ALSO BY MAEVE BINCHY
FICTION
Light a Penny Candle
Echoes
London Transports
The Lilac Bus
Firefly Summer
Silver Wedding
Circle of Friends
The Copper Beech
The Glass Lake
This Year It Will Be Different
Evening Class
The Return Journey
Tara Road
Scarlet Feather
Quentins
Nights of Rain and Stars
Whitethorn Woods
NONFICTION
Aches and Pains
In memory of my dear younger sister Renie.
And with great love and thanks to Gordon, who makes
the bad times bearable and the good times magical.
Prologue
Some projects take forever to get off the ground.
One of these was the disused storage depot that was owned by St. Brigid's Hospital. It was an unattractive cluster of warehouses around a yard. Once it had held supplies for the hospital, but it was in an awkward place, and new traffic regulations meant that it was a long and cumbersome journey through the Dublin streets to get from one place to the other.
It was a part of Dublin that still had its old workers’ cottages, and factories that had been transformed into apartment blocks. This part of the city was “going up,” as the property people described it; soon speculators would look at the storage depot and make St. Brigid's an offer for it, the kind of offer they could not refuse.
That's what Frank Ennis wanted. He thought of himself as the financial brains behind St. Brigid's, and an offer was exactly what they needed. A large lump sum, a huge financial injection on his watch.
Frank Ennis could see it happening.
Of course, every year when the board of the hospital met, there was always some problem and distraction or other. Something that stopped Frank from getting this white elephant sold and investing the money in the hospital. One year there was the rheumatology lobby; they wanted a rheumatism clinic. There was a pulmonary wing too, which wanted to set up a day center for chest patients. And the increasingly vocal heart faction, which claimed that there was sufficient evidence to prove that patients could be kept out of hospital, thus freeing up hospital beds, if they had someone to provide backup support. The cardiologists were like a dog with a bone: they wouldn't let it go.
Frank sighed as they faced yet another afternoon in the close, stuffy boardroom. The members were sitting around the table. Frank looked at them without great pleasure. There was the usual collection of people who might have sat on any hospital board. There was what he would describe as a plainclothes nun. St. Brigid's had once been run entirely by nuns; now there were only four of the sisters left. No new vocations. There were senior officials from the health authority; there were important businesspeople who had proved themselves in other walks of life. There was that good-tempered American philanthropist Chester Kovac, who had set up a private health center miles away down in the country.
The plainclothes nun would always open the window, and then the papers would fly around the table and someone would close it again. Frank had been through this many times. But on this occasion he felt that victory was in his corner. He had a written offer of a huge sum from a property developer for instant possession of the much-discussed and wasted land around the storage depot. This was money that would make everyone sit up and take notice.
Then would come the argument about how the money should be spent. Would it go to new state-of-the-art CAT scan machines? Or to making radical changes at the front of the hospital? Like many buildings of its time, which was the early twentieth century, the hospital had entirely unsuitable stone steps leading to the entrance hall. A ramp would be appropriate, or some more satisfactory way of getting into the hospital for the lame and frail.
There was always a need for more beds in women's surgical; there was always a call for isolation units. A lot of pressure had come from one section that wanted to be raised from high dependency to intensive care, and this would need money being spent.
Well, at least they would be able to reply to the property developer today accept his offer and stop wasting time on the various special interests who all wanted to enlarge their empires.
Coffee and biscuits were served, the agenda was distributed and the meeting began. But from the outset Frank knew that something was wrong.
The board members had been foolishly influenced by some statistic recently published that seemed to prove the Irish had more than their fair share of heart failure. Possibly connected with lifestyle and diet, with drinking and smoking undoubtedly playing their part in it. They were all discussing methods of giving heart patients more confidence. How great to be at the forefront of a battle against heart disease. A day clinic that would help patients to manage their own lives. Frank Ennis could have cursed the organization that had published these figures just days before his board meeting. For all he knew, it could even have been done deliberately—there was something very arrogant about those cardiologists at St. Brigid's. They thought they were omnipotent.
He looked for support to Chester Kovac, usually a voice of sanity in such situations. But he had read it wrong. Chester said that this was an imaginative idea and he would be happy if St. Brigid's were at the forefront of such a move. After all, the alternative was only money.
Frank fumed at this. It was easy for Chester to say something was only money; he had plenty of money himself. Certainly he was generous, but what did he know? He was a Polish American with an Irish grandfather—he was swayed by the last person he had spoken to.
Frank seethed with rage.
“It's not only money, Chester. It's huge money, going into St. Brigid's to improve it.”
“Last year you wanted to sell that land for it to be a car park,” Chester said.
“But this is a far better offer.” Frank was red in the face with the effort of it all.
