The Glass Lake (48 page)

         

The week before, the wedding gifts poured into the chemist's shop. And even more important for Maura and Martin were the accompanying notes wishing them well. People said that it was good to see two such nice people finding happiness. Maura was a known visitor to the town in recent years, and as a child had grown up only a few miles away. It wasn't as if Martin McMahon were looking outside for a stranger.

As he had before.

Mona from the post office gave some Belleek china. She said she thought there was something gracious about it which would suit the new Mrs. McMahon. Mildred O'Brien chose a small set of silver coffee spoons. The Walls sent a glass bonbon dish with a silver handle. The Hickeys, who had been intending to send meat as they always did if the event was being held in Lough Glass, stirred themselves and sent something which looked suspiciously like a pram rug.

Paddles sent four bottles of brandy and four bottles of whiskey, on the grounds that the groom and the bride's brother-in-law would consume that amount easily in any given year. There was an embroidered sampler from Mother Bernard and the community, a history of the county from Brother Healy and the Brothers' school, a set of saucepans from Mrs. Hanley in the drapery and from Sister Madeleine a great clump of white heather and a tub to plant it in. She said that although it was superstitious to believe that white heather was lucky, at least it might be nice to have this as a symbol of their marriage, and that when it grew every year it would remind them of their good fortune in coming together.

Kit looked at the heather thoughtfully. Sister Madeleine knew that there never had been a Lena Gray writing to Helen McMahon, and so this was a new relationship. Therefore she suspected this was not a marriage in the eyes of God and yet she was going along with it.

Sometimes Kit felt the world was tilting.

“Y
OU
never tell me anything about Lough Glass,” Louis said to Lena on Saturday morning.

“I used to, my love, but you said it was very trivial.”

“Well, some of it was…you know, the petty things…but I'm not totally insensitive. I know you must think about the children and about Martin.”

“From time to time,” Lena agreed.

“Well, don't shut me out…I mean, I am interested in everything that concerns you. I do love you.” He sounded defensive.

“I know.”

“How do you know?” He seemed to doubt the rather flat tone of voice.

“I know because you came back,” she said. Again it was as if she were saying something by rote. In fact she was repeating his own words to her.
Why would I come back to you if I didn't love you?

“Well, that's all right, then.” But Louis was watchful. Lena didn't seem herself this morning.

“What do you think the place is like now?”

Lena looked at him for a long while. She debated for a wild moment whether to tell him that her husband was marrying Maura Hayes at eleven a.m. and that she had spent a week's salary on a dress for her daughter Kit to wear at the ceremony. She wondered was it possible that, if she were to fill him in on the important areas of her own life, he would be able to feel involved with her to such a degree that he could put aside all the many distractions of his world. But the moment ended. She knew it would not be possible. She would not get the reaction she hoped for. Instead, she would get blame and recrimination for having hidden the fact that she had written to her daughter for years and then met the girl in London.

“Oh, I expect it will be like any other day,” she said. “Any ordinary Saturday in Lough Glass.”

S
TEVIE
Sullivan said once he'd be in Dublin anyway he'd drive the bride to the church, and drive them both to the reception.

“We can't accept that, Stevie…” Martin began to protest.

“Jesus, Martin, isn't it a grand easy wedding present? Let me do it for you.” Stevie was a handsome young man now of twenty-one, with his long dark hair falling over his eyes and his tanned skin. When Stevie was a boy he had often heard part of his father's drunken rages include the possibility that his mother had lain down with the tinkers…how else could she have produced such an unlikely-looking son for him? Stevie had heard her reply that since it had been such a hellish thing to have to lie down for her own husband she was unlikely to want to repeat the experience with anyone else, tinker or no tinker. His own experience of sex had made him think that his mother must have missed out a lot on life if this had been her attitude. But it was a view he kept to himself.

“Anyway, you can rely on me, Maura. You wouldn't want to be having any truck with these Dublin fellows.”

She was grateful. It would be good to have a friendly face beside her as she set off to the church. She had packed the possessions that she needed from her flat in Dublin and brought them in advance to Lough Glass. The flat had been painted and let to a young couple who had already moved in. Maura had hoped that in the future Kit and Clio might be able to live there. It would be handy for them; it had two bedrooms, it was central. But she thought that they might not be temperamentally suited to sharing a flat. There was an edge between them that did not suggest a real friendship, more a wishing to score off each other. She wouldn't suggest the idea until they had made up their minds more about life.

Stevie wore a dark suit, which could almost have been a uniform, when he came to the hotel to collect Maura.

“You look lovely, Maura,” he said.

He was the first to see her and even though he was little more than a child still, she was pleased. A flush came over her face and neck. “Thank you, Stevie.”

“I'm pleased to see my staff know how to kit themselves out,” he said.

Kit and Clio stood side by side in the big church.

