by Anne Doughty
‘Clare, Clare darling, don’t cry. I’m here,’ Andrew announced, crossing the bedroom in two strides. He sat sideways on the bed and tried to coax her into his arms. ‘What is it, love? What’s making you cry so? It’s sad and it is a shock, but Hector was a very old man.’
‘I don’t know, Andrew, I just don’t know. I shouldn’t be so upset, I really shouldn’t. I’m just being silly,’ she gasped, the words rushing out between her sobs. ‘And why have you come home? Have you forgotten something?’
‘I came because you’re so upset,’ he said, as she struggled to sit up. ‘June phoned me. I knew it had to be bad if June was willing to pick up the phone.’
She swallowed hard and searched for the handkerchief June had given her. She couldn’t find it, took the one he offered her, wiped her face and blew her nose again.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Andrew,’ she said, making an effort to stop crying. ‘I was so looking forward to going down next week. Looking forward to seeing him and asking all the questions I didn’t ask last time. I was going to wear that lovely ring he gave me and take him some gloves to match the scarf I sent him for birdwatching. I only had him for a little while and now he’s gone. I know I have you and I’m so lucky to have you, but for a little while there was Hector as well.’ She buried her head in his shoulder and just managed to get out, ‘The people I love are always taken away.’
Faint though they were, Andrew heard the muffled words. Suddenly, what came back to him was the day he’d been told that both his parents were dead. He had not shed a tear that day or in the days that followed. Not then. Then he was told to be a brave boy. Boys didn’t cry in his world, did they? It was only years later, safe in Clare’s arms, the dam gave way and he had cried like the child he had once been.
He stroked her hair and wondered what to say. Loving someone didn’t make it any easier to find the words for a moment like this. Perhaps, in fact, it made it harder. He’d learnt how to say quite difficult and personal things to clients whom he barely knew, but someone you truly loved mattered so much, it made you nervous.
‘Russell said he was sitting by the lake with his binoculars, but when he leant over him, he knew he was gone,’ she said, speaking clearly for the first time.
‘Like when Jamsey found your grandfather slipped down beside the anvil.’
She stared at him as if he had said something quite extraordinary.
‘You’re right, of course. Granda. Much as I loved dear Hector and always will, his going shouldn’t make me feel it’s the end of the world, but it was the end of my world when Granda died. That’s how I was feeling, my love, till you came home. The end of my world,’ she said, clutching him tightly. ‘But it’s easier to bear now I can see it,’ she went on, drying her face. ‘Oh dear,’ she added, looking down with a small laugh, ‘I’ve got Lancôme foundation all over your nice clean hanky. I hope you’ve got some more in the drawer. I can’t remember when I last did any ironing for us.’
‘I’ll borrow some of yours if I haven’t,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just imagine what floral handkerchiefs would do to my practice.’
She giggled and stood up, caught sight of her face in the dressing-table mirror and laughed out loud.
‘Looks like I’d better cleanse and start again,’ she declared. ‘Definitely beyond repair.’
‘But you seem better,’ he said gently.
‘I’m all right now,’ she replied steadily. ‘As good as new, or nearly,’ she added, kissing him. ‘Can you stay and have some lunch?’
‘Not if you can spare me. I’ve three appointments lined up for this afternoon and Thelma will cancel them if I don’t ring her now or get back to the office before one.’
‘Three appointments, Andrew?’ she said, looking surprised. ‘Is there something you have not been telling me?’
‘Birthday surprise,’ he said, brushing a smear of make-up from the lapel of his dark suit. ‘Tell you tonight. Anything you’d like me to bring home with me?’
‘Just you, please. But I’d like if you’d ring Russell about the funeral. I said I would, but I think he’d manage better with a man. He had a very bad moment with me.’
‘Right, I’ll just say a word to June as I go,’ he said quickly, as he took a clean handkerchief from his top drawer.
‘So your wife does occasionally get as far as ironing your handkerchiefs,’ she said, grinning. ‘Tell June and Bronagh I’ll be about fifteen minutes. I need to change as well. Trousers, I think, for eight year olds?’
