The Glass Lake (14 page)

Mrs. Dillon in the newsagent's said that she had a great demand for Mass cards, because now that there was a body and there was going to be a funeral, everyone wanted to show their respect by having a Mass said for the repose of the soul of Helen McMahon.

Sergeant Sean O'Connor had to say that the men who came down from Dublin from Garda headquarters were as nice a pair of fellows as he had ever come across.

They told him that he had completed all the paperwork very well, and that he wasn't to worry himself over the length of time it took to find the body. This was wild country around here. “Indian country,” one of them suggested. They didn't know how a man could live in such a place, with nothing going on. Sean O'Connor didn't like this, he felt it was a bit disparaging, but they told him that Dublin was full of drawbacks too.

And they stayed with him in Paddles' bar until an unconscionable time in the morning, nodding to the rest of Lough Glass who were drinking late.

“You know everyone in the place,” one of the guards had said to him.

“Indeed I do, and all about them.”

“Did you know the deceased?”

“Of course I did.”

“Why did she do it, do you think?”

“Well, we don't know if she did.” Sean O'Connor had a caution that no number of pints could dislodge.

“No, we don't know she did, but we think she did. What drove her to it, do you think?”

“She wasn't right for here. She didn't settle, she sort of floated along the surface. Maybe she was too good-looking for the place.”

“Had she a fellow at all?”

“God, you couldn't have a fellow in Lough Glass if you were a married woman. If you're a single woman it's hard enough with every eye in the place watching you…”

“So she wasn't crossed in love, no hint of a baba or anything…”

“No.” Sergeant O'Connor was suddenly alert. “They didn't find anything like that, did they?”

“No.” The young Dublin guard was cheerful. “No, I'd say it was all far too late to discover anything like that, even if it had existed. Will we have another, do you think?”

Philip O'Brien called to the McMahon house to know if Kit would like him to sit with her for a bit. “You know, like the night she got lost,” he said.

Kit's eyes filled with tears. That was such a nice way of putting it. Mother had got lost.

“Thanks very much, Philip,” she said, and reached out and stroked his cheek. “You're very kind and good. But I think we'd—”

He interrupted her. “I know. I just wanted you to know I was always here down the road, like.” He went down the stairs again, and felt the spot on his face where Kit McMahon had stroked him.

It was oddly peaceful in the house, better than it had been for a month. They knew the formalities would take some days, but the funeral would be next weekend. They had something they could do for Mother now. They could give her a good farewell.

“Are you sorry they found her, Father? Did you hope she might have been alive somewhere, kidnapped even?” Kit asked.

“No, no. I knew that wasn't going to be the case.”

“So it's better that she's found?”

“Yes, it's much better. It's bad enough to have Mother dead, without leaving her forever in the lake. This way we can go to her grave.” There was a long silence. “It was a terrible accident, Kit, you know that,” her father said.

“I know,” said Kit. And she looked into the flames, big red and gold flames licking upward.

         

They were right in thinking that the formalities would not be long-drawn-out. Since Dr. Kelly who was the local doctor had identified the body, there had been only brief consultations with the pathologist. There was no question of foul play or of anyone else being involved.

Nor was there any mention of taking a life while of unsound mind. If there was doubt about the advanced state of decomposition of the body it was never aired publicly. Helen McMahon had been in the lake only a month, but it was wintertime, the fish in that part of the lake…well, there was no need for details.

And who else could it have been? Nobody from these parts had disappeared. The coroner spoke of the great need to clear the inland waterways of Ireland, too many tragic accidents had happened among the reeds and overgrown parts of lakes.

And then the body of Helen McMahon was released for burial.

         

On the day of the funeral Clio arrived at their house. “I brought you a mantilla,” she said.

“What's that?”

“It's like a black lace veil, a bit like a handkerchief. It's what Spanish people and posh Catholics everywhere wear on their heads when they don't want hats and when head scarfs aren't right.”

“Is it for me to wear at the church?”

“If you'd like to. It's a present from Auntie Maura.”

“She's very nice, isn't she?” Usually Kit found something to criticize about Clio's aunt.

Clio seemed pleased. “She is, and she always knows what to do.”