Clio hadn't ceased to gripe about the dress since she arrived. “What kind of a shop did you say it was, that shop?”

“Oh, I told you, in a side street.”

“You're lying in your teeth.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Because that's the way you're made.”

“Ask anyone. Ask Daddy. Ask Maura.”

“You lied to them too. This is a really good smart dress. It cost a fortune. Did you steal it?”

“You have a very diseased mind. Will you shut up and let me enjoy my father's wedding.”

At that moment they saw the small congregation turning around. Maura Hayes was walking up the church aisle with her brother. Martin McMahon stood beaming at the altar rails.

“She looks great,” Clio whispered. “That's a terrific outfit.”

“She probably stole it. Most of us did,” Kit said loftily.

Stevie was outside the church holding open the door of the car. “I didn't know he was coming,” Philip said to Clio.

“Oh, he gets anywhere,” Clio said. “If you have a brass neck and flash good looks like that, the world is open to you.”

Philip seemed disappointed by this. “Is that his car?” he asked.

“Yes.” Clio still sounded scornful. “Part of the Sullivan Motor Service is to realize that there will be times in people's lives, functions, when they'll need a bit of class. Stevie's ahead of the game.”

“Do women like him?”

“Yes, but only in a very obvious kind of way. I mean, I personally wouldn't touch him with a barge pole. He's been with every maid and skivvy from here to Lough Glass and back.”

“Slept with them, you mean?” Philip's eyes were round.

“So I hear.”

“And none of them got…um…pregnant?”

“Apparently not. Or if they did we didn't hear.”

Maura had chosen the hotel well. There was a sherry reception in a big bright room with chintz-covered couches and chairs. The waitresses moved around efficiently, making sure that glasses were well filled. When they went in to sit down, the late autumn sun was slanting in the windows on the group.

The seating plan had been carefully thought out. Kit and Emmet sat on either side of Rita. The O'Briens were divided up so that they could not glare at each other. Lilian Kelly was put beside two of Maura's work colleagues so that she could talk about shops in Dublin and the races.

There was a grapefruit cocktail, then chicken and ham, and an ice cream with hot chocolate sauce. The wedding cake was small, one tier.

“There won't be any need to keep a tier for the christening,” Mildred O'Brien explained to her neighbor, who nodded, bewildered.

The speeches were very simple. Peter Kelly said how this was the happiest day for a long time. And how great it was that his good friend had found a partner for the rest of his life. Everyone clapped.

Martin thanked everyone for their support in coming to wish them well. He said it was particularly gratifying that Maura had so many friends already in Lough Glass, and it would in many senses for her be like coming home. They thought the speeches were over but Maura McMahon stood up. A little ripple went through the group. Women so rarely spoke in public. Brides never.

“I would like to add my thanks to Martin's, and to say this is the happiest day of my life. But I want to thank most of all Kit and Emmet McMahon for their generosity in sharing their father with me. They are the children of Martin and Helen, they will always be that. I hope the memory of their mother will never fade. For them or for any of us. Without Helen McMahon, Kit and Emmet would not have existed. Without Helen, Martin would not have known his years of happiness in a first marriage. I thank her for all she gave to us, I hope her spirit knows what a feeling of warmth there is toward her this day. And I assure you all that I will do my very best to make Martin as happy as he deserves to be. He is a truly good man.”

There was a silence as people took in the depth of feeling in her words. Then they clapped and clapped and raised their glasses. And the pianist in the corner began to tinkle so that a few songs could be called for. Maura had checked. There had been no singing at Martin and Helen's wedding.

Stevie Sullivan stood outside the door. Maura had not changed her outfit. The wedding dress and jacket were quite suitable for traveling. The cases were packed and had been put in the back of the car.

“You're looking fairly irresistible, Kit,” Stevie said.

“Better resist me, though,” Kit said. “I believe you're taking them to the train.”

“That's not what I heard,” he said.

“But aren't you going to take them off to start their honeymoon?”

“Right in one.”

“So?”

“So, it's not the station, it's the airport.”

“The airport?” Kit had thought they were going to Galway.

“They're going to London,” Stevie said. “Didn't they tell you?”

Chapter Seven

I
VY
could hardly believe it when she saw the letter with the Irish stamp and the foreign-looking postmark that nobody could read. She twitched her curtain as Lena ran downstairs on her way to work.

Lena scarcely dared to hope. She sat down in Ivy's kitchen and read it. It was one page. It had no beginning, no greeting. But then, neither had her note to Kit.

Thank you very much for the beautiful dress. It looked very well and was much admired. It arrived at the college over a week ago but I waited until now to write
.

So that I could tell you the ceremony has taken place. It all went very well and they have gone to London today. I thought it was Galway that they were going to, but apparently it's the Regent Palace Hotel, London
.

