The Glass Lake (47 page)

Rita wanted all the news, and details of how Peggy, the daily who came for a few hours, was doing her job.

“Will Miss Hayes make any changes, do you think?”

“I hope so…” Kit said. “I mean I'd like her to make it into her place, you know, not just move into our place.”

“She's going to ask me to the wedding,” Rita said.

“I know…what are you going to wear?”

“I saw a suit in Clery's. It's the very thing. And I might get shoes to match. It's a sort of light green. What'll you wear yourself, Kit?”

“I don't know. Daddy gave me money to buy an outfit. I haven't seen anything I like yet.”

         

Next morning at the college Kit was told that there was a parcel for her.

When she saw that it was from London she took it to the ladies' cloakroom, where, heart beating like a hammer, she opened it. What could Lena Gray be doing now? What awful secret was there here that was going to upset them all?

She unpacked the gray and white silk dress in amazement and read the note. The dress didn't look like much, but that wasn't important…what was important was the note.

I thought you might like this to wear at the wedding. L
.

She read it over and over.

What it meant was that she was giving her blessing to the wedding. Helen McMahon was saying that the marriage would go ahead and she would not interfere. Tears came down Kit's face, tears of pure relief.

She looked at the dress again. It was silk, maybe even pure silk. It must have cost a fortune. She would try it on tonight and then she would think of what she would write.

That is if she did write.

But you'd have to write to thank for something like this. Which was probably what Lena wanted.

         

Clio's hostel was near the university. There were girls from all over Ireland there, some of them from very posh families. Most of them had never heard of Lough Glass. Lots of them had been to boarding schools and knew each other. It wasn't as easy as Clio had thought to make friends. And it was the same at lectures. In some magical way other people seemed to know each other.

Clio found her first days at University College Dublin much less fun than she had hoped they would be. For the first time in her life she was a little bit lonely. For the first time she realized she was a very small fish in a pond so big she couldn't even see the edges.

She cheered herself up with the thought that however bad it was for her, it must be worse for Kit with all those awful hotel people from everywhere. And down at the other end of O'Connell Street, miles away from where all the action was.

Kit went out to supper with Philip O'Brien. She invited
him
and said it was her treat.

“What's this about?” Philip was suspicious.

“I want to talk to you properly, and if I am your guest then I think you've invited me out, like asking someone out.”

“Well, you're asking
me
out, isn't that the same?” he grumbled.

“You know it isn't,” Kit said firmly.

He was tall, Philip, and his freckles seemed to suit him more, his hair had stopped standing up at odd angles, he didn't have that slightly puzzled look he'd had as a youngster, he had a sense of humor. In most ways he was the perfect friend. Apart from one way, and that's what Kit wanted to talk about.

“I'm going to have spaghetti,” she said, looking at the menu.

“It's probably tinned,” Philip said.

“Good. I loved tinned spaghetti. It's much easier to eat.”

“Don't let them hear you saying that in the training college. They'll think we're a couple of yahoos.”

“That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” Kit said.

“What? Spaghetti?”

“No, the word you said, a couple of yahoos…”

“A lot of them are from Dublin or from big cities. They think everyone from a place like Lough Glass would be a yahoo.”

“I'm not talking about the word ‘yahoo,' it's the word ‘couple' that worried me.”

“It is what you call two people.” Philip was aggrieved.

“It's not what you call us. I have my whole life to live and things to worry about. I can't find myself sliding into a sort of pairing with you as well as everything else…”

“I don't see what's so terrible…” he began.

“It's not terrible, it's just something that has to be agreed between two people, not assumed by one and the other go along without thinking.”

“Then, will you be my girlfriend?” Philip asked.

“No, Philip.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to be me. I want to be without a boyfriend.”

“Forever?”

“No, not forever but until I meet one, and it might be you, and we both agree.”

“But you have met me.” Philip was very confused now.

“Philip, I'm your friend, not your girlfriend. And if you say
But you are a girl
I'll stick my fork in your eyes.”

“I'll always want you as my girlfriend,” he said simply. “You can go off with whoever you like, but I'll always be there for you in Lough Glass with the hotel, and maybe we might even get married.”

“Philip, you're eighteen. Nobody gets married at eighteen.” The waitress was standing there.

“People who love each other get married at eighteen,” Philip said, totally ignoring the girl standing with her little order book.

“They don't unless they're pregnant,” Kit said with spirit.

“We could get pregnant. That would be a great idea,” Philip said.

“Jesus!” said the waitress. “I'll come back when you've something less dramatic on your mind, like what you're going to have for your supper.”

         

“Are they a terrible crowd of hicks down there?” Clio asked. She and Kit were having coffee in Grafton Street.

“Stop talking about down there. It would take me less time to walk to my college than you to yours.”

“Yeah, but what are they like?”

“Very nice mainly. It's quite hard work. You have to concentrate a bit, but I suppose I'll get the hang of it.”

“And what will you do in the end, I mean where will it take you?”

“Christ, how do I know, Clio? I've only been in it a week. How about you? Where's a B.A. going to take you?”

“Aunt Maura said it's a great basis for meeting people.”

“Maura says she never said that.”

“I wish you wouldn't talk to her behind my back about things I told you. She is my aunt, you know.”

