by Nesta Tuomey
He assured her anything out of the ordinary, even something so commonplace as spectacles, could draw forth the venom of the bullies in a class. He shrugged and said that it was regrettable. He didn’t seem to feel there was anything he or anyone else could do about it.
Jane proceeded to speak her mind with no uncertainty. It was disgraceful, she said, and not to be tolerated. The bullies should be singled out and suspended. The headmaster listened with a bland expression. When she ran out of words he spoke about the danger of jumping to conclusions. A tumble in the playground hardly constituted an attack. She fumed as she listened to this bland whitewashing of the incident. Tripped indeed! She came away in a fury of hurt and dissatisfaction.
Maybe the school authorities had seen the television interview. No one could say for sure bu her enquiry received scant attention and the bullying continued. Hugh refused to discuss the matter, insisting he could defend himself. In desperation, Jane spoke to Terry.
‘Leave it to me, Mum,’ he said. ‘I’ll fix those bastards.’
Terry and a few of his classmates concealed themselves in the bushes at the end of the avenue, leading up to the school, and lay in wait for the bullies. As they drew near Terry gave the signal and he and his chosen band rushed out. Terry caught hold of the ringleader, a boy called Mark, and slammed him into the ground. He sat astride him and pinioned his arms.
‘If you ever lay a finger on my brother again,’ he told him, ‘I’ll break your neck.’
The boy struggled and squirmed under him but offered no further defiance. Terry had gained a reputation for being a formidable adversary and, for a while after that, they left Hugh alone.
The leaves on the silver birch in the McArdle’s back garden hung like pods, about to unfurl, and in the overgrown mass of vegetation behind Claire’s house the broom fountained yellow-gold against red brickwork. There were only two weeks to go before the end of the spring term and she and Sheena were counting the days. The McArdles had decided to go away to their holiday bungalow for Easter and Jane had asked Claire to go with them.
‘It will do you good,’ Jane said. ‘You’ve been looking very pale lately. Even Eddie has noticed. It’s a beautiful spot and the sea air will be just the thing to put colour back in those cheeks.’
Jane admitted she was feeling the effects of the past few months herself and looked forward to lazing about for two weeks. ‘Don’t feel you have to be grateful or anything,’ she told Claire with a smile. ‘You’ll be earning your keep looking after Ruthie as well as putting up with me when Eddie is playing golf. You may be sure Sheena won’t be much in evidence. If I know that young lady she’ll be off gallivanting with the boys.’
Claire didn’t really mind. She had no wish to meet boys. She really welcomed the break from her own house though, and especially her mother. Not that she didn’t appreciate the efforts Annette was making since her father left home. Each week the two of them went to a film together and bought fish and chips on the way home. Some nights they got on really well, others they hardly spoke to each other. When this happened Annette would lose her temper and accuse Claire of being selfish and unsociable and then inevitably she would start cataloguing Jim’s faults. Claire recognised that her father had faults, but he wasn’t there to defend himself, that was the difference. When she said so Annette would cry in exasperation, ‘For God’s sake, Claire, anyone would think from your attitude I drove him away. He was the one who strayed. It wasn’t the first time either. but because I loved him I forgave him. I still do in a way but it’s just not the kind of love to withstand such a marriage.’
Claire considered that it would be a relief to be out of the line of fire for a whole fortnight. She deliberately kept herself from thinking of Eddie. There had been two further occasions of intimacy in the months since the February day in the kitchen, but even those she had put out of her mind and they had assumed a dream-like quality, as though they had happened to someone else. Actually, the intimate Eddie was becoming more and more distant from the father-figure Eddie, whom she met often in the presence of his family. This fatherly Eddie, unlike the other, presented no threat.
Annette did not raise any objection. She was feeling worn out herself after the spring term and looked forward to two weeks of freedom from early rising and Montessori teaching.
