by Maeve Binchy
“Is anything wrong?” David asked quickly.
“Depends how you view it. Your mother’s coming to stay with mine tomorrow. Both maternals are a bit shirty that you couldn’t be found. I think you’d better ring your own to pat down ruffled feathers. Where were you anyway?”
“Wouldn’t it have to be this weekend she was looking for me? Wouldn’t you bloody know.”
James shrugged. “I did my best. I thought maybe you’d gone off with a bird. I said there was a match on and that you might have gone to that.”
“A match for three days!”
“I said it was in Northern Ireland.”
“OK, that’ll do. Thanks, James.”
“Don’t hang up. Where were you?”
“As you said. At a match.”
“I’ll deal with you. You’re meant to be coming to lunch with us on Sunday.”
Molly Power was martyred, on the phone.
“Please don’t think I’m checking up on you. I don’t mind where you go on your time off. Your father’s always saying you’re a grown man. I agree entirely.”
“I’m glad to know you’re coming up to Dublin,” he said, gritting his teeth.
“It’s just that the Nolans thought it was so odd that you couldn’t be found. I mean, David, nobody wants to keep checking up on you. I’ve told you that. It’s just that if anything happened to your father—God forbid that it should—and we were looking for you . . .”
He held the receiver at arm’s length. He would like to have smashed it against the wall.
“. . . do you think you’ll be able to tear yourself away from whatever is occupying you so much to come and meet us when I’m in Dublin?”
“I’m really looking forward to Sunday lunch,” he said, willing an eagerness into his voice.
“Am I not going to see you until Sunday?”
“No . . . I meant that, in particular. . . . Of course, I’ll see you before then.”
He leaned his head against the wall when the three minutes were up. “Clare,” he whispered to himself. “Clare, Clare.”
“Are you all right, Doctor?” A young nurse with freckles was looking at him. A lot of the young housemen went a bit loopy, she had been told, and she thought it could well be true.
Angela read the letter with great surprise. If Clare had got into a political group, or become very active in a cause, she would not have been so surprised, but David, lovely big nice David Power who was coming back to Castlebay next year to share the work with his father? How had it happened? And what would Clare do if she married him? She would marry him, it seemed, reading between the lines. Clare had said how they both felt as strongly as each other and they couldn’t bear to be apart. She said he had it as badly as she did. Angela was bewildered, reading the outpourings. Bewildered because there seemed only one thing to say. So she said it:
I suppose you must work as hard as you possibly can, get your First as you know you can, then relax, and do your Higher Diploma. And then, who knows? I might be put out to grass here and you’d be overqualified, but I’m sure they’d take you in the school. But as Mrs. Power, young Mrs. Power, would you want to work? Would you want to teach all day . . . ?
Clare read the letter in dismay. She had been stupid, stupid, stupid, to tell Angela. The woman understood nothing. There was no question of going back to Castlebay. That was what all the agonizing was about. David didn’t want to, she didn’t want to. The root of the problem was how to explain this to David’s father without breaking his heart. In a million years Angela wouldn’t understand. She had been too long in Castlebay; that was her trouble.
“I’m going to meet your mother-in-law and your intended on Sunday,” Mary Catherine said.
“How on earth . . . ?”
“James has asked me to lunch. He said Mrs. Power was coming and that David would be there too. Didn’t he tell you?”
“Yes. It slipped my mind.” David hadn’t told her. She was furious.
“I didn’t want to talk about anything bad, that’s all.”
“Your mother coming to Dublin isn’t bad.”
“Yes, it is. It makes it all more real, it brings that side of things into our life here.”
“She comes every year. You don’t have to announce to her at lunch in the Nolans’ house that your plans for the future have changed.”
“No. But I’d prefer to be with you on Sunday. Not there.”
“Mary Catherine’s going. They must be having a big do.”
“That’s an idea. Why don’t I get James to ask you too?”
“Are you stark staring mad?” she asked.
The ideal thing would have been to find somewhere near the hospital, but the roads were too posh and the prices of flats were too high. If they went far out of the city they could afford somewhere nice but then it would be pointless, David would hardly ever be able to escape to somewhere so far away. They read the small ads in the evening papers and couldn’t believe how quickly any reasonable-sounding bed-sitter was snapped up. Sometimes they found long queues on the doorstep of a place that had only been advertised that very day. They got to know other young people and exchanged information. Rathmines wasn’t too bad, people said. It was about twenty minutes walk from UCD. Lots of people had bed-sitters there. They went on an expedition, just knocking on every door: that was meant to be as good a way as any. Clare looked around at the area. There was a big main street and a lot of tall houses which had once been family homes but now housed several families. Some were very well kept with well-painted halls, nice half-moon tables where the post for each flat dweller was laid out in neat rows. Others had torn lino, walls badly in need of papering and a faintly unpleasant smell about them. These were the ones they were going to be able to afford.
It was a nice area, they decided. A bit like a village or a place all on its own rather than part of the Dublin they knew. But there were buses constantly back and forth, it was near the canal for walks and, because this was where a lot of young people had flats, the shops stayed open later. There was also a chip shop nearby. Clare looked at it gratefully. This might be very useful indeed.
