by Maeve Binchy
David Power was the nicest of them all, but then he always had been nice and he was from here. He didn’t change because of his new crowd.
“Can you do me a favor?” he asked one day.
“Sure.”
“Nolan and I want to buy some things, but we . . . um . . . don’t . . . want to bring them home with us. Can we pay for them and leave them here?”
“Do you want them delivered?” she said eagerly. Her father had been right—Mrs. Power did not visit the shop anymore. This might be the breakthrough.
“Oh heavens, no,” David said. “You see, we don’t want them to know at home or at Nolan’s, if you know what I mean.”
Clare made up the order for sausages, and bottles of orange and red lemonade, for bread and butter and biscuits. She even suggested tomato ketchup and when David wondered about a cake with hard icing on it, she said she’d put one of their own knives in the bag as well so that they could cut it.
“Is it a picnic in a cave again?” she whispered, eyes round with excitement.
“No, not a cave. Down the sandhills,” David whispered.
“Oh great. When will you be collecting the food?”
“That’s what I was wondering, could you sort of hide it outside somewhere, where nobody could find it except us? We’ll be going about two o’clock in the morning.”
They debated putting it in the doorway behind the big potted palm. But suppose a dog got at it? Or if they put it anywhere too near the shop, Clare’s father might think it was burglars coming to rob the place and raise an alarm.
“Is Chrissie going to the picnic?” Clare asked.
“Well, yes, yes, she is.”
“Then that’s fine, I’ll tell her it’s in the press under the stairs and she can bring it with her.” Clare was satisfied she had sorted it out so well. She took David’s money and gave him the change. Also a list of what he had bought so that he knew how the money had been spent.
“I’m sorry that you . . . I mean, I think it would be a bit . . .”
“I’m too young for picnics,” Clare said simply. “Too young and too boring. In a few years I’ll be old enough, I hope.”
David seemed relieved that she was being so philosophical.
“You will, definitely. Definitely,” he said, full of encouragement.
At that moment the floating, flowering prints of Mrs. Nolan appeared at the door of O’Brien’s.
“Do let’s have an ice cream Molly. In Dublin you couldn’t be seen dead licking a fourpenny wafer. So full of germs, too. Isn’t it marvelous to be here?”
There was no way that Molly could refuse to come in now. Clare acted quickly. “I’m sorry. We don’t have any of those Scots Clan left,” she said to David in a clear voice. “We’ll be getting deliveries this afternoon.” She turned politely to the two ladies. “Can I get you an ice cream?” she asked.
“Is it all kept nice and fresh?” Mrs. Nolan wanted to know.
“Oh yes, indeed. Look inside if you like, but why don’t I open a fresh pack just in front of you?”
Mrs. Nolan was pleased. David scurried out, unnoticed. Clare went to the kitchen and got a clean jug of hot water, and a clean sharp knife. She dipped the knife in the water and slit open the carton of ice cream. She made the indentations on it firmly and cut two fourpenny wafers which she handed over gravely.
“This is a nice shop, Molly,” said Mrs. Nolan.
“Oh yes, yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Power uneasily.
“I think it’s a better place than where you told us to shop.”
“It’s very good, all right,” Molly agreed, looking at the ceiling.
Clare prayed her father wouldn’t come in and start fawning. She bade them farewell.
“Nice little girl,” she heard Mrs. Nolan say. “Very undernourished looking, but a bright little thing.”
Chrissie said that Clare had a horrible gloating smirk on her that was terrible to look at, and that Clare would be unbearable now she knew about the picnic in the sandhills.
Clare sighed. She said that David’s bag was in the press behind the coats, and there was one knife of theirs as well.
“Did he say whether Caroline and Hilary were coming or not?”
He hadn’t, but Clare presumed they would be. Weren’t they old enough?
“Oh they’re old enough, but Gerry Doyle seemed to think they weren’t.”
