The Glass Lake

  Kit’s voice was steady. “Why should I say anything ? What have I got to say? You’re the one who should say something.”

  “Will you listen?”

  “Yes.”

  “I made a decision. I loved another man…it was such a powerful love I left you and Emmet and my life with you.”

  “And where is he, the man you loved so much?” There was a sneer in Kit’s voice.

  “He’s not here,” Lena said.

  “But why did you pretend to be dead?” The voice had a false calm, as if she were holding on by a thread.

  “I didn’t pretend to be dead, that’s something that came about by mistake.”

  “Oh, listen to me,” the temper broke, “now listen to me. Since I’ve been twelve I thought you were dead. My brother and I go up to your grave, you are prayed for every year on your anniversary. Daddy’s face is so sad when he speaks about you it would make a stone statue cry…and here you are in this, this place…because you loved some other man…a man who doesn’t love you…and you say it’s only a mistake that people think you’re dead…you must be mad, mad.”

  Kit’s anger somehow galvanized Lena. She flung the rug from her shoulder and stood up to face her daughter. “I was no part of this conspiracy to pretend I was dead. I told your father that I was leaving him. I said that he must choose how to explain it to his neighbors and friends, that this was the least I could give him, some dignity…

  “I didn’t make any demands. I wasn’t in a position to do so. I just said I hoped he’d let me see you over the years.”

  “You did not tell Daddy you were leaving. You didn’t tell him. I don’t care what kind of lies you tell yourself, you’re not going to lie to me. I’m the one who heard him crying night after night in his room. I’m the one who walked with him by the lake all the time they were still looking for you.

  “I was there when the body came back and he was so pleased and he said that you’d rest easy in your grave. Don’t tell me that Daddy knows about all this…this setup. He doesn’t.” They were standing a few feet from each other, faces angry and upset.

  “He must be a much better actor than I gave him credit for if he fooled you as well.” Lena had a great bitterness in her voice. “And I will never forgive myself for what I have done to you and Emmet, but he has his share in the blame. I told him. He knows. I left him a letter.”

  “What?”

  “I left him a long letter telling him everything, asking for nothing, not even understanding.”

  Kit backed away. “A letter. Oh my God!” She held her hand to her throat. Her face had gone white. Kit McMahon had never fainted before this day, and now she thought she was about to do so again. She staggered as the floor started its climb toward her, but she forced back the dizziness and nausea.

  “I know that you’re not going to believe me,” Lena said.

  “Yes, I do believe you.” Kit’s voice was strangled.

  “You knew?” Lena said.

  “I found it…and put it in the Aga.”

  “You what?”

  “I burned it.”

  “You burned it? A letter addressed to someone else? In the name of God, why did you do that? Jesus Christ, why did you do that?”

  “I wanted you to be buried in the churchyard,” Kit said simply. “If they knew you’d committed suicide they wouldn’t let you.”

  “But I didn’t commit suicide. Oh God, why did you have to interfere?”

  “I thought you had…”

  “What made you think that…what right had you to decide what to do? I can’t believe this, I really can’t believe it.”

  “Everyone was looking for you. There were people out with lights and Sergeant O’Connor…and the boat turned upside down…”

  “But for Christ’s sake, if you had given your father the letter…”

  “But you had been so strange…so wild, don’t you remember…that’s what we thought.”

  “That’s what you thought, what you took it on yourself to think.”

  “Quite a lot of people thought it, as it happens.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You hear whispers.”

  “And what about the inquest…the put-up job between your father and Peter Kelly identifying some other unfortunate as me?”

  “They thought it was you, that’s what we all thought.”

  “But who was it? Whose body is in my grave?”

  Kit looked at her, stricken. “I don’t know. It could have been someone who drowned a long time ago.”

  Lena dismissed this. “Imagine. He would have done anything to hide the fact that I’d left him.”

  Kit was very quiet. “Father doesn’t know you left him. Thanks to me, Father thinks you’re dead.”

  Lena looked at her and let the horror of this sink in. For years and years Martin really had thought she had drowned herself in the lake on his doorstep. How could this grotesque thing have happened?

  “And does he know why…or did he suspect that I was about to leave him and that’s why I took my life?”

  “No, he doesn’t think you took your life, he thinks that you drowned accidentally. He may be one of the few, but he thinks that. He told Emmet and me over and over.”

  Lena reached for a packet of cigarettes. Automatically she stretched the pack toward Kit. Kit shook her head. The room that had heard such shouting was now so silent that the striking of the match sounded like a whip cracking.

  After an eternity Kit said, “I’m sorry for burning the letter. It seemed like the only thing to do at the time.”

  Another long silence and Lena said: “You don’t know how sorry I am to have left you, but at the time…at the time…” Lena sat down, but Kit still stood.

