Doctor's Wife (4 page)

    But tonight was different. Tonight, for the first
time, she realized what Kevin had been talking about. She felt her
face flush and she stared into this boy’s eyes. She knew she should
not lead him on, but she wanted to do it. Besides, Kevin was
hundreds of miles away tonight and tomorrow she would be hundreds
of miles south of here. In the meantime, there was this excitement,
this joy.

    So they began to talk, animated, eager to know each
other, and she asked him about his student days in Dublin and he
told about digs and landladies and made it all fun, so that the
time passed in no time until Peg walked in, looking a bit tossed
and very pleased with herself, saying she was sorry to be so late.
“What about a nightcap?” Tom asked. “No thanks,” Peg said, and so
all three of them went out of the café and stood for a moment,
irresolute, on the street.

    “Let me walk you both home,” Tom Lowry said. “I’d
like some fresh air.”

    “All right, then,” Peg said, and suddenly he was
between them, taking each of them by the arm, urging them forward
along Boulevard Saint-Germain, where the crowds were queueing for a
midnight film. As they passed the queue he released his grip on
Peg’s arm and eased her ahead on the crowded pavement, remaining
behind himself, linked to Mrs. Redden. She noticed that. She felt
elated. She noticed that he held tight to her all the way to the
Place Saint-Michel, where, still talking eagerly to each other,
they caught up with Peg and paused, all three, at the traffic
light. In the square, four police wagons filled with French riot
police sat, waiting for trouble. She thought of home.

    And when at last they reached Peg’s building, while
Peg searched for the key to the street door, Tom Lowry moved close
again and said in a voice that was almost a whisper, “Listen, if
you’d like to go shopping tomorrow, maybe I could come along and
carry parcels?”

    “Oh, it’s not serious shopping,” she said and found
herself whispering, too.

    Peg had opened the street door and now turned to
them, waiting.

    “I could pick you up at ten,” he said. “Maybe we can
have a coffee?”

    “All right. Ten.”

    And Peg heard her, for she said, “Are we going to
have lunch together, Sheila?”

    “Oh, Peg, I don’t think we’d have time. My plane
leaves at one-fifteen.”

    “Too bad,” Peg said. “Tom, when’s Debbie going home,
is it tomorrow?”

    “I think so.”

    “Because if she can’t get a flight out, she can have
the spare room again, once Sheila is gone.”

    “Oh, thanks. I’ll tell her.”

    
Debbie
. Mrs. Redden saw the pretty girl in
the see-through blouse. Why did I say yes to him about the
coffee?

    Together, she and Peg began the long climb up to the
sixth floor. “I think you made a conquest,” Peg said.

    “Who?” She tried to look surprised.

    “Tom.”

    “Don’t be silly. I just didn’t know what to say when
he asked me about a coffee. Yanks are funny that way, aren’t
they?”

    “I work with them,” Peg reminded her. “And they’re
no different from other people. Actually, I always thought Tom was
shy.”

    “I like him, he’s very nice,” Mrs. Redden said
hurriedly and moved on ahead, not stopping until she reached the
third-floor landing, where she waited for Peg, who followed more
slowly. When Peg came abreast, Mrs. Redden, trying to sound amused,
asked, “That girl with no bra, is she my rival, then?”

    “Who?” Peg stopped, a little out of breath.

    “Debbie.”

    “Who knows, with that generation,” Peg said. “I
don’t think so, though.”

    And went on up to the top floor, taking out her keys
again to open the apartment door. As she turned the key in the
lock, both women heard the phone ring inside the flat.

    “Is that your phone?”

    “Yes, but I don’t know who it could be at this hour
of the night,” Peg said, pushing the door open and hurrying down
the hall. The ringing stopped just before she picked the receiver
up. “Hello? Hello?” She listened, then replaced the receiver. “Too
bad. I wonder, was that for you, Sheila?”

