The Glass Lake (10 page)

Martin stood trembling beside his old friend. “She didn't come home, Peter. I sat there saying she's never been as late as this. I wanted to come looking for her. If only I'd come. But she wanted to be left alone; she said she felt like a prisoner unless she could walk on her own.”

“I know, I know.” Dr. Kelly was listening and patting the man's shaking shoulders, but he was looking around him too.

In the trees the oil lamps shone through the windows of the caravans. The travelers might have a fire built in a sheltered spot. He could make out their shapes; they stood watchful, silent, observing the confusion and drama on the lake's edge.

“I'll bring you up there out of the wind,” Peter Kelly said. “They'll give you somewhere to shelter, till we make sure that everything…” His voice trailed away as if he sensed the uselessness of his words.

Peter Kelly had always been of two minds about the traveling people. He knew for a fact that they took poultry from nearby farms, there weren't enough rabbits in those trees to keep them in food. He knew that some of the boys could be troublesome if they came into Paddles' bar. But to be fair, they were often provoked into anger by locals.

Peter wished they could see that the traveling life didn't offer much opportunity to the children of their group. The youngsters could barely read and write. They never stayed long enough anywhere for any education to sink in if they were welcomed in the school, which wasn't always the case. They had little need of his services. They coped with birth, illness, and death in their way. And their way often had more fortitude and dignity than the other way. He had never approached them for a favor before.

“Could you give this man something to throw around his shoulders?” he asked a group of unsmiling men.

The men parted and from behind came a woman with a big rug and a cup of something that had steam coming from it. They sat Martin McMahon on a fallen tree nearby. “Do you want any help?” said one of the dark men.

“I'd be grateful if you could bring more light down to the shore,” Peter said simply. And he knew that for the rest of his life he would not be able to remove the image of his friend sitting on a log wrapped in a rug while the whole encampment lit up with the blazing torches made from dipping tar-covered sticks into the fire.

And then there was the procession down to the edge of the lake.

Martin hugged himself in the rug and moaned. Over and over he said, “She's not in the lake, she'd have let me know. Helen never told me a lie. She said she wouldn't do anything without letting me know.”

         

The clock was ticking and there was a little whir between each tick. Kit had never noticed that before. But then she had never sat at the foot of the grandfather clock before, leaning against it, holding her brother in her arms, while Philip O'Brien sat on the bit of stairs that went up farther still, up to the attic where Rita slept.

Rita sat on a chair in the doorway of the kitchen. Once or twice or maybe more often she got up and said, “I'll throw another log on the fire, they'll need that when they get back.”

Someone had sent for Clio. She came through the door and up the stairs. They had left the key in the door. She saw the little tableau. “My mother said I should come down to you straight away,” she said. They waited for Kit to reply. Kit said nothing. “She said this was where I should be.”

Something exploded in Kit's mind.

How dare Clio talk about herself, it was always I, I, I. It was the place she should be, she came straight down. She knew she must not speak, not until this huge wave of rage passed over. If she opened her mouth now she would hurl abuse at Clio Kelly, order her out of the house.

“Kit, say something.” Clio stood awkward on the stairs.

“Thanks, Clio,” she gulped. Please may she not say something terrible, something for which she would be apologizing for the rest of her life.

Emmet sensed the odd silence. “Mummy…” he began, but he couldn't get beyond the first “M.”

Clio looked at him sympathetically. “Oh Emmet, your stammer has come back,” she said.

Philip stood up. “There's probably enough people here, Clio. Could you go home now,” he said.

Clio snapped at him.

“He's right, Clio.” Kit found her voice very calm and clear. “Thank you very, very much for coming, but Philip was asked to keep the place sort of clear, for when everyone's coming back.”

“I want to be here when everyone comes back.” Clio seemed like a spoiled child.

There was the “I” again, Kit noticed. “You're a wonderful friend. I knew you'd understand,” Kit said. And Clio went down the stairs.

The clock ticked on with its new whir, and none of them said anything at all.

“There's not going to be anything until the light of day,” said Sergeant O'Connor, shaking his head.

“We can't just leave it and go home.” Peter Kelly's face ran with sweat, or tears or rain, it was impossible to tell.

“Be sensible, man. You'll have half the people here as your patients and the other half up in the graveyard if they go on. There's nothing to be found, I tell you. Go on, tell the tinkers to go home, will you.”

“Don't call them tinkers, Sean.” But Peter Kelly knew it was neither the time nor the place to try and impose some sensitivity onto Sergeant Sean O'Connor.

“What'll I call them, Household Cavalry? Apache Indians?”

“Come on, they've been a great help…they've no reason to be friends to any of us…they're doing their best.”

“They look like savages with those torches. They make my flesh creep.”

“If it helped to find her…” Peter began.

“Oh she'll be found all right, but it won't make any difference to anyone whether it's tonight or next Tuesday week.”

“You're very sure?” Peter said.

