The Glass Lake (26 page)

“True, true,” she laughed, and responded to him, but she pulled away firmly. “Let's not start anything we can't continue…see you tonight, hey? hey?” She laughed at him suggestively.

“You're a terrible tease,” he said.

They were happy again. But it wasn't at the forefront of her mind. Her brain was racing with ways she could write to her daughter.

         

Mr. Millar was at work before her.

“You remind me of a story about the Little People,” he said to Lena.

“What Little People?”

“I don't know…they used to come and do the work at night for some fairy prince, spin and weave or something and…do you know it?”

“I think I've heard of it all right, but why do I remind you of it?”

“I think someone must have come in at night and done all your work. The basket is full of letters written and notes made…”

“I came in for an hour or two last night.”

“I don't know what lucky good fairy brought you here.” He took off his glasses and polished them. “My brother used to laugh at me, and say I had no business sense. Now, in a few short months he wants to buy in to the business. What do you think of that?”

“What do you think of it, Mr. Millar?” Lena knew that there was little love lost between the brothers.

“I'm happier doing it without his help really, Mrs. Gray. That is, if you're going to stay.”

         

During the morning her thoughts went back to the conversations she had had with Kit about her life before she'd come to Lough Glass. They had of their nature been sparse. You didn't tell a daughter that you married only because you were on the rebound and that your every waking thought was so filled with the memory of Louis Gray it didn't really matter what you did. Had she spoken of the girls she was in digs with when she was at secretarial college? Possibly. It was so hard to remember. But if she couldn't remember, then maybe Kit didn't either.

She would write the letter and see how it looked.

Dear Kit
,

You will find it strange to get a letter from someone you do not know. But a while back I read in an Irish newspaper of the death of your mother and I wanted to write and offer sympathy. I do not know your father because your mother and I were friends long long ago when we were very young, well before she met him. Sometimes she used to write to me about you all, and the life you lived in Lough Glass. I even remember the date you were born, and know that you will be thirteen very shortly
.

Your mother was so pleased with her little girl, she wrote and told me about all the dark hair you had as a baby, and determined little fists. I don't want to write to you at home in case it makes your father sad. Your mother told me that there
was a sort of second postal system in Lough Glass and that people often write care of this nun
.

If you would like to write to me, and to know more things about your mother as a girl when we were all only about four or five years older than you are now, then let me know
.

I hope I might hear from you, but if not I will understand. At your age you will have more important things to do than writing to strangers in London
.

Warm wishes for a happy birthday from your mother's old friend
,

Lena Gray
.

When she put the letter into the red pillar box on the corner of the street, Lena left her hand for a long time on the mouth where the letters drop in. It was like reaching out and touching her daughter.

         

Tommy Bennet helped to sort the letters in the post office. Mona Fitz was very interested in the origin of a lot of them. She could comment when the Hanleys got a few dollars in a fat letter from America. Sometimes she examined the mail that arrived for Sister Madeleine. For a woman who said she had retreated from the world, she was still using quite a lot of the world's services. Like the postal system.

Tommy Bennet deflected any comment. Sister Madeleine was a saint as far as he was concerned. She had done the impossible and made things all right when Tommy's fifteen-year-old daughter came home with the most feared news in any Irish village, the news of an unexpected pregnancy. He had wept at Sister Madeleine's fireplace. And somehow the hermit had made it all all right. A friend had been found and his daughter went to live with her. Another friend had been found somewhere else who adopted the baby And Sister Madeleine had found a third friend who gave the girl a job. Nobody in Lough Glass knew the secret. Nor even suspected there was anything unusual about the girl's long absence.

Tommy delivered three letters to the hermit's cottage on a warm sunny morning in late May. One contained a five-pound note, to be put to good causes. She gave the note to Tommy.

“Give it where it should be given.”

“I don't like you trusting me to dole out all that money. I mightn't give it away right.”

“What would I be doing with it? You know where it is needed,” she insisted.

Tommy always felt a hundred feet tall; Sister Madeleine thought he was a man of responsibility. Nobody else much did. His wife thought he was lazy, Mona Fitz the postmistress thought he was soft. His own daughter, whose life he had saved, thought him old-fashioned and strict, and knew nothing of her father's role in all her good fortune.

“I'll leave you in peace to read your other letters, Sister.”

“Put on a pot of tea for us both, it's a thirsty walk up and down that lane.” Sister Madeleine shooed the collection of animals in front of her and sat on the little three-legged stool to read the letter addressed to her.

Dear Sister
,

I am a friend of the late Helen McMahon, and would like to correspond with her daughter Kit
.

For a variety of reasons I do not wish to write to her at her house. I have said to the child that I do not wish to make Martin McMahon sad to see reminders of his dead wife coming to his home, but the truth is that I was part of Helen's earlier
life when she loved another man. This would make it inappropriate for me to resurrect such memories for him
.

