Heart and Soul (3 page)

“But what can it
be?
He can't have the house. He doesn't want the girls—they're big enough anyway to go wherever they want and they hardly go near him.”

“Maybe he has a touch of angina and wants an examination.”

“No, I never treated him. I always made sure from the start that he went to Sean Murray.”

“Maybe he wants to marry the young one, and needs a divorce.”

“No, he's running headlong from marrying her.”

“How do you know?”

“The girls tell me.
He
even tries to tell me when he thinks I might listen to him.”

“And will you listen to him?”

“Not much. I know you all think I should have finished this totally ages ago. Who knows? I might. I might not.”

“Good luck, Clara.”

“I wish we
were
having those sausages and wine.”

“Another night, Clara.”

Then there was an e-mail from the paint shop saying that she could pick up a color chart the next morning; a text from her cousin in Northern Ireland to say that there was going to be a Ladies’ Club
Outing to Dublin and could Clara suggest somewhere good value where they could park a bus and lunch, buy souvenirs and a bit of country air at a reasonable price; a neighbor came in to ask for support about banning a pop concert that would deafen them in three months’ time. And then it was eight o'clock and Alan was on the doorstep.

He looked well. Annoyingly well. Much younger than his forty-eight years. Under a dark jacket he had an open-necked, lemon-colored shirt. Easy care, Clara noted. No careful ironing of collars and cuffs for the bimbo. He was carrying a bottle of wine.

“More civilized, I thought,” he said.

“More civilized than what exactly?” Clara asked.

“Than sitting glaring at each other. God, you look well. That's a lovely color. Is it heather? Or mauve?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Oh, yes, you are, you were always great with color. Perhaps it's violet or lilac or—”

“Perhaps it is, Alan. Will you come in?”

“Girls out?”

“Yes. You paid for them to go to Quentins, remember?”

“I said I'd stand them a bite of supper. I didn't know they'd go upmarket. Still, that's youth today”

“Yes, well, you'd know all about it, Alan. Come in and sit down since you're here.”

“Thank you. Shall I get the opener?”

“This is
my
house. I will get
my
opener and
my
glasses when I am ready.”

“Hey, hey, Clara, I brought you a pipe of peace, well, a wine bottle of peace. Where's all the aggravation coming from?”

“I can't think. I really can't. Could it have anything to do with your cheating on me for years, lying to me, promising things were over when they weren't, leaving me, fighting me through all the lawyers in the land?”

“You got the house.” To Alan it was simple.

“Yes, I got the house I paid for. I didn't get anything else.”

“We have
been
through all this, Clara. People change.”

“I didn't.”

“But you
did,
Clara, we all did. You just didn't face it.”

She suddenly felt very tired. “What do you want, Alan? What do you actually want?”

“A divorce,” he said.

“A what?”

“A divorce.”

“But we
are
divorced, separated for four years, for God's sake.”

“Not divorced, though.”

“But you said you didn't want to remarry. That you and Cinta didn't need any bonds like that.”

“Nor do we. But you see, she's gone and got pregnant and so, well, you see?”

“I don't see.”

“You
do
see, Clara. You just won't admit it. It's over. It's been over for a long time. Why don't we just draw a line in the sand?”

“Get out, Alan.”

“What?”

“Get out, Alan, and take your wine of peace with you. Open it at home. You really picked the wrong night.”

“But it will happen anyway. Why can't you just be gracious, decent, I wonder?”

“Yes, Alan, I wonder too,” Clara said, standing up and sliding his unopened bottle back across the table to him.

She wished she felt a sense of closure about it all. It was unsatisfactory leaving it up in the air like this, but Clara was not going to play along, doing things according to
his
timetable. Was it possible she thought it wasn't entirely over? So even if it was unfinished that's what she wanted just now. She stood there long enough for him to realize that he really did have to go. And so he went.

“Cinta? Darling?”

“That you, Alan?”

“How many other men call you Cinta and address you as darling?” His laugh was tinny. “What did she say?”

“Nothing.”

