Finishing Touches

by Patricia Scanlan

  They emerged into bright sunlight and walked slowly towards one of the wooden seats that dotted the garden. The wood was warm against their thighs as they sat down and Cassie felt a sense of peace envelop her as she always did in this lovely place. In a way she didn’t want to hear Laura’s bad news here. It took the good out of her little haven.

  She dismissed the thought. After all, Laura was her best friend and best friends shared everything. ‘What’s the matter, Laura, you look dreadful?’ she said solicitously, turning to her raven-haired friend. Laura was so striking with her jet-black hair and startling blue eyes. Cassie always felt so untidy beside her glamorous friend. Her own chestnut curls had a mind of their own and Laura’s extra few inches made her uniform hang on her like a model whereas Cassie, being smaller, felt that hers looked like a sack.

  ‘At least you’ve got boobs,’ her friend was always reassuring her. ‘All I’ve got is two fried eggs! And I’ll be fifteen next year. Quel désastre!’ Laura liked to speak bilingually.

  Now she said fiercely, ‘Jill’s going have a baby.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Cassie was shocked. She hadn’t expected this at all. Jill was Laura’s elder sister. Their idol. Jill lived in a flat in Dublin and worked at the airport as a car hire rep. She was the ultimate in glamour. On rare occasions, as a treat, Cassie and Laura were invited to spend a night in her flat, where they ate lovely foreign food like lasagne and garlic bread and could smoke without fear of being caught by their parents. To live in a flat in Dublin and go to dances and pubs and stay up every night until all hours was Cassie’s and Laura’s dream and they spent many happy hours plotting their immensely exciting future. Listening to Jill telling them about the party that she went to and how she met a gorgeous hunk in Nikki’s nightclub or had dinner with a pilot in the International Airport Hotel was better than the excitement of any novel. They couldn’t wait to do the same themselves. And now here was their heroine, pregnant and unmarried. A fate worse than death in Ireland. It might be 1969 in the rest of the world, and free love and easy living might be the new thing, but here such news was a disaster. All the gossips in Port Mahon would have a field-day.

  ‘Close your mouth and stop catching flies,’ Laura snapped irritably when Cassie failed to respond.

  ‘Sorry!’ murmured Cassie. No wonder Laura was upset. This was terrible news. Mrs Quinn would be going mad. Her own mother wouldn’t be a bit pleased, either. Nora Jordan didn’t approve of young girls going to live on their own in Dublin, and Cassie knew she was in for a rough ride when she left school and wanted to move to the city with Laura. This would only increase the difficulties ahead. Cassie would certainly never again be allowed to sleep over at Jill’s flat after this news was made public.

  ‘Sorry I barked,’ Laura said sheepishly.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Cassie reassured her. She’d known Laura for ages and didn’t take any notice of the occasional abrupt remark. ‘Anyway, you’ve got reason to bark. How are things at home?’

  ‘Ma’s taken to the bed and Da has told Jill never to set foot in the house again. Mick went and got drunk and crashed his car into the pillar in the drive and I’m just sick of the whole lot of them!’ Laura said mournfully. ‘It’s not a bit fair!’ she burst out. ‘Mick goes around getting drunk every weekend. He’s crashed the car so many times but he’s let get away with it at home and just because Jill’s going to have a baby she’s been kicked out. It makes me sick!’ Her face was red with rage. Mick was her elder brother. ‘If Mick came in and said he’d got a girl into trouble do you think he’d be told never to set foot in the house again?’ Laura was nearly crying now. ‘He would not! They wouldn’t talk to him for a while and then it would be forgotten about. The double standard just makes me sick! Da makes no allowances for us girls and the lads get away with anything. God, I wish I were working and earning my own money. I’d be out of there so fast you wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Do you want to come over and stay the night with me?’ Cassie asked, feeling nothing but pity for Laura. Knowing what a tyrant Mr Quinn was, she could just imagine the state of poor Jill and the awful atmosphere in the Quinn household. ‘We can come to school together tomorrow,’ she added a little glumly, remembering the fate of their precious Saturday morning.

  ‘Thanks a million, Cassie. I’d love to, if your mother won’t mind.’

  ‘Of course she won’t,’ Cassie assured her. ‘And I’ll make you some hot chocolate with cream and flake in it.’