    “I doubt it. Kevin wouldn’t call this late,” Mrs.
Redden said, but there in the half-dark hall, her elation sank to a
sudden fear. In her mind she saw the two Saracen armored cars
barricading the lower end of Clifton Street, no one in the street,
and just above the Army and Navy Club, Kevin’s surgery. There was a
blue van parked in front of the Army and Navy Club.
There was
no one in the van
. You never left a vehicle unattended. A
soldier in battle dress ran out (she had not noticed the soldiers)
and beckoned hurriedly with his automatic rifle, ordering her into
the shelter of a doorway. She saw, still as a painting, the empty
street, rain wet on the pavement, the van
unattended
.
Then, all at once, splinters in the air, the noise coming after the
dust and smoke as the van blew itself up. She saw the huge dusty
hole where the Army and Navy Club had been, the shattered windows
and rubbled wall of Kevin’s surgery. The soldiers had warned him in
time. He and the patients had been moved out.

    “Would you like a cup of tea before you go to bed?”
Peg asked.

    “Not unless you would.”

    “Well, let’s go to sleep now and have an early
breakfast before I go to work. Is a quarter to eight too soon for
you?”

    “No, no.”

    Peg moved toward her, her arms out, coming to kiss
her good night, but now, in the half-dark hall, Mrs. Redden saw,
not Peg, but that other woman, blonde, with dust on her hair, blood
on her face, running out of the Queen’s Arcade, shaking her fist.
“Fucking Fenian gets!”

    “You’re shivery,” Peg said, embracing her. “Are you
cold?”

    “No, no. I wonder who that was on the phone.”

    “Probably a wrong number.”

    Chapter 2

    • Croissants, coffee, chatter, screams of laughter,
two women in the ease of no child to get off to school, no husband
to be fed, no boy friend to be watched for signs of a morning mood,
talking, charting the movements and marriages of former friends,
calling out anecdotes to each other as Peg hurried to do her hair
and put on her suit, the chat so good and the time so quick and
easy until the moment came when they kissed each other, hugged,
promised to keep in touch, and then, suddenly, Peg was gone.

    The hall door shut. Alone, Mrs. Redden felt the
emptiness of being left behind. Turning, she went into the living
room, opened the windows, and stepped out onto the balcony, craning
down, hoping to catch sight of Peg below, on the street. She had
hardly seen Peg, had hardly seen Paris; this part of the holiday
was already ending.

    Then, far below, Peg stepped out, hurrying along the
edge of the pavement in her ice-cream suit, going to the corner to
the Métro. “Peg?” Mrs. Redden called down, “Peg!” but it was
foolish—with six floors and the noise of traffic, there was no
chance. Peg was gone. Unaccountably she felt guilty about Peg, so
decent and generous, and why didn’t I stay over and have lunch with
her, bad manners of me, because I wanted to see Tom Lowry again,
not Peg, but I should have done both, I should have taken a later
flight.

    The phone rang. She stood, irresolute, as its tone
gonged through the empty flat. It might be Tom Lowry phoning to say
he can’t meet me. She went to answer, but the moment she picked up
the receiver, she sensed it wasn’t him.

    Kevin’s receptionist said, “Is Mrs. Redden
there?”

    “Speaking. Is that you, Maureen?”

    “Yes, Mrs. Redden. Hold on, the doctor wants to talk
to you.”

    “Hello, Sheila.” His voice always sounded strange on
the phone. “How are you getting on? Did you have a good
flight?”

    “Yes, lovely,” she said. “How are things at
home?”

    “Well, that’s why I’m ringing. John McSherry’s
mother-in-law died yesterday afternoon. The funeral’s the day after
tomorrow. It’s a bloody nuisance.”

    McSherry was one of the doctors in his group. “But
you don’t have to go to the funeral of McSherry’s mother-in-law,”
she said.

    “Wait a minute.” She heard the familiar irritation
in his voice. “John’s wife is laid up, she has a heart condition,
you know. Anyway, I offered to hold on here for three more days to
let him get things squared away at home.”

    “But why does it have to be you? What about Con
Cullen, he could do McSherry’s work, couldn’t he?”

    “I’ve already offered to do it.”

    “But why? They take advantage of you, time and time
again. You’re always the one who works extra days. Surely, just
this once, they’ll have the decency to let you get away in
peace.”

    “Look, nobody forced me, it was my idea. And
besides, it’s just for two more days.”

    “But this is our holiday! We’ve been looking forward
to it for ages.”

    “You have,” he said.

    “What’s that supposed to mean?”

