‘I know I can’t return the invitation so I can’t accept it.’ Ciara was touched by the kindness of Alison and she did appreciate being asked to spend the weekend in Caharoe in Alison’s parents’ house. But she wouldn’t go, of course; couldn’t go in fact. Since the minute that she had left Leachlara for the first week of term she had decided that her life was now going to be in Dublin and beyond. Having her new-found friend expecting visits to her parents’ house was not part of the plan. She hadn’t, however, counted on Alison’s determination.
‘Oh, Ciara, I would just love you to come. My folks would relax a bit if they saw that I hadn’t shacked up with a total floozy. My dad is having a tough time coping with the fact that I am not in digs being overseen by an adult at all times.’
‘Look, I feel bad, Ali, ’cause my crowd are nuts and I would rather die than take you home.’
‘Oh, would you forget about asking me back? Just say you’ll come. Please?’
‘Well, OK, I suppose I could turn on the charm to your dad, make him realize the smart move you made landing Ciara Clancy as a flatmate.’
‘Brilliant! I’ll tell my mam. She will start piling high the buns and the brown bread. She goes a bit into overdrive when anyone visits. I think running a guest house would suit her a lot better than running my dad’s surgery. Do you want to check with your folks first to see if it’s all right?’
‘I’ll give them a call on Friday just to say I won’t be home. It’s no big deal at all.’
Alison was a bit puzzled. She would never forget her mother’s reaction the first time she told her she was going to stay away for the weekend. Her going to college in Dublin was firmly based on the contract that she would return home at the weekends to Caharoe. Things were very different in the Clancy house. Ciara seemed to think they didn’t care one way or the other, which couldn’t really be true, Alison decided. Her friend sometimes tried to be too cool for her own good.
Ciara was caught off balance by an unusual wave of quietness when they were making their way from the bus stop to the square in Caharoe. She had literally not shut up all the way to Heuston station and then on the long journey on a packed Friday train she had kept Alison entertained with wild accounts of her school days in Leachlara. In five years in secondary school she had been suspended twice. The first time was for vociferously challenging the principal, Sister Agatha, that she owed it to the women’s movement to promote the existence of a female deity or, failing that, at least to entertain the idea. That she was a young lady who didn’t know her place in the school or in God’s holy universe was Sister Agatha’s reason for the suspension cited in a letter to the Clancy parents, which winged its way from Ciara’s schoolbag straight to the bin in the Abbey corridor toilets. The second suspension was for sharing a cigarette and a kiss with a fifth-year boy in the trees behind the school canteen. Ciara’s parents remained similarly unaware of that transgression. ‘He turned out to be an absolute louser though, not worth getting suspended for. Told all his friends that I was mad for him, spotty little upstart.’
Alison had never so much as received a detention or a note home in her six years in the community school in Caharoe and she had to admit that bringing Ciara home to Caharoe was the first step in showing everybody how sophisticated her life was in Dublin.
‘Holy fuck, is this your house? It’s huge!’ Ciara was stunned when Alison headed in the direction of one of the grandest houses, at the north edge of the square. Nobody she knew lived in a house this size. It looked unbelievably posh and she was dying to have a look inside.
‘It’s not that big really. Dad’s surgery takes up the entire front half of the house so we kind of live in the back bit and the basement,’ Alison explained. She didn’t want her friend to be put off by the size of the house.
‘Oh, let me guess: do the butler and the housekeeper have their quarters down there?’
‘Don’t be daft, Ciara!’
Before Alison got a chance to turn the key in the front door, Cathy Shepherd had opened it. She stood there beaming at her daughter and her friend. It had taken a fantastic feat of willpower for her not to walk to the bus stop to meet Alison but she had watched the girls’ relaxed saunter from Richard’s surgery window, pouncing on the Chubb lock at the moment she knew they would be standing there.
