The Glass Lake

  “Why do you ask?” he said. He was handsome even when covered in grease and wearing filthy overalls. But unreliable of course. Everyone knew that.

  “It’s just that you’ve done most things…Clio and I are thinking of getting drunk when we finish our exams and I was looking for suggestions. Like what’s cheap and quick and wouldn’t make us too sick?”

  “You’re asking the wrong one, I don’t know.”

  “I bet you do,” Kit insisted.

  “No, truly, we had too much of that in this house when I was young.”

  Kit had forgotten. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t remembered the alcoholic father who saw animals and all kinds of things emerging from walls when he was in the horrors. But she decided against apologizing, she hated people saying thoughtless things about drownings or people gone missing and then being covered with confusion. She disliked the embarrassment and the apologies more than the original mistake.

  “Yes, I suppose that makes sense,” she said in a matter-of-fact way.

  “It does to me, but not to Michael. He’d drink it off a sore foot as they say.”

  “God, who are they, the people who say that?” Kit recoiled at the thought.

  “The low kind of people I mix with, Kit McMahon,” he said, and left her.

  There was always a keen rivalry between Mother Bernard and Brother Healy about the Leaving Certificate results. They were published in the local newspaper so that all could see and compare. Brother Healy always said that the odds were weighted in favor of Mother Bernard. Girls did all those easy subjects like art and domestic science. It was not so difficult for Mother Bernard to build up a frightening total of passes and honors among her pupils.

  But the nuns were adamant that she had a harder route to go. Many of the small farmers were anxious for their daughters to learn only the basic skills that would turn them into acceptable farmers’ wives. When the time came they were suspicious of girls learning French and Latin. They would have preferred classes in butter making and poultry raising and in many ways they had a point. Why raise the expectations of a girl who was going to leave her father’s house and move into one fairly similar a parish away?

  “And have you a very bright crop this year, Brother Healy?” Mother Bernard asked courteously, but disguising her deep interest to know the lay of the land and assess her own chances in this year’s contest.

  “Dunderheads, Mother Bernard. Dunces and idle blocks of wood. And you…you have the crème de la crème this time, I expect?”

  “Empty vessels, I’m afraid, Brother. Empty vessels with nothing tinkling inside except jazz music.”

  “This jazz is a great distraction to them all right,” agreed Brother Healy.

  Wise though they were about the ways of the youth of Lough Glass they were not sound on its musical taste. Jazz was not the enemy within that it had been for a previous generation. The noise tinkling in the hearts of the young people of Lough Glass was the sound of early rock and roll.

  “Peter, will you speak to Clio?”

  “No, Lilian. To be frank, I won’t.”

  “Well, that’s a nice thing to say, you won’t speak to your own daughter.”

  “She’s only my daughter, my own daughter, and I’m asked to speak to her only when some dreadful thing has happened for which some terrible punishment is to be meted out. As it happens…as it happens, Lilian, I’ve had a very bad day, a horrible day. And I’m not going to speak to either of my own daughters or even my own wife, I’m going down to Paddles’ for a pint with my friend Martin. Right?”

  “Well, sorry for existing, and running your house and minding your children, both of whom are turning into juvenile delinquents.”

  “Let them turn, they’ll turn back again when they see there’s no future in it.” Peter Kelly was out the door. He knew Anna’s offense had something to do with cosmetics and perfume. He suspected that Clio’s had something to do with getting her ears pierced like a gypsy without asking permission. It was too trivial. He banged out of the house and down the road toward the privacy and peace of Paddles’.

  There wasn’t much peace in Paddles’ as it happened. Mr. Hickey was singing away in a corner.

  “If I’ve told you once, John, I’ve told you a dozen times. This is not a singing house,” Paddles remonstrated with him.

  “Oh bollocks, Paddles. You wouldn’t know a singing house if you saw one.”

  “Well, I see this one and what’s more, I run it, and you’re getting no more drink in it unless you cut out that caterwauling this instant,” Paddles said.

  “Are you barring me…? Do my ears deceive me or do I hear you barring me—John J. Hickey High Class Victualler barred from your pathetic premises?”

  “You heard me, John,” Paddles said.

  “Well, I’d deem it an honor to be barred from such a dump. An honor I will wear proudly.” He staggered to the door. “And an honor not to have to drink with the scum who frequent it.” Mr. Hickey smiled pleasantly around at all his neighbors, friends, and clients before stepping out briefly into the fresh air that he would encounter on the way to Foley’s bar.

  Martin and Peter exchanged glances.

  “That was a good day’s work, Paddles’,” Peter said approvingly.

  “Can’t you frighten him, Dr. Kelly? Tell him his liver’s packing up? It probably is,” Paddles added.

  “No I can’t, Paddles. I’m in a poor position to be telling him that, seeing as I’ve seen him across this bar every night since time began. And you’re in an equally poor position, Paddles, seeing that you sell him drink. It’s a strange world where no one takes any responsibility.”

  Paddles had moved away grumbling to serve the other end of the bar, when the door flew open and Mrs. Hickey stood there carrying something very alarming on a tray.

