Dublin 4 (17 page)

‘I’d have liked her to do an M.A. and then a doctorate. She was very, very good. I spoke to some
of the people in there, they said she had the makings of a scholar, and I’d have liked her to have had a good lively life here, instead of putting up with Sister Kevin’s tantrums in a jungle.’ Dad had sounded very defeated when he said that, as if remembering the whole battle and how it was lost.

‘Yes, that’s what I’d have liked too. I’d have liked her to go on living here, it was so near and handy, and got a small car and had friends and gone off to the West for weekends. And then married someone in her own field, some professor, and got a house near by and I could have seen the whole thing over again with her children, growing up and learning to walk …’

‘It’s a fairly normal, reasonable wish, isn’t it?’ Dad had asked defensively. ‘Rather than see a whole life, a whole education, and talent, thrown away.’

‘She’s happy though, she says she is,’ Mum had said.

‘I suppose her letters to us are about as near the truth as ours are to her,’ Dad had said. And there was a silence as they thought about the implications of that.

‘So Cathy … ?’ Pat spoke softly, hoping that the mood hadn’t been broken, that she could still get her mother to talk.

‘Cathy,’ Mum had said.

‘Cathy was no trouble either. Everyone else told us of all their sleepless nights over their terrible teenage
children. We never had any,’ Dad smiled at Pat as if he was thanking her. She felt a twinge of guilt.

‘And Cathy did have her friends around much more than Ethna, and they used to laugh, and they were full of life. Do you remember the summer they did the whole garden, Hugh?’

Dad had laughed. ‘All I had to do was provide one of those big cans of beer at the end of the day. They dug and they weeded and they cut hedges and grass.’

‘It never looked back since,’ Mum had said. ‘It used to be a wilderness and they tamed it.’

‘All for a few cans of beer,’ Dad had said. They stopped talking for a moment. Pat said nothing.

‘So Cathy was going to be the one who might be with us, when Ethna went. It wasn’t a transfer of love. I suppose it was changing the plans or hopes. And she was so enthusiastic, about everything.’

‘We felt we were qualifying with her, she was so entertaining about it all – the lectures, the course, the solicitors’ exams down in the Four Courts, the apprenticeship … it was all so alive,’ Dad had said.

‘And she seemed to get on so well with Ian. I kept thinking, she’s only twenty-two, she’s far too young to settle down but then of course I told myself I was only twenty-two when I married. Then on the other hand, I didn’t have a career to decide about. Then I went back to the first hand and said since Ian and Cathy were both solicitors and Ian’s father had a firm, well then, surely if they did have a couple of
children and she wanted to work part-time it couldn’t be too hard to arrange.’

Dad had interrupted. ‘This is what your mother meant about you children always being in our minds. We had Cathy married to Ian in our minds long before they even kissed each other.’

‘But why couldn’t you accept Cathy’s decision like you did for Ethna? You didn’t want Ethna to go off and be a nun but when she did you sort of acknowledged it.’

‘Yes,’ Mum had said. ‘Yes, it made her so happy and it was her life. Much as I wanted to I couldn’t control it any more … she had to do what she wanted.’

‘So why couldn’t Cathy do what she wanted?’

‘That was different.’

‘But why, Mum, why? It’s not as if you and Dad were prudes or anything, it’s not as if your friends would cut you off, or as if you’d be ashamed to lift your heads. Why can’t Cathy bring her baby home?’

‘It’s different,’ Dad had said.

‘I can’t think why, I really can’t. Nobody minds. Ian doesn’t mind. I talked to him. He’s very casual about Cathy – “send her my love” he said. Ethna won’t mind. I wrote to her about it, but, but …’

‘You wrote to Ethna?’ Mum had said, surprised.

‘Yes, to try and clear things up.’

‘And did it?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘What did you want cleared up?’ Dad had asked.

‘Whether Cathy is having a baby or is not. Something very basic and simple like that, which most normal families would know.’

Dad had looked at Mum, and she had said, ‘Tell her.’

