“Well, we always have Declan to stand up to her for us all.” Josie was good at looking on the bright side.
Not for long, Declan thought to himself.
· · ·
In the surgery that morning all the patients seemed to need to tell him some story or recall some instance where he had helped them. If Declan were to believe a quarter of the praise he got that morning, he would have been a very vain man. He just wished they had not chosen today to tell him all this. Today, of all days, when he was just about to change his life and leave them all.
He booked a table at Anton’s restaurant for dinner. He wanted to tell Fiona in good surroundings, not in the house they shared with his parents, where everything could be heard in some degree anyway.
“How did you hear of us, sir?” the maître d’ asked.
Declan was about to say that Lisa Kelly talked of little else, but something made him keep this information to himself.
“We read about it in the papers,” he said vaguely.
“I hope we will live up to your expectations, sir,” said Teddy.
“Looking forward to it,” said Declan.
It seemed a long day until Dingo would come to pick them up at seven.
A couple of weeks before, Dingo had been to a party in a Greek restaurant and danced unwisely on some broken plates. Declan had tweezed the worst bits out of the soles of Dingo’s feet. Money had not changed hands. It didn’t, usually, in Dingo’s case, but an offer of four trips in his van was agreed to be a fair exchange. This meant they could have a bottle of champagne when he told Fiona the great news.
Just before he left the surgery, Noel came by.
“Just three minutes of your time, Declan, please.”
“Sure, come on in.”
“You’re always so good-natured, Declan. Is it real or is it an act?”
“Sometimes it’s an act, but sometimes, like now, it’s real.” Declan smiled encouragingly.
“I’ll come straight to the point then. I’m a bit worried about Lisa. I don’t know what to do.…”
“What’s wrong?” Declan was gentle.
“She’s lost complete touch with reality when it comes to this Anton. I mean, she doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not. Listen, I should know. I know what denial is. She’s right in the center of it.”
“Is she drinking or anything?” Declan wondered whether Noel might have developed an alcoholic’s sudden lack of tolerance for any kind of drinking.
“No, no, nothing like that, just an obsession. She’s deluding herself all the time. There’s no future there.”
“It’s tough, all right.”
“She needs help, Declan. She’s ruining her life. You’re going to have to refer her to someone.”
“I’m not her doctor and she hasn’t asked anyone to refer her anywhere.”
“Oh, you were never one to play it by the book, Declan. Get somebody … some sort of psychiatrist to throw an eye over her.”
“I can’t, Noel. It doesn’t work that way. I can’t go in off the side of the road and say: Lisa, Noel thinks you are heading in the wrong direction, so let’s go and have a nice soothing visit to a shrink.”
“It should be the way things work, and anyway, you’d know how to say it.” Noel was pleading with him.
“But she hasn’t done anything out of line. Your feelings about all this do you credit, but honestly there’s no way that outside interference is going to help. Can’t you get her to see sense? You live with her—you’re flatmates.”
“Sure, who would listen to a word I say?” Noel asked. “You always did, to give you your due. You used to make me feel I was a normal sort of a person and not a madman.”
“And you are, Noel.” Declan wondered was there anyone left who hadn’t told him how important he was to them.
Fiona was in great form. She said she had starved herself at lunchtime. Barbara had wanted them to go for lunch together for a long chat about the complexity of men, but Fiona had said that she was going to Anton’s that evening, so Barbara said there was no point in talking about the complexity of men to her anyway, that she had got a jewel of a husband and there weren’t enough of them to go round.
She was all dressed up in her new outfit: a pink dress with a black jacket. Declan looked at her proudly as they were settled in at the restaurant. She looked so beautiful. She had a style equal to any of the other guests. He took her face in his hands and kissed her for a long time.
“Declan, really! What will people think?” she asked.
“They’ll think we are alive and that we are happy,” he said simply, and suddenly he made the second biggest decision of his life. The first had been to pursue Fiona to the end of the world. This one was different. It was about what he was not going to do.
He wouldn’t tell her now about the letter from Dr. Harris. In fact, he might never tell her. It suddenly seemed so clear to him.
“I was thinking … I was wondering should we buy Number Twenty-two in the Crescent? It would be a home of our own, and we’d still be beside everyone.”
Chapter Eight
“I have a bit of a problem,” Frank Ennis said to Clara Casey as he picked her up at the heart clinic.
“Let me guess,” she said, laughing. “We used one can of air freshener too many in the cloakroom last month?”
“No nothing like that,” he said impatiently, as he negotiated the traffic.
“No, don’t tell me. I’ll work it out. It’s the brass plates on the door. We got a new tin of brass-cleaning stuff and I forgot to ask you? That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Truly, Clara, I don’t know why you persist in painting me as this penny-pinching sort of clerk instead of the hospital manager. My worry has nothing to do with you and your extraordinary and lavish expenditure on your clinic.”
“On our clinic, Frank. It’s part of St. Brigid’s.”
“I’d say it’s an independent republic—always was from day one.”
“How petty and childish of you,” she said disapprovingly.
