Chapter Seven

Peter Barry had always been cautious and careful. It was essential as a pharmacist that you should not be slapdash or reckless and he was proud that he kept all

aspects of his life under meticulous control.

His daughter Amy had inherited none of these qualities.

She was much more like her late mother: feckless, casual and unconcerned. Laura had been so hopeless about keeping records and having control of money that Peter had taken the whole thing over himself. He had immaculate accounts books.

The bookkeeper and the accountant said that he didn’t need anyone to oversee his figures, he had the whole thing under control.

Laura had been the arty one. She had known how to spread a piece of Indian cotton on the back of a sofa and make it look regal. She had always done the windows in the pharmacy for him. Laura had made beautiful clothes for Amy when she was a toddler. No other four-year-old had such dresses.

He looked back on the old pictures. Amy was like a little princess. But of course in recent years she looked like a terrorist or a member of the Addams family, with her matted hair

and white make-up and black straggly clothes.

It was impossible to know what would have happened if

 

Laura had lived. Would they have been great friends and conspirators, the two of them ganging up on silly old Daddy?

Or were his customers right when they said that teenage

daughters hated their mothers even more than they hated

their fathers? He would never know.

Amy was in her last year at school. But she had warned him not to expect any kind of good results. She hadn’t been able to study because all they were offering in that school was ‘pure crap’. If only her father could be in her classroom he would realise that it was rubbish, meaningless, nothing.

He had felt utterly inadequate and completely at sea when he went to the parents—teachers meeting. Her teachers, one after the other, told him that Amy was no trouble in class but paid no attention in any subject — she just stared out the window.

He suggested that she attend one of those sixth form

colleges or cram colleges.

‘For what?’ Amy had asked. ‘To learn more crap except at high speed?’

Everything was an effort. It was an effort to get up and go to school. An effort to wash her clothes in the washing machine.

They lived in a small apartment over the pharmacy. It had been part of the new mall’s policy to mix housing with commercial zoning in an effort to make the place more human and

avoid the empty-precinct syndrome. Amy grumbled because

they didn’t have a garden.

‘Who would keep the garden if we had one?’ Peter asked,

not unreasonably.

Amy shrugged. She had a good line in shrugs. Expressive

and defeated and then moving swiftly on to the next issue, which in this case was going to a seaside resort in Cyprus to celebrate the Leaving Certificate.

‘But you tell me you have nothing to celebrate, Amy.’

 

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‘All the more reason to go and cheer myself up,’ she said.

But nothing ever cheered her up.

It was 8 a.m. and she was showing him a brochure about

a holiday that cost some astronomical sum of money. Peter was adamant. He was not going to finance two weeks of

Amy staying in a hotel, entering wet T-shirt competitions and partying all night.

‘What are you doing it all for, Dad?’ she asked him, her black-rimmed eyes looking at him as if she had never seen him before.

‘Doing all what?’ he asked.

‘Oh — standing in a white coat looking at prescriptions and tutting over things and spending hours talking to reps from drugs companies.’

‘Well, it’s my work.’ Peter was bewildered.

‘Yes, but what’s it for, Dad, if it isn’t for me?’

‘It is for you — but not for you to go to Cyprus.’

‘Okay, that’s your final word, is it?’

‘Yes, it is, Amy. And I’m going to work now.’

‘To make more money to give me when I’m too old to

enjoy it.’

‘People are never too old to enjoy it,’ Peter said.

‘Oh, they are, Dad,’ Amy said. She didn’t say any more but she obviously thought that her father was the perfect example of the point she was making.

She didn’t really speak to him after that. She was polite but distant. She thanked him when he cooked a meal but announced that she was going out with a school friend. The next

morning she read a magazine during breakfast, washed up her own cereal bowl and left at the same time as Peter did.

‘This is silly, Amy. Where are you going?’ He was worried.

A silence had never gone on for twenty-four hours before.

‘To get a job!’ Amy called over her shoulder.

He saw her walking through the shopping precinct, her bag

over her shoulder. It seemed such a short time since he had held her by the hand at her mother’s funeral and promised that he would look after her. He hadn’t delivered on that promise. He had tried, but his own daughter looked at him with the eyes of a stranger.

 

It had been so simple when he was that age. His father had just assumed that his two boys would study pharmacy, and they did. Then, as now, it was very fiercely competitive to get a place on the course. Though chemists often told each other that they were just glorified shop assistants, they did have a pride in it all. They were people of authority.

Of course it had been so different in his father’s time. A small town, one chemist shop, Mr Barry Senior was able to do so much more than Peter was nowadays. It wasn’t said aloud but everyone knew that Mr Barry was as good as any doctor.

