The Glass Lake

  “And didn’t I run away with you too?”

  But it wasn’t an equal running away.

  “Of course you did,” Lena said gently. “We ran like silver fish across the sea.”

  “DID Mother have a best friend like I have Clio?” Kit asked.

  “Well, she had Clio’s mum, of course.” But they both knew that wasn’t true. Mother hadn’t liked Lilian Kelly.

  “I mean before. Before she met you.”

  “She had girls in the digs. She spoke of them a bit.”

  “What were they called, Daddy?”

  “It’s so long ago, love, I can’t remember. There was Dorothy, I think, and a Kathleen maybe…”

  “Would she have been called Lena?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I just wondered what people shorten their names to. Might the short name for Kathleen be Lena?” She looked flushed and eager.

  Martin McMahon gave it some thought. She seemed to want it to be that way. “I think it might have been all right. It certainly is a way of shortening the name,” he said. Kit nodded, satisfied. As he did so often, Martin McMahon wished he knew what was going on in his daughter’s mind.

  Boys were so much simpler. He went fishing with Emmet many evenings on the lake. At first Emmet had been unwilling to touch the boat, but Martin had persevered. “We have no idea what happened that night, but we know one thing. Your mother would want you to grow up as part of this lake that she loved so much. She wouldn’t want you to stay away from it.”

  “But the boat, Daddy…”

  “The boat is part of the lake, son. We won’t ever know what happened in that boat and how your poor mother got dragged away. She’d surely want yourself and myself to go out in it and love the place as she did.”

  It had been the right thing to say. His son went with him happily on the lake. And it seemed that Emmet enjoyed his fishing trips catching perch and pike.

  The boy never noticed that his father’s eyes were dead as he rowed.

  “NO letters for you to my flat, Lena.”

  “No? Well, there you go.”

  “You’re getting lots of London expressions,” Ivy said.

  “If I’m going to live in London then I’d better learn to talk like Londoners,” Lena said.

  “I thought you might be thinking of going back across the sea.”

  “No, there’s not any chance of that.”

  “But the lifelines…?” Ivy persisted.

  “Probably just as you said, very dangerous, very foolish.”

  “Take that hard look off your face, Lena Gray. I’m your friend…I never said it was dangerous or foolish, I just told you to take care.”

  “You’re a great friend, Ivy.”

  “When I get a chance to be, but that’s not at the moment, so let it lie.” Ivy went back into her room on the ground floor. She didn’t ask Lena in. She knew the time for intimacy was not now.

  Jessie Park was worried whether her mother might be able to make the bathroom in her neighbor’s house during the Coronation.

  “She gets very excited, you know, when things are emotional.” Lena listened patiently. “Oh Lena. I know I’m wittering on a bit and I’m always telling you my woes, but I just don’t know where to turn and you’re always so calm, so practical.”

  Lena looked at her kindly. It was a huge compliment to be called calm and practical, a woman like she was, on the run, living a false life with a man who might leave her again as he had done before.

  Here she was in this great strange city, heartbroken that she had heard nothing from Kit and fearing that the letter had frightened the child. Yet Jessie thought she was as strong as an oak tree. “Let’s see,” she said. “Didn’t you tell me that flat was all on one level? There won’t be any stairs.”

  “I know, Lena, but she moves so very slowly…suppose she had a little accident?” Jessie bit her lip.

  “I saw some pads in a chemist’s last week. She could wear those and then there’d be no problem.” Lena was bright and positive.

  Jessie thanked her so profusely that it almost brought tears to Lena’s eyes. It was so easy to solve a little problem for someone else when they asked, and so hard to sort out your own….

  In the Dryden Hotel all the preparations had gone ahead for Coronation Day. The chairs had been arranged in a semicircle in the drawing room just as Lena had suggested to Louis, and he had advised the hotel.

  “Your lovely wife will not be with us for the day?” James Williams said with disappointment. He thought that Lena would have added a touch of class to the proceedings.