These days she felt all strung out by the time she reached home in the evenings. With the approach of the good weather the little boys and girls she taught were full of repressed energy, just bursting to get out of school and into the air. At home her own children were also taking their toll on her. Since Jim had moved out of the house the three of them had been thrown into the claustrophobic proximity of one parent families. Every little grievance was magnified and it took as little as the absence of a favourite breakfast cereal to spark off a family row. It seemed to Annette that in her children’s eyes she was always at fault. Of the two, Christopher, though less analytical and probing than Claire, was inclined to be the most censorious and clearly still blamed her for the family split. So Annette readily agreed to her daughter going away with the McArdles for Easter, only too glad to have her burden halved for the next two weeks.
The McArdles travelled in convoy to Waterford and arrived in Dualeen late afternoon. It was a lovely day, like the middle of summer. Along the coast road the sea sparkled invitingly, the waves only lightly capped with lacy foam. Claire was sorry when they left it behind and turned inland.
The McArdle’s holiday house was actually a dormer bungalow, and bigger than it looked from the outside. Claire found she was sharing an upper room with Sheena and Ruthie. The boys were across the landing. Downstairs, with a separate bathroom of their own, was Jane’s and Eddie’s room.
Wherever they went in Dualeen everyone seemed to know the McArdles and because she was with them Claire got friendly smiles and nods of the head. It was her first taste of life in a seaside town and she loved every minute.
On the beach, which was two hundred yards from the bungalow, the children played sand cricket and skimmed stones in the waves. Ruthie, helped by Hugh, made linked rows of turrets on the shore, endlessly filling, patting down and upending her bucket. The mild weather looked as if it would never end.
Jane sat on the rug, like a queen amidst her subjects, sunglasses shoved high on her forehead, a book dangling from one relaxed hand. ‘This is the life,’ she sighed every few moments, wanting to hold on to these first blissful moments of the holiday, not yet taking for granted the fact that she really was away, with no patients to see or urgent cases to consider for the next two weeks. And the weather! ‘Not like April at all,’ she gloated. ‘More like the middle of June.’
Claire, like Jane, hugged to herself the thought of all those sunny days ahead of her. For the first time in her life she felt part of a family, a real family, with brothers and sisters to share her happiness. She wandered away from Sheena and Terry and lay down on a corner of the rug beside Jane. Contentedly she took up her book. Villette. Another great story and even better than Shirley, which she had just finished the week before coming away. When Claire liked an author she read everything she could lay her hands on by that author, feeling it gave her a great sense of the person, almost as if she knew them. Sometimes she just let the book slide out of her hand and felt the sun an aching violet pressure on her lids. Lately she was feeling lethargic. She was just as pleased to laze about playing snap with Ruthie or noughts and crosses with Hugh. She thought she might be getting her period.
With her eyes shut, she heard the shouts and laughter as though from a great distance. She kept her eyes tight shut, afraid if she opened them she might find herself back home again. When at last she chanced breaking the spell and let them fly open, the sun nearly blinded her and she gazed in wonder at the sea and sand, the smiling faces turned towards her.
‘C’mon, lazybones,’ Sheena cried, plumping down on the sand beside her, ‘we’re going to play cricket and we need you.’
Claire marked the page
of her book and got up reluctantly. She could have lain there for ever. Jane watched her with a smile, glad to see her so relaxed.
Not far from the bungalow there was a hotel, a large white building at the top of a sandy sloping road. There was a pool table in an annex beside the bar and the hotel served delicious afternoon teas. Jane often took the children there and she would sit reading a magazine, with a gin and tonic at her elbow while they sampled the cream cakes and petit fours.
‘This is my Black Forest Gateau,’ she would joke, raising her glass. Eddie sometimes joined them and he and Jane would withdraw to the bar, leaving the children to their own devices. Claire always felt easier when he wasn’t with them. It was a relief when he went away for two days to play golf in Rosslare.
