Whitethorn Woods Page 31

  ‘I have a car, and there will soon be a new road so it won’t take long,’ I said lightly while beating down my huge disappointment at his reaction.

  ‘But darling, those distances! I mean, I thought … I would have thought …’

  ‘I’ll be well able to do it,’ I said, trying hard not to cry.

  ‘But why, Caroline my angel, why would you want to take on all this when there’s so much for us to do here together?’

  I managed to say nothing, which was a very great achievement. What was there to do together? Nothing.

  For me alone in the house there might have been overseeing further decoration, repainting, new upholstery. The building of a conservatory, possibly the extension of the paved patio for more guests to drink kir royale at one of our summer dinner parties.

  ‘Why aren’t you speaking, Caroline my angel?’ he asked me, mystified.

  ‘I feel a bit dizzy, Laurence, I’m going to bed,’ I said and pretended to be asleep when he joined me full of concern and a lot of face and arm stroking.

  Next day he brought the subject up at breakfast.

  But I had had seven sleepless hours thinking about it all and so I was ready for him.

  ‘I’m going to get my qualifications and do my six hours a week in St Martin’s, Laurence, and at the end of the year we will discuss whether I shall work there full time or not. It may indeed turn out that they don’t want me. Or that the distances are indeed too long. But this learning year is something I can’t and will not give up.’

  And then I moved on in a seemingly effortless way to talk about a barbecue that we were having the following weekend when Alistair would be home from his school.

  I thought I saw Laurence look at me admiringly as he might look at a fellow lawyer who had made a good point at a case conference.

  But maybe not. I’m always hopelessly optimistic.

  And the year was indeed hard, there is no denying that. I have to say that I remember hours of night-driving in wet weather, with the windscreen wipers clacking and my being on the mobile phone barking instructions about the meal.

  Laurence did become a partner and the man who was finding himself in Arizona did indeed go on the quest without his wife but with a very young temp from the office.

  My work at the school was magnificent, we taught people to speak. Over and over, we actually gave a vocabulary and a life to the wordless and it was the most exciting thing I had ever done in my life. I loved it in St Martin’s and they appeared to like me, and as the exhausting year ended they told me that they would definitely offer me a full-time post there.

  They wondered, would I like a bedsit in the school as several teachers had, just in case the weather was bad and the travelling distance, traffic jams and long hours on the motorway were too much?

  I said I would let them know. Very soon.

  We had a sort of super-glitzy dinner party for the partners and wives, and I must have got in the door twenty minutes before the first guests arrived. I had just time to change my clothes, leave the extra cream that I had bought on the way home in the kitchen, rearrange the place names, and set out the shop-bought canapés on big oval dishes with wild flowers from St Martin’s gardens scattered amongst them and flat leaf parsley sprinkled on top.

  ‘Isn’t your wife a genius?’ one of the partners said to Laurence.

  ‘Lovely, lovely, Caroline.’ He raised his glass at me.

  ‘And she has a worthwhile job as well,’ one of the wives said in a tinny voice.

  ‘Yes, I can’t think why she does it,’ Laurence said.

  I looked at him, shocked.

  ‘I mean, all it really does is make sure that my income tax situation is even worse than it was. I mean, when they see “wife’s earned income” they are all of a flutter and come down on me like a ton of bricks. And I mean, for what in the end? But she will do it. Won’t you, darling?’ He looked at me indulgently.

  I smiled back at him.

  I didn’t hate him. Of course I didn’t. You couldn’t hate Laurence. And there were ways in which he was right. Maybe I was just trying to show him I had a life of my own. Possibly it was all a waste of time.

  There were plenty of people to teach the deaf. Maybe the deaf were even happier when they were called the deaf-and-dumb; when we weren’t trying to get them to breathe properly and force sounds out of them.

  Who knows?

  I would make up my mind next week. I would put it out of my head for now.

  We talked about the new road. Voices were raised. Some said it was all barbarous, others said it was totally essential. I mentioned the old well in Whitethorn Woods. Voices were raised still higher.