Chrissie was hoping they weren’t. Gerry Doyle had too many eyes for Caroline Nolan altogether. She had seen him laughing too much with her—over nothing. She didn’t explain this to Clare but Clare seemed to understand somehow.
“They’ll all be gone back at the end of the summer, and you’ll still be here,” she said comfortingly.
“I know that, stupid,” Chrissie said, examining her face in the mirror. “That’s both good and bad.”
Nolan was very disappointed that Fiona Doyle wasn’t in the number that giggled their way up the sandhills in the moonlight. He had decided that Caroline and Hilary could come—thereby making it respectable—and he was very annoyed with Gerry for putting it out of bounds to his sister.
“It’s not as if there was going to be all that messing like we had in the cave,” he said to Gerry.
“I know, but she’s just not going to come with us, not at night. Not in the sandhills.”
“You sound as if you’re talking about a nun, not about Fiona,” James Nolan grumbled.
Gerry gave him a smile that took all the harm out of it. “Listen, I know what you mean, but Fiona lives here, you know. It’s not just a holiday night out like it is for your sister, and for Hilary. If you live in a place, it’s different. There’s places in Dublin you wouldn’t want Caroline to go, even though there might be nothing wrong with them in themselves.”
Nolan was impressed.
They had a wind-up gramophone and they had walked so far that nobody, not even the seagulls, could hear it.
They lit the primus and cooked the supper; and David had his arm round Caroline for a while, and Chrissie was snuggling up to Gerry Doyle—but he had to disengage himself a lot to open cans or to see to the stove and turn the sausages. Nolan found himself with Kath, who had improved a lot since last winter, he thought. Nobody paired off and disappeared, but as the light from the primus flickered and died and people didn’t bother to wind up the gramophone it became obvious that it had all worked out nice and neatly.
It was Gerry Doyle not Chrissie who decided when the party was over, and with a little laugh managed to get them all on their feet again, blouses being hastily rearranged and a few giggles here and there. They walked back along the beach which was silvery and magic, stopped chattering when they reached the foot of the steps and then whispered and giggled their way home.
They weren’t drunk this time, Kath and Chrissie giggled, but more experienced. Hilary and Caroline raced along the beach in the moonlight, putting their fingers to their lips and giggling. Hilary had been heavily romanced by one of the Dillon boys who had buckteeth but wasn’t bad.
James and David walked at a more leisurely pace, James telling David he had put his tongue in Kath’s mouth and it had been horrible. It was all full of spit. There must be some other way of doing it. David nodded with interest and said there must; he didn’t reveal that Caroline Nolan’s mouth had not been full of spit at all, but had been very nice indeed.
Caroline and Hilary were lying on the cliff top when Gerry passed by the next day.
“You didn’t get caught?”
“Not a bit of it. Mummy takes so many sleeping pills she wouldn’t know if we had had the picnic in the garden,” Caroline said.
“So does my mother, and pills to keep her awake and pills to calm her down.”
“Like Smarties,” Caroline giggled.
“It was a nice night,” Hilary said.
“Yeah, could have been better though.” Gerry seemed to be looking directly at Caroline.
“Yes. Well,” she said, flustered.
“I
came to take your pictures for my wall,” he said.
“Oh we’ve lots of pictures already, nearly an album,” Caroline said.
“No. I don’t mean the ones you bought, these are for me, as souvenirs of the most gorgeous girls to come to Castlebay. Ever.”
They protested. They hadn’t the right clothes, no makeup, nothing. He soothed them and they agreed. Hilary first, joking at first, making faces, then posing in silly ways then smiling, then looking straight at the camera. “You must have a hundred there,” she said.
“At least. Now Caroline.”
There was less joking this time. Caroline seemed to relax immediately. “I feel very foolish,” she said once. “This isn’t the kind of thing I do.”
“You’re not doing anything,” Gerry said. “You’re just being yourself. You’re fine. I think you look lovely through this, very nice indeed.”
