‘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 e
xactly the score was.
The score was exactly as Rory described it for a long time.
‘I suppose you think it’s silly not to,’ Pat had said.
‘Silly, no. Wasteful, yes,’ Rory had said. ‘It’s up to you entirely what you would like to do. I don’t ever believe in putting on the pressure. Too much of what’s wrong is wrong because people felt forced to do things for approval. But I think you’re wrong. It would give us both so much pleasure and it would hurt exactly nobody. We aren’t betraying anyone, we can be sure that we aren’t irresponsibly conceiving a child we don’t want. So wasteful is all I think I’d say it was.’
She adored Rory, his intensity and his boyish enthusiasms. She went to the Family Planning Clinic. She knew the doctor who was on duty that day. It was a friend of her father’s. ‘Glad to see you, that’s a good sensible girl,’ the friend of Dad’s had said. No explanations asked for, no curiosity, no condemnation. It was all so simple. Why hadn’t Cathy done this? They had clinics, even in her time.
Cathy was still a mystery. There she was, living at home so calmly. If anyone ever asked about the Common Market Legal course she was meant to have done, she would shake her head and say that she hadn’t done it after all, she had worked for the Council in East London. Mum had been right in her way to have kept things simple, to have rocked no boats. Cathy came back and stepped in more or less where she had got out. It was just that time, all those months that remained as inexplicable. What had she been doing, what had she been thinking? She was so placid now, sometimes going out to the theatre with Ian, sometimes with other people. Holidaying with two girls in the Greek islands, sitting with Mum and Dad sometimes in the evenings looking at television.
Pat had insisted on Rory discussing it. ‘Is it natural for them not to mention it? Is it normal? I mean, there she is at home, and nobody ever once refers to the fact that she left home pregnant and stayed away from home for fourteen months and came back and everything is as you were.’
‘Um.’ Rory was reading.
‘But why, why do they say nothing? It’s like not noticing someone is naked or not referring to someone being in a car crash or in gaol. It’s not real.’
‘Um. I know,’ he said.
‘But they don’t seem to want to know, it’s only me, it’s only me that wants to know.’
‘Well, why don’t you ask her then?’ Rory said.
* * *
‘Cathy, did you have any problems with the Pill, you know, have you had to change brand or anything?’
Cathy looked up from the papers she was studying. She was sitting at the big desk in her bedroom, which she had converted into a kind of study.
‘No, I was never on the Pill, so it didn’t occur.’
‘Never on the Pill, at all?’
‘No.’
‘How amazing.’
‘Pat, you are twenty, going on twenty-one. You aren’t actually a wise old sociologist commenting on the funny things society does.’ Cathy laughed good-naturedly as she spoke.
‘Yes, but … not ever?’
‘Not ever. If I had been, that little incident which you may remember would never have happened …’
‘Yes, well, after the little incident … ?’
Pat felt she was treading on a minefield. She had to remain light-hearted and casual.
‘Oh, after the little incident, I didn’t … how shall I put it … well, I didn’t actually need the services of a contraceptive.’
‘Not ever?’
‘No, not ever.’ Cathy smiled, relaxed and calm as if they had been talking about the replanting of the herbaceous border.
‘Oh.’
‘So I’m not much help. But you could go to the Family Planning Clinic, tell them if it doesn’t suit you. They’ll change it.’
‘Yes, good idea. Cathy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Remember that time … the little incident … what happened?’
‘How do you mean, what happened?’
‘I mean, did you go through with it? Did you have the baby?’
‘Did I what?’
‘Did you have the baby? In London?’
‘Hey, what is this? A joke?’
‘No, seriously. I wish you’d tell me. I hate us all pretending, it’s so artificial.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘When you went off to London, did you actually have the baby?’
‘No, of course I didn’t, are you feeling all right? What an extraordinary question to ask. Have a baby? Where is it, then, if I had it, was I meant to have left it in a telephone box?’
‘Well, what did you do? Did you have an abortion?’
‘Seriously, is this some kind of game? Of course I didn’t. What on earth are you saying … ?’
‘But you were pregnant.’
‘No, I thought I was. I wasn’t.’
‘You were, Dad knows, he said so when you were gone.’
‘Oh no, he can’t have, I wrote telling them it was a false alarm.’
‘He didn’t believe you.’
‘Listen, don’t start stirring up a lot of trouble over nothing. It was nothing. Why all this interrogation?’
‘Is that what put you off the whole thing, fellows and making love?’ Pat asked. ‘They say people can get very depressed.’
