Echoes (53 page)

He sat beside her. “Why aren't you studying? You said you'd have a full day without me, what are you doing reading this rubbish? Where are your books?” He looked around, there was no sign of study.

“Don't give out to me. What was it like?”

“Oh, very Nolanish, you know.”

“I don't know.”

“Men are hopeless at describing things. You're always saying that. There was too much to eat.”

“I know. You smell of food.” She nuzzled him.

“Oh, and your friend Father Flynn was there. He's over for a few days holiday.”

Her face was bright at the thought of him; then it looked puzzled. “How did he know you knew me?”

“Castlebay and everything.”

“Yes.” She looked at him. “David. Was there any more?”

“I nearly lost my temper with my mother and walked out . . .”

“Tell me the whole thing.”

It wasn't
so
bad. Nothing they hadn't known already: that David's mother did not think the sun and moon and stars shone from Clare. That was all. Why was David so upset?

“I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be here.”

“You're here now.”

Much later they did the boldest thing they had ever done. They ate a tin of pears, with spoons, straight from the tin, and bits of the juice kept falling on their bodies and they had to lick it off their shoulders—or wherever it fell. Toward the end of the tin they were covered in the sweet pear syrup and so was the bed. They laughed until they both ached. They dropped the pear tin down on the floor, and put their sticky arms around each other again.

“Is this squalor? Is this what we live in?” Clare asked.

“It's lovely, whatever it is,” David said.

 

Father Flynn decided to go to Castlebay to see it for himself. He booked himself into Dillon's Hotel, made a courtesy call on Father O'Dwyer, and told Sergeant McCormack that he had heard her highly spoken of, which inspired her to make scones for his tea. Choosing his time well, he went to O'Brien's shop and told them that Tommy was getting on well, with a prison visitor who was bringing him picture books of wildflowers and he sometimes drew them. They marveled at some Englishwoman who would take the time to go to visit an Irish boy with no teeth in jail for robbery with violence. Father Flynn said he knew it was hard, but the odd letter, with no criticism or abuse but just descriptions of what life at home was like, would work wonders. Clare had been unfailing in her letters. Agnes was proud to hear that. Clare had never got uppity despite her great success and advances, she told Father Flynn.

“You must be hoping she'll find a good man and marry him and settle down,” the little priest said.

“That one? Marry and settle down? She's going to be a professor, no less. She never had much of an interest in boys when she was young, and I used to think that was a mercy. Chrissie had far too great an interest in them. But not Clare. I suppose in a few years she might meet a professor somewhere, but she'll be gone from us in Castlebay, I knew that the day she got into the secondary school.”

“Suppose she were to marry and come back here?”

“But who would she marry here, Father? Hasn't she more book learning than anyone in the parish?”

He called on the Powers too, because deep in his heart he was a man filled with curiosity. A big, square house, built to withstand the gales and spray from the sea. Father Flynn noted that it must have to be painted every year. There was a large garden, part of it obviously leading to a cliff path down to the sea. It wasn't an elegant house, but it was sturdy and substantial.

Inside too it was comfortable. No antiques, nothing very old, but nice furniture and good carpets, big arrangements of flowers and greenery on window sills and surfaces. A pleasant maid with wispy hair and a broad smile showed him into the drawing room while she went to get the mistress. Molly was delighted to meet him again, and flattered that he should have come to call.

Father Flynn liked David's father enormously: a bluff, kind man who was an old-style adviser to his patients. Probably does a lot of the work that dry stick Father O'Dwyer should be doing, Father Flynn thought ruefully. Over a drink, a lot of admiration for their magnificent view of the sea and some words of sympathy to an elderly mad dog, half-shaved, half-particles of red paint, he talked to the big warm man. He told him about the work with the emigrants in Britain, some of its lighter side as well as its gloomy overtones; that it was often the weakest and the least prepared who were the ones who had to emigrate.

Dr. Power told him of the good and bad things in Castlebay. People would never die of loneliness, as they might in a big English city; but attitudes could be cruel, and tolerance was low. In nearly forty years of practice here he had seen a lot of intolerance: families couldn't cope with what they called “shame and disgrace.” He was sure Father Flynn knew well what he meant. You didn't stamp out young love and young desire by refusing to face up to the consequences.

Dr. Power said it was great to have lived through the years that saw TB being wiped out. When he started off, people still hid the fact that they had tuberculosis in the family. It was denied, and if anyone had a spot on the lung it was considered a disgrace and something that would prevent other members of the family being able to marry well.

Father Flynn said he had had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Power's son, a fine boy, in Dublin. What were his plans?

Dr. Power didn't know, precisely. If the boy were going to work back home then the sooner he came back the better. He would want to find a wife for himself; and it would be wiser for him to be installed here, and choose from here, rather than starting off a life with some girl in a big place with lots of life in it and then asking the poor woman to come back here with him. There was a slight sadness which Father Flynn thought must be harking back to his own situation.

