The Glass Lake (3 page)

“Not really. Not completely fine.”

“What would you like that you haven't got?”

“I'd like to be quicker,” Kit said. “I'd like to understand things immediately the way Clio does, and to have fair hair, and to be able to listen to one thing while saying another. And be taller.”

“I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you that you were twenty times more beautiful than Clio, and much more intelligent.”

“Oh Mam, I'm not.”

“You are, Kit. I swear it. What Clio has is style. I don't know where she got it, but she knows how to make the most of everything she has. Even at twelve she knows what looks well on her and how to smile. That's all it is, it's not beauty, not like you have, and you have my cheekbones, remember. Clio only has Lilian's.”

They laughed together, grown-ups in a conspiracy of mockery. Mrs. Kelly had a plump face and no cheekbones at all.

R
ITA
went to Sister Madeleine on Thursdays, her half day. If anyone else called Sister Madeleine would say, “Rita and I are reading a bit of poetry, we often do that on a Thursday.” It was such a tactful way of telling them that this was Rita's time, people began to recognize it as such.

Rita would bake some scones, or bring half an apple tart. They would have tea together and bend over the books. As the weeks went on and the summer came, Rita began to have new confidence. She could read without putting her finger under the words, she could guess the harder words from the sense of the sentence. It was time for the writing lessons. Sister Madeleine gave Rita a fountain pen.

“I couldn't take that, Sister. It was given to you as a gift.”

“Well, if it's mine, can't I do what I like with it?” Sister Madeleine rarely kept anything that she had been given for more than twenty-four hours.

“Well, could I have a loan of it then, a long loan?”

“I'll lend it to you for the rest of your life,” Sister Madeleine said.

There were no boring copy books, instead Rita and Sister Madeleine wrote about Lough Glass and the lake and changing seasons.

“You could write to your sister in America soon,” Sister Madeleine said.

“Not a real letter, not to a person.”

“Why not? That's as good as any letter she'll get from these parts, I tell you.”

“Would she want to hear all this about home?”

“She'd be so full of happiness to hear about home you'd nearly hear her thanking you across the Atlantic Ocean.”

“I never got a letter. I wouldn't want them to be thinking above in McMahon's that I was in the class of having people writing to me.”

“She could write to you here.”

“Would the postman bring letters to you, Sister Madeleine?”

“Ah, Tommy Bennet is the most decent man in the world. He delivers letters to me three times a week. Comes down here on his bicycle whatever the weather, and he has a cup of tea.”

Sister Madeleine didn't add that Tommy never came without some contribution to the store cupboard. Nor that she had been instrumental in getting his daughter quickly and quietly into a home for unmarried mothers and keeping the secret safe from the interested eyes and ears of Lough Glass.

“And you'd get enough post for that?” Rita said in wonder.

“People are very kind. They often write to me,” Sister Madeleine said with the same sense of wonder.

C
LIO
and Kit had learned to swim when they were very young. Dr. Kelly had stood waist-deep in the water to teach them. As a young medical student he had once pulled three dead children from the Glass Lake, children who had drowned in a couple of feet of water because nobody had taught them how to swim. It had made him very angry. There was something accepting and dumb about people who lived on the edge of a hazard and yet did nothing to cope with it.

Like those fishermen over in the West of Ireland who went out in frail boats to fish in the roaring Atlantic, and they all wore different kinds of jumpers so they would know whose family it was when a body was found. Each family had its own stitch. Complicated and perverse, Dr. Kelly thought. Why hadn't they taught the young fishermen to swim?

As soon as the young Kellys and McMahons could walk they were taken to the lakeshore. Other families followed suit; the doctor was a figure of great authority. Young Philip O'Brien from the hotel learned and the Hanley girls. Of course, Old Sullivan from the garage told him to keep his hands off other people's children so Stevie and Michael probably couldn't swim to this day.

Peter Kelly had been in other countries where lakes like this one had been tourist attractions. Scotland, for example. People came to visit places just because there was a lake there. And in Switzerland, where he and Lilian had spent their honeymoon, lakes were all-important. But in Ireland in the early fifties nobody seemed to see their potential.

People thought he was mad when he bought a small rowing boat jointly with his friend Martin McMahon. Together they rowed out and fished for perch, bream, and pike. Big ugly fish all of them, but waiting for them on the ever-changing waters of their lake was a restful pastime.

