by Maeve Binchy
“I’ll ring you when I get there. I’ll ring to know are you all right.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll come to see you first thing tomorrow morning, when we’re calmer, we’ll decide what to do.”
“Great.”
“Is there anyone—have you any friends, anyone who could come in, or someone you could go to?” He looked around, willing himself to find her some support, hating to leave her.
“No.”
He swallowed and couldn’t speak.
She turned her head toward the dressing table and the pictures that were turned upside down.
The wind and rain lashed the car; the road was strewn with bits of branches.
A steady drumming beat in David’s heart. May Clare be all right. May Clare be all right. May he not have shown her the pictures. May he not have shown her the pictures. . . .
Clare stood at the window for a long time. She hadn’t heard the car starting up. Perhaps he would come back again. But then he had been very final when he had left.
Please, God, he had been lying when he said he showed the pictures to David, and to Caroline. Please may David not know about them. It made everything so definite if he knew, if he had seen. She would deny she had ever seen them if David asked her. She couldn’t bear to hold any discussion based on what she had seen. It didn’t make her retch now; it made her sad. But she had known for months, hadn’t she? All Gerry Doyle had done was to make her admit it to herself.
Please may Gerry go away from Castlebay, forever and ever. Please, please.
Gerry closed the door gently behind him. He had never slammed a door in his life. He would like to have taken it from its hinges.
Clare had looked at him as if he were mad. As if he were mad! It was Clare who was mad. To have hoped that she would be accepted in that family for one thing, to have looked at the evidence in black and white and then to decide to stay . . . That wasn’t the Clare O’Brien he used to know, the Clare he had the plans for. He had been so forgiving toward her, so understanding. He had said so little when she behaved like a common tramp and got into trouble with the boy from the big house. No accusations had come from him. And there she stood tonight, frightened of him and doubting him.
He hit violently at some gorse that jutted out of the hedge between the Lodge and the cliff. He remembered telling a hundred girls, maybe more, about the old saying, “When the gorse is out of bloom then the kissing’s out of fashion.” They had always been surprised that gorse seemed to bloom all year round, and Gerry would laugh. He hit again and scraped his hand on the prickly branches.
How dared Clared talk to him in that frightened, teeth-chattering way? How dared she look up at him as if she were afraid he might strike her? She had more to fear from her big unfaithful husband than from him . . . from Gerry, who had always wanted her, waited for her.
He moved angrily to the cliff top and looked out at the sea.
Everything had gone now. Everything. Not just the business, he had seen that coming for many a month, but Clare’s face tonight . . . He had not foreseen that. She was frightened of him as if he were a stranger who would do her harm, not her soul’s other half. Her one true friend and love who would make a home for her and her baby, and accuse her of nothing except bad luck, as he had.
His breath came in short bursts.
She would not do this to him . . . She would not back out now . . . Now, after everything . . . After all he had planned . . .
Clare! It was too much to take, too much for her to do now at this stage.
She would regret it for the rest of her life.
There would be no drive to England in the van tonight for her.
There would be no new life for her.
What did she mean by throwing back all he offered her?
She would want him in a little while, when it was too late. When he had gone. When nobody knew where he was. She would stand on the cliff and wish she had left with him tonight.
He found that he was trembling, shaking with anger. He had never known such a sensation—it was as if a great wind had taken hold of him and borne him up in the air . . .
He was shaking too much to drive. He would walk on the beach. It would clear his head.
He slipped and climbed down the path. The beach looked dark and dangerous, but the bigger waves were dying down; the tide must be going out now. It was on the turn anyway. He walked, his head wet from the salt spray and the rain; but he didn’t care.
He had really blown it now.
The business was a shambles. He couldn’t meet even one of the bills that were piled neatly on the desk under a paperweight for whoever would have to go through them. He hoped it wouldn’t be Fiona but he couldn’t think who else it might be. When the staff couldn’t get in tomorrow, there would be a hue and cry but he had left no note to say that he was going to England. There would be no Guards looking for him for bounced checks. He could always get by on credit; that’s what he had always done.
There were very few lights up in Castlebay. He looked up at the outlines of the houses clustered together and the dark spire of the church. He would never look at them again from here, or at all. Once he got to London it would be a new life. It would be exciting. It would not be exciting to stay to see their sympathy, to work for someone else, to see Clare, lovely, lovely Clare put up with that sod. He was glad he had done it. He was near the rock pools. Since he was a child he had loved walking over them, balancing, teetering on the edge. It was only inches of water if you did trip over and fall in. Tonight the waves were crashing over them . . . but still, it was a temptation.
He walked around them, playing games with himself, his feet and legs wet to the knee. He cried out with hysterical excitement. It was ludicrous, but it was exciting.
The wave knocked him down and he cut his cheek on the jagged rock.
It wasn’t funny anymore. Here came another one. Then the drag—he felt his leg being scraped across the rocks. Desperately he reached out with his hands.
But the drag was too great.
