by Maeve Binchy
“And bring her back here?” Father Flynn sounded politely doubtful: inside he felt a slight tremor of anxiety.
“Oh, no. Clare’s grown well beyond Castlebay. And as soon as I get this business organized, so will I.”
“Tell me about Gerry Doyle. The photographer,” Father Flynn asked Dick Dillon.
“Trouble from way back,” said Dick. “But the women won’t hear a word against him. Even a sensible woman like Angela O’Hara says he’s got a nice way with him.” Dick Dillon snorted, and Father Flynn shivered a little in the sunshine.
Sometimes they finished at about ten o’clock, and everyone else in the Res went for a few drinks before closing time. But David never joined them. These days, he would hare out of the hospital down to the bus stop.
“I don’t know why you even call it the Residence,” one of the other doctors said to him. “You barely reside here at all.”
David grinned. “I had no idea we were going to be on call so much, I thought we’d have far more freedom.”
“No, you didn’t. You knew you’d be cooped up here, you just didn’t think you’d meet such an available girl.” The redheaded registrar laughed at his own perception.
David Power’s face was cold and hard. “I beg your pardon?” he said.
“It was only a joke . . .”
“I didn’t think it was a bit funny.”
“No . . . Well, I’m sorry. I mean I don’t know anything about it. I know nothing.”
“That’s right. You know nothing, which gives you license to say everything. That about sums you up.”
He marched, white with anger, out of the Res sitting room, having thrown his white coat over the back of a chair.
“What did I say?” Bar pleaded to the empty room.
It was cold and wet. The bus took forever to arrive and even longer to get to Rathmines. He burned with rage still. A nice, available girl. Available. Clare. How dare he?
David was tired and very much on edge when he climbed the stairs. Clare was at the makeshift desk they had rigged up for her with planks of wood and builder’s bricks. She was wearing mittens on her hands, which made her look so endearing he stopped and stared at her with pleasure.
Her eyes were tired and had circles under them. “Lord, are you home already? Is that the time?”
He was pleased she called it home, but a little disappointed that she hadn’t been waiting for him, looking out for him.
“Did you get a lot done today?”
“I’m back into it again, thank heavens. I didn’t notice the time or anything. I heard a man selling oil so I rushed downstairs with the can and got some.” She looked proudly at the glowing little oil heater.
“It’s lovely and cozy. What are we having to eat?”
She looked stricken. “There’s nothing. I meant to get something.”
“There must be something. Toast even?”
“No. There’s nothing.” She opened the little press. “Look, real Mother Hubbard stuff. Bare. We’ll go out and get chips,” she added when she saw how disappointed he was.
“I only just got in,” he said. “I’m dog tired.”
Clare got up and reached for her coat. “Stay here. I’ll go out for chips and bring them home.”
“Then I’ll be here all on my own,” he grumbled.
She looked at him startled. This wasn’t his way of talking.
“Darling Clare, I’m sorry. I’m just desperately overtired. I hardly know what I’m saying.”
She was full of concern. “What are you apologizing for? Sit there. Rest for ten minutes. I’ll be back and we’ll have a feast.” She wouldn’t hear of him moving.
She took his shoes off and pulled the two pillows into a bundle behind him. She said no to money, she had some. Dinner would be her treat. She was gone down the stairs, and he felt guilty.
What a way to come home. Like a typical husband shouting, “Where’s my tea?” This was a hopeless way to go on. Both of them so tired they could hardly talk. No money, no comfort. If they had more money Clare could have lived in a flat near the hospital; they wouldn’t have this smelly stove, and this filthy house with bicycles, and the smell of urine downstairs in the hall.
He felt restless, got up and walked over to her desk. In her big, firm writing with the funny old-fashioned fountain pen and ink, not a ballpoint like everyone else, she had pages of notes.
She had been concentrating on economic history lately. The works of John Maynard Keynes were this week’s project. . . . She had taken notes in the library. Now she had been sorting them out and fitting them into her scheme. She was so bright and hungry to know. He wondered had he lost some of that himself; he used to feel a bit that way at school, and so did James Nolan then. Nowadays James was so languid it was hard to know what he felt, and David was so tired and so used to sleeping with an ear ready to be called to a ward that he would have thought that hunger for information was a luxury.
There was a letter to Clare on the desk in a brown business envelope. The odd thing was that it was addressed here, to this flat. Nobody knew they lived there, nobody. And even worse, it was addressed to her as Clare O’Brien. They had told the landlord they were married. It had a Castlebay postmark.
David had never read anyone else’s letter in his life. This time he justified it. He wanted to know. If he asked her she would tell him, and there would be an explanation; but he had already been so testy and crotchety tonight he didn’t trust himself. He would just have a quick look and then nothing need be said. He pulled the short letter out of the envelope. It was on headed paper which said DOYLE’S PHOTOGRAPHICS and it was signed Love, Gerry.
