It Was Only Ever You (9 page)

‘I’m not hungry.’

Eleanor looked devastated, so Rose said, ‘I’ll just put my sketch pad away then come down for tea.’

Eleanor watched her, clutching her sketches as she walked up the stairs. There was something wrong. Rose was usually very anxious to show her mother the drawings she had done while she was out. Something was not right.

They chatted pleasantly over tea and discussed the upcoming fundraiser for the new church roof. Rose was having some of her small watercolours framed for sale. She brought a selection downstairs so they could decide which ones would be best, but left her pad with her drawings from the day up in her room.

Later that evening, Rose went for a drive with her father. The Catholic bishop was sick and John was called out to the palace. Rose went along so she could sit in the kitchen of the impressively large, if somewhat ugly building, where she would be fed biscuits and gossip by the old housekeeper, just as she had done since she was a child.

And John treasured these outings with his beautiful daughter. John had adapted better to Rose’s maturing than Eleanor had. Their relationship, if anything, had blossomed over the years and when Eleanor saw it she felt a pain and sense of estrangement that somehow she felt powerless to reverse.

As soon as the car pulled out of the drive, Eleanor rushed up to Rose’s room, and grabbed her sketchbook from the bureau by the window. She quickly flicked through to the last pages and was relieved to see the usual pictures. There was a sparsely drawn page spotted with poppies, the next had intricate sketches of wildflowers, another page was generously swiped with black charcoal marks identifiable as blades of grass, and then a close-up of a tree trunk that was so extraordinarily detailed Eleanor leaned in to look closer. As she did, she noticed that the page was standing back slightly from the spine. Rose’s sketch pads were made of thick, expensive paper. They bought them by post from a supplier in Dublin. Eleanor held the pad close to her face and carefully studied the spine. There was a sliver of black space. The page after the tree trunk had been torn out.

Eleanor checked the dustbin where Rose threw her discarded work. It was empty. She ran downstairs to check the kindling basket where Rose sometimes put her paper waste – also empty. She hared back upstairs and began opening and closing drawers. She searched behind the bureau, lifted the cushions on the window seat and the rug until, finally, she found it, under the bed. A sheet, hurriedly thrown, discarded like lost rubbish. However, the mere fact it had been hidden told Eleanor that it was far from rubbish. It was a secret. When she lifted the page and saw what it contained, her worst fears came to life.

It was a portrait of a devastatingly beautiful young man, his eyes seeming to flicker off the page, gazing out mournfully into the distance. Eleanor recognized him instantly: that useless good-for-nothing, slick-haired gutty-boy Patrick Murphy.

Eleanor put her fist to her mouth and cried out in anger but also in pain. She did not know if she was more afraid of the fact that her daughter was in love, or of the man she was in love with.

Furious, every instinct made her want to march over to the Murphy house and tell the young man to keep his filthy hands off her precious daughter. But Eleanor had enough sense to know that would not work. How many times had she herself been warned as a young woman? It had made no difference to Eleanor and would surely make no difference to her daughter either.

She would have to be smarter than that.

Her hands shaking, Eleanor put the room back into order, carefully placing the picture under the bed in exactly the same position she found it so that Rose would never find out that her mother knew her secret.

*

Patrick was delighted with himself. Tony had given him a lift into Ballina on the tractor that morning, and he had been in to see the manager of the town hall, Liam Brennan, about securing a regular Saturday-night slot. Liam fancied himself as a music impresario and was bringing in a showband from Athenry the following weekend. He wanted to know if Patrick and the lads could support them.

‘Come in an hour earlier than usual. The good news is, we’re charging double on the door and so we’ll be able to throw a few pounds your way.’

A paid gig. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Patrick was humming ‘Singing the Blues’ to himself as Tony dropped him off at the bottom of the lane to the house. As he turned in the gate he stopped singing. There was a car outside the house. That could only mean the priest or the doctor, neither of which, as a rule, brought good news. His mother had been ill last year and had been sent up to Galway for a stay in the hospital. When she came home, nobody exactly knew what had been wrong with her, her being a woman and all, but they had known it was serious because his father had said it was a miracle to have her back at all. When Patrick saw Dr Hopkins’s car he instantly feared she might have had a relapse, but then, as he came towards the house he saw his mother at the front door saying goodbye to the doctor, and she looked fine. Another, even more ominous, thought began to form in his head.

