“It wasn’t the loss of my virginity on a coffee table, I can tell you that.”
“What was it?”
“It was nothing, it was being in a strange city and not really a part of it, I suppose.”
That was the right thing to say. Clio bought it. She had felt her outing a miserable failure. It was consoling to think that Kit McMahon had found nothing to do either. But odd that she looked as if something had happened, as if she had been in an accident or something.
Kit hardly slept all night. She sat and looked out the window as the dawn came up over London. She wondered if her mother was worrying the same way. No, she was probably with this Louis she had wanted so much. Again, Kit wondered was it possible that Louis might have been the handsome man who was leaving his belongings to collect later.
Then a thought came from nowhere, with the force and pain of a sharp cold wind. Suppose Louis had gone, and Mother knew that she was now proven to be alive, then Mother might come home after all. She might come back to Lough Glass after all those years and try to take up life again. Come back as a ghost to poor Father, who thought she was a dead saint. And to Emmet, who had been so young when she had drowned. And to stop Maura Hayes from getting married to Father. Of course Maura Hayes could never marry Father now.
And no one would ever forgive Mother.
Alternately Kit’s face burned with a feverish heat and felt ice-cold. By morning light she was far too unwell to join them on the excursion which that day was a walking tour of Dickens’s London.
Mother Lucy was worried. “Do you often get such a reaction? “she asked. The girl had a high temperature certainly.
“I’ll be fine if I can lie in bed for a while. In a nice dark room,” Kit had said.
“I’ll call in on you every hour or so,” Mother Lucy said.
“That’ll put a stop to your gallop,” Clio said.
“I’ve no gallop. You are such a pain, Clio. Such an awful one-track pain.”
“If I find your coffee shop, will I tell them you’ll be back for more?” Clio was annoyed that Kit wasn’t coming with them. Things were much funnier when Kit was there, but she really did look as if she had caught some illness or disease.
Kit lay in the small narrow bed in the dormitory that held eight girls. Eight English girls slept here during term time. The girls from Lough Glass slept here this week. All of them could go to sleep on these pillows without having barbed-wire coils of fear around their heart.
Kit lay with her eyes open in the dark room, and every time the nun put her head around the door she pretended to be asleep. This way there was no need for more speculation about what might have caused her fever.
Lena had not slept. By six o’clock she knew there wasn’t a chance of closing her eyes. She got up and dressed and went downstairs. She pushed a note under Ivy’s door. I’ll talk to you tonight, she wrote. There was no need to say anything else. Ivy would know how grateful she was to be left alone last night. Ivy knew she wasn’t closing her out, excluding her from a life which she had once invited her to join.
At Millar’s, Lena began to write a letter to her daughter. She wrote and wrote, tearing up the pages, ripping them from her typewriter. She tried to write by hand but that didn’t work either. When the door rattled and Dawn Jones came in, Lena had given up. There were no words to say any of the million things that should be said. She had torn the rejected letters into tiny fragments. Therapeutic almost, reducing them to confetti size pieces from which no clue could be read.
No one would ever know that the calm Mrs. Gray had spent a night in anguish. That in one day she had found her daughter, lost her again, and been abandoned by the man with whom she had lived as man and wife for five years. She had nothing to live for, yet she was going to live through this day. The thoughts that had chased around in her head all through the wakeful hours had convinced her that her daughter was right. She must remain dead. She had caused enough harm and hurt already.
But what had come to her in a sudden and unwelcome flash had been the fear that perhaps Kit would change her mind. When the initial horror and revulsion had passed by, when her own guilt at the part she had played—the tragic and well-meaning gesture of burning a letter to avoid the disgrace of a public suicide—then she might change her view. She might think that her duty lay in revealing that she had found Lena, that it was her duty to tell Emmet his mother was alive, and then to tell Martin.
Lena’s guilt at what had happened to Martin knew no bounds. She had misjudged him utterly. For years the man had lived in the shadow of her death, her possible suicide. Kit had said the town was full of whispers. He had survived it, brought them up to revere her memory. He could not be exposed now as what he was, a man whose wife had run off with another man, and had allowed the explanation of her death by drowning to be accepted.
Martin deserved more dignity. He deserved some happiness. Kit must be warned never to relent.
During the night Lena had thought that she would find the words if she were at her desk, the desk where she had so often written long letters to her daughter of a supposedly dead friend. Letters that would never be written or answered again.
But it had not been possible to write the words.
And there was Dawn, fresh as a daisy. “Well, I thought I was an early bird…but no, you’re here before me again.” Dawn’s voice was like the chirrup of a bird. She looked like a little canary or a budgie in her blue and gold outfit, her shining hair and her perfect makeup.
Lena felt old and tired. “Dawn, I may have to take some time off today. I wonder, could you get your pad and come in to me until I list some of my work that you and Jessie may have to divide between you.”
“Certainly Mrs. Gray.” Dawn listened attentively.
Lucky Dawn, thought Lena. Dawn, who had slept a full night’s sleep and had a dozen admirers. Her only decisions after work today would be whom to go out with.
Lena went back to number 27. She knocked on Ivy’s door. “Ivy, when you have a minute can you come upstairs with me?”