  “Sadly no. She is needed in her own work.”

  “I’m not surprised. I’m sure she is excellent in that employment agency. Perhaps she might be able to fill places for us as they become vacant.”

  “Ah, yes. Of course she’s always looking for the perfect position for her husband,” Louis joked.

  “I’d be so sorry to lose you, Louis. You’d never take anything without letting us discuss a salary and conditions.”

  “Mr. Williams, I wouldn’t even want you to think I was speaking seriously.”

  “And although I have asked you a dozen times to call me James you never will.”

  “I am very happy here.”

  “And is your wife happy in London? She doesn’t yearn for somewhere else?”

  “What makes you ask that, Mr. Williams?” Louis’s eyes had narrowed.

  “I don’t know, something she said at Christmas, about everyone on earth should be forced to work in London for a time. I thought there was a message in those words.”

  “She’s my wife, and I never heard a message like that.” The words were perfectly polite but James Williams decided not to pursue it any further.

  “WOULDN’T it be great to go to England for the Coronation?” Clio said.

  “Where would we stay?”

  “Aunt Maura has friends there, she’s going to go.”

  “Would she take us if we asked her?” Kit wondered.

  “No, probably not. It’s still term-time and they’d say we’re too young.”

  “I’d love to go anywhere,” Kit said.

  “I know. So would I. By the time they let us we’ll be too old.” Clio was glum and resigned about it.

  “Philip O’Brien’s going to Belfast with his mother,” Kit revealed.

  “Yeah, but imagine going anywhere with Philip’s mother.”

  “He’s all right though, I like him.”

  “You’re going to marry him. I can see it.” Clio was definite.

  “You’re always saying that. I haven’t a notion of it. Why do you keep saying it?”

  “Because he fancies you.”

  “Well?”

  “It doesn’t matter that you don’t fancy him, people always end up marrying people that fancy them.”

  “That couldn’t work out.” Kit fought it.

  “No, I mean women do, girls do.”

  “Why? I thought we were the ones meant to do the choosing and refusing and all that.”

  “No, that’s only in books and films. In real life we marry people who want to marry us.”

  “All women do that?”

  “Yes. Honestly.”

  Kit thought about it. “Your mother? My mother?”

  “Yes. Yes definitely.”

  “And nobody fancied your aunt Maura?”

  “That’s different. She told me that she wasted time on a man who didn’t fancy her. That was her mistake.”

  “But was it a mistake?” Kit wanted to know. “You always said she was very happy, happier than anyone we know.”

  “Yes, I know I did say that, but that’s the way we see it. Maybe inside she’s desperately unhappy.”

  “What about Sister Madeleine who says she was married and is a nun?”

  “I’ll never understand that,” said Clio. “Not till the day I die.”

  “WHAT are you thinking about?” Lena asked.

  Louis smiled at
her lazily. “I was thinking how beautiful you are,” he said.

  “No you weren’t.”

  “Then why ask me?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I sometimes want to know what goes on in your handsome head. We had a cat at home called Farouk. I used to look at him and wonder what could be going on in his head.”

  “And am I like Farouk the cat?”

  “Not nearly as handsome I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t like you saying ‘at home.’ Lough Glass is not your home, your home is with me. It has always in some way been with me.”

  She looked at him for a moment or two. A few weeks back she would have rushed in, begged, pleaded, said that she had been using only a form of words. But the night that he had left in the petty sulk, the night she knew she needed to write to her daughter, everything had changed. She didn’t wish to tie him to her with humble words of apology, it could be no love if it was bought at such a price.

  “Well, tell me, do you agree?” He was challenging her.

  “No, my love, I don’t. It wasn’t where I wanted to be but I was there for thirteen damn years and other people called it my home and it was where I lived. So if I mention in passing that a cat who lived there with me, a fine handsome cat called Farouk lived at home with me…I don’t think it’s a slip of the tongue that is going to make or break us.”