He could give a child with a bad chest a course of antibiotics without needing to wait for a doctor’s prescription; he could take a piece of broken glass out of a finger, or tell you if a weak ankle was a sprain or a break. He made his own elixirs which people came from far and near to get because they had such faith in them. And he had a cough medicine which worked

pure magic.

His father knew there wouldn’t be enough work for both

boys in the shop. He was in an agony of indecision about which of them to take in, but as it happened Peter wanted to move to Dublin, and his brother Michael had gone to live in Cork.

Problem solved.

But not forgotten.

In Cork, Michael often bewailed the fact that he hadn’t

made a bid for the family business. In Dublin, when he came upstairs in his shopping precinct premises after long hours in the shop, Peter felt the same thing.

 

When his wife died, their father eventually sold the business to a young thrusting assistant who had turned it into a goldmine.

Then Mr Barry Senior went to live in a bungalow in the

west of Ireland where there was good fishing. He had taken up with ‘a lady companion’.

Peter drove over to see him once a year.

The place was warm and comfortable. Ruby, his father’s

friend, had cooked a lovely meal, and had talked of their going on a cruise.

A cruise!

Peter and Amy had spent the night and as they drove home next day, there was some discontent niggling away inside him.

A feeling that somehow his father had done altogether too well out of this deal. He even bragged about the old shop and spoke proudly about how many square feet had been added to the original premises.

Amy had looked out of the car window as they passed

through towns and over rivers and past ruined castles on the way home.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked her.

‘I was wondering do those two old people still have sex?’ she said.

And Peter found the image so unsettling he resolved never to ask Amy or anyone else what they were thinking. It was never good to know …

As he watched Amy go off to get a job he had no idea what was in her mind. Was she full of regret that she hadn’t studied properly? Or resentment that she had no mother, only a

crusty, mean-spirited father who didn’t understand her need to go and get drunk for fifteen days in Cyprus? He wondered who would employ Amy, and as what?

He wished that he had a batty old friend like Ruby, someone he could speak openly with about Amy. But there was

nobody.

 

Just at that moment, Clara Casey from the heart clinic came in.

‘Peter, I’ve come with my begging bowl,’ she began straight away.

‘Right, what good cause is it this time?’ He put on a mock martyred look.

‘Now, I never asked you for any money for any cause

before, did I? No, it’s your time, not your money.’ She explained that they were going to have a series of lectures at

the clinic for patients and their families as well as the general public. It was all part of trying to get a wider understanding of how the heart functioned. She would love it if he, as the local pharmacist, were to come in and talk about the different kinds of medication: beta blockers, ACEI medicines. If he could do it in lay-person’s terms it would be much more satisfactory than doctors blinding them with science and long names.

People trusted their chemists, they had faith in their pharmacists, Clara said flatteringly. It would come better from the

man they saw in his white coat every time they went into the shop.

Peter was pleased that she thought so well of him. ‘You’ve never heard me speak in public. I’m not one of the world’s great orators,’ he confessed.

‘You’re the person they’ll be meeting, Peter; in fact you may even get more customers if you make yourself sound appealing and attractive and easy to approach.’

‘Oh, well, if it’s a matter of drumming up business then I have to go,’ he said with a smile.

They fixed the date and the time and Peter said that he’d love to know more about the whole project. Possibly Clara might have dinner with him one evening? She paused for a moment and then said that would be lovely. But it was her hobby horse and she could talk for Ireland on the subject — so

 

if he promised to insist on other topics as well then she’d be delighted.

‘Where would you like us to go?’ she asked.

He was going to say the cafe in the precinct, but that was more a snack-and-burgers place, not dinner as such.

‘Quentins?’ he heard himself say.

She smiled a big broad smile. ‘Now that would be a lovely treat,’ she said. So they fixed a date for that too and Clara went off to work.

Peter smiled to himself. The day had started well after all.

 

‘Did you get a job?’ he asked Amy that night.

‘Yup, thanks,’ Amy said.

‘Could I

ask what it is?’ He knew he sounded lofty and

superior and not like he should if he was trying to win her confidence.

‘A bit like yours, I’m working in a shop.’

‘I own my shop, Amy,’ he said.

‘Yup, and I may own a shop some day too.’

 

‘And you’ll be selling what, exactly?’

‘Fishnet tights and stiletto heels.’

‘And there are enough women out there to buy these

things?’

‘Who said anything about women, Dad? It’s a drag shop,

it’s for TVs and fancy dress and the like.’

