The Copper Beech (32 page)

‘But it’s so boring, and Aunt Ethel is so awful.’

‘She’s not awful, she’s just quiet. Bring something to entertain yourself – books, games.’

He noted his mother brought knitting. She usually managed to get two jumpers finished in their week in Shancarrig.

‘You’re a powerful knitter,’ Aunt Ethel had said once.

‘I love it. It’s so restful,’ his mother had murmured. Richard noticed that she didn’t say that she hardly produced the needles and wool at all when she was in Dublin. She regarded Shancarrig as her knitting time – her purgatory on earth.

Uncle Bill’s children were all very young; the eldest boy Niall was a whole seven years younger than Richard, a child of five when Richard was twelve and looking for company.

By the year 1950 Richard was seventeen. It would be his last holiday in this terrible place.

As he stood at an endless school dedication with bishop and priest and self-important people from around he vowed he would never come back. It made him feel claustrophobic, as if he was being choked.

Richard Hayes was leaving his Jesuit boarding school
that year. He would get his Leaving Certificate and Matriculation and go to university to study, not medicine like his father, but law. Next summer he could legitimately be away on some study course or be abroad.

They would never drag him to this village again. Let his sisters come, they seemed perfectly happy to play with the village children and run free. Richard Hayes had done his stint.

There was only one good-looking girl at the ceremony, in a blue and white dress, and a straw hat with the same material around the brim. She was shading her eyes from the sun and listening intently to the speeches. She was slim with a tiny waist and a pretty if pale face.

‘Who’s that, Uncle Bill?’ he asked.

‘Madeleine Ross. Nice girl, a bit under her mother’s thumb though, and will probably go on that way.’

‘She’s going to stay here all her life?’ Richard was horrified.

‘Some of us do that willingly.’ His uncle sounded huffy.

‘Oh I know, Uncle Bill, I meant she seems so young.’

‘I was young when I decided to come back here to live, all those years ago. If old Dr Nolan had wanted someone in the practice at that time then your father would have come back too. It’s home, you see.’

Richard shuddered at the very thought.

The Dublin Hayeses lived in Waterloo Road, which was ideal for anyone with children at university. Richard was within walking distance of his lectures and, even more useful, within walking distance of all the night-time activities that went with being a student. The pubs in Leeson Street were literally on his way home, the student dances nearby, the parties in Baggot Street where fellows had flats only a stone’s throw away.

Richard Hayes offered to do up the disused basement of his parents’ house so that he could live there. To study, he said. To be out of the way.

His father and mother never heard or saw any sign of anything untoward. They were pleased with their son who was unfailingly charming as he came to sit at their table for supper at six and for weekend lunches. He was always smiling politely as he passed his bag of laundry to Lizzie to wash, and managed to make his own part of the house off limits.

‘You’ve enough to do up here, honestly. I’ll keep my own place tidy below,’ he had said with his boyish smile. So without anyone realising it he had got his own little self-contained flat down in the basement. At eighteen years of age he had a freedom undreamed of by other undergraduates.

His parents had no idea that their son brought a series of girlfriends home and that not all of them left before morning. He had posters on his walls, chianti bottles that had been turned into lamps, coloured Indian bedspreads over chairs and sofas and his own bed.

There were very noisy studenty parties with loud songs and crashers. The kind of parties that Richard Hayes gave were usually for two people, and sometimes for four. There were two rooms in his little basement flat, and all you had to do was to leave confidently and authoritatively, as if you had every right to be there.

‘Don’t slink in and out,’ Richard warned one girl. ‘Walk out of the gate as if you had been delivering a note in my door. They wouldn’t in their wildest dreams believe anything else.’

And he was totally correct in his belief that his parents knew nothing of his private life. They told their friends, and Richard’s Uncle Bill down in Shancarrig, that the law
studies seemed to be going very well, and that unlike a lot of young tearaways their son seemed to be a homebird, which was all they could have wanted for him and more.

So it came as a complete shock when shortly before Richard’s finals there was the unpleasant business of Olive Kennedy and her parents.