They looked at the small grimy room up three flights of stairs, in the big house with the uncared-for garden and the peeling paintwork. They looked at each other and said yes. They handed over the first month’s rent and moved in on Saturday. The landlord said he hated students usually but seeing that this was a young married couple, that was quite different. He did hope that there was no question of a child yet because they would understand he had to run a quiet house. They shook their heads. No, there would be no question of that and they quite understood.
David had given her a plain ring which cost fifteen shillings; one day it would be a proper one. Like one day it would be a proper place to live. They had an oil stove, and the place smelled of paraffin; the bed was a bit lumpy and the little cooking ring was very dirty after the last tenants. The bathroom was down two floors. But it was their own. And apart from Valerie and Mary Catherine who had to know everything, nobody else in the world knew where they were.
They went out to buy bacon and sausages and a bottle of red vermouth for their first supper. They bought a bookcase at a secondhand shop because the landlord said he didn’t like his walls being mutilated. The walls were so rough and uneven, and had such shaky plaster, they would have been hard put to take a nail let alone a shelf. Clare felt settled when the books were in place.
He kissed her hands and looked up at her face. “Look, it’s all going to be all right. You’ll study and I’ll come to you every minute I can. You’ll get your First and I’ll finish my year and start somewhere else, just as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I won’t be an intern, we can live together like this, only better. I’ll be getting real money.”
“So will I,” Clare said excitedly, “if I’m tutoring.”
“We haven’t a worry in the world. If we can do this”—he waved his hand expansively around the small shabby room—
“if we can do this in a few days, can’t we do anything?”
It was a lonely Sunday, but all Sundays could be a bit down in Dublin.
Clare scraped at the cooking ring for a while, then she went out to buy a Sunday paper. A bell was ringing and great crowds were going into the big church in the main street of Rathmines. She hurried past. There had been five Sundays since she was in mortal sin. She had gone to Mass as usual the first Sunday, but it was ridiculous, she couldn’t say any prayers, it was hypocritical to kneel there knowing that she was going to commit further mortal sin. For all her brave words to David, it was a sin, and that was that. There was no point in acting the part of a person who was praying. If Clare were the Lord she’d prefer those kind of people not to come to church at all.
Val had gone to a lunch where six people were going to make a curry. It sounded awful, yet Clare would like to have been there. She didn’t feel she could ask Emer and Kevin if she could call, it seemed like using them, and anyway she did feel slightly embarrassed going back to their place even though they had no idea why she should be. Mary Catherine was at this Nolan lunch and so was David. Perhaps she should have said yes, and agreed when, in his innocence, he had suggested she should be invited too. It would have been hard to take: Mrs. Power’s rage and scorn would have communicated itself to everyone there and Clare didn’t really like James or Caroline Nolan enough to think they might have supported her. But still this was very hard too, this hanging around and waiting.
It was like being in love with a married man, like that girl who was so depressed in the hostel last year. She had been having a romance with one of the lecturers; she was suicidal at weekends.
“Don’t be so silly,” Clare told herself aloud. “There is no comparison. We have a flat together of our own. He’ll be coming back here. It’s his mother he’s seeing, for God’s sake, not a wife. Why feel so chilly? Why this awful sense of doom?”
There were five cars parked in the drive in front of the Nolans’ house: Mr. Nolan’s, his wife’s, Caroline’s and James’s. David didn’t know who the last one belonged to. He ran lightly up the steps. Breeda opened the door. She took his coat, and put it in the breakfast room, where a lot of other coats were already hanging and draped.
He went up the stairs to the first-floor drawing room. His mother was standing by the fireplace, leaning on the mantelpiece. She looked very made-up and a bit fussy, David thought. Too many frills at her neck and her cuffs. He didn’t have time to see who else was there, since Molly gave a scream of welcome.
“The prodigal! He’s torn himself away!”
He wished she hadn’t. It made such a commotion. He should have gone in quietly and greeted James’s mother and father. But now because she had called such attention to him, he had to go straight to her.
“You’re looking marvelous, Mother,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.
“Oh, you’re a worse flatterer than your father,” she said, still in this high silly voice that he hated.
He looked around. Mrs. Nolan looked vague and sort of fluttery as usual. David wondered yet again why his mother didn’t see how strange Sheila Nolan was, how dotty, for want of a more technical word.
“Lovely to be here, Mrs. Nolan,” he said dutifully.
“Oh, David.” She looked at him as if she had never seen him before but as if she had learned his name to make him feel welcome. “How good of you to come to see us. Your mother is here too you know.” Sheila Nolan looked around vaguely.
“Yes, yes. I’ve just seen her.” David was beginning to feel trapped, to experience the hunted sensation that Mrs. Nolan managed to create all around her.
“David—they tell me you love sherry. Sweet or dry?” The woman stared into his eyes as if waiting for the Meaning of Life in his answer.
“Dry would be very nice, Mrs. Nolan.” He hated sherry of any kind.
