The Copper Beech (20 page)

Eileen was going to go to university if she got a lot of honours in her Leaving Certificate. She would be an architect. She would love that. The nuns said she had all the brains in the world and by the time she was qualified the world, and indeed Ireland, would be moving to the point where women architects would be quite acceptable. It would be the 1960s after all. Imagine.

And Sheila wanted to do nursing, so he was already sending out feelers for her to the better training hospitals in Dublin.

Declan would do medicine, of course, so the main thing was to get him into a good boarding school. He had spoken to the Jesuits, the Benedictines, the Vincentians and the Holy Ghost Fathers. There were advantages and drawbacks in all of them. He checked the records, the achievements, the teaching records and he chose the one that came out best overall. The bad side was that it was further away than any other school.

‘You won’t be able to go and see him much there,’ Eileen said.

‘He’ll come home in the holidays.’ Dr Jims knew he was being defensive. Again.

‘But it’s lovely to have visitors at school. We loved you coming on Sundays.’

He used to go every second week, a long, wet drive in winter. He had never taken Declan. At first he would have been too young and restless for the drive, and the girls would have hated him to be troublesome when he arrived in the parlour. Then later, it didn’t seem the right thing to suggest.

A ten-year-old boy wouldn’t
want
to be dragged off to a girls’ school of a Sunday even if he had been invited. It would be a sissy sort of thing for a boy.

He intended to spend more time with the boy during the summer before Declan went to boarding school, but there was so much to do. There was the whole business of Maura Brennan’s child for one thing.

He had always liked Maura, the only Brennan girl to stay in Shancarrig. The others had long gone to unsatisfactory posts in England. Maura had a dreamy quality about her, an acceptance of what life had to offer. He remembered the day he had confirmed her pregnancy.

‘He’ll never marry me, Dr Jims,’ she had said, big tears waiting to fall from her eyes.

‘I wouldn’t be sure of that. Aren’t you a great catch for any man?’ He had said it but his heart wasn’t in the words. He had thought Gerry O’Sullivan would disappear but he had been wrong, Gerry stayed. There had been a wedding, he had gone in to Johnny Finn’s to drink their health.

And then when he had delivered her child it was he who saw the epicanthic folds around the eyes. It was he who had to tell Maura O’Sullivan, as she so proudly called herself, that her son was a child with Down’s syndrome.

He remembered how he had held the girl in his arms and told her it would all be all right. Even when Father Gunn had told him that Gerry O’Sullivan, father of the boy, had taken the train from Shancarrig station and was gone before the baptism, he remembered the sense of hearing his own voice mouth the words of comfort, telling Maura that everything would be fine.

And he had been right to say that she would always love young Michael with an overpowering love. That much had been true even if Gerry O’Sullivan was never seen in the streets of Shancarrig again.

There was a human story everywhere he turned … in the small houses and in the big ones.

There was something seriously wrong up at The Glen and he didn’t know how to cope with it. Frank Murphy, a quiet man who bore his war injuries bravely, had something much more serious on his mind than the bad leg he dragged after him so uncomplainingly.

Jims Blake thought it had to do with his wife. But Miriam Murphy was someone he had never examined. She assured him she was as strong as a horse. She was an attractive woman with a dismissive manner if crossed, and he had liked her red-gold hair and her effortless way of looking elegant while walking around the big gardens
with a shallow basket, an old silk scarf draped over her shoulders.

People in Shancarrig had long grown accustomed to the fact that Mrs Murphy never came down to the shops. There were accounts in the shops and the delivery boys who called on bicycles always got a friendly wave from the mistress of The Glen. They would deal with Biddy the maid, or with the Major himself.

But this summer there was something different about Miriam. A vacancy in her eyes that was more than disturbing. And a cautious protective look in Frank’s that hadn’t been there before. Charles Nolan had told him often enough about families who guarded their secrets, who kept their unstable people hidden. Often it was better not to pry.

Jims Blake wondered what old Charles would have made of the situation in The Glen. Not only was the Major in a state of distress, but their daughter Leo, who had been such a close friend of his daughters, had also begun to show signs of strain. He met the girl when driving past Barna Woods.