“She must have said something.”

“No, she didn't.”

“You didn't go.”

“I
did
go.” He was stung by the injustice of it. “She can't have said nothing.”

“She said, ‘Get out.’”

“And you did?”

“Love, it doesn't make any difference.”

“It does to me,” Cinta said.

Clara had always been a great believer in putting worries out of your mind. Years back they had a wonderful professor of general medicine who had managed to inspire them all. He was Dr. Morrissey, her friend Dervla's father.

“Never underestimate the curative powers of being busy,” he had advised them. He said that most of their patients would benefit from having more rather than less to do. He had achieved a near legendary reputation for curing insomnia simply by advising people to get up and sort out their tape collection or iron their table napkins. What would he say now? Kind Dr. Morrissey who had been more of a father to Clara than her own remote, withdrawn father ever had been.

Dr. Morrissey would say, “Tackle something that will absorb you. Something that will put That Bastard Alan and his divorce and his infantile girlfriend way out of mind.” Clara poured a glass of wine and went upstairs. She would fill every corner of her mind with this bloody center that she had signed on to run.

In Quentins Adi was watching her sister with disapproval. Linda was twining her long blond hair around her fingers and smiling at a man across the room.

“Stop it, Linda,” Adi hissed.

“Stop what?” Linda's eyes were big, blue and innocent.

“Stop attracting his attention.”

“He smiled. I smiled back. Is this now a hanging offense?”

“It could end up being complicated. Will you
stop
smiling, Linda!”

“All right, prune face. Whatever happened to being pleasant?” Linda asked sulkily.

At that moment a waiter bristling with disapproval came to their table. “Mr. Young's compliments and would the young ladies like to choose a digestif with his compliments.”

“Can you please tell Mr. Young no, thank you very much,” Adi said.

“Please tell Mr. Young that I'd love an Irish coffee,” Linda said.

The waiter looked helplessly from one to the other. Mr. Young, from across the room, had seen the situation and materialized at their table. A tall man in his late forties, in a well-cut suit and with the appearance of being a person who could manage most situations.

“I was just thinking about how life is so short and how sad it is to have to spend it talking business with men in suits,” he said, a practiced smile on his suntanned face.

“Oh, I do agree,” Linda simpered.

“So do I,” Adi said. “But we are the wrong people to waste the rest of your life on. Mr. Young, my sister here is a twenty-one-year-old student and I am a twenty-three-year-old teacher. We're probably not much older than your own children. Our father has paid for us to have a nice dinner here while he tells our mother that he wants a divorce. So you see it's a fraught time. And really you would probably find it more fun with the suits.”

“Such passion and strength in one so young and beautiful.” Mr. Young looked at the elder girl with admiration.

Linda didn't like that at all.

“Adi's right, we
do
have to go home,” she said and the waiter's shoulders relaxed. Problems didn't always sort themselves out so easily.

“And you just actually got out because she said ‘Get out’?” Cinta was disbelieving.

“God, Cinta, what did you expect me to do? Take her by the throat?”

“You said you'd ask her for the divorce.”

“And I did … I did. We'll get it eventually. It's the law.”

“But not before the baby is born.”

“Does it matter when we get it? We'll both be here for the baby. Isn't that what counts?”

“So no wedding?”

“Not yet. You can have the biggest, best wedding in the world later.”

“Okay, later, then.”

“What?”

“I said all right, it's hard for you.
I'm
not going to nag you. Why don't you get that wine you were going to give her and bring it home.”

“I left it there.”

“You gave her the wine and left without the divorce? What kind of clown are you, Alan?”

“I really don't know,” Alan Casey said truthfully.

Clara had met Alan when she was a first-year medical student and he had been working for his first year in a bank.

Clara's mother said that there were very few people in the world who did not make money while working for a bank. Alan Casey however, was one of them. He placed rather too much faith in the more speculative and wilder aspects of investment. They never had much material comfort. Alan was always being pipped at the post for some house or some really great property. Clara just saved steadily from her salary. She closed her ears to the unasked-for advice from her mother and her friends. This was her life and her decision.

