Foreign Affairs (22 page)

Kit sighed and turned her face towards the sea. One of the ferries was ploughing through the waves past the slender white column of the Tuskar Rock lighthouse. She watched until it disappeared
around the curve of the bay and headed towards the safety of Rosslare Harbour. Maybe she had been moaning a bit to Jenny. After all, the poor girl was in an awful state about Beth. But she always
felt she could pour out her woes to Jenny. Much more so than to Brenda, who was totally wrapped up in herself. If Kit thought she had woes, her eldest daughter could out-woe her anytime.
She’d been unfair to Jenny, she decided. It was something she must guard against. Turning towards home, Kit prepared her words of apology.

It was strange to be sitting on her own at school, Jennifer thought sadly. If only Beth was with her on the first day back. At least she was out of her coma and that was the
best news that could have greeted Jennifer on her return home to the city after her disastrous holiday. She was not allowed to visit as Beth was still seriously ill. But the doctors were optimistic
that in time her best friend would make a satisfactory recovery. It would take months, but it was good news. The headmistress had asked the whole school to pray for Beth at assembly that morning
and Jennifer was sure that so many heartfelt prayers would not go unanswered.

She was delving deep into her schoolbag when she heard Sister Imelda’s voice above her. ‘Jennifer, this is a new girl. I’m sure you won’t mind if she sits beside you
until Beth returns to us.’

Oh no, thought Jennifer to herself. The last thing she needed was polite small talk with a stranger. She felt quite resentful that someone else would be sitting in Beth’s seat. She looked
up to find a very pretty petite blond-haired girl smiling at her.

‘Hello,’ the stranger held out her hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you, my name is Paula Matthews.’

Chapter Eighteen

Rachel felt sick with nerves. The supervisor handed out the Honours English papers. There was a last-minute shuffling and coughing and fidgeting as the sixth years of St
Angela’s prepared to do their Leaving Certificate exam. It was very important that Rachel do well in English, Irish and Maths. Good results in these subjects would make all the difference to
her application to St Patrick’s Teacher Training College in Drumcondra.

Rachel didn’t particularly want to be a teacher. She dreamed of being an air hostess. She could wear contact lenses and look very glamorous and fly around the world.

‘Indeed and you won’t be an air hostess, Miss,’ her father pronounced when he heard this sensational piece of news. ‘I’m not having any daughter of mine working as
a glorified waitress and wasting her good education.’ In vain had Rachel pointed out that an air hostess needed to have foreign languages, and had to be capable of giving first-aid treatment
in an emergency. Serving food was only a small part of the job. Her father was not impressed.

‘Nonsense, Rachel, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Her father’s constant put-down for as long as she could remember. It enraged her. She never answered
him back. One didn’t with William Stapleton. Even her mother didn’t often argue with him. He was too much of an autocrat.

Rachel gave vent to her fury only in the privacy of her bedroom. She’d make scathing retorts to the photograph of him she kept for that purpose. ‘You stupid, ridiculous, horrible
man. You old-fashioned idiotic clod of a schoolteacher. What would you know about it? What would you know about anything in the modern world? You fossil, you. You bald-headed bastard. Someday . . .
Mister. Someday I’m going to tell you exactly what I think of you.’ This thought kept her going and made life bearable. Someday she would certainly turn on her father and tell him to
get stuffed. And that she was leaving Rathbarry for good. Just when she was going to do this, Rachel hadn’t decided. She’d have to wait until she got a job. Now that her father had
insisted she become a teacher, she was going to be beholden to him for the next three years of her teacher training. What a pain in the neck, she thought glumly as the supervisor placed the exam
paper face down on her desk.

Rachel loosened her tie. It was warm. They were taking the exam in the school library. How ironic, reflected Rachel as she gazed around at the book-filled wooden shelves that lined the walls of
the bright, airy, rectangular library, that the place that had been her greatest haven at school should now be the scene of this ordeal. She’d been dreading her Leaving Certificate exam for
months. Her father never lost an opportunity of pointing out that it was the most important exam in a student’s life. The gateway to life itself, he was fond of saying.