  “What’s that, Mrs. Hickey?” Paddles’ voice sounded less than confident.

  “Ah, Paddles, this is a sheep’s head. I thought you’d like to see it, and maybe the rest of the clientele might like to have a look at it too…”

  There was an uneasy murmuring around the premises, a low, dark pub very basic in its design and decor, and not a place where ladies came at all, not to mention carrying a large sheep’s head on a white butcher’s tray.

  “Yes, well, thank you, Mrs. Hickey. Thank you indeed.”

  “I’ll just take it round so everyone can see it properly,” she said. She had a very mad glint in her eye and no one wished to upset her or even enter into conversation with her. They nodded and muttered vague sounds of approval as the object was carried around for their inspection. “This is the way John looks when he comes home from here each evening, he has the features and color of a sheep’s head. I thought you should not be denied the pleasure of seeing this for yourself.”

  “Well, John isn’t actually here himself at the moment…” Paddles began uneasily. “But when we see him…well…” His voice trailed away.

  “No need to mention it at all,” Mrs. Hickey said airily. “Just wanted you all to be aware of everything that’s going on.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hickey,” said Paddles gravely, in the tone of voice that implied the show was over.

  “Would you live anywhere else?” Martin asked Peter Kelly when Mrs. Hickey and her tray were safely off the premises.

  Peter Kelly had come in about to inveigh against the kind of society they lived in, people who had told him that a baby’s death was all for the best, all for the best because you see she hadn’t got a father. It had upset him greatly that a pious morality should be so inverted that it could think a bastard child better dead than surviving to be a child raised with love in a small mountain cottage. But there was Martin, peaceable, easygoing, and finding everything about Lough Glass comic and delightful. He couldn’t impose his misery on his friend.

  “You’re right, Martin,” he said after an effort. “It’s got everything here except a three-ring circus. Maura says there’s more life here than in the whole of Dublin.”
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  Kit came home and found Rita whitewashing the walls of the yard. “Will I help you, is there another brush?”

  “Aren’t you meant to be studying?” Rita said.

  “Oh God, Rita, not you too…Here, I’ll go from this end.”

  “Take off your school uniform first anyway.” Kit did that immediately, standing in her bra and knickers. “I didn’t mean that,” Rita laughed. “I meant get some old clothes.”

  “No, what’s the point? By the time I’m upstairs and changed and downstairs you’ll have finished. And who’ll see me anyway except Farouk?”

  The old cat looked at them sleepily and indifferently. It was hard to get Farouk interested in anything.

  The gray-streaked walls transformed before their very eyes, the yard was soon the bright gleaming color it had been before the damp and spatters changed it to its messy state every year.

  “I don’t know why we bother sometimes,” Kit said. “It just gets mucky again and no one sees it but us.”

  “Your mother always said that made it even more important that it was kept nice,” Rita said.

  “Did she?” Kit laid down her brush for a moment.

  “Yes, she said you had to have pride in a place for its own sake, not for what the neighbors saw or didn’t see.”

  “She liked nice surroundings, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Wasn’t it sad she didn’t have a garden like the Kellys do? It must have been hard stuck in the side of the street here with only a yard.”

  “She said the lake was her garden,” Rita said. She was unselfconscious, she didn’t stop and put her hand over her mouth as if suddenly remembering that Helen McMahon had died in the lake. “She said no one could have a better garden on their doorstep.”

  “I didn’t inherit that from her, I couldn’t care less about my surroundings,” Kit said.

  “You will when you have a place of your own,” Rita promised. “Now, get some clothes on before Sergeant O’Connor comes over the wall and arrests you for indecent exposure.”

  LENA looked around her little home and tried to be objective. Why did Louis say it was a kip? Why did he say they hadn’t much to show for their years of hard work?

  Ivy’s house had improved considerably since they had gone to live there. The outside was painted and the railings had been repaired. So many of London’s railings had disappeared during the war, wrenched up to form part of the war effort. Lena had never known that before. The hall was carpeted now and the banisters had been replaced. In fact the only flat that had not been given an overhaul was the one that she and Louis lived in.

  And they had beautified it themselves, done it up with pictures and rugs and wall hangings. To Lena it was a haven, the place where she made passionate love to the man who was the center of her life, where she cooked him little meals and talked to him and looked out at the sky of London…she felt the freedom of the place everywhere she looked. True, it was small. But they didn’t entertain people, they didn’t want to. Louis was out so late, his hours were getting worse and worse. It was the same everywhere, once you got some responsibility you found your life was no longer your own.

  But Lena loved it here, she loved the undemanding friendship of Ivy Brown, she would never find anyone to share her post secrets with such glee. She loved the road being around the corner from the agency. She could even dash home at lunchtime and put a flower and a love letter and maybe a sticky almond bun for him to find if he came home early on a split shift.

  And Louis loved this place too. He had shopped with her in markets for outlandishly colored bedspreads, and for the mirror with a cherub on the side of it that looked as decadent as you could get. Why had he said it was a dump, a kip, and that they had nothing to show for their time here? He liked Ivy and it was near the tube station. Perhaps it just wasn’t smart enough for his image of how they should live. A flat without a bathroom. But suppose, suppose one of the other flats in the house came free…suppose.

