by Maeve Binchy
“I’m very sorry to hear about your mother, Miss O’Hara,” said the headwaiter of the new dining area in which they were, as yet, the only guests.
“How did you know about it?”
“Clare writes to Tommy every week, regular as anything. She told him. I sort of . . . well, I read the letters to him. I’m very sorry.”
“Thanks, Ned. She was old and in awful pain—it was for the best.”
“I don’t think Tommy’ll stay long with your friends, Father,” Ned hissed out of the side of his mouth.
“A pity. Why?”
“He keeps thinking these other lads will be looking for him. I don’t think they want to see hair nor hide of him, but he has had a message that they’re leaving him some money next week, his share like.”
“But if they don’t want him in on whatever they’re doing, then maybe he might stay with the Carrolls?” Father Flynn had got Tommy a live-in job with an Irish family who owned a small greengrocery. Tommy would be sweeping and helping at first, but they’d keep an eye on him; and if he was any way helpful at all, they’d give him a shop coat and let him serve the public.
“You know Tommy, Father. He’s just a big baby.”
Angela sighed and wondered were all brothers big babies.
“What will I do, if Sean comes back to Castlebay?” she asked, later.
“You’ll survive it, like you’ve survived everything else,” said Father Flynn.
She went back to Dublin in time to spend Christmas with Emer and Kevin. The boat was filled with returning emigrants, singing and happy to be on the way back to small villages or towns all over Ireland.
The house was full of holly and ivy and long paper chains across the hall. Emer hoped they weren’t too cheerful. After all Angela had been recently bereaved. No, she assured her, they were exactly what she wanted to see. Clare would be dropping by that evening on her way to the station. She had a Christmas present for Daniel and Emer had invited her to supper.
Clare looked thin and tired, Angela thought, but was very cheerful. She told them she was hopeless with men and that once she felt her academic work was under control she was going to take lessons from someone who knew. It was apparently like bridge and driving a car: even stupid people could be good at it if they learned the technique.
Clare wished that she could stay here in this pleasant, easygoing household for Christmas, but shook the idea away. She was looking forward to seeing home again. There would be no Chrissie, and she had painted her bedroom before the summer ended. There was good news about Ned from London and no bad news about Tommy. Angela had been full of detail, and had even written a letter to Clare’s mother to describe the elegance of Ned in his new job. Compared to everyone else’s Christmas hers would be fine.
Valerie was going to have to face the return of the long-lost father, and Mary Catherine had been invited to the Nolans’ and was wishing every minute of the day that she had refused. Clare thought about them both as she stood on the cold platform of Kingsbridge station waiting for the train.
On an impulse she went to the phone box and rang Val, who was still at the hostel.
“I’m in a great hurry. The train’s nearly going. Tell him what you think. Don’t go along with all your mother’s lovey-dovey bits. You’re not in love with him. He’s your father and he walked out on you. Tell him that you were greatly upset and that it might take a bit of time to be sure he’s back for good.”
“What?” Val was stunned.
“There’s no need to pretend that nothing happened. That’s pretending that he’s a madman. He left when you were thirteen and needed him. Don’t just gloss over that, or he’ll think it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”
“Then we’ll spend the whole of Christmas fighting, and my mother’ll come after me with a cleaver,” Val said.
“Nonsense. You can do it without a fight. Happy Christmas.”
She looked the Nolans up in the book and rang. James was surprised to hear her on the phone. “Nothing wrong is there?” he asked.
“Heavens no, James. You’re far too young to think a telephone call means bad news.”
He was annoyed—as she meant him to be—and went to find Mary Catherine.
“Tell them your father’s a postman. Immediately,” Clare said.
“What?”
“The only reason you’re not going to enjoy Christmas is because you’re going to be up to your ears in pretense. Tell them, for heaven’s sake, the moment they ask, or before. They’re not going to throw you out in the street.”
Mary Catherine started to laugh.
“Well, will you?” Clare said impatiently. “I have to go for my train in a minute.”
“I guess I will,” Mary Catherine said. “When you put it that way, there’s no sense in not.”
The porters started shouting excitedly that the train was now backing into the platform and would be ready for boarding.
Clare wondered what would someone say to her if they were to give her good advice for Christmas just as she had been dispensing to others. She decided that Angela’s age-old advice had always been the best. She must be positive and cheerful, and never let them think her education and her hopes were a threat to them.
She did all of that as if it were a Christmas homework she had been set to do. She helped her mother make a last-minute Christmas cake. She called to see her married sister’s new house. She went with Jim and Ben on the back of a cart to a farm where they had a lot of holly and ivy and were glad to see people thinning it out. They decorated the shop and the house.
She went for long walks with her father down the Far Cliff Road, and discussed with him seriously the possibility of buying a soft ice-cream machine. There was little to discuss, really, except whether her father had the courage to borrow the money to buy one or not. It would obviously be a huge draw; sooner or later someone else in Castlebay would get one and a lot of trade would move to the place where the delicious whipped-cream cones were on offer. But Clare’s father hunched his back and worried over and over about the wisdom of getting into debt for something that would only be used eleven weeks of the year. Clare said that people bought those soft ice creams in Dublin even in the winter. You often saw people eating them in cinema queues. But her father puzzled and wondered . . .