‘Absolutely,’ he agreed, putting his arms round her. ‘Good luck with this afternoon.’
The birthday party was a great success. A roaring success, as June said afterwards, not well pleased that the young gentleman whose birthday it was chose to greet his guests by pretending he was a lion about to eat them.
When it was clear his mother didn’t have the slightest idea of what to do with him, Bronagh took over. She gathered all the children round her and asked if anyone thought they could roar more loudly. After a short, sharp burst of concentrated roaring, she held up her hand for silence and then asked if anyone could whisper more softly than she could.
Clare watched fascinated as Bronagh manipulated the ten little boys as competently as the Pied Piper charmed the children of Hamelin. She was a joy to watch. By dropping her voice she managed to get their total attention till all thought of roaring had disappeared.
‘Bronagh, you were marvellous,’ Clare said, as they stood at the kitchen table after the roaring lion had gone off clutching a red balloon.
‘I have a lot of experience,’ Bronagh responded lightly, as Clare packed a box of goodies for her to take home. ‘There are ten in my family and I’m the eldest. It came in handy when I got the job in the nursery.’
Clare paused, hesitated, and then decided to take the plunge.
‘Bronagh dear, forgive me asking, but why did you give up your morning job at the nursery? You’re so good with children. I’m sure they were able to pay you more than we can and you’d have had holidays with pay as well.’
‘No such luck, Clare,’ she said evenly. ‘That’s why it was mornings only. I was only part-time, so I got paid by the hour on a weekly basis. I was grateful enough for that, but then the head decided it was time to make certain staffing changes,’ she continued, a strange, uneasy look flickering in her lovely dark eyes.
‘What sort of staff changes?’ Clare asked, already half aware of what the answer was likely to be.
‘No Catholics,’ Bronagh replied, her tone quite neutral.
‘Bronagh! I can’t believe it . . . except that I can . . . but I still can’t get my imagination round the ridiculousness of it. I suppose if you’d been a Buddhist or a Muslim, that would have been fine.’
Bronagh laughed. ‘My father was a Protestant, but he beat my mother up. She thought all Protestants were like him, so she insisted on bringing us up good Catholics . . . or a not-very-good Catholic in my case.’
‘And she put up with that for ten children?’
‘No. He left after three but she could never say No to a man. There was usually a boyfriend or an uncle, God rest her soul,’ she said, crossing herself.
‘She’s dead, Bronagh? She couldn’t have been very old.’
‘She died seven years ago. She was only forty and I’m twenty-four. I had a child too when I was fifteen, just like she did. But he died at birth, which probably saved me from the life of a penitent in a laundry somewhere or other.’
Clare sat down abruptly as Bronagh placed the box of cake and buns in a carrier bag.
‘How many still at home?’
‘Only the four youngest,’ she replied easily. ‘And I’ve a married sister that helps me out with clothes from her ones and the odd bit of money. It’s a bit of a squeeze with only two wee bedrooms, but it’s better than it was. If Brendan could find a proper job, we’d manage fine.’
‘What age is Brendan?’
‘Seventeen last week, but he
looks older. He’s one of the brainy ones, he and Anne-Marie. She’s at the Convent. She got a scholarship at the Eleven Plus. Brendan got a County Scholarship to Queens last August but he knows we can’t keep going if he isn’t earning. He says he can study in the evenings and do a degree when he’s older.’
‘Bus or bicycle, Bronagh?’ Clare asked as they walked outside together.
‘Bus, today. Brendan has the bicycle. He’s doing a job for a man that lives off the Cathedral Road. Back of beyond, he says, no buses within miles.’
‘I’m sorry Andrew’s not back. If he was, I’d run you home.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Clare, but I’m well used to walking. The stop down on the road is very handy,’ she said cheerfully, smiling her lovely smile.
‘Can Brendan drive?’
‘Oh dear yes. Been driving for years, anywhere quiet where he’d not get caught without a licence. He’s a good driver. Anything mechanical just comes natural to him. I don’t think I’d be any good at it at all,’ she confessed, laughing, as they came round the corner of the house together.