When the third wave had reared up at him, he knew he was going to drown or be battered to death on the rock pools, where he had played since he was old enough to walk.
“Clare.” He rattled the door. It was locked. “Clare? Are you all right?” She came to the door pale but calm.
He reached out his arms for her but she stepped out of his way.
“I’m very sorry. I was frightened. It’s the storm. I’m all right now. I’m sorry I called you home.” She spoke like a stranger.
“I rang. I rang twice about seven, and again at a quarter to eight.”
“I was in your parents’ house.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I am now, I think. But I don’t feel like talking. Do you want tea or food? Were you able to have your dinner?”
“No, no, it doesn’t matter.” He wasn’t concentrating.
“Was the road bad?” Again like a person making conversation.
“Yes, branches, and in one place a tree down, and you’d have to drive right up on the ditch to get past.”
“Imagine.”
“Clare.”
“You know I said I’d like to go to Dublin for a few days and you said that would be fine, because you could get looked after . . . ?”
“Yes?” His voice was hollow.
“I’d like to go very soon. Tomorrow maybe.”
“You’re not all that well, wait a few days.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“It’s silly to take Liffey off the whole way across the country when you’re not well.”
“It’s sillier to stay here on my own hour after hour listening to the sea when I’m not well.”
“You don’t have to be on your own here.”
“No. David, will you do me a great favor? Will you not make a scene? I’ve had as much drama as I can take, and I’m sure you’ve had a bad day too. But I want to go up to Angela and Dick tonight. Please.”
&nbs
p; She must know.
He must have shown her the pictures. David’s heart was like a stone.
“Why? What brought this on?”
“I think if I stayed here tonight it might be bad for us. We might say things that would hurt each other.”
He tried a little laugh. “Heavens, isn’t that very fanciful?”
“No,” she said. “It’s not.”
“Do you want to take Liffey with you?”
“Please.”
“I could try to explain . . .” he began.
“And so could I. But we know too well how easily people say things that are unforgivable when they’re hurt or annoyed. We’ve done very little hurting and wounding. Don’t let’s risk it tonight.”
“Have you packed?” he asked.
“Yes, just things for tonight. I’ll come back tomorrow when you’ve gone out and I’ll sort out what we’ll need in Dublin.”
“I’m saying yes, not because I’m weak but because I think you’re very sure what you want, and I’m not, so we should go along with the one who is sure.”
He grinned at her and she almost took a step toward him.
“Thank you,” she said formally.
“Is Angela expecting you?”
“Yes.”
“Well.” His shoulders drooped.
“She doesn’t ask. You know Angela—she doesn’t ever ask.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“It’s better.”
“I suppose it is.”
So many times they had wished Liffey would sleep rather than struggle and chatter and try to escape. Tonight when they could have done with a bit of distraction she lay in Clare’s arms breathing evenly, her long eyelashes making shadows on her cheeks.
David held his daughter tight in his arms and two tears came down his face. “I’m sorry, Liffey,” he said.
“Why are you sorry?” Clare said gently. “I have much more to apologize to her for. But it’s only like talking to ourselves until she can understand.”
“Goodbye, Clare.”
“Goodbye, David. For a while.”
They didn’t touch.
Angela had seen the car drawing up outside the cottage; she had sent Dick scurrying off to bed in case Clare wanted to talk.
Clare stood with Liffey in her arms and watched the car turning and going back down the golf-course road. She gave a little wave but David was looking straight in front of him and didn’t see.
“Come in,” Angela said.
“It’s very hard to explain.”
“Most things are quite incapable of being explained. I’ve always thought that,” said Angela.
She showed Clare her bed and made a cup of tea from a kettle which had been boiling in readiness.
“That’s to take to bed on your own,” she said. Clare blinked her gratitude at the teacher who knew by magic when people wanted to talk and when there was nothing left to say.
Jim O’Brien ran back into the shop looking frightened.
“Dad, Dad, where are you? Where are you?”
“Where would I be but getting out of my bed?” Tom O’Brien grumbled.
“Dad, come here, will you?”
The boy looked frightened.
“Dad, come out with me. . . . Now, come quickly.”
Tom O’Brien pulled his coat over his pajama top. He had his day trousers on and his shoes and socks, he had been dressing on the side of the bed when he heard the shouts.
They ran on to the top of the cliff and Jim pointed down on the beach. “I think it’s a person, Dad—it’s a body.”
There was wind and spray. Tom O’Brien took off his glasses and wiped them. “It’s a shape, but it couldn’t be a body. Who’d be in the water in this weather?”
“It is, Dad. It is. I’m going down. Will you get the Guards and Dr. Power?”
Jim O’Brien, almost totally deaf, didn’t hear his father warning him to take care. He started down the steps to the big treacherous beach at Castlebay where somebody drowned nearly every summer but where they had never seen a body washed in by a winter tide.
