If anyone had said she was in love Claire would have pooh-poohed the idea. She might have felt love for her parents but with the death of her baby sister they had been too occupied with their own grief to notice they were neglecting her. By the time they did, it was too late. By then Claire was helplessly, hopelessly enamoured with the McArdle family.
Claire was a solitary child given to reading a lot and playing imaginary games by herself in the wilderness that passed for a garden behind their house. Her mother had been a teacher and believed it was never too early to become acquainted with books. Claire’s first memory was sitting in her bath turning the vinyl pages of Puss in Boots. She remembered the water slopping the shiny plastic cat and crooning sadly because he had gotten his fur ‘all wet.’
Christopher, who was two years younger than Claire, never opened a book. He spent all his time hopping, throwing or kicking a ball which pleased their father who was also sport crazy and spent his weekends glued to the television watching Grandstand and Match of the Day. Claire didn’t feel much, if any, affinity with Christopher.
When Claire was ten, another baby had been born; a little girl with hair a shade blonder than Claire’s and grey eyes fringed with sooty lashes. She and Christopher had doted on Bella, bonded together this one and only time out of mutual adoration. “Make an angel face,” Claire would coax and the little darling would show her pearly teeth in a smile. “Now a devil face,” and she would scowl and wrinkle her button nose obediently. Claire was besotted by this tiny sibling, willing the school bell to ring so that she could run home, eager for the reality of her.
The baby was her mother’s joy and delight and her death from meningitis when she was two cast Annette into a deep depression. She lost her optimistic view of life, her sweetness of expression. At thirty-eight years of age she became weepy and withdrawn, lying in bed with her face to the wall, refusing to take an interest in anything. When she got up at last and resumed her normal routine she performed her tasks like an automaton, without flair, the spirit gone out of her. Claire’s father, Jim, tried to cheer her but could not break through the barrier Annette had erected about her. There was a marked difference in their relationship. He became hesitant, almost apologetic, as if it was somehow his fault. Her mother no longer laughed at his clowning and he had lost his faith in his ability to make her laugh.
Claire’s tummy began to hurt, a niggling discomfort at first, which deepened to a sort of sour ache. Somehow it was always night-time when the pains got bad and her moans woke her up. Her parents heard her but put it down to the trauma surrounding the baby’s death. In the nights after the death she had woken up sobbing, turning away from them, refusing to be comforted. They would have been slow to take action, even in normal times, but now they were so locked in their own private misery that they hardly heard her anymore.
Eventually, they took her to a doctor who diagnosed colic and she was put on a gluten free diet. Now her stomach pained from hunger and all that week she cried herself to sleep. When the pains persisted only a hot water bottle or her mother’s hand moving in soothing, concentric circles brought relief. They took her back to the doctor, who put his hands on her stomach, poking and prodding and feeling her. He could find nothing.
The pain became a red-hot pincers which dragged her regularly from her dreams and demanded attention. She was frightened by the intensity of her tears. Other doctors were consulted, more examinations carried out. She would point to the middle of her stomach since, by then, the pain had faded and she couldn’t remember exactly where it had been. “Just somewhere around there.” Back home again. For a while near starvation and then normal food until the next time. Claire missed school sixteen days that term, too tired in the mornings after a disturbed night to get up and dress herself in time for the bus.
Across the street a house was sold and two shiny brass plates went up on the fence.
‘Two doctors, no less!’ her father reported, coming in when the tea table was cleared and his liver and bacon crisping in the oven. He had a flush about his cheeks, an air of foolish bonhomie. These days he was never home on time, spending longer hours “at the office”. ‘I suppose there’s nothing like keeping it in the family.’
‘You mean they’re married,’ her mother stated without interest. ‘I wonder have they children?’
Claire could have told her. She had sat at the window all afternoon watching the unloading of the removal van and spied a cot and a playpen, bunk beds. Later, the men had staggered in with a roll-top desk and a piano. Claire imagined what it would be like to play it and saw herself in a long, silver evening gown, moving her hands fluidly over the keys as she was doing now on the arm of her chair. It distracted her from the dull pain in her stomach. If she pretended she was playing a Scott Joplin number she could almost ignore it. Her fingers bounced rhythmically up and down, her brow furrowed in concentration.
‘Look at her,’ her father said, with maudlin affection. ‘she’ll be a concert pianist yet.’ He looked down at his own tobacco-stained fingers regretfully. Her mother turned the page of a magazine. She might have been stone deaf for all the notice she paid him.
That night Claire dreamed the walls of her bedroom were closing in on her like a tomb, crushing breath out of her, squeezing her forehead in a vice. Her screams wakened her.
‘Hush, hush,’ her mother murmured, rocking her distractedly in her arms. She had got into bed beside Claire and was lying under the quilt. Claire felt raging hot. Bile rushed to her throat. She half sat up and then her throat spasmed and the stench and taste of vomit was in her nostrils, burning her tonsils. She began to cry with relief and fright.
Her mother got out of the bed. Claire heard her speaking to someone on the landing and then she was back, sponging her hands and face, towelling her down, putting her in a clean night-dress. ‘I’m going over now,’ Annette said. ‘I don’t give a bloody damn if they have just moved in.’ Her laugh was mirthless. ‘Surely between the pair of them with all their qualifications they can find time to come. It’s not ten o’clock.’
Claire lay and drifted. It felt like the middle of the night. Every so often pain jerked her awake. There was the sound of feet on the stairs. The dividing wall between her room and the landing did not quite meet the ceiling and every sound was magnified, especially at night. A lamp was switched on in the room and she felt someone bending over her. She squinted upwards but whoever it was blocked the light. She felt gentle hands pressing her stomach.
Dr McArdle said kindly, ‘Does that hurt, Claire? Won’t you tell me now if it does?’
She was surprised it was a woman and it was a minute before she could answer, ‘No.’ Strangely, it was true. Throwing up, or something, had eased the agony. She began to say so when something was put into her mouth and cool fingers held it there. She closed her eyes and she must have dropped off because when she opened them she was lying in a strange bed in a shadowy room full of sleeping figures. From a lighted corridor just beyond the shadows a voice said clearly, ‘It’ll probably rupture before they get her on the table.’ Claire wondered what she was talking about.