  “You could have come back to us, told us you were alive, that it had been a mistake.” Lena said nothing. “I mean, I couldn’t have unburned the letter, and anyway I didn’t know I should have. But you didn’t want to, did you? You didn’t mind leaving us there thinking…thinking…”

  “I was trapped,” Lena said. “I promised your father…”

  “You made the trap,” Kit said. “And don’t talk of what you promised Daddy. Presumably you promised you’d love, honor, and obey him when you got married. You didn’t think much of that promise.”

  “Sit down, please, Kit.”

  “No I won’t sit down. I don’t feel like sitting down.”

  “You look very pale…you look ill.”

  “People at home don’t say ill, we say ‘sick.’ You’re forgetting words even…”

  “Kit, sit down. You and I may not have much time to talk…this may be our only chance.”

  “I don’t want a cozy chat.”

  “I don’t want a cozy chat either.” But Kit sank into a chair gratefully, her legs were feeling very wobbly. “What’s the very worst part of it?” Lena asked eventually.

  “What you did to Daddy.”

  There was a silence. And then Lena said very gently: “Or what you did to him?”

  “No, that is not fair. I’m not going to take the blame for this.”

  “I’m not asking you to take the blame. I’m just asking you to talk to me…tell me what we should do now…”

  “How can I talk to you? I haven’t seen you since I was a child of twelve. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know anything about you.” Kit seemed to shrink away from her.

  Lena hardly dared to speak. Anything she said seemed to upset the child further. She sat there waiting. Eventually she could bear it no longer. “You do know about me…we have been writing to each other for years…”

  Kit’s eyes were cold. “No, you’re wrong…you know all about me. You know things nobody else on earth knows. I told them all to you in good faith. I know nothing about you. Nothing but lies.”

  “I wrote the truth,” Lena cried. “I wrote that your mother loved you and was so proud of you…didn’t I tell you that…all the time?”

  “It was lies, you didn’t say my mot
her had left…ran away and left us there to think she was dead.”

  Lena’s eyes flashed. “And you certainly didn’t write saying that you had burned the letter of explanation.”

  “I didn’t do that because I wanted to protect her reputation.”

  Lena noted with pain that she spoke of her mother in the third person. As if in any real sense her mother was dead.

  And would always remain so.

  “You seemed fond of me in your letters,” Lena tried. “And I am that person who wrote. All the things I told you were true, I work in the employment agency, Louis works in the hotel…”

  “I don’t care about any of that…you can’t think that any of that has any interest for me. I want to go now.”

  “Don’t go, I beg you. You can’t go out there in London all alone with this terrible news.”

  “I’ve had terrible news before. I survived.” The girl’s voice was bitter.

  “Just sit for a while. I won’t talk if it annoys you. But I don’t want you to be alone after this shock.”

  “You didn’t care about the shock before…when you went away.” Kit had her hand against her mouth, fist clenched as if she were willing back the tears.

  Lena knew she must make no gesture to hold her, to touch her. Kit was poised to leave, the only thing keeping her in this room was her attempt to gather the strength and courage to leave it. She was fighting back the tears. Her face was working and she was almost biting her knuckles in her efforts not to give way.

  Lena sat very still. She didn’t stare at Kit, she rested her head on her hand and looked out the window to the outside world, where people were living ordinary lives.

  Kit raised her head and looked at her.

  Mother had always been like this. Able to sit still for ages on end. When they sat by the lake and everyone else was running here and there and pointing things out, Mother would sit there composed and peaceful, not needing to speak or to move. And at night, when they sat at the fire, Father would do card tricks or teach them tongue twisters and riddles, or he would play Ludo with them. And Mother just sat there looking at the flames, sometimes her hand on Farouk’s neck, stroking him, saying nothing but being peaceful.

  It had all seemed so safe then. Why had this man come in and taken Mother away from them? The anger against the man who had broken up their lives took over from the tears. Kit was able to speak.

  “Does he know about us?” she asked eventually.

  “Does who know?” Lena seemed genuinely startled.

  “The man…Louis, whatever his name is?”

  “Yes, his name is Louis. Yes, he knows about you, of course he does.”

  “And he still took you away?” Kit’s voice was full of distaste.

  “I went willingly. I wanted to go. You must realize how much I must have wanted to go…how else could I have left you?”

  Kit put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear what you wanted. I don’t want to think about you wanting. It makes me sick to think about it.” Her face was red and upset. It was hard enough for a girl to think about her mother mating with her father, let alone think about wanting anyone else.

  Lena realized this. “I said it only because I wanted to take the blame,” she said.

  “Blame!” The word from Kit sounded like a snort.

  Lena feared that Kit might leave, that suddenly she might get up and go out that door without turning her head. “What are we going to do?” she asked again.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Are you going to tell Emmet and…well, your father that…that things are not the way they thought.”

  “You’ve always known things weren’t the way we thought.”

  “Kit, please…you know this was not my intention. It’s what you did that brought this about.”

  “So what are you asking me?” Kit’s voice was cold.

  There was a long pause. Then Lena raised her head and looked her daughter in the eye. “I suppose I’m asking you whether you want me alive or dead.”

