Echoes

by Maeve Binchy

  There was a call for the doctor to come quickly. A child. Come quickly. They rang off. A five-year-old had fallen over rusty farm machinery and opened his eye.

  David remembered Clare saying that she had cut her leg years ago on the rusty spikes of half-hidden machinery. He felt a surge of anger about people raising children so casually among all these dangers.

  Soothing, reassuring, and speaking confident words he didn’t mean, David wiped the drying blood from the child’s face. It wasn’t too bad. Calming and chatting to distract their attention he said it wasn’t bad at all, it would all be fine, now now, could someone start to make some tea. Then he took out his bag and put five quick stitches into the small face. He examined it critically. It wasn’t bad. The child looked at him trustingly.

  “Isn’t that fine?” David said.

  “I’m Matthew.”

  “Of course you are, and you’re better now.” David gave him a hug just as the tea tray was being brought in.

  “Aren’t you the cut of your father, and the same grand ways with you?” Matthew’s mother was holding one of his hands between both her own.

  “Thank you.”

  “We were all delighted when you married a local girl, not getting yourself a fancy wife from Dublin.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “And how’s your own little girl, Doctor?”

  “Oh, she’s beautiful, thank you. Simply beautiful.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. You give so much to other people’s children, it would be very sad if you didn’t find happiness in your own.”

  Liffey was crying when he got in. She was wet. Her little legs were red and chapped, and the napkin soaked. As it was cold, she had obviously been lying like that for some time.

  Clare was lying in bed, reading a recipe book.

  “I thought I’d make drop scones. They don’t look too hard,” she smiled at him.

  “Sure, that would be fine. Liffey’s very wet.”

  “I’ll see to her in a minute.”

  “She’s been wet for ages, Clare.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  David spoke sharply. “No, I’ll do it. It’ll be quicker.”

  “Oh, good.” She went back to studying the recipe book.

  Clare went back to bed early so she should have had a fair bank of sleep when Liffey woke. But the child cried and cried, and Clare never turned over in bed.

  David got up. He fed and changed her again, but she still wouldn’t settle. He walked her up and down. Eventually, she slept.

  About ten minutes before he intended to get up, Liffey began again. He poked Clare gently.

  “You get her this time, love, will you? I want to grab a few minutes’ sleep.”

  Clare swung her legs out of bed and put her woolly dressing gown on over her long nighty. She picked up Liffey with a few words of comfort and carried her downstairs.

  When David had washed and shaved and come down for his breakfast, Clare was sitting at the table, asleep. The kettle was on the range, hissing and spitting; Liffey was screaming from her cradle.

  That was the morning David told his father in halting, broken sentences that he thought Clare was suffering from postnatal depression.

  His father said that these things were too easily defined and put into categories. Clare was a bit low. Life was very different and less demanding than it had been last year, and it should never be forgotten that the child had missed her degree. That would be hard enough on any girl but on a little girl who had fought like a tiger to get there it must have been harder still.

  David said it was more than that. If it was only that they could talk about it and sort it out, but she was so physically tired, she was drowsy all the time, and without losing any love for Liffey she seemed to have lost interest in her.

  David’s face was white and his eyes were dark and sleepless-looking. His father was full of pity for him.

  “I think you should still try other ways before you say that we should treat it, or send her to someone.”

  “I don’t want to send her to anyone, but couldn’t she be put on Tofranil? Wouldn’t that sort her out in a month or two? Dad, that’s what we’d say for anyone else. Why can’t we say it for Clare?”

  “Because it could be a lot of other things. She could be lonely. She could be unsure of herself. Molly might be making her feel inadequate. Talk to her. Talk, and tell her things and maybe you’ll see. It’s not a question of her being some unfortunate woman who has no one to understand her. She’s got a fine husband, a great husband.”

  “I can’t be all that great if she’s changed so much.”

  “Do you still love me?” he asked her.

  “David, what can you mean? I love you more than ever.”

  “That’s the third time you’ve been too tired to make love.”

  “I’m sorry. I just felt a bit weary. OK. I don’t mind. Now I’m awake.”

  “It’s too late now.”

  “Oh, David, stop sulking.”

  He swung his legs out of bed and plugged in the electric fire. He wanted to talk and he didn’t want them to freeze.

  “I promise you on my oath I’m not sulking. But when I think the way we were jumping on each other this time last year, it seems as if we were two different people.”

  “This time last year we were in Dublin and we hadn’t all the responsibilities we have now,” she said.

  “This time last year, you were working fourteen hours a day for your exams. I was working fourteen hours a day in that hospital. We had to get round the city on buses. We were up to here in anxiety. Now we have our own house, our own child, our freedom to jump on each other morning, noon and night if we wish to do so. I have a gentle and satisfying amount of work to do rather than the mayhem as an intern. You have no official things to do, and we’re still too tired.”

  “You’re not. I am,” she said, correcting the facts.

