by Maeve Binchy
David started to help with the fire but Nellie stood up, creaking, and said it was going fine and wasn’t that his teacher coming in the gate.
Angela O’Hara’s red bicycle was indeed coming up the gravel path. She was tall and slim, and she always wore belts on her coats as if it were the only way they’d stay on. Other people had buttons, but of course other people didn’t fly around on the bike so much. She had red-brown hair that was sort of tied back but with such a loose ribbon or piece of cord that it might as well not be tied back at all. She had big greenish eyes and she used to throw her head back when she laughed.
Miss O’Hara wasn’t at all like other grown-ups. She wanted to know did they all get a refund of fees because the school had to close for the scarlet fever. David didn’t know, he said he’d ask, but Miss O’Hara said it didn’t matter, and not to ask because it might seem as if she was looking for more money, which she wasn’t. David had forgotten that she was being paid to teach him, it wasn’t the kind of thing you’d think about, he sort of believed that Miss O’Hara did it for interest. She had found that very funny. She said in many ways she would well do it for interest but the laborer was worthy of his hire as it said somewhere in the gospels, and if she were to do it for free what about the fancy order of priests he was with—they certainly didn’t do it for free. David said he thought the main cost was the food and the beds in the dormitories, he couldn’t imagine that the actual lessons would cost anything.
She came for an hour every evening, after she had finished up at the school and called in on her mother. Mrs. O’Hara was all crooked from arthritis and David thought that she looked like an illustration of an old tree in one of the children’s books he used to read. A book probably tidied away neatly by his mother for when it would be needed again. Miss O’Hara had two sisters married in England and a brother, a priest, in the Far East. She was the only one who had never traveled, she told him. He asked what would have happened if she had traveled and her mother had got all crippled living by herself.
“Then I’d have come back,” Miss O’Hara had said cheerfully. Since her sisters were married and her brother was a priest she would have been the one to look after her mother anyway.
The O’Hara house was out a bit on the road toward the golf course, and Miss O’Hara cycled everywhere on her big red bicycle with the basket of exercise books in the front. There were always copy books and when it rained she had them covered with a waterproof sheet. She wore a long scarf wound round her in winter and if there was a wind sometimes her long hair stood out behind her in a straight line. David’s mother once said she looked like a witch heading for the cliff road and you’d expect her and the bicycle to take flight over the seas. But his father had refused to let a word of criticism be spoken of her. He said that nobody knew how much she did for that crippled mother of hers, morning noon and night, and wasn’t it proof to note that when poor Angela O’Hara went on her two weeks holiday a year somewhere they had to have three people in and out of that house to mind the mother and it was never done satisfactorily even then. His mother didn’t like Miss O’Hara—it had something to do with her not admiring things or not being excited enough about his mother going to Dublin for outings. It had never been said, it was just a feeling he had.
The table with his books on it was near the fire and Nellie would bring in a pot of tea and a slice of cake or apple tart.
Miss O’Hara always talked to Nellie more than she talked to his mother, she’d ask about Nellie’s old father out in the country and the row with the brothers and had they heard from the sister in Canada. She’d giggle with Nellie about something new that Father O’Dwyer’s housekeeper had said. The woman’s name was Miss McCormack, but everyone called her Sergeant McCormack because she tried to run not only Father O’Dwyer and the church but the whole of Castlebay too.
Miss O’Hara came in now, her hands cold from clenching the handlebars in the wind, and she held them out to the fire.
“God, Nellie, isn’t it a sin having a great fire like this banked up just for David and myself? We could work in the kitchen, you know, beside the range.”
“Oh, that wouldn’t do at all!” Nellie was horrified.
“You wouldn’t mind, David?” she began . . . and then suddenly changed her mind. “No, don’t take any notice of me. I always want to change the world—that’s my problem. Aren’t we lucky to have this grand place in here? Let’s make the most of it. Nellie, tell me what are they building on the side of Dillon’s? It looks like an aerodrome.”
“Oh, that’s going to be a sun lounge, I hear,” Nellie said, full of importance. “They’re going to have chairs and card tables maybe in the summer, and tea served there too.”
“They’d need to have rugs and hot-water bottles if it turns out anything like last summer. Come on, college boy, get out your geography book. We’re going to make you a world expert on trade winds. You’re going to make them green and yellow striped with jealousy when you get back to that palace of a school of yours. We’ll show them what a real scholar is, the way we breed them in Castlebay.”
Paddy Power was tall and thickset, with a weather-beaten face. His face was beaten by weather of all kinds, but mainly the sharp wind that came in from the sea as he walked up lanes to people’s houses, lanes where his big battered car wouldn’t go. He had a shock of hair that grew in all directions as if he had three crowns on his head; it had been brown and then it was speckled but now it was mainly gray. Because of his bulk and his alarming hair he sometimes looked fierce, but that was before people got to know him. He had a great way of talking, a kind of good-natured bantering until he could see what was wrong; his talk was merely to relax the patient until he could see where the piece of grit in the eyes was, or the splinter in the hand, the glass in the sole of the foot or feel for the pain in the base of the stomach without too much tensing and alarm.