She was so frail-looking, Ivy was alarmed. “Shall I take you to the doctor?” she asked.
“No. Just a helping hand up the stairs would be nice.”
Ivy took Lena’s clothes as she undressed and got into her bed, the big bed that she and Louis had shared but which was far too wide and empty for her now. She folded the clothes and laid them on a chair, then handed her a nightdress as if she were a lady’s maid. Lena slipped it over her head. Her face was lined deep with pain and tiredness.
Neither of them had spoken.
Then Ivy said, “She’s a very beautiful girl, Lena. She’s a lovely daughter for you to have…”
She couldn’t have said anything guaranteed to open the barrier that was holding back the tears. Lena had not cried since it all began, but hearing Ivy Brown praise the beauty and warmth of the daughter she had lost forever let it all out. She cried like a baby for what seemed like an age. And only after a very long time was she persuaded to blow her nose and tell Ivy the depth of the tragedy…the wrong that in all innocence her daughter had done by ensuring that Helen McMahon could never go back and see her family again.
“YOU didn’t enjoy it all that much, did you?” Martin McMahon said.
“Oh, I did, Daddy, and it was a lot of money and everything…”
“That doesn’t matter. We sometimes spend a lot on things that don’t work out. Was it a bit schoolish, is that it?”
“No, it was fine, I told you. I sent you cards, we saw everything.”
“Where did you like best?” Emmet asked.
Kit looked at him suddenly. He reminded her of her mother saying “What was the worst thing?” She swallowed and tried to find something to say that would satisfy him. “I think I liked the Tower of London best,” she said.
“And this fever you got…?” Her father was still anxious.
“It was only a temperature for a day or two…you know the way nuns fuss.”
“Clio was telling Pe
ter about it, she said you were in bed two days.”
“Clio is worse than the nuns. Daddy.”
“Don’t let poor Mother Bernard hear you say that, after all the effort she put into educating the pair of you.” Her father had been satisfactorily sidetracked.
Trust Clio to make it into a big, big deal.
“There you are, Kit McMahon.” That was Father Baily’s normal greeting to people. He more or less gave them permission to exist by saying it.
“Here I am, Father,” said Kit mischievously.
He looked at her sharply to see if she was making fun of him, but couldn’t prove it. “And tell me, what did you all make of London?”
“It was interesting, Father. We were lucky to have been given such an opportunity.” She spoke primly, as if she were a little girl reciting what she had been told to say.
Clio giggled.
“A fine place in its own way,” Father Baily said. “If you look at it for what it is, there isn’t a thing you could criticize about it.”
Kit wondered how you could look at London as if it were something other than it was, but decided this was not the time to argue it with the elderly priest. “Were you ever there yourself, Father?” she asked.
“I passed through it twice on the way to the Holy City,” he said.
“Were there coffee shops at that time?” Clio asked.
“We hadn’t much time to spend in coffee shops,” Father Baily said.
“Just as well,” Clio hissed as they left. “Think what he might have seen if he had been given the time to visit them.”
“Wasn’t it a great coincidence, you being in London at the same time as our school trip?” Mother Bernard said to Maura Hayes.
“What’s that, Mother?”
“You know, Clio and Kit going out to meet you from the convent…Mother Lucy was telling me about it.”
“Ah, Mother Lucy…” She was at a loss but didn’t want to let the nun realize.
“What a coincidence!” Mother Bernard said again.
“Wasn’t it,” Maura said, her brow darkening.
“Oh Clio, a word, please.”
“Yes, Aunt Maura?”
“Was there some confusion in Mother Bernard’s mind or did anyone tell her I was in London when you were?”
“I swear I didn’t. I swear it,” Clio said.
“Well, who did, Clio?”
“I haven’t a clue. But some daft nun over there said our aunt phoned so we kind of used the heaven-sent opportunity…” Clio giggled. “You couldn’t turn your back on a heaven-sent chance like that, could you?”
“And where did you and Kit go on the heaven-sent opportunity?”
“I don’t know where Kit went, she was most mysterious. I had a dull time actually, looked in shop windows and went in and out of cafes and bars pretending I was looking for someone.”
“And did you not inquire about this sudden aunt who was asking for you?”
Clio shrugged. “Nope, I just thought it was a bit of rare good luck. But I was wrong.”
Orla Reilly was in her mother’s shop. “Why can’t I help you, Mammy? You used always complain that I didn’t help.”
“That was when you were living here, now you live with your husband and I’d like you to go back to him.”
“God, Mammy. You’d need to get out of that house from time to time. I told him you needed a bit of a hand in the shop.”
“Well, you told him wrong. And who is minding the baby?”
“Old Ma Reilly. Give her something to do, the old rip.”
“I’ve said it once and I won’t say it again, there’s no work for you here, Orla.”
“Mammy, please.”
“You should have thought of this before all the other business.” Her mother’s face was hard. Orla’s shotgun wedding had not been a matter of pleasure to her family.
Clio and Kit were reading the magazines. They usually managed to read about five for every one they bought. Clio had been following the whole conversation between Orla and her mother. “Marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” she whispered to Kit.
“What?” Kit said.
