The Glass Lake

  “I was wrong, Peter. You did know her. Did she ever…was there ever…?”

  “She never told me anything, she never asked me anything that you should know about…I swear it. Like I have sworn it for twenty-eight days to you. You ask me every single day and every single day I say the same thing.”

  “Do I ask you every day? Every day?” Martin McMahon looked pitiful.

  “No, I exaggerate. You may have missed out a few.”

  “I’ll not come for a pint until they find her body, Peter.”

  “Then I will be drinking alone for some considerable time, won’t I?” The doctor looked resigned.

  “Why do you say that?” The words seemed bleak and full of horror.

  Peter Kelly wiped his brow. “Jesus, Martin, it’s only her body. Her soul, her spirit, had gone long ago, soared way up over us all. You know that, man, you know it. Won’t you admit it?”

  Martin wept, his shoulders shook.

  Peter stood beside him, unwilling to reach out. Theirs had not been a friendship where a man held another man through a storm of tears. Eventually the shaking stopped.

  Martin looked up, his face tear-stained and red. “I suppose I won’t admit it because I keep hoping…Let’s go to Paddles’.”

  Emmet told Sister Madeleine that he couldn’t concentrate on poetry. It all seemed to remind him of…of…well, what had happened.

  “Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?” Sister Madeleine said. “You wouldn’t want to forget your mother.”

  “But I don’t seem to be able to say it, feel it, the way I used to….” His stutter was as bad as it had ever been. Sister Madeleine never gave any sign that he was taking any extra time.

  “Well, don’t say it at all.” To Sister Madeleine everything was simple.

  “Don’t I have to? Isn’t this a lesson?”

  “Not a real lesson. More a chat. It’s you reading to me because my old eyes can’t see to read all that well by the candle and firelight.”

  “Are you very old, Sister Madeleine?”

  “No, not very old. Much older than you, much older than your mother.” Sister Madeleine was the only person who ever mentioned Mother, everyone else avoided the subject.

  “Do you know what happened to Mummy?” he said hesitantly.

  “No, child, I don’t.”

  “But you sit here all the time and look out at the lake…you might have seen her falling out of the boat…maybe?”

  “No, Emmet, I didn’t. Nobody saw her, it was dark, remember.”

  “Would it have been terrible…like choking?” He couldn’t ask this to anyone else. They would have hushed him up or soothed him down.

  Sister Madeleine appeared to give the matter some thought. “No, I think it would have been very peaceful, you know, a lot of dark water just falling over, like silk or velvet, sweeping you away. I don’t think it would have been very frightening…”

  “And would she have been sad?”

  “I don’t think so. She might have been worried about you and about Kit…mothers always worry, you know, about silly things like people wearing warm, dry socks and doing their homework and having enough to eat…all mothers I have known worried about those kinds of things…but not, not when she was drowning.” If Sister Madeleine noticed that Emmet’s stutter had gone she gave no sign. “No, no of course not, but just hoping that you’d all be all right, that you’d carry on…that kind of thing, I’d imagine.”

  “Imagine her thinking of that…” His voice was shaking.

  Sister Madeleine looked at him expectantly, as if she were waiting for him to say something else, something positive. And right on cue Emmet McMahon said: “Well, she needn’t have been worrying, of course we can carry on.”

  Father Baily gritted his teeth when he saw the McMahons at Mass on Sunday. He was fast running out of words of consolation for the family. There were just so many times a priest could explain to a bereaved family about things being God’s will.

  And the more he heard, the less he could accept it as the will of God. It was much more the will of that poor disturbed woman, Helen McMahon, who had come to Confession to him and knelt in the dark, telling him that her heart was heavy. What kind of way was that to confess sins? Father Baily felt that he had often given the woman absolution when she had not really sought it, when there was no contrition, no firm purpose of amendment.

  He couldn’t recall now what she had to tell.

  If only people knew how similar and unremarkable their sins were to a confessor. But what did stand out was that she seemed to think she was not in control of her life. She accused herself of feeling distant, detached, of being an outsider instead of a participator. But she had not followed his suggestions of joining the sodality, getting herself on the flower-arranging committee, or cooking for the sales of work.

  After Mass he greeted his parishioners by name.

  “There you are, Dan. Cold day, isn’t it?”

  “It is, Father. Perhaps you’ll come and have something to warm you up in the hotel?”

  “Well, I’d love to, but I have a few sick calls to make after my breakfast.”

  Father Baily would have liked nothing better than to sit in the obscurity of the back room of the Central Hotel and have three brandies to keep out the cold. But a breakfast table had been set by his housekeeper, and then he had to go up to Mother Bernard’s convent to see an elderly nun, out to a farm in the back of beyond to bring the Blessed Sacrament to a farmer who had not thought to cross the door of a church until he had got a diagnosis of terminal cancer and now wanted the Church to come to him.

  And everywhere he went people asked him what would happen when Helen McMahon’s body was found. Always he had been vague and hopeful, committing himself to nothing, saying that the poor woman must always be in everyone’s prayers.