“Clara, are you wedded to this concert tonight?” he asked suddenly.
“Is anything wrong?” She looked at him sharply. Frank never canceled arrangements.
“No, nothing is wrong, exactly, but I do need to talk to you,” he said.
“Will you promise that it’s not about boxes of tissues and packets of paper clips and huge areas of wastefulness that are bleeding your hospital dry?” Clara asked.
He actually smiled. “No, nothing like that.”
“All right, then. Sure, we’ll cancel the concert. Will we go out to a meal somewhere?”
“Come home with me.”
“We have to eat somewhere, Frank, and you don’t cook.”
“I asked a caterer to leave in a dinner for us,” he said, embarrassed.
“You were so sure I’d say yes?”
“Well, in a lot of areas of life you are quite reasonable—normal, even.” He was struggling to be fair.
“Caterers. I see …”
“Well, they’re quite young. Semi-professional, I’d say. Haven’t learned to charge fancy prices yet.”
“Slave labor? Ripe for exploitation, yes?” Clara wondered.
“Oh, Clara, will you give over just for one night?” Frank Ennis begged.
Maud and Simon were in Frank’s apartment. They had set a table and brought their own paper napkins and a rose.
“Is that over the top?” Simon worried.
“No, he’s going to propose to her. I know he is,” Maud said.
“Did he tell you?”
“Of course he didn’t, but why else is he making a meal for a woman in his flat?” To Maud it was obvious.
They had laid out the smoked salmon with the avocado mousse and a little rosette carved from a Sicilian lemon. The chicken-and-mustard dish was in the oven. An apple tart and cream were on the sideboard.
“I hope to God she says yes,” Simon said. “It’s a heavy outlay for that ma
n, all this food and the cost of us and everything.”
“She must be fairly old.…” Maud was thoughtful. “I mean, Mr. Ennis is as old as the hills. It’s amazing that he still has the energy to propose, let’s not even mention anything else!”
“No, let’s not,” said Simon, with relief. They let themselves out of the house and posted the keys back through the door.
Clara had always thought Frank’s apartment rather bleak and soulless. Tonight, though, it looked different. There was subdued lighting and a lovely dinner table prepared.
And she noticed the red rose. This wasn’t Frank’s speed. She wondered whether the young caterers had dreamed it up. Suddenly she felt a great thudlike shock. He couldn’t possibly be about to propose to her. Could he?
Surely not. Frank and she had been very clear about where they were going, which was a commitment-free relationship. They were both able to go out with other people. Sometimes when they went away for a weekend, such as the time they had that holiday in the Scottish Highlands, they stayed in the same room and had what Clara might have described as a limited, but pleasant, sex life. That was if she were to tell anyone about it. But she told nobody. Not her great friend Hilary in the clinic, nor her oldest friend, Dervla.
Certainly not Clara’s mother, who made occasional inquiries about her new escort. Not her daughters, who were inclined to think that their poor old mother was long past that sort of thing. Not her ex-husband, Alan, who was always hovering in the background, waiting for her to come running back to him.
No. Frank could not have got the wires so hopelessly crossed? Definitely not!
He went into his study and came out with some papers.
“This all looks very nice.” Clara admired the place.
“Well, good. Good. And thank you for agreeing to change the plans so readily.”
“Not at all. It must be important.…” Clare wondered what she would say if he really had lost the run of himself and proposed. It would obviously be no, but how to put it without hurting him or making him look ridiculous. That was the problem.
Frank poured her a glass of wine and then passed the papers over to her.
“This is my problem, Clara. I’ve had a letter from a boy in Australia. He says he’s my son.”
Simon and Maud had asked Muttie to test out a recipe they had for koulibiac for them that evening. In fact, they both knew the dish worked perfectly well. They just wanted to give themselves an excuse for going to the trouble for him and to give him a role to play. They showed Muttie carefully how they had folded the pastry leaves and prepared the cooked salmon, rice and hard-boiled eggs.
He watched with interest. “When I was young, if we ever got a bit of salmon we’d be so delighted that we’d never wrap it up in rice and eggs and all manner of things!” He shook his head in wonder.
“Ah, well, nowadays, Muttie, they like things complicated,” Maud explained.
“Is that why you’re always talking about making your own pasta instead of buying it in the shops like everyone else?”
“Not a bit,” Simon butted in with a laugh. “She’s interested in pasta because she’s interested in Marco!”
“I hardly know him,” said Maud unconvincingly.
“But you’d like to know him more,” Simon responded definitely.
“Who’s Marco, anyway?” asked Muttie.
“His father is Ennio Romano—you know, Ennio’s restaurant, the place we were telling you about,” Simon added.
“We were hoping to get work there,” said Maud.
“Some of us were praying we get work there,” Simon added, laughing at his sister’s blushes.
Maud tried to look businesslike. “It’s an Italian restaurant; it makes sense for us to know how to make our own pasta. And even if we don’t get work there, it would be useful for our home catering. The clients would be very impressed.”