There was a funfair set up in a field behind the hotel and the children went there as often as they got money from Jane. Hugh partnered Claire in the dodgem cars, and she hung in breathlessly beside him, her heart in her mouth. He knew she hated the jarring collisions and he did his best to ferry her safely out of danger, but every so often Terry and Sheena came at them out of the blue and the two cars would come crashing to a halt. Ruthie was not allowed to ride the cars and she would be jumping up and down, impatient for them to finish. Claire took her on the chair-o-planes and the two of them held hands and whirled screaming high above the crowd. Ruthie loved them but afterwards Claire felt so sick she thought she was going to throw up.
In the evenings they stayed home and Jane cooked up lots of chips and whiting in batter. Sheena and Claire took turns, lowering the fish basket into the hot fat. Sometimes they had party nights, when Eddie and Jane invited in couples from the other holiday bungalows and the adults either played cards or shuffled about the floor in lazy time to Elvis or the Beatles.
Sometimes the neighbouring couples brought their children with them and Claire and Sheena had to organise them in another room. Eventually the younger ones became cranky and would have to be carted home and put to bed, so the girls earned themselves quite a bit of money baby-sitting. By the time the partying parents came stealing shamefacedly in, Claire and Sheena would be fast asleep on the settee, but, within minutes, they would be fully awake and hurrying out of their respective cottages, clutching fivers or even tenners. Stumbling back to their own bungalow, they would plan how they would spend it. Once it was so late that the first blush of dawn suffused the sky and they saw the men setting off in their fishing boats to bring in the catch.
Another morning, tiptoeing in the door, the girls found Eddie still sitting, glass in hand, by the fire. Although the weather was so mild as to be almost summery, the nights had a nip to them and the McArdles kept plenty of turf stacked beside the fireplace. Hugh was usually first up in the morning and, by the time the others struggled down, he would have the fire lit and be sitting by it, listening to his Walkman. Later in the morning it was let go out and only lit again when evening came.
Now the fresh sods Eddie had arranged on the dying embers had begun to catch, sending a flickering glow about the room. Jane had already gone yawning to bed and Sheena, perhaps fearing that her father would make her do the washing-up before retiring, fled upstairs crying, ‘Last one in bed’s a rotten turnip,’ and abandoning Claire to him.
Claire hesitated, drawn by the heat of the fire for she was chilled from hours of sitting in the unheated cottage. Eddie seemed half asleep, nodding over his whisky. She lingered, warming herself at the blaze.
Sheena’s shout awakened Hugh out of his second sleep. He stirred and dozed until it became evident that he would have to get up and take a leak. Too much lemonade before bedtime always had this effect on him. He was reluctant to go down the steep wooden stairs to the toilet and contemplated peeing in the bowl on the washstand, but fear of Terry’s wrath deflected him.
Hugh swung his feet on to the floor and shivered. Elsewhere in the bungalow the polished boards were warmer underfoot but in this room, which was really little more than a boxroom, lino had been put down. He looked longingly at the washbowl and then at the sleeping hump in the bed. Terry would almost certainly tell everyone if he used it. Hugh shuddered. He would be mortified if Claire found out. He opened the door and crept down the stairs.
The house was very quiet. At the turn in the staircase he looked through the banisters and noticed the fire still burning. Someone had piled on more sods and the flames were leaping high up the chimney with no guard in front of the fire. One stray spark and they could all burn in their beds. He was about to run on down when something in the corner moved, so slightly he might have imagined it, a sod of turf shifting in the creel or hot ash settling in the grate. Then he saw the bodies on the rug. For a moment he could not distinguish who they were. He peered closer and, in the shifting firelight, recognised Claire’s long blonde hair fanned out on his father’s bare stomach. He had always thought that hair so pretty. At that moment she lifted her head slightly and he saw what she was doing.
Hugh crouched down in the shadows and began to cry softly to himself. It was the first time he had cried since Hero died. He turned, almost in slow motion, and with great effort, got his legs to carry him back upstairs. He crept into his room and quietly closed the door. Careless of Terry, or anyone or anything in the world, he peed in the bowl and got back shivering under the covers. When he closed his eyes he could not rid himself of the vision of Claire and his father.