  He looked at her with admiration.

  With a sudden flash of regret, she realized that if she had behaved like this years ago he might never have left her in the first place. But if he had stayed…what about Kit and Emmet? Would they have been the same people? Or different people? Or not existed at all?

  No price was worth paying for them not to have existed at all.

  “I’m going to have a perm for the Coronation,” Jessie Park said.

  “Great idea,” Lena said.

  “Mr. Millar has invited us both around to his brother’s house in the evening.” Jessie spoke with reverence.

  “Yes. I hope you’ll go and tell me about it. I have to meet Louis, I think he’s a bit let down that I won’t be with him all day…” She saw Jessie’s face crumple.

  “Oh Lena, do you have to? Please come to Mr. Millar’s, you can be with Louis any night…this is special.”

  Lena looked at her fondly. Although she still called him Mr. Millar, Jessie had very fond thoughts about her employer. Lena had seen her looking at him in a way that had nothing to do with the employment agency. “No, honestly. I would if I could, but this is something I have to do. Anyway, you’ll have more fun without me. I’d only be a gooseberry.”

  “He doesn’t see me in that way at all.” Jessie’s face was long and sad.

  “How do we know what way men see things? You’d need a fleet of interpreters to work out what they’re thinking…but it’s better you go on your own. You’ll get to know him more than if I were there.”

  “Do you think so? Do you think it will be all right?”

  “Certainly it will, it’s not as if he were a stranger, a man you only met at a party or somewhere. You and he have so much in common, shared so much already…” Lena was full of encouragement.

  “But I never know what to say when you’re not there.” Jessie looked flustered.

  “Maybe this is the time to begin.”

  “I hope I’ll look all right. Do you think it’s worth having a perm…?”

  “Oh indeed I do, and anyway it will cost half nothing. Grace owes us. We’ve been sending so much business her way, she practically runs the salon on the people we refer.”

  Jessie left for the salon cheerfully full of plans. Lena picked up the phone. “Grace, do me a favor. When Jessie makes a booking give her everything, I mean every single thing. I’ll sort it out with you later. Nails, facial, color…anything you think.”

  “She’s never going to look for a new job?”

  “Better than that,” Lena said, “she’s looking for romance.”

  DEIRDRE Hanley dropped by the pharmacy. “I came to know if you’d be needing an assistant or anything, Mr. McMahon,” she said.

  “Are you going to study pharmacy, Deirdre?” Martin McMahon was surprised.

  “No, but I wouldn’t need to for working here, would I?”

  “Well, to be any help to me you would really.” He spoke mildly.

  She was a restless girl, Mrs. Hanley’s daughter. A child who had always been loud in her impatience for the day when she could leave Lough Glass. Sometimes she had even said it to Helen and found, Martin feared, only too sympathetic an audience.

  “But isn’t it all a matter of trying to get people to buy makeup and all?” she asked.

  “I think there’s a bit more to it than that, Deirdre. But were you going to train as a beautician? Is that it?”

  “You wouldn’t need much training, Mr. McMahon. All you’d need is to talk one of the cosmetics companies into giving you a bit of a course, then you push their stuff, tell people it’s great. You know the sort of thing.”

  “And you’d like to do that in Lough Glass?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “But do you think…suppose we were able to find a place for you here, which I don’t think is possible…do you think you’d be happy doing that?”

  “Mr. McMahon, you have to do something from dawn to dusk to justify your existence. That’s what it’s all about,” Deirdre Hanley said.

  “And you’d like your existence here in Lough Glass?” He’d had nothing but despair from this child about her hometown, what had changed her? Deirdre looked across the road at Sullivan’s garage. It was only a glance, but Martin McMahon remembered having seen her with Stevie Sullivan on a few occasions. Usually down by the lake or away from the public eye. “What would your mother like you to do?” he asked suddenly.

