Echoes (66 page)

 

She lay on her bed resting one morning, and her mind just drifted off. She wasn't asleep for more than a moment. David came in.

“Hey, you worried me. I thought you weren't here.”

“What is it? What's wrong?”

“Clare, what
are
you doing? Olivia's crying her head off downstairs, Bones is sitting looking at her, and there's no lunch.”

“It's not lunchtime.”

“It's half past one. I thought I'd be late.”

“Christ, I'm sorry, David. I must have fallen asleep.” She leaped from the bed and raced down the stairs. With Olivia in one arm she grabbed a saucepan and broke three eggs into it, she reached for some butter.

“What are you doing?”

“David, my love, I'm making you a scrambled egg. I'm sorry. I'll make a proper dinner this evening. I tell you I must have drifted off to sleep. I feel so tired sometimes.”

“I know. I know. It's all right.”

“It's not all right, I'm dreadfully sorry.”

“Look, will I make toast or something?”

“No, hold your daughter, I'm quicker.”

She swept the breakfast things away and into the sink.

“I don't want you to feel you have to cook a lunch for me every day. Don't think that—”

“Darling David—will you stop it. One day, just
one
day I fell asleep. Every other day I love to have lunch with you. I love it. I used to be very lonely when you were up with your mother and father, and I was there at the window working.”

They both looked over at the window as she spoke. No books there now, just a big arrangement of dried flowers.

“Aren't you going to start studying again?”

“What for?”

“Clare, please. Don't be like that. For your degree of course.”

“I studied for it once. Why should I do it again?”

“Because you didn't take it, you clown. You were happy studying.”

“Not all the time I wasn't. A lot of the time I was worried and anxious.”

“Will we go to the pictures tonight?”

“Are you trying to entertain me by any chance?”

“A bit I suppose.” He looked troubled.

 

Clare asked Angela was there any kind of Christmas present you could make for people, by cooking, something that would look as if you'd gone to a lot of trouble over it.

“I suppose you could make fudge,” Angela said doubtfully, “and put it in nice colored boxes. But why do you want to make things? You're worse than me. And I think they'd expect a bit more than fudge from you.”

“Who'd expect? I don't care what they expect, I'm so tired, I tell you Angela I can't stay awake these days. It's such an effort to go into town, and there's nothing here . . .”

“Well, stay awake long enough to go into town just one day. Make a list of what you want. Come in with Dick and me on Saturday afternoon.”

“Yes, I could do that. I'll ask her Ladyship would she mind Liffey.”

“Liffey. Isn't
that
a name, now? How did you think of it?”

“I just made it up,” Clare said. She didn't want to tell anyone that it was Gerry Doyle's idea.

 

“Am I going to teach you to drive, Clare? Remember we set it all up. You learned the theory all at once.”

There was a silence at the back of the car.

“I think she's asleep, Dick,” Angela said.

“No, sorry. What was it?”

“Will I give you driving lessons after Christmas?”

“I don't know if I'd have the time. It's very kind of you. If I have the time . . .”

 

Molly and David were sitting by the fire in the big house when she came back.

“You look exhausted,” David said.

“David, you must get Clare some nice clothes. It's terrible to have her dragging round in all that studenty-type thing. No wonder the girl looks so dawney.”

Clare let them talk about her.

“Why don't we all have a sherry? You've provided the excuse.” David leaped up.

“A really nice coat in a good bright color, something that would put some color in her face.” Molly was thoughtful. “A cherry red maybe.”

David handed them both a sherry.

“Thank you, my dear,” Molly said.

Clare said nothing.

“Was it exhausting?”

“It was very tiring all right,” Clare said.

“Did you leave your parcels in at the Lodge?”

“No. This is all I got.” She had a small shopping bag with a few little things in it.

She sat on a stool looking into the fire and eventually David and his mother went back to talking as they had been before she came in. They didn't even try to bring her into the conversation.

 

David bought all the Christmas presents in the end. He even wrapped them and wrote the cards. He put the Christmas cards she was to send to Mary Catherine and Valerie in front of her and she wrote
Love from Clare
on each of them.

 

When David opened his Christmas present from Clare, he said he was delighted with the shirt. It was just what he wanted. You couldn't have enough shirts. He said this one was particularly nice, and he put it away hastily before his mother could see it had been bought in the shop in Castlebay and was exactly the same as half a dozen he had already.

David had bought Christmas tree decorations when he was in town; he couldn't bear anyone in Castlebay to see him buying them locally. He brought a tree home from one of his country calls; the man whose child had been sick was delighted to give the young doctor a fine green tree.

“Your wife will enjoy decorating that, Doctor,” the man beamed as they fitted the tree into the back of the car.

“Oh, she's going to love it,” David said with a smile he didn't feel.

He looked carefully at his mother's tree that evening and did something a bit similar to their own; Clare looked up at him gratefully as he stood on a chair.

“That's terrific, David. It looks really lovely. I'd do it myself but I'm just worn-out.”

It was cold clear weather, from the window David saw his parents warmly dressed and in their comfortable walking shoes setting out with the dog. He knew they would head far along the cliff away from Castlebay and they would point things out to each other, and see the birds swooping low and hares running through the fields. They would come back to a hot lunch. They would sit on either side of a big well made-up fire and read. He looked over at Clare to know if she too would like a walk. She was sitting at the kitchen table. She had been reading, but in fact she had dropped off over her book.

 

There was a call for the doctor to come quickly. A child. Come quickly. They rang off. A five-year-old had fallen over rusty farm machinery and opened his eye.

David remembered Clare saying that she had cut her leg years ago on the rusty spikes of half-hidden machinery. He felt a surge of anger about people raising children so casually among all these dangers.