She had her appendix taken out during the night. It didn’t burst but it was a close thing. Nine inches long, her mother told her, when she came out of the ether to find her sitting by the bed. Claire wondered why none of the doctors had realised what was wrong with her. When she said so her mother explained that her appendix had not been in the usual spot but was tucked away behind some other organ, making it difficult to find. ‘Only for Jane McArdle you’d have been in a bad way.’ There was a note of respect in Annette’s voice.
Jane? When had they become so friendly?
It turned out that her mother and Jane McArdle - or Jane Mannion as she was then - had been to college together. They had been great friends at one time and even gone on holidays to Spain together.
‘I couldn’t get over it when she opened the door and saw her standing there,’ Annette said with a reminiscent smile. ‘She knew what was wrong with you straight away and to think none of those doctors I brought you to had any idea.’
Claire wondered if her appendix had started growing when the baby died and if she too would have died only for Dr McArdle. She felt the beginnings of a sense of obligation to her unknown saviour, which was to increase upon acquaintance and to remain with her for the rest of her life.
Claire was in the children’s hospital almost a week and ate her meals from pink plastic dishes which tasted of washing-up liquid. There were six other children in the ward, all younger than her, one a toddler with his torso encased in a plaster cast, who wept all day. Christopher only came to see her once. He was spending all his time playing with their new neighbours.
‘There’s a boy my age,’ he told her. ‘He’s smaller than me.’ He went on to describe the dressing-up games they played in the McArdle’s garage and the stage they had erected out of packing cases. Claire thought it sounded fun.
After five days they took her stitches out and she was allowed home. She was glad to go. The sound of the wailing babies through the wall kept her awake nights and reminded her of their own baby they had lost.
Her house seemed smaller on her return, darker too after the wide windows in the ward. Claire climbed the stairs gingerly, afraid of making her wound bleed. She lay weakly against the pillow and stared at her book through a blur of tears, suddenly lonely for the antiseptic efficiency of hospital routine.
As if sensing this, her mother filled a hot water bottle and slipped it comfortingly against her feet.
‘There!’ she said. ‘You could do with a bit of spoiling.’ At the unaccustomed kindness Claire’s tears overflowed.
Next day Jane McArdle paid them a visit. She was a big boned woman, with auburn hair and an infectious giggle, which, oddly at variance with her bulk, conjuring up a much younger woman.
‘How’s the patient?’ she asked, coming into the front room where Claire was sitting with a rug tucked loosely about her, a book open on her lap. Claire felt suddenly shy.
‘You needn’t keep her wrapped up, you know.’ Dr McArdle twitched away the rug. ‘Not in this weather, Annette. The poor child is the colour of lobster.’
Annette bristled, ‘There’s been a cold snap these past few days,’ she pointed out.
They stared at each other.
‘Why is it,’ Annette asked pleasantly, ‘that doctors seem to think they’re qualified to give advice in all areas, even those that don’t concern them?’
Jane laughed. ‘Touché! Part and parcel of the trade. We’re a bossy lot, I’m afraid.’
Annette looked mollified. ‘And mothers are inclined to be over-protective,’ she conceded.
‘Don’t I know it. You should see the bottles of vitamin C and cod-liver oil I dose my gang with.’
At this Annette laughed, ‘How domesticated we sound, Jane. Imagine us having this dull kind of conversation way back when we went to college hops together.’
‘Booze, men and sex were about the height of it,’ Jane agreed.
‘And in that order.’
Claire sat forgotten between them as they chatted about people and places they had once known
Her convalescence lasted two weeks. By that time the summer term was more than half over and there seemed little point in going back to school. Her father, however, pointed out she had missed enough already and would drop even further behind so she returned for the last two weeks. There was a new girl in her class at St. Catherine’s. Although Claire had covertly observed her on a few occasions, this was her first meeting Sheena McArdle, a slim leggy girl with bold, merry eyes under straight black brows and, with her birthday just before Claire’s in June, Claire’s senior by nine days.
They hit it off at once. Sheena moved her desk beside Claire’s and helped her copy out notes she had missed. They lent each other rulers and colouring markers, shared their fruit and sandwiches.
They were like twins, speaking at the same time, finishing each other’s sentences. Claire forgot her appendix scar and ran all over the playground, whooping and shouting. Her pigtails slipped their ribbon and blonde hair haloed her perspiring forehead.
The nuns were amazed at the change in her. She had always been so shy and restrained. She was a different child in Sheena’s company, excited and garrulous. Together they got up to all kinds of mischief. On painting days they tipped the contents of murky jam jars through a broken floorboard, drenching the unsuspecting heads of the class beneath. Once during morning break, they barricaded themselves into the kitchens and sprayed cartons of milk through the serving hatch at the children in the refectory. Sister Dunphy threw up her hands and exclaimed at their antics. Only it was so near the end of term they would have been punished. As it was, she called them into her office and told them such giddy behaviour was unseemly in little girls in their first year in the senior school. She made them promise to reform. For Claire none of it was quite real. Sheena, herself, Sister Dunphy gesticulating. It was as if she had taken a step into another sphere. She had never back-answered in her life and now she was making up in a fortnight for years of good behaviour. She bit her lip, struggling to keep from giggling outright. Sister Dunphy glanced at their bursting expressions and with a sigh brought the lecture to an end. Arm in arm, Claire and Sheena pranced unrepentantly down the corridor.
The summer holidays normally meant for Claire unlimited free time to read, sprawled on her bed with a quarter pound of scented pin cushions beside her, dipping two fingers into the bag as she turned a page. On daily trips to the local library, she’d made a friend of the librarian, who was young and sympathetic and more than ready to turn a blind eye to the number of books Claire borrowed. She had practically exhausted the children’s library; although she wasn’t actually old enough at thirteen to join the adult section. You had to be fifteen to get an adult ticket. Sometimes she had to go further afield to branches in outlying areas when the shelves of the ‘local’ turned up nothing new.
This was how Claire normally spent her summers. With the advent of the McArdles all this was changed. Now she spent her days playing with Sheena and the other McArdle children, enjoying the novelty of their big house and garden.