  He made a great point of shaking the hand of Martin McMahon warmly. “Good man, Martin, a tower of strength, that’s what you are. I pray every day that you’ll get the grace you need….” The man looked pale and wretched. Father Baily wondered what good his prayers were doing.

  “Thank you, Father.”

  “And Kit and Emmet. Good, good.” The words were meaningless, he knew it. But what could he give in the way of comfort? The only merciful thing was the woman had left no note. When they found the body, the coroner would surely be discreet enough to talk of accidents and misadventure. They could bury Helen McMahon in the churchyard, where she belonged.

  Sister Madeleine was at Mass too, quietly in the back of the church, a gray cloak wrapped around her thin shoulders.

  “Will you come back and have your Sunday dinner with us?” Kit said to her suddenly.

  “Thank you, child, but no. I’m not much good at going to people’s houses.”

  “We need you,” Kit said simply.

  “You have each other.”

  “Yes, but it’s not enough these days, it’s gone on too long. We just sit and look at each other.”

  “Wouldn’t you ask one of your friends, Clio…young Philip O’Brien from the hotel…”

  “You’re my friend. Please come.”

  “Thank you. That would be very nice,” said Sister Madeleine.

  Rita carved the meat, a big piece of beef from Hickey’s.

  “I never saw so much meat in my life.” Sister Madeleine was full of wonder.

  “It’s not extravagant. It’s for today, then cold tomorrow, and mince on Tuesday, and there’s often enough for rissoles on a Wednesday.” Rita was proud of the way she ran the house.

  Sister Madeleine looked around the kitchen where they sat at the table, a home with a tragedy hanging over it so heavily that you could almost see it there in the air.

  “The travelers are still looking, you know,” she said. They all seemed to sit up startled, shocked that a visitor was mentioning what everyone else wanted to avoid. “They go all around the lake. If there’s anything to be seen they’ll see it.”

  There was a total silenc
e. The McMahons were not able to respond when someone spoke about the subject uppermost in their minds. Sister Madeleine waited. She never minded silences, she didn’t rush to fill them with words.

  “That’s good of them…to take such an interest,” Martin said eventually.

  Sister Madeleine appeared not to notice his unease. “Helen was always very courteous to them on her walks, she knew their names and the names of their children. She often asked them about their ways, the language they spoke.” Kit looked at her, amazed. She had never known this about her mother. And yet Sister Madeleine spoke with total sincerity. She wasn’t making up a story to console them, to wrap the dead up in soothing phrases. “They know the need for a funeral,” Sister Madeleine said. “They have wonderful funerals of their own people. They travel all over the country to be there, it’s a way of saying good-bye, of finding a resting place up in the churchyard.”

  “That’s if—” Kit began.

  Sister Madeleine interrupted: “That’s if they find her. But they will, either the travelers or someone else, and then you’ll be able to pray at her grave….” Sister Madeleine’s tone was firm.

  She was having no dealings with the idea that Helen McMahon would be buried outside the walls of a churchyard. A grave without a tombstone. Marking her as someone who had taken her own life.

  That night Kit sat with her father.

  “It’s so long now…it’s over a month. Would there be any of Mother left to bury?”

  “I asked Peter Kelly that, Kit, the other night in Paddles’ bar. He said we mustn’t think of that, we must think your mother’s spirit and soul left her that night, and what’s left of the body doesn’t matter.”

  “I suppose he’s right.”

  “I suppose he is. Kit, I suppose he is.”

  Mother Bernard was called out of class.

  The conversation in the classroom rose to a high level. There was great excitement anyway because Deirdre Hanley, a senior girl, had been seen in a hedge with Stevie Sullivan, sort of wrapped around him, not just kissing, mind, but more, much more. They were so anxious for more details that they didn’t notice Mother Bernard coming back and were startled by the crack of her voice, like a whip across the classroom.

  “I expected big grown-up girls of your age to be able to continue with your work. But I was wrong. Very, very wrong.” They had crept shamefacedly back to their places. Mother Bernard’s face was white. She must be very angry indeed. “This time however I shall put you on your honor. Each girl is to take out her composition book and write one full page about Advent. The season of waiting, the preparation for Christmas.” They looked at each other in despair. A whole page about Advent. What was there to say about it except that it went on forever and was nearly as bad as Lent? “And there shall be no blots, and no big spaces between words. This will be a work of which we will all be proud.” Mother Bernard spoke with menace in her tones.

  They picked up their pens, knowing that this time she meant it. There would be no more news about Deirdre Hanley at this time.

  “Katherine McMahon, could you come with me for a moment,” Mother Bernard said to Kit.

  Brother Healy had told Kevin Wall that he would be a very fortunate lad if he were to see the day out without feeling the weight of a stick on both his hands. The boy looked fearful, but not fearful enough. He busied himself making pellets out of blotting paper soaked in ink.

  Brother Healy was called to the door.

  “I’ll be back in five minutes. Is that clear?” he roared at his class. And then went to find young Emmet McMahon and tell him what he had to tell him.

  No training could prepare you for this kind of job. Brother Healy sighed to himself as his cassock swished down the corridors to the room where second class were sitting with Brother Doyle, not knowing what lay ahead.

  By nightfall everyone in Lough Glass knew.