Claire went through the morning feeling like she was going to get sick. Her throat kept gagging as though she had swallowed some of the stuff. She hadn’t wanted to do it but Eddie had insisted, pressing her head down lower and lower until her face was pushed into his pubic hair. ‘Please...’ she had said in a low voice. ‘Oh please!’ But he had kept her at it. She was afraid if she refused or told him how much she hated it he would be angry with her and might even tell Jane to send her home. She hung over the toilet bowl dry-retching and would have stayed in there longer only Terry was banging on the door, wanting to get in.
Claire came out and went into the bathroom, which was separate from the toilet, to brush her teeth, taking a long time over it and repeatedly rinsing out her mouth. The memory came back to her, indelibly etched on her brain. She spat again and again, coughing until her throat hurt, remembering the force with which he had driven into her mouth. She felt violently ill again.
‘Claire, my dear, are you all right?’ Jane asked, coming in after her and gently closing over the door. When Claire looked up, white and exhausted, from the washbasin, Jane thought she had never seen such abject misery on a human face before.
Jane was too familiar with the early stages of pregnancy to be in much doubt about what was the matter with Claire, and was both shocked and saddened. How could it have happened to Claire? she wondered. She was so young, not yet fourteen, still a child. Such a tragedy. Jane couldn’t have felt more depressed if it was Sheena or Ruthie.
She persuaded Claire to come into her bedroom gently examined her. What she saw confirmed her suspicions. Claire’s breasts were blue veined and rather fuller than normal, with a thickened, orange peel texture to the nipples.
‘Good girl,’ she said, her heart aching for the shame she saw in the girl’s eyes, ‘Now there’s one more thing I’d like from you.’ She gave her a bowl and told her to go into the toilet. Later that morning Jane got a home pregnancy testing kit from the local chemist. As she had suspected, Claire was pregnant.
From the girl’s bewildered attitude Jane surmised correctly that Claire was not fully aware what had happened to her. Like most youngsters of her age, her periods were scattered and light, and she wasn’t even sure when she had her last one. From what she could tell from her brief examination, Claire was at least ten weeks pregnant.
Jane sighed and cursed nature’s ill-conceived system, whereby girls hardly more than babies themselves were given fully effective reproductive equipment long before they were mature enough to cope with it.
Jane decided to take a trip back to town to consult a colleague who spe
cialised in the area of rape crisis and decided to take Claire with her. There was only a few more days of the holiday left and she was anxious to get the girl home before her condition became apparent to the others.
Jane decided she would say nothing to Eddie. In such a crisis, she considered, men were rarely much use. Eddie would more than likely tell her that it was Annette’s business, not hers. Jane had no great confidence in Annette’s ability to cope with this particular kind of situation, but while she was in town she would have a chat with her. Another suspicion was beginning to form in her teeming brain. She was visited by a memory of how upset Claire had been after her father had walked out on them and, putting this and a few other impressions together, believed she knew who the father of Claire’s baby might be. And if her suspicions were correct ... Jane shuddered at this new aspect of the situation and the effects of it on the unborn child.
Claire packed her case with lowered spirits. She felt somehow as if she were in disgrace. It was nothing Jane had actually said but Claire sensed her reserve. She closed down the lid, thinking how happy she had been the day they arrived and what fun it had been taking out her belongings and laying them on the shelves, along with Sheena’s and Ruthie’s things. How she wished she could reverse time and be starting all over again. She stood, eyes closed, swaying slightly until Sheena and Terry came running in to tell her that Jane was ready to go.
‘I’m to bring your case down,’ said Terry importantly. He swung it off the bed and went rapidly out of the door. Claire and Sheena looked at each other.
‘See you the very minute we get back,’ Sheena promised, almost recovered from her disappointment at being left behind. ‘Why can’t I come too?’ she had asked her mother indignantly. ‘I’d love to visit the book fair in the Mansion House,’ Jane’s excuse for bringing Claire. Only her mother’s promise to bring her back a treat had succeeded in soothing her feelings. Now she put her arms around Claire and gave her a hug.