Clare had bought them a choc-ice each as a treat. The man in the shop said they must be supermen to eat ice cream in weather like this. She unwrapped the chips and found plates. There was an awful plastic flower in a pot which they always put on their table for meals and made jokes about Doing the Flowers. They had tomato sauce and salt as well as the vinegar that the shop had provided. Clare chattered happily about the advantages of living in bed-sitter land where you could go out any hour of the day and night and get food.
David said nothing.
“Lord, you really are tired. Maybe you should just go to bed a couple of the really bad nights there, so you don’t have to drag yourself up here.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“Did anything happen?”
“No.”
“Is anything worrying you, then?”
“That letter.” He pointed to the desk.
“What letter?” She stood up. There were two letters: one was from her mother addressed to The Ladies’ Reading Room at UCD. She had said that this was a quicker way of getting your post and her mother hadn’t questioned it.
“This one?” she held up the brown envelope.
“Yes.”
“If you read it, why are you worried?” Her voice was cold now.
“I didn’t read it. I swear to you. But I know who it’s from. And I was wondering why you gave him our address and told him you lived here. This is our secret. And we’re meant to be man and wife. Why the hell is Gerry bloody Doyle allowed into anything and everything? And don’t tell me what everyone says when his name is mentioned, that it doesn’t count telling Gerry, or Gerry knows everything, or everyone loves Gerry, because I find that sickening.”
She had taken the letter out of the envelope and was reading:
Dear Clare,
I did what you asked me, I hope to hell it doesn’t get lost in the post or I’ll look a nice criminal.
The place is full of activity here, your Chrissie getting ready to produce your nephew or niece, our Fiona getting ready to marry Frank Conway, Josie walking out with a very suitable older man. I suppose you know all the details. Only you and I left around from the old guard.
Send a card or something so that I know it arrived OK.
Love, Gerry
She read this, brushing aside his protestations that he didn’t want
to hear it. She threw the letter on the bed at him, she reached into a drawer and took out a post office book and threw that too.
“I asked him to get my post office book for me from my room at home in Castlebay. I didn’t want Mam asking what I needed my savings for. I need my savings, you bloody, suspicious, mean-minded pig, because now that I live here I have to buy things that I didn’t have to buy when I lived in the hostel. Like milk, and bread, and tea, and sugar, and packets of soup and Vim. And I pay a share of the rent here. And it all costs money. And I don’t have a penny left. In fact I owe Valerie three pounds. So in order not to appear a kept woman or a hanger-on, or to define even more the fact that I am poor Clare O’Brien and you are rich David Power, I sent for my savings account.”
Her eyes blazed with rage. “I asked him to send it here because I didn’t want a valuable thing like a post office book with sixty-three pounds in it, money I’ve been saving for three years, to get lost in college or get mislaid at the hostel. And Gerry Doyle doesn’t give a tuppenny damn if I live here or on the top of the Dublin mountains, so I gave him this address. And I was not going to tell him that I am pretending to be your wife, so I gave him my name. And the landlord no more thinks we’re married than he thinks that he’s charging us a fair rent.”
Her hair had fallen over her face as she spoke. She lifted her plate of chips and poured them roughly onto David’s plate.
“I have no appetite now. I’d do anything rather than share a meal with such a mean-minded human being.”
“Come back . . . come back!” he called.
“I’ll not come back. Not tonight. I’ll come back tomorrow when you’ve gone.”
She had grabbed up a few papers and put them into her duffle bag, she had pulled the nighty from under the pillow.
“Clare, you can’t go out in that rain. . . .”
“I went out once, to get your supper, didn’t I? To give you time to poke around and make accusations. Go to hell!”
She ran faster than he did and jumped on the last bus going toward the city. She got off and slipped round behind the hostel, looking left and right. She climbed the rungs, praying that Valerie and Mary Catherine might be out. But it was not a night for prayers to be answered.
They were reading magazines and listening to Chris Barber on their small portable record player. When she came through the window, furious and dripping, they were convulsed with laughter. They laughed as they got one of the younger and more frightened occupants of the hostel to go for tea, and they laughed as they gave her a big bath towel and ran a bath for her in the big old bathroom at the end of the corridor.
They felt that it called for even more than tea, so the brandy was taken out from the drawer. And eventually she laughed too. She laughed as she dried her hair and sipped the tea with brandy in it and told them the outline of the story. And then eventually she went to bed in the third bed.
Valerie and Mary Catherine had fought like tigers not to have a third girl. They said that since Clare had paid until Easter anyway it would be double letting, and the nuns couldn’t do anything as dishonest as that, could they? Secretly Mary Catherine had been certain that Clare would be back: she felt that the romance with David was not going to get beyond first base. But she said none of this as Clare sighed happily and settled back into her old familiar place. Neither did Valerie.
“I’m really sorry. It makes me such an eejit,” Clare said.
“Nonsense. It makes you much nicer,” said Valerie. “Now we know you’re still normal, and not all this awful sickening peace and calm of true love. That was the distressing bit.”
Bar apologized to him formally as they were having coffee the next morning.
“I’m afraid I spoke out of order last night. I meant no disrespect.”
“That’s fine. Sure. Thanks,” David mumbled.
