Like One of the Family (19 page)

Some nights Terry would stay in the cottage listening to the radio while Claire and Ruthie played Ludo or some other board game. When he did Claire never felt comfortable. She sometimes looked up to see him watching her with those dark tawny eyes, so like Eddie's, and then all the guilt would come flooding back. What if Terry was to know of her association with his father? She didn't think she could bear it if he did.

Claire got in the habit of settling down for the night at the same time as Ruthie. She hated being downstairs on her own after dark and always imagined faces looking in at her through the uncurtained windows. It was much cosier up in bed, sipping cocoa and reading her book.

Terry never came into their bedroom. That was a blessing. Claire was loth to admit it but he stirred a feeling of excitement in her. She was coming in her dreams again and it had to do with that afternoon on the mountain. She realised that the lips she had kissed so dreamily and unknowingly had not been Alan's - how could they and he at the other side of Sheena? - but Terry's. Deep disturbing kisses that seemed to reach down into her soul and go on for ever. So it was a case of never allowing herself to be alone with him.

Before long there was another cause for guilt.

Terry and Sheena were taking money from the housekeeping to pay for their bottle parties and she, Claire, had never said anything for fear of being called a prig or a goody-good. Jane had treated her from the very beginning of their relationship like an adult, and now here she was betraying her trust yet again.

Jane had no idea of any of this.

Like Eddie, in the past, she worked hard all week, then drove back to the country at weekends, intent on making the most of these few days with her children. She was like a sailor home on leave, crowding the all too few hours with the kind of things she most liked. And once back in the bosom of her family, she loved and indulged them to an almost foolish degree.

Jane was not aware that she was doing it, but she deliberately blanked her mind to anything unpleasant that might mar these brief get-togethers with her children. There was enough grimness in the shape of illness and death awaiting her on her return. It was unlikely that she would ever probe deeply enough to discover that Sheena and Terry were getting high most nights on drink or that Claire was left minding Ruthie practically all the time, as well as shopping for groceries and keeping the cottage tidy. On the surface everything was serene because Jane wanted it to be that way.

Terry understood his mother's attitude perhaps better than any of them. He had that same ability to stick his head in the sand in order to avoid tackling issues that were, for one reason or another, distasteful to him.

Terry was a doer, not a dreamer and anything he was unable to settle with his fists made him uneasy. He always had to be in control and usually was. Since the previous summer he had put on an extra four inches, which brought him up to six foot in height, and although slim, he was sturdy and strong. There was a fearless streak in Terry which had the effect of disconcerting his fiercest opponent. The tougher and bloodier the fight, the better Terry liked it. Once he had identified his enemy's Achilles' heel, he coolly went for it, pounding away until he was victorious. He was not a dirty fighter. He was even a chivalrous opponent. But as he said himself, he just didn't take crap from anyone.

For some time Terry had found himself strongly attracted to Claire. The strength of his feelings puzzled him, for he considered she was everything that he was not: Intellectual, refined, sensitive. Not his usual kind of girl. A real little Miss Dainty-Dot.

He'd always had a curiosity about her from the days they had played nurses and doctors in the stone garage. She was so cool and fair, remote. The day up the mountains, seeing her lying there in the sunshine, permitting liberties... exchanging kisses like she was some high priestess conferring an honour, yet managing somehow to retain that dreamy, untouched quality. She confused and excited him. Ever since the school opera he had found himself thinking of her, remembering the sensuous kiss she'd given him before the whole cast. Terry hadn't encountered anything like it, not even the night he had lost his virginity to an older girl on the holiday site two years earlier. With that one kiss, Madonna-faced Claire had relegated his earlier experience to the inept fumble it had been. He thought of the other kisses stolen on the sunny mountainside and felt confirmed in his opinion that Claire Shannon, though she appeared so gentle and reserved, was breath-takingly sexy.

He wasn't the only one on the holiday site who was attracted to her. Denis and Barney, two local lads, were always angling for introductions. Down on the pier at night after the disco, the beer sizzling in their bloodstream, they leaned on the wall and spoke lewdly of what they'd like to do with her if they ever got the chance. Even Terry was a bit taken aback the first time he heard them.