I know London is a huge city but I thought you would want to know. Just in case
.

Once more, thank you for the dress.
Kit
.

Lena sat holding the letter.

“Is it bad news?” Ivy asked.

“No. Not bad news, no.”

“Well, is she speaking to you?”

“No, not really speaking to me. Not yet, no.”

“Oh come on, Lena. Don't make me beg…what is it?”

“It's a sort of contact, sort of warning me off something…but I haven't told you the whole background. Can I do that some long, lonely evening?”

“There'll be plenty of those ahead of us,” Ivy agreed.

When she got to the agency she found Jessie Park waiting in her office for her. Jessie was a changed person to the tired, flustered woman in a cardigan whom Lena had discovered the first day. Now a trim, smart woman of forty-seven, Jessie exuded confidence. Her mother played racing demon with the other tenants in the sheltered accommodation and seemed to have forgotten her digestive problems.

They had set the date, were going to have a small wedding. Just eight people to sit down to a lunch in a hotel. Could Lena be one of the witnesses? Jim Millar's brother would be the other. And they would love Lena's Louis to come as a guest to the wedding, of course. Lena embraced her and said how happy she was. She very much hoped that Louis would be free. His hours were so difficult. She said all the right things. But her mind was far away.

She was breathing up a prayer of thanks to Kit for having warned her about Martin and Maura's being in London. Suppose, for example, that Jessie's wedding lunch had been in the Regent Palace Hotel? There had been stranger coincidences. To be forewarned was very useful indeed.

         

She knew that Louis wouldn't want to go to the wedding.

“Darling heart, don't I get enough of this every day at work?” he said, smiling at her despairingly and holding his hands out as if to show that it was raining weddings on him every time he moved.

The Dryden did a very scant wedding business indeed. But Lena didn't make an issue out of it. “I know, just to let you know that you're welcome and they'd love it if you could get away. That's all.”

“Can you get me out of it?” He seemed pleased.

“Easily,” she said.

She saw the little tension lines around his eyes relax. Perhaps Louis Gray didn't like the idea of going to weddings with her, watching other people making promises for a future together. And Louis was in such good form these days, so lighthearted and happy. It would be ludicrous to make a fuss over his attending the function. It would of its very nature be as dry as dust. Louis would hate it.

Because she hadn't forced him or complained that he wouldn't give her support he was even more loving than ever. And he called unexpectedly at the office one day with a bottle of champagne for the happy couple.

“I'm so sorry I can't be there,” he said. There was a real regret in his eyes and voice.

Lena stood listening to him, and even she felt that there were ways in which Louis Gray
was
sorry he wouldn't be attending.

Jim Millar and Jessie Park were, of course, delighted with him. “He's a great man, that husband of yours. I'm sure he's a top businessman,” Jim Millar said.

“I think they value him a lot at the Dryden,” Lena agreed.

“I'm surprised he doesn't run his own hotel,” Jessie said.

“He may one day,” Lena said. But she didn't think that far ahead. She had discovered that you got by better taking life in short bursts.

She dressed in front of Louis, he lay making admiring sounds from the bed. It was one of his late mornings.

“You're far too glamorous for that crowd,” he said. “Let's you and me go off somewhere and dazzle the world.”

“I'll see you later.” She blew him a kiss.

“Come home sober,” he called after her.

“I think that's fairly likely,” she laughed.

The wedding luncheon ended nice and early as everyone had known it would. Mrs. Park was brought back to her new friends, Jessie and Jim caught the train for St. Ives. They were going back to Cornwall, where their romance had begun. Lena assured them she had many things to do.

Without her realizing it her feet took her toward the Regent Palace. She stopped and studied hard her appearance in a shop window mirror. She was wearing a cream-colored suit with lilac trim. Her hat was in velvet to match the trim. She had a large black bag, black gloves, and very high-heeled court shoes. She wore a fair amount of well-applied makeup. Surely she could not look like the woman in the dirndl skirts and loose, flowing dresses that they had known years ago.

Her eyes might give her away. People often recognized others by the eyes alone. She stopped in Boots and bought a pair of sunglasses. “Not much call for those these days,” said the young girl selling them.

“I'm going to rob a bank,” Lena explained.

“Want anyone to help you carry it all away?” the girl said. Louis was right about the English. They were dying to talk, it was just that they needed someone to start them off.

Lena studied herself in the sunglasses. That was just the trick. She positioned herself in the lounge of the Regent Palace. She had no other plans for the rest of the day, she would wait here until she saw them going in or coming out.

James Williams couldn't believe it. He had thought that the well-dressed woman in sunglasses was Louis Gray's wife. There weren't many with that hair and those legs. But what on earth was she doing sitting in the foyer of a huge hotel like this? It was almost as if she were waiting to pick someone up. But perhaps she was just waiting to meet that handsome if feckless husband.