‘Of course,’ Peter Barry said, feeling slightly faint.

 

Clara was surprised that Peter suggested they should meet at Quentins around six thirty. It seemed very early. She would prefer to have come home to shower and dress before going out. It had been a long time since she had had a real dinner date. But he seemed to think that this was the right time, so she agreed. Probably he had to be home early, as he had a 244

I

 

young daughter; anyway, she would take a change of outfit to the clinic and be ready to go when work was over.

During the day she wondered why she had said yes. Her

usual response was to say that she had such an exhausting job she went to bed early, or to imply that there was a shadowy figure somewhere in her background that prevented her from accepting dates. But Peter had been easy-going, natural. And what the hell, a nice dinner at Quentins was just what she needed on a cool spring evening.

 

Brenda Brennan showed them to their table. There were a few tables occupied, and it was gracious and elegant: Clara looked around at her surroundings. She had been here twice before.

Once with Alan shortly before she had found out about Cinta.

He had left the table four times to make urgent phone calls.

Clara had seen nothing unusual about it at the time.

Then she had come here with her friend Dervla on the

night after Dervla’s father, the wise Professor of Medicine, had died. Dervla had said that there would never be anything spontaneous and unexpected in her life again and Clara had suggested a posh dinner out. It had been very healing and well worth the cost.

Peter Barry had not been to Quentins before. He was still stunned at the thought that he had suggested such a top-of the-range restaurant. There was something elegant and cool about Clara, something that called out for a place like this.

He noticed immediately that she had dressed up in a smart brocade jacket and a black silk dress. She was enthusiastic about the menu, and settled for fresh sardines followed by lamb.

Their conversation was easy from the start.

He told her about growing up in a chemist’s shop in a small town. About his father’s late life romance, about how everything had changed. Not always for the better. His father had

 

four chairs in the chemist’s shop. Older people always liked to sit down. Today in his pharmacy he had one chair and that was just in case someone felt unwell.

He told her that his mother had been kind and self-effacing; she would be amazed if she had lived to see how many women pharmacists there were now. In her day it would have been highly unusual for a woman to qualify as a chemist. ‘Lord, how nice it would have been, to have a self-effacing mother,’ Clara said wistfully. ‘Mine knew she was right about everything and still knows it.’

‘And was she?’ Peter asked.

‘Not remotely,’ Clara laughed. ‘But then I think I’m right with my daughters too, and they don’t take the slightest notice of me.’ They talked easily about daughters and their difficulties.

Peter

told how Amy had gone to work in a drag shop selling

amazing red satin corsets and pointy shoes. Clara said that she wished her Linda would be as adventurous, or at any rate get a job: she seemed to think the world owed her a living. They talked about the heart clinic and how it had to be supported by a proper health education programme. About how pharmacies nowadays often depended on cosmetics for their profits.

Peter said he hadn’t studied long hours so that he could advise some mother about red velvet hair bands for her twelve-year old’s party.

Clara agreed and said it had been a long journey to where she was, and now that she had got there she spent an inordinate amount of time talking to Frank-the-Crank in

hospital administration, who spent his working day trying to thwart them at every turn.

‘He is so penny-pinching, so desperately the-letter-of-the law rather than the spirit of it that we spend our time trying to think up equally petty ways to deal with him,’ she laughed.

‘Ania and Hilary and I have a ten-minute session every

 

morning to fight him over who pays for the toilet paper or the tea bags. I don’t care - it’s so juvenile - I just want to get on with it.’

He looked at her admiringly: she was full of passion and enthusiasm. Just then he noticed that most of the people were leaving and the waitress approached their table.

‘Would you like to have your coffees in the bar?’ she asked politely.

‘No, we’re fine here,’ Clara said before Peter had time to answer. ‘Aren’t we?’ She looked at Peter for confirmation. But it wasn’t there.

‘The bar would be nice, I think,’ he said.

‘Whatever you say.’ She seemed surprised.

‘You see, I booked an Early Bird dinner, so they will need our table for the next sitting.’

‘Oh, of course,’ she said hastily.

‘I mean, it makes sense, it’s almost half the normal menu price,’ he said defensively and somehow, some of the light went out of the evening.

 

‘Dervla, is it too late?’

‘Of course not, Clara, it’s only nine thirty. I thought you were going out on a date.’

‘I was and I did but I’m back home again.’

‘That sounds like speed dating,’ Dervla said.

‘Yes, it does.’

‘So - did you enjoy it?’

‘I did actually - until the end when I realised he had taken the Early Bird option in Quentins just because it was cheaper.’