He was a burly man who never found clothes to fit him and never cared about them either. Life was far too short, he said, to spend time in a tailor’s talking rubbish about lines and cuts and lapels. But for all his bulk and his haphazard attitude to his appearance, he was a healthy man and he was able to go down the path from his own garden to the sea and swim for nearly six months of the year and to get a game of golf a week as well. But Paddy Power was tired today; it had been a very long day and he had driven seventeen miles out to see a young woman who would be dead by Christmas but who talked cheerfully of how she knew she’d be better when the fine weather came. Her five children had played noisily and unconcerned around the feet of the doctor and the pale young husband just sat looking emptily into the fire. He had also had to have an unpleasing chat with one of the Dillon brothers from the hotel and speak seriously about liver damage. No matter how carefully he tried to phrase it, he had ended up with a blank wall and a great deal of resentment. Today it had ended with Dick Dillon telling him to mind his own bloody business, and that Paddy Power was a fine one to talk, half the county could tell you that he was drunk as a lord three years ago at the races, so he was in a poor position to cast stones. There were two bad cases of flu in old people, where it was settling in on chests that were never strong, he could see both of them turning into pneumonia before long. People talked about the good seaside air, and the bracing breezes. They should be here in a doctor’s surgery in winter, Paddy Power thought gloomily, there’d be less of the folksy chat then.
Molly said that David was getting on like a house on fire with his lessons, and that he did two hours on his own each morning.
“She’s a fine scholar Angela. Isn’t it a pity that she never got the recognition for it?” Paddy said, wearily taking off his boots and putting on his slippers.
“Never got any recognition? Isn’t she a teacher above in the school with a big salary? Hasn’t she all her qualifications? That’s not bad for Dinny O’Hara’s daughter.” Molly sniffed.
“You miss the point, Moll. That’s a bright girl and she’s stuck here in Castlebay teaching
children to be waitresses and to serve their time in shops. And what kind of a life does she have in that house? I mean the Little Sisters wouldn’t do as much for their flock as Angela does for her mother.”
“Oh I know, I know.” Molly was anxious to leave it now.
“Still, a man on a white horse may ride into town one day for her yet.” He smiled at the thought.
“I’d say she’s a bit past that now,” Molly said.
“She’s only twenty-eight years of age, a year older than you were when we got married, that’s what she is.”
Molly hated when he spoke about things like that in front of Nellie. Molly hadn’t grown up here, she came from a big town and she had been at school in Dublin. She didn’t like anyone knowing her business nor indeed her age.
She looked at herself in the mirror, no longer young but not too bad. She had made a friend of the buyer in that shop in Dublin and now there was no problem in getting clothes. Nice wool two-pieces, loose enough so that you could wear a warm vest and maybe even a thin jumper under them. You needed a lot of layers in Castlebay. And Paddy had given her nice brooches over the years so that she always looked smart. No matter who came to the house, Molly Power looked well-dressed and ready to receive them, her hair was always neat and well-groomed (she had a perm every three months in the town) and she always used a little makeup.
She examined her face. She had been afraid that the climate in this place might have made her lined or leathery like a lot of the women, but then they probably didn’t use any face cream even.
She smiled at herself, turning her head slightly so that she’d see the nice clip-on earrings she had got recently to match the green brooch on her green and gray wool two-piece. Paddy saw her smiling and came and stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders.
“You’re right about yourself, you’re gorgeous,” he said.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” she said indignantly.
“Well, you should have been,” he said. “A glamorous thing, not like a mother and wife.”
She thought about being a mother for a moment. She had believed it would be impossible. So many false alarms. The weeks of delight followed by the miscarriages at three months. Three times. Then two babies born dead. And then when she hardly dared to believe it, David. Exactly the child she wanted. Exactly.
Angela thought David was a grand little fellow. He looked like an illustration from those Just William books, with his hair sticking up, his shoelaces undone and his tie crooked. When he worked he sort of came apart.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to teach bright children all the time without having to pause forever for the others to catch up. She looked at him as he worked out a chart of the winds and gave it to her triumphantly.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked suspiciously.
“I don’t know. I could be losing my mind. I’ve noticed myself smiling nowadays whenever any child gets anything right. It’s such a shock, you see.”
He laughed. “Are they all hopeless at the school here?”
“No, not all. Some are as smart as paint. But what’s the point? Where will it get them?”
“Won’t it get them their exams?”
“Yes, yes, it will.” She stood up a bit like a grown-up who wasn’t going to follow the conversation on with him. He was disappointed.
Angela cycled home from Dr. Power’s house into the wind. Her face was whipped by it and the salt of the sea stung her eyes. Any journey in winter seemed like a voyage to the South Pole, and she wondered for the millionth time would they be better if she moved her mother to a town. Surely this wet wind coming in through every crack in the cottage must be hard on her, surely it couldn’t be healthy living in a place that was only right for seals and gulls for three-quarters of the year. But then she mustn’t fool herself: if they moved to a town it would be for herself, so that she could have some life. Let’s not pretend it would be for her mother’s poor old misshapen bones. And anyway what more life would there be for her in a town? She’d come in as a schoolmarm with an ailing mother, that’s if she were to get a job at all. A schoolmarm who was freewheeling down to thirty. Not something that was going to light many fireworks. Stop dreaming, Angela, head down, foot down, pedal on, only a few more minutes now, the worst bit is over, you’re past the blasts of wind from the gap in the cliff. You can see the light in the window.