Unlike her own terraced house, the McArdle’s house stood on its own ground, with a solid stone garage set some distance apart. This was the garage that Christopher had played in when Claire was in hospital, but since then he had fallen out with Hugh and now his allegiance was with another family, further down the road. Claire was just as glad. The McArdles were hers!
Claire had yet to meet Sheena’s father, who was away all that month at a medical conference in Leipzig, but Sheena’s mother made a great fuss of her, getting her to come in out of the sun when she was tired and spending time with her in the cool kitchen, where she snatched frequent coffee breaks between patients. Jane flattered Claire, gave her little jobs to do and rewarded her by treating her like a grown-up.
The garage was the centre of the children’s play. In it they performed all kinds of dramas, ad libbing as they went along. A big part of their garage repertory consisted of hospital scenarios, in which Terry, Sheena’s twin, insisted on playing his father most of the time, an old stethoscope dangling about his neck; and Sheena their father’s receptionist, or the bossy matron at his hospital, while protesting that she didn’t get to be the doctor more often. Claire and Hugh uncomplainingly acted the young married couple about to have their first baby, who was of course Ruthie.
‘Why can’t Claire or I be matron sometimes?’ Ruthie wailed, taking her cue from her sister. But Claire was quite happy to form part of a trio with the younger children.
She was a little in awe of Terry, who succeeded in bossing everyone except Sheena, who was equally strong-minded. With his cleverness and agile tongue he could make Claire feel foolish, but she couldn’t hate him, only dumbly suffer it. He was too like Sheena.
The twins, though not identical, were very similar physically, with dark mops of hair curling untidily on their necks, and expressive dark eyes in smooth, round faces. Each exhibited an effortless, unstudied charm and consideration which at once confused and disarmed their adversaries. Together they were formidable. All of them, from Ruthie upwards, had inherited the McArdle charm. When they fought for her favours, Claire felt both privileged and embarrassed.
One thing wasn’t the same anymore. Claire was no longer Sheena’s twin. Out of school, Terry was restored to his rightful place. Claire felt her separateness keenly and, although they included her in all their games, felt supernumerary most of the time. It helped that Jane singled her out as she did.
‘Would you help me carry in the washing? It’s lovely and dry and it may rain later.’
Claire was down the garden with Jane, behind the apple trees. A line stretched across the patch of grass Terry had begun mowing earlier in the day. He had left the edges untrimmed, the mower abandoned across the path.
‘I love my eldest son dearly but I have to admit he’s a minimalist,’ Jane said, stepping over it. Claire took the basket from her and carried it towards the house. ‘Now Hugh is a perfectionist like his father,’ Jane chatted on. ‘As for Ruthie, that little madam. she’s another Meryl Streep.’
Claire said nothing. She was becoming used to Jane’s way of talking about her husband and children as though writing their biographies.
As they passed the garage they could hear Terry and Sheena playing there. There was a steady drumming sound, punctuated by Sheena’s high-pitched laugh.
‘Come into the kitchen and we’ll make ourselves coffee,’ Jane said, tiptoeing exaggeratedly past the opening. Claire smiled and followed her into the house.
‘No need to disturb them.’ With a conspiratorial wink, Jane closed the kitchen door and locked it. ‘This way is more fun.’
Claire seldom drank coffee but she liked the way Jane made it, sweet and milky. She sipped it slowly and munched shyly on a Kerry Cream.
‘Have another,’ Jane urged. ‘Go on! Don’t be polite.’
Pleased, Claire obeyed, feeling flattered and a little overwhelmed. She glanced discreetly about her and wished that their kitchen at home was even half as roomy as this one so that they could have their meals in it like the McArdles did. The Shannon’s kitchen was little more than a scullery so they ate in the dining-room, sitting about the round mahogany table which took up most of the space. It was very cramped, especially when they had company, with Claire and her mother squeezing awkwardly past, carrying plates and apologising all the time. Claire thought everyone else lived like this until she saw how spacious the McArdle’s house was.
Jane sat on a chair opposite Claire and cupped her hands around a china mug, sprigged with flowers. She eased her feet out of sling-back sandals and leaned her elbows on the table. ‘Another five minutes,’ she told Claire, ‘then it’s back to the grind.’ She pulled a comical face.
Jane’s regular receptionist was on holidays and her seventeen year old daughter was standing in for her. After a minute, the girl stuck her head around the kitchen door to say that the next patient was in the waiting-room.
‘Okay, Babs. I’ll be right there.’ Jane yawned and sipped her coffee, looking as if nothing would ever move her.
There was a clattering sound outside the window and a face bobbed into view. It was Terry standing on an upturned bin. He sank out of sight until only his eyes were visible above the sill. ‘We want to come in, Mum,’ he shouted. ‘Open the door.’ He began lashing the bin under him with a stick.
‘Stop that racket,’ Jane called, unperturbed. ‘Claire and I are having a chat. Off you go now. You’ll get your turn later.’
Having a chat. How grown-up it sounded. Claire was suffused with pleasure, which quickly turned to guilt when Terry fisted the window and roared a rude word. Jane just laughed. ‘Brat!’ she said lazily, declining to go after him
Released in the summer months from the discipline of school time-tables and evening surgery, Jane McArdle had become very relaxed. She let her children run wild, neglected to cut their hair and only remembered their toenails when jagged tears appeared in their canvas runners. Her own hair, which could have done with professional styling, she wore girlishly tied back from her face with one of Sheena’s hair ribbons. During the rest of the year she had no time to go to hairdressers, she maintained, and in summer no inclination. To save herself the chore of cooking she sent Sheena out to the local delicatessen every morning to see what she could find, and their lunches consisted of ham and salami salads one day, pizzas or barbecued chicken the next, and half a dozen buttered baguettes to fill them up. She refused to exert herself more than necessary in the summer months and meals were as labour-saving as she could make them. At the same time, she encouraged Claire to eat with them, saying that it wasn’t worth her while to run home and anyway she was a civilising influence on her own children.
‘Look how Claire never grabs but waits for bread to be passed to her,’ Jane praised, horrified at the speed with which her own brood cleared the table.
‘She’ll be waiting,’ grinned Terry, swiping the last piece. He gave it a quick lick before his mother made him return it to the plate.
