Dublin 4 (16 page)

‘I’m not permitted to know what she’s doing. We’re not in her confidence, your father and I, but I
assume
that’s what she’s doing. If she can’t be “tied down” to a perfectly reasonable nice boy like Ian Kennedy, then it’s very unlikely that she can be tied down to an illegitimate baby which she would have to rear on her own.’

Pat had gone to the firm of solicitors where Ian Kennedy worked with his father. He was a nice, redhaired boy, about the friendliest of all Cathy’s boy friends; it was a pity she hadn’t married him.

‘I came to talk to you about Cathy,’ she had said.

‘Yeah, great, how is she?’ he had asked.

‘I think she’s fine …’ Pat had been nonplussed.

‘Good, give her my love when you write, will you?’

‘I don’t have her address, and Mum is being difficult. You know, not being able to lay her hands on it …’

‘Oh, I don’t know where she is now,’ said Ian.

‘Doesn’t she keep in touch?’ Pat was shocked again.

‘No, she said she didn’t want to. Said she wanted to be free.’

‘But …?’

‘But what?’

‘Doesn’t she keep you informed … let you know?’

‘Know what?’

Pat paused. Now, it had been definitely said, definitely, about six months ago, that Ian had been told of her decision to go to England on account of the pregnancy. Yes, Ian had even been in the house. He had said to Dad that he was very happy indeed to acknowledge that he was responsible for the child, and to marry Cathy if she would have him. Pat knew that he had said he wanted to support the child, and to see it when it was born; he couldn’t have forgotten about all that, could he?

‘I’m sorry for being silly,’ Pat had said. ‘I’m the baby of the family and nobody tells me anything.’

‘Yes?’ Ian smiled kindly.

‘But I thought she’d be having the, er, baby, now and I wanted to know how she was … that’s why I’m here.’

‘But didn’t she tell you? She must have told you?’ Ian’s face was lined with concern.

‘What? Told me what?’

‘It was a false alarm – she wasn’t pregnant at all.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Of course! Hey, you must know this. She wrote and told everyone just after she went to London.’

‘It’s not true …’

‘Of course it’s true. She wrote and told us all. It was a very early test she had here, not a proper one.’

‘So why didn’t she come back?’

‘What?’

‘If it was a false alarm why didn’t she come back to her job and home and to you and everything?’

‘Oh, Pat, you
know
all this … she was a bit peeved with your Mum and Dad. She thought there’d be more solidarity, I think. And she was very pissed off with me.’

‘Why was she pissed off with you? You said you’d marry her.’

‘But that’s not what she wanted, she wanted … oh, I don’t know … anyway, it wasn’t necessary.’

‘So why isn’t she back?’

‘As I said, we all let her down. She was annoyed. She wrote, when she told me about the false alarm
bit, and said she didn’t feel like coming back. She must have written to your family too. Of course she did.’

‘She didn’t,’ Pat said definitely.

‘But whyever not? Why didn’t she put them out of their agony?’

‘
Their
agony?’

‘You know what I mean. It’s an expression.’

‘She never wrote.’

‘Oh Pat, nonsense, of course she did. Maybe they didn’t tell you. You said yourself they kept things from you.’

‘They don’t know it was a false alarm, I know that much.’

She said goodbye to Ian, and she promised she wouldn’t make a lot of trouble for everyone, she’d be a good little girl.

‘You’re a real
enfant terrible
, you know. You’re much too grown-up and pretty to be playing that Saint Trinian’s kind of thing.’

She put out her tongue at him, and they both laughed.

*   *   *

Mum said she didn’t want to discuss Cathy. Cathy had found nothing to discuss with her, why should she spend time talking about Cathy?

‘But Ian says he heard from her as soon as she went. It was all a false alarm, she never had a baby,
she was never pregnant at all. Aren’t you pleased now, isn’t that good news, Mum?’ Pat pleaded with her.

‘That’s as may be,’ Mum had said.

*   *   *

Just as she was dropping off to sleep that night, Pat thought of something that made her sit up again, wide-awake.

Now
she knew why Mum hadn’t been pleased. Cathy must have had an abortion. That’s why there was no baby, that’s why Cathy had not come back. But why hadn’t she told Ian? Or Mum? And mainly why hadn’t she come back?

*   *   *

‘Do you think the other nuns read Ethna’s letters?’ Pat had asked a few days later when the green aerogramme was being sealed up and sent off.

‘Very unlikely,’ Dad had said.

‘It’s not the dark ages. They don’t censor their correspondence,’ Mum had said.

‘Anyway she can be fairly critical of some of the other nuns; she gives that Sister Kevin a hard time,’ Dad said. ‘I don’t expect she’d do that if they read her outgoing letters anyway.’

Pat thought that it was nice that Dad read Ethna’s letters so carefully that he knew which sister was which.

*   *   *

Pat had written to Ethna; first of all a probing letter. ‘I’m getting older and a bit, though not much, wiser. One of the things that upsets me is the cloak of silence that hangs over Cathy, and where she is in England and what she’s doing and what the situation is. Could you tell me what the situation is as far as you know it and then I’ll take it from there …’

She had a letter from Ethna, not on an aerogramme but in an envelope. On the outside of the envelope it said, ‘The Stamps You Wanted’. That satisfied any curiosity Mum and Dad might have had. Inside it was very short.

‘I really think you are making a mystery about nothing. Poor Cathy has been punished quite enough, she thought that she was indeed going to have a child. And since she was not at all willing or ready to marry the father then it is merciful that this was not so. She is happy in London, where she is doing social work. She has hardened her heart to mother and father, which is a great pity, but in time I am sure she will feel ready to open up doors of friendship again. She doesn’t write to me, apart from that one letter which told me all these things; since nobody has ever mentioned anything to me about it in letters from home, I have never mentioned anything either. I pray for her, and I pray for all of you. Life is so short, it seems sad that any of it should be spent in feeling a grievance and a hurt
when a hand held out would brush all the unhappiness away.’