‘I didn’t have an abortion, and I wasn’t very heavily into fellows and making love, and I haven’t gone off fellows.’
‘That’s all you’ll say.’
‘Jesus Lord, what is this, Pat, one of Rory’s revolutionary tribunals? You’ve asked me about ten questions. I’ve answered all of them honestly – which is rather good of me since none of them are any of your business.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, you’re not, you want some awful group where everyone sits and tells the most god-awful, self-centred, boring details of what they did and what they thought and what they felt and what they did then, and what they thought then and what they felt then … honestly, I can’t stand that kind of thing. Even Woody Allen laughs at it, for heaven’s sake. It’s not going to solve the world’s problems.’
‘What is?’
‘I don’t know, but a lot of people’s are solved by playing down dramas rather than creating them.’
‘And is that what you’re doing?’
‘I’m refusing to invent them, refusing to make myself into a tragedy queen.’
‘I’m sorry I spoke.’
‘I’m not, but I’m glad you’ve stopped.’ Cathy grinned.
Pat gave a watery grin back.
* * *
‘So you see, she’s got to be lying. Somewhere along the line she told a lie.’ Pat frowned as she ticked the items off on her fingers.
‘There are times you can be very boring, Pat,’ said Rory.
She was hurt and upset. ‘You’re often analysing what people say and why society forces us to tell lies and role-play. Why is it boring when I do it?’
‘Because it’s repetitive and it’s slapdash.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, you haven’t even included all the possibilities, have you?’
‘I have. Either she was not pregnant, or she was and she had either a baby or an abortion.’
‘She could have had a miscarriage, you clown.’
* * *
All that had been a year ago. Pat remembered the conversation word for word. They had been all at the turning points of things somehow. The very next day, the day following the interrogation, Cathy said that she and Ian were going to get married. The news coincided with a letter from Ethna. She was leaving the order. And everyone might remember that she had spoken quite a lot of Father Fergus. Well, Fergus was in Rome at the moment and the laicisation process was well under way. She and Fergus would be married in Rome during the summer. Then they would come home, possibly try to get a teaching job. It shouldn’t be hard. Both of them had a lot of qualifications and a lot of experience.
‘It’s all working out as
you want, isn’t it, Mum?’ Pat had said.
‘It’s what all you girls want that’s important, you know that,’ Mum had said; she was laughing at herself a little, and she tried to take the triumphant look off her face.
That time had been a turning point for Pat too. Rory had told her about the South American woman, Cellina. Pat had liked Cellina; she had helped her to organise a solidarity campaign for fellow students back home, and she had introduced her to Rory. She had been pleased when Rory had liked Cellina. She had never seen exactly how much he had liked Cellina until he told her.
She had stopped taking the Pill. To use Cathy’s marvellous, old-fashioned phrase, she felt she didn’t need the services of a contraceptive. She did a lot of work on her thesis, and she did a great deal of work at home too. A family wedding for Cathy, with the Kennedys screaming their delight as loudly as Mum and Dad. Then there was the trip to Rome. Why not? If Ethna was doing something as huge as this they must all be there, and they were. Mother had Ethna back, and she had Cathy back.
But she was about to lose Pat. Temporarily perhaps, who could tell? Rory had come back from Bonn where he and Cellina had been living. He had come home alone. They had met a lot during the two weeks he was back. It seemed silly and wasteful not to go to bed with him. They were giving each other a lot of pleasure and they weren’t hurting anyone, since Cellina would never know. And were they betraying anyone? The word betrayal is such a subjective one.
But now Rory had gone back to Bonn, and Holles Street, which is never wrong over such things, had said Positive. And Pat had learned enough over the years not to believe the Problem Pages. It would be best if she went to London, on her own. Connected with work. And the possibility of getting into the London School of Economics – yes, that would be a good one. She had often spoken of the LSE. Mum and Dad would be interested in that as a project.
And as long as she wrote regularly and seemed happy, that was the main thing.
4
MURMURS IN MONTROSE
Seven people woke up that morning and remembered that this was the day Gerry Moore came out of the nursing home. He wouldn’t be cured, of course. You were never cured if you were an alcoholic. Four of them shrugged and thought that perhaps he wasn’t really an alcoholic – these things were so exaggerated nowadays. There was a time when a man took a drop too much, but now it was all endogynous, and in the glands, and in the bloodstream, and there were allergies and addictions that had never existed before. Two people knew very well that he was an alcoholic, and the remaining one, waking up that morning, looking forward to his release, had never believed for one moment that there was anything the matter with Gerry. He had gone into that home for a good rest, and that’s all there was to it.