“You look a bit rough. I don’t want to say anything that you’ll take amiss, but are you all right?”
“Sure, I’m fine.” David swallowed his coffee and went back on the wards. He had spent about three hours tidying the flat. He had removed all the rubbish, including the uneaten chips. This morning he had gone out and bought supplies of tea, coffee, milk, sugar, cornflakes, sardines and oranges. He had arranged them as well as he could, and he had bought a vase too. He left the vase on the desk with a note:
This is for the flowers I would like to bring you tonight. I’ll understand if you don’t want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and hoped for. You are much, much more. Please know that I didn’t think I was mean-minded. But I realize I am. I don’t want you to put your arms around me and say it’s all right, that you forgive me. I want you to be sure that you do, and to know that my love for you will last as long as I live. I can see no lightness, no humor, no joke to make. I just hope that we will be able to go back to when we had laughter, and the world was colored, not black and white and gray. I am so sorry for hurting you. I could inflict all kinds of pain on myself, but it would not take back any I gave to you.
He had written it over and over to try to take out the phrases that sounded tired. He tried to make it just himself. But he was in such unaccustomed low form, it didn’t end up sounding like him. Perhaps he should have just left a card with a heart on it, or should he have gone round to the hostel after her last night? He had telephoned from a phone box and asked to speak to Mary Catherine. The nun on duty had asked did he know the time, all the young ladies were in bed, he could leave a message in an emergency. He had hung up. Perhaps he should have feigned illness at the hospital and taken a day off. He could have waited at the bottom of those rungs. Clare would have had to come down that way; she wasn’t meant to be a resident. Perhaps he should have stood in the hall up at UCD and waited till she came in for lectures.
Most of the morning was spent speculating between beds.
The secretary at the front desk handed him a note as he passed. “This just came for you, Dr. Power.”
In her big firm handwriting she had written:
It was just our First Row. That’s all it was. Of course I love you. I’m hotheaded and impatient and I’m very sorry for that too. I am ashamed I ran out and left you there, tired and depressed. I love you and I’m greatly looking forward to those flowers and whatever else you might think of as a way to spend the evening.
They were often too tired to talk, too tired to make love when they went to their bed, but not irritably tired. They looked forward to David’s proper leave days with excitement and planned them down to the last detail. They went to the zoo, which was lovely in the winter because it wasn’t crowded, and they went out to Bray on the train one day and climbed Bray Head to look all over County Wicklow and County Dublin.
Sometimes they ate out, and they had gone to the pictures with Mary Catherine and Valerie one night. But they didn’t mix much with David’s hospital set, and they didn’t look up old friends. James had given up on Mary Catherine and he seemed to be in a very social set. David and Clare didn’t need James Nolan; they didn’t need anyone but each other.
They had decided not to think about the future yet. David was going round doing interviews for hospitals where he would do his Post Intern year once he finished his present post in July. Clare had her mind fixed firmly on her degree.
By next September they would both be earning money. They would afford a better place. They would not get married yet. They just skated over that bit, but neither of them wanted to bring on the storm. Up here in Dublin in their own little world, nothing mattered, nobody bothered them.
They would be all right unless something happened.
Coming up to Easter two things happened.
Dr. Power had a mild stroke.
And Clare discovered she was pregnant.
It was Angela who found him when he passed out. He was just getting into his car, which he had parked a quarter of a mile from the golf club in order to give himself a little walk. He had bandaged the finger of the barman, delivered a strong
lecture on the danger of sharp knives, and explained that it didn’t matter whether a lemon was finely sliced for drinks but it did matter if dangerous knives were left where people could cut their hands on them.
He walked cheerfully down to the car and then felt everything go dark. He realized that he must be about to faint and lowered himself to the ground beside his car. He tried to call out but he could hear a rushing sound and knew that he was losing consciousness.
Angela was hanging up some clothes on the washing line. She saw the car, and just as she was about to turn back into her house, she saw his black bag thrown on the ground. She ran quickly and was at his side when he was recovering consciousness.
“Did you have a fall?” she said.
“No, Jhangelgha,” he said. “Shmore a vainting . . .” His voice sounded very odd. As if he were drunk. She was practical as he would have expected.
“Tell me what to do in yeses or nos. Can you stand up if I help you?”
“Yesh.”
“Will I open the door and put you sitting in the car?”
“Yesh.”
He started to speak again, she had the door open and the big man seated in the passenger seat.
“Now, do you want me to get your wife, or to go to a phone and call the hospital in the town? Sorry. You have to answer yes or no. Will I get Mrs. Power?”
“No.”
“Will I phone the hospital?”
“No. Drive.”
“No, Dr. Power. I could curse myself to the pit of hell but I can’t drive. Let me get someone to drive you . . . is it safe to leave you here?”
“Yesh. Shafe.”
“Very well, I’ll get my bike. I’ll be back in five minutes. . . .”
“Anjheala.” He seemed agitated.
“Trust me, trust me. I’ll get the right person. Are you better here or would you like me to help you back to my house?”