Whitethorn Woods (6 page)

   "And what can I do for you on this sad day, Miss Clare?" he said.

   "Just a third of what you got for the family farm," I said to him pleasantly.

   He looked at me as if I were mad.

   "One third is fine. I have written down the bank account number."

   "And what makes you think I am going to give you one single euro?" he asked.

   "Let me see, I think you won't want Geraldine and myself to tell the local doctor, the priest, half of Rossmore and, even more important, a top lawyer the reason why she and I had to leave home at a very young age," I said.

   He looked at me, unbelieving, but I met his stare and eventually it was his eyes that moved away.

   "It will be no problem, there's a new young curate here who would give Canon Cassidy the courage to stand up to you. Mr. Barry would get us a hotshot barrister from Dublin, the doctor will confirm that I asked his help to get Geraldine away from your clutches. The world has changed, you know. The days are gone, Niall, when the uncle with the money can get away with anything he likes."

   He spluttered at me. I think my calling him "Niall" was about the clincher.

   "If you think for one moment . . ." he began.

   I interrupted him. "One week from now, and a decent gravestone for my father," I said.

   It was surprisingly easy. He paid the money into my account.

   It was blackmail, of course, but I shrugged. I didn't see it as that.

   Then I was going out with Neddy. He came to Dublin once a week to see me. And I went down to see him once a week. And we hadn't slept together because Neddy wasn't like that.

   And in the middle of things in Dublin, which were always a bit pressurized, he was very restful indeed.

   And then I heard from Keno.

   They really needed me back at the club, he wouldn't ask if he wasn't desperate. He'd been having a bit of trouble with some of the girls from abroad. Visas and red tape and form-filling. He needed someone reliable to be in there, dancing, yes, and keeping an eye on things for him.

   I explained how impossible it was for me, or I tried to explain. I even told Keno about Neddy and the kind of man he was. I shouldn't really have told Keno about Neddy.

   When he put the pictures down on the table, he mentioned Neddy.

   I hadn't known there were any pictures being taken, and it was very obviously me, and the positions were very suggestive indeed. It was sickening, looking at them.

   It didn't bear thinking what the board of the school or dear innocent Neddy would make of them.

"It's blackmail," I said.

"I don't see it as that," Keno said, shrugging.

"Give me a week," I said. "You owe me that."

   "Right." Keno was always agreeable. "But you owe me too. For your start in life."

   During the week, of course, wouldn't you know, Neddy asked me to marry him.

   "I can't," I said. "Too much baggage."

   "I don't care about the past," Neddy said.

   "It's not just the past. It's the future," I said.

   And I told him. Everything. Every single thing—like my awful uncle Niall and Geraldine and how boring and tiring the dancing had been. I had left the envelope of pictures on the table and he just threw it into the fire without opening it.

   "I'm sure you are very beautiful in the pictures," he said, "and why shouldn't people pay to look at you?"

   "He'll have more," I said in a despairing kind of voice.

   "Yes, of course he will, but it won't matter."

   "Ah, come on, Neddy, these are nice respectable girls I teach— do you think anyone would let me near them if they saw those pictures?"

   "Well, I was hoping that if you married me you'd come back to Rossmore and teach nearby."

   "But he could still show them," I said. I wondered if Neddy might really be soft in the head.

   "But you could tell them in advance. You could say at the interview you had to pay your way through college by doing various jobs, including exotic dancing," he said.

   "It won't work—we won't get away with it, Neddy."

   "It will work because it's true." He looked at me with his honest blue eyes.

   "I wish things had been different," I said to him.

   "Would you have said yes and married me if it weren't for this little problem?" he asked me.

"It's a big problem, Neddy." I sounded weary.

"Would you, Clare?"

   "Well, yes, I would, Neddy. I would have been honored to marry you."

   "Right, then—we'll sort it out," he said.

   And he came with me to Keno's that night. We walked right through the dancers and the punters to the office at the back. To say Keno was surprised is putting it mildly.

   I introduced them formally and then Neddy spoke.

   He told Keno that he sympathized with the situation, and how it must be hard running a business with all the staff problems and everything, but it wasn't fair to take away my dream, as I had
always
wanted to be a teacher ever since I was a schoolgirl.

   "Clare was a gold star at school," Keno said, more to make conversation, I think, than anything else.

   "I'm not at all surprised," Neddy said, beaming at me proudly. "So, you see, we can't make Clare do anything else except concentrate on her teaching. Neither of us can."

   Keno pulled a big brown envelope from his desk drawer.

   "The pictures?" he said to Neddy.

   "They're very beautiful. Clare showed them to me earlier tonight," he said.

   "She did?" Keno was amazed.

   "Of course, if we are to be married we must have no secrets. I have told Clare about my brother Kit, who has been and still is in prison. You can't keep quiet about things that are part of you. And I know that Clare is very, very grateful for the start you gave her. So that's why we are here."

   "Why exactly are you here?" Keno was totally bewildered.

   "To know if there was any
other
way we could help you." Neddy said it simply as if it were obvious.

   "Like what way, in God's name?"

   "Well, I have a great friend who does wrought iron, he could

do you really nice windows outside, which would look well and also be good and strong against unwelcome visitors. And let me see, what else could we do? If the dancing girls were tired and wanted somewhere to stay, it's very peaceful by the woods where we live . . . Perhaps some of your dancers might need a nice restful holiday. They could come to stay with us. There's lots to see in Rossmore. There's even a wonderful well in the woods. People can wish there and it comes true." His good-natured face was straining with good ideas for Keno.