Great help, Pat had thought at the time; punished enough, hardened her heart, brush all the unhappiness away; nun’s phrases, and not a word of blame about Mum and Dad who were always writing letters to the paper protesting about letting South African rugby teams into the country. They were always talking about itinerants, and they had raised money for refugees. Why were they so hard-hearted about Cathy?

Pat had decided that she was not going to allow Cathy to disappear without trace as if some terrible crime or shame had settled on the family and people hoped that by ignoring it things would return to normal. She had tackled them at supper the night she had got Ethna’s letter.

‘This family is becoming a bit like nine green bottles,’ she said.

‘What on earth do you mean?’ Dad was smiling.

‘First Ethna goes off to the other side of the world, and then we are four. Then six months ago Cathy disappears without trace and now we are three. Will I go off somewhere too?’

Dad was still smiling but he looked puzzled. He stood up to fetch the coffee percolator. He looked tired and a bit beaten. Not the cheerful doctor, always in a smart suit, always optimistic, always seeing the best for patients and neighbours alike. He
wore his cardigan at home, and Mum wore an old jumper that was torn under the arms. They looked shabby and a bit dishevelled as they sat in the big dining room with its good furniture and its expensive cut glass decanters. Pat felt that somehow they didn’t make any effort when it was only just her. She was sure they had been far more elegant and lively when Ethna was at home and when Cathy was there.

‘Are you just waiting for me to go off and that will be the hat trick?’

‘What is this, Pat, what silly game are you playing?’ Mum was not very amused.

‘No, I mean it, Mum. It’s not much of a family, is it?’

‘Don’t speak to your mother like that.’ Dad was surprised and hurt. He had thought that talking about green bottles was going to be a joke; now it had turned into a row.

‘It’s not normal. People marry and have children, they don’t have them just to export them off as fast as possible.’

Mum was very annoyed indeed. ‘Ethna was twenty-one when she left. She had wanted to join this order for two years. Do you think we wanted Ethna to go to that outlandish place? Or to be a nun at all? Don’t be so ridiculous, and have some thought for other people before you start your hurtful accusations.’

‘No, I know that’s Ethna, but then Cathy’s gone. This house used to be full of people, now it’s just us.
And soon I suppose you’ll want me to go. Would you prefer if I tried to get into UCC or Galway or maybe England rather than Belfield, then you wouldn’t have to have me around the place and you could be all on your own?’ She stood up, tears in her eyes.

‘Apologise this minute to your mother, this minute, do you hear me!’

‘Why to Mum? I’m saying it to both of you.’

She was about to leave the room when Mum had said wearily, ‘Come back, Pat. Come back and I’ll talk to you about Cathy.’

‘You owe her no explanation, Peggy, none, not after the way she’s spoken to you.’ Dad’s face was red with disappointment.

‘Sit down, Pat. Please.’ Grudgingly and shrugging, Pat sat down.

‘I’m not going to fight with you. I’m going to agree with you. It’s not much of a family, it certainly isn’t. When your father and I got married this is not what we had in mind at all.’

‘Now Peg, now Peg,’ Dad said warningly.

‘No, the girl is right to question what’s happened. We question it ourselves, for God’s sake. Not at all what we had in mind. I suppose we had in mind the practice getting bigger and going well. It has. That’s all fine, that side of it. And we had in mind our friends and all the people we like being around, and that’s gone well. And our health has been fine. But mainly what we had in mind was the three of you.
That’s what people do have in mind actually, Pat, that’s what they have in mind most of the day and night when they have children. From the time that Ethna was here we’ve had you three in mind more than anything else.’

Pat gave a very slight shrug. It was a disclaimer. It was meant to say, you don’t have to tell me all this. I know you tried. As a shrug it worked. Mum had known what she meant.

‘I know you think I’m just saying this to be nice to you, or maybe perhaps that we started out with good intentions and lost them on the way. But it wasn’t like that. I think some of my best times, and yours, Hugh, were when Ethna was about six or seven, and Cathy was five, and you were a baby. Three little girls totally dependent on us, all lighting up with enthusiasm …’

‘Sure Mum. Yes. Sure.’

‘No, give me a very short minute for the sentimental sugary bit because it didn’t last long. Then you were all so bright. This was another joy, some of our friends had problems. Well, we didn’t call them problems but so and so’s child couldn’t read until he was seven, or someone couldn’t settle at school, or another wouldn’t manage to get on with the teachers, or failed the third Honours in her Leaving. Not you three, from Ethna on we knew, top of the class, exams no real problem. Do you remember Ethna’s conferring?’

‘Yes … I got the day off school.’

‘And she looked so bright … that’s a funny word, but she did, you know, clear eyes and alert face, compared to a lot of the others. I thought, ours is very bright, there’s so much before her when she gets this ridiculous nunnish thing out of her system …’

‘But I thought you approved?’

‘We had to approve in the end.’ Dad spoke for the first time. ‘Of course we didn’t approve. Use your head, Pat, suppose you had brought up a lovely girl like Ethna, as bright as a button as Mum says, who has just got a First class honours degree in history and who wants to go with a crowd of half-educated women to a school in the outback of somewhere because she read a book about the damn place and she met a recruiting team!’

‘But you never said. I don’t remember …’

‘You don’t remember. How old were you – twelve, thirteen? What discussions could we have had with you about it that would have helped anything except add to the argument?’

Mum had interrupted. ‘We didn’t even discuss it with Cathy because we didn’t want gangs forming and pressure being put on Ethna. We just talked to her.’

‘And what did you want her to do?’ Pat wanted to know.