“And thinking they’re knocking people’s eyes out with envy,” Simon said.
“But what’s the point of asking people to your house and then upsetting them?” For Muttie this was a real problem.
The twins sighed.
“I wonder, has he asked her yet?” Maud said.
“If he doesn’t want his dinner burned to a crisp, I’d say he has.”
“Who’s this?” Muttie asked with interest.
“A desperately old man called Frank Ennis is proposing to some very old woman.”
“Frank Ennis? Does he work up in St. Brigid’s?”
“Yes, he does. Do you know him, Muttie?”
“Not personally, but I know all about him from Fiona. Apparently, he is their natural enemy in the clinic where she works. Declan knows him too. He says your man is not a bad old skin, just obsessed with work.”
“That will all end if he marries the old lady,” Simon said thoughtfully.
“It will change for the old lady too, remember,” Maud reminded them.
“Has he paid you?” Muttie asked suddenly.
“Yes. He left an envelope for us,” Simon confirmed.
“Good. That’s fine, then. I hear from Fiona that he’s a total Scrooge and won’t pay his bills until the last moment.”
“He did mention thirty days’ grace,” Simon said.
“You didn’t tell me!” Maud said.
“I didn’t need to. I said to him we operated a money-up-front, no-credit business. He totally understood.”
Simon was immensely proud of his negotiating skills and his command of the language of commerce.
Clara Casey was looking at the letter that Frank had handed to her.
“Are you sure you want me to read it?” she asked. “He didn’t write it to me.…”
“He didn’t know about you,” Frank explained.
“But the question is what does he know about you?” Clara asked gently.
“Read it, Clara.”
So she began to read a letter from a young man:
You will be surprised to hear from me. My name is Des Raven and I believe that I am actually your son. This will probably strike terror into your heart and you will expect someone searching for a fortune turning up on your doorstep. Let me say at once that this is not at all the case.
I live very happily here in New South Wales, where I’m a teacher and—just to reassure you—where I will go on living!
If my presence in Dublin will cause embarrassment to you and your family, I will quite understand. I just hoped it might be possible for us to meet at least once when I am in Ireland. My mother, Rita Raven, died last year. She got a heavy pneumonia and didn’t have it properly treated.
I have not lived at home for the past six years while I went to teachers’ training college, but I always came home once a week and cooked her a meal. Sure, she put the washing through the machine for me, but she liked to do that. Truly she did.
Funny thing, I never asked her any questions about where I came from and what kind of a guy was my father. I didn’t ask because she didn’t seem very easy about the whole thing. She would say she had been very young and very foolish at the time and hadn’t it all worked out so well. She said she never regretted one day of having me, which was good. And Australia had been good to her. She arrived here pregnant and penniless when she had me and then she trained as a hotel receptionist.
She had a couple of romances: one fellow lasted six years. I didn’t much like him but he made her happy … and then I think something marginally more interesting for him turned up. She had a lot of good friends and kept in touch with her married sister, who lives in England. She was forty-two when she died, although she claimed to be thirty-nine and I’d say, all in all, she had a good and happy life.
Of you, Frank Ennis, I know nothing except your name on my birth certificate. I found you on the Internet and called the hospital from here and asked were you still working there and they said yes.
So here goes with the letter!
You only have my assurance that I will not make trouble for you and your present w
ife and family. I also know that you didn’t know anything about where I lived. Mum was very adamant about that. She told me that every single birthday so that I wouldn’t expect a gift.
I truly hope that we will meet.
Until then …
Des Raven
Clara put the letter down and looked over at Frank. His eyes were too bright and there was a tear on his face. She got up and went across to him with her arms out.
“Isn’t this wonderful, Frank!” she cried. “You’ve got a son! Isn’t that the best news in the world?”
“Well, yes, but we’ve got to be cautious,” Frank began.
“What do we have to be cautious about? There was a woman called Rita Raven, wasn’t there?”
“Yes, but …”
“And she disappeared off the scene?”
“She went to some cousins in the U.S.A.,” he said.
“Or to some non-cousins in Australia …,” Clara corrected him.
“But it will all have to be checked out …,” he began to bluster.
She deliberately misunderstood him. “Of course the airlines and everything, but let him do that, Frank—the young are much better at getting flights online than we are. The main thing is what time is it in Australia? You can ring him straightaway.” She busied herself removing the plastic wrap from the smoked salmon.
He hadn’t moved. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her he had had the letter for two weeks and hadn’t been able to decide what to do.
“Come on, Frank, it’s surely morning there and if you leave it any longer he’ll have gone out to school. Call him now, will you?”
“But we’ll have to talk about it?”
“Like what do we have to talk about?”
“But don’t you mind?”
“Mind, Frank? I’m delighted. The only thing I mind is you, after all these years, having to talk to an answering machine.”
He looked at her, bewildered. There were so many things that he would never understand.
“How was Frank last night?” Hilary asked Clara the next day at the clinic. Only Hilary was ever given any information, and she was the only one who dared to ask.
“Amazing,” Clara said and left it there.