The Glass Lake (7 page)

Kit felt a wave of relief flood over her. “So you're not sad and worried, then?”

“I said I wouldn't lie to you and I won't. Sometimes I do get sad and a bit lonely in this little town. I don't love it as much as your father does; he was brought up here and knows every stone of it. I sometimes feel I might go mad if I have to see Lilian Kelly every day, and listen to Kathleen Sullivan whinging about how hard life is in the garage, or Mildred O'Brien saying that the dust in the air is making her feel sick…but then, you know that…you get annoyed with Clio and with school.” Mother had treated her as an equal. Mother had told her the truth. “So do you believe me now, Kit?”

“Yes, I do,” Kit said. And she did.

“And will you remember, whatever happens, that your passport to the world is to have your own career and that's the only way you are free to choose what you want to do.”

It had been a great conversation, she felt much better about everything now. At the back of her mind she had one nagging worry. Why had Mother said twice, not once, “whatever happens”? It was as if Mother could see the future. Like Sister Madeleine seemed to do. Like the gypsy woman down by the lake.

But Kit had put it out of her mind. There was too much to think of, and wasn't it great that she had got her periods before Clio. That was a real triumph.

D
R.
Kelly called as Martin was closing the shop. “I am the living embodiment of temptation. Will you come down to Paddles' with me and have a pint?”

In another town the local doctor and chemist might be expected to drink at the hotel, which would have a better-class bar, but O'Brien's was so dismal and gloomy that Martin and Peter much preferred to bypass it in favor of Paddles' earthier but more cheerful atmosphere. They settled into a snug.

“My advice?” Martin held his head on one side quizzically. He didn't think there was any real excuse other than a need for a companion.

“It's young Anna, she has me worried. She keeps saying that everyone has a down on her, and that she really did see a woman down at the lake crying…”

“At that age they're so full of drama.” Martin was consoling.

“I know, God don't I know. But you know the way you sense when someone's telling the truth.”

“Well, you don't think she saw a ghost?”

“No, but I think she saw something.” Martin was nonplussed. He didn't know what he was expected to say. “Do you remember her?”

“Remember who?”

“Bridie Daly, or Brigid Daly, or whatever her name was? The one who drowned.”

“How would I remember her, weren't we only kids?”

“What did she look like?”

“I haven't a clue, when was it? It was way back.”

“It was in 1920.”

“Peter, we were only eight.”

“Was she dark with long hair? It's just that Anna is so positive.”

“And what are you thinking?”

“I was wondering was there someone dressing up to frighten the kids.”

“Well, if there was, they've succeeded, and the kid's father, it seems too.”

Peter laughed. “Yes, you're right. I suppose it's nonsense. I just didn't like to think of someone deliberately setting out to upset them. Anna has many faults, God knows, but I think she did see something that worried her.”

“And what did she say the woman looked like?”

“You know children…they have to relate it to someone they know. She said she looked like your Helen.”

T
HE
senior girls in the convent were going to have a special session of their own with Father John. That meant that the twelve- to fifteen-year-olds would hear something the younger ones would not.

Anna Kelly was very curious. “Is it about babies?” she asked.

“Probably,” Clio said loftily.

“I know about babies,” Anna said defiantly.

“I wish I'd known enough about them to suffocate you while you still were one.” Clio spoke from the heart.

“You and Kit think you're terrific. You're just stupid,” Anna said.

“Yeah, I know, we can't see ghosts and we don't get nightmares…it's desperate.”

They shook her off eventually and went to sit on the low wall of Sullivan's Motor Works. It was a good vantage point to survey Lough Glass and no one could say they were causing trouble if they just sat still.

“Isn't it a wonder that Emmet is so normal, I mean for a boy and everything,” Clio said in admiration. Privately Kit thought that Anna Kelly might not be so irritating if Clio had ever spoken to her younger sister with anything other than disdain.

“Emmet's just born that way,” Kit said. “I never remember him getting into trouble or anything. I suppose they didn't roar at him much because of his stammer. That must have been it.”

“They didn't roar at Anna enough,” Clio said darkly. “Listen, what do you think he'll really talk to us about, do you think it might be about doing
it
?”

“I'd die if he did.”

“I'll die if he doesn't,” Clio said, and they pealed with enough laughter to bring Philip O'Brien's father to his usual position at the door of his hotel to view them with disapproval.

