by Maeve Binchy
“I’m in surgery all day, David. Do you want to take the car and drive off somewhere? It might be a nice break for you.”
“That’s very nice, Dad.” He paused. He’d better make the offer. “Would you like to go for a drive, Mother?”
Fortunately it was a bridge afternoon and she had to get ready for it. But it was nice of him to ask her. Honor had been satisfied.
New Year’s Day or not, people would have their ailments and Dr. Power shuffled off into the other side of the house. Nellie made David a big turkey sandwich with lots of stuffing in it and a flask of tea. He didn’t even notice where he was driving until he came to a wild rocky place he had only seen from the road before. He parked the car and got out.
It must have been the same for centuries, he thought. Bleak and un-welcoming, the sea washing on it endlessly, as remote in the summer as in winter. Who would walk for forty minutes as he had through thickets and briars and down stony crumbling paths to get to a place that didn’t even have a sandy beach? He threw stones into the water mechanically, one after another in a kind of rhythm. He couldn’t be so obsessed with Clare that he shivered at the thought of Gerry touching her. He was only awake last night because he had drunk too much, because he had a stupid quarrel with Josie Dillon, because he was worried, as he was always worried, about this business of coming home to live like a child again in the house with a mummy and a daddy and a doctor’s coat.
But her face was there, and her shoulders, and her hair. And her bright smile, and the way she was always so interested in everything and had so many views on any subject. He remembered the day he had felt so annoyed with her outside the National Library in Dublin when she was running back to her hostel to know if Gerry had rung. He remembered the relief that she didn’t seem to be at all interested in the amorous Mr. Doyle. Her work plans were daunting and over-ambitious, but she was certainly destined for a first-class B.A. and acceptance as an M.A. student. So why was she behaving like a cheap tramp last night? That’s what it was. The cheapest way to go on, with a bottle of spirits and right in public. And with Gerry, who had felt up and touched every girl who was any way attractive and quite a few who were not.
His hand throwing the stones into the sea paused and he dropped the stone and clenched his fists. Gerry Doyle would never touch her again. Never. He would keep his hands to himself. He would not go near Clare O’Brien, he wouldn’t dare. Last night had just been silly, a New Year silliness, to be excused but never to be repeated.
He would explain this to Clare, and she would understand. They would even laugh about it.
But what would he explain?
He wished he had taken Bones with him. Just looking into the dog’s foolish face helped; but he hadn’t known where he was going to go and the dog could have been a liability.
What would he say to Clare?
The wise man would say nothing. The wise man would make a little joke and forget the scene on the cliff top.
But David began to think he was not a wise man. He could not forget the tableau and he couldn’t stop a feeling of light sweat forming on the back of his neck at the memory.
He couldn’t want Clare that badly for himself. He couldn’t. It must be pure bloody jealousy that Gerry struck lucky on New Year’s Eve in the cold, while he, David, had a boring evening listening to old-timers singing “Darling, You Are Growing Old”—which was too painfully true—having a totally ludicrous conversation with a tearful Josie Dillon, and then coming across Love’s Young Dream on the bench.
No. It was more. He wanted to see Clare. Now.
He wanted to tell her that she was special. And to ask her to give him a chance to prove himself her lover as well as her friend.
It was highly awkward, but as sure as he knew anything he knew he loved her.
Clare didn’t know why she felt so furious all next day. There was no way she could fault David. He hadn’t been rude. Under the circumstances he had been polite. His voice hadn’t dripped with sarcasm, as it had that time he had unleashed a tirade about Gerry in Dublin when he called him trashy.
But she wished he hadn’t come along. It had been nothing, it had only been a couple of kisses, and she didn’t think it would have gone any further. It was too public a place for one thing; and she wouldn’t, for another.
But she had this feeling that David was always on the verge of going on to another level in their friendship. She had never admitted this to the girls. She kept telling them how unsuitable the liaison would be, and they made jokes about the security forces Mrs. Power would need to employ and where she should station them around Castlebay. But Clare knew it wasn’t just a joke.
She felt they talked as she never could with anyone. They didn’t just talk gossip or plans. She was always interested to know what he thought about things. He never bored her. And she had the feeling that he was delighted with her. But he had never touched her or kissed her. So she was a bit in the dark about what he really felt. She would like to have been close to him, closer than she was, but she didn’t want to push it because she had no idea at all how he felt.
Anyway it might be just hero worship. When she’d been the poor little girl in the shabby cotton dress in the shop, David and James Nolan had been swaggering round Castlebay like gods. Now she was their equal in a way. He sought her out and didn’t meet other people at all.
It was all such bad timing. If only she had stayed at home. Or gone straight home. Or said no to Gerry Doyle. Or if only that big idiot of a dog hadn’t spotted them and come like a detective to find them out.
She’d never know now what David Power had felt about her, if anything. It would have vanished on that cliff top last night. Damn Gerry Doyle to the pit of hell.
