Echoes (71 page)

“Oh, Bones has plenty of life in him.” She patted the dog's head. A promise is a promise and Bones wasn't going to be sent to sweet dreams while Clare was around.

 

Liffey deposited all her carrots and mashed potato on her best hand-smocked dress. Clare snatched it off and washed it. It might just be dry enough to put back on her again. That was the dress Molly had made such a fuss about. It was being worn in her honor. Then when she was cleaning the spoon, the beautiful silver spoon that Mr. Kenny had given the baby, Bones thought it was a toy and galloped off with it.

He took it round the garden three times and then buried it in a flowerbed.

The cream was off, of all days in the year, and two of the table napkins had tears in them. In her haste rushing past the table she knocked over a jug of water so she had to put pillowcases under the corner and pray it would dry out in time.

Because Caroline would change in their bedroom Clare deliberately made it look a much more cozy and loving place than it actually was. She bunched the pillows right up close as if this was the way they normally slept, and she took out her black nighty, the one that actually looked awful on, but exotic if draped around the place. She put a bunch of flowers in the room, and a soft romantic lamp.

She had also tidied up the cupboards and drawers in case Caroline would poke around. Any shabby old shoes or things that were not meant to be seen were hidden firmly in the spare room, and she removed the bulb so that no light could be thrown on that confusion, should somebody open the door in error.

They all arrived at once.

David poured sherries and everyone said wasn't this all nice at least three times each.

Caroline looked glowing with health. Her hair looked shiny and smart. Clare had
hoped
it would have become matted and windblown. She said she'd simply
love
a quick wash, and came down in a commendably quick time wearing a long red wool skirt and white lace blouse.

“It was simply marvelous out there today,” she said. “You really should learn, Clare.”

“Did somebody tell me you were taking lessons, Clare?” Josie asked.

Clare could have smashed her face. “No, no, but they may have seen me once with Angela up there. She's learning.”

“Oh, yes.” Angela Dillon was a sore subject in Dillon's Hotel. There was great fear that Uncle Dick and the schoolteacher might well have lifted the entire golfing trade from the old hotel.

“James plays a lot in Dublin. In fact some think that he spends far too much time on the course,” Caroline said.
That
wasn't a tactful subject either. Martin's hand tightened round his glass at the mention of the perfidious James Nolan.

Clare decided the meal should be served.

Damn the magazines to the very blackest spot of hell.

The rolls had burned black in the oven. Black.

She sliced some of Nellie's soda bread and put it on a plate. Molly said that Nellie had one of the lightest hands with pastry and bread in the country.

“This bread is very nice too,” Mr. Kenny said.

“This
is
Nellie's bread,” Clare said in despair.

The beef was tough, the mashed potatoes were dry, the sprouts were soft and the gravy was lumpy.

Clare could see a series of plates with food left and eventually had to admit that no one was having more and that knives and forks had been left together. Burning with embarrassment she cleared the table.

There was no cream for the chocolate pudding. It had been too late to go and get any more. She had cursed her mother and father for not having a phone, because they could have sent someone over with cream or even ice cream. She should have gone herself, she should have put Liffey into the back of the car and raced down, but at the time she had thought it was better to stay at her post, it seemed less flurried.

They waded through the pudding. Nobody had the cheese she had laid out so carefully with biscuits in lines.

She went to make coffee and discovered that the full coffee jar she had seen in the press was not full of coffee, it was the jar she used to keep cowrie shells in, until she found a place to display them.

She said she had to go to Liffey for a moment and crept out of the house in the dark to see could she find coffee in her mother-in-law's kitchen. It was Thursday, Nellie's evening off. She wouldn't be there. She fell over Bones and landed flat on her face. Bones barked joyfully and so loudly that Dr. Power came out to see what was happening.

“My God, Molly,” he called, “there's somebody in our kitchen!”

David was masterful. He picked up a golf club and insisted that his father stand back.

As Clare crept out of the Powers' kitchen with grazed hands, a bruised forehead and a suspicion of a loosened tooth, Bones was baying at the moon with excitement.

“I'll kill you,” she said to the dog. “You'll go for the chop and I won't lift a finger to help you.”

Suddenly she saw the entire party framed in the light of the Lodge waiting for her, and David advancing slowly with a golf club.

In the distance she heard the familiar sound of Liffey waking and starting a crying jag that was going to last two hours.

 

Angela laughed till she cried.

Clare
was
crying as she told the story.

“No, I
can't
see the funny side.
Stop
all that laughing. I'm so bloody fed up. I made a
fool
of myself. I might as well have got up and danced on the table in my knickers. It was
dreadful.
They pitied me, all of them, even Josie.”

“It's your own fault,” Angela said. “You were always the one who was great with the advice to Mary Catherine. . . . Tell them your father's a postman, see do they care. Why couldn't you have told them you had a coffee jar of cowrie shells?”

“Not on top of the burned rolls, the lumpy gravy, the tough meat. I bet Chrissie did it on purpose, gave me some old hindquarters of a donkey.”

“What about David?”

“He patted me down afterward, he said first dinners are always a trial.
First!
First and last, more likely. How was Mother Provincial?”