Dad looked old and tired; and though he said he liked to get out in the fresh air to walk with her the wind seemed to hurt his eyes and make him seem frail. She debated telling him about Tommy; but the debate with herself did not take long. A man who couldn’t decide whether or not to get an ice-cream machine couldn’t possibly cope with having a criminal son.
Josie was cheerful, but busy. She had decided all on her own to inquire whether there might be a demand for a Christmas program, as it was called in hotels. And there was; they were going to have twenty-nine guests over Christmas and everyone was in a fever of excitement. There was bad blood between the family about it, and her sister Rose, who was meant to be coming into the hotel full-time, said that since Josie seemed to make all the decisions nowadays, what was the point, and she was going to go to another hotel.
David Power came into the hotel that night for a drink and to wish them well in the Christmas program. The guests were assembling and the Dillons were at their wits’ end. They had never thought of finding someone who could play the piano. In the summer they always gave bed and breakfast free to any student who would play the piano in the lounge in the evenings.
Josie’s mother looked at David appealingly. “Just for about an hour, David? You would be helping us better than you could ever believe.”
“But I’m no good,” David protested. “Clare, can’t you play?” he beseeched.
“No. In my education, there was never time for it. But a renaissance man like yourself now. Every social skill . . .”
“I hate you, Clare O’Brien,” he said good-naturedly.
Josie thanked him profusely and led him to the piano. Haltingly, he got into a version of �
�There Is a Tavern in the Town.” Dick Dillon, who was planted amongst the guests, began to sing and in no time they were all joining in. It was obvious after about three songs that he would be there all night. Dick got him a pint and left it on the piano. Bones, who had been sitting patiently in the hall, hoping that the music would stop soon, was taken into the kitchen and given a plate of soup. He fell asleep beside the Aga and dreamed of sandhills full of rabbits and big firm beaches when the tide was out, where people would throw sticks for him hour after hour.
In the summer of 1959 some people said that the world was going to end: it was the hottest weather ever known. Tom O’Brien cursed his cowardice as he saw people troop past his door to go to Fergus Murphy’s soft ice-cream machine. Fergus built up a lot of business because people bought sweets and magazines and groceries while they waited for the ice cream queue to file by. The Castlebay Committee congratulated themselves on their foresight in organizing a booking register so that visitors could be directed to the available rooms in the resort rather than having to knock on doors. There were two full-time lifeguards and when the tides were high people had to bathe between two flags. Nobody drowned that summer in Castlebay, and nobody fell and hurt themselves on the paths up the cliffs because they were all finally built properly with rails to hold on to. People still went into the Echo Cave and asked it questions. The Dillons were very distressed to hear of plans for a new and huge hotel but were subsequently overjoyed to discover that two of the five businessmen who were going to start it were undisclosed bankrupts at the time, so that plan never got off the ground. Dr. Power said he was getting old and slow and he was so proud that his big handsome son had passed Final Med with flying colors. He would do an intern year in Dublin and then who knew what would happen.
James Nolan was called to the Bar and did his first case in court. He said he thought he was never going to get another brief but he carried a great many papers tied with pink tape.
Fiona Doyle announced her engagement to Frank Conway, the pride and joy of Mrs. Conway. Mrs. Conway had never been anxious for her Frank to marry anyone, and she had her doubts about the Doyles in general. Gerry was as wild as anything and should be kept in a zoo if half of what you heard about him was true. And the mother was odd—some kind of phobia they said. She hardly ever went out. But you couldn’t say a word against Fiona—a good-looking girl, great self-respect. She’d never let a man near her, even in the days when a girl was silly and could have her head turned. Mrs. Conway sighed. Frank could have done a lot worse, she supposed. She gave them her blessing. And then that pup Gerry Doyle had the impudence to say he’d like a talk with Frank, since Fiona had no father. Mrs. Conway never found out what the chat was about, but it had impressed Frank no end.
Chrissie Byrne discovered on her second visit to Dr. Power that she was indeed pregnant, and bought a maternity smock on the way back from the surgery to the butcher’s shop. Ned O’Hara came back for a flying visit to Castlebay with his fiancée, Dorothy. Dorothy thought everything in Castlebay was terrif. When she and her Neddy got old, like about thirty, they would come back here and start a restaurant. Dorothy thought the O’Briens’ house was terrif. Dorothy’s mother was Irish, and she wished that her mum had taken her to Ireland before—it was simply gorgeous.
That summer, a registered envelope arrived for Agnes O’Brien. There were twenty-five ten-pound notes in it and an ill-written note from Tommy saying he had been saving for years to get a present for his ma, and now he had.