  Laura smiled wanly. ‘You’re always great in a crisis, Cassie. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Oh Cassie, you should have heard my da! He called Jill a slut and he roared and ranted the way he always does and I just hate him.’ She burst into tears at the memory.

  ‘Shhh, don’t be upsetting yourself,’ Cassie soothed, putting an arm around her weeping friend’s shoulder. ‘It will pass over. He’ll come around.’

  ‘No he won’t,’ sobbed Laura. ‘He’s a big bully and once he’s got his knife into someone, it’s there for good. He always holds grudges and he’ll never forgive Jill.’

  Privately, Cassie had to agree that her friend’s assessment of her father was extremely accurate. Peter Quinn was the rudest, most ignorant, most self-centred man, and he ruled the family with a rod of iron. To him, women were second-class citizens. He treated his wife and daughters as minions, expecting them to dance attendance on him and his sons. Laura, who was as strong-willed as he was, had a terrible time trying to cope with the unfairness of it all. Growing up in a generation where women were finally beginning to be treated as equals, she despised her father’s male chauvinism and railed against it.

  Cassie thanked God for giving her a father like Jack Jordan. Her father was the complete opposite to Laura’s and Cassie loved him with all her heart. A genial, good-humoured, quiet man, Jack treated his sons and daughters as equals. He always had time to talk and listen to them and took a great interest in all their affairs. Much as he loved them all, Cassie knew in her heart and soul that she was her father’s favourite. Each evening after she had done her study, her father and she would tramp the fields for an hour or two. She would tell him of her day and he would tell her of his as he puffed contentedly on his pipe. Jack loved the countryside. His farm was his pride and joy and although the hours were long and the work was hard, he provided well for his family and never a word about it, unlike Peter Quinn, who was always going on about how hard he worked and how much his children had to thank him for.

  ‘Stop crying, Laura. It will be all right, honestly,’ Cassie said worriedly. It wasn’t like Laura to break down. Usually she was such a strong character. She really was at the end of her rope. ‘Here’s Miss Fagin,’ she went on urgently, spying their maths mistress bearing down on them. ‘If you don’t stop she’ll want to know what’s the matter.’

  Laura hiccupped. ‘You’d better stop hugging me. She’ll think we’re a couple of lezzers. You know her and her warped mind.’

  Cassie giggled. ‘It might give her something else to worry about other than that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Just look at her; she even looks like a triangle on legs.’

  Laura snorted. ‘Cassie Jordan, what a thing to say! But you’re absolutely right! I’ve never noticed it before.’

  ‘Good afternoon, girls,’ the triangle on legs said, giving them a keen look as it passed by.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Fagin,’ responded the girls politely, getting up from the bench. They went to the games room and had a game of table-tennis, which Cassie kindly allowed Laura to win, and then the great bell rang around the school and droves of blue-uniformed figures headed for their various classrooms to begin the afternoon’s classes, like ants scurrying around an anthill.

  As she put the finishing touches to her disgusting-looking carrageen mould in the school kitchen, Cassie cast a glance at her friend. Laura was cleaning the work-surface with a vague faraway look in her eyes, and Cassie knew she was thinking o
f the trouble at home. Well, at least tonight she could relax and forget about it. If only Barbara were going to spend the night with her friend Judy, it would be perfect. Then Laura could sleep in her sister’s bed and Cassie wouldn’t have to make do with the camp bed. Of course, if Barbara knew Laura was staying, she’d probably stay at home for spite.

  Cassie sighed. Her younger sister could be such a little madam, always wanting to do what Cassie was doing, always looking for notice. And she was such a tattle-tale, ratting on Cassie to her mother about Cassie and Laura and a few of the others being caught smoking in one of the boarders’ bathrooms. It was Sister Eileen who had caught them, all ten of them, puffing away in the tiny bathroom, three of them sitting in the bath, four of them sitting on the edge of the bath, one sitting on the cistern of the loo, and the other pair sitting on the loo itself. Wreaths of smoke circling around their heads, they sat giggling and gossiping and puffing contentedly, ties loosened and uniforms in glorious disarray. Sister Eileen, who had a nose like a bloodhound and ears like an elephant, had heard the stifled giggles and smelt the smoke as she was walking past. Usually nuns and teachers were not to be seen on school corridors during lunchtime. They preferred the peace of the convent and staffrooms as they recharged their batteries before returning to the afternoon fray. But now, flinging the bathroom door open, Sister Eileen stared grimly at the scene confronting her.