‘Someone else might like it.’
‘They won’t now,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve put my saliva on it.’
Jane sighed. Sometimes she wondered why she was sending her children to good schools. They didn’t have the first notion of table manners. Maybe they should all eat together more often. She met Claire’s eye.
‘See what I mean?’
Claire grinned sympathetically. Even if she got a bigger share at home, she considered the McArdle mealtimes were much more fun,.
Sometimes Jane asked after Annette in an absent kind of way. Claire didn’t say that her mother, after her initial pleasure in their reunion, was resentful of the fact that despite repeated invitations, Jane had so far failed to drop over for coffee and a natter. Just as she didn’t tell Annette that she was no longer passing her invitations on.
Jane was inclined to fuss over Claire. How pale she was! Was she getting enough rest, eating the right food? She was a great believer in children drinking lots of milk and, when Claire admitted that she never drank a drop at home, slyly made her cups of milky coffee to get it into her that way. Pharmaceutical Companies sent Jane packs of vitamin samples through the post and she often encouraged Claire to take some home with her. No one, not even her mother, had ever shown such interest in Claire’s welfare. She felt warmed yet guilty to be the object of so much concern.
‘Don’t be!’ Jane hugged her. ‘I can’t help worrying about you, you little silly.’ Her manner was at once teasing and comradely.
One day, when they were on their own in the kitchen, she told Claire to pull up her dress and, when Claire shyly revealed her tummy, gave her scar a quick, professional glance.
‘It’s healing nicely,’ Jane pronounced. ‘Luckily, you’ll be able to wear a bikini.’
Claire hadn’t thought that far ahead. The incision had been fairly neat and, over the weeks, it had lost its livid colour.
‘By the time you’re my age,’ Jane promised her, ‘it will be just a tiny mother-of-pearl seam.’ She made it sound quite attractive. In this, and in other small ways, she was extremely solicitous of Claire in the weeks after her operation.
Claire’s parents paid her little attention. The truth was that while they were not unkind to her, they were going through a rough patch themselves and had little emotion left over for anything else. Her mother was silent and abstracted most of the time, deep in her own thoughts. Her father was less and less at home, and when he was there he devoted his time to Christopher, who had always been his favourite. Comfortably ensconced on the couch, the pair of them watched the Wimbledon finals and any other ball that hopped. Claire, passing through on her way to the kitchen, would hear their voices rising to varying pitches of excitement as they recorded the scores. She wondered what it would have been like if Christopher had been a girl instead of a boy. And went back across the road to play with the McArdles.
Sometimes Sheena dropped over to Claire’s house but mostly left it to Claire to call on her. There was always some activity going on in the McArdle’s garden and little or nothing happening in the Shannon’s. Claire could see that two deckchairs plonked out in the wilderness wasn’t all that inviting,. Nor was the inside of the house any better. The kitchen was poky, with a damp odorous dishcloth permanently draped on the sink, and there was never any iced lemonade like in Sheena’s house. It might have been different if her mother had gone out of her way to make Sheena welcome but any exertion these days seemed beyond Annette. The odd time she remembered to buy biscuits Christopher made short work of them, snacking before the television.
At first Claire was disappointed by Sheena’s failure to return her visits; it was all so lop-sided somehow. Then she was relieved. It kept her relationship with the McArdles separate, which was what she had really wanted all along. She held on to the hope that when she and Sheena returned to school and Terry was no longer about, it would be the same for them as before.
One consolation was her friendship with Hugh. Although he was two years younger he was surprisingly sensitive for his age. He owned a cocker spaniel called Hero and let Claire help feed and groom her. By degrees, Claire learned more about the dog. Hero had started out as Terry’s dog – she was given to him for his tenth birthday - but became Hugh’s when Terry got tired of taking her for walks. Or so Terry made out. But this wasn’t the real reason. According to Hugh, Terry was secretly galled at having a dog that wouldn’t answer his whistle or obey his commands to sit or beg so he made a great show of giving her away. From what Claire already knew of Terry she could well believe this.
Towards the end of June, Hero gave birth to a sizeable litter, too many for her to be able to feed by herself. Hugh fixed up a bed in the tool-shed with plenty of fresh straw from a nearby riding stables and borrowed a doll’s feeding bottle from Ruthie and filled it with warm milk. Claire was thrilled when he asked her if he would like to try her hand at feeding them.
It was evident that Hugh had his parents’ dedication to preserving life and his father’s skill with his hands. Watching him dose Hero with vitamins, Claire was amazed how he got her to accept the tablets. It was all done so smoothly. She was sorry when the pups got bigger and Hugh no longer needed her. She had never enjoyed anything so much in her life.
During their coffee sessions in the locked kitchen Jane McArdle sometimes chatted to Claire about the children’s father and Claire couldn’t help feeling curious about Dr Eddie McArdle. She tried to conjure him up from his children’s faces. Hugh and Ruthie were so like Jane it was a safe bet the twins resembled him. She wondered what he would think of her when he returned and found her in his house every day. Would he object to having an extra child about the place, an extra mouth to feed? She felt sensitive about such things, having once heard her mother speak crossly when a schoolfriend regularly lingered on past mealtimes. ‘Hasn’t she a home to go to?’ Annette had grumbled, annoyed at having to stretch the shepherd’s pie to five portions when it was barely enough to feed four people to begin with. At the same time Claire recognised that the McArdles were different. They didn’t calculate so finely - didn’t have to! She had already seen evidence of this in the generous way Jane included her in all the picnics and treats she laid on for her own family.
Claire began to see Dr McArdle as a slightly romantic figure, physically a cross between Sheena and Terry, yet inexplicably grim and brooding, with granite-hewn features and jutting eyebrows. She was reading Jane Eyre at the time and had unconsciously cast him in the role of Mr Rochester.
It was a shock to find how closely he resembled a romantic hero.
Eddie McArdle was broad-shouldered and powerfully muscled, with curly grey-black hair and a beautiful sad smile, which seemed to suggest that no matter what dreadful secrets you told him he would not be surprised or shocked.
