him, and gave him the letter. Then I came home. That’s the work I did today, that’s the amount of work the Murray scholar has put in toward getting her first-class honors degree.”
“All right, all right.” Valerie hadn’t intended to bring on such an onslaught.
“No. It’s not all right. I didn’t know this would happen.” Clare looked mournful.
“Christ, you’re only having a bit of fun. One day, one day, Clare O’Brien, with this fellow—it’s not as if it were something stupid, like me making eyes like a sheep at that fellow who doesn’t even know that I am alive, or Mary Catherine going out with James. You’ve got the real thing, what we all want. Stop bellyaching.”
“I know it must sound like bellyaching . . .”
“It does.” Valerie was grumpy.
“But if you knew how annoyed I am for doing nothing today. If you knew.”
“I’m beginning to know. For God’s sake will you get out of bed, put on your coat, sit at the dressing table and work properly. Stop hanging out of the bed and trying to read with the light on the floor. Do it properly. I’ll get to sleep. Don’t mind me.”
“Valerie, stop making yourself into a tragedy queen,” Clare said.
Val laughed at the scorn; but she said that it was no harm to take Professor Clare O’Brien down a bit. She talked about her studies as if they were a sacred ritual. Clare had to smile as she climbed out of bed and put on clothes so that she wouldn’t freeze.
A girl they didn’t know tapped on the window, having climbed up the rungs. Clare let her in and she thanked them profusely.
“You three are a legend in this place,” she said breathlessly. “I mean you’re so old, and so settled, and make all your own rules.”
“We’re also mad,” Val said from the bed. “We take it in turns to get up and get fully dressed in the night to keep guard over the others.”
The girl was startled and said she should be off.
“You have to make a cup of tea for us as your payment for going through the room,” Clare said, as a joke—but ten minutes later the girl crept back with two cups of tea.
“I presume your friend is still out,” she said, nervously looking at Mary Catherine’s bed.
“Of course, she is,” said Val. “It’s only three o’clock in the morning.”
Clare said that Valerie was giving them all a reputation for being stone mad. Val said that she wondered what on earth Mar
y Catherine and James Nolan could be doing until after three in the morning if they weren’t in bed together.
About ten minutes later, Mary Catherine came through the window. She and James Nolan had been in bed together, and it had been all right. Not great, but all right, and she would like them to start a novena this minute because her period was due in exactly nine days’ time, so if ever a novena was called for it was now.
Dick Dillon told Angela that he hadn’t changed his mind. That he wasn’t much of a catch for her, and he wasn’t as well read, but at least she knew that he’d never turn into a drunk on her. Then he remembered that a drunk is exactly what Angela’s father had been and he apologized so much for that remark the she had to tell him to shut up or she would beat him to death with her bicycle.
But seriously, he said. Wouldn’t it be a good idea? Angela was lonely in that cottage, he was lonely in a little corner of the hotel, his bedroom and sitting room. He would be agreeable to whatever she wanted—live in her cottage, build a new place, he could get a site easily. Angela could go on teaching if she liked. The ban on married teachers had been lifted now. Or she could take a rest from it. He so enjoyed her company. He was never one for the flowery words, but genuinely he had flowery thoughts in his heart.
Angela was thoughtful. She said that in her heart she still felt it would be the single most foolish act since the partition of the country but she wouldn’t think of it now. There was something else to the forefront of her mind. But the thing that was in her mind would be out of it one way or another at the end of the summer.
Then she would sit down with him seriously and discuss his suggestion, without any jokes or smart-alec remarks.
“It’s not so much a suggestion—it’s more a proposal,” he said, affronted. “This . . . thing, this worry in the summer. Is there anything I could do to make it easier for you?” he asked.
She looked at him. He had a very kind face. “No, Dick. Thank you all the same.”
“It isn’t another man?” he asked anxiously. “You’re not making up your mind about another person or anything like that?”
“No. There’s no other man in that sense at all.”
“You’re not thinking of entering the convent?” He was fearful of all the rival possibilities.
“Immaculata would have the place closed down rather than let me into the community,” she said.
“Well, sure one religious in any family is enough,” said Dick Dillon, unerringly putting his finger on the one thing that was guaranteed to set every nerve end jangling. Father Sean O’Hara. Who still wrote excited letters about how much they were all looking forward to the summer.
Paddy Power said it was a very clear day altogether, you could see cliffs and headlands miles and miles away. Nellie had told him he was back early: it would be half an hour before the lunch was ready, the potatoes were still like bullets. Molly said she’d walk a bit along the cliff with him since it was so bright and fresh out.
“Will you go up to see Sheila? You like going there in January.”
“Yes. I was thinking of it. David was a bit offhand on the phone when I suggested it.”
“Offhand?”
“He said he might find it very hard to get any time off to meet me. He just said that he’d like to warn me in advance.”
“Well, that’s fair enough. I remember it was like that in my time as well. You don’t have a minute of your own.”