“Well, we would have been foolish to accept your suggestion last year, Frank, seeing the way things turned out.” Chester was mild but firm.
“But I spent weeks raising this guy's offer—”
“And last year we all agreed that we didn't want a car park.”
“So this is not a car park. It's superior housing—of the highest specifications …” Frank said.
“Not what a hospital is necessarily about,” Chester Kovac said.
“If we're sitting on this piece of land we should use it,” said one of the captains of industry.
“We are using it! We are going to get a small fortune for it and invest that in the hospital!” Frank felt that he was talking to very slow learners.
The plainclothes nun spoke primly. “We would like something within the spirit of the original order who once ran the hospital.”
“Housing is hardly against the spirit of the order, is it?” Frank asked.
“Expensive housing of the highest specifications might not be what the good sisters wanted.” Chester spoke gently.
“The good sisters are all dead and gone! They died out!” Frank exploded.
Chester looked at the face of the plainclothes nun. She was very hurt by those words. He needed to be a peacemaker.
“What Mr. Ennis means is that the nuns’ work is completed here, their work is done. But they have left their legacy. This is a community that needs more health care and fewer expensive apartments which will each be host to two cars, thus clogging up the roads still further. What it needs is a good positive system set up, something that will go on helping people to make the most of their lives after the initial setback of cardiac failure. And to be very frank, when it comes to the vote, that's what I would most like t
o see and that's where I will place my choice.”
There was something dignified about the way he spoke.
Frank Ennis was crestfallen. The place would not be off their hands, as he had so confidently hoped this morning. Now it was back on the table. The cardiologists had won. There would be months and months of agreeing to costs and building work and furnishings and equipment. They would have to appoint a director and a staff. Frank sighed heavily. Why did these people not have any sense at all? They could have had so many of the items on their wish list if they had any understanding of how the world worked. Instead they were complicating everything.
He sat through the meeting, moving on automatically from item to item. Then it came to the vote for the change of use of the premises owned by St. Brigid's and known as the former storage depot. As he expected, it was unanimously agreed that a heart care clinic should be built there.
Frank suggested a feasibility study.
He was voted down immediately. They were not in favor of this—they would be another six years debating the issue. If they had agreed to do it, then they had agreed. It was feasible.
It would, however, need an Extraordinary General Meeting, once costs had been agreed upon, tenders received from builders, numbers of staff settled with cardiology.
They consulted their diaries and fixed the date.
Frank had wanted it in six months’ time. Chester Kovac said that surely a matter of a few weeks would be enough to get the submissions in. Builders must be so anxious to get work. The representative heart specialist said that cardiology in St. Brigid's would be so grateful, they would set out their requirements speedily.
“Requirements!” Frank Ennis snorted.
“And of course the post of director will have to be advertised,” the plainclothes nun said.
“Oh, yes, indeed. I suppose he's out there waiting in the wings for a nice easy number,” Frank muttered, still bitter in defeat.
“He or she,” the nun said firmly.
“God—I'd forgotten the women,” Frank said under his breath. He was a man who had often forgotten women. At the golf club he was always outraged when there was a Ladies’ Day delaying his round. He had even forgotten to get married along the way. But that had all probably been for the best. “He or she. Of course,” he said aloud. “I am stuck in the old days, Sister.”
“Bad way to be, Mr. Ennis,” said the plainclothes nun as she opened the windows and let some fresh air into the room once more.
Chapter One
They had told Clara Casey that there was a small budget to furnish her new office. A tiresome administrator with a loud voice, tousled hair and irritating body language had gestured around the dull, awkward-looking room with its gray walls and ill-fitting steel filing cabinets. Not the kind of room that a senior consultant would consider much of a prize after thirty years studying and practicing medicine. Still, it was never wise to be negative at the outset.
She struggled for the man's name. “Yes, indeed …um …Frank,” she said. “It certainly has a lot of what might be called potential.”
This was not the response he had expected. The handsome, dark-haired woman in her forties, wearing a smart lilac-colored knitted suit, was striding around the small room like a caged lioness.
He spoke quickly. “Not unlimited potential, Dr. Casey, not financially speaking, I fear. But a coat of paint here and a piece of nice furniture there—a feminine touch will do wonders.” He smiled indulgently.
Clara fought hard to keep her temper.
“Yes, of course, those are just the kind of judgments I would bring to decorating my own home. This is entirely different. For one thing, I can't have a room hidden miles away down a corridor. If I am to run this place I have to be in the center of it and run it.”
“But everyone will know where you are. Your name will be on the door,” he spluttered.
“I have no intention of being locked away in here,” she said.
“Dr. Casey, you have seen the funding. You were aware of the setup when you took the position.”
“Nothing was said about where my desk would be. Nothing at all. It was left to be discussed at a later date. This is the date.”
