Echoes (65 page)

Olivia was so sweet you could play with her for hours. Just poking her gently in the tummy made her wave her arms and legs a bit. And she smiled, long before babies smile Olivia was smiling.

“I'm sure everyone must feel a bit like that, but they don't have the time to say it and think about it,” Clare said, looking at the small white bundle in the cradle.

“I don't have all that much more time to say it and think about it, I'm off again.” David finished his cup of tea as he pulled on his coat. “I don't know how Dad looked after a quarter of this—I really don't. And yet he must have. You don't hear any complaints about him.”

He kissed his wife and daughter and ran through the rain to the car. He was becoming more and more involved in the work and all the patients; he said you'd learn as much in a month in Castlebay as in a year up in the hospital.

 

In the first few weeks there was no question of doing any studying, and Clare had no intention of beginning it until after Christmas. Everyone said a baby needed your full attention for the first three months. What nobody had said was that a baby took every ounce of your energy for the first three months too. But maybe you were meant to know that.

Olivia was a good baby they said—people who knew, people who had had babies like Mam, and Molly Power and Chrissie and Young Mrs. Dillon and Anna Murphy and a dozen more. And the amount she slept was good. But sometimes she cried for long long times. Clare was despairing one morning, and just before she took her child up to her grandfather in the surgery, she discovered that a nappy pin was open and sticking into the tiny leg.

“How could I have done that to you? How?” Clare wept and held the small baby so close that the howls started again as the child began to feel suffocated.

The bath took a long time. You had to be very careful to hold her properly, she was so slippy, and you had to keep the soap from her eyes and yet make sure she didn't get cold.

And then the bottle. This was a slow day; she kept pushing it away. Finally it was almost finished and she was laid down. But she wouldn't settle. Over and over Clare took her up. It seemed an age before she agreed to sleep, even though her eyes were fighting to stay open.

Then there was the washing. Nellie had offered to help, but unfortunately she had offered when Molly Power was there, raising her eyebrows. So Clare thanked Nellie profusely, and said not at all. It was quite impossible to imagine that a tiny baby like that could provide such a mound of washing. Not to mention David's shirts. At home nobody changed their shirt every day. Dad would wear his shirt for four days maybe. And the boys . . . Lord knew when they changed theirs. But David had a fresh shirt every single day. It took seventeen minutes to iron each bloody shirt in the beginning. Now it took eleven. It was still far too long. Eleven minutes. That was a whole hour on five shirts one morning, and it was easier to do five at a time because otherwise he used to seem disappointed that he hadn't a choice.

“If you hate it so much, I'll do it. It might be quite restful,” he had said once when she protested.

“No, you damn well won't. The very first day you do one your mother will call and see you, and I might as well throw my hat at it after that.”

Today she had decided to iron three. But in the middle of the first one Olivia woke up again, and since it was nearly time for her bottle, that was the end of the shirts. Then David was home for lunch. Then she had to tidy herself up. This was the day she had been invited for a cup of tea in the big house. Molly talked almost entirely to Olivia, in baby talk, and twice asked the baby, who was not yet three months old, whether she thought that matinee coat was a little bit too tight.

Clare answered, as the baby didn't. It was a fine fit.

“Why, then, Olivia, do you have these little red marks on your arm, little sore marks?
Poor
Olivia.”

Clare wanted to hit Molly with one of the big hard uncomfortable cushions on the sofa. Instead she sat back and swallowed her thin tomato sandwich.

 

David rang her later in the afternoon.

“What's wrong?” she asked, alarmed.

“Nothing's wrong. I'm just celebrating that we have the phone, that's all.”

“Yes, it's marvelous. No more buzzing from the Great House.”

“Now, Clare!” he laughed.

“Sorry. Sorry. Will you bring home some chops from Dwyers'?”

“It might be closed when I'm coming back. Why don't you ring them and ask them to deliver?”

“And have Chrissie calling me Lady Muck for a month.”

“Oh, well, do what you can. I have to go. I thought I'd just ring.”

“There was nothing you wanted to say?”

“Only that I loved you.”

She hung up, and realized she should have said she loved him too.

She asked Nellie to look after the baby in the kitchen and walked down to Church Street and a confrontation with Chrissie.

Her mother-in-law moved the curtain in the sitting room and watched her go.

 

She wrote to Valerie that evening but tore up the letter. It was a list of complaints and moans and grouses. It was the kind of letter you would hate to read. Then she put the pieces in the range in case anyone ever found them torn up in the bin and pieced them together. She wondered was she going mad to imagine anyone piecing together one of her letters to Valerie.

 

David was called out twice in the night.

When the phone went the second time, Olivia woke too. Clare went to pick her up. David was putting on his socks and shoes as he talked to the woman on the phone.

“It's no life this, is it?” she said jiggling the crying baby up and down in her arms.

“It's not for that woman.” David nodded at the phone which he had just put down. “Those bloody dogs they have out there have just eaten the face off her baby.”

David had his clothes on by now.

“What will you do?” Clare asked, stricken.

“Hope the baby's dead, properly dead. Hope we can get its mother to agree to go into the hospital. For a couple of days, anyway. She'll need more than just a sedative after that lot.”

He was down the stairs and into the car. It was three hours, and dawn, before he came back. Olivia was asleep again. Clare was in the kitchen, she had a kettle ready and made some tea. He took the mug gratefully.

“Was the baby dead?” she asked.

“Not quite,” he said.

She waited. He said nothing.

“And Mrs. Walsh? Is she all right?”

David still said nothing. His shoulders were shaking. He was crying, but he didn't want her near. He went to the window and looked out at the dark sea and the shapes of the cliff heads only becoming visible now. He stood there for a long time and she found no words or gesture to help him.