It appeared that Olive was pregnant and that Richard Hayes was to blame.

Richard felt that the scene was like a play, a film of a court case. Nobody seemed to be speaking the truth.

Not Olive, who was crying and saying that she had thought it would be all right because Richard loved her and they were getting married. Not the Kennedy parents who said their daughter had been ruined. Not his own parents who kept protesting that their son could never have done anything like this. He lived at home for heaven’s sake, he was under their watchful eye.

Olive made no mention of the many nights she had spent in the basement in Waterloo Road – perhaps she didn’t want her family to know that. The location of the conception was not discussed, only the responsibility for it. And what was to be done now. Richard spoke clearly. He was very very sorry. He denied nothing, but he said that he and Olive were far too young to consider marriage. They had never committed themselves to it He seemed to think that this was all that was needed.

His manner, respectful and firm, won the day. It now became a matter of negotiation: Olive was to go to England and have the child; she would return having given the baby for adoption and resume her studies. Some financial contribution should be expected for this. It was agreed between the fathers.

‘Olive, I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world,’ Richard said as they left.

‘Thank you, Richard.’ She lowered her eyes, pleased that he still respected her and loved her even if they were too young to marry.

That was when Richard Hayes, as he let his breath out slowly in relief, began to realise that he must be by some kind of accident a bit of a lady-killer.

Richard kept his head down and studied hard for months after this event. He invited his parents down to his flat on several occasions so that they could see every sign of a blameless life and a hard-working son.

Bit by bit, without his having to tell any story, they began to see this Olive as a scheming wanton girl who had set out to get their Richard. They began to think he had behaved decently in the face of such temptation.

They watched proudly as he received his parchment, was admitted to practise as a solicitor and got a job in a first-rate office in Dublin. Even before his first month’s salary they gave him money for clothes – he went to a tailor and his real good looks were obvious to everyone he met.

Particularly Elaine, one of the apprentices in the office. She was a niece of the senior partner, and the daughter of a judge. She wore the most expensive of twin-sets, her pearls were real ones, her handbags and silk scarves came from Paris. They looked a very elegant couple when they were seen together.

But they were rarely seen together because Richard said he wasn’t a suitable escort for her. A penniless young solicitor starting off …

‘You’re not penniless, my uncle pays you a fortune …’ She used to cling to his arm as if she never wanted him out of her sight.

‘But we’re too young, you and I …’ he begged, knowing
that she found him all the more irresistible the more he protested.

‘We could grow up,’ she said, looking at him directly.

So Richard Hayes saw a lot of Elaine the judge’s daughter, but always in his flat where nobody else saw them.

For three years they lived a hidden life, behaving perfectly correctly to each other in the office, wrapped around each other passionately all night. It amazed him how easily she was able to tell her parents that she was staying with girlfriends.

As she stood in the sunlight barebottomed, wearing only the top of his pyjamas and frying eggs for their breakfast, he marvelled at his luck, that such a beautiful and clever girl should make him her choice in this way.

‘Do you love me at all, Richard?’ she asked as she turned the eggs on the pan.

He lay back on his bed, luxuriating and waiting for the breakfast that would be brought to him on a tray before they got up and dressed and made their separate ways to the office. He loved the very clandestine nature of it all, the fact that nobody in the office knew.

‘What an extraordinary question! Why do you ask?’ he said.

‘It’s always dangerous when people answer questions with another question.’ She laughed, pretty Elaine with the golden hair and the expensive clothes thrown on the floor of his flat.

‘No seriously, we loved each other twice last night and once this morning … and you ask me an odd thing like that?’ He seemed puzzled.

‘No, I meant real love.’

‘That’s real love. It seemed pretty real to me.’

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

‘Oh shit,’ he said.

‘I see where we stand.’ Elaine threw the plate of fried eggs into the sink and picked up her clothes.

‘Elaine wait … I didn’t mean …’

From the bathroom he heard over the running water her voice call back.

‘You’re so bloody right, you didn’t mean it. You didn’t mean any bloody word you said.’

She was out of the bathroom, dressed and furious. He came towards her.