‘Oh, Clara — that’s not like you, judging people by what they spend. And anyway he’d have had to spend a fair whack in Quentins no matter which menu it was.’

‘I don’t know … I just felt it was a bit … I just don’t know …’

 

‘You didn’t like him. Did he grope your knee?’

‘No, I did like him, and there was no groping. I had been thinking of inviting him to Sunday lunch; the girls are rarely around at the weekends.’

‘And did you ask him?’ Dervla wanted to know every detail.

‘No, I didn’t. I thought I’d let it wait a while.’

‘Just because he bought you a bargain meal?’

‘I know it sounds idiotic, that’s why I rang you.’

‘Oh, invite him. Tomorrow. First thing.’

‘Why exactly?’

‘Because we always regret what we don’t do, rarely what we do do.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I can’t remember. Was it Mark Twain?’

‘Shouldn’t I get out now, quit when I’m winning?’

‘But you’re not winning, Clara, that’s the point.’

‘Oh Lord, Dervla, what would I do without you?’

‘You might work yourself to death,’ Dervla said and hung up.

 

‘Was it a good evening?’ Ania asked next day.

‘It was very nice, Ania, very nice, beautiful food and very elegant …’

‘But?’ Ania said.

‘That’s just it, he was very charming, very polite. I’m just being silly.’

‘It was that handsome Mr Barry from the pharmacy, you

said?’

‘Yes, do you think he’s handsome? Really?’

‘Yes — he is like a film actor, I think.’

‘Yes … maybe.’

‘And will you see Mr Barry again, do you think?’

‘I think so — I am going to ask him to lunch on Sunday.’

 

‘Oh good …’

 

‘Why do you think it’s good?’

‘Because romance is always good,’ Ania said simply. She

thought about Carl and smiled to herself.

Clara reached for the phone before she could change her

mind. ‘Peter, thank you so much for last night.’

‘Oh, good, Clara, I enjoyed it too, greatly.’

‘Would you like to come to lunch with me in my house on

Sunday? I could cook for you …’

‘That’s very nice of you - and will your daughters be there?’

‘With any luck they won’t. I’ll email you my address. Is one o’clock okay?’

‘Thank you so much, Clara,’ he said and his voice was

warm.

Dervla had of course been right. Now she was pleased to be seeing him again, instead of just sitting here grumbling about a date which had turned out to be slightly less than perfect.

 

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, Amy?’ He was pleased that she had telephoned.

‘You know the way you always complain when I don’t tell

you things?’ She would ring, of course, when he had three people waiting for prescriptions.

‘Yes, well what are we talking about here?’

‘I’m going away for the weekend.’

‘We could talk about this later.’

 

‘There is no later, Dad. I’m going today. Back late on

Sunday night.’

‘Where exactly?’

‘To London, they want me to see some of the shows that

shops like ours do so that I could organise evenings like that in Dublin.’

‘And who are you going with?’ he asked weakly.

‘That’s right, Dad. So now you know. See you Sunday

night.’ And she hung up with the air of one who had solved

everything and was now free to head off to England and

explore the world of bizarre sex and fetishes.

 

Adi and her boyfriend Gerry were going on a protest march at the weekend, something about preserving trees, so that was one thing. All she had to do was to find out Linda’s plans.

Linda said she wasn’t sure of her plans. Nothing was firmed up.

‘Well, can you firm them up now, please?’ Clara asked.

‘Why?’ Linda sensed that she was being got rid of. She

might settle for a posh lunch out if Clara were to finance it. ‘I thought I might just stay here,’ she said, testing the ground.

‘Well then, whatever you buy for yourself perhaps you could have it in your bedroom,’ Clara suggested.

‘Buy for myself V Linda was horrified.

‘Well, yes, Linda, you haven’t paid anything towards this household for two weeks despite our arrangement. I know you will get a part-time job and contribute very soon, but in the meantime you won’t expect me to cook for you.’

‘No, but if I don’t have a job how can I buy food?’ To

Linda it was a mystery.

‘Ah, yes, that’s the trouble. It will sort of concentrate your mind,’ Clara agreed.

‘What are you doing on Sunday?’ Linda said mulishly.

‘I’m having a friend to lunch here.’

‘As if I’d want to hear you and some other fuss-fuss old woman talking about the heart clinic’

‘Good - we’ll take it that your plans have firmed up then, Linda.’

‘All right, Mam, and by the way, there’s no need to strip the fridge bare in case I drink your milk or eat your bacon …’

‘I always think it’s better to avoid any grey areas,’ Clara said cheerfully.