She basked in his approval and smiled and leaned towards the camera. Without even realizing that she was doing it she ran her tongue across her lower lip and opened her eyes wider. It seemed quite natural to look at the camera as if hypnotized while Gerry clicked and clicked and talked on naturally too. He spoke about her skin and how it was very soft and tanned and he hoped that somehow by light and shade this would show up on a black and white film. She didn’t feel embarrassed at these compliments in front of Hilary, and Hilary didn’t giggle or feel embarrassed either. In fact she just wished she had put more into the whole thing the way Caroline was doing, then Gerry Doyle might have said something nice about her skin and her hair too.
He put his camera away.
“That’s what I love, taking pictures of beautiful women. That’s what I’d love to do all day, not sweating couples at the dance and hopeless family groups on the beach.” His voice sounded bitter. That was unusual for Gerry Doyle who was always so carefree.
“Why don’t you do that then? You always seem to do what you want.” Caroline’s eyes met his and she was saying more than the actual words.
“I do usually.” He grinned.
It seemed to Angela that more people than ever asked her about Sean that summer. People who had never asked about him before. Mother Immaculata wondered was he going to Rome for the Holy Year, so many Fathers from all over the world were going to go to the Holy City. Angela thought he couldn’t be spared from the mission fields. Young Mrs. Dillon from the hotel told her excitedly that there were two guests who were actually going to Japan in September. Maybe they could take something to Father Sean for her, or go to see him. Angela said that by ill chance she thought September was the very month he had said he would be away touring the Philippines.
Sometimes she surprised herself with the way she could talk about vocations and missions, when she knew all that she did. What was the Lord thinking of all those years ago when he hovered over O’Hara’s cottage and picked Sean? Didn’t God know what was going to happen in the future? Why did He let Himself be mocked and bring such unhappiness on everyone? She was leaning the bicycle up against the wall of O’Brien’s when she realized with a sudden shock that everyone had not been made unhappy, in fact very few people had. There was a possibility that only she was unhappy about it all. Her brother was totally content, learning as he said for the first time the meaning of true content. Her sisters Geraldine and Maire were quite content about it too. They sent him letters at Christmas and on his birthday and their children added bits in round unformed writing. And back up in the O’Hara house her mother who was sitting out in a chair watching the people walk up and down to the golf course, saluting and smiling and nodding at everyone who passed, she was happy too. Secure in the knowledge that she had a son a priest, interceding for her directly to God, making ready her place in heaven.
Angela didn’t know whether to be pleased or outraged that she was the only one who suffered over Sean’s predicament. She should be pleased, she supposed, that it meant that the sum of human misery was less. But the sheer unfairness of it all seemed huge when you began to think of it like that. Mouth set hard she marched in, and saw young Clare working away. Her face wasn’t tanned golden like the girls who sat on the wall up in Cliff Road. She didn’t wear a bright pink blouse that would have given her life and definition. Instead she looked shabby and wan, in a dress with faded yellow and pink flowers that must have been Chrissie’s. She was furrowed with concentration, getting somebody change.
“I’m quite quick at change usually,” Angela heard her telling the woman. “But when the shop is crowded and we are all at the drawer of money together, it’s easy to get flustered—that’s why I’m being a bit slow.”
The woman smiled at the earnest child who didn’t even have time to see Angela at the other side of the shop. Mrs. O’Brien asked about Angela’s mother, whether the weather was good for her bones, if there was any word of Geraldine or Maire coming home this summer, and how soon would his Reverence be back—wasn’t it a pity he hadn’t been able to come this year, he could have gone to Rome for the Holy Year. The Dillons were going to go there in October when the season was well over. Imagine going to Rome and being able to see the Holy Father. There had been talk of making a collection to send Father O’Dwyer, but nothing had come of it, the idea had come too late and everyone was working so hard now there’d be little time for meeting about it. Angela responded with a series of automatic grunts and replies. Often she felt that if you had been born dumb and never known the gift of speech you could converse quite happily with most of Castlebay. All you had to do was to listen and nod and smile and shake your head and make a sound. She knew she was right when she was packing her shopping in the basket of her bicycle and she overheard Mrs. O’Brien saying to Miss O’Flaherty that Angela O’Hara was a very nice girl and it was no wonder the children were all mad about her. Angela smiled with pleasure at this and was only slightly taken down when Miss O’Flaherty’s complaining tone which saw very little right with the world said that was all very fine but when was Angela O’Hara going to get a husband for herself.