  Margy Kane got such a fright that her cigarette smoke went the wrong way. She started to choke and Cassie had to thump her several times on the back. The others tried to extinguish their fags and the inhabitants of the bath struggled to climb out. In the midst of this uproar, Barbara, Cassie’s sister, a second-year student at the school, and her friend Judy, happened to be passing. Barbara, listening to Sister Eileen coldly tell the miscreants to follow her to the big parlour, was disgusted, her pinched little face wrinkling in disdain. Barbara, being the goody-goody that she was, wouldn’t dream of smoking and was always threatening to tell on Cassie. So far she had refrained, but Cassie knew this time for sure Barbara would tell, because Cassie, fed up with her sister wearing her clothes and putting them back in her wardrobe dirty, had bought herself a padlock and locked her wardrobe door. Barbara had been furious and had been dying to get her own back ever since. The smoking episode had been a golden opportunity.

  Sister Eileen had lined them up in front of her in the big parlour. ‘I am in two minds as to whether I should report this to Reverend Mother. It is absolutely outrageous and disgraceful behaviour. And not what is expected from the girls of Saint Imelda’s. You wouldn’t get the girls from Thompson and Maitland behaving in such a common fashion.’

  Thompson and Maitland was the nearby Protestant school and their exemplary behaviour was always held up to the Saint Imelda’s girls. Mind, the Thompson and Maitland lot had confessed, one day they had been over on a courtesy visit, that the Imelda’s girls were always held up as examples to them, so they all agreed to take no notice of such pronouncements.

  ‘And furthermore, apart from the disgraceful disrespect to the uniform, have you girls no regard for your health and the state of your lungs?’ the nun demanded to know. Philippa Feely was so upset at being caught that she burst into tears.

  Sister Eileen was unmoved. ‘Oh, stop snivelling, Madam Feely. It’s a bit late for that now! I want an essay on my desk tomorrow morning from all of you, on the dangers of smoking. Dismissed!’ She turned on her heel and swept out, her crisp white habit flapping in the breeze.

  ‘You should have seen their faces,’ she reported to a crowd of laughing sisters, later that evening in the convent. ‘If you had seen the contortions of Jane O’Hara trying to get out of the bath, with her socks at half-mast and her tie knotted up under her ear.’ Jane O’Hara was a gangling six-footer. ‘Don’t ask me how I kept my face straight,’ she grinned as the other nuns laughed.

  The smokers could not believe their luck. Sister Eileen was a brick for not reporting them to the Reverend Mother and that would have been the end of it had Barbara kept her mouth shut. But it had been too good an opportunity for revenge and she couldn’t get home quickly enough to tell her mother. Nora had not taken so lenient a view as Sister Eileen, and Cassie had been stopped from going to the youth-club dances for a month. When Laura’s mother met Mrs Jordan in the street and wanted to know why Cassie wasn’t at the dances, Nora had informed her of the reason and Laura too had been stopped from going. One day, Laura swore, Miss Goody Two-Shoes was going to get what was coming to her. From then on, she called her Blabbermouth Barbara, much to the younger girl’s disgust, for secretly Barbara was in awe of Laura with her striking good looks and air of supreme self-confidence.

  The best thing to do, Cassie decided, was to say nothing about Laura staying until after Barbara had announced she was going to stay with her friend Judy. It would be too late for her to change her mind then.

  Two

  ‘Why are you going to school on a Saturday morning?’ Nora Jordan asked suspiciously. ‘Is this a punishment?’ Cassie had visions of being prevented from going to the next youth-club dance so reluctantly, she had to fib.

  ‘It’s just a bit of extra study before our exams,’ she explained.

  ‘Does Barbara have to go in?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Cassie hastily. ‘It’s only because we’re third years.’