“And do you think he's met anyone that suits him yet?” he asked.

“Divil a fear of it. He's having too good a time with all those nurses up in the hospital,” said Dr. Power with a laugh.

 

Father Flynn talked about it with Angela too.

“Aren't you a terrible old woman?” she teased him.

“Terrible. That's why I'm so good in confession. I'm never bored and I like to meddle in other people's lives.”

“Are you meddling with David Power and Clare O'Brien?” she asked.

“It worries me a bit, and I only know the fringes of it,” he said. “I don't know why I feel that it's so doomed. But that's the word that keeps coming to me.”

“It could just be First Love.”

“It could.” He was doubtful. “But I must get over this tendency to play God. Are you going to let this brother of yours come here and upset everyone?”

“I promised him in Rome. Those were my words. That's how I bought him off from doing it years ago. I can't go back on that now. He's like a child, you can't go back on a promise to a child.”

“Children can do dangerous things. Sometimes promises needn't be kept.”

“Is it dangerous for him to come home? He's had his heart set on it. I don't have children—you don't. We don't know all this about showing them their roots. I mean, I don't think it matters, and you don't. But suppose it's everything? Then he should do it. I'll survive it if I have to.”

There was a silence. He drank his tea, and looked admiringly around the book-lined room. When he spoke, it was with the voice of one introducing an entirely new subject.

“That's a very civilized fellow in the hotel, Dick Dillon—brother of the man running it, I think. Very pleasant sort of a man altogether. Someone you could always rely on, I'd imagine, if there was a crisis.”

“I'm sure you imagine right, Father Flynn. Such a pity that you got over this tendency to play God, isn't it? You could have had a field day there.”

Before he left Castlebay Father Flynn decided to buy a few postcards of the place: not the garish ones which looked like everywhere else, but those nice black-and-white ones full of outlines which Angela often used to send him.

He asked Josie Dillon where they were on sale.

“We haven't had them for ages. I used to put them up just to please Gerry Doyle—that's the photographer—he took them, you see. But visitors mainly preferred the colored ones. But now you mention it, he never brought any replacements. You could ask in Doyle's—it's the place with the big bright sign, Doyle's Photographics. You can't miss it.”

You couldn't miss it. Josie Dillon was right.

There was a small, dark-haired man inside.

“Father? What can I do for you?”

He was a likeable fellow, with an easy smile.

“This is a very grand place.” Father Flynn looked round in admiration. “I'd not have thought Castlebay would have something as fine as this.”

“Don't let my mother hear you, or my sister, or, Lord rest him, my father. They would all agree with you.”

“Well, I'm not a businessman—what would I know? Is it too small an order to ask do you have those nice pictures of the place, the black-and-white ones. They were very good. I kept the ones people sent me.”

Gerry flushed with pleasure. “Go on, is that a fact?”

“I can't find them in the shops.”

“I didn't bother. Hold on till I see where they are.” He pulled out drawers here and there, and called to an assistant. There was difficulty in finding them.

“It doesn't look as though I'm much of a businessman either,” Gerry grinned.

“If it's too much trouble . . .” Father Flynn began.

“No. It's a matter of honor now.” He found them. “Here they are.”

“Could I have . . . er . . . a dozen, please, assorted views?” Father Flynn had been going to buy three cards, but after all this trouble on his behalf he felt it would seem piffling.

Gerry had made a bundle and thrust them at him.

“There's more than twelve there.”

“Nobody else ever praised them before. I'd like you to have them. As a present.”

“That's extraordinarily kind of you . . . Mr. Doyle,” Father Flynn said in some embarrassment.

“Not at all. You keep sending them to bishops and priests and tell them to get their ordinations and enthronements recorded by me.”

“You're a very fine photographer. I'd be delighted to put any work in your way. But I'm sure you hardly need it.”

Father Flynn looked around again at the big counter, the carpeted floor, the large framed photographs on the wall. It had all the appearances of a studio in a large city. He recognized a picture of Clare on the wall—taken a few years ago, but very recognizable as the same face.

“Is that Clare?” he asked.

“Do you know Clare?” Gerry was pleased. “That was when she got the Murray Prize, a scholarship to UCD. They sent me to take the winner. I never believed it was going to be Clare. I hadn't enough faith. Fortunately she did.”

“She works very hard, certainly. I met her with friends in Dublin.” Something made him uneasy about the way Gerry was looking at the picture.

“She's very unusual. For Castlebay, that is. I don't think she's from here at all. I think she's a changeling. I've always thought that. Like myself.” He laughed to take the oddness away from the statement. “That's why I'll marry her. When she's ready. When she's got all this studying out of her system.”

“And bring her back here?” Father Flynn sounded politely doubtful: inside he felt a slight tremor of anxiety.

“Oh, no. Clare's grown well beyond Castlebay. And as soon as I get this business organized, so will I.”