He saw James had managed to get a gin and tonic, but it was too late, the sherry glass was in his hand. Caroline was talking to Mary Catherine by the window. Two priests were talking to Mr. Nolan. One of them looked familiar, yet David hadn’t met him before. Breeda came in and passed round cheese straws and little bits of celery filled with cheese.
The voices of his mother and Mrs. Nolan talking archly at him receded, and David wanted Clare and their little room and a tin of tomato soup. He wanted to be miles from this overheated room and babble of chat. He answered the questions automatically: yes, it was pretty hard work, no, he didn’t know that specialist, but of course he knew him by name, and how nice of the Nolans to say they’d have a word. He asked his mother about home, and about his father, and had Bones recovered from the terrible paint incident. Molly Power said that Bones had never looked beautiful but nowadays he would actually frighten you to look at him. They had cut off so much of his coat where the spilled paint had all hardened and matted. He looked very odd but had no idea that his appearance had changed. Old as he was, he still ran round in circles barking happily. Molly said you couldn’t take him for a walk anywhere because the explanations were so lengthy when you met anyone, and the memory of finding him lying on his back on the kitchen floor in a pool of red paint was not one you wanted to relive.
“Will you be down before Easter to see him? And us indeed,” she asked.
“Not a chance . . . oh and about Easter . . .” he began, but Sheila Nolan had clapped her hands. Lunch was ready.
They moved to another very overheated room with nine places set around a table, two bottles of wine already open and a huge joint of beef on the carving table.
“Isn’t this the life?” said Molly Power wistfully as they went into the room with its heavy dark furniture and thick curtains. Her voice was envious for a life which could assemble people around a table like this, far from Castlebay.
David took his mind from the dingy bed-sitter not two miles away, and forced himself to feel some sympathy for his mother. Dad had always said that she needed very little to make her happy. And it was true, there she was, reveling in the showy lunch that Sheila Nolan had organized in her honor. He was not going to be rude to her. He wasn’t going to spoil her visit. He’d tell her about Easter later.
David was sitting between Caroline and one of the priests. Caroline was in high form and full of confidences and whispered questions.
“Do you think James is serious about the Yankee lady? Oh, go on. He must tell you. I don’t believe this strong, silent act. Men do tell. I know they do.”
“But you are so wrong, Caroline, men are much too gentle and sensitive to discuss their emotions, would that we had the strength of women, able to bring anything out in the open, air it, examine it and dust it down.”
She laughed. “Do you think they’re involved, if you know what I mean? Once upon a time he used to be only interested whether she had money, now he’s a bit lovesick, I think.”
They both looked at Mary Catherine, who was battling with interrogation from Mrs. Power and glances of fluttery hostility from Mrs. Nolan.
“Why don’t you ask her? She’d tell all, the way women do.”
“No, she’s like a tin of sardines that one. I wouldn’t get to first base, to use her own kind of language.”
“And how about your own romances? Are you the toast of the Incorporated Law Society?”
“You only ask me that to break my heart. You know I think of no other man.” Caroline waved her eyelashes up and down at him jokily.
“What chance would a humble country hick like myself have with a sophisticated girl like you?” David smiled. He had always liked Caroline. He had fancied her of course when he was very young, and in phases ever since, she was so easy to talk to, so jokey, and she took nothing too seriously. He remembered with a start that his mother had always regarded them as a likely match, and with some alarm noticed that Mrs. Power and Mrs. Nolan were looking at them fondly.
Caroline was unaware of it. “I never tried seriously to capture you, David, I hate failure. I feel that with you I have to bide my
time, wait till you’re ready for me, and fall into my arms like a ripe plum. Maybe on the rebound from some other female.”
She threw back her head of dark hair and laughed. Clare had once said that Caroline Nolan had too many good, white, even teeth. It was a sign of great money and breeding. Rich people didn’t rot their children’s teeth with sticky things, and rich people took their children to the dentist regularly.
Caroline did look very healthy.
She looked very attractive too: she had a lemon-colored jumper and a green-and-gold sort of tartan-type skirt. She wore a big amber necklace. She said that she must have been mad to listen to the nuns who said that a degree was the answer. It wasn’t the answer, it was the question. You had to ask yourself what to do then. Fortunately now that she had done the boring secretarial bit she was nicely installed in her father’s office as a solicitor’s apprentice where she should have been years ago. Before she became old and gray.
She turned to pass the vegetables in their heavy tureens and David found himself talking to the priest with the small buttons of eyes.
“I know your face from somewhere, Father. Would there have been a picture of you in the paper or anything?”
“I hope not. I’m in bad enough books with the archbishop already. No, I don’t think I’ve come across you—I know you’re from Castlebay. Your mother was telling me before you arrived.”
“I’m not such a genius as she makes out,” he said.
“She didn’t make you out to be a genius at all,” the priest said.
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“We do have a mutual friend though. Angela O’Hara. She and I met at a wedding in Rome, oh it must be eight years ago now. A long time. But somehow we all remained great friends. A couple called Quinn got married . . .”
David remembered why the priest was familiar. He was the Father Flynn whose round face shone out of the wedding photos in Kevin and Emer Quinn’s bedroom.