         

Whatever Father John, the Missioner, had intended to talk about to the senior girls in Lough Glass convent was never known, because it happened that his visit coincided with a huge argument that raged through the senior school, about whether Judas was or was not in hell. Mother Bernard was not considered a satisfactory arbiter on the matter. The girls were persistent that the visiting Missioner give a ruling.

There was a very strong view that Judas must be in hell. “Hadn't Our Lord said that it were better for that man if he hadn't ever been born.”

“Now, that
must
mean he was in hell.”

“It could mean that for thousands of years his name would be connected with ‘traitor' and ‘betrayer' and that was his punishment for betraying Our Lord. Couldn't it?”

“No, it couldn't, because that would only be name-calling. Sticks and stones could break your bones but words would never hurt you.”

Father John looked at their young faces, heated and red with excitement. He hadn't come across such fervor in a long time. “But Our Lord couldn't have chosen him as a friend, knowing that he was going to betray him and that he'd be sent to hell. That would mean Our Lord was setting a trap for Judas.”

“He didn't have to betray him, he just did it for the money.”

“But what would they want with money, they just went around as a gang.”

“But it was over. Judas knew it was coming to an end, that's why he did it.”

Father John was used to girls shuffling with embarrassment and asking was French-kissing a venial or a mortal sin, and accepting whichever he said it was. He was not normally faced with such cosmic questions and debates on the nature of free will and predestination.

He tried to answer as best he could, with what was, after all, fairly inconclusive evidence. He said he thought that, as in all things, the benefit of the doubt must be extended, and that perhaps in his infinite mercy Our Lord had seen fit…and to remember that one never knew the heart of a sinner, and the words that passed between man and his maker at the moment of death.

Loosening his collar a little, he asked Mother Bernard afterward about their extraordinary preoccupation. “Was there any case of anyone local who perhaps ended their own life?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. You know the way girls get something into their heads.” Mother Bernard sounded wise and certain.

“Yes, but this is very intense. Are you sure…?”

“Years and years ago, long before any of them were born, there was an unfortunate woman who found herself in a certain condition, Father, and is believed to have taken her own life. I think the ignorant people had a story about her ghost or some such nonsense. Maybe they are thinking of that.” Mother Bernard's lips were pursed with disapproval for having to mention a suicide and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy to a visiting priest.

“That could be it all right. There are two little girls, two of the younger ones in the front row, a very fair girl and a very dark one, who seem most het up about it, and whether or not people who take their own lives should be buried in Holy Ground.”

Mother Bernard sighed. “That will be Cliona Kelly and Katherine McMahon. Those two would argue with you that blackbirds were white, I'm afraid.”

“Well, it's good to be forewarned,” said Father John, as he went back into the convent chapel and told the girls very firmly that since taking your own life was taking away a gift that God had given you, it was a sin against Hope—one of the two great sins against Hope—despair. And that anyone who did so was not fit to be buried in a Christian burial ground.

“Not even if her poor mind…” began the blond girl in the front pew.

“Not even if her poor mind,” Father John said firmly.

He was worn out from it, and he had the boys' school to do still. Serious warnings on the evils of drink and self-abuse.

Father John sometimes wondered did any of it do any good at all. But he reminded himself that thinking along those lines was almost a sin against Hope. He must be careful of it.

Chapter Two

“Y
OU
don't have proper cousins,” Clio said to Kit as they lay on the two divan beds in Clio's room.

“Oh God, what are you picking on me for now?” Kit groaned. She was reading a magazine article telling you how to soften your hands.

“You never have families of cousins coming to stay.”

“Why would they come to stay? Don't all the other McMahons live just a few miles away?” Kit sighed. Clio could be very tiresome sometimes.

“We have cousins coming from Dublin always, and aunts and things.”

“And you're always saying you hate it.”

“I like Aunt Maura.”

“That's only because she gives you a shilling every time she comes to stay.”

“You've no aunts.” Clio was persistent.

“Oh Clio, will you shut up. Of course I've aunts, what is Aunty Mary and what's Aunty Margaret…?

“They're just married to your father's brothers.”

“Well, there's Daddy's sister in the convent in Australia. She's an aunt. You can't expect her to be coming and staying and giving us a shilling, can you?”

“Your mother has no people.” Clio lowered her voice. “She's a person with no people of her own at all.” There was something in the way she said it which made it obvious that she was repeating it like a parrot from something she had heard.

“What do you mean?” Kit was angry now.