Tom said immediately that they must tell nobody outside the house about it. They discussed long and secretly that summer what Mammy would do with the money. Chrissie was left out of the discussion because she was a Byrne now and if Bumper, Bid and Mogsy knew about it they’d be down like a flash.
In the end it was spent on a new coat for Agnes and the long and often discussed extension on the side of the shop. It was Tom O’Brien’s one concession to the magnificent site of his business: he wanted a Perspex roof on an extra room where they could put a couple of tables and chairs. This way they could serve those who wanted to sit down for their Club Orange or their tub of ice cream. And they were even going to add sandwiches and tea next summer. Tommy’s gift made it possible.
In the summer of 1959, Mother Immaculata asked Angela O’Hara whether she intended to stay on in the school or, now that she was free to see the world, if she planned to travel. Angela, seeing that Immaculata would love Miss O’Hara to roam off around the world, said firmly that she was going to stay in Castlebay. It was also the summer that Dick Dillon asked Angela O’Hara to marry him and she said very gently that she thought they would drive each other mad within months, and the ambulance would be arriving from the town and they’d both be locked up in the asylum on the hill. Dick had smiled bravely and she had patted his knee and invited him to the Committee dance so that he would know she liked him greatly.
Clare’s professors said she would get a First: they were all in agreement. Clare O’Brien to get a First—she said it to herself, not caring to believe it. Any student with a First was worth looking at. From then on she would never have to apologize again. Clare went off into one of her rare little daydreams in the National Library. Imagine it. Never would she have to tell people she was only a scholarship girl or she had to do this because of some Committee or other, she would be her own person. And a scholar. She tore a page from her ring file and decided to write to Angela O’Hara there and then. She wrote as she hadn’t been able to write before, she said that somehow for the very first time she believed that it was actually happening. Only now did she feel it had worked, all that praying up in the church, and all the shouting in the Echo Cave and all the learning and learning, the disciplines that Angela had taught her.
Angela replied by return of post. She said that it was the most wonderful letter she had ever received in her life. It made everything—and everything included the seagull-faced Immaculata—all worth while. She said it was a letter written on the crest of happiness, and from that heady standpoint the world was there for the taking. She hoped that that would last forever.
It was a warm and generous letter. Clare folded it in four and put it in the little flap at the back of her big, black leather notebook. The book, which she carried everywhere, had been a gift from the nuns in the secondary school when she won the Murray Prize. Immaculata had sent her a picture of Maria Goretti, with a big padded frame of coral pink velvet. Fortunately her mother had liked it, and it hung in the back of the shop getting grimier and dirtier as the years went by. Gerry Doyle had given her a fountain pen. He had insisted. He had only been asked to do the pictures he said because there was a candidate from Castlebay. She knew this wasn’t true but it was nice of him to say it. She still had the pen. She never lent it to anyone and she always put the cap on very carefully, clipped it to her notebook and then put a rubber band around the whole thing. She had so few possessions that she valued them all. She thought about Gerry. She could never write to him like she did to Angela but somehow she did want to talk to him. It would be nice if he came to Dublin again and they could walk by the canal maybe, or she could show him off to the girls. She sighed. She’d never get any kind of degree if she spent time daydreaming like this.
Still, she bought a postcard of O’Connell Street and sent it to him—a cheerful card saying it would be nice to see him if ever he passed through Dublin.
She heard nothing for ages.
She was annoyed.
Thank God, she wasn’t in love with him.
It was neither one thing nor another, being an intern; David discovered that very early on. Some people thought he was a fully-fledged doctor, who knew everything; others thought he was a schoolboy dressing up in a white coat and wouldn’t ask him the time of day in case he got it wrong. And the hours! There was the solidarity of a prisoner-of-war camp in the Res, where bewildered young doctors coped with the unfamiliar and the frightening without any sustained sleep. They told each other that they would never sl
eep again. That their metabolisms would never recover from the strange hours and speeds at which they had to grab food. And even more immediate and urgent—their social lives were now finished forever.
James Nolan, handsome, well-dressed young barrister, carrying his black bag that contained wig and gown casually slung over his shoulder, said he despaired ever of seeing David anymore.
David was paged urgently, and rushed to the phone. “Dr. Power speaking.”
“Dr. Power, this is Mr. Nolan, barrister at law. I wondered if you would like to come and have a long boozy lunch with me. I got a check for seven guineas.”
“A lunch?” said David in disbelief.
“You know. You’ve heard of them. They’re what people have in the middle of the day. Food and wine. You sit at tables.”
“You bloody don’t do that here,” David said.
“Well, can you come? It’s a gorgeous autumn day. Walk a bit toward me and I’ll walk a bit toward you.”
A wave of impatience came over David. How could James be so insensitive? He had no idea of what David’s life was like. He had been up all through the night—but that made no difference to today’s schedule. The ward round went ahead as usual. Blood tests here, a drip there, organizing an X-ray for another. The ward Sister—a poisonous woman—never gave him any information about the patients: she confided all that only to the consultants. The housemen were made to look fools as a result.