Soothing, reassuring, and speaking confident words he didn't mean, David wiped the drying blood from the child's face. It wasn't too bad. Calming and chatting to distract their attention he said it wasn't bad at all, it would all be fine, now now, could someone start to make some tea. Then he took out his bag and put five quick stitches into the small face. He examined it critically. It wasn't bad. The child looked at him trustingly.

“Isn't that fine?” David said.

“I'm Matthew.”

“Of course you are, and you're better now.” David gave him a hug just as the tea tray was being brought in.

“Aren't you the cut of your father, and the same grand ways with you?” Matthew's mother was holding one of his hands between both her own.

“Thank you.”

“We were all delighted when you married a local girl, not getting yourself a fancy wife from Dublin.”

“I'm glad.”

“And how's your own little girl, Doctor?”

“Oh, she's beautiful, thank you. Simply beautiful.”

“I'm glad to hear that. You give so much to other people's children, it would be very sad if you didn't find happiness in your own.”

 

Liffey was crying when he got in. She was wet. Her little legs were red and chapped, and the napkin soaked. As it was cold, she had obviously been lying like that for some time.

Clare was lying in bed, reading a recipe book.

“I thought I'd make drop scones. They don't look too hard,” she smiled at him.

“Sure, that would be fine. Liffey's very wet.”

“I'll see to her in a minute.”

“She's been wet for ages, Clare.”

“Oh, all right.”

David spoke sharply. “No, I'll do it. It'll be quicker.”

“Oh, good.” She went back to studying the recipe book.

 

Clare went back to bed early so she should have had a fair bank of sleep when Liffey woke. But the child cried and cried, and Clare never turned over in bed.

David got up. He fed and changed her again, but she still wouldn't settle. He walked her up and down. Eventually, she slept.

About ten minutes before he intended to get up, Liffey began again. He poked Clare gently.

“You get her this time, love, will you? I want to grab a few minutes' sleep.”

Clare swung her legs out of bed and put her woolly dressing gown on over her long nighty. She picked up Liffey with a few words of comfort and carried her downstairs.

When David had washed and shaved and come down for his breakfast, Clare was sitting at the table, asleep. The kettle was on the range, hissing and spitting; Liffey was screaming from her cradle.

That was the morning David told his father in halting, broken sentences that he thought Clare was suffering from postnatal depression.

His father said that these things were too easily defined and put into categories. Clare was a bit low. Life was very different and less demanding than it had been last year, and it should never be forgotten that the child had missed her degree. That would be hard enough on any girl but on a little girl who had fought like a tiger to get there it must have been harder still.

David said it was more than that. If it was only that they could talk about it and sort it out, but she was so physically tired, she was drowsy all the time, and without losing any love for Liffey she seemed to have lost interest in her.

David's face was white and his eyes were dark and sleepless-looking. His father was full of pity for him.

“I think you should still try other ways before you say that we should treat it, or send her to someone.”

“I don't want to send her to anyone, but couldn't she be put on Tofranil? Wouldn't that sort her out in a month or two? Dad, that's what we'd say for anyone else. Why can't we say it for Clare?”

“Because it could be a lot of other things. She could be lonely. She could be unsure of herself. Molly might be making her feel inadequate. Talk to her. Talk, and tell her things and maybe you'll see. It's not a question of her being some unfortunate woman who has no one to understand her. She's got a fine husband, a great husband.”

“I can't be all that great if she's changed so much.”

 

“Do you still love me?” he asked her.

“David, what can you mean? I love you more than ever.”

“That's the third time you've been too tired to make love.”

“I'm sorry. I just felt a bit weary. OK. I don't mind. Now I'm awake.”

“It's too late now.”

“Oh, David, stop sulking.”

He swung his legs out of bed and plugged in the electric fire. He wanted to talk and he didn't want them to freeze.

“I promise you on my oath I'm not sulking. But when I think the way we were jumping on each other this time last year, it seems as if we were two different people.”

“This time last year we were in Dublin and we hadn't all the responsibilities we have now,” she said.

“This time last year, you were working fourteen hours a day for your exams. I was working fourteen hours a day in that hospital. We had to get round the city on buses. We were up to here in anxiety. Now we have our own house, our own child, our freedom to jump on each other morning, noon and night if we wish to do so. I have a gentle and satisfying amount of work to do rather than the mayhem as an intern. You have no official things to do, and we're still too tired.”

“You're not. I am,” she said, correcting the facts.

“But why, Clare?
Why?
I'm not just being a raging beast like all men trying to demand my rights, or more rights, or anything. Why are you so tired?”

“There's so much to do,” she said.

“Are you sure you love me? And you know I'm not picking a fight.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then let me tell you what you did today. You got up and
I
got breakfast. And
I
changed Liffey. And I said I'd get a leg of lamb in Dwyers' on the way home, and you said no,
you
would. Before I went out I brought in some potatoes from the bag outside.
I
peeled a few.
You
said leave them. I came home for lunch. You had been asleep all morning. Liffey was wet and bawling. . . . You were upset because there was no lunch. Clare . . . this is terrible. This isn't meant to be a row—do you understand? I'm just trying to find out why you could be tired? I made us a tin of soup and we had some of Nellie's bread while you got the bottle for Liffey. This time I insisted on getting the meat. I left it back in the house at three o'clock. You were asleep in the chair. Clare,
I
put the bloody meat into the oven, and that's how we had dinner. I thought we'd go to the pictures but
you
said
you
were too tired. You've been asleep all morning, all afternoon, and now you're weary, you say, when you come to bed. I'm your doctor as well as your husband. Of course I'm worried about you.”