Like One of the Family (10 page)

During and after the show there were the usual amount of abusive calls from cranks and misogynists. In the Sunday papers there was a follow-up and Jane was denounced by a bishop who said it was a sad look-out for Irish motherhood when the likes of Jane McArdle were given peak viewing time in order to corrupt and seduce the youth of the country.

Jane tried not to be too cast down by the more vituperative of the letters that came pouring. She felt she had been grossly misrepresented and contemplated writing a letter to the papers clarifying her views, but Eddie strongly advised her against it, believing that the less said the sooner the whole thing would be forgotten. Sheena enjoyed all the notoriety. She told Claire she was hoping her mother would go on the
Late, Late Show
to vindicate herself. That would be really great.

Hugh fared rather worse as a result of all the publicity. He came home one day, his forehead badly gashed. Jane thought he must have been in a fight, although as a rule Hugh was peaceable enough. Terry was the one who regularly fell in the door with a cut and swollen lip. She was not unduly worried until one evening she noticed bruising on Hugh's back when he was undressing for bed. When questioned he mumbled something about slipping off the high bar at gym. He tried to make light of it but when she pressed him, reluctantly admitted there had been one or two bullying incidents on his way home from school.

‘Don't fuss, Mum,' Hugh said anxiously. ‘I can handle it.'

But could he? Jane wasn't so sure.

It seemed that his spectacles had triggered off the first ill-natured remarks and after that, she suspected, the situation had escalated. Jane was incensed and rang St Gabriel's to make an appointment to see the headmaster.

He received her in his study with barely concealed dislike and, still seated, waved her to a chair. Jane, taken up with her grievance, hardly noticed his lack of courtesy. She told him why she had come.

He assured her anything out of the ordinary, even something so commonplace as spectacles, could draw forth the venom of the bullies in a class. He shrugged and said that it was regrettable. He didn't seem to feel there was anything he or anyone else could do about it.

Jane proceeded to speak her mind with no uncertainty. It was disgraceful, she said, and not to be tolerated. The bullies should be singled out and suspended. The headmaster listened with a bland expression. When she ran out of words he spoke about the danger of jumping to conclusions. A tumble in the playground hardly constituted an attack. She fumed as she listened to this bland whitewashing of the incident. Tripped indeed! She came away in a fury of hurt and dissatisfaction.

Maybe the school authorities had seen the television interview. No one could say for sure bu her enquiry received scant attention and the bullying continued. Hugh refused to discuss the matter, insisting he could defend himself. In desperation, Jane spoke to Terry.

‘Leave it to me, Mum,' he said. ‘I'll fix those bastards.'

Terry and a few of his classmates concealed themselves in the bushes at the end of the avenue, leading up to the school, and lay in wait for the bullies. As they drew near Terry gave the signal and he and his chosen band rushed out. Terry caught hold of the ringleader, a boy called Mark, and slammed him into the ground. He sat astride him and pinioned his arms.

‘If you ever lay a finger on my brother again,' he told him, ‘I'll break your neck.'

The boy struggled and squirmed under him but offered no further defiance. Terry had gained a reputation for being a formidable adversary and, for a while after that, they left Hugh alone.

The leaves on the silver birch in the McArdle's back garden hung like pods, about to unfurl, and in the overgrown mass of vegetation behind Claire's house the broom fountained yellow-gold against red brickwork. There were only two weeks to go before the end of the spring term and she and Sheena were counting the days. The McArdles had decided to go away to their holiday bungalow for Easter and Jane had asked Claire to go with them.

‘It will do you good,' Jane said. ‘You've been looking very pale lately. Even Eddie has noticed. It's a beautiful spot and the sea air will be just the thing to put colour back in those cheeks.'

Jane admitted she was feeling the effects of the past few months herself and looked forward to lazing about for two weeks. ‘Don't feel you have to be grateful or anything,' she told Claire with a smile. ‘You'll be earning your keep looking after Ruthie as well as putting up with me when Eddie is playing golf. You may be sure Sheena won't be much in evidence. If I know that young lady she'll be off gallivanting with the boys.'