Alan had always been the ambitious one: enough was never
enough and there had to be more. That came to include women as well. For a time, Clara pretended it wasn't happening. But then it became too hard and she faced it.

When Clara and Alan had split up officially, Clara made sure that each of the three bedrooms should be furnished with shelves and desks. This way she and the girls could all work in their own space without interfering with each other. Downstairs was meant to be a more general area. Claras room was cool and elegant. On one side of the room were her bed, dressing table and a large fitted wardrobe. The other half was a workstation with filing cabinets, but it looked like quality furniture rather than cheap office supplies. She had a comfortable leather chair and a good light. She opened a drawer and took out a large box file called
CENTER.
For three weeks she had been avoiding looking at it. It brought home the realization of all she had lost and the small consolation that had been offered in return. But this was the night she would attack it. Maybe after she watched the nine o'clock news.

When there had been a special offer on television sets in the huge warehouse, Clara had bought three of them. The girls said she was behaving like some mad exhibitionist millionaire, but Clara thought it well worth the investment. It meant that Adi could watch programs about the planet being in decline, Linda could see pop shows and she, Clara, could relax with costume drama.

She reached around for the remote control, but then she remembered that Dr. Morrissey had always said that we found excuses to put off doing something that would take our minds off our worries. It was as if we didn't
want
to lose the luxury of worrying. So she opened the large box and looked with some small degree of pleasure at her neat filing system. There was the documentation about the whole nature of the heart clinic, what it was meant to do, how it would be funded, her own role as its first director. There were her own reports of educational visits to four heart clinics in Ireland and three in Britain and one in Germany. Tiring visits all of them, wearying hours touring facilities that would not be appropriate or relevant to her own center. Note taking, head nodding, murmuring approval here, asking questions there.

She had seen money scrimped here, money wasted there. She had observed no planning, excessive planning, making do with what was already there. Nothing to inspire her. Some idiotic decisions like placing a heart clinic on a third floor in a place without proper elevator access. Like the casual attendance of staff on no regular basis. She had seen duplication of files and reports. She had seen trust and hope among patients who felt that they were learning to manage their disease. But surely you could get that in any good GP's office or an outpatient department.

Clara had taken notes on what she had liked and hated in two different colors. It would be easy to summarize her findings. Then she saw a file called
PERSONNEL.
The pool on which she was allowed to draw for assistance. She would need the services of a dietitian and a physiotherapist. She would need at least two trained cardiology nurses, and a phlebotomist for taking blood. They would have to have a houseman or -woman working there for six-month periods, a system of referral from doctors and the general hospital. They would have to get a campaign of public awareness going, arrange interviews in the national press and on radio.

She had done it all before. When she had been at the forefront, and that was when she was going somewhere. Or thought she was. Still, it had to be done, and she would do it right. What else was she in this for if not that?

She started to look through the files.

Lavender. What a name for a dietitian. But she had a good CV, and she said she wanted to specialize in healthy eating for the heart. She sounded lively, young, dedicated. Clara put a tick beside her name and reached for the phone. Might as well start now. Okay, so it was nine o'clock at night, but this was the girl's mobile phone. She would no doubt be surgically attached to it.

“Clara Casey here, Lavender. I hope it's not too late …”

“No, of course not, Dr. Casey. I'm delighted to hear from you.”

“Perhaps we could have a chat tomorrow if you could come to the center. There's a sort of conference room there. When is best for you?”

“I'm working from home tomorrow, Doctor, so anytime is fine.”

They fixed a ten o'clock appointment.

Now she needed a physio but she didn't know how many hours a week. She went through the applications to see who was available for part-time work. A big, bluff face came through the photographs. Square, reliable, not handsome, looked like an ex-boxer, but there was something about his story that she liked. He did a lot of work in inner-city clubs, he had been a late student; the word
mature
didn't really apply to him. He had a lopsided grin.
Great,
she thought,
I'm choosing staff on their pictures now.