The boys were older than him which was part of their attraction for Terry. Denis was nineteen and Barney a retarded twenty-three, and they were hard drinkers, which also appealed to Terry. Most of the gang he and Sheena knocked about with were their own age or younger and, after one or two beers, were on their ear.

One night, after their usual drinking session on the pier, Terry and the two older boys walked back to the cottages. Well primed. Denis and Barney began jumping up and down scrunching the empty beer cans. Terry walked on ahead.

‘Hey, McArdle,' Denis called after him, tripping on his training laces and falling over. ‘Come back here, you effer!' Barney began shouting too. He did everything that Denis did. They were making an appalling racket.

Terry quickened his steps down by the side of the cottage, fully expecting Garda Deveney to open his window and bawl them out for disturbing the peace. Last time he'd threatened to take them down to the station. He was probably pulling on his pants right now, Terry thought, and would appear any minute, like a maniac in the doorway. When it happened he, for one, intended to be safely tucked up in bed.

The kitchen light was on and he wondered if Sheena had brought her current boyfriend Killian in for a snog, but when he slipped inside he found Claire on her own, heating milk on the stove. Her skimpy night-gown barely covered her thighs. When she turned he noticed the childish transfer on the front.
Sleepytime Bunny
. At the same time his senses registered the swell of her breasts. Anything but childish. He swallowed uncomfortably.

Claire angled the saucepan and poured milk into a mug. In her hurry to get away she spilt some on the counter. ‘Ruthie woke,' she told him, mopping furiously. ‘I thought warm milk might get her back to sleep.'

Terry nodded, for the first time struck by how little Sheena helped with Ruthie. He felt an irrational anger at his twin. Always out enjoying herself, he thought. It didn't occur to him that he was being equally selfish.

‘You should come out with us more,' he said lamely.

‘I'd like that,' Claire said. But who would stay with Ruthie? hung unspoken between them.

‘There's another disco on Friday. Mum will be home then. You could come.'

‘Maybe. I'll see.'

She turned off the stove. He stared at her indecisively. A picture flashed in his mind of Claire sprawled on the grassy knoll, eyes closed, knees apart. His desire flared. He wondered what she would do if he kissed her. Drink made him bold. He moved to bar her way.

She looked up at him, her face flushed, the expression in her grey eyes enigmatic. He bent his head and kissed her hotly on the mouth. She did not at once push him away.

To the boys outside the window, peering in, Claire seemed to be encouraging Terry. By the time she had freed herself from his embrace, they had ducked back around the side.

‘Did you see that?' Denis rounded on Barney. ‘Standing there with her backside hanging out?' He pretended to stagger. ‘McArdle has it bloody made.'

Barney chortled and went out of his way to kick a beer can. He would have begun stamping on it again only Denis shoved him on.

Terry roamed his room, all thought of sleep gone, his pants uncomfortably tight. ‘Dynamite, she's dynamite,' he kept telling himself. That one kiss had been even better than the ones he had stolen on the mountainside. Now he couldn't concentrate on anything, not even getting into bed. He thought he was in love. He was damned sure he was in love. He wanted to go and tell her, to kiss her again.

Terry went out on the landing, now thoroughly aroused, and tapped gently on Claire's door. There was no answer. He went inside.

‘Claire,' he whispered urgently, overcome with a desire to kiss and hold her, find some release for this sweet aching tension. He stopped short at the sight which met his eyes. Claire and Ruthie lying side by side, with their eyes shut and their blonde heads nestling close together. Childish, pure.

Claire opened her eyes and looked at him.

‘What's wrong?' she whispered.

Terry felt as though he had been caught doing something criminal.

‘I thought Sheena was back,' he gulped. He turned and stumbled out of the room.

While Claire was away in Waterford, Annette took things easy. She spent a lot of time in the garden, sunning herself and reading blockbuster novels.