  Some said that it was a ludicrous and dangerous superstition, others said it was part and parcel of the old tradition of the country. So I moved them seamlessly on to something we would all be agreed on, like the price of property. I also produced the truffles that I had bought during my lunch hour and brought home and bashed up slightly to make them look uneven, then rolled in cocoa and chopped nuts. Everyone thought they were home-made.

  ‘Lovely, Caroline.’ Laurence raised his glass to me again.

  ‘Laurence,’ I said, raising my own glass.

  My heart felt like lead.

  It had probably been a lot of running round after nothing, when I had thought it was a great career. I managed not to sigh at the thought of a dream that had not been achieved. The world is full of people who don’t get their dream.

  I wouldn’t do all the clearing-up tonight. Tomorrow was not a particularly busy day.

  Next day when I had left the house gleaming, I drove slowly to St Martin’s. I had been asked to sit in on an assessment of a scholarship child. A girl called Melanie who sounded very bright.

  It wouldn’t be very demanding and what’s more I would enjoy it. It might after all be one of the last assessments that I would ever do.

  Funny, isn’t it, the way you never know when something is going to happen. When I saw what that child Melanie had done already and how much more we could do now with her, there was simply no decision to be made.

  We would take her in St Martin’s. I knew this as clearly as I knew I would be here to watch her grow in confidence. This is what I wanted to do and would do.

  Just as Laurence wanted to run a law practice.

  There were no more grey areas. It wasn’t going to be the end of the world. There would be no argument, no confrontation. All over the country people were following a dream and having a marriage. It didn’t have to be one or the other. We would work it out. Of course we would.

  Strangely the bright little girl seemed to understand, it was just as if she could see the machinery in my mind clicking into place.

  ‘You are coming back then?’ she asked me casually, just moments after I had decided.

  And I smiled the first real smile for weeks. Because now I knew it was settled.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Road, the Woods and the Well – 3

  Eddie Flynn waited outside the church after Mass until he saw his brother leaving.

  ‘Brian, can I have a word?’ he began.

  ‘Not if that word is “annulment”,’ the priest said without stopping in his progress towards Skunk Slattery’s for the paper and then back to his house.

  ‘You know it isn’t.’ Eddie was almost running to keep up. ‘Hang on a bit, this isn’t the four-minute mile.’

  ‘I’m going for my breakfast, I’m hungry, I have a lot to do today, talk away if you want to …’ Father Flynn continued to move purposefully along the road, greeting parishioners at every turn.

  ‘You’re so well-known here you should go into politics,’ Eddie grumbled as they paused for Father Flynn to wish this one success at an examination and that one good luck with his new greyhound.

  ‘Right. A cup of coffee?’ he said when they got back to his kitchen.

  ‘I thought you’d have someone to cook your breakfast. Haven’t you got a Russian or something wor
king for you?’ Eddie seemed disappointed.

  His brother had put three pieces of bacon and a tomato in a frying pan and was turning them expertly. ‘Josef, who is Latvian actually as it happens, not Russian, looks after the canon, not me.’

  ‘The canon should be in a home for the bewildered,’ Eddie said.

  ‘Naomi didn’t have much luck with him either, is that right?’ Brian Flynn smiled.

  ‘Leave it, Brian. I wanted to ask you about the well.’

  ‘The well?’

  ‘The well, man, it’s in your territory, for heaven’s sake, the holy well, the sacred well, whatever. I’m asking, will they let it go?’

  ‘Will who let it go?’ Father Flynn was confused.

  ‘God, Brian, you’re getting very thick, will your lot let it go, the Church, religion, the Pope, all that?’

  ‘Oh, my lot, I see,’ said Father Flynn. ‘The Pope has never mentioned it to my certain knowledge, or if he has, the burden of what he said hasn’t trickled down to us here. Are you sure you don’t want a piece of bacon?’

  ‘No, I don’t want any bacon, and you shouldn’t be having any either, clogging up your arteries.’ Eddie Flynn was very disapproving.

  ‘Yes, but then I don’t have so many social demands on my life, I don’t have to keep so many ladies happy.’