Alison had not been joking about her mother’s propensity for over-catering. Everywhere Ciara looked there was something good to eat. Scones with cream and raspberry jam, apple crumbles and brown bread, not to mention a delicious smell of dinner coming from the range, roast chicken maybe and garlic definitely. Whatever it was made her mouth water with hunger. The last thing she had eaten was a slice of chocolate biscuit cake in the arts block café before her twelve o’clock lecture. It hadn’t exactly filled the gap and she was thoroughly ravenous now.
‘You girls must be starving,’ Cathy Shepherd announced as if reading Ciara’s mind. ‘Alison will take your coat, Ciara. Pull up a chair and I will make us a pot of tea. You do drink tea, don’t you?’
‘We drink pots of it, don’t we, Alison?’
‘Yeah, loads, it’s an excuse for us to stop studying for a bit and meet up in what we rather grandly refer to as the sitting room. Where’s Dad anyway, Mam?’
‘He had a house call, love, but hopefully it won’t take too long. It’s Mrs Langton. She has taken a turn for the worse this last while I am afraid and she can’t make it to the surgery any more. He is dying to see you, and you too, Ciara, to find out what you are made of!’
Alison was in total awe of the performance Ciara put on for her parents. She was completely charming, funny and so opinionated on current affairs that for once Richard Shepherd had to take a back seat at his own dinner table. His normally razor-sharp critical faculties seemed to be totally suspended and Alison thought she might pass out when he suggested that they head over the road to Lovett’s for an after-dinner drink. Alison had only ever been to Lovett’s for the odd Sunday lunch with her parents and she could not recall a time when her mother had accompanied her father on his routine Friday-night saunter across to the hotel. She was fairly sure that her dad thought his teenage charges were thirsting for a nice Fanta or 7up and a bag of crisps. His face was a total picture when Ciara coolly requested a pint of Heineken without pausing to register a shred of her host’s discomfort. In fairness, he recovered his composure eventually and made sure Ciara was introduced to the Lalors and anyone else they knew in the pub.
Alison was happy to see her mother looking so relaxed. She looked beautiful and seemed to have bought some new clothes. Maybe the shopping trips with Rena Lalor were not such a dead loss after all, though the lady herself resembled a burst sofa at a table opposite. She must give advice on fashion better than she takes it, Alison decided. In her own moments of loneliness, when Dublin threatened to overwhelm her, she worried that her mother might be finding her absence difficult to cope with. They had, after all, been inseparable for as long as she could remember. Tonight was definitely putting her mind at ease.
Two Heinekens for a teenage girl was the limit of Richard Shepherd’s tolerance and they were back at Michaelmas by eleven, drinking tea and eating biscuits by the dilapidated open fire in the living room.
Cathy had put Ciara in the spare bed in Alison’s room and they chatted late into the night. Alison found herself confiding about the customer in the Daisy May that she had only met twice but fancied like mad.
‘Jesus, girl, you sound like you have it bad. Take it from someone who has had experience of a few: they are all arseholes. None of them are ever as nice as they pretend to be the first time you meet them.’
‘I don’t know why you are trying to set me against men – you do a fair bit of window-shopping yourself around Trinity! What about Eoin from Waterford in our American history tutorial? Don’t tell me you don’t see a bit of romantic potential there?’
‘I suppose there are a few exceptions to my rule and little hotpot Eoin may indeed prove to be one of them, but a lot of lads our age are total eejits.’
‘Dan is older than us though, a good few years I’d say. He just seems really clever and nice. Did I say that Rose told me he was studying medicine?’
‘Oh, Dr Dan, is it now? Oh, sure that makes all the difference. A doctor’s daughter, sure of course you would be on the lookout for a medical student! And it follows that I will be trying to track down a big brawny lump of a farmer like Daddy dearest. Not.’
‘Ah, don’t be so cynical, Ciara! I didn’t even find out he was a medical student until yesterday. I think Rose is getting a bit of fun out of torturing me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, she is drip-feeding the information about him very slowly. She’s known him for ages, says he has been coming in and out of the Daisy May as long as she has been working there. She has sort of guessed I fancy him even though I haven’t said anything.’