  “She’d like to get me out of here. She says she doesn’t know why but she thinks it would be the best thing for me.”

  “Go, Deirdre. You’d be much more exciting to him if you were an out-of-town girl.”

  “Mr. McMahon, imagine you knowing all about women and life and everything,” said Deirdre in amazement.

  “I know,” Martin McMahon said good-naturedly. “Isn’t it extraordinary all right!”

  “Will the pair of you come into the chemist’s with me, do you think?” he asked the children that night.

  “Now?” Emmet asked in surprise. Once the door had been locked their father hardly ever opened it again, unless it was an emergency for someone.

  “No, I meant in the future,” he said.

  “Would you like us to?” Kit asked.

  “Only if you want to, or one of you wants to. It’s long hours and you’d need to enjoy the work.”

  “I thought I might be an actress,” Kit said.

  “And I thought I’d be a priest out on the Missions,” Emmet said.

  “Oh well then, it’s all settled.” He looked from one to the other. “Father Emmet…out in Nigeria with his long white soutane, saving souls, and then back to catch the first night of Katherina McMahon in the Abbey Theatre. It’ll be a busy life for me. I suppose I’d better take Deirdre Hanley in to help me.”

  “Deirdre Hanley?” Emmet and Kit said in a voice of disbelief.

  “She came looking for a job today, to help out.”

  “You wouldn’t want her, Daddy,” Kit said.

  “I don’t have to be a priest, it was just an idea,” Emmet rushed in.

  “And I mightn’t get accepted as an actress, to be honest…”

  “So you might fall back on the chemist’s; like if all else failed.”

  “Exactly,” said Kit.

  “Children are marvelous,” Martin McMahon said to the air around him. “Who’d be without them.”

  ON the morning of June 2nd, Lena woke eagerly. Her daughter was thirteen today, she hoped Martin would mark the day for her, make it special, cheerful.

  She got an urge to ring him and whisper encouragement down the phone. She longed to cry, and tell him that it w
as very hard to live without her children, but she knew this was a fanciful thing to indulge herself. She had a life to live. A life of her own. And here she was in London on the day of the Coronation.

  Everyone was listening to the wireless from the moment they got up. It was as if they feared the whole thing might be canceled. They wanted to know every detail. The newspapers were full of the splendor of the day and a minute-by-minute itinerary of how the procession would go to Westminster Abbey, and a step-by-step guide to the ceremony.

  Lena looked around her with delight at the crowds who were determined to enjoy the great day. Less than ten years ago they had been in the middle of a terrible war. Thirteen years ago, the day her child was born, the day that Martin had wept for joy at her bedside to say they had a beautiful daughter, there had been fear and panic in these streets in London.

  In a way, Lena thought, the English don’t have enough celebrations…they don’t have Saint Patrick’s Days, and Corpus Christi processions, and the Blessings of the Boats, and pilgrimages to Croagh Patrick, and all the things that give people a chance to take a day off and think about something else. It was heartening to see them all smile and talk to strangers. She made her way to the corner that Ivy had managed to secure by knowing the family who owned a small shop there. The children had been out since long before dawn guarding the places for them. There were little wooden stools and picnic baskets, and flags and bunting.

  For a moment Lena felt as if she were outside herself looking at it all from somewhere else. She didn’t feel part of the great excitement and anticipation. The knowledge that the young Queen was going to pass feet away didn’t fill her with awe. But neither was it foreign to her. These were as much her people as were those who lived in the main street of Lough Glass.

  She was as much at home here as she would be anywhere in the world.

  They settled into their vantage point and heard the news about Everest. Britain had conquered the highest mountain in the world; the excitement knew no bounds. The roar became louder as the carriages came into view, the horses gleaming and decorated, the magnificent brocades and livery. And then the smiling but slightly anxious face of Princess Elizabeth, as they still referred to her, waving her gloved hand, eagerly responding to all the love and welcome from the pavements.