He didn't like her tone. It was definitely like the tone of a schoolmistress.
“And this is the room,” he said.
She was tempted to ask him to call her Clara, but remembered he would have to recognize her status here if she was to get anything done. She knew his type.
“I think not, Frank,” she said.
“Can you show me where else you could be placed? The dietitian's room is even smaller, and the secretary has just room for herself and the files. The physio has to have his room laid out with equipment, the nurses need their station, the waiting room must be near the door. Can you kindly inspire me as to where we can find you another room if this perfectly serviceable place doesn't suit?”
“I'll sit in the hall,” Clara said simply.
“The hall? What hall?”
“The space when you come in the glass doors.”
“But, Dr. Casey, that wouldn't do at all.”
“And exactly why not, Frank?”
“You'd be at everyone's beck and call,” he began.
“Yes?”
“There would be no privacy, it wouldn't look … it wouldn't be right. There would only be room for a desk.”
“All I need is a desk.”
“No, Doctor, with respect, you need much more than a desk. Much more. Things like a filing cabinet,” he finished lamely.
“I can have one of those in the secretary's office.”
“A place for your patients’ case histories?”
“In the nurses’ room.”
“You'll need some privacy sometimes to talk to patients.”
“We can call this room that you like so much the consultation room. We can all use it when needed. You could paint it calm, restful colors, get new curtains; I'll choose them if you like. A few chairs, a round table. Okay?”
He knew it was over, but he gave one final bleat.
“That was never the way before, Dr. Casey, it just wasn't the way.”
“There never was a heart clinic here before, Frank, so there is no point in trying to compare it with something that didn't exist. We are setting this place up from scratch, and if I am going to run it then I'm going to run it properly.”
Clara knew that he was still looking at her disapprovingly from the door as she walked toward her car. She kept her head high and a false smile nailed to her face.
She zapped to unlock the car and swung herself into the driving seat.
After work today someone would certainly ask Frank what she was like. She knew just what he would say. “Ballbreaker, big time.”
If pressed he would say that she was power-hungry and couldn't wait to get into the job and throw her weight around. If only he knew. No one must ever know. No one would know just how much Clara Casey did not want this new job. But she had agreed to do it for a year, and do it she would.
She pulled out into the afternoon traffic and felt it safe to let the false smile fade from her face. She was going to go to the supermarket and buy three kinds of pasta sauce. Whatever she got, one of the girls objected. The cheese was too strong, the tomato was too dull, the pesto too self-consciously trendy. But out of three they might find something that would suit. Please, may they be in good humor tonight.
She couldn't bear it if Adi and her boyfriend, Gerry, had yet another ideological disagreement about the environment or the whales or factory farming. Or if Linda had yet another one-night stand with some loser who hadn't bothered to call her.
Clara sighed.
People had told her that girls were terrible in their teens but became fine in their twenties. As usual, Clara had it wrong. They were horrific now at twenty-three and twenty-one. When they had been teenagers they hadn't been too bad. But of course their father, That Bastard Alan, had been around then, so things had been easier. So
rt of easier.
Adi Casey let herself into the house where she lived with her mother and her sister, Linda, who used to call the place Menopause Manor. Very funny, really humorous.
Mam wasn't home yet. That was good, Adi thought. She would go and have a nice long bath, use the new oils she had bought at the market on the way home. She had also bought some organic vegetables; who knew what kind of shop-bought thing Mam might bring home, filled with additives and chemicals.
To her annoyance she heard music from the bathroom. Linda had beaten her to the bath. Mam had been talking about a second bathroom. Shower room, anyway. But there had been no mention of it recently. And what with Mam not getting the big job she had hoped for, this wasn't the time to bring it up. Adi gave a little at home, but she didn't earn much as a teacher. Linda gave nothing. She was still a student, but it never crossed her mind to get a part-time job. Mam ran the show and was entitled to call the shots.
Before Adi got to her room, the phone rang. It was her father.
“How's my beautiful daughter?” he asked.
“I think she's having a bath, Dad. Will I get her?”
“I meant you, Adi.”
“You mean whoever you're talking to, Dad, you always do.”
“Adi, please. I'm only trying to be nice. Don't be so cross over nothing.”
“Right, Dad. Sorry. What is it?”
“Can't I just call to say hello to my—”
“You don't do that. You ring when you want something.” Adi was sharp.
“Will your mother be at home this evening?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“This is a family Dad, not a facility where people check in and sign books.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“So call her, then.”
“She doesn't return my calls.”
“So turn up.”
“She doesn't like that, you know. Her space and all that.”
“I'm too old. This game between you has gone on too long. Sort it, Dad, please.”
“Could you and Linda be out tonight? I want to talk to her about something.”