Echoes (33 page)

“Maybe you can help me?” Caroline had decided to be charming. “You see, a friend suggested we take a drive out to this place where you see seals, and I'm to provide a picnic. He, my friend, would bring a bottle of wine. And I'm not sure whether he meant us plural, like my brother and David, or whether he meant us singular, just me. You see my problem?”

“No,” said Clare. “Ask him. Ask him did he mean you singular or you plural, then you'll know.”

Caroline left the shop.

Half an hour later she was back. “He said he meant you plural,” she announced.

“Bad luck,” Clare said, and without being asked made a selection of the freshly made ham sandwiches and cheese sandwiches, apples, bananas, oranges, a packet of chocolate biscuits and four bottles of fizzy orange.

Caroline took it in silence and packed it into the boot of her car.

Gerry came in for cigarettes a bit later.

“I thought you'd be off on your picnic,” Clare said.

“I'm going to join them later. I gave them directions to get to the seals. Why don't you come with us?”

“How can I? I have to work here. Anyway, I'm not asked.”

“You are. I'm asking you.”

Clare laughed. “No, thanks. How can any of us take a day like today off? How can
you
take today off, come to think of it?”

“Why do I pay someone to take pictures for me, if it's not to give me a day off. Come on, be a devil.”

“Stop it. You know I can't.” She was annoyed now, she wished he'd go.

“One day out of the summer? One sunny day?” He wasn't joking.

“Go away, Gerry, go away.” Clare was laughing but her voice had a steely ring. “We are going to take care of our business, even if others we wouldn't mention are letting theirs go down the plug-hole.” And anyway, Clare told herself, there was no point in going out with that gang without the proper ammunition. Clare had no crisp cotton dress with big red dots on it, Clare had no golden suntan, she had a faded mauve dress and long white legs in old-fashioned sandals. Hell, she wasn't going to compete with Caroline unless she had a chance of winning, and if she wanted the attentions of Gerry Doyle she wouldn't look for them now.

The good spell was set to last. In the days after the picnic, Clare decided that she hated sunshine. For other people it meant that the holiday dream was coming true, it meant a healthy out-of-doors life. For the young couples in their tents it was pure magic, for the Nolans and their friends just more long days lost in sandhills on seal beaches, on golf courses, and racing in and out of the waves. For children it meant rushing into the shop asking for a bottle of fizzy orange, open please and with three straws. But for Clare the sun just meant it was time to take the cakes and things that might melt from the window, and to make sure the stocks of ice cream were ready for Jim and Ben to cope with.

Gerry came in. “I've a message for you. Come on, up to the post office, now! Old Ma Conway said there was a phone message. They're going to ring again in fifteen minutes—well, ten now. Come on.”

Clare's heart was thumping as she ran up Church Street with Gerry. The hotel and the chemist and the dancehall and the hardware shop passed in a blur. And then they were in Conway's.

“Oh you found her?” Mrs. Conway looked disapprovingly over her glasses.

Please may it not be about Tommy. Oh, please, God, I'll say the thirty days prayer. Please, Our Lady, I'll begin the thirty days prayer
today
if it's not some awful thing about Tommy.

“You must be very nervous,” Gerry said sympathetically.

Her heart gave another jump. “How do you know—I mean, what do you mean?”

“Your results,” he said simply. “That's what it is, isn't it?”

It was. It was the convent, incoherent with delight—in all their years they had never been so proud. Clare had done nine subjects on her Leaving Certificate and she had got honors in
all
of them except mathematics; but of course she had passed that safely. And now wasn't there every chance that she would be called for the Murray Prize interview? Three of the sisters were starting a special novena today and Clare could be assured that the whole Community would remember her every day at Mass. She could hardly see Mrs. Conway's pinched face, forcing itself to be congratulatory, having heard every word. Gerry lifted her off her feet and swung her round three times.

“Eight honors, eight honors, hell's bells and spiders' ankles!” he shouted.

“Eight honors!”
Clare screamed.
“Eight!”

“Well, I must say I think congratulations are in order . . .” Mrs. Conway said, her face pursed at the horseplay.

“I must tell Miss O'Hara, now,” Clare said. “Now, this minute.”

“I'll drive you up in the van.”

She hesitated for a moment.

“I won't come in. I know you want to tell her on your own.”

Angela was out in front of the cottage, watering the scarlet geraniums. The sun shone in her eyes and she had to put up her hand to shield them as the van screeched to a halt. Clare tumbled out the door before it had properly stopped.

“Eight, Miss O'Hara,
eight
!” she shouted excitedly, and Angela put down the water jug and ran toward her. She clutched the thin body—trembling with excitement—to her in a big awkward hug of delight.

They had both forgotten Gerry, who sat motionless in his van watching them with his dark handsome eyes.

The whole town knew by evening. Josie had been so excited when she heard that she put the lid on her typewriter and said she was taking some time off to celebrate. Agnes and Tom O'Brien were bewildered with pleasure and worn out shaking people's hands across the counter and taking praise on behalf of their bright, hard-working daughter. Dr. Power was going past on his way to the caravan site and stopped to pay his respects. Sergeant McCormack had got wind of it, and it wasn't long before Father O'Dwyer's little car stopped outside O'Brien's as well. It was a miracle that anything was bought or sold, or money taken or change given in that shop all day with the comings and goings.

“Will you come to the dance to celebrate tonight?” Gerry said.

“Ah, there'd be too much of a crowd there, all the Caroline Nolans and all,” she said, smiling at him.

“We could go somewhere where there wouldn't be.” He grinned back.

“I don't think so. Don't change any of your own plans.”

“There are eighty nights in the summer,” Gerry said. “If you don't come tonight you'll come another night.”

