Like One of the Family (7 page)

Jane smiled. ‘Oh well, I never was a very organised person, was I? Look, Eddie and I are having a few friends to supper next Saturday night and we're hoping you and Jim will come.'

Annette brightened. ‘That sounds nice,' she said. ‘Can I let you know?'

‘Of course,' Jane said expansively. ‘No rush. I'm doing a fork plate... rice and something or other, so a few more or less won't make any difference. And that's another thing.' She looked at Claire. ‘Would you be a love and give Sheena a hand with the serving, Claire? I'd be eternally grateful.'

Annette said: ‘Of course, she'll be glad to. Won't you, Claire?'

Claire could hardly say no.

On the evening of the supper party Claire went across to the McArdle's house early. They had strung up fairy lights in the macrocarpa tree. Claire thought they were very pretty.

She met Hugh in the hall. Of all the McArdles she had missed him the most. She smiled at him shyly.

‘Hero's in trouble,' Hugh said glumly.

‘But why?'

‘She tried to bite the postman.'

‘But she's so gentle,' Claire protested. ‘She wouldn't hurt anyone.'

‘It wasn't her fault,' Hugh said. ‘The bastard is always hitting her with his bag. It's making her vicious.' He looked like he was going to cry and Claire ached for him. She went on into the kitchen where Sheena was.

‘Why didn't you change?' her friend wrinkled her nose at Claire's school uniform.

‘Didn't have anything decent to wear.'

‘You should have told me,' Sheena said. ‘I've loads of things would fit you. Let's go up quick and have a look.'

‘No really, it's all right,' Claire said embarrassed, wanting to get off the subject. ‘Honestly. Anyway I'll be in the kitchen most of the time.'

Sheena looked as though she were going to protest then shrugged. ‘Okay have it your way. Give us a hand with these,' she indicated a bowl of grapes she was stuffing with cream cheese. Claire stood beside her, slitting grapes with a sharp knife. There was a big pot simmering on the stove.

‘Beef Stroganoff,' said Sheena, lifting the lid and releasing an appetising aroma. ‘Hope there's some left over for us.'

Claire eyed the pavlova and the temping array of mousses laid out on a sidetable. She could have given the stroganoff a miss, desserts she adored.

The first couples began arriving soon after eight-thirty. Claire peeped into the cosy drawing-room. Flames licked about a freshly placed log, and lamps glowed at opposite ends of the room. Centre ceiling, the unlit Waterford Glass chandelier shimmered palely. Beneath it, the guests stood about, glasses in hand, their laughter as tinkling as the translucent lobes overhead. Jane had deliberately left the velvet curtains open so that the fairy lights were visible through the patio window. In front of it stood a huge vase of chrysanthemums, perfuming the air.

Claire and Sheena went about offering little bowls of crisps and peanuts. Claire shyly and Sheena with gay impudence. No-one seemed to take offence at her bluntness and only laughed when she said, ‘Go on, make yourself fatter.' One or two of them admired her dress and the velvet bow in her hair, as they scooped up fingerfuls. ‘Quite the young lady,' a man said to the woman beside him.

Claire might have been invisible in her school uniform. She looked about for her mother and father but, despite having such a short distance to come, they had not yet arrived. She wondered if, after all, they might not come.

Then she saw Eddie standing by the mantelpiece, head bent, talking to a woman in a black dress. He looked very tall and handsome. The woman laughed up at him, a jewel glinting at her throat. Claire swallowed hard, her own throat dry and constricted.

Her parents were still absent. She and Sheena took it in turns, betweens trips with fresh drinks or canapés, to stir the beef stroganoff. Every so often one of the younger McArdles, usually Ruthie, would run into the kitchen. She helped herself to so many cheesy grapes that Claire was afraid she would be sick.

Ruthie loved the house filled with people. She clung to Claire's skirt, anxious to be in on the excitement as more and more guests arrived. There must have been fifty. A few people to supper!

Claire peeped into the oven. Any minute the garlic bread would be ready to take out of the tinfoil and place it in the baskets Jane had left ready. She turned and caught Ruthie with her hand in the pavlova, her lips rimmed with cream.

‘Oh Ruthie,' Claire sighed fondly. She picked up the little girl and Ruthie squirmed in her arms as she ran the tap and washed away the evidence.