Kit nodded. It was true. Rita had told her last night that Mrs. Kelly's sister had come to advise her about the food to serve. She had suggested a big ham, and to ask Mr. Hickey at the butcher's to cook it for them. Rita had said they'd never do that, but Clio's aunt had been firm. Theirs was good custom, always at the shop. The Hickeys would be happy to do something to help. Let them bring it up on Sunday afternoon, when it was needed, before the people came back from the churchyard.

Rita said it was a great help, she didn't want to be mounting guard on a huge pot and smelling the whole house with it. She could concentrate now on asking people to bake homemade bread, and asking Mr. O'Brien from the hotel to lend them three dozen glasses.

And yet Kit felt somehow that it was disloyal to Mother to say that Clio's aunt Maura was being a great help. Mother hadn't liked her; she had never said so, but Kit was sure of it. But it was idiotic to think that Mother would want her to carry on a distance that was never even spoken of.

Would Mother like Kit to wear the mantilla? Kit stood still, wondering if Mother had thought about her funeral at all, before she had gone and done what she did. When she was writing the letter, had she paused to think about how Lough Glass would bury her.

A surge of anger passed across Kit.

“Are you okay?” Clio looked worried.

“Yes, I'm fine.”

“Aunt Maura said I wasn't to hang around you in case you wanted to be by yourself.” Clio looked uncertain, her big blue eyes full of concern.

Kit was covered in guilt. This was her best friend, who couldn't do more for her. Why was she always being so prickly and defensive toward her? “I'd love you to stay,” she said. “I need you. It would be great to have you there.” Clio's smile lit up the room. “Do you have a mantilla too?”

“No, Aunt Maura said it was just for you.” Kit put it on. “It looks terrific. Your mother would have been proud of you.”

And then for the first time in front of her friend, Kit let herself go and wept.

         

The hymns at a funeral were always sad. But on this wet winter afternoon, when the wind whipped up the lake and the church was cold and drafty, Father Baily thought that they never seemed sadder.

Perhaps it was the round, simple face of Martin McMahon, bewildered and unbelieving. Maybe the two children, the girl in a Spanish-type veil, the boy who had a speech difficulty which was cured and had got as bad as ever again.

Father Baily looked around the church.

The cast was assembled as usual. The choir sang “I'll Sing a Hymn to Mary.” They sang the first verse and the whole congregation joined in for the second.

“
O lily of the valley
,

O mystic flower what tree

What flower in the fairest

Is half as fair as thee…
”

Between the coughs and splutters they sang, eyes misted with tears for the woman who had died out on their lake.

When he had been saying his Office the previous night Father Baily had thought about Helen McMahon's death. Suppose she had taken her own life. But he had told himself firmly that God did not expect him to act as judge, jury, and executioner. He was merely the priest to say the funeral Mass and to commit her body to its resting place.

It was 1952. It wasn't the Middle Ages. Let her rest in peace.

The Sullivans stood together, Kathleen and her two sons. Stevie was busy catching the eye of Deirdre Hanley from the drapery shop. Kathleen glared at him. A church was not the place to make eyes at a girl. A funeral was not the time. Michael was kicking the front of his shoe trying to get some of the loose bits off. She gave him a sharp jab to get him to stop.

Michael had been a worry to her for a while. He kept moping about and asking her strange questions to which there were no answers. Like, if you knew something that other people didn't know, what should you say? Or, suppose everybody else thought one thing and you knew another thing, were you meant to tell them the other thing? Kathleen Sullivan had scant patience with such imponderables. Last weekend she had told her son Michael that she hadn't a notion of what he was talking about, and would he please consult his older brother. She was certain it must be about sex in some shape or form, and Stevie would give him the basic information he needed. At any rate, he seemed to be less agitated now. She hoped that Stevie had spoken with some kind of authority. She didn't at all like the glances he was giving that big bold strap of a Hanley girl, who was far too old for him, and a forward madam if ever there was one.

Kevin Wall thought that it must be desperate to have your mother all eaten up by fish. That's what had happened to Emmet McMahon's mother. And all on the night that he and Michael Sullivan had gone out on the lake. They might have been near to it happening. Michael had been very worried. He said they should tell people that it was they who had taken the boat out that night. Kevin had been against it, they'd get the arses beaten off them, he said. Michael, who didn't have a father to beat the arse off him, said maybe they shouldn't have guards and everyone looking for Emmet McMahon's mother when she hadn't gone near the boat. They had been playing in it and rowing up and down by the pier when it slipped away from them and they couldn't reach it. It had been blown out into the middle of the lake and then the waves had overturned it. Kevin said it didn't matter one way or the other, but Michael had been all frightened.