  ‘I’m serious, Brian.’

  ‘So am I, Eddie. The best part of my day is often sitting here peacefully at my breakfast reading the paper. And here you are in my kitchen picking on everything I say or do …’

  ‘Some people asked me to join up with them in a syndicate,’ Eddie said in a tone of great gravity. He seemed to be waiting for an admiring response.

  ‘But isn’t that what you do, Eddie? You’re a businessman, you’re always joining up with people over this or that.’

  ‘This is my chance to make real money, Brian. And boy, am I going to need real money. Do you know what this wedding is going to cost?’ Eddie seemed agitated.

  ‘A simple registry office wedding? Not much surely?’ Brian suggested.

  ‘Oh no, we have some dissident priest or other, and somebody is lending him a church to give a blessing in, there are going to be bridesmaids, groomsmen, a huge reception, the whole works. And then all the while I have Kitty sending me notes about school fees. God, I need this break, that’s why I have to know about the well.’

  ‘Listen to me, Eddie, I may very well as you say be thick but what do you have to know about the well?’

  ‘All right. I’ll tell you but it’s for your ears only, seal of the confessional and all that. The new road is all ready to go bar the shouting, and we’ve bought up a lot of land in little bits here and there. Everyone will have to negotiate with us when the compulsory purchase order goes out so we are sitting on a fortune. There’s only one snag: some of the lads are afraid the bloody well in the woods is going to balls things up.’

  ‘You may not approve of the well but I wouldn’t use that kind of language about it,’ Father Flynn said disapprovingly.

  ‘No, okay. But you know what I mean. And I know for a fact that you aren’t that convinced by the well either. But is it going to be an issue? That’s what we need to know. Nobody wants to take on a crowd of religious nutters.’

  ‘I know nothing about it.’

  ‘Of course you do, Brian.’

  ‘No, I don’t, I have managed to stay out of everything. Deliberately. I would not support either side in the issue. I got out of any involvement so you’re asking the one man in Rossmore who doesn’t have a view.’

  ‘But you’re the one who knows whether it will blow up and cause a fuss or if it will just die down. You have the feel for these things and we have to know. Now …’

  ‘We being the syndicate who are investing money in land?’

  ‘Don’t sneer at it, Father Flynn. Plenty of money was spent educating you as a priest, wasn’t it? And if I am financially secure that’s a weight off your back too.’

  ‘You’re not a weight on my back, Eddie, you never were.’ Father Flynn was extremely annoyed but he tried hard not to show it. ‘Now if that’s everything I have to go about my work.’

  ‘Work? What work?’ Eddie scoffed. ‘Sure, nobody is bothered about God these days, you have nothing to do. You’ve never really done a proper day’s work in your life.’

  ‘Fine, Eddie, I’m sure you’re right.’ He sighed wearily and packed his briefcase.

  He was going to visit his mother in her home with a series of old photographs which the counsellor had told Judy might jog her memory about the past. He was going to take Lilly Ryan and one of her sons to visit Aidan in the jail. Aidan Ryan apparently in a window of calm had relented enough to agree to talk to his wife.

  He was going to take Holy Communion to Marty Nolan and another old man out on that road; he was going to open a multicultural World Food Day in aid of world famine at St Ita’s; he was going to throw in the ball for a match between the Brothers School and St Michael’s; he was going to go out to Ferns and Heathers and admire their new prayer and meditation room. They didn’t call it a chapel but that’s where he said Mass on a Sunday for them.

  Maybe Eddie was right and it wasn’t really a proper day’s work. But it sure felt like it.

  *

  Judy Flynn had done eight days of praying at St Ann’s shrine. Just one more left.

  She had enjoyed her visit far more than she had ever expected she would. It had been a pleasure getting to know Brian again, he was such a good-natured young fellow, as he had always been, and the people here loved him. Her mother was lost in a strange, half waking, half sleeping world but had become markedly less hostile. Poor Eddie was being well and truly punished for having strayed from home – Judy and Kitty had many a laugh over the amazing problems he had on his hands with young Naomi. Kitty said she wouldn’t have him back if he crawled the whole way through Whitethorn Woods to ask her.