Claire didn't really mind. She had no wish to meet boys. She really welcomed the break from her own house though, and especially her mother. Not that she didn't appreciate the efforts Annette was making since her father left home. Each week the two of them went to a film together and bought fish and chips on the way home. Some nights they got on really well, others they hardly spoke to each other. When this happened Annette would lose her temper and accuse Claire of being selfish and unsociable and then inevitably she would start cataloguing Jim's faults. Claire recognised that her father had faults, but he wasn't there to defend himself, that was the difference. When she said so Annette would cry in exasperation, ‘For God's sake, Claire, anyone would think from your attitude I drove him away. He was the one who strayed. It wasn't the first time either. but because I loved him I forgave him. I still do in a way but it's just not the kind of love to withstand such a marriage.'

Claire considered that it would be a relief to be out of the line of fire for a whole fortnight. She deliberately kept herself from thinking of Eddie. There had been two further occasions of intimacy in the months since the February day in the kitchen, but even those she had put out of her mind and they had assumed a dream-like quality, as though they had happened to someone else. Actually, the intimate Eddie was becoming more and more distant from the father-figure Eddie, whom she met often in the presence of his family. This fatherly Eddie, unlike the other, presented no threat.

Annette did not raise any objection. She was feeling worn out herself after the spring term and looked forward to two weeks of freedom from early rising and Montessori teaching.

These days she felt all strung out by the time she reached home in the evenings. With the approach of the good weather the little boys and girls she taught were full of repressed energy, just bursting to get out of school and into the air. At home her own children were also taking their toll on her. Since Jim had moved out of the house the three of them had been thrown into the claustrophobic proximity of one parent families. Every little grievance was magnified and it took as little as the absence of a favourite breakfast cereal to spark off a family row. It seemed to Annette that in her children's eyes she was always at fault. Of the two, Christopher, though less analytical and probing than Claire, was inclined to be the most censorious and clearly still blamed her for the family split. So Annette readily agreed to her daughter going away with the McArdles for Easter, only too glad to have her burden halved for the next two weeks.

The McArdles travelled in convoy to Waterford and arrived in Dualeen late afternoon. It was a lovely day, like the middle of summer. Along the coast road the sea sparkled invitingly, the waves only lightly capped with lacy foam. Claire was sorry when they left it behind and turned inland.

The McArdle's holiday house was actually a dormer bungalow, and bigger than it looked from the outside. Claire found she was sharing an upper room with Sheena and Ruthie. The boys were across the landing. Downstairs, with a separate bathroom of their own, was Jane's and Eddie's room.

Wherever they went in Dualeen everyone seemed to know the McArdles and because she was with them Claire got friendly smiles and nods of the head. It was her first taste of life in a seaside town and she loved every minute.

On the beach, which was two hundred yards from the bungalow, the children played sand cricket and skimmed stones in the waves. Ruthie, helped by Hugh, made linked rows of turrets on the shore, endlessly filling, patting down and upending her bucket. The mild weather looked as if it would never end.

Jane sat on the rug, like a queen amidst her subjects, sunglasses shoved high on her forehead, a book dangling from one relaxed hand. ‘This is the life,' she sighed every few moments, wanting to hold on to these first blissful moments of the holiday, not yet taking for granted the fact that she really was away, with no patients to see or urgent cases to consider for the next two weeks. And the weather! ‘Not like April at all,' she gloated. ‘More like the middle of June.'

Claire, like Jane, hugged to herself the thought of all those sunny days ahead of her. For the first time in her life she felt part of a family, a real family, with brothers and sisters to share her happiness. She wandered away from Sheena and Terry and lay down on a corner of the rug beside Jane. Contentedly she took up her book.
Villette.
Another great story and even better than
Shirley,
which she had just finished the week before coming away. When Claire liked an author she read everything she could lay her hands on by that author, feeling it gave her a great sense of the person, almost as if she knew them. Sometimes she just let the book slide out of her hand and felt the sun an aching violet pressure on her lids. Lately she was feeling lethargic. She was just as pleased to laze about playing snap with Ruthie or noughts and crosses with Hugh. She thought she might be getting her period.