“You’re miles away,” Clio said. It was like talking to the side of a wall, talking to Kit McMahon these days. She just had no interest in anything.
The prospectus from St. Mary’s College of Catering in Cathal Brugha Street arrived. It lay unopened on the hall table for three days.
“Aren’t you going to open it, Kit?” Rita asked. “It will have all the details about your uniforms and everything.”
“I will, of course,” Kit said.
But she didn’t.
“Catering?” Mrs. Hanley in the drapery said. “Catering, well, I’m sure that’s very nice. You’re not going to university, then, like Clio?”
“No, Mrs. Hanley. I’d love to learn the hotel business. It’s meant to be a very good course, you learn to cook and do accounts and all kinds of things.”
“Is your father disappointed you’re not going to university? I know he had his heart set on it.”
Kit looked at Mrs. Hanley. “Had he? You know he never said. He never said a word about that. Maybe I should go home and ask him. I never knew that till you said it this minute.”
“Well now, I may be mistaken, and you wouldn’t want to go round upsetting people.” Mrs. Hanley looked alarmed.
Kit’s eyes were blazing with annoyance. She didn’t know that Mrs. Hanley was so ashamed that her daughter Deirdre was working in a low-class kind of cafe in Dublin—not even waiting tables properly, just clearing up after people with a broom and a cloth—she did everything she could to belittle the opportunities and futures of other girls from Lough Glass.
Mrs. Hanley didn’t know that the red-faced angry girl in front of her had hardly heeded her words and their meaning. It was just the trigger of mentioning her father that had set off the storm.
Kit slept badly at night and concentrated not at all during the days. What if her mother were to write from England or, worse still, arrive? Suppose that the nice safe future her father seemed about to embark on was going to blow away in front of his eyes?
“Emmet, you smell of drink,” Kit said.
“Oh, do I? I thought it would have gone by now.”
“You thought what?”
“You won’t tell?”
“Did I ever tell?”
“Well, Michael Sullivan and Kevin Wall and I…we had a cocktail.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Yes, we made it from all the bottles outside Foley’s. We poured it into a jug and shook it.”
“You are mad, Emmet. Quite mad.”
“Actually it was awful. And it was mainly watery stout, there was hardly anything left in the whiskey and brandy bottles.”
“What a shame,” Kit said.
“But anyway, thanks for telling me, I’ll wash my teeth.”
“Why on earth did you do it?” Kit asked.
“It was something to do. Sometimes it’s kind of lonely here. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?”
Kit looked at Emmet and bit her lip. Should she tell him?
“How are you, Kit?” Stevie Sullivan called.
“Not well,” Kit said.
“I hate to hear of a good-looking girl not being in good form.” Stevie smiled a crooked, attractive smile.
It cut no ice with Kit McMahon. “I’d be a lot better if you could stop your brother arranging cocktail parties in the backyard of Foley’s and Paddles’,” she said.
“What are you all of a sudden, Pioneer Total Abstinence Society? Father Matthew, Apostle of Temperance?” Stevie asked.
“I’m someone who’d prefer my own brother not to come home stinking of booze,” she said.
“Okay.” Stevie nodded.
“What do you mean okay.”
“I mean okay, I’ll stop it.”
“Thanks,” she said, and let herself in the door. As she climbed the stairs Kit asked herself why she had react
ed so strongly to something that was only a kid’s game. They hadn’t been really drunk. It was pretending to be grown up.
But she told herself that it was for her father. Daddy had enough behind him. And enough ahead of him when he realized his wife hadn’t died in the lake. Because Kit now thought this was too big a secret to keep. She wouldn’t be able to hide it as she had hidden the burning of the letter. It would all come out now, everything, and their lives would all be ruined.
She dreamed that Mother was home, and that they were all having tea in the kitchen. “Don’t be too hard on Kit,” Mother was saying, and they all sat grouped together with Rita standing behind them. Kit seemed to be the outcast far away across the table. And in her dream she heard Maura crying noisy sobs.
“I have a lovely present for you to start your new career, Kit.” Mrs. Hanley handed Kit a flat box.
“That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Hanley.”
“Open it and see do you like it.”
It was a lemon-colored short-sleeved sweater, something Kit would never have worn. But under a jacket it might look all right.
“It’s beautiful, Mrs. Hanley, that’s very very kind of you.”
“I spoke a bit out of turn the other day, you were a good girl not to take any notice of me.”
Kit looked at her blankly, she hadn’t an idea what the woman was talking about. Everything was so odd these days, and she could hardly remember anything she had done since she came back from London. It all seemed suspended somehow, unreal.
The days and nights were endless in London for Lena. She slept or tried to sleep curled up in a little corner of the great bed that they had shared so happily.
In the office she worked on like a machine…there was no purpose to the working day for her anymore. No plans for an evening meal with Louis, no running home at lunchtime to catch him on his split shifts so that they could have an hour together.
Impossible to believe that her birthday would come and go, and nobody would know. Louis in France would have forgotten. Kit in Ireland would not remember. Everyone else in Ireland thought she was dead. Maybe Ivy knew but she would be tactful enough to realize that this year there was nothing to celebrate.