He said with guards involved they could all end in jail. Anyway it had all turned out fine. Kevin had been right after all to say nothing. Michael Sullivan was half mad. Of course, his father had died in an asylum. Not that Kevin would mention that.

Maura Hayes and her sister Lilian stood in good dark coats and their sober velour hats. Peter blew his nose loudly many times during the Requiem Mass. Young Clio and Anna stood beside them for the final hymn.

“Kit is holding up very well,” Lilian said approvingly to her daughter. “Isn't she very composed that she doesn't cry?”

“She's cried a lot. Maybe all her tears are gone,” Clio said.

Lilian looked at her in surprise. Clio was not always so sensitive. Perhaps the child was more feeling than Lilian had realized.

As the crowds came out into the biting cold wind Stevie Sullivan managed to be near Deirdre Hanley. “Will you come to my house…you know, after this?”

“Your house? You must be mad!” she said.

“My mother's going to be across the road in McMahon's.”

“Yes, so's mine.”

“So, we'll see from the window when they're all leaving and you can slip home.”

“See from where?” She ran her tongue across her lips.

“My bedroom…”

“You're joking?”

“A bed's just like a sofa, isn't it?” he said.

“And better than a car seat,” said Deirdre.

         

At the grave Kit spoke to Sister Madeleine. “Will her soul be at peace now?” she asked.

“Her soul has always been at peace,” said Sister Madeleine. “It's the rest of us will be at peace because we are seeing her laid to rest.” In her mind Kit saw the white envelope with the word
Martin
on it. Sister Madeleine took her arm and held it tight. “I beg you think only of what your mother would want of you, to be a strong young woman looking always to the future and not to the past.” Kit stared at Sister Madeleine in amazement. Her mother had indeed wanted that for her, said it in almost those words. “That's what you must think of now. That's how you make her feel at peace, knowing that you did what she wanted you to do.”

Kit looked around and saw all the people of Lough Glass preparing to say a decade of the Rosary for Helen McMahon. Kit had made this possible. She burned the letter that would have meant her mother being put in an unmarked grave outside the place where Christians were fit to lie.

She held her shoulders back.

“I'm doing the best I can, Mother,” she said, and reached for her father's big cold hand and Emmet's small trembling one as they stood at the grave in the rain.

Chapter Three

H
ELEN
McMahon reached for another cigarette. She needed to calm herself, she needed to think.

She did not believe that Martin could have reacted this way. She had fulfilled every promise that she had ever made him, telling him that she could not love him fully, as she knew there would be no forgetting Louis Gray. She had said that she would be faithful to Martin and live with him and be as good a wife as she could possibly be, if he allowed her freedom to walk and think and escape from the stifling boredom of a small town.

She had sworn she would not leave him without telling him exactly why. She had written it all out, painstakingly, in a letter. And left it on his bed before she left. She had told him about the child. About how she had met Louis again, how he had said it had been a mistake ever to have left her. They must try for their chance of happiness.

She would take nothing. Nothing that Martin had given her.

It had taken her a week to write that letter, the week before she left. She said he could say whatever he liked, and she would go along with it. That she had gone away with Louis. That she was visiting relatives. That she was ill and needed treatment. It was all she could give him, the choice to cover her departure with whatever story he wanted.

It wasn't much to give him in terms of dignity or face-saving when you considered how much she was taking.

She had given him the address and phone number of an organization that rescued Irish girls in trouble in London. There was a grim irony about it. That's what she was, in many ways, an Irish girl in trouble. She had said she would be there every day from four to six. She had said she would wait to hear what he wanted to say.

         

They had arrived on the afternoon of October 30th, tired and wet, she still nauseous with her pregnancy. She had sat by the phone as she had promised for four days. There had been no call.

She had said that she would not get in touch with him, she would wait until he had decided what to do. Her letter had been very firm on that point. She would give him time, all the time he wanted to digest the news and to respond as he saw fit. Twenty times she had tried to tell him and on every occasion he had smiled his foolish loving smile, or made a silly child's comic joke.

The only way she could let him know the totally serious nature of her decision was to write it to him. And now, in spite of her impatience to know his reaction and what he planned to tell the children, she was sitting here in agony. But fairness meant that she must keep her word. Now she couldn't telephone…she could not write again.

