The Glass Lake (44 page)

Clio and Kit were reading the magazines. They usually managed to read about five for every one they bought. Clio had been following the whole conversation between Orla and her mother. “Marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be,” she whispered to Kit.

“What?” Kit said.

“You're miles away,” Clio said. It was like talking to the side of a wall, talking to Kit McMahon these days. She just had no interest in anything.

The prospectus from St. Mary's College of Catering in Cathal Brugha Street arrived. It lay unopened on the hall table for three days.

“Aren't you going to open it, Kit?” Rita asked. “It will have all the details about your uniforms and everything.”

“I will, of course,” Kit said.

But she didn't.

         

“Catering?” Mrs. Hanley in the drapery said. “Catering, well, I'm sure that's very nice. You're not going to university, then, like Clio?”

“No, Mrs. Hanley. I'd love to learn the hotel business. It's meant to be a very good course, you learn to cook and do accounts and all kinds of things.”

“Is your father disappointed you're not going to university? I know he had his heart set on it.”

Kit looked at Mrs. Hanley. “Had he? You know he never said. He never said a word about that. Maybe I should go home and ask him. I never knew that till you said it this minute.”

“Well now, I may be mistaken, and you wouldn't want to go round upsetting people.” Mrs. Hanley looked alarmed.

Kit's eyes were blazing with annoyance. She didn't know that Mrs. Hanley was so ashamed that her daughter Deirdre was working in a low-class kind of cafe in Dublin—not even waiting tables properly, just clearing up after people with a broom and a cloth—she did everything she could to belittle the opportunities and futures of other girls from Lough Glass.

Mrs. Hanley didn't know that the red-faced angry girl in front of her had hardly heeded her words and their meaning. It was just the trigger of mentioning her father that had set off the storm.

Kit slept badly at night and concentrated not at all during the days. What if her mother were to write from England or, worse still, arrive? Suppose that the nice safe future her father seemed about to embark on was going to blow away in front of his eyes?

         

“Emmet, you smell of drink,” Kit said.

“Oh, do I? I thought it would have gone by now.”

“You thought what?”

“You won't tell?”

“Did I ever tell?”

“Well, Michael Sullivan and Kevin Wall and I…we had a cocktail.”

“I don't believe this.”

“Yes, we made it from all the bottles outside Foley's. We poured it into a jug and shook it.”

“You are mad, Emmet. Quite mad.”

“Actually it was awful. And it was mainly watery stout, there was hardly anything left in the whiskey and brandy bottles.”

“What a shame,” Kit said.

“But anyway, thanks for telling me, I'll wash my teeth.”

“Why on earth did you do it?” Kit asked.

“It was something to do. Sometimes it's kind of lonely here. Wouldn't you say that's true?”

Kit looked at Emmet and bit her lip. Should she tell him?

“How are you, Kit?” Stevie Sullivan called.

“Not well,” Kit said.

“I hate to hear of a good-looking girl not being in good form.” Stevie smiled a crooked, attractive smile.

It cut no ice with Kit McMahon. “I'd be a lot better if you could stop your brother arranging cocktail parties in the backyard of Foley's and Paddles',” she said.

“What are you all of a sudden, Pioneer Total Abstinence Society? Father Matthew, Apostle of Temperance?” Stevie asked.

“I'm someone who'd prefer my own brother not to come home stinking of booze,” she said.

“Okay.” Stevie nodded.

“What do you mean okay.”

“I mean okay, I'll stop it.”

“Thanks,” she said, and let herself in the door. As she climbed the stairs Kit asked herself why she had reacted so strongly to something that was only a kid's game. They hadn't been really drunk. It was pretending to be grown up.

But she told herself that it was for her father. Daddy had enough behind him. And enough ahead of him when he realized his wife hadn't died in the lake. Because Kit now thought this was too big a secret to keep. She wouldn't be able to hide it as she had hidden the burning of the letter. It would all come out now, everything, and their lives would all be ruined.

She dreamed that Mother was home, and that they were all having tea in the kitchen. “Don't be too hard on Kit,” Mother was saying, and they all sat grouped together with Rita standing behind them. Kit seemed to be the outcast far away across the table. And in her dream she heard Maura crying noisy sobs.

“I have a lovely present for you to start your new career, Kit.” Mrs. Hanley handed Kit a flat box.

“That's very nice of you, Mrs. Hanley.”

“Open it and see do you like it.”

It was a lemon-colored short-sleeved sweater, something Kit would never have worn. But under a jacket it might look all right.

“It's beautiful, Mrs. Hanley, that's very very kind of you.”

“I spoke a bit out of turn the other day, you were a good girl not to take any notice of me.”

Kit looked at her blankly, she hadn't an idea what the woman was talking about. Everything was so odd these days, and she could hardly remember anything she had done since she came back from London. It all seemed suspended somehow, unreal.

         

The days and nights were endless in London for Lena. She slept or tried to sleep curled up in a little corner of the great bed that they had shared so happily.

In the office she worked on like a machine…there was no purpose to the working day for her anymore. No plans for an evening meal with Louis, no running home at lunchtime to catch him on his split shifts so that they could have an hour together.

Impossible to believe that her birthday would come and go, and nobody would know. Louis in France would have forgotten. Kit in Ireland would not remember. Everyone else in Ireland thought she was dead. Maybe Ivy knew but she would be tactful enough to realize that this year there was nothing to celebrate.