Very few people came in on New Year’s Day. It was a holiday of obligation and they had all been to early Mass. Clare hadn’t looked round to see if David was in the church. She thought she saw his father, but she didn’t want to meet any of them. She hurried home afterward, down the quiet cold street.
Clare decided that she would invite Josie to supper, too. If only her mother would get out of this servile approach things would be much better. There was no reason why Josie Dillon shouldn’t have sausages and beans, and brown bread and butter in their kitchen. She would enjoy it.
Clare had tried to catch Josie’s eye in the church, but Josie looked away every time. Possibly she hadn’t seen her.
The shop doorbell went. Her father was cleaning the paintbrush out in the back. Ben and Jim were reading the funnies in a paper. Chrissie had arrived for a woman-to-woman chat with Mam and was sitting on a hard-backed chair while Mam ironed. Clare had been half reading a very dense account of the differences between common law, equity and statute law, for what she had been hoping would give her a better understanding of the history of the English courts.
“I’ll go.” Chrissie quite enjoyed meeting the public and serving them now that she was such an important person in the town. Mrs. Maurice Byrne, and seven months pregnant too.
“It’s young Dr. Power, for Miss O’Brien,” she said scathingly on her return.
Clare went out and pulled the kitchen door a little closed behind her.
“Please come out with me now. Please,” he said as if preparing for a long debate about it.
“Right,” she said and took down her duffle coat from the hook.
She was surprised to see the car outside the door.
He held open the car door for her, and then ran round the other side. “I wanted us to go for a drive,” he said. His eyes looked very bright but he didn’t look upset.
“Yes, of course.”
They drove to that strange rocky place, bleak and dangerous. They got out of the car and looked down at it. Apart from the seagulls, there wasn’t a soul around.
“I was down there this morning,” he said.
Clare said nothing.
“I was down there for a long time. Throwing stones in the sea. And I realized something.”
She looked at him.
“I realized I love you,” he said.
“I love you too.”
She didn’t know why she was crying, it was ridiculous to cry when this happened. This was the best thing in the whole world that could happen. Why did the tears come down out of the corners of her eyes? She could taste them mixed with the spray, the salty spray which came up and whirled lightly around them as they kissed each other and held on to each other on the cold New Year’s Day of 1960.
Part Three
1960
DAviD’S FATHER AND MOTHER DROVE HIM TO THE TRAIN; DICK Dillon and Angela drove Clare.
“There’s David,” Angela said, pleased, as they stood on the platform.
Clare was casual. She had a book in her hand already. Everyone knew she was going to study all the way to Dublin. David waved cheerily, and his mother nodded, a kind of bow as if she had hurt her neck. Dr. Power had gone to the newsagent’s stall to buy David a magazine for his long journey.
When the train was half a mile from the town they were in each other’s arms in the corridor, each whispering the other’s name over and over. They were going back to Dublin. City of freedom. So Clare was in a hostel run by nuns and David was a resident doctor in a big city hospital. Compared to where they came from this was license and freedom.
The book on the history of law and the magazine just bought at the newsstand lay beside each other on the seat of the train unread. The train was not crowded. They had a compartment to themselves for most of the journey, and when they were joined it was by an elderly American who said it was the coldest country he had ever visited in his life and he had visited a few. David encouraged him to wrap something round his feet—it was the extremities that often felt most cold. The American had a huge muffler and they tied it loosely around his ankles. He was asleep in no time and they kissed and held hands and snuggled up to each other happily in the corner without interruption.
They had two whole days in Dublin before anyone knew they were back. Clare’s hostel didn’t open till Sunday; and David wasn’t expected in the hospital until eight a.m. on the Monday morning. It was only Friday night. They had made no plans, almost as if they both felt it might be unlucky.
Now in the winter evening outside Kingsbridge they walked past the line of taxis and to the bus. Clare had one small case, David two huge ones. She accused him of having brought all his washing home for Nellie to do and he opened his eyes wide. Didn’t everyone do that?
She wanted to ask him what they were to do now. Or better, she wanted to tell him all her options: she could stay with Kevin and Emer, if he wanted to go and stay with James for example. She could go to the hostel and throw herself on the mercy of the nuns. They thought she was one of the most reliable girls they ever had, so they would grumble only a bit and let her into her room—even though it hadn’t been aired for her and no hot-water bottles had been put in the small iron beds.
She had £18 in her wallet. They could stay in a guesthouse: there were lots of them in Glasnevin, she knew lots of students who had cheap digs out that way.
But she thought she should wait and see what David had in mind. Her throat closed over once or twice in case he suggested that they sleep together. She hoped and prayed he wouldn’t ask her to. Not yet. She had to think. It was all too sudden.
As they got on the bus to O’Connell Bridge, David said easily, “You know the flat I used to stay in before they locked me up in the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“I still have the key. And I can go there always. There’ll be nobody back until Monday. And there’s lots of rooms. You could go in the one I used to have—it’s one of the nicest. And I could go . . . well, anywhere. Far away from you, I think, so that I won’t come and break down the door and get at you.”