  There was another pause, then Kit said slowly: “I think since you’ve wanted to be dead as far as we’re concerned for the last five years…you should stay dead.” She stood up to leave the room, and for Lena it was like the lid closing on her coffin.

  Ivy saw the girl go down the stairs and walk toward the hall door. Her face looked more composed now. She didn’t look as if she needed anyone to support her, help her through the traffic. She looked as if she could manage by herself. But her face was very dead. There was something empty and cold about her expression which had not been there before.

  Ivy longed to go up to Lena. She wanted more than anything to comfort the woman who had lost her lover and her daughter in one day. But she knew better than to approach. Lena knew where she lived. When she was ready she would come downstairs. Not before.

  Kit found a cafe. It had a jukebox and a group of girls her own age played record after record. How wonderful to be like that. To live in ordinary homes. Their mothers hadn’t run away…and pretended to be dead. None of these girls had ever come across a ghost. They had enough money to have play after play.

  They talked of the fellows they were going out with. Two of them were black girls with London accents. Imagine, this whole kind of life went on, people of different colors and dozens of cafes in the same street, and nobody knowing everyone on the street like at home.

  And this is where Mother had been living since the day she drowned.

  Mother alive. What would Emmet say…? He’d be so delighted. Daddy. What would Father say when he heard? And then the black heavy weight again. But they couldn’t hear. They couldn’t hear now. It would be too much hurt and unhappiness after all these years.

  And it was all Kit’s fault.

  So often over the past years she had wondered guiltily if she had done the right thing by burning the letter. But she had always told herself that God would know she had done it for the best of motives. She wanted Mother to have a burial place with everyone else. Not like a criminal outside the walls. She had done it for love of Mother. But who would care or understand that she had meant it for the best? She had created the most terrible situation for everyone.

  Kit felt the coffee scald her throat.

  The best thing was that no one should ever know. That was the way that…she…wanted it. Kit didn’t think of her as Mother, not this thin woman who sat in the elegant apartment and talked about wanting Louis…and needing him or whatever it was she said. Why should Emmet be put through everything Kit had been through? And Father. What would it do to Father to think his beloved Helen whom he had cried over so much had left him because she wanted this man called Louis?

  And where was this Louis anyway? If she was so crazy about him, why wasn’t he there or any sign of him? Kit remembered that man who had come into Ivy’s. The handsome dark-haired man like an actor. But that couldn’t have been Louis, he was going away somewhere. He was leaving a big crate of his belongings to be collected. That wasn’t Mother’s Louis. Anyway he was far too young. Too young to be Mother’s fancy man.

  Someone touched her arm. She looked up, startled. Surely Mother or Mrs. Brown couldn’t have followed her here.

  But it was a boy of about eighteen “Are you on your own?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Kit looked at him cautiously.

  “Would you like to join us?” He waved over at a table where the group was sitting. They smiled encouragingly.

  “No thank you…thank you very much…”

  “Come on, can’t have you sitting on your own when there’s music playing,” the boy said.

  Kit looked at him doubtfully. They were just singing and clapping to the music. As she and Clio would have done with them had things been different. She couldn’t sit with them laughing, pretending that nothing was wrong. But neither could she sit with her thoughts going around and around like a red-hot circle in the groove with no solution.

  “Thank you.” She smiled at him.
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  He looked pleased to have brought such a pretty, well-dressed girl to their table. She smiled brightly and nodded at their names. She must have told them she was Kit, because that’s what they called her when she said she had to go, and ran from the cafe to catch a bus back to the convent.

  Clio was walking up and down, grumbling. “You’re late,” she said.

  “No, you’re early.” It was the way they had always been. Yet the last time Kit had seen Clio she hadn’t known this awful fact. The fact that Mother had never died, she had run away. And that Kit had helped her to continue the deception by burning the letter.

  “What did you do?” Clio was still sulking that they hadn’t gone to do the town together.

  “Mainly a coffee bar,” Kit shrugged.

  “That all? I saw lots of places.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Did you get talking to people?” Clio’s eyes were piggy for information.

  “Yeah, a whole group. They played the jukebox.”

  “And were there fellows?”

  “Mainly fellows.” Kit’s mind was miles away. Miles from Clio and from the coffee bar.

  “What were they like?”

  “They were okay…. What about you?” Kit knew she must make things seem normal.

  But Clio obviously had found no satisfying adventures in London on her own. “I just looked here and there. What were their names?”

  “Who?”

  “The fellows you met.”

  “I can’t remember.” Kit obviously couldn’t.

  Clio looked alarmed as they walked up the steps to the convent door. “Kit, you didn’t have sexual intercourse with any of them, did you?” Clio asked suddenly.

  “Jesus, why would you say that?” Clio never failed to surprise her.

  “Well, you look different,” Clio said. “And you know you can always tell someone who’s done it from someone who hasn’t.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t. We didn’t get around to it in the coffee bar. Maybe too many people there or something.”

  “Oh shut up, Kit. It’s just that you’ve changed. I don’t know what it is, but I know you so well and something happened.”