He arrived home from Germany one morning, not long after Jane had set off to collect him at the airport, having somehow got her lines of communication crossed. The children were playing in the garage when he suddenly appeared in their midst. Claire was lying on her back - they were enacting a childbirth scene - and Sheena was instructing her to “breathe deeply” and “bear down, my dear” while Terry pressed the stethoscope against the cushion Claire had shoved under her dress. The twins were noisily encouraging her to moan and scream and when they saw their father, they didn’t stop but, pleased to have an audience, exaggerated their antics.
‘Good God, is this what you get up to?’ he asked, genuinely appalled.
Claire struggled up, feeling mortified. She saw herself as he must see her; an almost grown girl, legs sprawled, playing childish games. Her face reddened as she pulled the cushion from under her dress and quickly hid it behind her. She gave an involuntary cry and held her stomach.
‘Labour pains reoccurring, no doubt.’ Dr McArdle sounded sarcastic.
Tears in her eyes, Claire stared down at the ground. Her tummy really hurt. She must have opened the wound.
‘It’s my tummy... I think I’ve pulled my appendix scar.’
He stared at her for a moment. ‘Come into the house,’ he said, more gently.
Still clasping the cushion, Claire followed him into Jane’s surgery, where he motioned for her to lie down on the couch. She put the cushion on the floor and eased herself up on to the couch. She felt a little shy, lying there, staring at the walls. There was the sound of water running as Dr McArdle washed his hands.
He came over and sat on the edge. ‘Let me see.’ His hands were gentle as he pulled up her dress and peeled back her pants. Claire stared fixedly at a spot on the wall behind his right ear. She wondered desperately which knickers she had put on that morning. Annette was very lax these days about taking her shopping, or indeed, doing anything that required effort. With school holidays she had practically abandoned all pretence at housekeeping.
‘Nothing too catastrophic,’ he murmured, blotting a globule of fresh blood. ‘You’ll survive.’
She made to sit up but he gently pushed her back on the couch.
‘Hold on. A swab of Betadene and you’ll be right.’ He stood up and crossed the room.
She looked down at herself, her stomach bared, her faded cotton pants pulled down, revealing pale skin. Oh no, there was a hole in them. She flushed, wishing she could cover herself. Sheena wore flowered sets of lingerie. She wished desperately to have had underwear like Sheena’s. She looked away miserably. He was back.
‘Be prepared,’ he warned. ‘It’s cool.’
She gasped as the solution drenched her warm skin. Quick competent fingers swabbed the area and with a grunt he straightened up. She let her breath out slowly. He turned away to put the stained dressing in the pedal bin, giving her time to rearrange her clothing before turning back.
‘How old are you, Claire?’
She was surprised he knew her name.
‘Thirteen.’
‘I would have put you older. Got your periods yet?’
She stared at him. She felt hot, confused. No-one ever talked about such things, especially no man. She nodded dumbly. There had been brownish red staining a couple of times so far. Annette had discreetly left a packet of sanitary pads in her room some time before. She told him.
He nodded. ‘I have some booklets I can give you. Sheena found them helpful. She has hers almost a year.’
Claire looked down at her hands. She and Sheena had not spoken yet of such things.
‘You’re both fairly young starting. Means you’ll go on longer. Possibly have babies in your fifties... if you want that.’
She shook her head. Was she really having this conversation? She tried to imagine sharing the same dialogue with her father and failed. But then her father wasn’t a doctor.
‘It seems rather old,’ she ventured.
‘No accounting for tastes, is there?’ He smiled at her. ‘Modern young women want to put it off as long as possible. Careers first, babies later. You won’t be like that, will you, Claire?’
Careers! Babies! She didn’t know how to answer him.
He laughed, reading her thoughts. ‘That’s all a long way off... still, maybe not so far away.’ He looked at her consideringly. ‘You are mature for your age... your body strong, well developed. You are already taller than Sheena by an inch, I should say.’
Suddenly she became self-conscious. She glanced towards the door. As if recollecting the time he went at once to open it. ‘Off you go. You can take your cushion with you.’ He sounded amused.
She blushed and retrieved it. He waited until she was through the door then closed it gently after her. She walked back to the garage, her head in a spin. No one had ever described her so intriguingly to herself before. She felt as if she were being created afresh and was drawn, almost against her will, to view herself as he did.
That night Claire stood on her bed, her feet sinking in the soft mattress, and looked in her dressing-table mirror. She badly wanted to see herself, all in one go. It was the first time such an idea had occurred to her.
By bending her neck and crouching she was rewarded by a foreshortened frontal: first midriff and thighs, and then lower and upper torso. Her hips and thighs had lost their childish thinness and looked nicely rounded. Her breasts were beginning to get fat. When she arched her body, they gently budded the bodice of her cotton dress. Was this what he had meant by well developed?
Next she angled the mirror so that she could see herself lying down on the bed. With her head resting on the pillow, she pulled up her dress and down her pants and looked critically across. In the months since the baby’s death she had filled out and was no longer a little girl.
She dreamed that night, as in the period after her appendix operation, that she was in the operating theatre, except that this time he was the surgeon standing beside the table. She was aware that her hospital gown was ruched up leaving her naked below the waist, but each time she modestly tried to pull it back down he told the nurse to pull it up again. In the end she just lay there and let them. She remembered the dream long after she woke up.
In the days after, when Claire passed the surgery, she felt a faint excitement as though behind the panelled door Eddie was waiting to continue their conversation. Now during her coffee sessions with Jane she encouraged the older woman to talk about him, avidly absorbing every detail of his life.
Jane, who never needed any persuading to talk about her family, was pleased at her interest and painted a generally accurate, if slightly biased, account of the doctor and the man.
Eddie was a brilliant surgeon and had been awarded several medical gongs for his research into ectopic pregnancy and the effects of certain drugs on bone formation in the developing foetus. He divided his time between his consulting rooms in Merrion Square and the city nursing homes. One day of the week he operated at the hospital. Jane said he was treated like a god by his woman patients and bullied and adored by his receptionist, who had been his faithful watchdog for thirteen years. This paragon managed to keep his appointment book filled without overcrowding it. New patients were encouraged to pay in advance of consultation and maternity cases prior to their six week check-up. No-one ever slipped past her and Eddie could not have functioned without her. Jane laughed and professed to be madly jealous of her. Claire asked Sheena later if this were true, but Sheena just laughed herself and said that the woman was almost sixty years old and the only threat she had ever posed was to her father’s waistline.