‘I hope you have a good weekend, Clare,’ Bronagh said gently, as they paused by the front steps. ‘I’m glad you’re feeling better. It was very sad about the old gentleman, but he was a good age, as they say.’
Clare nodded. ‘Thank you for all you did today, Bronagh, especially with the children. I’ll see you Monday afternoon. Don’t work too hard yourself.’
They parted and Bronagh walked down the long drive a small smile on her face. This was the easy part. The bus would come and she could sit for the time it took to reach the stop in English Street. Then there was the long climb up Dawson Street, on up past the hospital and down by the Gasworks into Callan Street, a street where the houses had been condemned for some years now. No action had yet been taken and none seemed likely at the present rate of going.
Thirteen
‘And which of these has Madam booked for her birthday dinner this evening?’ John Wiley asked with a large smile, as he and Andrew replaced the tables a little after seven o’clock.
‘I have no idea, John,’ Andrew replied, his sleeves rolled up, his jacket and tie abandoned. ‘All I know is that the controlled riot went well, the mother was delighted, there’s a cheque in the cash box and she says she has some other friends who’d be only too glad of the same arrangement.’
‘It was a great idea,’ John said, as they manoeuvred another table back into position. ‘She’s full of ideas. I don’t know where she gets it from. It wasn’t her grandfather, that’s for sure. God rest his soul, he was the decentest man alive, but he had no imagination,’ he declared, pausing to catch his breath. ‘It was one of the Robinsons asked him to make a field gate,’ he went on. ‘He drew him a wee picture on a scrap of paper and that was what started him on the gates when the work with horses and machinery began to fall away. Great he was at it too, but he’d never have thought of it himself.’
‘I only met him twice,’ Andrew said regretfully, as they worked their way round the room. ‘Clare took me to meet him one evening the summer before she went up to Queens and he reminded me I’d ridden over to the forge on my cousin’s chestnut the previous year. We’d only spoken for a few minutes, but he remembered the chestnut all right. Of course, I’d gone over hoping to see Clare, but she was wasn’t at home, more’s the pity.’
‘Well, she’s at home tonight all right,’ said John beaming, as she appeared, wearing a plain, dark skirt, an open-necked, cream silk blouse and a small scarf pinned at the neck with a gold brooch. ‘You’re lookin’ great, Clare. I heard it was trousers this afternoon.’
‘It was, John, it was. And dusty it was too, down on this carpet. You’d have thought it had never seen a vacuum cleaner. I was rather in need of a bath afterwards!’
‘Well now, the pair of you, enjoy your meal. Unless six cars turn up all at once, I guarantee I’ll not be disturbin’ you,’ he promised, leaving them laughing in the midst of the empty room.
Andrew looked around him critically. ‘Not many dining tonight,’ he announced. ‘I was surprised when I managed to get a booking. Apparently the place has quite a good reputation, but they did say Friday night was often quiet,’ he continued solemnly, as he rolled his shirt sleeves down. ‘Do you want me to put my tie back on?’
She laughed and put her arms round him.
‘No, I’ll take you as you are. That’s one advantage of having our own private restaurant. How about the table by the window? Not much light about, but you can view the site of your lake. Sorry, I mean pond.’
They stood in the bay window looking out across the remnant of home paddock to one of the former Drumsollen fields where their neighbour’s cattle were grazing peacefully. The day had been chill and sodden, the kind of day when wet leaves cling to pavements and the branches of trees are black with moisture. But even as they gazed the flourishing grasses bent gently in a small breeze. The sky brightened and began to clear from the west. Minutes later, flickers of sunlight reflected off the wet roof of the garage and picked up the splashes of colour amongst the swaying seed heads in the wild flower meadow.
‘My goodness, what a lovely surprise,’ Clare said. ‘If we hurry up and fetch supper, we’ll be able to have it in daylight. It looks as if we may even get sunshine.’
June had cooked dinner for them while Clare and Bronagh were providing the birthday entertainment. By the time ten hungry little boys crowded into the kitchen, their eyes wide as they viewed the plates of sandwiches and cakes laid out on the big table, a roast chicken with all the trimmings was safely wrapped in foil and parked in the low oven of the Aga.