Patrick nodded a greeting at the doctor, taking his hands out of the pockets of his blue jeans, trying to look more respectable. He wished he had worn his trousers and jacket into town, but he had wanted to look with-it meeting Liam.

‘Patrick,’ Dr Hopkins said, nodding at him cheerily.

‘Grand day, Doctor,’ he said.

‘It is that, Patrick – I hope it holds for you.’

Patrick thought to himself, That wasn’t so bad. If there was anything wrong the doctor wouldn’t be passing the time of day with him like that.

‘And you, Doctor, you might take the roof down on the car and give her full tilt one of the days before the summer is out.’

The good doctor laughed and said, ‘Indeed!’ before tipping his worn trilby and getting into the car.

There, Patrick thought to himself. A grand man. No mention of Rose or anything like that at all. Probably just calling in to check up on Mammy and she looks fine so...

As soon as he got into the house, however, Patrick sensed all was not fine.

His mother’s smile, so radiant for the doctor, disappeared the second they were inside. His father was puffing on his pipe at double speed.

‘Have you been carrying on with Rose Hopkins?’ he said, before Patrick’s mother had even closed the door behind them.

Patrick didn’t know what to say. He had never been caught out lying like this before. In truth, he had never yet lied – or done anything very much that was worth lying about. His parents were easy-going people. His father had taken him to the pub for his first pint when he was sixteen and, aside from teasing the odd bull over a wall, or, when he was very small, stealing the occasional cigarette, Patrick had no reason to lie to his parents about anything.

He had no reason to lie about this either, except that Rose had not wanted people to know. Or rather, had not wanted her parents to know, for some reason.

‘I don’t know about carrying on. We’ve been very careful...’ That sounded awful. ‘I mean, I’ve kissed her and that...’ Why was he sounding so guilty? ‘There’s nothing illegal about it – I’m a man of twenty-five and she’s eighteen – a woman.’

‘She might be of legal age, Patrick, but she is still a girl,’ his mother shouted at him. ‘The same age as Sinead! Your baby sister!’

Patrick was confused now.

‘Sinead’s been dating Tommy Fleming since she was sixteen, and he was only a year behind me in school.’

‘That’s not the point!’

‘Well what is the point?’

‘The point is, you shouldn’t have lied...’ his father said, still tut-tutting hard on the pipe.

‘I know, Da, I’m sorry, it’s just that Rose didn’t want people knowing. She wanted it kept secret for a while.’

His father just raised his eyebrows; his mother was flustered.

‘Look, son,’ she said. ‘It’s just that you can’t go about...’ She paused, then seemed to gather herself up into a fury again before saying, ‘You can’t just go about the place messing around with the doctor’s daughter.’

‘We weren’t messing around – I already told you—’

‘I mean – dating the doctor’s daughter. You can’t go about dating her.’

‘Why not?’

His mother looked to his father for support and his father shrugged and looked back at her, raising his eyebrows, then looked Patrick straight in the face and said, ‘Because you just can’t.’

He looked back at the fire, as if ashamed of the outburst, then released a long stream of smoke from his barely opened lips, before tapping some of the ash on to the stone grate beside him. Slowly, he picked up a snifter from the tobacco tin by his side, and pressed it down into the smouldering bowl. His father only ever relit a finished pipe immediately when there was something wrong.

Patrick knew what was being implied here. He just didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t her age that bothered them. It was her social status.

‘You think I’m not good enough.’

His father continued to look into the fire.

‘It’s not that, Patrick,’ his mother pleaded. ‘Please try to understand.’

Patrick was her eldest child. Her blue-eyed baby boy. A laughing, sweet-talking charmer of a boy, he had been star of the church choir. When his voice broke at fourteen, the priest and organist had been distraught. By sixteen he had developed a deep baritone.