With her eyes shut, she heard the shouts and laughter as though from a great distance. She kept her eyes tight shut, afraid if she opened them she might find herself back home again. When at last she chanced breaking the spell and let them fly open, the sun nearly blinded her and she gazed in wonder at the sea and sand, the smiling faces turned towards her.

‘C'mon, lazybones,' Sheena cried, plumping down on the sand beside her, ‘we're going to play cricket and we need you.'

Claire marked the page of her book and got up reluctantly. She could have lain there for ever. Jane watched her with a smile, glad to see her so relaxed.

Not far from the bungalow there was a hotel, a large white building at the top of a sandy sloping road. There was a pool table in an annex beside the bar and the hotel served delicious afternoon teas. Jane often took the children there and she would sit reading a magazine, with a gin and tonic at her elbow while they sampled the cream cakes and petit fours.

‘This is my Black Forest Gateau,' she would joke, raising her glass. Eddie sometimes joined them and he and Jane would withdraw to the bar, leaving the children to their own devices. Claire always felt easier when he wasn't with them. It was a relief when he went away for two days to play golf in Rosslare.

There was a funfair set up in a field behind the hotel and the children went there as often as they got money from Jane. Hugh partnered Claire in the dodgem cars, and she hung in breathlessly beside him, her heart in her mouth. He knew she hated the jarring collisions and he did his best to ferry her safely out of danger, but every so often Terry and Sheena came at them out of the blue and the two cars would come crashing to a halt. Ruthie was not allowed to ride the cars and she would be jumping up and down, impatient for them to finish. Claire took her on the chair-o-planes and the two of them held hands and whirled screaming high above the crowd. Ruthie loved them but afterwards Claire felt so sick she thought she was going to throw up.

In the evenings they stayed home and Jane cooked up lots of chips and whiting in batter. Sheena and Claire took turns, lowering the fish basket into the hot fat. Sometimes they had party nights, when Eddie and Jane invited in couples from the other holiday bungalows and the adults either played cards or shuffled about the floor in lazy time to Elvis or the Beatles.

Sometimes the neighbouring couples brought their children with them and Claire and Sheena had to organise them in another room. Eventually the younger ones became cranky and would have to be carted home and put to bed, so the girls earned themselves quite a bit of money baby-sitting. By the time the partying parents came stealing shamefacedly in, Claire and Sheena would be fast asleep on the settee, but, within minutes, they would be fully awake and hurrying out of their respective cottages, clutching fivers or even tenners. Stumbling back to their own bungalow, they would plan how they would spend it. Once it was so late that the first blush of dawn suffused the sky and they saw the men setting off in their fishing boats to bring in the catch.

Another morning, tiptoeing in the door, the girls found Eddie still sitting, glass in hand, by the fire. Although the weather was so mild as to be almost summery, the nights had a nip to them and the McArdles kept plenty of turf stacked beside the fireplace. Hugh was usually first up in the morning and, by the time the others struggled down, he would have the fire lit and be sitting by it, listening to his Walkman. Later in the morning it was let go out and only lit again when evening came.

Now the fresh sods Eddie had arranged on the dying embers had begun to catch, sending a flickering glow about the room. Jane had already gone yawning to bed and Sheena, perhaps fearing that her father would make her do the washing-up before retiring, fled upstairs crying, ‘Last one in bed's a rotten turnip,' and abandoning Claire to him.

Claire hesitated, drawn by the heat of the fire for she was chilled from hours of sitting in the unheated cottage. Eddie seemed half asleep, nodding over his whisky. She lingered, warming herself at the blaze.

Sheena's shout awakened Hugh out of his second sleep. He stirred and dozed until it became evident that he would have to get up and take a leak. Too much lemonade before bedtime always had this effect on him. He was reluctant to go down the steep wooden stairs to the toilet and contemplated peeing in the bowl on the washstand, but fear of Terry's wrath deflected him.