‘Well, I’d say going puce every time the poor chap shows his face is a bit of a dead giveaway. If you want my opinion, the direct route is always the best. Tell Rose. If she is anyway decent at all she will put in a good word for you with the delectable Dr Dan!’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I can barely look at him when he comes in at the moment and that’s with Rose knowing nothing for sure. I think if I told her out straight I’d have to run out the back if he ever darkened the door again.’
Ciara sat up in the bed. She was going to have to seriously motivate Alison. ‘No point in letting this fella think he is God’s gift. You are a gorgeous-looking girl and you’d better start realizing it. You are just lacking a bit of gumption, that’s all. I’ll call in some day to you at the Daisy May and see what I can find out from your one Rose. Give me the facts again. Dr Dan—’
‘Will you stop calling him Dr Dan, for God’s sake, he is a medical student not one of your Mills and Boon favourites.’
‘Actually, now that you say it, The Ravishing Doctor Dan would make a cracking title for my first oeuvre in the romantic genre.’
Alison lobbed a cushion from her luxuriantly plumped bed and caught Ciara in the side of the head.
‘OK, cool it. Plain old Dan it is then. Medical student. Any idea where he’s from?’
‘No idea but he sounds a bit posh. Could be from Dublin. Certainly not from somewhere like here anyway.’
‘Jesus, Caharoe is a grand spot. Want to see a backwater? Take yourself off to Leachlara in the arse end of Tipperary. This house is totally amazing and your folks are cool. This house has a name, for God’s sake. How posh is that? Our place is called the new bungalow and it’s been there for twenty years! This is a jammy set-up you have going here, Alison!’
‘I do love the house and my folks are sound. I’m just not all that keen on Caharoe, that’s all. The whole doctor’s daughter thing got a bit annoying very early on. I always thought people treated me differently, the teachers in school and that. To tell you the truth I wasn’t great at the whole making-friends thing in school. I was never in the gang – always standing outside looking on. Too good for my own good, if you know what I mean.’
‘Well, you are in my gang now and I am very glad to have you. So I’ll say it again. You are a lucky wench, Alison Shepherd!’
They spent Sunday helping Cathy sort the Christmas decorations, bringing them down from the attic and deciding what should go in each room. Ciara was stunned by the amount and quality of the decorations. There was no cheap tinsel here and the fairy lights were all tasteful white. When bulbs blew Richard had a stash of spares so nothing would spoil the beautiful display. All of Michaelmas’s windows were to have pillar candles surrounded by holly and ivy and, as a finishing touch, on the front door would hang a beautiful and imposing wreath finished with a burgundy-ribbon bow.
A week later Ciara went back to Leachlara for the Christmas holidays. She unpacked the small parcel of decorations that were kept on the top shelf of the wardrobe in the box room. Tinsel, baubles, old Christmas cards and a horrible-looking plug-in candle were the best of what she found. Well, it might not be Michaelmas, she thought, but they could surely do better than this. A trip to the discount shop on the main street of Leachlara and two bags later she was ready to bring some semblance of Christmas to her family.
Leda was waiting to puncture her sister’s attempts at festive spirit.
‘Jesus, Ciara, why would you bother? Christmas in this house is a lost cause. Dad will have started on the whiskey before breakfast and it will all crash and burn around dinnertime. More tinsel is not going to help the situation.’
‘The place could do with a buck-up, that’s all, and you could get off your backside and help me put these up,’ Ciara said, handing her sister one end of a silver garland.
‘I can give you ten minutes before I have to get ready for my shift in the pub,’ she offered miserably.