The days of her new life, the life she had run to with Louis Gray, the man she had always loved, were nightmare days.

She had steeled her heart for the tearful call from Martin begging her to return.

She had prepared explanations for the accusations that she was a monster to leave her children. She was having another child now, her responsibility was to the future. She knew he would not lower himself to get the children to beseech her to come back. He would not use them as pawns. If he was reasonable and calm she might be able to give him advice. She had rehearsed how she would tell him that people would forget in time. The way they had forgotten about so many people who had left Lough Glass for this reason or that. There would be questions for a few weeks, then the interest would die down. He would not be a figure of scandal or of pity and scorn.

And she owed him this…she would cooperate with anything he wanted to do.

And she waited for four days and four nights without hearing anything at all.

“Ring him,” Louis had urged.

“No.” She was adamant.

“Jesus, Helena, it's Monday night. You've been gone since Wednesday. He'll have us both in a madhouse with these tactics.”

“They're not tactics, Louis. Martin isn't like that.”

She looked at him, his thick dark hair, his handsome face white with worry. He wore a slate-blue jacket exactly the color of his eyes. He was the most handsome man she had ever met in her life.

After she had seen him nobody else counted.

She still could not believe that he had come back for her. She believed him utterly when he said it had all been a mistake, his own greedy mistake to run away with a rich woman. Helen knew that was true.

His face had lines on it now. They made him more handsome than ever, but they were lines of sadness. And what was so wonderful was that he was so grateful she had forgiven him. That she had put behind her his desertion and betrayal.

“I don't deserve you,” he had said a thousand times since he had come back to find her. “I wouldn't blame you if you sent me away,” he had said.

Send him away?

Louis Gray, the man she had wanted since she was twenty-three. The man she had still wanted on the day she married Martin McMahon when she was twenty-five. The man she had thought of with her eyes tightly closed every time that Martin made love to her.

Send him away?

She would have wandered the world looking for him had she thought that there was a chance to get him back.

But he had come to look for her. He had come secretly to Lough Glass, to beg her to believe that his eyes were open now. There was just one love in the world for everyone, Louis had said. He had been so wrong to think that he could create the same thing with another woman.

It appeared that Helen might have been wrong to try and create it with Martin McMahon, kindly, honorable, and dull chemist in Lough Glass. Then it was clear to both of them that they had to seize it and run. The stolen hours in the spring and summer around the woods of Lough Glass had been proof that the magic was there. The discovery that Helen was pregnant had been the spur they needed.

They were like teenage lovers in their excitement about the adventure ahead. Irresponsible, uncaring about the world around them as they hid from the inquisitive eyes of the small town. Would they disguise themselves when they went to London? It would be just their luck to meet someone from Lough Glass—Lilian over on a secret expedition to have her facial hair dealt with, Mrs. Hanley to look at exotic lingerie for her drapery shop. They giggled with each other at the madness of it all, yet when they did arrive Helen had gone immediately to a hairdresser to have her hair cut. It was more than an effort to disguise herself, it was also the start of a new life.

Helen watched her long, dark curls fall to the ground and she felt the wasted years slipping away. She looked younger, stronger now. And Louis loved it. That was the important thing. Not that anyone would find them in this part of London. Irish visitors would go to Piccadilly or Oxford Street, or Camden Town to see their relations. They wouldn't come to this street in Earl's Court.

They had been so lucky to find the flat, or room really. It was in a tall house which the landlady was in the process of doing up. But so far she had only got around to doing up one floor. She certainly hadn't got around to this room, and by the time she would manage to include that in her plans for making the place more elegant Helen and Louis would be far away, in a house more suitable for a family.

They would be living with their child. But in the meantime this was their home. A room in Earl's Court, London SW 5. Helen had to keep saying it over and over to herself. A city so big that you had to tell people whether you were north or south or east or west in it. You had to give your area a number as well as a name.

After thirteen long years in Lough Glass, a place with one street that had little laneways off down to the lake…

This was heady excitement.

It was a small room certainly, with a sofa that turned into a bed. There were few adornments, just a couple of pictures of Alice Springs left by the previous tenants, who had been Australian. A small table and two wooden chairs. The carpet was threadbare, and the paper that lined the chest of drawers was grimy and smelled of must. The sink had a rust mark where the tap had dripped, and the little shelf beside it which did as dressing table and draining board had a torn piece of oilcloth.