Sometimes on Saturday lunchtimes when they closed the agency doors Lena congratulated herself that she had survived another week. Perhaps this was what the rest of her life would be like, unless of course her daughter could bear the strain no longer. Unless she was unmasked as living, alive if not well, in London. Living in the empty bed of a man who had left her just as she had left her own husband.

Some days were harder than others. There was a widow who came in looking for part-time work, saying she had to be home at four o'clock in the afternoon when her son got back from school.

“He's thirteen, you see, and they really need their mothers at that age,” she confided to Lena.

To her surprise Mrs. Gray's eyes filled with tears. “Yes, I expect they do,” she said earnestly. “Let's try everything until we get you something suitable.” And Lena threw herself into the task. It was as if she could somehow reach out to Emmet by helping this woman to see her son.

She thought about Emmet a lot. Perhaps he might be less hard of heart, less quick to condemn than Kit had been. After all, he was blameless in every way. He had burned no note of explanation. Was there a way she could write to him, tell him she was alive? Or was this the way madness lay?

And then there was Martin. Martin, whom she had so sorely misjudged. Was it better, as Kit had said, that she remain dead? But suppose that Kit was not constant in her intentions? Might she not give in and admit everything? Would it be fairer to Martin to tell him now, tell him herself, rather than let him hear it secondhand?

She had given him her promise that she would never leave him without explanation, but he had not known. Was she telling him only because Louis had gone? Or would he think that this was the case?

Like mice the thoughts scurried around in her head while she was awake. And when she slept she dreamed often that Louis had come back. She would wake cold and cramped and realize it was not true. One night she dreamed she went back to Lough Glass, that she got off a bus outside the Mercy Convent and walked through the town, past the Lakeview Road which led up to the Kellys' house, past the post office where Mona Fitz closed the door in her face. Tommy the postman tried to come out and talk to her but Mona called him back, and the curtains in the Garda station across the road twitched as they saw her but nobody came out to greet her. Mrs. Hanley had
EARLY CLOSING
written on the shop so as to avoid meeting her.

And a sullen crowd stood in the doorways of Foley's bar. Sullivan's garage was deserted, Wall's Hardware people turned the other way, Father Baily hastened up Church Road so as not to have to see her, so she tried to come back up the street on the other side in case there would be someone to meet her but at Paddles' the doors were closed and Mrs. Dillon didn't speak. Dan and Mildred O'Brien in the Central Hotel avoided her eye.

And then she was at the pharmacy. “I'm home,” she called up the stairs. But there was no reply. Rita dressed in black came to the top of the stairs. “I'm afraid you can't come in, ma'am, the mistress is dead,” Rita said solemnly. “I am the mistress,” Lena cried in her dream. “I know, ma'am, but you can't come in.”

At that she woke up sweating. It was true. There was no life of any sort ahead for her. She might as well be dead.

         

Lena missed the letters terribly. There was no point in looking in to Ivy hopefully. There would never be a letter from Kit again. Never a letter overflowing with news to her mother's friend.

Kit missed the letters. There was nobody to sound off to, no one to tell about all the things that lay ahead, the catering college, the doglike devotion of Philip O'Brien, the increasing bossiness of Clio. The Lena Gray she had written to would have been able to come up with some course of action about everything, everything, of course, except what was really wrong.

It was a great lacking, the letters. Not having Sister Madeleine slip her the envelope with the English stamp which she would take home and read in her room. Now the knowledge that these letters were all lies made them worthless. She could hardly bear to think of what they had said. She didn't believe Lena Gray anymore. About anything.

There was a postcard from Philip. He was in Killarney.

Dear Kit
,

I have a holiday job here in this hotel that you see on the front of the card. Imagine having a picture of your hotel on the card. How boastful
.

I can't wait to start the course, can you? We'll be so much ahead of the others, after all we're going out together. They'll all have to find new friends
.

Love,
Philip
.

Dear Kit
,

Your father tells me that you will be in the Mountjoy Square Hostel, which I am sure will be excellent for you while you are studying in catering college
.

I also realize that some of the greatest joys of coming to Dublin center around the sense of freedom you have from home, and everything connected with your own place. I would like you to know that I have a very comfortable flat in Rathmines. If ever you would like to come and see me I would be delighted. But most of all I want you to know that I shall not be sitting at home waiting for you. I leave work at five-thirty and very often when the weather is good I go on the golf course an hour after that time. Often I go to the cinema, or to the houses of friends. Sometimes people come to my flat for supper
.

I tell you this so that you will know I am not trying to seek for company, nor am I trying to keep an eye on you while you are in Dublin. But this is my phone number just in case you'd like to come for a meal sometime
.

Yours affectionately,
Maura
.

Dear Michael Sullivan
,

This is from a well-wisher. You have been observed drinking the dregs from bottles outside various public houses in Lough Glass
.

This must now cease
.

Immediately
.

Otherwise Sergeant O'Connor will be informed
.

And Father Baily
.

And most important your brother who will beat the shit out of you
.

You have been warned
.

Dear Philip
,

Whatever else we are doing when we get to Dublin we are not going out together. I want you to know this from the very start so that there will be no misunderstanding
.

Love (but only if you take it in the right spirit),
Kit
.

“They want me to start soon in Dublin, Stevie,” Rita said.

“Oh Jesus! You run everything here like a dream.”