People seemed to know without being told. They came out of their houses and began to run down the main street. The murmur became louder, and almost without knowing they were doing it they started to check where their own families were. It was still just a figure, facedown in the water. They didn’t know for sure whether it was a man or a woman.
“Perhaps it’s a sailor from a ship,” they said. But they knew it wasn’t anyone who had gone overboard. No nice anonymous death of someone they didn’t know. No informing the authorities and saying a few prayers for the deceased Unknown Sailor. This was someone from Castlebay.
They stood in silent groups on the cliff top and watched the first people getting to the water’s edge; the boy who had first seen the waves leaving something frightening on the shore; other men too; people from the shops nearby and young men who were quick to run down the path. Then they saw the figures coming down the other path near the doctor’s house, kneeling by the body in case, just in case, there was something in a black bag that could bring it back to life.
By the time Father O’Dwyer arrived with his soutane flapping in the wind, the murmur had turned into a unified sound. The people of Castlebay were saying a decade of the rosary for the repose of the soul that had left the body that lay facedown on their beach.
David had only had two hours sleep when he heard the shouting. He thought it was still part of his dream, but it was real. He sat up in bed—Clare wasn’t there. He remembered the scene last night, taking her up to Angela’s house, and he remembered coming back and taking the house apart looking for any trace of the photographs. He knew Clare hadn’t taken them with her—he had looked in her small bag. She had only some things for the baby and a nightdress for herself.
He had put off ringing Caroline until it was too late to ring her. Then he told himself it would be cruel to wake her when he had nothing helpful to say.
He had been dreaming that people were coming after him, waving papers or big envelopes at him, all running down Church Street calling at him in anger. In his dream he didn’t know why they were so against him but he was frightened and trying to run away.
Then he realized the shouts were real. It was Bumper Byrne’s voice and Mogsy’s, and then his father’s.
“Come quickly. There’s someone on the beach. There’s been a drowning.”
His heart nearly burst in fear.
He ran down the stairs in his crumpled shirt and trousers; he hadn’t undressed last night.
He caught the unfortunate Mogsy Byrne; who was at the doorway by his arms. “Who is it? Goddamn you, who is it?”
“I don’t know . . . I don’t. I don’t . . .” Mogsy was stammering at the wild-eyed look of David Power who was always so calm and capable.
“Tell me,” David roared at him. “Tell me or I’ll break your neck.”
“He’s got his face down, David,” Mogsy managed to get out. “I left the cliff before they knew. They said to come quickly.”
He had said “he.” It was a man. It was a man, thank God—it was a man. Oh, God, thank you for letting it be a man.
David’s eyes had cleared. He grabbed a coat and ran to the surgery for his bag, his father was already there.
“Don’t come down the steps. Please, Dad. I’ll do it. Come down the other way.”
“I’ve been coming down those steps to take bodies out of the water since before you were born.”
“Who is it? Is he dead?”
“They don’t know. They think it’s Gerry Doyle.”
David put out his hand to steady himself on a desk. Just beside a big brown envelope printed with the words DOYlE’S PHOTOGRAPHICS.
His father was already out of the surgery and heading toward the cliff. David steadied himself, put the envelope in a drawer of his own things, down at the bottom of it. And with shaking legs he followed his father to the cliff path.
They saw th
e group around the body and realized even at this distance that their work would not be needed. Father O’Dwyer had been sent for, he was the only one who might be any help to that body which lay spread-eagled on the beach. Even through the wind and rain and from far away David knew it was Gerry Doyle’s lifeless body. He held his arm out to steady his father.
“Young fool,” Dr. Power said. “Bloody young lunatic, his whole life before him. What did he want to do that for? Bloody criminal fool to throw away the one life God gave him.”
David’s heart was like stone when they turned the body over and he saw the lacerations and tears down the side of the face of Gerry Doyle. As if in deference to his father he stood back and let the older man pronounce what everyone knew, that life was extinct.
“Where’s Clare? Will the pair of you come in and have breakfast with us?”
“She’s not here, Dad. She spent the night up at Angela Dillon’s.”
“She what?”
“Dad, please. You asked me where she was. I told you.”
“Yes, yes, you did. Well, will you come in and have a bit of breakfast? You could do with one after all that.”
“No. No, thanks. I’ll make a cup of tea—that’s all I want.”
“And has my grandchild gone to live up with Mr. and Mrs. Dillon, or am I not to ask about that either?”
There was a bit of a smile on his face to take the harm out of the question. But it didn’t hide the worry.
“It was only last night, Dad. It’ll sort itself out.”
“Clare has some kind of flu. She was shivery and very jumpy last night. I’m not interfering. I’m just telling you.”
“Did she say what was wrong?”
“That she was frightened. She had a cup of tea with us. I brought her back. You weren’t home.”
“Yes.”
Dr. Power narrowed his eyes. “Lord God, is that Gerry’s van parked in the lane over there? It is. What on earth is it doing up here? Lord have mercy on him, poor fool. And he could be one of the nicest fellows you’d ever talk to.”