‘The answer is … that we don’t know.’

‘You don’t
know
?’

‘No. That’s the truth.’ Mum had continued, ‘We were very shocked by Cathy’s attitude. She was very harshly critical of us, and the way we lived, and thought that our attitudes were hypocritical, you know, to preach some kind of broadmindedness and then not to follow it.’

‘But we didn’t see it like that. You see, it was nothing to do with acceptance or reputations, we thought Cathy was being silly and making extravagant gestures, turning herself into a Protest just for the sake of it. “Look at me, I’m too modern to do like anyone else, give my child a name and a home and a background, no, I’m far too sophisticated for that!” We didn’t like it, Pat, it was too studenty …’

‘There’s no need to go over all that was said, you probably heard most of it, but to cut a long story short we have only heard from Cathy once since she went to London. I always imply – well, let’s be honest, I always tell people lies and say that we’ve heard from her, but she wrote only once two weeks after she left.’

‘Did she say … ?’

‘She said that it had been a false alarm, that her dates had been wrong, that she was only a shorter time overdue than she thought and that everything was fine.’

There was a silence.

‘And did you believe her, Mum?’

‘No.’

‘Did you, Dad?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘It was too far for there to be a mistake?’

‘Well, she said she had left a specimen into Holles Street and they had said it was positive. They don’t make mistakes.’

‘But she says they did.’

‘No, she’s forgotten she told us that bit, I think.’

‘Oh.’

‘So we know no more than you do,’ Mum had said, spreading out her hands helplessly.

‘But why do you say everything’s all right … ?’

‘Because it will be one way or another, sometime, and we don’t want Cathy to have to walk back into a whole lot of complications. Keep it simple, is our motto.’

‘So what do you believe if you don’t believe what Cathy said?’

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘No, what do you think?’

‘Pat, either she had a termination or she is in fact
having the child, and as you so rightly pointed out to me, if she is having the baby it’s due this month.’

‘And we don’t know?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘We don’t even know where she is?’

‘No.’

Then Mum had started to cry, and she cried with her arms down on the table and her head on top of them. Right into the dishes and the food. And Dad had stood up and come over and patted her awkwardly on one side and Pat had patted her awkwardly on the other.

‘It’s all right, Peg,’ Dad had said, over and over.

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Pat had said, over and over.

*   *   *

It had been a hard thing to sit your Leaving Certificate not knowing where your sister was, whether she was alive or dead, and not knowing if you were an aunt or not. But Pat had gone on and done it: she had got all her Honours and plenty of points. Peggy and Hugh’s third daughter was on her way to University College, Dublin, registering as a student in Belfield.

Cathy wrote home that year just before Christmas. She said she had seen enough of other people’s miseries in her case-load in London to make her realise that most of life’s troubles were caused by families. She would like to say very sincerely that she
had been entirely to blame for any little fracas they had had. She asked forgiveness and if they liked she would love to come home for Christmas, but since she had been so difficult and stayed out of touch for so long, over a year, she could well understand if they said no. She gave her address for them to reply. It was in Hackney. Mum and Dad had sent a telegram five minutes after the letter arrived. The telegram had read, ‘Welcome home, darling Cathy, to the silliest parents and the happiest Christmas ever.’

Cathy had also written to Pat.

‘You may well wonder what the Prodigal thinks she’s up to, and I don’t want to put your nose out of joint. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, if you want to know anything, when I see you, and if you have no time for me I’ll understand that too. It was utterly selfish of me to go away and leave you as a teenager, in your last year at school, to cope with all the trauma and drama. But when there’s a crisis people only think of themselves, or I did anyway. I hope the reunion won’t be a damp squib. I haven’t kept in touch with most of my friends, so can I ask you to fill the house a bit with people so that we don’t become too hot-house and raise our family expectations too high? I’ll stop asking and taking soon and start giving, I promise.’