I shall write nothing disturbing to the girl, and you are at liberty to read my letters in case you think that the effect will be unsettling. I am sending what I hope will be the first of many letters to you. I am marking the corner of the envelope KM so that you will know they are for her. And perhaps you might send some message to say whether this is acceptable to you
.

Yours sincerely,
Lena Gray
.

It was neatly typed. There was an address in West London. And it said in capital letters
PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU WRITE C/O MRS. IVY BROWN
. Sister Madeleine looked out over the lake for a long time. When Tommy made the tea and brought it out to her he stood for quite a while looking at the small woman entirely lost in thought.

         

“Clio, you're great with the dogs. Will you go and see if you can find Ambrose for me,” Sister Madeleine said later that day.

“Where's he gone, Sister?”

“I couldn't say truthfully, but he's lying low somewhere and you've always been able to make dogs come to you.”

Clio headed off, pleased to be singled out.

Kit looked after her jealously. “I'm better with cats really myself,” she said.

“Don't I know it,” Sister Madeleine agreed. “The cats nearly talk to you, Kit McMahon. Even half-wild cats.” She gave Kit the letter.

There were very few words, but Kit knew it was something to be opened at home alone. And probably not something to be shared with Clio. Nor, since it had been addressed to Sister Madeleine's home, something to be shared with her father.

She must have read the letter forty times. She knew every line of it by heart. Mother had told this woman all about her, about her little fists, her dark hair. She might have told her more. The letter was typed, which made it easy to read. But it looked like a business letter that would come to the pharmacy.

She sounded nice, but a bit standoffish too. Was it Mrs. Gray or Miss Gray? Did she want to know more? Kit felt reassured because Sister Madeleine had said that Mother had in the past mentioned this woman as a friend.

“I didn't know Mother had any friends,” Kit had said.

“Your mother was a friend to everyone,” Sister Madeleine had said.

“She was, I know she was.” Kit's eyes were shining. “People liked her a lot, didn't they?”

“Very much so.” The old nun nodded in agreement.

“But you didn't know her well, she didn't come here all that often, did she?” Kit was eager to hear more good about her mother. “But you don't have to meet people often to know them.” That was true. You sort of knew immediately who you liked and who you didn't. “What did you and Mother talk about when she came here?”

“Oh, this and that.” There was a seal of confession on anyone's conversations with Sister Madeleine.

“But did she talk about this Lena Gray?” Kit's face was troubled.

“She mainly talked about you, about you and Emmet.” Helen McMahon on her infrequent visits spoke with such love about her children that it was inconceivable she could have drowned herself and left them behind.

Sister Madeleine had always believed that.

It took Kit two weeks to think of something to write back. She began once or twice. But it always seemed wrong, it seemed like a school essay, or else too friendly for someone she hardly knew. She wondered what Mother would have done. Mother would have thought about it for a bit, not rushed in.

That's what Kit would do too.

“I'
VE
given your address, Ivy, in case I get any post,” Lena said.

“Well, it's your address too, isn't it?” Ivy was mystified.

“No, I mean your flat.”

“I see.”

“No you don't.”

“Are you going to tell me then?”

“It's just that I want to get a letter from Ireland now and then that I'd prefer Louis didn't know about.”

“Be very careful, Lena.”

“No. It's nothing like love letters…”

There was a silence between them.

“But it's from Ireland?”

“Yes. It's a kind of lifeline to my daughter…”

“Who thinks you're dead?”

“Yes. I'm not pretending to be me, I'm pretending to be someone else. Another me.”

“I wouldn't, love. I really wouldn't.”

“I've done it now.”

         

“You're not still sulking about the television in the hotel?” Louis asked.

“Of course not. I was never sulking in fact, I was being bad tempered. You were the one who was sulking. Let's get the memory of the row right.” Her eyes laughed and there was nothing but ease and pleasure between them.

“Right, so you'll come and watch it down there…”

“Certainly not. If I'm going to be in London for a big historic occasion like this, I'm going to watch it on the street.”

“You'll have to queue all night with rugs and a flask?”

“No, of course I won't. Ivy and Jessie have found a corner.”

“And what about me? What about Mr. Millar and Jessie's mother, and the rest of the cast?”

“You have to work, you've told me a dozen times. Ivy doesn't want to go to Ernest's pub because the horrible Charlotte will be there. Mrs. Park will be parked on a potty at a neighbor's, looking at their television. Mr. Millar will be with his brother whom he hates…now does that answer the interrogation?” she asked jokily.

“I love you,” Louis said suddenly.

“I should hope so. Didn't I run away with you?” she said.

“And didn't I run away with you too?”

But it wasn't an equal running away.

“Of course you did,” Lena said gently. “We ran like silver fish across the sea.”