The men had been friends since they were boys. They knew the beds of reeds and rushes where the moorhens sheltered and sometimes even the swans hid from view. They occasionally had company on the lake as they went out to fish, a few local people shared their enthusiasm, but normally the only boats you saw on Lough Glass were those carrying animal foodstuff or machinery from one side to the other.

Farms had been divided up so peculiarly that often a farmer had bits of land so widely separated by great distances, the journey across the water could well be the shortest route. Yet another strange thing about Ireland, Peter Kelly often said, those inconvenient things that weren't laid on us by a colonial power we managed to do for ourselves by incessant family feuds and differences. Martin was of a sunnier disposition. He believed the best of people, his patience was never-ending. There was no situation that couldn't be sorted out by a good laugh. The only thing Martin McMahon ever feared was the lake itself.

He used to warn people, even casual people who came into his chemist's shop, to be careful as they went along the paths by the lakeshore. Clio and Kit were old enough to take a boat out alone now. They had proved it a dozen times, but Martin still felt nervous. He admitted it to Peter over a pint in Paddles' bar. “Jesus, Martin! You're turning into an old woman.”

Martin didn't take it as an insult. “I suppose I am, let me look for any secondary signs, I haven't developed breasts or anything, but I don't need to shave as often…you could be right, you know.”

Peter looked affectionately at his friend, Martin's bluster was hiding a real concern. “I've watched them, Martin. I'm as anxious as you are that they don't run into trouble…but they aren't such fools when they're out on the water as they seem to be on dry land, we've drilled that into them. Watch them yourself and you'll see.”

“I will, they're going out tomorrow. Helen says we have to let them go and not wrap them in cotton wool.”

“Helen's right,” Peter said sagely, and they debated whether or not to have another pint. As always on these occasions they made a huge compromise by ordering a half pint. So predictable that Paddles had it ready for them when they got around to ordering it.

“M
R.
McMahon, will you please tell Anna to go home,” Clio begged Kit's father. “If I tell her it only starts a row.”

“Would you like to go for a walk with me,” Kit's father suggested.

“I'd like to go in the boat.”

“I know you would, but they're big grown-up girls now, and they want to be having their own chats. Why don't you and I go and see if we could find a squirrel?” He looked at the girls in the boat. “I know I'm a fusser. I just came down to be sure you were all right.”

“Of course we're all right.”

“And you'll take no chances? This is a dangerous lake.”

“Daddy, please!”

He went off, and they saw Anna grumbling and following him.

“He's very nice, your father,” said Clio, fitting the oars properly into the oarlocks.

“Yes, when you think of the fathers we might have got,” Kit agreed.

“Mr. Sullivan up in the home.” Clio gave an example.

“Tommy Bennet, the bad-tempered postman.”

“Or Paddles Burns, the barman with the big feet…”

They laughed at their lucky escapes.

“People often wonder why your father married your mother though,” Clio said.

Kit felt a bile of defense rise in her throat. “No they don't wonder that.
You
might wonder it,
people
don't wonder it at all.”

“Keep your hair on, I'm only saying what I heard.”

“Who said what? Where did you hear it?” Kit's face was hot and angry. She could have pushed her friend Clio into the dark lake and held her head down when she surfaced. Kit was almost alarmed at the strength of her feeling.

“Oh, people say things…” Clio was lofty.

“Like what?”

“Like, your mother was a different sort of person, not a local person from here…you know.”

“No, I don't know. Your mother isn't from here either, she's from Limerick.”

“But she used to come here on holidays, that made her sort of from here.”

“My mother came here when she met Dad, and that makes her from here too.” There were tears in Kit's eyes.

“I'm sorry,” Clio said. She really did sound repentant.

“What are you sorry about?”

“For saying your mother wasn't from here.”

Kit felt she was sorry for more, for hinting at a marriage that was less than satisfactory. “Oh, don't be stupid, Clio. No one cares what you say about where my mother is from, you're so boring. My mother's from Dublin and that's twenty times more interesting than being from old Limerick.”

“Sure,” said Clio.

The sunlight went out of the day. Kit didn't enjoy the first summer outing on the lake. She felt Clio didn't either, there was a sense of relief when they each went home.