 

She had a lovely night. She had a drink with Dick Dillon, who taught her how to make a drink called a Pussyfoot, which had no alcohol in it but sort of fooled you into thinking it had. Josie gave her a yellow blouse and a yellow ribbon to match it for her hair—she had been saving it as a surprise. Josie had a date with James Nolan and was in seventh heaven herself: they were going to the pictures and he had said he would meet her in the queue. She swore to tell Clare everything that happened and had worn a dress with a high collar in case he might start to fumble and she would have to decide whether to let him or not.

Clare walked down the Cliff Road. It was sunset and people could be seen indoors, finishing their supper or just sitting around with the dishes still on the table before heading off for the night's entertainment. It had been so long in arriving, this day. She was going to savor every minute of it.

It was getting dark now and she shivered a little in her new yellow blouse. Josie and James Nolan were well into the Main Feature and who knew what else at the cinema. Chrissie and Mogsy Byrne had gone down the sandhills, she knew that because she had seen Chrissie changing her slip and getting out her good knickers, the ones with lace on them. Gerry Doyle was in his caravan. No, she was
not
going to the caravan park. She would go up to the amusements and have two rides on the bumpers and then if she didn't meet anyone she would come home and pitch Chrissie's things to the other side of the room and go to bed. She would
not
go to the caravan park tonight.

 

There was never a greater demand for space than this summer. Somehow the word had spread that there was fun galore in Castlebay. Not all the visitors were desirable of course; this would be discussed by the Castlebay Committee during the winter. There had been a very noisy element with tents, and the dirt of the caravan people had to be seen to be believed. Dr. Power said they weren't to be blamed until somebody put up lavatories and washbasins for them, and arranged proper bins and a rubbish collection.

There was hardly a day that Angela and her mother weren't approached by passing visitors asking for a night's lodging.

To her surprise her mother had said they should do it. Everyone else in the town made a profit out of the summer, why shouldn't they?

Angela washed sheets and tidied up the back room. Why not? It would be a few quid, and people were so grateful. She would point out that she had a mother who wasn't well and couldn't have anyone noisy. But it had been fine. First a couple of girls who had crept in like mice after the dance, stayed four days and had both said that Gerry Doyle was the most gorgeous thing they had ever seen in real life. Up to now they had only seen his likes on the cinema screen. Then there had been a married couple, a quiet pair in their forties, dull, nothing to say to anyone or each other, Angela pitied them, and was puzzled when they said it had been a lovely visit and they would come back next year. Then two lads from Dublin, with accents you could cut, roaring laughing at nothing and saying it was the best fun they'd had in years. The night they had got very drunk they had the decency to sleep in the shed rather than trying to find their room. Angela told them they were marvelous and refused to charge them for the night's accommodation.

“You won't suffer for that, Missus,” one of them said. “We'll send you our mates.”

And indeed there was a never-ending supply of Dubliners, lads from building sites, from factories, and then the two housepainters, Paddy and Con. God, they'd never seen the like of the place, they were going to have a swim immediately, they were sticking to themselves with the sweat after the train and the bus, and the sea looked a treat.

“Be careful,” Angela called automatically. “There's a very high tide. It's treacherous at the end of August. They call it a spring tide.”

“Oh, you couldn't drown us,” called Paddy and Con.

 

She heard the cry about half an hour later. It was like a wail growing and fading, louder and softer. And she knew there was someone drowning down on the strand. She had been buying the bacon and eggs for their tea in O'Brien's. She had her bicycle with its carrier basket parked outside. Automatically she found her feet heading for the cliff top and there saw everyone clustered and pointing out beyond the caves and the fishing rocks. The waves were enormous.

On the edge of the water there was a commotion. Five or six men were trying to hold back the struggling figure of Simon. Ropes and life-belts had been thrown, to no avail. Angela's stomach lurched when she saw a hand raised desperately, far, far out, and beside it the head of someone else. There were two of them. She dropped the bacon out of her hands, and she knew that it was her lodgers, Paddy and Con.

They were shouting at Simon on the beach. “You've been out twice, you've been battered, you can't do any more, it's suicide. You've done all you can. Simon, have sense.”

Simon's side was bleeding from where he had been scratched against the rocks.

“Let me go! Let me go!” His face was working and his eyes were full of tears. Gerry Doyle was gripping him, holding his arm behind him in a lock.

“What's the point in getting you killed? Look at your back. You've been thrown on the rocks twice. What are you trying to prove? You've done all you can, for Christ's sake. You warned them—you went out after them once and brought them back in.”

“They're new. They were all white,” Simon wailed. “Let me go.”

There was a great cry from the people who could see the figures.

“One's holding on to a rock. He'll be all right. Look! Look!”

But in seconds a huge wave pulled the small figure, its white arms flailing, down into the sea.

Helplessly the crowd watched. There was no boat, no swimmer, no throw of a lifebelt that would reach Paddy and Con. They would die in front of a thousand people.

Father O'Dwyer had been sent for, and as if by reflex, the people standing near him went down on their knees.

Father O'Dwyer called out the rosary and the swell of Holy Marys increased. Simon stopped struggling eventually and sat with his head in his hands, sobbing. Gerry Doyle sat beside him with an arm protectively around his shoulder.

There was no sign of the figures now, the waves kept crashing as if they were unaware of what they had done. Men went for strong drinks, women gathered up their children and issued useless, angry warnings about the need to stay in shallow waters.

Clare had come out too. She felt a hand reaching for hers and to her surprise, it was David Power.

“Would it have been quick, do you think?” she asked.

David shook his head.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“I don't know. Not the first bit, not the being swept out—they'd have known what was going to happen.”

“I suppose so.”

“I have to go down there,” he said. “With my father.”

“When?”

“When the tide comes in tonight, they'll be washed up.”