‘Do you want a lift back up to the house, Leo?’

‘Are you going that way?’

‘A car goes whatever way you point it.’

‘Thanks, Doctor.’

‘Have you lots of new friends for yourself this summer, Leo?’

She was surprised. No, it turned out she hadn’t any. Why did he ask? Without putting his own children in the role of complainers he hinted that she hadn’t been around.

‘We went on a bit of a holiday, you see, to the seaside.’

That was true. He had heard Bill Hayes say that the Major had packed dogs and all into the car and driven off without warning.

‘Ah, but you’re back now, and still no one ever sees you. I thought you’d gone off with the gypsies.’ They had just driven in the gate of The Glen as he said this. She looked at him, as white as a sheet. ‘It’s all right, Leo. I was only joking.’

‘I hate jokes about the gypsies,’ she said.

He wondered had they frightened her in the woods. Dark, suspicious and always on guard, they had given him a pheasant once, when he had delivered a child for them. Unsmiling and proud they had handed him the bird, wrapped in grass, to thank him for the skill they hadn’t sought, but had used because he was passing near during a difficult birth.

The Major appeared at the door. ‘I won’t ask you in,’ he said.

‘No, no.’ His reputation as a discreet man who could be told anything rested on ending conversations when others wanted to. He never probed a step further, but his face was always open and ready to hear when others wanted to tell.

His son Declan never wanted to tell anything.

‘Will you like being at the school do you think, Declan?’

‘I won’t know, not really, until I get there.’

Had there ever been a boy so pedantic, so unwilling to talk?

Maisie wanted to know had he settled in? Was the bed aired? Were there any other boys from this part of the world there?

Dr Jims Blake could answer none of this. His only memory was his son’s hand waving goodbye. He wasn’t clinging, like one or two other lads were, loath to leave mothers go. Nor was he chatting and making friends as some of the more outgoing boys seemed to be doing.

They had to write letters home every Sunday. Declan wrote of saints’ days, and walks, and doing a play, making a relief map. Jims Blake knew that these letters were supervised by the priests, that they were intended to give a good impression of the school and all its activities. Sometimes the letter lay unopened on the hall table along with the advertising literature from pharmaceutical companies that was sent to all doctors on a mailing list.

Declan didn’t write to Eileen, now in a hostel in Dublin while she studied architecture in University College. He didn’t write to Sheila, now nursing in one of Dublin’s best hospitals. He sent a birthday card to Maisie, but they knew very little about his world at school.

The reports said that he was satisfactory, his marks were average, his place in the class was in the top end of the lower half.

His school holidays seemed long and formless. The doctor got the impression that he was dying to be back at school.

‘Would you like to ask any of your friends to stay?’

‘Here?’ Declan had been surprised.

‘Well, there’s plenty of room. They might like it.’

‘What would they do, Daddy?’

‘I don’t know. Whatever they do, whatever you do anywhere.’ He was irritated now. It was this habit of answering one question with another that he found hard to take.

It never came to anything, that suggestion. Nor the invitation to go to Dublin.

‘What would I do in Dublin for two days?’

‘What does anyone do in Dublin? We could see your sisters, take them out to lunch. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’ He realised he sounded as if he was talking
to a five-year-old, not a boy of fifteen. A boy who had grown apart from Eileen, now nearly qualified as an architect, from Sheila, now almost a qualified nurse.

The visit never happened. Neither did the outing to the Galway races, which had been long spoken of as a reward when Declan’s Leaving Certificate was over.

Jims Blake said he could put his hand on his heart and swear that he had made every move to try and get close to his son, and that at every turn he was repelled.

It wasn’t a thing that he would normally talk to another man about, but he did mention it to Bill Hayes. ‘Do you find it like ploughing a hard field trying to get a word out of your fellow, Niall, or does he talk to you?’

‘Niall would talk to the birds in the trees if he thought they’d listen. He has a yarn for every moment of the day. Not much knack of dealing with clients, though.’