“And she's going to be my stepmother.” They both laughed. They were squabbling the way they did when they were seven years of age.

“Maybe we'll always go on like this,” Clio said.

“Oh yes. When we're old ladies holidaying in the South of France, fighting about our deck chairs in the sun and our poodles,” Kit agreed.

“You getting away from Philip O'Brien, crotchety old owner of the Central Hotel.”

“Why don't you see me as the owner of a string of hotels of my own?”

“It's not what women do,” Clio said.

“And what about you? Will you have married some suitable fellow from First Arts?”

“God no. There's no one suitable there. I'll be looking amongst the lawyers and the medics.”

“A doctor's wife? Clio, you'd never have the patience. Look at what your mother has to put up with.”

“A surgeon's wife, a specialist's wife…I'm planning this properly,” Clio said. Then she asked: “What are you wearing anyway?”

“A sort of gray and white dress,” Kit said.

“What material?”

“Silk, sort of silk.”

“No! Where did you get it?”

“In a small shop on a side street.” Kit was evasive.

“You're not exactly killing yourself, then, are you?”

“It's quite nice, it looks weddingy.” Kit defended the dress.

“Gray and white, it sounds like a postulant nun to me.”

“Well, let's wait and see, will we?”

         

“Does it feel funny, your father getting married again?” Anna Kelly asked Emmet as they met at the sweets counter of Dillon's grocery.

“What do you mean, funny?” Emmet asked. Anna was pretty. She had blond curly hair and a gorgeous smile. They were going to be sort of related after the wedding.

“Well, will you call her Mummy?” Anna wanted to know.

“Lord, no. We call her Maura already.”

“And will she sleep in your father's room or your mother's room?” Anna wanted to know all the details.

“I don't know. I didn't ask. Daddy's, I suppose. That's what married people do.”

“Why didn't your mother, then?”

“She had a cold, she didn't want to give it to Daddy.”

“A cold? The whole time?”

“That's what I was told,” Emmet said. He spoke without guile.

Something changed in Anna. “Yes, well, some people do,” she agreed, and companionably they discussed the relative merits of Cleeves toffees, which were flatter, and Scots Clan, which were more chunky but dearer.

Mrs. Dillon watched them. At least these two didn't look likely to pocket half the display when no one was looking, but you couldn't be too careful.

         

Maura hadn't wanted an engagement ring. “We're too mature for that,” she said to Martin.

“We're not old, don't say that.”

“I didn't say old, I meant we didn't have to get engaged…we had an understanding in the real sense of the word.”

“I don't know how you waited so long and were so understanding when I was such a ditherer,” Martin said.

“Shush, we've been through that before. You had much more to sort out than I did.” Maura could afford to be generous now, she told herself. Her months and months of coping with Martin's indecision were over. He was now deeply committed to their marriage. He would make it work, he would make her happy. He knew these things were possible. And as for Maura herself, she could hardly believe her good fortune in having chased the ghosts of the beautiful, restless-looking woman who was her predecessor. Martin and Maura could walk by the lake of an autumn evening now without pausing, stricken, to remember that this was where Helen's life had ended.

“I want the wedding day to be the best day in the world for you.”

“It will,” Maura said.

“Then let me get you some jewel if you won't have a diamond engagement ring. I want you to have more than a plain wedding ring. Would you like a diamond brooch, do you think?” His face was eager to please her.

“No, my love. Truly.”

“There are jewels of Helen's in a box. You know that. Suppose I were to bring them to a jeweler in the town and ask him to make something completely different, then you wouldn't worry about cost.” He was able to speak of Helen naturally now, without his face contorting.

“No, Martin. Those belong to Kit. She must have them someday. When she's twenty-one, maybe. You must give them to her. She should wear them with pleasure. Don't have them altered for me. I have enough.”

“They're all there somewhere, I never even looked at them.”

“Fine. Let's leave them for Kit's twenty-first.” Maura had looked at them though. She had fingered them sadly. A marcasite brooch, a locket, a diamante clip, a pair of earrings that might have been real rubies and might not.

But mostly she had noticed two rings, an engagement ring and a wedding ring. Helen McMahon had not taken those with her on the night she went out in the boat on the lake. Maura wondered whether Sergeant Sean O'Connor or the detectives from Dublin had inquired about that at the time. It surely must have been a pointer to the state of mind of someone who might have been thought to end her own life, if she had carefully removed valuable jewelery and left it behind.

         

“Are you asking Stevie Sullivan to the wedding?” Clio asked her aunt Maura.

“No. There was a lot of debate about that. He is my future boss, that would mean a yes, but then think of his mother and that means a no. And he is a neighbor but think of his terrible little brother.”

“He is a single man and quite good-looking,” Clio added.

“Yes, but he also has a reputation for disappearing from public functions with young ladies in tow.” Maura knew the whole world of Lough Glass now. “Martin and I added it up and it came out against asking him.”

“Imagine you working for him, Aunt Maura. He came from nothing.”

“Imagine you using an expression like that…a young girl like you.” Maura's eyes were cold. Clio realized too late that she often misjudged her aunt. Aunt Maura didn't have the same cozy, gossipy way of looking at the world as her own mother did. There was very little gossip, and absolutely no feeling that some people were acceptable and some were not.