  “But why, Clare? Why? I’m not just being a raging beast like all men trying to demand my rights, or more rights, or anything. Why are you so tired?”

  “There’s so much to do,” she said.

  “Are you sure you love me? And you know I’m not picking a fight.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then let me tell you what you did today. You got up and I got breakfast. And I changed Liffey. And I said I’d get a leg of lamb in Dwyers’ on the way home, and you said no, you would. Before I went out I brought in some potatoes from the bag outside. I peeled a few. You said leave them. I came home for lunch. You had been asleep all morning. Liffey was wet and bawling. . . . You were upset because there was no lunch. Clare . . . this is terrible. This isn’t meant to be a row—do you understand? I’m just trying to find out why you could be tired? I made us a tin of soup and we had some of Nellie’s bread while you got the bottle for Liffey. This time I insisted on getting the meat. I left it back in the house at three o’clock. You were asleep in the chair. Clare, I put the bloody meat into the oven, and that’s how we had dinner. I thought we’d go to the pictures but you said you were too tired. You’ve been asleep all morning, all afternoon, and now you’re weary, you say, when you come to bed. I’m your doctor as well as your husband. Of course I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m very sorry. When you put it like that, it’s indefensible.”

  “Darling heart, I’m not blaming you. I’m only asking you as my best and dearest friend, can you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think anything was.”

  “But we can’t live like this. I mean, you can’t go on like this—if I weren’t a doctor I’d bring you to a doctor.” He smiled and put both his hands on her face.

  “What do you think?” she looked like a worried child.

  “I think it’s a depression.”

  “I’m not sad.”

  “No, a clinical depression.”

  “But I swear I’m not depressed.”

  “And your exams?”

  “Yes,
but I’ve got over that. Honestly I have. I had harder things to fight against ten years ago. Now I’m a nice middle-class married lady, no worry about the fees. If I haven’t the guts to do it again it’s my own fault, not anybody else’s. Not Liffey’s fault, not yours, only mine.”

  “And will you have the guts to do it again?”

  “I think I’m too tired. There, I’ve said it again.”

  “I’d like to give you an antidepressant.”

  “More energy, like?”

  “No, I’m not going to talk to you as if you were an ignoramus. They’ve got nothing to do with iron or energy. They work on the chemicals, on amino acid in the brain, and on the nerve endings. It would take about three weeks to make any difference.”

  “What does your dad think?”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “I’m sure you have asked him. It doesn’t matter. You have to ask him things.”

  “He thinks you’re just lonely and unsure of yourself here.”

  “And you think it’s a postnatal depression, and I think it’s just tiredness.”

  “It could be a bit of all of them,” David said.

  “Well, feed me the medicine, Doctor, and let’s hope we see a miracle cure.” She smiled at him, a smile from the old days, and he went to sleep feeling a little better than he had felt for some weeks.

  Next day he suggested that they take Liffey to see Mr. Kenny, and Clare said that was a great idea; the nice old solicitor had sent them a lovely silver spoon for the baby. But when David got home expecting Liffey and Clare to be ready, the baby hadn’t been changed or dressed, and Clare said she felt very tired today.

  David said fine, they’d go another day, and without making any big drama out of it, he started her on a course of Tofranil.

  “I was up this way and I wondered if there was a cup of tea going.”

  “Nobody’s up this way, but you can have a cup of tea,” she said.

  “You never come downtown anymore,” Gerry said.

  “And how would you know whether I do or not?”

  “Your mother mentioned it to me, as it happens.”

  “Oh, Lord. I meant to go to see her this week.”

  “This week? Clare, she’s only ten minutes away. She thinks you’ve joined the gentry.”

  Clare felt very guilty. The days ran into each other, yes, it was a whole week since she had brought the baby over to her mother, it must be three days at least since she had seen her mother-in-law.

  “Do you feel all right, Clare?” Gerry asked gently. He was sitting at the kitchen table.

  She was pouring the kettle of water into a teapot.

  “Thank you very much for all this interest, Dr. Doyle. Have you become a medical consultant now as well as a home counselor, bearing me advice from my family?”

  “I’m serious, Clare.”

  She brought the tea to the table.

  “I’m tired, that’s all. It’s very exhausting looking after a baby.”

  “That one doesn’t seem to need much looking after. She’s fast asleep.”

  “Ah, but they wake up, Gerry. That’s a little trick they have.”

  They drank their tea.

  “And is the handsome young doctor giving you anything for your tiredness?”

  “Yes, of course, he is . . . a course of tablets.”

  “Good. I’m glad he noticed.”

  “Please don’t speak badly of David, Gerry. It makes me very upset.”

  “I’m not speaking badly of him. I’m just saying he’s wrong for you.”

  “Now you really must go.” She stood up, coldly. “Friend or no friend, Gerry, you are not coming into my house when David is not here and saying that. No, you bloody can’t.”

  “You’re only getting upset because it’s true.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You can win any argument if you say things like that. The truth is, I am upset to hear any bad reference made to David at all, and if you ever knew what it was like to love someone rather than just . . . well . . . use them . . . then you’d understand.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  There was a silence.