‘Somehow babies always seem to get themselves born around mealtimes,’ Sheena explained. ‘She worries about Daddy and stuffs him with take-aways.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Terry, who was listening. ‘He’s getting to be a right fatso!’
Claire was struck by how casually the twins regarded their father. By comparison Hugh worshipped his father and was afraid of disappointing him. He thought of becoming a vet when he grew up but worried it would disappoint his father if he didn’t follow in his footsteps. Claire thought if only Terry had some interest in medicine it would have let Hugh off the hook, but Terry was not the academic type. His was a bold and adventurous spirit and when he grew up would more than likely become an explorer or a soldier. Terry climbed effortlessly to the top of the thirty foot chestnut tree in the garden, swinging daringly on a branch and shouting boastfully down to them all, while poor Hugh got dizzy and sick if he so much as went on to the garage roof to recover a tennis ball. Claire understood and empathised with Hugh’s fear of heights, but at the same time she couldn’t help feeling a sneaking admiration for Terry’s fearless show of courage.
Claire got in the habit of hanging about her own gate around the time Eddie came home in the evening. But as soon as she saw his car turning into the road she would go at once into the house. One evening she lingered on the pavement, throwing her ball at the wall. When he had stopped his car and got out she pretended suddenly to notice him.
‘Hi, Blondie,’ he said with a smile and disappeared up the driveway before she could say hello back.
Blondie!
Another time she and Sheena were going upstairs as he was coming down. Claire had on a blue gingham skirt and a frilled top, her fair hair bound about her head in plaits. He murmured something in his daughter’s ear and passed on with a chuckle. ‘Don’t you want to know what he said?’
Of course she did, but only if it was something nice.
Sheena giggled. ‘Daddy calls you the Dresden doll. I think you’re more like Heidi.’ She linked her arm through Claire’s affectionately. ‘Daddy thinks you’re awfully pretty.’
Claire hugged it to herself. The Dresden doll. It sounded delicate and exotic. Her heart went up and up.
After that she began imagining dramatic little scenes. Jane had been called away and Eddie had need of her help with a woman who had cut an artery and was rapidly losing blood. She stood beside him following his instructions to the letter and afterwards he admitted that the woman would have been dead only for her. Sometimes Jane had died (Claire felt a bit guilty even thinking such a thing) and he was lonely and seeking comfort. She sat with his head in her lap and tenderly stroked his forehead, ran her fingers through his grey-black curls. Beyond that her imagination did not go.
One evening, Claire saw Eddie and Jane, both were smartly dressed, come out of the house on their way to some function.
‘Don’t forget to get out the hose and water the plants,’ Jane reminded Hugh. She had on a mustard and brown Thai silk dress, with a linen jacket draped over her shoulders, and very high heels. She was wearing lipstick and she had been to the hairdressers. Claire thought she looked almost pretty.
Eddie backed the Rover out of the garage. Terry had hosed it down and given it a polish, and now the chrome gleamed and the bodywork held a blue satin sheen. He put on the brake and got out. He had on a light grey mohair suit, red silk tie and a handkerchief peeped from his top pocket. Claire thought he looked very grand.
‘And how are you, my dear?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘No more bother afterwards I hope.’
Claire shook her head. ‘Thank you,’ she said, remembering her manners.
‘No trouble at all... only too happy.’ He made her an elegant little bow and smiled his beautiful, rather mournful smile.
‘Eddie, shouldn’t we be going?’ Jane sat carefully into the car, arranging her skirts so as not to crush them. She had been telling Hugh which plants most needed water. She had recently acquired a camellia in a terracotta pot and wanted to be sure he would spray the leaves.
‘Claire will help you,’ she called through the window, adding in a low flattering voice to Claire, ‘Keep an eye on him, there’s a love.’
When they were gone Claire and Hugh got out the hose. They attached it to a tap on the side of the house and took turns directing the jet of water across the flowerbeds. At first it was fun. They screamed and laughed, soaking plants and bushes, everything in sight. Then they turned the hose on the house and the water spurted up like they had struck oil, drenching windows and gutters. There was a muffled shout and Terry stuck his head out of the window.
‘Hey, watch it down there, you eejits,’ he shouted. He leaned out, comic in hand, vigorously shaking drops from the pages. His irritated gaze took in the dripping figures below. ‘Aren’t you getting a bit big for that sort of caper, Claire?’ he asked scornfully. ‘Hugh will cop it when Mum comes home.’
Claire flushed, reminded of Jane’s parting words. She had betrayed a trust. ‘Sorry!’ she whispered, washed now by guilt. But Terry had gone back inside. She looked uneasily at Hugh. His T-shirt was sticking to his ribcage, his hair falling in a wet lick across his forehead. Her own dress clung sharply to the lines of her body, emphasising the swell of her small breasts. She went hot with shame. What must Terry have thought! She turned away.
‘What’s the matter?’ Hugh asked.
‘Nothing,’ she mumbled.
He followed her across the damp grass, still holding the nozzle in his hand. ‘You’re going home?’ He sounded disappointed.
Claire wandered through the gate. She had made a fool of herself.
Claire hated it when the McArdles went off on holidays in August. They owned a holiday bungalow in County Waterford and went there every year. Jane took the whole month off and Eddie commuted for the second half, driving down from Dublin for the weekend.
Claire wandered about like a lost soul for the first week, just living for some word from them. Sheena had promised to send a postcard. Claire felt like someone on a life-support machine, merely existing until their return.
She haunted their garden in the evenings, slipping like a lonely ghost about the darkening perimeters. The trees were covered with slowly ripening fruit. At night they were a thick mass of sweet-smelling leaves in the gloom. She didn’t like to pull an apple from the tree. It seemed ungrateful somehow, though why she couldn’t say. Jane had always been more than generous to her. Claire rummaged on the ground for a windfall and bit into it. It was sharp and woody-tasting. She spat it out and reached almost defiantly to the tree. The apple that came away filled her palm and was sweet and moist on her tongue. She dropped it guiltily in the grass and went home.