‘But it'll all be gone when I get up,' Ruthie wailed.

When Jane came in to put her to bed Ruthie was reluctant to go, then with a tired little sigh she suddenly capitulated, holding up her arms for Claire to carry her. She placed one small hand in a proprietary fashion on her mother's silk-clad arm, and the three of them went upstairs to her room.

The tigers and lions, the giant pandas, on the wall were the same, yet somehow the room looked different. Claire told herself what happened that night had been a dream, another of her fantasies, that she had never actually lain there with him, done what they did on the bed. She was only a schoolgirl. How could she have?

‘Can Claire-bear tell me a story,' Ruthie pleaded. It was her pet name for Claire.

‘Would you be an angel?' Jane was anxious to return to her guests. When Claire nodded, she kissed Ruthie and slipped away, turning off the light as she went.

Claire sat reluctantly on the bed. Party sounds filtered through the ceiling: laughter, the hum of voices, doors opening and closing. She heard Jane welcoming the last of the guests, her mother's nervous laugh, her father's deep voice. The drawing-room door closed over.

Claire decided to tell Ruthie one of her favourite Rufty-Tufty tales that she had read many times to the little girl, the one where the golliwog floated high in the sky holding on to a balloon and came to rest in a faraway garden. Ruthie listened, thumb sleepily plugging her mouth. Claire heard the light footfall outside the door and looked up. Ruthie heard it too. Sleep banished, she bolted up in the bed.

‘Daddy come in and sit down,' she cried, patting the coverlet imperiously.

‘What! Are you still awake?' He pretended to be cross but his manner was playful. ‘This won't do at all, young lady.' He came in and sat on the end of the bed. ‘Go on,' he gently prompted Claire, ‘Don't let me spoil your story.'

Haltingly, she continued, aware of his quiet breathing beside her. Quickly she brought the story to an end.

‘Quite a guy that Rufty-Tufty,' Eddie approved. He got to his feet and bent to tuck Ruthie in. ‘Go to sleep now, poppet.' He disengaged her clinging arms. ‘Claire must go down and you must get your beauty sleep.'

He stood aside politely for Claire to precede him on to the landing.

Claire was happiest in the classroom. There, somehow, her other life did not impinge upon her at all and she could lose herself in her schoolwork. In fact, she came out near the top of the class in the mid-term exams.

She was not unfriendly with the rest of her class but kept remote from them. She shuddered when they giggled about dirty old men.

June Kelly's next-door neighbour was always trying to feel her up, she said. Some of the other girls had similar experiences. They shrieked and made faces. Sheena laughed along with them.

‘There was this man on holidays,' she began, choking so much with laughter that she could not go on. ‘If you'd only seen him!'

‘Go on... go on,' they urged her.

‘Pulled down his pants and showed his thing!' gasped Sheena. More delighted shrieks. Sickened, Claire turned away. Was that what Eddie was?

Eddie didn't seem old to her, not like her own father, or some of the other girls' fathers. If he hadn't been Sheena's father she might have told Sheena about him. It would have been a relief to have told someone. Her own mother perhaps, if she had been at all like Jane, or Jane herself if she wasn't his wife. It seemed unfair that the only people she might have talked to were out of the question.

Hero was in trouble again. She attacked the postman again and although the bite was not severe, the man's trousers were torn and he had gotten a bad fright. He complained to the Gardaí and Eddie received a summons to appear in court. When he did the judge ruled that Hero be put down.

‘She's not really vicious,' Hugh told Claire earnestly. ‘I've a good mind to find out where that judge lives and bring Hero along to his house. Then he'll see how gentle she is.' He was almost in tears.

Claire listened to Hugh's anguished plans and wished there was something she could do to comfort him. She felt as miserable as he did.

As the date of execution drew near Hugh insisted that he would do the job himself and in his own way. Jane and Eddie tried to dissuade him, thinking it was too fraught a situation for an eleven year old boy to handle but after they saw how determined he was, they withdrew their objections.

Hugh decided he would get chloroform from the vet and choose his own time. Mr Halligan gacw it to him, telling him, If you feel you can't handle it, bring her to me.' Hugh still kept putting the moment off. He just couldn't bring himself to do it.