Her father warned her that if she didn’t do well in the exam, she was going to have to repeat sixth year. If she did do well, she’d be off to St Pat’s for another three years
of swotting. It was a no-win situation. Or maybe not, she mused. If she went to St Pat’s, she’d live in college and that could be good fun. It would be marvellous not to have her father
constantly telling her what to do. She’d have her own room. The rules of the college could hardly be any stricter than the rules of William Stapleton. There’d be discos and societies to
join and a chance to meet men and even go on dates. Maybe teacher training college wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It would be very exciting living in Dublin after the languid pace of
life in Rathbarry. Ronan loved Dublin. But then Ronan was much braver than she was. Her brother never allowed their father to boss him around. She should take a leaf out of Ronan’s book, she
decided firmly. That was if she did OK in her exams. She was beginning to feel very apprehensive.

‘You may turn over your papers and begin, girls,’ the supervisor said. Then she discreetly took a Mary Stewart thriller out of her bag and settled down to a peaceful morning’s
reading.

Rachel’s heart thumped as she turned over the paper and began to read through it. At first everything was a blur. Words jumped out at her.
The Portrait of a Lady
question looked
poxy. So did the one on
Coriolanus
. Oh God! This was a disaster. Calm down, she thought frantically. Take deep breaths. In front of her, Glenda Mower was already beginning to write. So was
Eileen Dunphy. This panicked Rachel even more. Maybe it was just she who found the paper difficult. Her palms began to sweat. She felt dizzy. Her stomach cramped and she felt a bit pukey. Why did
her period have to arrive this morning? It was the last thing she needed. She’d been horrified when she woke up to find it had come. When she had her period she sometimes felt a bit woozy in
her thinking. As if her thoughts were smothered by cotton wool. She needed to have her wits about her today. Her brain had to be sharp and functioning. Oh God, what am I going to do? she thought
desperately. Across the aisle, Michelle Butler was chewing the top of her pen pensively. She hadn’t started to write yet. And Michelle was one of the brainiest in the class. Michelle smiled
at her and threw her eyes up to heaven. Relief flooded through Rachel, Michelle wasn’t too enamoured of the paper either.

She slipped a Polo Mint into her mouth, Polo Mints always helped her feel less queasy when she had her period. Her panic lessened. She began to read her paper again. The question on
Coriolanus
wasn’t as awful as she’d thought, she decided. Rachel took the top off her pen and began to write, a little shakily at first until she got into her stride. She
couldn’t believe it when the supervisor called for their papers two and a half hours later. It had only seemed like twenty minutes. It hadn’t been half as bad as she’d thought it
was. Rachel was quite light-hearted as she listened to the post-mortem afterwards and felt that she had answered her questions reasonably well.

‘O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in thee,’ Theresa prayed with heartfelt urgency as she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece in the kitchen and saw
that it was after twelve-thirty. The exam should be over by now. God grant that Rachel had done well. The poor child had been so nervous going in to school this morning and she’d got her
period unexpectedly as well. The things women have to put up with. Theresa sighed.

She was going through the change herself. It was a nightmare. The sweats and hot flushes were most distressing. She’d been sitting listening to the sermon at Mass last Sunday when
she’d been struck by a hot flush. She could feel her face boiling. Perspiration trickled down the collar of her good white blouse. She’d felt terribly hot and agitated. It would have
been a relief to slip out of the church but they were in the front pew. William would never consider sitting anywhere else. As headmaster, he had to set a good example. Theresa hated sitting in the
front row. She’d much prefer to sit in the seats near the side door, which was where she sat when she went to Mass by herself during the week. But on Sundays she had to sit where her husband
sat, no matter how uncomfortable she felt.