She smiled at him, relieved that she hadn’t spoken, pleased that he felt the need to break down the door, and very grateful that he wasn’t going to. He had said absolutely the right thing.
They had a honeymoon without sex. They held hands and she took him on tours of her Dublin. He had never been inside the Bank of Ireland to look from within at what had once been the Irish Parliament. He said he must have known that but somehow he had forgotten. She promised to take him on a weekday.
She crossed the road with him and showed him the book of Kells in Trinity College. He said he had known it was there and he had been going to see it one day.
They climbed Nelson’s Pillar to look out over the city. It had a long, dark, windy staircase. There was a lot of pausing to catch breath and to kiss. David embarked on a long tale of a doctor who was married but having an illicit romance with another married lady. They couldn’t go anywhere to make love because they were too well known, so they used to meet twice a week inside Nelson’s Pillar and make love on the stairway. If any tourist climbing up or down was troublesome enough to interrupt them they just flattened themselves against the wall.
“That’s why I brought you here of course.” She laughed and jumped lightly ahead of him so that he’d know she wasn’t contemplating it for a moment. She took him down the Quays to St. Michan’s, an old Protestant Church where they had a totally preserved mummy in the vaults.
In the evenings they made themselves meals. David was rather better at preparing them than Clare.
“I thought you’d be very domesticated, big family, all those brothers to cook for,” he teased.
“I’d be fine throwing a big dinner for eight on the table, lump of bacon, half a ton of spuds. But I’ve never cooked just for one or two. We get the food handed to us up in the hostel.” She sounded apologetic.
“It’s not the end of the world, Clare. Stop looking so mournful!”
“What will we have tonight? Will we go out and get something or what?” She hoped he’d say that they’d get chips from the place down the road.
“Oh, there’s lots of eggs there—why don’t you just make an omelet?” He was talking absently, concentrating on clearing out the grate.
Clare looked stricken.
“There’s a bit of cheese there, isn’t there? We could have a cheese omelet,” he called.
“I’ll do the fire. You do the omelet.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t make an . . .” David stopped when he saw her face.
“We never had them at home. If you show me, I’ll know then.”
“Listen, it doesn’t matter, scrambled eggs, anything . . .”
“Show me how to make an omelet. I want to know.” Her face was set and determined.
“All right then.” David was good-natured. “It doesn’t matter a damn, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”
They kissed over the frying pan. It didn’t matter a damn.
On Sunday night, he asked her, “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
They sat for a long time on the floor with a bottle of wine between them.
“It’s too soon isn’t it? We met too soon.”
“We met when we were babies, David.”
“You know what I mean. Now. It’s too early.”
“I love you. The other seems unimportant. I wouldn’t want to be a history don somewhere without you.”
“I don’t want to be anywhere without you.”
“Maybe we can go round the world only taking universities that will have research facilities for both of us.” She smiled nervously.
“But in real life . . .” he said.
“Yes. Real life. Which begins tomorrow.” She looked stricken.
He kissed her and rocked her in his arms. “Nothing bad can happen now. I was never more sure in my life. I’ll love you forever. I half loved you always and didn’t know it.”
“No, nothing bad can happen now,” said Clare.
They knew immediately of course. Mary Catherine and Val. There was no point in denying it.
“Do you mind if I don’t talk about it,” she said.
“Yes, we bloody do,” Valerie said indignan
tly. “What kind of nonsense is that? We’ve told you everything, every pant and groan.”
“It’s very unfair to hold out on us now. It’s secretive and it’s not like you at all. I can’t understand it.” Mary Catherine was upset.
“But there’s nothing to tell. I beg you, there’s no new panting and groaning in it, in fact there’s a lot less than there was with Ian that night in the car. So now, will that satisfy you?”
“It will not. How did it happen? Did he say he loved you, did a thousand violins start to play? I must know.” Valerie was sitting on her bed, legs crossed like an old-fashioned tailor. She looked very young, Clare thought. They were all young, nobody was twenty, she was too young to feel the way she did. The realization swept over her.
“You see I’m too young,” she said stupidly.
“For what? God Clare, you’re very irritating when you put on this dramatic bit. Does he think you’re too young for him or what?”
“No, but it’s all right for him. He’s old. He’s twenty-five. His life’s nearly over. In terms of studying, I mean.”
“This is very tedious,” complained Valerie.
“I told you it was tedious,” Clare said defensively.
“It may pass over. Seriously, if you’ve known the guy all your life and never thought about him in that way until ten days ago, it’s bound to blow over.”
“It won’t. That’s what really is going to be tedious for you. I can’t think of any better way to put it than this and it’s going to make you vomit.”
“Say it,” said Valerie grimly.
“I feel as if I’d been looking and looking for something I’d lost and now I’ve found it. It’s like going home, except much nicer than going home, it’s like you think going home should be.”
“It’s a bit soppy,” Val said objectively.
“I’m afraid it is.”
“Will you be any fun do you think, ever again?” Mary Catherine asked.