Sean O'Connor had a simple direct way of getting to the truth of things, and tonight it left no area for doubt or hope. “Sure wasn't the poor woman out of her wits?” the sergeant said. “Didn't you see her night and day, wandering around here, half talking to herself. It's only a mystery that she didn't do it sooner.”

         

A tall dark woman brought Martin McMahon a cup from her caravan.

“Drink this,” she said. It was like an order.

He sipped it and made a face. “What is it? I thought it was tea,” he said.

“I wouldn't give you anything to harm you,” she said. Her voice was low; he barely heard it above the wind, and the calling all around the lake's edge.

“Thank you indeed,” he said, and drank what tasted like Bovril with something sharp in it. It could have been anything; he didn't care.

“Be calm,” the woman said to him. “Try not to shake and tremble, it may well be all right.”

“They think my wife…” he said.

“I know, but she wouldn't. She wouldn't go anywhere without telling you,” said the woman in her low voice that he had to strain to hear.

He turned to thank her, to tell her that he knew this was true, but she had slipped back into the shadows.

He heard Sergeant O'Connor calling off the search for the night. He saw his friend Peter coming to take him home. Martin McMahon knew he must be strong for their children.

Helen would have wanted that.

R
ITA
heard them coming.

She knew by the shufflings and low voices down at the hall door there was no good news to tell. She ran into the kitchen to put on the kettle.

Philip O'Brien stood up. It wasn't often he was in charge, but he knew he was in charge now. “Your father will be all wet from the rain,” he said. Kit was wordless. “Is there an electric fire in their bedroom? He might want to change.”

“In whose bedroom?” She spoke from far away.

“In your parents' room.”

“They have different rooms.”

“Well, in his room then.”

She flashed Philip a grateful look. Clio would always use an opportunity like this to comment on how strange it was that Kit's mother and father did not sleep in the same bed. Philip was being a great help. “I'll go and plug it in,” she said. It took her away from the top of the stairs, she didn't have to see her father's face when he came up. She didn't want to have to look at it.

Emmet wouldn't know how bad things were. He wouldn't know that Mother and Father were unhappy, and that Mother might not be coming back. Might be gone.

She wanted the moment on her own.

The room was cold as she found the one-bar electric fire and plugged it in the socket in the wall just above the yellow skirting boards. Everything seemed very clear somehow. She could see the pattern on the carpet and the way the fringe of the bedspread hung unevenly, more to one side than the other.

Maybe if Daddy was very wet he might put on his dressing gown. He wouldn't if there were other people there, and Kit had heard Clio's father's voice, and people like Father Baily and Philip's father were outside. No, he would wear a jacket. She walked past the top of the bed toward the big chair, where her father's tweed sport coat hung as it always had.

It was then she saw the letter on the pillow. A big white envelope with the word
Martin
on it.

Over Daddy's bed hung the picture of the Pope, the Pope that Kit had always believed was a guest at their wedding. Time seemed to stand still as she looked at it. The Pope had small round glasses, they looked like a little boy's spectacles that were much too small for him. He had a white fur trim around his garment, a bit like the frill Santa Claus wore when they went up to Clery's in Dublin for a Christmas treat. He had his hand raised as if to give a blessing.

She read the words very slowly:
Martin McMahon and Mary Helena Healy humbly prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, beg the apostolic blessing on the occa
sion of their marriage, 20th June 1939
. And there was a kind of raised seal beneath.

She looked at it as if she had never seen it before. It was as if by memorizing every single detail she could somehow control what was about to happen now.

And for some reason she never understood, she bent down and unplugged the electric fire. It was as if she wanted it to be thought she had never entered the room.

Kit stood with the letter in her hand. Her mother had left a message. She had explained why she had done what she did. The words of the priest who had come to give their retreat came back. She could almost hear his voice speaking as he had that day in the chapel. Life wasn't yours to take, it was a gift from God and those who threw it back in God's face had no place being mourned by the faithful. And had no place in the burial grounds of God's family on earth. She could see his face. And she acted as an automaton. She slipped the envelope deep in the pocket of her blue tunic and went to the stairs to greet the party that was coming up and to face her father's terrible smile.

         

“Now, there's no sign of an accident. We're not to worry about a thing. Your mother could walk in that door as right as rain. Any minute now.” Nobody spoke. “Any minute at all,” said Kit's father, hope written all over his face.

Rita built up the fire in the sitting room and hunted Farouk from his important-looking place in front of the grate. People stood about, awkward, embarrassed, not sure what to say next.

Except Clio's father. Dr. Kelly always knew what to say. Kit looked at him with gratitude; he was being the host. “Do you know everyone's frozen solid from standing in the coldest spot in Ireland. Now, I hear that Rita has the kettle on. Philip, will you run round to your father's hotel like a good lad, and ask the barman for a bottle of Paddy and we'll have a hot whiskey for ourselves, everyone.”

“There's going to be no money changing hands at a time like this.” Philip's father, Mr. O'Brien, had a funeral face on him.