It had been a long hot flush. She hadn’t been able to say another prayer. All she’d wanted to do was to get away by herself. Theresa felt she couldn’t go out. She’d have
to disturb the other people in the seat and there’d be the long walk down the aisle of the church with everyone looking at her. William would not be impressed. It was too awful to
contemplate. She’d lasted until the end of Mass, but it had been extremely stressful. The thought of going to Sunday Mass was now a big worry. What if the same thing happened again?
She’d offer it up, she decided, so that Rachel would do well in her Leaving Certificate. Her daughter would have a bit of freedom if she went to Dublin to do teacher training. Like Ronan, who
was studying electronics in Bolton Street Tech.

Theresa smiled as she thought of her son. Ronan didn’t let his father browbeat him. There’d been a fierce argument when William insisted that his son must go to university to get a
degree and Ronan had insisted on going to Bolton Street to study electronics.

‘It’s either electronics or else I’m not doing third level at all, I’ll get whatever job I can get and leave home,’ Ronan declared. William caved in. He
couldn’t take the idea of his son having no qualification in life. Theresa had been secretly delighted. It did her heart good to see her son standing up to his father. She had no fears for
Ronan but she worried desperately about Rachel. Rachel would never defy William. She would always be under his thumb unless she moved away from home and stood on her own two feet. If she did
teacher training, she could live in one of the halls of residence. Theresa knew her daughter didn’t want to be a teacher, but it might be the making of her . . . Rachel needed to get away
from her father and get a bit of self-confidence. It would be hard not having her daughter at home. Theresa missed Ronan dreadfully although he came home for weekends but knowing that he was
becoming self-sufficient was enough to make up for it, Theresa mused as she stood looking out the kitchen window at William mowing the grass in the back garden.

He thought he was a great father. Concerned for their welfare and education. He would have been truly horrified if he’d realized that he was viewed as a tyrant by his wife and children.
Theresa knew this. She’d tried to make him see that constantly exerting authority was not necessary. William was convinced that his children were his own personal property to do with what he
would. The idea that they were people in their own right was totally alien to him. He knew what was best for them. That was what a father was for, to guide, to instruct and to be obeyed, he told
Theresa over and over when she tried to argue that Ronan and Rachel were entitled to make their own decisions about their futures. The trouble with William was that he had to be in control . . . of
everything. Theresa sighed, as she started to make the gravy from the juice of the stuffed lamb cutlets that were sizzling away in the tinfoil.

William mowed the grass with vigour and precision. His lines were straight, giving a neat manicured effect to the lawn. He wondered how Rachel was doing in her Honours English.
It should prove to be relatively easy, after all, he had given her extra coaching after school. At least his daughter would let herself be advised by him, not like that scut Ronan, who was becoming
far too obstreperous for William’s liking.

It wasn’t William’s doing that Master Ronan was living in digs in Phibsboro. No indeed. That was all due to Theresa. William wanted his son to commute to the city daily and return
home to his own bed at night. But Ronan had started to moan. He maintained that time spent on buses would be better spent studying in the college library. Ronan announced he wanted to do
extracurricular classes in computer studies in the evenings. In the end, and much against his better judgement, William had given way and agreed to let his son live in digs in Dublin, on condition
that he come home at weekends. It was the thin end of the wedge, there were weekends now when Ronan only made a brief appearance. He’d come home on Sunday mornings, with the excuse that
he’d been studying on Saturday. William suspected that his son was out carousing!

Rachel certainly wouldn’t be living in Dublin for the duration of her teacher training. William was unequivocal about that. Rachel would commute and there’d be no arguments about it.
The trouble with this family was that nobody listened to him. Theresa let the children away with murder. This time he was going to put his foot down. He couldn’t allow his daughter to live in
Dublin on her own. It was unthinkable. There was so much crime these days. Young women weren’t safe on the streets. Rachel was a timid soul. She wouldn’t manage on her own in the city.
Even in a hall of residence. Theresa had better not start any arguments to the contrary. She had no concept of parental responsibility. Giving in to children might be kindly meant but it was much
harder to be firm. In some ways firmness showed a much greater love. His wife couldn’t see that. She had always accused him of being too strict. That was an unfair accusation, he thought
self-righteously.

This time he wouldn’t budge, William vowed as he pushed his lawnmower and beheaded several dandelions that had no business being in his lawn.