   I begged God not to let Keno mock him, or tell me I was marrying a simpleton. I spoke to God very strongly in my mind. "I never bothered you about things, did I, God? I didn't go up to that well rabbiting on to your grandmother, St. Ann, now did I? No, I sorted out my own problems and looked after my little sister. I didn't go round doing much sin, unless the dancing is a sin? But it's so silly, it can't really be a sin, can it? And now I want to escape from all this and marry a good man. So that's the kind of thing you're meant to be
for,
isn't it, God?"

   And God listened. This time.

   Keno turned on the shredder and put the pictures into it.

   "There aren't any more," he said. "Get your wrought-iron man to give me a ring, Neddy. And now get the hell home, the two of you, to plan your wedding. I have an ailing business to run here."

   And we walked out of the club together hand in hand and down the cobbled street.

It was very clear from the moment I saw the advertisement:

That was exactly what I wanted.

   And they were so slow back at the Active Retirement Association, and they were so scornful at the cardiac exercise class. They were positively hostile at the Gardening in Later Years Group. My cousins back in Rossmore were the most disapproving of all. They said that sort of holiday was only for young people. Undesirable young people, who would probably have sex on the plane on the outward journey, and be drunk for fifteen days when they got there.

   But where did it say anything about that in the advertisement?

   Nowhere.

   I paid my two-hundred-euro deposit and then the rest when they sent the invoice. At no time did anyone ask me my age. And proper order too. I had not asked them
their
ages. I turned up at the airport with my little purple and yellow label saying holiday for singles.

   That's what I was, single.

   I could easily have married Gerald, and quite possibly I could have married Kevin. But Gerald was very, very dull. So I didn't marry him. And the woman who
did
marry him went sort of mad from the tedium of it all. And I didn't try to make Kevin infatuated with me or anything because truly he was very unreliable. I wouldn't have had a moment's peace with him.

   And I never regretted being single. Never for one moment— except sometimes on holidays.

   You had to pay a single-room supplement. You were often given a very small, poky table away from other people's eyes. It was a bit lonely not having anyone to talk to like other people had, someone to laugh over the day with. That's why I was thrilled to see a holiday that catered to exactly what I needed.

   At the airport I saw lots of those purple and yellow labels and, yes, the fellow travelers did seem to be very young, like about forty years younger than me, but then that was just who I saw now. The older crowd would turn up later.

   They didn't, as it happened. And as I stood in the line waiting for check-in, I got a few odd glances. But then I have always had a few odd glances. A sixty-something woman in jeans and a big floppy sun hat does often attract a second look. People often look again just to check that they haven't imagined all those lines and wrinkles under a floral cotton hat and over a trim pair of jeans.

   The check-in girl asked me if I was sure I had booked the right holiday and I assured her that I was indeed single and greatly looking forward to it. On the plane they were all introducing themselves to one another, so I joined in too.

   "I'm Vera," I said and shook hands heartily with those nearest to me. They were nice young people called Glenn and Sharon and Todd and Alma. None of them had ever been on a singles holiday before, and neither had I, so we had that in common, anyway.

   "Where did you go last year, Vera?" Glenn asked.

   I told them about the Active Retirement Association's walking holiday in Wales, and the year before the bus tour of Scotland for the cardiac exercise class. I had been planning to go on the Gardening in Later Years Group trip to Cornwall and the Eden Project but suddenly I had seen this advertisement and decided that it had everything I really wanted.

   Sharon, who was a very pretty girl with a lovely smile, asked did I have family at home and I said sadly, no, I had been an only child, I had never married but I had lots of good friends. And plenty of time to see people nowadays since I had retired.

   Todd wanted to know where I was from. I explained Dublin nowadays, but originally from Rossmore—they probably wouldn't have heard of it. It turned out they all had.

   There had been some kind of documentary on television about it. There was what they called a cool kind of wishing well, which gave you whatever you wanted. Alma said maybe we should all be going there on holiday rather than Italy, imagine getting what you wanted from a holy well. I thought of telling them that the well wasn't really holy, it had been there for years before St. Patrick ever came to Ireland. But it was a mistake to give young people too much information.

   Glenn asked had I been to Italy before and I told them a bit about Rome and Florence and Venice but said that I'd never been to this place, Bella Aurora, where we were heading. In fact I had never heard of it until I got the brochure, which said it was full of places of interest. I was eager to see what they were.

   "Mainly clubs, I think," Alma said. Her friend had been here last year, and said it was great, that she had been locked day and night.

   Locked? I wondered but didn't say. Young people get so irritated if you sound bewildered.

   "Sounds good," I said with a bright smile, and maybe it was only my imagination but they seemed to look at me with more interest.

   After we arrived and got our luggage at the airport, two almostnaked girls with purple and yellow bikinis checked us all off on clipboards and put us on a bus. We went through several very big resorts until we got to Bella Aurora. All had huge white hotels, facing the sea, lines of cafés, pizzerias, ice cream parlors, bars. And Bella Aurora looked just the same.

   Hard to see where all the interesting things were. But I never start by complaining. Hard to know how it could be exactly relaxing either—very loud music blaring everywhere—but no point in finding fault before you have settled in. There might well be fun, though not much room for it, the beach looked very crowded. But they had promised fun and no doubt it would be delivered.

   Three more near-naked courier girls with clipboards were waiting for us at the hotel to assign us our rooms and we were told we had half an hour to unpack and then there would be welcome drinks by the pool.

   So I hung up my clothes and had a shower, put on a nice clean T-shirt with my jeans and down I went.

   To my surprise almost all the people who had traveled on the plane were almost naked too, like the courier girls. A lot of them were very white-skinned but some, like Alma and Sharon, had been on electric tanning beds. Sharon looked very beautiful, like someone from Hawaii. They looked as if they had been here for weeks.