Free Echoes by Maeve Binchy

and not saying.”
    â€œRight. Tell them I called and was sorry they weren’t allowed out.”
    â€œNo, I won’t, because that’s not the message. Tell them yourself if you want to.”
    Gerry Doyle’s great skill was knowing when not to push it any further. “You’re a hard man, Dr. Power,” he said with a grin, and he was off.
    Paddy Power wondered whether he had been going to ask about his anxiety-ridden father or his withdrawn, possibly phobic mother. Maybe the boy hadn’t noticed anything wrong with either of them. He was a funny lad.
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    A parcel arrived for Angela, a small flat box. It was a beautiful headscarf from the parents of James Nolan. “Thank you so very much for all the help with tuition, your pupils in Castlebay must be very lucky to have such a gifted teacher.” It was a square with a very rich-looking pattern on it, the kind of thing a much classier woman would wear. Angela was delighted with it. She showed it and the letter to her mother but it was a bad day and the old woman’s joints were aching all over.
    â€œWhy shouldn’t they be grateful to you? Why shouldn’t they send you something? It’s money they should have sent. Doesn’t the postman get paid for delivering letters?”
    Angela sighed. She told David about it that evening. “Wasn’t it very thoughtful of them?” she said.
    â€œThey have great polite ways up in Dublin,” David said wistfully. “We’d never have thought of giving you a thing like that, and we should have.”
    â€œDon’t be silly, College Boy. I was only telling you so that you’d know your friend appreciated the lessons and all that.”
    â€œHe thought you were very good-looking,” David said suddenly.
    â€œI thought he wasn’t bad himself, but a bit small for me. How old is he, about fifteen?”
    â€œYes, just.”
    â€œOh, well, that’s no difference at all. Tell him I’ll see him when he’s about twenty-five. I’ll be coming into my prime about then.”
    â€œI think that would suit him fine,” David laughed.
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    It was shortly before the school reopened that David met Gerry Doyle again.
    â€œHave you had any good drinking nights since the cave?” Gerry asked.
    â€œI think I’m going to be a Pioneer. I was never so sick. I was sick eleven times the next day,” David said truthfully.
    â€œWell at least you held on to it until you got home,” Gerry said. “Which was more than some people managed. Still, it was a bit of a laugh.”
    â€œGreat altogether. Nolan said he’d never had such a night.”
    â€œHe was telling me you’ve got a record player of your own, a radiogram in your own bedroom—is that right?”
    â€œNot a radiogram with doors on it, but a record player—yes, you plug it in.”
    â€œHow much would they be?” Gerry was envious.
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t know. It was a present, but I could ask.”
    â€œI’d love to see it,” Gerry Doyle said.
    David’s hesitation was only for a second. His mother had never said he wasn’t to have Gerry Doyle into the house but he knew she wouldn’t approve. “Come on, I’ll show you,” he said.
    Any other lad in Castlebay might have held back but not Gerry Doyle. He swung along the cliff road companionably with David as if he had been a lifetime calling on the doctor’s house socially.
    The summer houses looked dead, as they passed, like ghost houses, and it was hard to imagine them full of families with children racing in and out carrying buckets and spades, and people putting deckchairs up in the front gardens.
    â€œWouldn’t you need to be cracked to rent one of those for the summer?” Gerry nodded his head at the higgledy-piggledy line of homes.
    â€œI don’t know. Suppose you didn’t live beside the sea?” David was being