With the advent of the school holidays Annette had lost not only her children but her lover as well. Austin had returned to Cork, leaving a big gap in her life. She had outlined her summer, stressing how peaceful and private the house would be. Austin had talked vaguely of a walking holiday in Germany with some other athletic youth. Annette still half-hoped that, missing sex if not herself, he would come up for a visit. One postcard from Bad Godesberg mid-July confirmed her suspicions that she was strictly term-time relaxation.

At the end of July Christopher returned home briefly, before going on a camping holiday to France with his father. Annette suspected it was to be a threesome. She washed Christopher's grubby shorts and T-shirts and repacked them, with her usual disregard for niceties, in the same fraying plastic bags he'd taken with him to the Gaeltacht.

Three days and he was off again. She missed him to about the same degree as before, which was a good deal less than she missed Austin, and settled back to her solitary routine in the garden.

A fortnight later they drove right to her front door: Jim, Christopher and the Other Woman. Annette invited them all in. As she made them tea - Marissa declined to have a drink and Jim shook his head in the slightly censorious fashion of one who has once spent his evenings drinking himself unconscious - Annette kept up a string of bright inanities. She was both fascinated and repelled by Marissa. So strikingly ugly. She searched her mind for a suitable expression and came up with ‘belle laide'. Annette thought Jim was out of his mind.

She wondered at him openly flaunting the relationship, until later when he phoned to tell her that Marissa was expecting a baby. He hadn't liked to mention it before her. Why not, Annette wondered. It was his, wasn't it? He said they wished to make the fruit of their love legitimate. His actual words. He was seeking a Church annulment. Annette put down the phone feeling she had somehow been nullified herself, the past twenty years cleanly erased.

She reached for the whisky bottle and poured herself a stiff one, wishing there was someone with whom she could share this disturbing new development. What about Jane? She hadn't seen her in ages and maybe now was the right moment to bridge the gap. But when she went across the street and rang the bell Jane's latest teenage assistant, yet another of Teresa Murray's many daughters, told Annette that Dr McArdle had just left for Waterford.

That same evening, in his mother's presence, Terry asked Claire to come with them to the disco. When she hesitated he appealed to Jane.

‘Mum,' Terry said. ‘See if you can get her to come.'

Jane squeezed Claire's arm. ‘Off you go, love,' she said encouragingly. She was looking forward to an early night and had given in to Ruthie's plea to be allowed share her bed. They had taken the portable television into the downstairs bedroom and would watch for a while before falling asleep. ‘You'd like to go, Claire, wouldn't you?'

Claire nodded. She had been a little shy of Terry all week, remembering his kiss and the way he'd come into her room afterwards. Of course, he and Sheena often went searching for each other in the night, to share some plan or thought. Admittedly, not as much these days as when they were younger. Now she felt pleasure at the prospect of an evening out with other young people, dancing, having a good time. She wore a red skirt, over a lightly boned petticoat, and a white, sleeveless blouse. She left her hair loose on her shoulders.

The disco was held as usual in a hall near the quay. Claire danced with Terry a few times, and then other boys approached and took her on to the floor. Sheena, who was with Killian, looked plump and provocative on a diet of chips and alcohol. She was wearing her low-cut frock and a pair of red heels, which Jane hadn't seen yet.

Barney and Denis slouched about, feeling-up the girls. Every few dances the pair of them disappeared outside to tank up on beer. Claire could not understand how Terry was friendly with them. She shivered when Denis approached and put a hand like a brown glove on her bare arm.

Terry held Claire carefully, not with his usual careless swagger, shielding her from more boisterous dancers and, every so often, gazing wonderingly down as though to check it really was her in his arms. At the end of the evening, he hoped to kiss her again. Maybe even go a bit further and feel her breasts. Any more than that he did not envisage.

The disco over, Terry and Claire held hands and walked in step along the pier. They passed, without seeing, the usual intoxicated group under the quay wall, aware of nothing but each other. They spoke in short animated bursts, laughed self-consciously and then fell silent. An almost full moon shone luminously down upon a dark sea, quilted with waves.