The Glass Lake (27 page)

“D
ID
Mother have a best friend like I have Clio?” Kit asked.

“Well, she had Clio's mum, of course.” But they both knew that wasn't true. Mother hadn't liked Lilian Kelly.

“I mean before. Before she met you.”

“She had girls in the digs. She spoke of them a bit.”

“What were they called, Daddy?”

“It's so long ago, love, I can't remember. There was Dorothy, I think, and a Kathleen maybe…”

“Would she have been called Lena?”

“I don't know. Why?”

“I just wondered what people shorten their names to. Might the short name for Kathleen be Lena?” She looked flushed and eager.

Martin McMahon gave it some thought. She seemed to want it to be that way. “I think it might have been all right. It certainly is a way of shortening the name,” he said. Kit nodded, satisfied. As he did so often, Martin McMahon wished he knew what was going on in his daughter's mind.

Boys were so much simpler. He went fishing with Emmet many evenings on the lake. At first Emmet had been unwilling to touch the boat, but Martin had persevered. “We have no idea what happened that night, but we know one thing. Your mother would want you to grow up as part of this lake that she loved so much. She wouldn't want you to stay away from it.”

“But the boat, Daddy…”

“The boat is part of the lake, son. We won't ever know what happened in that boat and how your poor mother got dragged away. She'd surely want yourself and myself to go out in it and love the place as she did.”

It had been the right thing to say. His son went with him happily on the lake. And it seemed that Emmet enjoyed his fishing trips catching perch and pike.

The boy never noticed that his father's eyes were dead as he rowed.

“N
O
letters for you to my flat, Lena.”

“No? Well, there you go.”

“You're getting lots of London expressions,” Ivy said.

“If I'm going to live in London then I'd better learn to talk like Londoners,” Lena said.

“I thought you might be thinking of going back across the sea.”

“No, there's not any chance of that.”

“But the lifelines…?” Ivy persisted.

“Probably just as you said, very dangerous, very foolish.”

“Take that hard look off your face, Lena Gray. I'm your friend…I never said it was dangerous or foolish, I just told you to take care.”

“You're a great friend, Ivy.”

“When I get a chance to be, but that's not at the moment, so let it lie.” Ivy went back into her room on the ground floor. She didn't ask Lena in. She knew the time for intimacy was not now.

         

Jessie Park was worried whether her mother might be able to make the bathroom in her neighbor's house during the Coronation.

“She gets very excited, you know, when things are emotional.” Lena listened patiently. “Oh Lena. I know I'm wittering on a bit and I'm always telling you my woes, but I just don't know where to turn and you're always so calm, so practical.”

Lena looked at her kindly. It was a huge compliment to be called calm and practical, a woman like she was, on the run, living a false life with a man who might leave her again as he had done before.

Here she was in this great strange city, heartbroken that she had heard nothing from Kit and fearing that the letter had frightened the child. Yet Jessie thought she was as strong as an oak tree. “Let's see,” she said. “Didn't you tell me that flat was all on one level? There won't be any stairs.”

“I know, Lena, but she moves so very slowly…suppose she had a little accident?” Jessie bit her lip.

“I saw some pads in a chemist's last week. She could wear those and then there'd be no problem.” Lena was bright and positive.

Jessie thanked her so profusely that it almost brought tears to Lena's eyes. It was so easy to solve a little problem for someone else when they asked, and so hard to sort out your own….

         

In the Dryden Hotel all the preparations had gone ahead for Coronation Day. The chairs had been arranged in a semicircle in the drawing room just as Lena had suggested to Louis, and he had advised the hotel.

“Your lovely wife will not be with us for the day?” James Williams said with disappointment. He thought that Lena would have added a touch of class to the proceedings.

“Sadly no. She is needed in her own work.”

“I'm not surprised. I'm sure she is excellent in that employment agency. Perhaps she might be able to fill places for us as they become vacant.”

“Ah, yes. Of course she's always looking for the perfect position for her husband,” Louis joked.

“I'd be so sorry to lose you, Louis. You'd never take anything without letting us discuss a salary and conditions.”

“Mr. Williams, I wouldn't even want you to think I was speaking seriously.”

“And although I have asked you a dozen times to call me James you never will.”

“I am very happy here.”