By the time the McArdles had been away three weeks, Claire was counting the hours to their return. Sheena’s card arrived at last, a few lines with the expected message: ‘Having a great time, swimming and playing tennis. Disco dancing at night. If only you could be here!’
Dancing! Claire felt envious. Not so much for the boys Sheena was meeting - if anything she felt distinctly nervous at the prospect of them - but for the altered status it implied. Her friend had stepped into a different world while she played at home in short socks.
The same post brought a card from Hugh. He’d caught a whopper of a fish and only wished she’d seen it. But he’d got sorry for it and chucked it back in the sea. He signed his name and Hero’s paw-mark. Claire laughed and felt a whole lot better.
That evening she wandered again in their garden. The tool shed was locked and she peeped in the cobwebby window, hoping to see Hero’s bed. The puppies were all long since disposed of and she felt wistful remembering their eager pink tongues, the warm solid feel of them. Hugh had wanted her to have the little black and white one she was so fond of and urged her to ask her mother, but Claire had known it was out of the question.
She could hear a radio playing in the bedroom in the house next door. She recognised the tune ‘What’s Another Year?’ It had been very popular a few summers before.
The lights in the adjoining houses were being turned on. Claire stood listening under the trees by the side of the garage in the faint pink light, not knowing why she did so, but reluctant to go home. The music stopped next door, and she heard footsteps approaching. She felt sudden panic at being found there and, opening the small door in the side wall of the garage, slipped inside. There was the smell of rotting potatoes. She stumbled on a coil of rope and shot out a hand to save herself from falling. She looked about in the gloom for somewhere to hide.
‘I said one drink...’ Eddie McArdle’s voice sounded with startling clarity at the other side of the up and over door.
‘You said!’ The woman’s voice sounded amused, incredulous. ‘What makes you think it’s any easier for me.’
Claire stood very still as their footsteps went on down the path. They must have been in the house all along. But where was his car? After a moment she heard the muffled slam of a car door and the engine starting up. He must have left it on the road. She waited an age, giving them time to get away before she crept out, pulling the door gently after her. She ran full tilt into him coming round the side of the garage.
‘What the hell?’ He gripped hold of her, his breath coming short and quick. No less startled, she froze in his grasp as he dragged her forward into the light.
‘It’s me... Claire,’ she said timidly.
‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘So it is. Where in the world did you spring from?’
‘I was in the garage...’ She blushed and hung her head. She began to shiver.
Eddie looked at her professionally. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ He put the back of his hand against her forehead. ‘You feel a bit feverish.’ He reached for her hand to take her pulse.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, teeth chattering slightly. ‘Just a bit cold.’
‘Mmm. Your hands are icy. Better come inside. I was just about to make coffee.’ He walked off towards the porch. She stood hesitantly until he called, ‘Come along,’ at which she followed him inside. The drawing-room door stood open, spilling soft lamplight into the hallway. She noticed two glasses on the low coffee table and a decanter, half filled with some golden liquid. She walked on past, down to the kitchen where he was bringing the kettle to the boil.
‘Perhaps you would prefer cocoa?’
‘No, coffee is grand.’ She didn’t want to put him to any trouble. Besides cocoa was for children. He took down two mugs from the dresser, scraped a spoonful of instant into each and filled them up with boiling water.
‘Jane never remembers to buy coffee. Fortunately there is just enough.’
Claire thought of the way Jane made coffee, almost entirely on milk, and wrapped her cold fingers about the mug. ‘How are they all?’ she asked shyly.
He looked up and smiled. ‘Enjoying themselves.’
‘And Hero?’
‘Off on endless forays, following scents. She’s a country dog at heart. Wouldn’t be surprised if she decides not to come back at all.’
She stared at him. What would Hugh say?
He laughed at her concerned face. ‘Only funning,’ he said. ‘Hero’s no fool. She knows when she’s well-off.’
She nodded, relieved.
He took her mug away from her. ‘It’s cold in here. Let’s go into the drawing room. It will be pleasanter there.’
He put his arm around her, ushered her down the hall and into the drawing-room. He set down the mugs on the coffee table.
‘Sit down, Claire.’
She sat in the armchair closest to her. He lowered himself into another and took up the whisky decanter. With a pleased grunt he poured himself a drink. She realised he was a little drunk.
She sipped the coffee, wondering when she should go.
‘How have you been enjoying the summer?’ Eddie took a swig from his glass and waited, head on one side. When she was silent he prompted, ‘Go on... tell me what you’ve been doing? I’d really like to know.’
She said she went to the library every day, took out a lot of books.
‘You’ve spent all your time reading!’ He laughed. ‘In this hot weather?’
She coloured, stung by his air of amusement.
‘I like to read.’
‘Absolutely nothing wrong about that,’ he conceded. ‘I only wish the same could be said of the twins. Those two never open a book.’
‘Christopher... my brother... is a bit like that,’ she admitted.
‘Younger than you, isn’t he?’
‘Yes...two years... but he acts a lot younger.’
He smiled and nodded. ‘Boys mature more slowly than girls. I’m not surprised an astute young lady like yourself has already noticed this.’
She felt inordinately pleased by his approval.
‘Tell me your favourite authors.’
She did. This was the real world, more real to Claire than her own. She became animated. She was aware of his eyes upon her and felt excited and a little carried away by his attention. ‘I mean in Jane Eyre she’s merely a governess and Rochester is the master of the house, but when he challenges her opinions she has the courage to stick to them and even when he’s terribly fierce and rude to her she doesn’t allow him to intimidate her. You see although Jane cares for him passionately she preserves her detachment from him,’ she concluded earnestly, trying to remember in which textbook she had come across this observation.
He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You’re really quite smart, aren’t you, Claire? And romantic too.’
Yes, she supposed, she was. Certainly she loved reading about people in unequal circumstances falling helplessly, hopelessly in love and cleaving together, despite dreadful opposition.
‘Apart from reading how else do you enjoy yourself?’
She searched about but could find no answer. With Sheena away, reading and visiting the library were her only pastimes.
‘I expect you play tennis?’
‘Now and then.’ Why on earth had she said that when it wasn’t true except for knocking a tennis ball against the back wall?