  But it was silly to think that. Most of the people in the house were settled. She must not start chasing rainbows.

  But there was a God or a fate or something, Lena told herself. Three days later Ivy told her that the New Zealanders on the second floor were leaving.

  “Homesick, they say.” Ivy shook her head doubtfully. “You couldn’t be homesick for out there surely.” Anyway, they’d given her a month’s rent and they were moving out now. “You can help me choose the tenants,” Ivy offered. “After all, they’ll be your neighbors, you want to have people you’ll get along with.”

  “How did they leave it?” Lena asked.

  “Come and have a look.” Ivy picked the key off her rack and they went upstairs.

  It had high ceilings and big windows. This was never a place that Louis Gray could dismiss as run down. Not if they furnished it properly. “How much does it cost?” Lena asked.

  “I never offered it to you…I thought you were saving for a place of your own to buy,” Ivy said.

  “No, no, nothing like that.” Lena would not let Ivy know that the savings were very little. They spent what they had. She would have to make economies to rent this place but it would be worth it.

  “Does he know?” Ivy asked.

  “Of course not, I only knew myself ten seconds ago.”

  “Let me get it spruced up a bit before you show it.”

  “What will you do?”

  “What do you think…?” They stood looking at it, minds full of ideas. “Ernest can send me a few chaps over from the pub, you know, meant to be doing a day’s work for the brewery but out on six other jobs at the same time.”

  “A big cupboard in the bedroom maybe.”

  “To hang all Louis Gray’s jackets in and lay out his nice shoes.” Ivy was teasing her.

  “Don’t say a word against him.”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” Ivy said. “Listen, give me a week, then I’ll show it to the pair of you and see what you think. If you change your mind that’s no problem I’ll let it anyway.”

  “I’d say he’ll love it,” Lena said, her heart full of hope again. This might chase the notion of Spain out of his mind. For a while anyway.

  And he did love it. He was so excited by the proportion of the rooms, better than the Dryden, he told Ivy. He waltzed Lena around the big empty rooms and said that at last they’d have space for a proper life in London. He bought a bottle of champagne and the three of them drank the health of the new home.

  “I can’t wait to move in,” Louis said. He was eager and excited like a child, he moved around the room, touching the walls, the door handles…stroking them almost. “Now we’re making something of ourselves,” he said, as pleased as punch.

  There was a hoteliers conference in Scarborough.

  “That’s a place I’ve always wanted to go,” said Lena.

  “I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Will I not see it with you?” Lena had been about to take a few days off from the agency.

  “No spouses, I’m afraid.”

  “Tell me about it, then,” she said with a great smile.

  She was choosing fabric for the curtains of the new flat when she ran into James Williams in Selfridges.

  “More blue and gold for your agency?” he asked. He had remembered.

  “No, just browsing.”

  “You’re looking fit and well.” He always eyed her rather overappreciatively, she thought.

  “Thank you, James.” She smiled her routine smile, acknowledging the compliment.

  “Enjoy Scarborough,” he said.

  “Will you be there too?” she said, her voice coming somehow through the icy feeling in her throat.

  “No, I have no excuse, unfortunately. They do some work, but mainly it’s a thank-you to a lot of these guys who work so hard and such highly unsocial hours. Gives them a chance to entertain their wives properly without having to count the pennies.”

  “And do all wives go?”

  “Yes.
They’re not going to pass on a trip like that. Enjoy it anyway.”

  “I will,” she said. And held the counter to steady herself.

  It’s probably all in my mind. Kit wrote, but I have this feeling that Dad and Clio’s aunt Maura are walking out. I know that’s a very old-fashioned expression, but I can’t think what else to call it. And there’s nobody I could say it to. They’ve had a couple of meals in O’Brien’s Hotel. Philip told me their heads were very close, but Philip is always talking about people’s heads being close. It’s sort of on his mind.

  But would you think at their age they might really and truly be thinking of getting married? I know it wouldn’t come to anything like that without Dad discussing it with us, but I was very keen to know what you thought.

  This time the answer came to Kit very quickly. It must have been by return of post. It was a very short letter.

  Kit, write and tell me. Do you think Maura would make your father happy? He has had a hard life. He deserves happiness. Then tell me would you and Emmet like it or would it make you upset to see another woman walking around where your mother did, in her room. When you tell me these things I’ll write and tell you what I think.

  Kit wrote:

  How did you know Mother had a separate room? I never told you that. I can’t believe she would have told you. Please let me know.

  Lena paced her office.

  She must never write quickly again, that’s how mistakes happened. But it was all right. It could be covered.

  How observant you are, Kit, Lena wrote.

  Your mother did indeed tell me that she had a separate room. She said she didn’t sleep well at night with anyone else in the room. She didn’t need to ask me to tell it to nobody, since I spoke to nobody about her. Our correspondence was a sort of secret life, in a way like yours and mine is. Other people might think it sad, pathetic even. But I don’t. And I hope you don’t. Your mother never did. You have no idea how lonely I felt when her letters ceased. Tell me you understand.