“Just what I said.”

“Of course she has people, she has us, a family, here.”

“It's peculiar, that's all.”

“It's not peculiar, it's just you are always picking on my mother for some reason. I thought you said you were giving that up.”

“Keep your shirt on.”

“No, I won't. And I'm going home.” Kit flounced off the bed.

Clio was alarmed. “I didn't mean it.”

“Then why did you say it? What kind of booby goes round saying things she doesn't mean?”

“I was only saying…”

“What
were
you saying?” Kit's eyes flashed.

“I don't know what I was saying.”

“Neither do I.” Kit ran lightly out of the room and down the stairs.

“Are you off so soon?” Clio's mother was in the hall. Mrs. Kelly always knew when there had been a row. “I was going to offer you some shortbread,” she said. Many a skirmish had been avoided by the timely appearance of food.

But not today.

“I'm sure Clio would love it, but I have to go back home,” Kit said.

“Surely not yet!”

“My mother might be a bit lonely. You see, she is a person who has no people of her own.” Kit was as near to insolent as she could get away with. A dark red flush around Mrs. Kelly's cheeks and neck showed her she had been right. She left, pulling the door gently behind her. With a smile she realized that there would be little shortbread for Clio. Good, Kit thought in satisfaction. I hope her mother eats the face off her.

         

Mother wasn't at home. She had gone to Dublin on the day excursion, Rita said.

“What did she want to do that for?” Kit grumbled.

“Wouldn't we all love to go to Dublin on a day excursion,” Rita said.

“I wouldn't…we have no people there,” Kit said.

“There's millions of people in Dublin,” Emmet said.

“Thousands,” Kit corrected him absently.

“Well then?” Emmet said.

“Right.” Kit let it go. “What did you read with Sister Madeleine?”

“It's all William Blake now. Somebody gave her a book of his poems and she loves them.”

“I don't know anything he wrote except ‘Tyger, Tyger.'”

“Oh he wrote lots. That's the only one in the schoolbook, but he wrote thousands and thousands.”

“Maybe dozens and dozens,” Kit corrected him, “maybe. Say me one.”

“I don't remember them.”

“Oh go on. You say them over and over.”

“I know the one about the piper…” Emmet went to the window and stood, as he had stood in Sister Madeleine's cottage, looking out the window.

“
Pipe a song about a lamb

As piped with merry cheer

Piper, pipe that song again
,

So I piped, he wept to hear
.”

He looked so proud of himself. It was a difficult word to say, “piper,” at the best of times, and coming so often in the one sentence. Sister Madeleine must be a genius to have cured his stutter like that.

Kit didn't notice that her father had come in as Emmet was speaking, but the boy hadn't faltered; his confidence was extraordinary. And as they sat there in the September evening, she felt a shiver come over her. It was as if Mother didn't belong to this family at all. As if all there was was Emmet, and Dad, and Rita, and herself.

And that Mother wouldn't come back.

         

Mother came back, cold and tired; the heating had broken down on the train; the train itself had broken down twice.

“How was Dublin?”

“It was noisy, and crowded and everyone seemed to be rushing.”

“That's why we all live here.” Father was delighted.

“That's why we all live here,” Mother said flatly.

         

Kit watched the flames in the fire. “I think I'll be a hermit when I grow up,” she said suddenly.

“You wouldn't want this lonely kind of a life. It's only for odd people like myself.”

“Are you odd, Sister Madeleine?”

“I'm very peculiar. Isn't that a funny word, ‘peculiar'? I was saying it with Emmet the other day; we were wondering where it came from.”

It reminded Kit that Clio said it was peculiar her mother had no family. “Did you get hurt when people spoke badly about your family when you were young?”

“No, child, not ever.”

“How did you make yourself not worry?”

“I suppose I thought if anyone would try to pull down my family they would just be wrong.” Kit was silent. “As they would be if they said anything about your family.”

“I know,” but the little voice was doubtful.

“Your father is the most respected man in three counties; he's so kind to the poor and he's like a second doctor in the town. Your mother is as gentle and loving a soul as it was ever my good fortune to meet. She has a poet's heart and she loves beauty…” The silence lay between them, so Sister Madeleine spoke again; her face was hard to read, you wouldn't know what she was thinking. She spoke slowly, deliberately. “Of course, people often say things out of jealousy, because they're not secure in themselves. Because they worry they lash out, like a man with a stick might hit a hedge and take all the lovely heads off the flowers not knowing why he did it…” Sister Madeleine's voice was hypnotic. It was as if she knew all about Clio. Maybe Clio had been here and told her. Who could know? “And often a fellow who beat the heads off the flowers with a stick would be sorry he did it but he wouldn't know how to say that.”