  ‘It’s also because we’ll be missing some days next week for our school retreat,’ Laura added smoothly. Cassie stared admiringly at her friend. Laura was always able to think on her feet. That response was so plausible, her mother would have to believe it.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Nora nodded, as she basted the stuffed seabass, already golden-brown, that she was going to serve for dinner. The smell of it made Cassie’s mouth water. She was starving. ‘And who is giving you the retreat this year?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. All we know is that we’ve to go to the Priory at nine on Monday morning, and we don’t have to wear our uniforms.’ Cassie was so relieved that her mother had accepted Laura’s explanation without question. She was really looking forward to the retreat. Two days off school. Last year they had had a gorgeous priest, Father Paul, and they had all fallen madly in love with him.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we had Father Paul again?’ Laura echoed her thoughts.

  ‘Mmm . . .’ Cassie agreed enthusiastically, helping herself to stuffing while her mother was distracted, straining the peas.

  ‘Cassie, would you set the table for me, like a good girl?’

  ‘Where’s Barbara?’ Setting the table was Barbara’s job. Cassie’s job was to wash up after the dinner. But invariably Barbara was not to be found when it was time to set the table and Cassie ended up doing it.

  ‘I don’t know where she is. If you’re going to make a fuss I’ll do it myself,’ Nora said crossly in her martyr voice.

  Cassie sighed. It was always the same. Barbara was a lazy little bitch and she got away with blue murder.

  ‘Come on. I’ll help you,’ offered Laura briskly, going to the drawer and getting a handful of place-mats. ‘How many for dinner?’

  ‘Mam, Dad, John, Barbara, Martin, Irene, you and me,’ Cassie said, counting on her fingers. ‘Eight.’ She counted out eight knives, forks and spoons and followed Laura into the dining-room.

  ‘Which table-cloth?’

  ‘The embroidered one. I’ll get it,’ Cassie said grumpily, pulling open the door of the sideboard with more force than was necessary. ‘It’s just not fair!’ she muttered. ‘That one gets away with everything.’ Cassie flung the table-cloth across the long polished wooden table. ‘It’s not that I mind setting the blasted table. I’d prefer to do that than the washing-up. She’s even got an easy job. It’s the principle of it. I don’t see why just because I’m the eldest I have to do everything,’ she moaned as she began laying the table.

  ‘At least John and Martin do a bit,’ Laura observed. ‘Just look at me. Once Jill left I had to do everything. Da doesn’t think boys should have to do ho
usework.’ This was true, Cassie conceded. Laura really had it tough at home. At least Nora insisted on the whole family doing their share, even if Barbara did her best to get out of it.

  ‘Well, how are the terrible twins?’ Cassie’s father enquired, as he walked into the dining-room from the kitchen.

  ‘Hi, Pops!’ Cassie immediately brightened up as she affectionately kissed her father on the cheek.

  ‘Hi, Mr Jordan,’ Laura said cheerfully, kissing him on the other cheek. Laura really loved Mr Jordan. He was a very kind man and always had time to talk to her and have a bit of crack with her, unlike her own sourpuss of a dad.

  ‘What’s this about you having to go to school tomorrow? Your ma was saying you’ve to do extra study or something?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Laura said demurely, saving Cassie the trouble of telling her father a fib.

  ‘My eye,’ said Jack Jordan. ‘What were you up to this time?’ He knew the girls of old. Cassie and Laura laughed. They knew Jack wouldn’t give out to them. He was always entertained by their escapades. He chuckled as they told a censored version of their carry-on with Mother Perpetua, refraining from giving exact vulgar details of their ditty.

  ‘God help those poor nuns!’ said Jack with mock solemnity. ‘Saint Trinian’s had nothing on you lot. Young ladies, my hat!’ The girls giggled. They loved it when Jack teased them.

  Barbara appeared at the dining-room door. She ignored the two older girls completely.

  A thin, scrawny girl, with fine mousy hair and nondescript blue eyes, even at the age of thirteen Barbara had an air of self-importance about her. She was forever out to impress and loved to be the centre of attention. Bossy by nature, it galled her that Cassie was the elder, even though it was only by a year. And Cassie’s friendship with Laura really infuriated her. What was really wrong with Barbara was a big dose of envy. When she watched the two older girls having fun, listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and going into Dublin to stay over with Jill, darts of jealousy like hundreds of tiny pinpricks would torment her and as she watched them leave for the city, she fumed. She’d make them sorry one day.