Eddie secretly tried for a repeal of the sentence. He offered to muzzle the dog and keep him chained, anything to save him for Hugh. But it was no good. The judge refused to reconsider.

‘I'm sorry, son,' Eddie said. ‘I did my best.'

Hugh nodded. It meant a lot to him that his father had tried again. ‘Thanks, Dad.'

‘There are only another few days left,' Eddie said. ‘Best get it over with quickly.'

‘Your father is right, Hugh,' Jane said gently. ‘You're only prolonging the agony and causing yourself unnecessary pain.'

‘Okay...okay,' said Hugh. ‘I'm going to do it. Don't go on about it.'

‘Right.' Eddie brought the discussion to an end. ‘No more delay. You've got until tomorrow or I'll bring him to the vet myself.'

Hugh listened in silence. He knew he couldn't bear for Hero to be put in a cage and given an injection by a stranger. Next morning when his father drove away he got the chloroform and steeled himself for the grim task ahead. He had to be the one to do it, he told himself, as he went to release Hero. He owed her that much.

Hero was delighted to see him. She frisked about, glad to be free after weeks of being chained up. When she came back to him he patted her and clipped the leash on to her collar. Hugh went up the back road, past the stables where he had got the straw for Hero's puppies, and kept walking until he reached a rutted track, high above his home.

He took his dog into a field and let her off the leash. Hero tore about, enjoying her freedom. When she calmed down, Hugh threw sticks for her and watched her race and fetch, her paws skidding in the mud. Together they rolled and romped on the damp grass.

After a time, Hugh took the bottle from his pocket. Hero watched her young master, her eyes bright and intelligent, ready to spring forward whenever he threw what he was holding. While Hugh hesitated she whined with excitement and jumped up against him, muddy paws scrabbling his gabardine.

Hugh ran his hand caressingly over Hero's head and down her flanks. ‘Good girl,' he whispered. He gritted his teeth and grabbed her in a fierce necklock. Hero looked trustingly up at him and whined, believing this was some new form of play.

Hugh grimly reminded himself that the vet had assured him this method was quick and painless, no matter how terrible it seemed. He prised open her jaws and prepared to pour the chloroform down her throat, as Mr Halligan had instructed, but she moaned and struggled so frantically in her efforts to get free that the bottle was knocked from his grasp and fell into the long grass. Although badly shaken, Hugh still kept a tight grip on the moaning, struggling animal, feeling her paws scrabbling at his bare legs, drawing blood, but counting the pain as nothing compared to what he was suffering in his heart. He knew then that he couldn't do it, and let her go.

Hero tore off down the field and vanished through a hole in the hedge. In a state of near collapse Hugh blindly felt about in the grass for the half-empty bottle and, hardly aware of what he was doing, screwed the cap back on and stuck it in his pocket. His breath rasped painfully in his chest and the muscles in his arms and shoulders trembled with the shock and effort of the ordeal. He hadn't enough breath in him to emit more than a feeble whistle as he went in search of Hero. When he found her eventually on the roadway, she wouldn't come near him but slunk along at the far side of the road. He went slightly ahead of her down the mountainside, calling repeatedly. He should have listened to his mother, he thought in anguish. There was no use in hoping for a miracle or messing about any longer. He had only succeeded in putting Hero through further distress. He was stricken when he remembered the stark look of terror and dismay in the dog's eyes.

Now he whistled sharply, and Hero came reluctantly towards him, her tail between her legs. He clipped the leash on her collar and, going down on his hunkers, made a great fuss of her, stroking her and praising her, and feeding her the lumps of sugar he always kept for her in his pocket, until gradually she perked up a bit.

At the end of the road, Hugh resignedly turned in the direction of the vet's house. He paused outside the gate bearing the familiar wooden sign, then he braced his shoulders and with an encouraging word to his dog went up the path and rang the bell.

The vet greeted him warmly, taking in his pinched white face and dejected expression. He brought Hugh through the empty waiting-room to his surgery and, with a kindly pat on his shoulder, sat him down.

Ned Halligan chatted away easily as he placed a bowl of water on the ground for Hero and ran a gentle hand over her silky coat. Then he turned away to fill a syringe with 10 ml. of Euthatal.