That was indeed the question, Angela said to herself wryly. Suppose, just suppose she did herself up and went to the dance and found a nice fellow here for the summer holidays, he’d live in Dublin or Cork or Limerick, or Dagenham like the fellow she met three years ago did. What then? There was no point in thinking about it. If she had stayed with her mother this long she was going to have to stay the distance. There was a time five years ago when she might have left, but she couldn’t leave now. She couldn’t trust her brother not to blow the whole thing apart. Miss O’Flaherty, who was in a poor position to throw stones, would have to wait a long time before she saw Angela O’Hara getting a husband for herself.
Weeks later she met Dr. Power. He slowed down his car to drive beside her along the golf-course road.
“I was thinking of dropping in to have a look at your mother.”
“Do that, but for God’s sake, let me get in five minutes before you and put a clean blouse on her; otherwise she’ll be complaining all night that you saw her shabby.”
“I have to go up and see someone in the club first. I’ll call on my way back.”
Wouldn’t he be a lovely person to be married to? Angela thought. Old as the hills of course, but so calm and kind. That fusspot towny wife of his was very lucky; Angela wondered did she know how lucky she was or did she sit there restlessly examining her rings and her lightly painted nails and wish for a life of more sophistication. Was she grateful for that bright son of hers, did she love the big white house that looked straight out to sea on two sides and was she pleased every morning when she woke up to hear Nellie cleaning out the fires and making the breakfast? Nice laughing Nellie Burke who had wanted to be a film star when they were at school. Dr. Power wasn’t a saint exactly. Sometimes he was bad-tempered and impatient with people. But he was very kind and Mr. Murphy in the chemist said that you’d travel far to find such a good doctor. If he was above in Dublin with a brass plate on the door of somewhere in Fitzwilliam Square he would be call
ed a consultant physician and people would pay him a fortune. Angela hoped that Mrs. Molly Power was never given this piece of information, for deep down Paddy Power was like herself, he wouldn’t leave. He had been born on a big farm outside Castlebay and it had been his life since he could remember. He wasn’t going to any square for any plaque on his door or any fees in his bank account.
She smartened her mother up, giving her a quick wash and a dusting of talcum powder. A clean slip in case Dr. Power decided to feel her poor knee joints, and clean stockings of course.
She looked well when she was smartened up, Angela thought, the fine handsome face of Father Sean O’Hara got its good cheekbones from the mother’s side, and her hair was curly and soft. Everyone looked a bit better when they were smartened up, Angela said to herself firmly, and changed her own dress and put on a little lipstick.
“Now we’re like two tarts on a night out,” she said to her mother.
Mrs. O’Hara looked round the room nervously in case anyone might have heard. “You say terribly stupid things sometimes. I’m sure people get the wrong idea of you.”
“I bet they do, Mother dear,” Angela said, as the doctor arrived.
It had been some visitor who played too much golf, no exercise at all, at home fifty weeks of the year, and then thirty-six holes of golf over a hilly course here, five days in succession. No wonder he had collapsed. There should be Danger notices on the golf course as well as on the beach.
“Will he be all right?” Angela asked.
“Oh, the worst he has to recover from is all the abuse from me. He’ll be fine. I might have done him a good turn even, warned him about his way of life. He may live to a hundred and thank me every day. Enough about him, how are you, Mrs. O’Hara?”