Pat had thought this was very sensible. She asked her College friends in on the evening that Cathy came back. Mum had gone to the airport to meet her and by
the time Pat had come home conversation was quite normal. In fact, so normal it was almost frightening. It was as if Cathy had never gone away, as if no mystery hung over the events of the past year. Cathy had said that Pat looked smashing, and that students must be dressing better than in her day, and there wasn’t time for much more conversation because they had to get the mulled wine ready, which involved a lot of conversation about what you did to mull it, and how to ensure you didn’t boil the alcohol out of it. Pat had been startled to see that they were all laughing quite naturally in the kitchen when Dad had said he should test each batch they made, just in case the flavouring needed adjusting. ‘You haven’t changed, Dad,’ Cathy had laughed, and nobody made any flicker of an eyelid as the moment passed and Cathy’s long absence had now sunk into the collective memory. It could be mentioned without being questioned.

It had been like that all that Christmas, and nothing seemed more natural at the end of the holiday than for Cathy to say that she would be coming back for good as soon as she had found a replacement for herself. She was going to work in Ian’s office; they had a vacancy in a couple of months. Pat had been puzzled when she saw Cathy and Ian Kennedy strolling around the wintry wilderness of garden, plucking at bushes and pointing out what should be done with hard, frozen-looking flowerbeds. What was going on inside that red head of Ian Kennedy’s? Did he not
wonder whether Cathy had given birth to his child in London all by herself in a hospital with no friends to come and visit her? Did he not worry about his child, their child, being given to an adoption society and never knowing what it should have known?

Did Ian Kennedy wonder whether Cathy had gone long, long ago to a doctor in England in order to organise a termination of pregnancy and then overnight in one of those nursing homes everyone knew about, where simple minor surgery under anaesthetic would ensure that Cathy and Ian’s child didn’t ever come into being? Surely he wasn’t so foolish as to think that a girl could be pregnant, disappear for over a year and have some vague belief that the pregnancy was all a false alarm.

People were really behaving more and more peculiarly, Pat decided. The older they got the vaguer they became. Ethna’s letters now had nice bland welcoming bits about Cathy in them. Had she forgotten all that earlier stuff about punishment, and hardening her heart, and praying for her? Once people got any way settled they seemed to lose touch with reality and built themselves a comfortable little world like a Wendy House entirely of their own creation.

*   *   *

She had told this to Rory a few times, and he had tried to understand it. But Rory thought that her whole life was a fraud, and that anyone who owned
any kind of private house was already out of touch with society. Rory was in her Economics tutorial, by far the most brilliant student of his year, a great thorn in a lot of University flesh. Rory had economic arguments for revolution which could not be faulted. Rory agreed with Pat that the whole Cathy business was very unreal. Rory said he loved Pat, and Pat was very sure that she loved Rory.

*   *   *

‘It’s a mistake to get too involved with anyone your first year in College,’ Cathy had said. ‘It ties you down, you should have the freedom to roam round and see who you like and who you don’t. You should get to know a lot of people, not just sticking together two by two as if you were the animals going into the ark.’ Pat didn’t like this remark. It was too reminiscent of Cathy saying she couldn’t be tied down to marry Ian. It also implied a criticism of Rory. And that was not allowed.

There was nothing that Mum and Dad could find fault with in Rory; they wanted to, but they couldn’t actually put a finger on anything. He certainly didn’t distract her from her work; in fact he insisted that she work harder than she was prepared to. He said her essays weren’t sufficiently researched; he lent her books, he came with her to the library and sat opposite her. It was easier to do the damn stuff than to find excuses. He didn’t keep
her out at all night parties. He had explained to Mum and Dad that he didn’t drink much so there wouldn’t be any danger of drunken driving late at night in his little beat-up car. When they went away to conferences or student festivals in Cork or Galway, Rory always managed to drop the one phrase which would reassure Mum and Dad about the set-up. ‘I’ll leave Pat at the girls’ house first and then she can settle in and I’ll go off and find where they’re putting the lads up …’ Some trivial little remark which would prevent Mum and Dad from wondering what exactly the score was.