He nodded. ‘I like a game myself. We have plans to build a hard court at the back. Not this year. Maybe next. You must use it, of course.’ He got up suddenly and leaned over her head to switch off the lamp.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ He sat down again. ‘More restful.’ He began talking about Sheena, the fun she was having flirting with the boys in the neighbouring cottages on their holiday site.
‘She’s becoming very mature, filling out. Her breasts are as developed as a sixteen year old.’ Eddie laughed. ‘Driving the young lads mad. Sheena will give them a run for their money.’
Had he said breasts? She felt a sudden shock and went hot all over.
‘Had your first date yet?’ he asked her.
She shook her head.
‘It won’t be long.’ He smiled across at her. ‘You are very mature for your age, Claire. Anyone would take you for older. Did I tell you that before?’
She was silent.
‘And extremely pretty. But that’s not the only thing... you have an air of fragility that is very appealing. You don’t mind me saying so?’
Her head swam, her mouth felt dry. She had a sense of unreality again. The room was bathed in the reflected glow from the lantern in the driveway. Meeting his intent gaze in the pearly half-light she became shy. A little scared. She sat rooted, unable to move as he leaned over and stroked her bare knee, pushing her skirt right up till his fingers brushed against the vee of her pants. He talked dreamily about Sheena’s exploits with the Waterford boys and stroked her as if he wasn’t aware of what he was doing. Her head felt thick, confused, her blood was drumming in her ears.
‘Do you like that, Claire... it’s nice, isn’t it?’
His whispering voice seemed to come from a long way off. She licked dry lips and lay back helplessly as a warm glow spread up her thighs while from on high, another self looked down, noting what he was doing and registering a feeble protest. His fingers slipped inside her pants and the sensation between her legs became so intensely pleasurable that she was terrified she was going to lose all control and wet her pants. She closed her knees convulsively on his hand. He gave a long sigh and sat back in his seat.
She got up. ‘I must go home.’ She looked uncertainly at him. He sat slumped in the chair, a hand covering his eyes.
‘Yes, do that,’ he said, without looking around.
She let herself out of the house and ran across the street. The News at Ten was on the television as she passed the sitting-room door and went on up the stairs. In the bathroom she took off her pants and looked at them. They were in a damp string. She scrubbed them under the tap and hid them at the back of the hot press
The next evening she wandered in his garden again. She saw the light in the kitchen and knocked on the window. He came to the door and looked at her almost angrily.
‘Yes, Claire... what do you want?’
She was taken aback. She thought he would be glad to see her. She looked at him tearfully. She didn’t quite know what she wanted except to be with him.
‘I saw the light.’
He stared at her, obviously uneasy. His unease communicated to her and she glanced behind at the darkening landscape as if fearful of someone or something watching them.
‘You’d better come in.’
She stepped inside and he closed over the door. He went at once to the window and jerked across the curtain although the garden was not overlooked.
‘So why have you come?’
She was silent. She stood before him, eyes cast down. She was trembling. He gripped her by both arms and shook her. ‘Oh what have I started,’ he said, so softly it was almost a whisper. He stroked her hair back from her averted face and, with closed fist, gently bopped her chin. She was trembling in the agony of expectation.
‘If you had any sense,’ he said, ‘you would run now and not stop running until you were far away from here.’
Sense didn’t come into it.
He took her up to Ruthie’s bedroom. There were posters of tigers and lions on one wall, giant Pandas on another. She looked at them as he sat her down on the edge of the bed and stroked her small breasts through her T-shirt. The tiger’s eyes seemed to follow the movement of his fingers, bare his fangs at her. She closed her eyes. He bent his head and pulled gently at her nipples, worrying them through the cloth, leaving damp patches where his mouth had been.
When he lifted her skirt and began the slow pressure, she involuntarily arched against it.
‘You are a very quick learner. Do you know what part of you this is?’ he asked, stroking his finger up and down between her legs.
She shook her head.
‘A very important part. Without your clitoris you couldn’t achieve orgasm.’
The telephone rang in an adjoining bedroom and he went to answer it. Claire fiddled with her socks, stretching and neatly turning down the tops.
‘No, I can’t... not tonight.’
It was just possible to hear what he was saying.
‘Look, another time. Yes... yes. Soon. I’ll let you know.’ Pause. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake! Don’t be like that. Tonight’s just a bad night for me. Okay. I’ll call you.’
When he came back he was smiling.
He switched off the light and left the door open so there was enough illumination from the landing to see by. He lay down beside her, on his side, stroking her hair.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this, should we?’ he murmured.
What did he want her to say?
‘Is it so wrong?’
He laughed. ‘Only if you believe it is. Some people are of the school of thought that all pleasure is sinful but then again there are those that believe a little masturbation is a healthy thing.’
She lay still as he placed his hand on her stomach and gently traced her appendix scar, slipped lower to massage her belly and crotch. She was reminded of her mother’s hand soothing her in the night. It wasn’t so very different.
The next time she was with him he asked her if she realised that the family would be home at the end of the week. She said that she did. He sighed and caressed her.
‘You’re a lovely girl. I’m going to miss our evenings together.’
She had vaguely hoped they would continue.
‘Will you tell anyone about us?’
She shook her head.
‘Good girl. We have something precious. We don’t want to spoil it.’ He rocked her in his arms. ‘Claire... pretty little Claire. Strange to think that in years you aren’t much older than Ruth. Yet she’s still a babe with her animal pictures and toys. My men-aja-wee,’ he mimicked his daughter, not unkindly.
Claire felt sudden hatred for him and, at the same time, anguish and shame that no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t be able to keep away from him.
On Thursday, the day before he went down the country to collect Jane and the children, he handed her a little package.
In the package was a delicate gold cross and chain. He made a big thing of putting it on her and fastening it about her neck.
She felt both disappointed and uncomfortable with the gift. How nice if instead of a crucifix, she thought wistfully, he had given her gold stud earrings like Sheena had, or maybe a Claddagh broach. She would have loved that. She had absolutely no jewellery of her own.
She brought it home and hid it at the back of her cupboard (she didn’t know how she would explain it to her parents), thinking she would leave it there for ever.