  A body had been found in the reeds. It was already badly decomposed. There wasn’t any way that anyone would have to identify it.

  Dr. Kelly had gone to his friend Martin McMahon. Everyone heard and said that there was no way he should look on something that bore no relation to what his wife had been. The state pathologist had come from Dublin; he had agreed. It would take some days, they were told.

  A section of the lake had been cordoned off. People told each other how they had heard the ambulance coming. As if an ambulance would be any use after a month, but still, what other way could the poor woman’s body have been brought to the morgue in the hospital.

  Everyone had a story to tell about the McMahon family.

  Kathleen Sullivan from the garage said that the lights were on in that house all night. None of them must have gone to bed. Clio Kelly said that things were much different there now, more normal. They had all stopped speaking in funny tight voices. Mrs. Hanley from the draper’s said she had gone to pay her condolences and that very pushy maid of theirs hadn’t let her in, she said the family were suffering from nervous exhaustion.

  Mrs. Dillon in the newsagent’s said that she had a great demand for Mass cards, because now that there was a body and there was going to be a funeral, everyone wanted to show their respect by having a Mass said for the repose of the soul of Helen McMahon.

  Sergeant Sean O’Connor had to say that the men who came down from Dublin from Garda headquarters were as nice a pair of fellows as he had ever come across.

  They told him that he had completed all the paperwork very well, and that he wasn’t to worry himself over the length of time it took to find the body. This was wild country around here. “Indian country,” one of them suggested. They didn’t know how a man could live in such a place, with nothing going on. Sean O’Connor didn’t like this, he felt it was a bit disparaging, but they told him that Dublin was full of drawbacks too.

  And they stayed with him in Paddles’ bar until an unconscionable time in the morning, nodding to the rest of Lough Glass who were drinking late.

  “You know everyone in the place,” one of the guards had said to him.

  “Indeed I do, and all about them.”

  “Did you know the deceased?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Why did she do it, do you think?”

  “Well, we don’t know if she did.” Sean O’Connor had a caution that no number of pints could dislodge.

  “No, we don’t know she did, but we think she did. What drove her to it, do you think?”

  “She wasn’t right for here. She didn’t settle, she sort of floated along the surface. Maybe she was too good-looking for the place.”

  “Had she a fellow at all?”

  “God, you couldn’t have a fellow in Lough Glass if you were a married woman. If you’re a single woman it’s hard enough with every eye in the place watching you…”

  “So she wasn’t crossed in love, no hint of a baba or anything…”

  “No.” Sergeant O’Connor was suddenly alert. “They didn’t find anything like that, did they?”

  “No.” The young Dublin guard was cheerful. “No, I’d say it was all far too late to discover anything like that, even if it had existed. Will we have another, do you think?”

  Philip O’Brien called to the McMahon house to know if Kit would like him to sit with her for a bit. “You know, like the night she got lost,” he said.

  Kit’s eyes filled with tears. That was such a nice way of putting it. Mother had got lost.

  “Thanks very much, Philip,” she said, and reached out and stroked his cheek. “You’re very kind and good. But I think we’d—”

  He interrupted her. “I know. I just wanted you to know I was always here down the road, like.” He went down the stairs again, and felt the spot on his face where Kit McMahon had stroked him.

  It was oddly peaceful in the house, better than it had been for a month. They knew the formalities would take some days, but the funeral would be next weekend. They had something they could do for Mother now. They could give her a good farewell.

&nbs
p; “Are you sorry they found her, Father? Did you hope she might have been alive somewhere, kidnapped even?” Kit asked.

  “No, no. I knew that wasn’t going to be the case.”

  “So it’s better that she’s found?”

  “Yes, it’s much better. It’s bad enough to have Mother dead, without leaving her forever in the lake. This way we can go to her grave.” There was a long silence. “It was a terrible accident, Kit, you know that,” her father said.

  “I know,” said Kit. And she looked into the flames, big red and gold flames licking upward.

  They were right in thinking that the formalities would not be long-drawn-out. Since Dr. Kelly who was the local doctor had identified the body, there had been only brief consultations with the pathologist. There was no question of foul play or of anyone else being involved.

  Nor was there any mention of taking a life while of unsound mind. If there was doubt about the advanced state of decomposition of the body it was never aired publicly. Helen McMahon had been in the lake only a month, but it was wintertime, the fish in that part of the lake…well, there was no need for details.

  And who else could it have been? Nobody from these parts had disappeared. The coroner spoke of the great need to clear the inland waterways of Ireland, too many tragic accidents had happened among the reeds and overgrown parts of lakes.

  And then the body of Helen McMahon was released for burial.

  On the day of the funeral Clio arrived at their house. “I brought you a mantilla,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like a black lace veil, a bit like a handkerchief. It’s what Spanish people and posh Catholics everywhere wear on their heads when they don’t want hats and when head scarfs aren’t right.”

  “Is it for me to wear at the church?”

  “If you’d like to. It’s a present from Auntie Maura.”

  “She’s very nice, isn’t she?” Usually Kit found something to criticize about Clio’s aunt.

  Clio seemed pleased. “She is, and she always knows what to do.”