Ciara tried to ignore Leda’s negativity about Clancy family Christmases but in her heart she knew that while decorations were a start they wouldn’t be enough. Ted Clancy had won an enormous twenty-pound turkey in Shanahan’s Christmas raffle. (He had bought books of tickets so in reality had shelled out for an entire flock.) Proud as punch, he warned Aggie to make proper stuffing for the fine bird he had provided for the Christmas dinner. He hauled it home after closing time on Christmas Eve but he never thought to put it in the fridge. When Ciara and Aggie got up on Christmas morning it had dripped its juice down the front of the kitchen cupboards and all over the kitchen floor. Ciara cleaned up the mess and set about helping her mother peeling spuds and carrots. Aggie had made plenty of stuffing and for a while that morning Ciara thought things might be different that year. The turkey would only fit into the gas oven if they cut off the legs and squashed it into the one battered roasting tray the kitchen possessed. After an hour a smell of gas filled the kitchen instead of the smell of roasting meat that Ciara had expected. Her mother had gone to lie down on Ciara’s bed and her father hadn’t surfaced yet so she sent Michael to the shed looking for a spare bottle of gas that she knew in her heart he would not find. The Clancys had always made scant provision for the future. Leda sat at the corner of the table munching on a bowl of breakfast cereal. She brought her empty bowl to the sink, all the while smirking at her sister’s disappointment.
‘Well, all we need now is for a fairy godmother to appear with a bottle of gas under her wing. I did tell you that all the decorations in the world wouldn’t change this house, Ciara. Christmas here is always a fuck-up, made worse by the fact that it’s the one day Dad can’t disappear to the pub and give us all a break.’
Ciara knew Leda was right but a stubborn streak wouldn’t allow her to give up just yet. As far as she knew, the microwave still worked. She took the still-mostly-raw bird from the oven and, using the blunt carving knife, she hacked lumps of meat from the carcass and laid it out on plates. She would nuke it at dinnertime and hope for the best. Pot noodles and gravy would only need the addition of boiling water from the electric kettle. Vegetables they could live without.
Her mother cried when she found out what had happened. ‘I gave money to your father to pay for briquettes and gas at Murtagh’s. I rang when they didn’t deliver during the week but they said the bill was still outstanding and we were not to have anything else on credit. I just hoped the bottle of gas would last. He will be so cross, Ciara.’
Ted Clancy was as sour as a pig when he finally emerged from bed to do some work on the farm at midday. ‘The finest specimen of a turkey this house has ever seen and you had to fuck it up,’ he roared at Aggie, who looked miserable and cold as she leaned against the kitchen counter.
Ciara was not about to allow him to get away with blaming her mother. ‘Well, if you had paid the bill at Murtagh’s with the money that Mammy gave you instead of drinking it at Shanahan’s they might not have left us without gas to cook the shagging turkey. Now go and feed the cattle before they go down to the neighbours’ looking for something to eat. Dinner will be at two.’
Ted cursed his way to the cowshed. His head was sore and his stomach heaved from drink and no food to undo its poison. He kicked his loyal cattle dog in the shins when it ran in front of him, welcoming him to their morning’s work.
The turkey was tough and a bit charred after ten minutes in the microwave. The noodles and gravy tasted as they should but the food was nothing like a real Christmas dinner and the lack of conversation around the table made the meal almost unbearable. Ciara had bought a box of Christmas crackers but they could stay under her bed for another year. Even she hadn’t the stomach for that. Michael and Leda milled through the jelly and ice cream that Ciara doled out in big bowlfuls in an attempt to make amends for the lousy first course they had endured. Ted threw savage looks at his wife but Aggie had taken herself off to another world with the help of a couple of her pills and didn’t notice.
As dusk fell Ciara went to the kettle to make herself a hot drink. The house was cold and she thought about draining a bit of whiskey from Ted’s stash to add to her coffee. He was out in the yard, most likely having a swig from some bottle he had hidden out there, so he would hardly notice. Leda and Michael were stretched out watching the TV and Ciara offered up a quick word of gratitude that at least the electricity hadn’t been cut off. From the kitchen window she could see her mother doling out the still-meat-rich carcass of the turkey to the dogs and cats that lined up in grateful appreciation at their unexpected good fortune. Well, at least the animals are having a good day, Ciara thought as she took her drink to her room and lost herself in a book Alison had given her for Christmas.