  Judy had tried to assist St Ann in the search for a man by going to the local bridge club in the Rossmore Hotel. She met two handsome men called Franklin and Wilfred. Con men, both of them, talking dreamily about a mobile phone service they were going to set up.

  Some day.

  They lived with an older lady who never went out because of some scandal, it was too complicated to work out, and anyway they were too shallow for her, so she left them to their plans.

  Judy worked out a satisfactory routine to her day. Visiting her mam, spending three hours in her hotel room doing her drawings with no distractions. She would have a cup of coffee with Kitty and then dress herself up for her walk to the well. On the way she would buy a newspaper and then later in the evening she would have a drink with Brian and he would tell her the business of the day. It was a restful way to live. She didn’t know why she had been in such flight from it for so many years.

  She got her hair shampooed at the smart Fabian’s. The young man who seemed to own the place told her that he was in love and hoped that he would marry before the year was out. This surprised her. She had been certain he was gay, but she had learned since coming here that nothing was ever as it seemed.

  ‘I’m hoping to get married too,’ she confided to him. ‘I’ve hired St Ann above at the well to help me find a husband.’

  ‘I’d say you’ll have no problem there.’ Fabian was flattering. ‘Beating off the offers is what you’ll be.’

  She was smiling as she thought of beating off all the offers. She picked up the newspaper in Slattery’s and brought it to the counter.

  ‘Just the usual, Sebastian,’ she said.

  ‘You’re very beautiful when you smile, Judy.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ she said, surprised.

  The man they all called Skunk Slattery wasn’t known for little pleasantries like this.

  ‘I mean it. I was wondering, would you be free perhaps any evening to have a … I mean, to … go … maybe we could have a meal together?’

  ‘That would be very nice, Sebastian,’ Judy said,
trying to work out his matrimonial status. She hadn’t heard Kitty saying anything about Mrs Skunk but then you never knew.

  ‘If you’re not sick of the food at the Rossmore Hotel, they do a very nice dinner,’ Skunk said eagerly. There couldn’t be a Mrs Skunk if he were taking her somewhere as open as that.

  ‘And what night would you suggest, Sebastian?’ she asked.

  ‘Should we strike while the iron is hot? Tonight at eight maybe?’ he said anxiously. ‘In case you have second thoughts or anything?’

  Judy walked up to the shrine with a spring in her step. Everything was going very well. She must ask people why they called him Skunk.

  Neddy Nolan said to Clare that eventually he must get in touch with his brothers in England about the land and see that they get something from it.

  ‘I don’t see why. Kit’s in jail, it can’t matter one way or the other to him, the other two haven’t been home in years either; we don’t even know where they are.’

  ‘But they have a right to share in whatever there is to share if we do have to sell,’ Neddy said.

  ‘What right, Neddy? Honestly now, what right? They never gave anything, never kept in touch, never knew or cared what happened to your father.’ Clare was very firm on this.

  ‘But things didn’t work out well for them, like they did for me.’ As always he saw the very best in everybody else.

  ‘You did it all yourself, Neddy, and you never forgot your father. Now your father is a man who wouldn’t have any such sentimentality about the rest of the family,’ Clare said. ‘They didn’t get up to deal with foxes in the hen-run, a sick cow having her calf in the upper field, rebuilding all the hedges and walls. They were never any part of getting your father’s meals, clearing up after him and bringing him out to see his friends.’

  Her face was full of loyalty to him and Neddy wondered again as he did so often how she could possibly love him so much.

  ‘Anyway, it may all come to nothing, this business about the road,’ he said, rather forlornly.

  ‘I wouldn’t rely on it, Neddy,’ said Clare, who had heard a great deal in the staffroom at St Ita’s, at the bridge club in the Rossmore Hotel, and when she left the big bag of laundry in for a service wash at the Fresh as a Daisy. Nowadays nobody was saying if the road came, they were saying when the road came. There had been a subtle change over the last few weeks.