‘Don’t touch me. You’ve said what you wanted to say.’

‘I’ve said nothing. We have to talk.’

‘You’ve talked. You said “shit”. That’s what you said.’

It was awkward in the office. She wouldn’t catch his eye or agree to meet. Then she went missing for four days.

At home alone Richard didn’t dare to let his thoughts follow the train they were heading down. Was it possible that she could have gone to have an abortion?

In the Dublin of 1958 such things were not unknown. There had been stories, none of them pleasant, of a nurse … He headed away from that thought. Elaine wouldn’t have done that on her own.

But then, had he not shown how he didn’t want to be involved? He telephoned her house; when he gave his name to the maid he was told that Elaine didn’t want to speak to him.

This time there was no carpeting, no council of war as there had been in the case of Olive Kennedy. This time he was told by the senior partner that his position with the firm was now being terminated.

‘But why?’ Richard cried.

‘I think you know.’ The older man, Elaine’s uncle, stood up and turned away.

It was the coldest gesture that Richard had ever seen. Now to explain to his parents.

He wanted to try to get another job first: to tell his parents that he had decided to change offices. This way it might not appear so bald. He had reckoned without the power of the senior partner, brother of the judge, and the smallness of Dublin legal circles. The word was out about him. He didn’t know which word it was but it must have had something to do with being unreliable, a seducer of young women, someone unwilling to pay for his pleasure.

There were no jobs for Richard Hayes, whose record in the law was not so staggering that it would override the other considerations.

He told his parents.

It was not an easy conversation. There were very few solutions, and to his horror he realised that the only one which seemed possible was Shancarrig.

In July of 1958 he installed himself in Number Five The Terrace. He wandered disconsolately around the village, looking without interest at the church with its notices of upcoming events, like whist drives in aid of some villagers in South America who apparently needed a church … just like this one.

He walked hands in pockets across the River Grane and up towards the school where he remembered going to some tedious ceremony years ago. The place hadn’t changed at all. Nor had the ill-kept river bank with its row of shabby dwellings, nor the clumps of trees they so proudly called Barna Woods. He couldn’t bear to make the climb he had done so often as a child to the Old Rock. He came home shoulders hunched wearily and crossed the bridge back into the town.

A group of youngsters were playing on the bridge and
turned to look at him as he passed. He realised that whatever he did in this village would be under the scrutiny of hundreds of eyes. It was an appalling thought.

Everything about Shancarrig depressed him.

The small fat beady-eyed priest welcoming him, and saying it would be a pleasure to have him in the congregation – what could he mean? And the wraith-like priests’ housekeeper with a face like the Queen of Spades – a sour woman called Mrs Kennedy who looked straight through him and seemed to read his inner soul. She nodded dryly on being introduced, as if to say she knew his type and didn’t like it.

His uncle’s home offered little joy to him. Although Uncle Bill was a pleasant enough man and an efficient solicitor he had managed to encumber himself with such a mournful wife. Aunt Ethel saw little to celebrate in the world. And the children were not going to rate high on any ladder of companionship.

Niall was now about eighteen and at an age when he should have been full of the joys of spring, but he appeared disconsolate and without any fire. It didn’t occur to Richard that his cousin Niall might merely be lacking in self-confidence; Richard had never known that state. He wondered why the boy didn’t ask to borrow his father’s Ford which was parked outside The Terrace. That way he could have toured the countryside and found wider horizons. There must be
some
social life for a boy in this place, but Niall had seemingly never found it; he stayed around the house, moving between The Terrace and Ryan’s Hotel.

Richard looked at the bedroom he had been given – a huge heavy dark mahogany wardrobe which despite its great size found it difficult to hold the suits and coats of the young solicitor down from the city. His Aunt Ethel
had proudly shown him the hot and cold running water; he had the only room with a hand-basin. The bed would never welcome a companion. To manoeuvre a girl up those stairs past offices, kitchens, sitting rooms and bedrooms would be a feat that few would undertake. It would be celibacy, or else find someone else with a place of their own, which didn’t look at all likely in Shancarrig.