“I know,” Kit said. She was pleased to know that Sister Madeleine thought her mother had a poet's heart and was a good and gentle soul. And she'd forgive Clio in her own good time.

Provided, of course, Clio apologized properly.

         

“I'm very sorry,” Clio said.

“That's all right,” Kit said.

“No, it's not. I don't know why I did it, why I keep doing it. I suppose I just want to be one better than you or something. I don't like myself, that's the truth.”

“And I don't like myself sulking,” said Kit.

Their families were relieved. It was always unsettling when Kit and Clio had a falling-out. Like thunder in the air, and the hint of a bad storm ahead.

S
OMETIMES
it was harder to break the news of a death that was meaningless than one which would cause huge grief. Peter Kelly paused for breath before he went to tell Kathleen Sullivan that her husband had finally succumbed to the liver disease that had been threatening him as seriously as the brain deterioration which had given him his place in the County Home. He knew there would be no conventional words of grief or consolation. But it was never simple.

Kathleen Sullivan took the information with a stony face. Her elder son, Stevie, a dark, good-looking boy who had felt his father's fist once too often, and left of his own volition for the uncle's farm, just shrugged. “He died a long time ago, Doctor,” he said.

The younger boy, Michael, looked confused. “Will there be a funeral?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” the doctor said.

“We'll have no funeral,” Stevie said unexpectedly. “No mourning or making a mockery of the whole thing.”

His mother looked startled. “There'll have to be a funeral,” she began.

They all seemed to be looking at the doctor for the solution. As he so often felt, Peter Kelly wondered what kind of social structure had made him the fount of all wisdom in such matters.

Stevie, a boy of sixteen maybe, looked him in the eye. “You're not a hypocrite, Dr. Kelly, you wouldn't want a charade.” There was something strong about the boy's face, and determined. Maybe six or seven years of his childhood robbed from him had been a good training for life as well as a high price to pay. The lad should not have to take part in a sham ceremony.

“I think the whole thing can be arranged very quietly at the Home. That is often done in such cases, and just the family attend a Mass there. Father Baily will arrange it, I know.”

Kathleen Sullivan looked at him gratefully. “You're very good, Doctor. I just wish it had all been different.” Her face was set and hard as she spoke. “I can't go to anyone for sympathy or anything because they'll all say it was for the best, and we're all well rid of him.”

“I know what you mean, Kathleen.” Peter Kelly did, only too well, and if he didn't have any suitable words of comfort, no one else in Lough Glass would be able to find them. “You could always call on Sister Madeleine,” he said. “She'll be the very one to comfort you at a time like this.”

He sat in his car after he left the house, and watched while Kathleen Sullivan, now wearing her coat and head scarf, followed his advice. He saw her heading down toward the path that led to the lake. As he drove home he passed Helen McMahon walking with her hair blowing in the wind. The wind was cold and she wore a woolen dress but had no coat. She looked flushed and excited.

He stopped the car. “Will I drive you back, take the weight off your legs?” he asked.

She smiled at him, and he realized again how very beautiful she was. Sometimes he forgot, and didn't really see the beauty that had broken all their hearts in Dublin. The girl with the perfect face, who had chosen Martin McMahon, of all people, to be her consort.

“No, Peter, I love to walk on an evening like this…it's so free. Do you see the birds over the lake? Aren't they magnificent?”

She looked magnificent. Her eyes were bright, her skin was glowing. He had forgotten that for a slight woman she had such a voluptuous figure, her breasts seemed to strain at the blue wool dress. With a shock he realized that Helen McMahon was pregnant.

         

“Peter, what is it?”

“You keep asking me that.” He was irritated with Lilian. “What is what?”

“You haven't said a word all evening. You just keep staring into the fire.”

“I have things on my mind.”

“Obviously you have. I was just asking what things.”

“Are you some kind of Grand Inquisitor? Can I not even think now without your permission?” he snapped.

He saw the tears jump into Lilian's eyes and her plump face pucker. It was very unjust of him. They had the kind of relationship where each would ask the other how they felt and what they were thinking. It was monstrous of him to behave like this.