“And is your wife happy in London? She doesn't yearn for somewhere else?”

“What makes you ask that, Mr. Williams?” Louis's eyes had narrowed.

“I don't know, something she said at Christmas, about everyone on earth should be forced to work in London for a time. I thought there was a message in those words.”

“She's my wife, and I never heard a message like that.” The words were perfectly polite but James Williams decided not to pursue it any further.

“W
OULDN'T
it be great to go to England for the Coronation?” Clio said.

“Where would we stay?”

“Aunt Maura has friends there, she's going to go.”

“Would she take us if we asked her?” Kit wondered.

“No, probably not. It's still term-time and they'd say we're too young.”

“I'd love to go anywhere,” Kit said.

“I know. So would I. By the time they let us we'll be too old.” Clio was glum and resigned about it.

“Philip O'Brien's going to Belfast with his mother,” Kit revealed.

“Yeah, but imagine going anywhere with Philip's mother.”

“He's all right though, I like him.”

“You're going to marry him. I can see it.” Clio was definite.

“You're always saying that. I haven't a notion of it. Why do you keep saying it?”

“Because he fancies you.”

“Well?”

“It doesn't matter that you don't fancy him, people always end up marrying people that fancy them.”

“That couldn't work out.” Kit fought it.

“No, I mean women do, girls do.”

“Why? I thought we were the ones meant to do the choosing and refusing and all that.”

“No, that's only in books and films. In real life we marry people who want to marry us.”

“All women do that?”

“Yes. Honestly.”

Kit thought about it. “Your mother? My mother?”

“Yes. Yes definitely.”

“And nobody fancied your aunt Maura?”

“That's different. She told me that she wasted time on a man who didn't fancy her. That was her mistake.”

“But was it a mistake?” Kit wanted to know. “You always said she was very happy, happier than anyone we know.”

“Yes, I know I did say that, but that's the way we see it. Maybe inside she's desperately unhappy.”

“What about Sister Madeleine who says she was married and is a nun?”

“I'll never understand that,” said Clio. “Not till the day I die.”

“W
HAT
are you thinking about?” Lena asked.

Louis smiled at her lazily. “I was thinking how beautiful you are,” he said.

“No you weren't.”

“Then why ask me?”

“I don't know. I suppose I sometimes want to know what goes on in your handsome head. We had a cat at home called Farouk. I used to look at him and wonder what could be going on in his head.”

“And am I like Farouk the cat?”

“Not nearly as handsome I'm afraid.”

“I don't like you saying ‘at home.' Lough Glass is not your home, your home is with me. It has always in some way been with me.”

She looked at him for a moment or two. A few weeks back she would have rushed in, begged, pleaded, said that she had been using only a form of words. But the night that he had left in the petty sulk, the night she knew she needed to write to her daughter, everything had changed. She didn't wish to tie him to her with humble words of apology, it could be no love if it was bought at such a price.

“Well, tell me, do you agree?” He was challenging her.

“No, my love, I don't. It wasn't where I wanted to be but I was there for thirteen damn years and other people called it my home and it was where I lived. So if I mention in passing that a cat who lived there with me, a fine handsome cat called Farouk lived at home with me…I don't think it's a slip of the tongue that is going to make or break us.”

He looked at her with admiration.

With a sudden flash of regret, she realized that if she had behaved like this years ago he might never have left her in the first place. But if he had stayed…what about Kit and Emmet? Would they have been the same people? Or different people? Or not existed at all?

No price was worth paying for them not to have existed at all.

         

“I'm going to have a perm for the Coronation,” Jessie Park said.

“Great idea,” Lena said.

“Mr. Millar has invited us both around to his brother's house in the evening.” Jessie spoke with reverence.

“Yes. I hope you'll go and tell me about it. I have to meet Louis, I think he's a bit let down that I won't be with him all day…” She saw Jessie's face crumple.

“Oh Lena, do you have to? Please come to Mr. Millar's, you can be with Louis any night…this is special.”

Lena looked at her fondly. Although she still called him Mr. Millar, Jessie had very fond thoughts about her employer. Lena had seen her looking at him in a way that had nothing to do with the employment agency. “No, honestly. I would if I could, but this is something I have to do. Anyway, you'll have more fun without me. I'd only be a gooseberry.”