 

She went over to the big house to take the paper back. She had read it from cover to cover. There was a voice in the kitchen, talking to Olivia. She thought David must be back, but she didn't see his car. It was Gerry. He was dangling a little woolen ball, a brightly colored pompom, in front of the baby who was looking at him eagerly.

“Gerry?” She was not pleased. He had given her a fright, and anyway, how dared he come in uninvited?

“I don't remember asking you in,” she said.

“I don't remember a time when friends in Castlebay had to wait to be invited in. Maybe it's different here in the . . . um . . . in the Lodge.” He made the name of the house sound laughable.

“What do you want?”

“I came to see your daughter and ask her would she like her photograph taken. That's all.”

“Don't be childish, Gerry. What do you want?”

“What I said. Would you like a picture of the baby . . . as a wedding present?”

“No,” she said quickly.

“What nice manners they teach up at the Lodge.”

“No, thank you. I'm sorry. No, thank you very much.”

“Why not? I take nice pictures of babies. They like me.”

Olivia was indeed gurgling up at him and the red, black and yellow ball of wool.

“I'd prefer not, if you don't mind. Thanks, though. Sorry about my manners.” She smiled, hoping he'd go.

He stood up. “She's beautiful,” he said. “I sometimes think
I'd
like one.”

“Well, nothing's stopping you.” She tried to be light. “You know how to set about it.”

“Ah, but it would be no use if it weren't yours too.”

She flinched.

He put up both his hands in peace. “I'm off. I'm off. Take that look off your face.”

He did have his camera with him, in its shabby black bag that he had always used. “Whenever you think she's old enough, I'd love to.”

“Sure. I'll talk about it with David,” she said.

“Do that.” He smiled and was gone.

She felt very uneasy and didn't know why. He only wanted to take a photograph. He had only made those sort of flattering remarks that he made to everyone. Why did she feel so bothered?

 

She invited her mother-in-law to see the baby being bathed. She spent the whole day tidying the place up first.

Molly came to watch the ritual.

Clare tested the heat of the water with her elbow, feeling very experienced.

“Do you do that? How strange,” Molly said. “How very strange, with all the thermometers and everything. Ah, well.” She sighed as if her granddaughter was being brought up by a thick, ignorant peasant who knew nothing.

 

One gray morning she heard a timid tapping on the door. It was her mother.

“You haven't been down for a bit. I called to see you.”

“That's great. Come on in.”

Agnes O'Brien looked around as if fearful someone might ask her what she was doing there. “Have you done up the parlor yet?” she asked.

“You're always asking me that. What would we need a parlor for or a sitting room or drawing room or whatever we'd call it? This is where we live.”

Agnes jerked her head up toward the big house. “But wouldn't they expect . . . ?”

“Let them expect what they like. David and I want to make this a nice bright room that we can live in. Armchairs and bookshelves and the advantage of it being the kitchen as well.”

“And when are you going to start?” her mother asked innocently.

“Will we have a cup of tea?” Wearily she emptied the tea leaves from the pot and put it on the range.

“Are you not using a kettle?”

“There's just the two of us, Mam.”

She was wrong.

Molly Power was at the door.

“I thought you might want something from town, I'm going in with Mrs. Dillon this afternoon. Hallo, Mrs. O'Brien.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Power. Good morning.” Agnes stammered a little.

“Come to admire the baby?”

“Yes, well, Clare hasn't shown her to me yet.”

“Clare dear, do show the baby to your mother.”

Clare fumed. Her mother had made it seem that she had never seen her granddaughter at all. Mrs. Power made Clare feel like a very unsatisfactory hired help.

She went upstairs for Liffey. She was not only wet; her nappy was filthy. The clean nappies were downstairs.

She went down to get them.

“Oh, don't bother dressing her up specially.”

“I'm not,” Clare hissed.

She did a rapid change job and Liffey, alarmed by the speed and lack of gentleness, cried in fright. Clare handed her first to her mother.

“I don't know whether I should . . .”

Why
did Mam have to be so humble?

“You had six of your own. I'm sure you won't drop her.” Her voice was sharp. The teapot was hissing. Trying to shield her actions from her mother-in-law, Clare put four spoons of tea into the boiling water and pulled it aside.

“What a funny way to make tea,” Mrs. Power said clearly.

“I've told Clare a dozen times not to do that,” Agnes said. Awkwardly she passed the baby over to Mrs. Power. For a few minutes Molly Power cooed at her grandchild, and by magic the child stopped crying.

“There you are,” said Molly triumphantly, as if she alone knew the secret.

She refused a cup of tea without actually shuddering, and left.

Clare and her mother were full of gloom.

“You shouldn't let her see the house like this, Clare, really.” Agnes looked at the heap of dirty clothes in a corner, the unwashed saucepans on the draining board.

“It's my house. I'll have it look exactly the way I want to.”

“Oh, all right.” Her mother was about to take offense and leave.

“Not you, Mam. Sit down. I mean her. Why should we bow down before her? I'm damned if I'll do everything the way Lady Molly wants.”

“No, but you could do a bit of cleaning and cooking, that's not bowing down before her,” Agnes said coldly.

Clare knew that she wouldn't drop in again casually; she would have to go and invite her from now on.

 

She had been very entertained by Angela's attempts to learn to cook and decided it wasn't a bad idea. She might well do the same herself. She made shortbread biscuits one morning and took a plate of them up to the house for Molly.

“Won't you come in and have coffee with me?” Molly said.

“I left her there on her own,” Clare said.

“Oh, well. Another time then.”

The woman could have said to go back for her, couldn't she?