“Like a hamster, wrinkling her nose, pointed little teeth.”

“What did they talk about?”

“The decline in faith and morals. And we had egg sandwiches and tea—that was the feast.”

“I'd have loved it,” Clare said feelingly. “Compared to what went on in my house last night it sounds like paradise.”

 

Gerry Doyle called in on a wet Thursday.

“I'm a bit busy, Gerry.”

“I can see that,” he said, looking at the open newspaper on the kitchen table.

“Well,” she said awkwardly.

“Well, it took some time. But it's happened.”

“What has?” Her heart was full of fear.

“David.” He stood there smiling.

Her hand went to her throat. “What's happened to him?”

“I think he's found true love, Clare. In a caravan.”

“Well, it's much too wet to play golf isn't it? Look at that, they'd be soaked through.” He had been sitting down uninvited, but when he had given her the news, he stood up.

“See you,” he said, and left.

 

David came home quite dry.

“Did you get a game or was it too wet?”

“No, we battled on, quite exhilarating you know in the wind and the rain.”

“I'm sure.”

“Horrible night for Caroline to have to drive all that way back,” he said.

“Isn't it. Should we have asked her to stay or anything do you think?”

“No, no, but I'll tell you she
is
thinking of getting a caravan here, just in case she wants to stay over. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?”

 

“Gerry Doyle is in a lot of trouble,” Clare's mother said.

“What way?”

“Well, he has a big bill here for one thing, you know. Three months. All his groceries and cigarettes, it mounts up.”

“I'm sure it does.”

“Your father said I should ask him about it, what with my always getting on well with him.”

“And?”

“And he said he was a bit pushed. And Chrissie says he has a bill as long as your arm in Dwyers' too, and he can't get credit in Costello's anymore. He over-extended himself with that place, they don't get enough orders for that size of a set-up. They were fine when they had the little hut and the developing in the house. Dick says he'll have to sell up.”

“Gerry's a survivor.”

“That's what I've said always, but when I asked him about his bill here and he said he was broke, I said it was all right, pay a little off it here and there to keep Tom happy . . . and he said I wasn't to be nice to him, he wasn't going out with a whimper, when he went it would be with a bang that would be heard all over the county. What can he have meant?”

 

“I'll take Liffey to Dublin in a week or two, show her the other Liffey, the river.”

“That's a good idea.”

“Will you go and have your dinner with your parents when I'm gone?”

“Yes, some of the time. I'll cook here a bit maybe if I feel up to it. Oh and Caroline will be in her caravan. I'll probably have a meal or two with her to settle her in.”

 

Gerry came again.

“I have pictures this time,” he said.

“What kind of pictures?” She was feeding Liffey and needed her full concentration.

“Can I have a cup of tea?”

“No, Gerry. You know I don't like you coming here.”

“Here, you're making an awful mess of that. I'll feed her. You put on the kettle.”

“Will you go then?”

He fed Liffey expertly, holding the spoon just long enough in her mouth for her to have to swallow what was on it.

Clare poured the tea. She had no sense of alarm. He looked vulnerable as he sat feeding Liffey and gurgling at her.

“Oh, the pictures. These ones.” He emptied an envelope on the table. About a dozen black-and-white prints of David and Caroline making love on the cramped bed of a caravan.

She put her hand over her mouth and went to the sink. She vomited and retched.

He moved her away and turned on the tap. He cleaned the sink and gave her a glass of water.

“Drink that,” he said.

She threw it at him. It missed and shattered all over the floor. She was shaking.

Calmly he took a towel and wet it under the tap, he went up close and wiped her face, as you would wipe a child's face. She was powerless to stop him.

She poured herself another glass of water and drank it.

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“OK.” He put his hand on the door.

“Take these.” She gathered them up with a shaking hand.

“Sure,” he said.

She sat for a long time staring into space.

 

She told David she felt a sort of flu coming on, if he didn't mind she'd sleep downstairs.

He was concerned, and felt her forehead. She did seem a bit feverish.

They made up a bed for her. In the kitchen near the fire.

“It looks very cozy,” he said. “Maybe we should move down here altogether.”

“Remember when we lived in Rathmines? It was so tiny, and the bed, the stove, the dining table were all on top of each other.”

“That's right,” he said, and sighed.

She got into bed and pulled up the sheets like an obedient child.

He kissed her forehead.

“David?”

“Yes?” He looked alarmed.

“Nothing, thanks for everything, sleep well.”

She heard him go upstairs, the lavatory flush, and eventually his shoes fall. He was in bed.

She saw the reflection of the bedroom light go off. He was asleep.

She got out of bed, wide-awake. What on God's earth was she going to do?

She made a pot of coffee.

She sat up all night and only when she heard the bed creak did she get back into her own.

He tiptoed down and made a pot of tea.

He brought it to her bedside triumphantly.

“Who's a good husband?” he said.

“David's a good husband,” she said mechanically.

 

She looked very fluey, David thought as he went up to the big house. Funny that she hadn't a temperature—he had taken it automatically. But her eyes were bright, her forehead hot and she was white as a sheet. Or maybe it was just that he felt he could hardly look at her these days without guilt and confusion.