Mary’s eldest son had owned her from the day he was born. She adored him. There was not a woman alive good enough for him. But even so, the humiliation of the doctor calling to say that her son had been carrying on with his daughter was terrible. Dr Hopkins had been such a gentleman about it too. Not even saying how wrong it was or anything – just did they know? It was clear, though, that he didn’t approve. In all fairness, Mary Murphy thought to herself, how could he approve of his daughter going out with Patrick?

‘Oh, I understand all right,’ Patrick said, and marched out of the door. He grabbed his bicycle from the front yard without a backward glance and cycled into Foxford. He wasn’t going to be told by anyone that he wasn’t good enough for their daughter. His family were hard-working, God-fearing, honest people.

Twenty minutes later Patrick walked into the Mayfly, the small hotel in the centre of town. Dr Hopkins looked up from his sandwich and coffee and his face flickered with something like disappointment before setting itself in a grave, but friendly way.

He said, ‘Patrick. Won’t you sit down. Can I get you a pint?’

‘I don’t drink,’ Patrick said, then realizing how ludicrous that sounded, added, ‘During the week,’ which was true.

‘Tea? Coffee?’

Patrick shook his head. He felt nervous. Perhaps this had not been such a good idea.

John Hopkins’s face was benign and comforting, full of concern and kindness, as it was when you went to him as a patient. Suddenly Patrick felt bad for carrying on with his daughter and not telling him about it.

‘I know why you are here, Patrick.’

‘Dr Hopkins, I’m sorry that we’ve been sneaking around but—’

‘Patrick, it’s all right, really.’ Patrick was relieved. This was a lot easier than he had thought it was going to be.

‘I understand that you love my daughter and want to marry her.’ Patrick tried to keep the surprise off his face. He had been expecting some kind of a ticking off.

‘And while you are a very fine young man, Patrick, I am just concerned, as any father would be, as your father would be if Sinead was being asked for her hand, as to how you are going to look after her?’

This was way more than Patrick could deal with on the spot. He tried to steady himself and come up with something, anything, to get himself out of, or indeed, into this fix. He wasn’t entirely certain what he wanted any more. Did he want to be with Rose and married? Or be with Rose and not married? Had he, indeed, asked Rose to marry him? He was sure he would have remembered if he had. What had Rosie told her father? Had she sent him here to put pressure on Patrick to get married? No. She was the one who had wanted to keep it a secret. This was clearly why. Patrick was certain he loved Rose but how could he say to Dr Hopkins, ‘I love your daughter but I am not sure if I want to marry her’?

Or, perhaps, he did want to marry her but, like the good doctor, was unsure how he would keep her? Patrick had had an idea about that too – what was it?

‘If I could just know, Patrick, that you had prospects, abroad even, then perhaps we might come to some kind of an arrangement.’

There it was!

‘Well, sir...’

‘Please call me John.’

‘Well, John, I had been thinking about going to London. Perhaps getting something set up over there and then sending for Rose, when she was finished school, of course, and after we were... you know...’ John looked at him quizzically until he said, ‘married.’

‘And you’ll need some money to help you set up first?’

The way he said it, straight out like that, made it sound cheap, as if Patrick was begging for money, which he wasn’t. Then, the good doctor smiled, his kind, soft features sort of crumpling in on themselves, and Patrick knew he didn’t mean anything bad by it.

‘I may be able to help you, Patrick,’ he said.

Then he leaned over and he patted Patrick’s hand, as he had done when he was a child, to comfort him before an injection.

Dr Hopkins had a cousin in New York who owned a large golf course and clubhouse. They held a lot of functions there, weddings, dances, ‘that type of thing’, he said. John was going to contact his friend and see if he could get Patrick a job there. Of course, he would have to start doing some work in the kitchens and waiting tables, but his friend was very well connected and would surely help him to get on in his singing career.

If things worked out, which of course they would, because John had always known Patrick Murphy to be a bright, intelligent and ambitious young man, Patrick would let John know when he had things set up, then he could send for Rose. John would organize everything from this end. But there was one proviso: Patrick was not to tell Rose he was leaving.

‘She will be so upset,’ John said, ‘and you know what the ladies are like, Patrick. They don’t always know what’s best for them. Look how she kept you a secret from us.’