  Then she threw her head back. “Don’t be idiotic. You only say that because you once or twice made a pass at me, and I didn’t give in. You feel it’s broken the track record for you—it’s not one hundred percent. Bingo! Isn’t that it? That’s what it’s all about. I pity any girl you really say that you love because you don’t know what the word means.”

  He sipped his tea. “In this case I suppose it means that I’d do anything to have you, anything.”

  She felt frightened.

  “Please . . .” she began.

  “I saw David one day last week kneeling in the middle of the road. I thought of putting my foot on the accelerator. Nobody would have blamed me. He was in the middle of the street. Any court would have let me off. Then I saw he was looking after a puppy someone had run over. I couldn’t do it.”

  Clare stood up. “You aren’t serious. You’re just saying these things to make yourself sound like a villain.”

  “No, it’s quite true. Quite true.” His voice was calm.

  “But why?”

  “Who knows? Who knows anything about why people love other people? Anyway I decided that it could never be done that way, and even if David had an accident, a genuine accident, and you were a grieving widow, that mightn’t work. It might take years for you to get over him. So it has to be a different way entirely.”

  “This is a game, is it?”

  There was another silence.

  Clare didn’t like him sitting there looking at her. “I’ll tell you something. Maybe it’s foolish but I’ll tell you anyway. I don’t feel all that well, I think I have a sort of depression, and honestly I can’t take any more upset. I would be sitting here day and night in a panic if I thought that anything you were saying, any of it, were true. Can you reassure me that it’s not? Please?”

  “I thought you had a depression,” he said sympathetically. “Remember Fiona did too, in England that time. But she got over it, and so will you. Is he giving you proper tablets for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll be fine, and you’ll be back at your books, and madam there will grow up to be a pride and joy to you.”

  It was as if he hadn’t said any of the other terrible things. Clare felt dizzy.

  “So put everything out of your head. I’ll just love you quietly from a distance. Forever. You know?”

  “Or until summer,” she said.

  “No, forever. But you’re right. There’s no point in getting you upset. You’re to get yourself better now.”

  He got up to leave.

  “Yes. Yes, I will. I’ll be fine.”

  “And go to see your mam, eh? And Josie, right?”

  “Right. Goodbye, Gerry.”

  The baby woke just then and began a little cry.

  “Aren’t you going to pick her up?”

  “Yes, in a minute. I was just seeing you off. Hush, Liffey. I’m just coming.”

  “Liffey?” he smiled from the door. “You call her the name I gave her.”

  “I think we’re going to have to come to terms with pastry,” Angela said.

  “I came to terms with it years ago. I love it.”

  “No, I think we should make it. We’ve been avoiding all these recipes that begin telling you to roll out the crust. Let’s make the damn thing tonight.”

  “Right,” he said. “Will I get the ingredients?”

  “No, I’ll call into O’Brien’s on the way back from school. I think it’s only flour and lard or something, but I might be wrong.”

  “I can’t think of any other woman of your age who doesn’t know how to make pastry,” he said, teasing her.

  “Less of that. You got yourself an intellectual as a girlfriend. You should be delighted with yourself and counting your blessings all the time.”

  “Are you my girlfriend?” he said, pleased.

>   “Of course I am. I didn’t mean to be but I am,” she said.

  The following night they made the pastry. It was nightmarish. The book had said you could use lard or butter or margarine.

  “Why doesn’t it tell us what ordinary people use?” Angela fumed.

  It had told them to Rub the Fat into the Flour.

  “That actually is not English. You rub something out, or you rub something. You don’t rub in. God, these people.” They made it look like breadcrumbs which is what it said, but it also said use a Light Hand.

  “That’s the most stupid thing I ever heard. How can you be light with all this rubbing?” Dick had an apron on over his good suit. Angela had insisted.

  “I don’t know what you wore a good suit like this for, just to do cooking,” she scolded. But she knew well . . .

  It was the same reason that she had worn a smart blouse and washed her hair.

  The question had to wait until they worked out what Bake Blind meant. By process of elimination they discovered it meant that you put the pastry into the oven and you cooked it by itself first. Angela wrote a short note to the book’s publishers saying that it should be withdrawn for its general misinformation.

  Then they sat down and poured themselves a drink. Dick stood up again and said he would like Angela to marry him.

  “Dick, are you sure? You’ve been asking me a long time you know.”

  He put his glass of orange squash down on the table and took her hands. “I thought that maybe when you let slip that you were my girlfriend that we had made a bit of progress,” he said.

  “I’m very difficult,” she said.

  “I know,” he said.

  “And you’re set in your ways of course,” she added.

  “I am not set in my ways. When I got to know you, which is not today or yesterday, I was set in my ways. Now I do all kinds of things I’d never have done before. I read long books. I cook great meals. I’m cheerful instead of miserable. What do you mean, set in my ways?”