But it was their home, the home she had always wanted to live in with Louis Gray.

Four days away from their previous life Helen had forgotten the carved furniture in her bedroom. The mahogany wardrobes that had belonged to Martin's parents, the graceful dressing table with its ball-and-claw legs. They were part of something that was far behind. Or that should have been far behind if Martin had played his part in the bargain.

Louis was very certain what was happening. “I don't blame the man, truly I don't. We made him suffer, now he's making us sweat. It's what I'd do if someone stole you away from me.” He hunkered on the floor beside her and looked up at her.

Helen didn't want to argue it any further. She had lived for thirteen years with Martin McMahon. It was not in his character to let people sweat, to make them suffer. What she had most feared was that he would telephone her and cry. That he would promise to be better, different, kinder, stronger…whatever she wanted him to be. “I suppose he got the letter?” she said suddenly.

“You said you left it where he couldn't miss it.”

“I know I did…”

“And no one else would have taken it…it
was
addressed to him?”

“No one else would have taken it.” Helen had been over this ground before. It wasn't helping her and it was beginning to irritate Louis. She forced it out of her mind. “I love you, Louis,” she said.

“And I love you, Helena.”

He had always called her that. It was special between them. She remembered helping Kit with her history homework—the island where Napoleon spent his exile. Saint Helena. Like my name, she had said.

“You're Helen.” Kit had corrected her sharply, as if there were something dangerous about Mother's having a different name. It was as if the child had known.

“Will you take me out on the town?” She smiled at him. She hoped her eyes didn't look as old and tired as they felt from inside.

“Now you're talking,” he said. He got their raincoats and he handed her the red square she wore to cover her hair. She tied it like the gypsy woman had tied hers. Jaunty, cheerful. “You are so beautiful,” he said.

She bit her lip. She had dreamed so often that he would come back for her. It was impossible to take it in now that he had.

         

They went down the stairs, past the bathroom they shared with three other flats. There were rules on the wall, in a plastic frame so that the writing could not fade with the steam. Hot water from the geyser had to be paid for. The place was to be left as you would like to find it. Sponge bags were not to be left in the bathroom.

Helen's thoughts never went back to the big comfortable bathroom over McMahon's pharmacy, where the thick towels were warmed by a radiator, where there was a woolly mat to keep chilly feet warm.

“This is great fun,” Helen said as she ran down the stairs lightly. She saw from his smile that she was doing the right thing. Louis Gray loved life to be easy, to be free from furrowed brows.

Ivy looked out from her flat near the door. She was a small, wiry woman with short pepper-and-salt hair. She had a lined face but a bright smile. It was hard to know whether she was nearer forty or fifty. She wore cotton coveralls with tiny pink and purple flowers on them. She had the look of someone who had always worked very hard and who could take on any task. Certainly she found the business of being a landlord to many varied tenants no strain. She had a glass-fronted door with a thick curtain so that she could observe the comings and goings of her tenants.

“Off out to enjoy yourselves?” she said.

Helen didn't resent Ivy Brown's questions.

They weren't like the inquiries back in Lough Glass. “Going for a walk by the lake, Mrs. McMahon?” “Off on your own again, Helen?” “And where have you been this afternoon?” She hated every greeting from Mrs. Hanley of the draper's, from Dan O'Brien of the Central Hotel, from Lilian Kelly the doctor's wife, with the eyes that knew too much.

Ivy Brown was different. She checked the stairs only so that Australian youngsters wouldn't bring in a dozen more tenants to sleep on the floor, or that no one sublet so that some could use the room by day and some by night depending on the shifts they worked.

“He's taking me out to see a bit of London, Mrs. Brown.” She flung her head back and laughed at the pleasure of it all.

“Call me Ivy, dear. Otherwise we're all Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Brown, a bit gloomy,” Ivy laughed.

Louis stepped forward to shake her hand, to make the change from acquaintance to friend. “Louis and Helena Gray,” he said.

Helen felt a thrill as he said it. Like a sixteen-year-old, not a middle-aged runaway wife, expecting someone else's child.

“Lena Gray,” said Ivy Brown thoughtfully. “That's a lovely name. Sounds like a film star. You could be a film star, love, and all.”