People called it a cottage because it looked small from the front but in fact there was an upstairs. It was whitewashed and had the formal little garden with its boxed hedge and tiny path up to the door.
She wondered how they had all fitted there when her father was alive, when they were children, they must have been crowded. But then her parents had slept in one room upstairs, the three girls in another and Sean, the only boy, in the third. And downstairs the room which she had now made into a bedroom for her mother had been a kind of sitting room she supposed. There had been no books in it in those days, there had been no shining brass ornaments, no little bunches of flowers or bowls of heather and gorse like she had nowadays. But of course in those times the small house had been home for a drunk, an overworked and weary mother and four youngsters all determined to get away from it as soon as possible. How could there have been time for the luxury of books and flowers?
Her mother was sitting on the commode where Angela had put her before going up to the Powers’. She had dropped her stick and the other chair was too far away so she had nothing to support her and couldn’t get up. She was uncomplaining, and apologetic. Angela emptied the chamberpot and put Dettol in it, she got a basin of soapy water and a cloth for her mother and helped her to wash herself and put on powder. Then she slipped the flannel nightdress that had been warming on the fireguard over her mother’s small bent head and helped her to the bed in the room adjoining the kitchen. She handed her the rosary beads, her glass of water and put the clock where she could see it. She didn’t kiss her mother, they weren’t a kissing family. She patted her on the folded hands instead. Then Angela O’Hara went back into the kitchen and took out the essays which would be handed back next day. There was no doubt about the winner, that had been obvious all along, but she wanted to write a little paragraph on the end of all the others. They had done the essay in their free time to enter for the prize that she had provided. She wanted to give them some encouragement, some visible proof that she had read them, even the illiterate ones.
She wet a pot of tea and settled down with the wind howling outside and very shortly the sound of her mother’s gentle snores about ten feet away.
Clare O’Brien had arrived early at school. The back of her neck was almost washed away, such a scrubbing had it got. The stain on her school tunic was almost impossible to see now, it had been attacked severely with a nail brush. Her indoor shoes were gleaming, she had even polished the soles, and the yellow ribbons were beautiful. She turned her head a few times to see them reflected in the school window, she looked as smart as any of the others, as good as the farmers’ daughters who had plenty of money and got new uniforms when they grew too big for their old ones, instead of all the letting down and letting out and false hems that Clare and Chrissie had to put up with.
She thought the day would never start. It was going to be such an excitement going up there in front of the whole school. And there would be gasps because she was so young. Years and years younger than some of them who had entered.
Chrissie would be furious of course, but that didn’t matter, Chrissie was furious about everything, she’d get over it.
Clare walked to the end of the corridor to read the notice board. There was nothing new on it, maybe after this morning there might be a notice about the history prize. There was the timetable, the list of holidays of obligation during the year, the details of the educational tour to Dublin and also the price of it, which made it outside Clare’s hopes. There was the letter from Father O’Hara, Miss O’Hara’s brother who was a missionary. He was thanking the school for the silver paper and stamp collec
ting. He said he was very proud that the girls in his own hometown had done so much to aid the great work of spreading Our Lord’s word to all the poor people who had never heard of Him.
Clare couldn’t remember Father O’Hara, but everyone said he was marvelous. He was very tall, taller than Miss O’Hara, and very handsome. Clare’s mother had said that it would do your heart good to see him when he came back to say Mass in the church, and he was a wonderful son too, she said. He wrote to his mother from the missions, she often showed his letters to people—well, when she had been able to get out a bit she had.
Father O’Hara made the missions sound great fun altogether. Clare wished he would write a letter every week. She wondered what did Miss O’Hara write to him. Would she tell him about the history prize this week?
There was Miss O’Hara now, coming in the gate on her bicycle.
Mother Immaculata had a face like the nib of a pen.
“Could I have a word, Miss O’Hara? A little word please. That’s if you can spare the time.”
One day, Angela promised herself, she would tell Mother Immaculata that she couldn’t spare the time, she was too busy helping the seniors to run the potin still and preparing the third years for the white-slave traffic. But not yet. Not while she still had to work here. She put her bicycle in the shed and swept up the armful of essays wrapped in their sheet against the elements.
“Certainly, Mother,” she said with a false smile.
Mother Immaculata didn’t speak until they were in her office. She closed the door and sat down at her desk; the only other chair in the room was covered in books so Angela had to stand.
She decided she would fight back. If the nun was going to treat her as a disobedient child over some trivial thing as yet unknown, and let her stand there worrying, Angela was going to draw herself up so high that Mother Immaculata would get a crick in her neck looking up. Angela raised herself unobtrusively onto her toes, and stretched her neck upwards like a giraffe. It worked. Mother Immaculata had to stand up too.