The Glass Lake (21 page)

But here in the midst of terrible confusion but with the man she loved they all told her she looked blooming and happy. It must prove something.

“It's a very nice place to work, Mr. Millar, and it's great to be in at the start of such new changes with you and Miss Park.”

Lena Gray had brightened up their office and their lives. She could see this in their faces and it made her feel better than ever.

The days passed. Sometimes they flew by, and Lena wondered how it could be time to close, she could hardly remember having reached lunchtime. Other days time went so slowly, she wondered was the world coming to an end and had everything slowed down. She roamed the secondhand shops and auction rooms of London and found wonderful wall hangings and Indian bedspreads to drape the shabby furniture in the flat. She bought a briefcase, a leather one with brass locks, for Louis. She polished it until it shone.

“Not really essential for a hall porter,” he said ruefully.

“Come on out of that. How many times have they asked you to do night manager? Your portering days are drawing to a close.”

And indeed they did.

Soon Louis was working on the night desk three times a week. And it didn't seem fitting for the guests to meet someone they had known in the administration to appear carrying their bags.

One evening Lena went with him to see where he worked.

“I can imagine you much better if I see it,” she said.

He hadn't wanted it at first. “It's very hard to explain why…” he said. “I sort of play a role at work, you know, I'm not my real self.”

“Neither am I,” Lena agreed.

And he had let her come.

Mr. Williams, the manager, had been impressed with the handsome dark-haired woman the Irishman had produced. “No wonder he had been keeping you hidden,” Mr. Williams said.

Lena knew just how to reply. “Ah, that's very flattering of you, Mr. Williams, but it's all my fault. I'm still so unfamiliar with London…” She was throwing herself on his mercy, saying she was a country person who didn't understand the big city.

Not flirting, that would have been crass.

It was exactly the right course to have taken. Mr. Williams, a large, bluff man, became protective and gallant. “I hope you have both taken to the place. Louis is a very valued employee.”

“Oh, we intend to make a good life here, I assure you. London has so much to offer.”

“I'm surprised you can leave this attractive wife and work here at night…”

Lena spoke quickly. “It wouldn't be my choice, Mr. Williams. But I know that if Louis wants to work his way to working on the desk in the daytime, he has to put in his hours at the more antisocial end of things as well.” They all smiled. This was not a couple who groaned or complained. But it was a couple who intended to move upward.

It was not long before Louis Gray was offered a position on the desk as an assistant manager. He was unfailingly courteous to those who had worked with him as porters. Particularly the head porter, who had been so difficult when he came first.

The Christmas lights were going up in London. Lena forced her mind away from the trains of thought that brought her down the road to Hickey's to order the turkey. There would be no decorations above McMahon's pharmacy this year.

As she had guessed, Ivy did not refer to the conversation they had had together on the wet Tuesday night when Lena had decided against ringing Lough Glass. If Ivy understood how strange and hard the decision had been she gave no sign, instead just little gestures of friendship. A pot of homemade jam that someone had given her, a couple of records that she didn't play anymore. Lena knew that these were a gift because she had heard Louis say how much he loved
Singing in the Rain
.

Ivy made no mention of Christmas. She must have known that it would be a time of tension and drama for the young couple on the second floor. Sometimes Lena wondered about the kind of Christmases Louis had spent during the long years of their separation. But part of the promise and the plan had been that they would not talk about the past.

He would not ask about sleeping with her husband. She would not ask him about the times and the people and the places she knew nothing of.

It worked very well. They had their own little world. Sometimes he came to Sunday Mass with her, sometimes not. It was easier when he didn't go with her, then she could buy the paper and read about what was happening in Lough Glass and the places for fifty miles around it. She read of land bought and sold—of children born, of people buried.

And on Sunday, December 21st, when she went to the big church in Quex Road, Kilburn, to pray that God would help her sort out how to make Christmas a good Christmas for Louis and herself, Lena made a deal with God. She said to him that he had always loved sinners, and shown them mercy and that if her only sin had been to run away with Louis, then God might see it with a more forgiving eye.

“So,” Lena said, “I don't cheat, I don't steal, I don't lie, apart from the one big one that we are husband and wife. I don't say bad things about people, I don't blaspheme, I don't miss Mass.” She had no way of knowing if God went along with the deal. But then, even if you weren't living in mortal sin you often didn't know whether God was going along with the deal either. You had to try and interpret his answers in your heart. It was hard to interpret sometimes. Especially in a big strange church with a lot of coughing and sneezing. It was a cold December day.