Bill Hayes shook his head gloomily. His son too seemed a slight disappointment to him. Although a qualified solicitor he showed no signs of being able to attract new business or, indeed, cope with the business that was already there.

‘And does he talk to
you
?’ Dr Jims persisted.

‘When he can get me to listen, which isn’t often. I don’t want to hear rambling tales about the mountains and the lakes when he goes out to make some farmer’s will for him. I want to hear that it’s been done properly, the man’s affairs are settled and everything’s in order.’

Dr Jims sighed. ‘With me it’s just the opposite. I can’t even get him to talk about enrolling up at the university. He keeps making excuses.’

‘Talk to him at a meal. Don’t serve him until he answers your question … That’ll get an answer out of him. Boys love their food.’

Jims Blake was ashamed to say why this wouldn’t work,
to admit that his son still ate meals in the kitchen with Maisie, out of habit, out of tradition. No point in laying up two places in the dining room. Who knew when the poor doctor would have to be called out?

But the summer of 1964 was moving on. Arrangements would have to be made, fees must be paid, places in the Medical School reserved, living quarters booked.

‘Declan? No one would ever think we lived in the same house, lad …’

‘I’m always here,’ the boy said. It wasn’t mutinous or defensive, it was said as a simple fact.

Jims Blake was annoyed by it.

‘I’m always here too,’ he said. ‘Except when I’m out working, as you will be.’

‘I’m not going to do medicine, Dad.’

Somehow, it came as no surprise. He must have been expecting it.

‘When did you decide against it?’ His voice was cold.

‘I never decided
for
it, it was only in your mind. It wasn’t in mine.’

They talked like strangers, polite but firm.

Declan would like to join an auctioneering firm. His friend Vinnie O’Neill’s father would take him on. He’d like the life. It was the kind of thing that appealed to him, looking at places, showing them to customers. He was good at talking to people, telling them the good points of a place. There’d be a very good living in it for him. Vinnie was going off to be a priest. There was no other boy in the family, only girls. Mr O’Neill liked him, got on well with him.

Jims Blake listened bleakly to the story of a man he didn’t know, a man called Gerry O’Neill, whose estate agent’s signs he had seen around the place. A man who got on
well with Declan Blake and regarded him as a kind of son now that his own was going to enter the priesthood. Silently he accepted the plans, plans that involved Declan going to live in the big town. He could have Vinnie’s room, apparently. It would be easier to have him on the spot, and the sooner the better.

Vinnie was going to the seminary next week. Declan thought he’d move in at the weekend.

Jims Blake heard that Maisie wouldn’t miss him because so much of her life was now centred around the church. And she had got used to him being away at school.

‘And what about me?’ Jims Blake said. ‘What about my missing you?’

‘Aw, Dad, you’re your own person. You wouldn’t miss me.’

It was said with total sincerity, and when the boy realised that there actually was loneliness in his father’s face, he seemed distressed.

‘But even if I were going to be doing medicine wouldn’t I be away all the time?’

‘You’d be coming back to help me in the practice, and take over. That’s what I thought.’

There was a silence. A long silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ Declan said.

Later Jims wondered should he have put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. Should he have made some gesture to apologise for the coldness and distance of eighteen years, to hope that the next years would be better. But he shrugged. ‘You must do as you want to,’ he said. And then he heard himself saying, ‘It’s what you’ve always done.’

He knew it was the most final goodbye he could ever have said.

Sometimes when he was in the town Jims Blake called in to O’Neill’s. Like someone probing a sore tooth he was anxious to see the man and the home where Declan Blake felt he belonged. Gerry O’Neill, a florid man with a fund of anecdotes about people and places, regarded himself as a great raconteur. Jims Blake found him boring and opinionated. He sat and watched unbelievingly while the man’s wife and daughters and Declan laughed and encouraged him in these tales.

The eldest girl was Ruth, a good-looking girl, her Daddy’s pet. She was doing a commercial course in the local secretarial college so that she could help in the business. They talked of O’Neill’s Auctioneers as if it was a long-established and widely respected family firm, instead of a Mickey Mouse operation set up by Gerry O’Neill himself on the basis of being a fast talker.