Echoes (44 page)

“Does the fact that it's gone on so long mean there's more hope or less?”

“I don't honestly know. It means that there's more red tape, I suppose. If something has already been looked at by one person then other people are slow to take the file themselves.”

“Do they know here?” She nodded her head up to the school.

“At the very top yes. Otherwise no. I was very lucky to get in here.”

He was much less confident than he was before. There was a time when he would never admit that he was lucky to have got anywhere. It was all open to him, the whole world, whatever life he wanted. This whole business with Rome had changed his thinking.

But before they had the children with them, before they were all kneeling and saying a rosary for the dead grandmother the children didn't know and wouldn't have understood, she had to go back to his plans for Ireland.

“So you think you'd like to come back to Castlebay.”

“You wouldn't mind?”

“No. Of course not,” she lied.

“Well I know you said that, long ago in Rome. You did say that the only reason for me to stay away was because it would break Mam's heart.”

“That's what I said. I'm not going back on it.” She couldn't be any warmer. It just wouldn't come out as more welcoming. It would be lunacy. It would upset everyone, the enormity of the deception for all those years. Denis, a big boy of ten. How could he not see it?

“No, no, I know you're not going back on it. You've always been straight as a die, Angela. No one could have a better sister or friend.”

She made the tea, and poured a cup for herself. Her hand was shaking.

“It's been awful for you, all of it. What will you do now? Will you live on in the house on your own?” His voice was full of concern.

“I don't know yet. I will for the moment.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Maybe you'll want the house? If you come back that is?”

Now she had said it, brought it right out in the open. This nonsensical idea of the priest going back to live in his native town with his Japanese wife and grown-up children.

To her relief he didn't seem to think that this was automatically the way things would go.

“Oh, I don't think we'd want to
live
in Castlebay. Where would I work? Where would they go to school?”

Angela fumed inside for a quick moment. What was so wrong with the convent where she taught? Or the Brothers, which had been good enough to educate Sean O'Hara. Still, this was all to the good.

“True, I suppose. But you do want to go back do you, and meet everyone—talk to Mrs. Conway in the post office, Sergeant McCormack, the Murphys, the Dillons.” She had deliberately chosen awful ones to mix in with ordinary people. She had to tread carefully.

“Well, it's my home. It's where I came from.” He was defensive. She didn't want that at any cost.

“Don't I know it's your home—I'm offering you Mam's house to live in. Of course it's your home. I just asked what sort of way you'll be coming home. Will it be in the summer? Do you want me to let people know you're coming, or will you explain it all when you get there?”

“I thought that you'd . . . I don't know. That's something that can all be arranged later.”

“Of course it can.”

 

She went to see Father Flynn on her way back through London. He said they must go out and have dinner.

“I know now why people become priests. It's a license to eat dinners out in restaurants for the rest of your life. I never ate in so many restaurants before or since as when we were in Rome.”

“Ah, those were the days all right. But this is half work. Young Ned O'Brien asked me to the place he's working in. The landlord's just opened a dining room off the pub, and the bold Ned no less is running it. Wait till I turn up with his ex-schoolmarm.”

“I don't think he'll be a bit delighted. Not that I ever taught him anything. I don't think we can lay his educational deficiencies at my door. And Tommy, he's out isn't he?”

“For the moment. That was something I was going to ask tonight.”

“I'll make myself scarce.”

“You don't need to. He knows you're in on it.”

“You're grand and easy about things, Father Flynn. Is it something that goes with the job, like deafness goes with teaching?”

 

They saw Ned, important and nervous at the same time. Father Flynn pretending ignorance of everything so that Ned could put him at ease. In the midst of doing this Ned lost a lot of his own nerves. He explained that there were three things you could have: steak, chicken or fish. And you got soup before and ice cream after, no matter what you chose. But the price depended on the main course. He could have Father Flynn as his guest but, to be honest, he wasn't sure about Miss O'Hara. Angela said that there was no question of her being a guest, she was going to have steak, the dearest, and was going to love it.

“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.”