“Oh, he has minutes of his own all right.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said to me that he heard the Guards had to be called to Dillon’s Hotel, I asked how he heard that—we hadn’t told him—and he said that he had met Clare O’Brien and she’d told him. Josie Dillon had written to her all about it, apparently.”
“Well?” Dr. Power couldn’t see where all this was leading.
“Well, it shows he gets enough minutes off to meet that Clare O’Brien.”
“Molly, don’t be giving out about that child. You’ve always had a down on her.”
“I’ve had nothing of the sort. I just mentioned to you in passing that it’s odd our son has time to meet her when he’s not going to be able to have any time to meet his own mother.”
“Now, now, now. He ran into her—what more natural than they talk about Castlebay?”
“No, he didn’t say he ran into her. He said when he met her, as if they met all the time. And stop sounding exasperated with me like that. I know. I tell you.”
“If he is meeting her, would that be the end of the world?”
Molly looked triumphant. “A minute ago I was drawing conclusions. I was imagining things. Now all of a sudden I’m right.”
“Yes, Molly . . .”
Valerie said you couldn’t do a novena for something like that. God just wouldn’t listen. Clare said that if anything had happened it had happened now and no amount of prayers could change it. Mary Catherine said that neither of them had understood the nature of prayer. In her parish back in the States it had been very clearly explained. God knew in advance that you were going to pray later. It was foreknowledge, not predestination. They had endless debates about it, but fortunately events overtook them and on the appointed day the news was good, so there was a great sigh of relief from the bedroom of the three ageing eccentrics.
Mary Catherine said she wouldn’t run the risk again, although James had said that he would Look After Things. She said she didn’t really want to either. She couldn’t think why she had in the first place except that she was so sick of him pestering her about it, and saying no, and finding excuses, and thinking up reasons why not. She said he had nearly dropped dead when she said she would go back with him to this flat. The same one that David had lived in . . . They all brought their girls there, it seemed.
But Mary Catherine said they probably talked much more than they actually seduced. James said he was fairly experienced, but without being too technical Mary Catherine thought he wasn’t. No honestly it would be too detailed, she couldn’t say any more. And she had asked him very casually if he thought that David Power was a ladies’ man, and he had said that David was being terribly secretive and the belief was that he was having it off with a fast nurse up in the hospital otherwise why wouldn’t he come out to play with the rest of them?
Mary Catherine said she couldn’t see the need for secrecy but if it was so desperately important to Clare and David, she’d go along with it. She didn’t care much one way or the other she said; she had a far bigger worry of her own. How to brush off James politely. Far from casting her aside once he had his way with her, he was on the phone morning noon and night, presumably hoping to have his way with her over and over again. She didn’t want to turn him down too brusquely and she certainly didn’t want him to tell everyone that she was a good thing.
In the safety of daylight and public places Clare and David talked about sex. David told her that he never had it with anyone. He had implied to the lads that he was at it all the time, but he actually never had. There was a sort of a near miss on one occasion but he needn’t detain her with that. Anyway that had all to do with drink and nothing to do with love.
They discussed almost abstractly what they would do if they had the opportunity presented to them. Suppose now for example that Clare had her own flat where nobody would bother them. Suppose David had his own place. Would their resolution be so strong?
Clare said that she could never go through the anxiety. She didn’t like to tell tales on Mary Catherine, but it turned out that David knew anyway. This was a bit alarming, but they couldn’t fault James really since Valerie and Clare knew all about it as well.
David said that there were probably ways round the anxiety bit, and what with being a doctor and everything he’d have more access to the ways round it than anyone else. Anyway people went to the North of Ireland where you could get contraceptives legally, so there should be no problem there.
“That’s if we were thinking of it seriously,” Clare said.
/> “Yes, that’s if we were,” David agreed.
Emer rang Clare at the hostel and asked her would she do her a great favor. Kevin had been asked to go and find out about new educational aids in London. For three whole days. And would you believe it, she was going too. Her mother was looking after Daniel. And what she’d really like is if someone were to stay in the house, to keep an eye on it. Would Clare like to? Clare said she’d like to very much.
She contemplated not telling him. For two whole hours.
Then she told him. He asked for his three days’ leave at that time.
“I hope we won’t have to be doing any more novenas,” Valerie grumbled.
“Suppose I never want to see you again afterward?” she said as they went to the bedroom.
“Why wouldn’t you want to see me again afterward?”
“Mary Catherine didn’t with James.”
“They don’t love each other. They’re only just pretending to.”
“So being in love would make all the difference?”
“That’s what I’ve always heard.”
David stroked her long fair hair on the pillow afterward. He kept moving his hand from the top of her head to the end of the hair. He was afraid to speak in case she was hurt or unhappy.
Her eyes were open as she lay there beside him but he couldn’t read her face. Was she frightened? Or disappointed? Had she felt anything like the pleasure that he had, or the peace he felt now?
“David,” she said. Her voice was very small.
He gave a great cry of delight and gathered her up in his arms and held her to him. He couldn’t believe that it was possible to be so happy.
James Nolan tracked David down eventually.
“I thought you’d been murdered and the body buried,” he said. “Nobody knew where you were.”