    “It means, will you stop nagging me. I’ll be in
Ville-franche on Friday. Just enjoy yourself and lie out in the
sun. You don’t need me for that.”

    “So you won’t be coming before Friday, is that
it?”

    “Let’s say Friday night. I’ll give you a ring.”

    “Why bother?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “If you don’t want to come on this holiday, then
don’t. You’ll be far happier sitting at home, stuck into the
telly.”

    “Oh, balls.” He was shouting now. “We can’t all live
like you, ignoring the facts of life, dancing in the dark.”

    It was his oldest jibe. Dancing in the dark. “Suit
yourself,” she said.

    “I’ll be there on Friday night. Look, I’m sorry it
turned out like this.”

    “You’re not one bit sorry,” she said, and hung up.
But, of course, that was the worst thing she could have done. Now,
if only she could ring back and apologize: but that wouldn’t work,
he would take it as a further insult, a false contrition. She never
should have hung up. She turned and wandered, upset, through the
flat, going back out onto the balcony, where, in search of
self-justification, her mind replayed the conversation. What did he
think a woman
did
alone in the South of France? Eating
solitary meals in the dining room, going alone to the beach,
dragging around the streets of Nice—what sort of holiday was
that?—and not only that, he never mentioned Danny. And then, with
shame, remembered that neither had she.

    Far below, from under the Pont Saint-Michel a long
black cargo boat slipped into view, a Dutch flag flying at its
stern, a clothesline bunting of sheets and underwear flapping over
its holds. A man in a German riverman’s cap stood in the
wheelhouse, the bowl of his pipe turned down. She looked at this
passing barge, at this man who sailed his floating home through
inland waterways to cities like Brussels, Amsterdam, and Hamburg,
cities she had never seen, might never see. To sail away from all
of the things that hold and bind me, to sail away, to start again
in some city like Brussels or Amsterdam. Into her mind came the
place Kevin always took them to for their summer holidays, a
Connemara village with a fishing dock at the end of the single
street, the fishermen’s boat coming in from the sea at dusk,
sailing into that postcard view of the sea bay under the Dolmen
peaks of the Twelve Bens, a few summer visitors watching the boat
dock, and, then, two red-faced fishermen in greasy Aran sweaters
and black rubber Wellington boots coming up off the boat, walking
along the quay carrying a flat wooden box filled with fish, she and
Kevin and Danny following with the other summer visitors, going
around to the back yard behind Cush’s pub where the fish would be
sold. And later, in Cush’s, Kevin would stand pints for those same
two fisherman, Michael Pat Lynch and Joe O’Malley. That’s Kevin’s
idea of escape. That village is the only faraway place he ever
wants to be.

    The doorbell.

    She went to answer, first thinking it was the
cleaning woman Peg said might come, but then that it could be him.
She saw herself in the mirror, hair blown about by standing out on
the balcony, but no time to fix it, for the doorbell rang again.
She opened.

    This morning he was in a tweed jacket, a checked
shirt, and a tie, the dressed-up look of someone who normally
doesn’t think about what he puts on. She wished she had had time to
fix her hair.

    “Well, Tom,” she said, smiling. “You’re very
punctual. Even early.”

    “Sorry. Too soon for you?”

    “No, no, I’m ready.”

    “Where would you like to go?” he asked. “Rue
Saint-Honoré?”

    “Oh, I think the Galeries Lafayette is more in my
line.”

    “All right, let’s go there, then.”

    Poking around in a department store with him
trailing after me, men are bored stiff by shopping. “Why don’t we
just go for a stroll? What about the Luxembourg Gardens?”

    “That sounds good.”

    Later, going up the Boulevard Saint-Michel, she
said, unwisely, “It doesn’t change, does it? It’s just the way I
remember it from my student days.”

    “You studied in Paris?”

    “Not really. I spent a summer here, ages ago, doing
conversational French at the Alliance Française. I lived right in
this quarter, as a matter of fact.”

    “Where?”

    “A little place called the Hôtel des Balcons, near
the Place de l’Odéon.”

    “I know it.” he said. “Rue Casimir-Delavigne.”

    “That’s right.”

    “Crazy,” he said. “I stayed there last summer. When
were you there, do you remember?”

    “Oh.” She did the sum in her head: twenty years.
“Ages ago.”