James Williams wondered whether Mrs. Gray had any idea of her husband's popularity with the ladies. He declined to listen to whispers in his own hotel, thinking it beneath him. But he would have to be deaf not to have known that Louis Gray had gone off with some rich spoiled young American to Paris not long ago. Possibly Mrs. Gray put up with it.

He looked over at the elegant figure sitting in front of a drink, which she was studying through sunglasses. Perhaps she might even be here consoling herself. It was an attractive thought, but James Williams had a meeting in one of the conference rooms.

When he came down through the hall again he saw she was still there. “What's the lady drinking?” he asked a waiter.

“She's refused other drinks that were offered.”

“She won't from me, I know her.” He learned it was gin and orange. He ordered one for both of them and just as the tray arrived he appeared at her table. “Really, Mr. Williams,” she said.

“Really, Mrs. Gray.” It was always their joke to be so formal.

“Were you waiting here by any chance hoping I'd turn up?” He was playful, flattering, flirtatious.

“No, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I just came in to take the weight off my feet,” she said.

“Just came in? Wasn't I lucky!”

“Just this minute,” Lena Gray said. He looked at her with interest. She had been in this lounge for more than two hours. What on earth was making her lie to him like this?

They talked away, Lena and James, about the world in general and hotels in particular. At no stage did either of them mention Louis Gray, who was the only person they had in common. They had another round and another.

Three gin and oranges with him, and perhaps more before he arrived. James was wondering if by the most amazing good fortune he had got lucky with this attractive Irishwoman. Her voice was not slurred. He couldn't see her eyes because of the ridiculous glasses, but she said she had an eye infection and needed to wear them. He thought there was something a little odd and light-headed about her behavior, and at one stage she stood up and excused herself very suddenly. She didn't go to the ladies' as he expected, she went inside to stand by the gates of the lift. She stood quite near a middle-aged couple who were carrying a lot of shopping—typical out-of-town tourists and shoppers. If it hadn't been so ridiculous, James Williams would have thought that the elegant Lena Gray had gone over to eavesdrop on what they were saying.

         

It was five years since she had seen them. Her head was slightly dizzy. She must remember this moment.

Martin was still in a bulky suit. It looked new, this one, but it had not been made by a tailor. He was forty-five, a year older than Louis, but he could have been ten or fifteen years older. His stance was the same, slightly stooped, his good-natured smile was there. His arms were full of bags, from British Home Stores, C & A, and even Liberty's. Was anything different? He looked happy, he looked like he used to when he had been playing with the children or had pushed the boat out on the lake. He looked less anxious to please.

And Maura Hayes. Maura, whom she'd hated to meet because she was the jovial sister of Lilian, the woman who made it very difficult to refuse an invitation. Was she older or younger than Lilian? Had she been told? Had she ever listened? She looked flushed and happy.

“I'd love a cup of tea,” Lena heard her say. “Is that a real country-hick thing to want?”

“And this from the city sophisticate working in Dublin all those years?” he said, laughing. “But I imagine that they'll have no difficulty in bringing a tray to the room.”

“Do you think so?” She looked eager and as if all her problems had been solved at a stroke.

“This isn't the Central Hotel in Lough Glass, you know,” he said.

She was so near she could touch them, the ghost of the wife they had thought was dead. Her appearance would destroy so many lives. Filled with the self-pity that gin can often bring, Lena started to weep. Perhaps it would have been better if she had died in the lake that night.

She looked flushed when she came back. James Williams leaned across the table. “If you're in no hurry home…?” he asked. His tone was polite, it was not remotely like a proposition.

“If I'm not, Mr. Williams…?”

“Then I was wondering what we might do…” He was walking on eggshells now; her voice had got shaky, there seemed to be glistening tears on her face.

“I was wondering if you might like me to give you a lift in a taxi…perhaps?”

“To where?”

“To wherever you'd like to go next. Somewhere for another drink possibly? A bit to eat? Home to your doorstep? To the Dryden Hotel?”

“Anywhere you say.” She took off her glasses and looked at him. She had been crying, but her eyes did not look infected. She was very upset. “You're a very intelligent man, James Williams, very smooth, very polished. I'm no match for you. I think I'm so capable and in control, but I'm only a poor country hick. That's the word I heard two people using a few minutes ago. That's what I am, a hick.”

“No. No,” he protested. “Please tell me. What can I offer you?”

“A chance to go now while I still have two legs to carry me to the door,” she said.

She put on her sunglasses. She was a very attractive woman. If ever he saw anyone who needed a strong shoulder to cry on over something, it was Lena Gray. After she had cried she would feel grateful to him. He considered it for a moment. But only a moment. “Off we go then, I'll find you a taxi.” His hand lightly on her arm, he steered her out into the traffic of Piccadilly Circus.