Lena went to the kiosk and bought the paper that told her of home. She read that her body had been found in the lake. That a verdict of death by misadventure had been returned. And that a large crowd had attended her funeral at the parish church in Lough Glass. Through her tears she saw that the chief mourners had been the late woman's husband, Martin McMahon of the Lough Glass pharmacy, her daughter, Mary Katherine, and her son, Emmet John. Their mother was dead and buried now in the churchyard. Someone else's bones had been found. And identified as hers.

Lena thought suddenly, and knew somehow, God had acted for her. Perhaps he had answered her prayers. Lena had no decision to make now.

Now she could never go home.

Chapter Four

L
ILIAN
Kelly brought up the subject again. “Peter, I wish you'd put it more clearly to Martin. Tell him to bring the lot of them here for their Christmas dinner.”

“I suggested it…”

“Ah, you only suggested it. Tell them it would be the right thing to do. And that girl of theirs in the kitchen too if he's worried about her. She can help Lizzie here, Lizzie'd be glad of it. They don't want to be sitting looking at each other in that house after all that happened there.”

“Nothing happened there, Lilian,” Peter Kelly said. He was reading a medical journal as always, and seemed to give little attention to his wife.

Lilian appealed to her sister Maura, who had come to join them for the Christmas holiday. “Come on, Maura. Tell him they can't sit there looking at each other….”

“But they're going to have to sometime,” Maura said. “Maybe they should get used to it rather than running away.”

Peter looked up, surprised. “That's what Martin said himself.”

“Well then.” Maura seemed pleased.

In the hotel Dan O'Brien asked Mildred did she think they should ask the McMahons in for their Christmas dinner.

“We don't want to be imposing on them.”

“It wouldn't be imposing, it would be a kindness.” Dan didn't relish the thought of yet another empty celebration with his wife and son, and little conversation. At least the presence of the McMahons might force some talk around his dinner table.

“I think they're going to have their own kind of a meal, you know, to make things seem normal,” Philip suggested. He too would have loved Kit sitting at his table and to have stood to serve her, but he knew it wouldn't happen.

“Well, there you are, then,” said Mildred O'Brien. She had never liked that arty Helen McMahon, and everyone knew that there was something suspicious about her death. Note or no note, there were a lot of people in Lough Glass who thought she had ended her own life.

         

Mrs. Hanley in the drapery was having severe trouble with her daughter Deirdre. “You want to go where on Christmas Day?” she asked.

“Out for a walk, visiting graves, you know.”

“No, I don't know. Whose graves?”

“People who died, Mam. That's what's done on Christmas Day, they go and say prayers for the dear departed.”

“You have no dear departed at the moment. Except yourself might be heading that way if you're not careful.”

“You're a very selfish, unfeeling person.”

“Tell me, who would you pray for if you went out on Christmas Day…just one.”

“Well, I could pray up at the graveyard for Stevie Sullivan's father.”

“He's not buried there, he's buried in a madhouse thirty miles away!” Deirdre Hanley's mother was triumphant.

“Well, for Kit McMahon's mother.”

“She's barely buried. Come on out of that, Deirdre, you want to go out to get up to no good with someone, and when I find out who it is there'll be trouble, I tell you.”

“Who could get up to no good in this town?” Deirdre asked with a sigh.

“You could. And I have my eye on you. Is it that young fellow, Dan O'Brien's son?”

“Philip O'Brien!” There was genuine horror and revulsion in Deirdre Hanley's voice. “Philip. He's a child, an awful child.”

Mrs. Hanley knew she had to look elsewhere for the suspect.

         

Sister Madeleine refused invitations for Christmas Day, but it was said that she had more on her table than most of the people in Lough Glass. They tactfully found out what others were bringing so that items would not be duplicated.

Rita said she'd just take her a loaf of bread. “At least I know you'll eat that. You'll be giving the plum pudding to the gypsies and the slices of turkey to the little fox or whatever you have nowadays.”

“I have a big lame goose,” said Sister Madeleine. “And it would be very undiplomatic of me to feed her something as nearly related as a turkey. But you're right, I love the bread.”

“It'll be very hard above in the house there on Thursday,” Rita said.

“No harder than any other day.” Sister Madeleine was surprisingly unsympathetic.

“But you know, thinking back on other Christmas Days…”

“It's better that she's safely buried. It does give people a sort of peace, you know.”

“Would you mind where you were buried yourself, Sister Madeleine?”

“No, not at all. But then, I'm as odd as two left shoes. You know that.”