‘Eat as much as you want,’ June instructed, as she was leaving, ‘So long as you leave one breast and one leg to go with the ham in the fridge. You might need that for a buffet meal if anyone comes.’
The chicken was splendid, moist and succulent, and they were both very hungry, but they reckoned they would need at least Jessie and Harry, or Mary and John, were they to reduce the leftovers from the large bird to a mere breast and leg. They toasted Robert, the giver of the wine, and they toasted those dear friends whose birthday cards had decorated the mirror of her dressing table for the last week. It was a particularly good bottle of wine, a Puligny-Montrachet, and as Andrew pointed out, when he refilled her glass, there was no one to tell them to save some for tomorrow.
When Andrew brought the cheeseboard from the sideboard they refilled their glasses yet again.
‘My goodness,’ he said, ‘French cheeses in Armagh?’
‘Oh yes. You can get them all right. Just expensive,’ she said, as she opened the biscuits-for-cheese assortment and set the tin on the table between them.
‘Is there dessert?’ he asked, as he chose crackers. ‘I’m not sure I’ll have room,’ he admitted, as he addressed the Brie.
‘Tarte aux abricots,’ she said, eyeing him.
‘Oh well,’ he sighed. ‘A short rest and a couple of circuits of the dining-room will facilitate, if not entirely renew, my appetite. You know it’s one of my favourites.’
‘Even more to the point, June does. But she never let’s on. She just suggests it and I say yes.’
He laughed and thought how happy she looked. And how elegant in her simple blouse and skirt. She always said that Marie-Claude had taught her to dress like a Frenchwoman, but he reckoned she’d been a star pupil. Hard to believe now how she’d looked when he’d found her weeping her heart out this morning.
‘Shall I turn on some of the lamps?’ he asked. ‘Or do you prefer a romantic gloom?’
‘Why do you think a gloom is supposed to be romantic?’ she asked, as he peered at the cheese in the dim light.
‘Well, one answer is that a gloom, as you call it, softens the edges of what you are perceiving,’ he answered soberly. ‘In the absence of clear definition one could, if one were so inclined, create something different from what is actually there,’ he ended, with that deliberate touch of lawyer’s pomposity whi
ch always made her laugh.
‘In other words, if you don’t look too closely you can see what you like. And if you don’t listen too carefully you can hear what you like.’
‘And if you have no intention of doing anything other than what you are currently doing, you can save yourself the trouble of even pretending to look or listen. You just do your own thing in dedicated ignorance, as one of my teachers was fond of saying.’
‘There’s a lot of it about, isn’t there?’ she replied crisply. ‘That’s what Charlie would say.’
‘We’re being very sober tonight given how splendid this wine is,’ Andrew said as he shared the last of the bottle carefully to avoid the lees.
‘I don’t think I could manage frivolity tonight,’ she said easily. ‘And not just because of dear Hector. It’s more a sense that tonight is one of those nights we will remember. A marker, perhaps, so that we will look back and say: Do you remember my twenty-eighth birthday at Drumsollen with June’s chicken and apricot tart and Robert’s delectable white Bordeaux . . .? But perhaps I’m just being imaginative, which is a polite way of saying I’m being fanciful.’
‘No, I don’t think you’re being fanciful,’ he said firmly. ‘I think tonight is a double celebration. It is your birthday, and we are setting out again. We said last week we wouldn’t give up hope when things looked so bad, and already we’ve made a start.’
‘Birthday parties and sandwich lunches,’ she said dubiously.
‘You are sometimes very literal, my dearest. What I meant was that we’ve had some very big disappointments this year. Together and separately. But we haven’t let them overwhelm us. I’ve think I’ve managed a bit of progress too. The only reason I haven’t told you is that, like your children’s party, it’s only come together today. Something’s happened that just might be a start for me as well.’
‘Oh Andrew, that would be a really lovely birthday present,’ she cried. ‘Do you want to tell me this minute, or shall we make coffee, take John a cup and bring ours back here? The walk would do us good,’ she said, laughing happily.