“Is there anything I should do, do you think?”

“No, I don't believe in putting on an act. Whatever's going to happen will happen.”

“I wish they'd talk about her.”

“They might at Christmas.”

“B
ROTHER
Healy! Always good to see you. They tell me that the Christmas Crib down at St. John's has to be seen to be believed.” Mother Bernard was loftily gracious.

“All the work of that young criminal Kevin Wall. Apparently the hermit gave him greenery and hay and all kinds of things. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, Mother Bernard.”

“And isn't it a good thing that the Lord directed them where to find the body of poor Helen McMahon in time to have her buried in holy ground before Christmas.” The nun spoke as if it were another tiresome problem that God had conveniently tidied up and got out of the way before the Christmas season.

But Brother Healy knew what she meant. “Lord have mercy on her. It was indeed,” he said. Teachers hear more than they are meant to, and he had heard a lot of speculation, mainly in the schoolyard.

There was some complicated story that young Wall had taken out the McMahons' boat and that this meant that Emmet's mother had not drowned from it. And then there were rumors that she might have been having a romance with one of the gypsies. Maybe she had run away with him. Or they were hiding her in their caravans.

Nothing you'd want to burden Sean O'Connor with up at the Garda station, but all the same, it was great when that body had been found. Mother Bernard was right, it had been good of the Lord to direct them to find Helen McMahon and finish her troubled life off as every life should be finished, with hymns being sung and Father Baily accompanying the coffin to the churchyard.

         

“What does Emmet think about Santa Claus?” Clio asked on Christmas Eve.

“He thinks like we all think.”

“No, I mean would he be expecting something…your father mightn't remember.”

“It was always Mam that did it.” Kit was defensive in the recall of her mother's good deeds.

“Oh!” Clio was surprised.

“It's all right. He knows, but I'll do it for him anyway. Something beside the chimney.”

“And who'll do it for you?”

“Dad might leave me some soap from the chemist's.” She sounded doubtful.

There were so many things that Mother used to do, things that everyone took for granted. At Christmastime she used to fill the house with holly boughs; Father used to laugh and say it was like living in a forest. He would never say that again. Mother used to go to town and buy presents ages before Christmas and there was never a trace of them around the house. Kit still didn't know how she had got the bicycles home with her the year of the bikes, or how she had hidden the record player last year. Was it only last year when everything had been all right?

And Mother knew the right kind of clothes to get Rita, always something brand-new in a box from the big town. Kit and Father wouldn't even know what size Rita was and couldn't go looking or measuring or anything. Mother always had boxes of crackers stored somewhere, and long paper chains that crisscrossed the kitchen. Kit wondered should they look for them. They weren't in the kitchen cupboards; perhaps they were in Mother's room, her little secret surprise.

But they were in mourning, maybe they wouldn't have a Christmas tree even. They would have to have a crib, with the straw in it. That hadn't to do with celebrating, that had to do with welcoming baby Jesus. Kit sighed with the weary burden of it all.

Clio thought it was still about the Christmas stockings. “We could do them for you, you know, my mother and father could. They'd be glad to do something,” Clio said, her eyes full of tears.

Kit shook her head. “No, I'll manage it, thanks very much all the same. The Santa Claus bit isn't the worst bit, let me tell you.”

“What is the worst bit?”

“She won't know how I turn out. She'll never know.”

“She'll know from heaven.”

“Yes,” Kit said. The silence lay between them. Despite the comforting words that Father Baily had intoned over the coffin, Kit knew that her mother had not been met by the angels and led into Paradise. She had committed the great sin against Hope, for which there is no forgiveness.

Kit's mother was in hell.

“C
HRISTMAS
Eve can be hell on earth,” Ivy said to Lena. “Everyone running round doing their last-minute shopping. It's as if Christmas comes on people by surprise, as if they hadn't known for weeks it was on its way.”

“We work until lunchtime…though I don't know why. Nobody wants to come to look for a job on Christmas Eve.”

“Probably Mr. Millar and Jessie Park have nowhere to go,” Ivy said shrewdly.

“I'm sure you're right.” Lena realized that this was indeed true.

Some people's lives just revolved around their work. In the hotel where Louis worked they stayed open for Christmas mainly because the staff had nowhere else to go. Mr. Williams had told them there would be a big staff meal at four o'clock. He would be honored if Lena would join them. It had indeed been an answer to all her problems. There would be no false re-creating of a Christmas scene for the two of them. The flat had been nicely decorated but it would make things much easier for her if they had a duty dinner to attend.