The Glass Lake (6 page)

The woman slipped silently away.

“‘My dark Rosaleen,'” said Sister Madeleine. “Read it nice and slowly to me. I'll close my eyes and make pictures of it all.”

Rita stood in the sunlight by the little window where people had brought pots of geraniums for the hermit, and with the bantam chicks around her feet she read…

“
My dark Rosaleen
,

My own Rosaleen
,

Shall glad your heart and give you hope

Shall give you health and help and hope

My dark Rosaleen
.”

“Wasn't that beautiful!” Sister Madeleine spoke of the poem. Rita laughed aloud with pleasure, sheer pleasure that she had read without stumbling. “That was beautiful, Rita. Don't ever tell me you couldn't read a poem,” she said.

“Do you know what I was thinking, Sister?”

“No. What were you thinking? Your mind was far away; poetry does that to you.”

“I was just thinking that if young Emmet were to come to you…?”

“Emmet McMahon?”

“Yes. Maybe you could cure his stutter, getting him to read sonnets and everything.”

“I can't cure a stutter.”

“You could make him read, he's too shy to read at school. He's fine with his friends but he hates when Brother Healy comes to him in class. He was the same when he was in Babies, he got red in the face with fright.”

“He'd have to want to come. Otherwise, it'd only be a torture to him.”

“I'll tell him the kind of magic you do.”

“I think we should talk less about magic, you know people might take you seriously.”

Rita understood at once. There were people in Lough Glass who were suspicious of Sister Madeleine, the hermit. And thought she might not come in a direct line from God. It had been whispered that people who believed in herbs and cures from the olden times might be getting their power from the very opposite of God.

The Devil hadn't been mentioned, but the word had stood hovering in the air over such conversations.

D
AN
O'Brien stood at his door looking up and down the street. Business in the Central Hotel was never so pressing that he couldn't find several opportunities during the day to come out and survey the main thoroughfare. Like many towns in Ireland, Lough Glass consisted of one long street, the church in the middle, the Brothers at one end and the convent strategically placed far at the other, giving the children as little chance of accidental meetings as possible. In between, there were the shops, houses, and businesses of his neighbors, fronting onto the same street as he did himself.

You could learn a lot by standing at your own door. Dan O'Brien knew that Billy Sullivan's two boys had come back from their uncle's once their father had been locked away. The fiction was that they had been visiting, helping the uncle out with the farm. Everyone knew, of course, that Kathleen had sent them there to avoid the drunken rages and the unsettled atmosphere in the family home.

It was hard on children like that.

The lads were not to blame for the life they were born into. Handsome little fellows too, the very image of Billy himself before his face had turned fleshy from the drink and he had coarsened beyond recognition. They would be company for poor Kathleen anyway. Stevie must be about sixteen, and Michael was the same age as his own lad, Philip.

Philip didn't like him, he said that Michael Sullivan was tough, and he was always ready for a fight.

“So would you if you had been brought up with an old man like his,” Dan O'Brien said. “Not everyone is as lucky as you are, Philip.” Philip had looked at him doubtfully. But then, the young were never satisfied with what they got.

Dan watched as the summer afternoon took its leisurely course. There was never much of a sense of urgency in Lough Glass, even a Fair Day had a relaxed air about it. But when the weather was warm like this, people seemed to move at half speed.

He saw young Clio Kelly and Kit McMahon arm in arm practicing the steps of some dance along the footpath, oblivious to anyone else. It seemed only a few months since those two had been skipping ropes, and here they were getting ready for the ballroom. They were the same age as his Philip, twelve, an unsettled age.

And as he watched he saw Mother Bernard from the convent walking in a stately manner accompanied by one of the younger nuns. Her face was one line of disapproval. Even in the holidays her charges should not behave like that. Treating the public road as a place for silly dancing.

They sensed her coming, and changed their antics rapidly.

Dan smiled to himself at the contrite appearance of the two rascals. He would like to have had a daughter. But his wife was not well enough to face another pregnancy after Philip was born.

“Haven't we the son? Isn't that enough for you?” Mildred had said. As there were going to be no more children, there was no more lovemaking. That was obvious, Mildred had said.

Dan O'Brien sighed, as he often did. Imagine being a man with a normal married life, like…well, like anyone really. His eye fell on Martin McMahon crossing the road to Sullivan Motors. A man with a spring in his step and a very attractive wife. Imagine being able to take a woman like Helen McMahon upstairs and draw the curtains and…

Dan decided not to think about it anymore. It was too frustrating.

         

Mother Bernard and Brother Healy were discussing the autumn retreat. Sometimes the priests who came to do the Mission weren't at all suitable to face the children in a school. But this year they heard that there was a very famous priest coming to Lough Glass, a Father John who gave sermons that were attended by hundreds of people at a time. They traveled to hear him, or that's what Father Baily had told them.

“I wonder can he keep order with a crowd of hooligans.” Brother Healy had his doubts. Famous preachers could be a bit ethereal for his liking.

“Or realize when those girls are making a fool of him.” Mother Bernard had an eagle eye for mischief makers.

“I don't know why we're even debating it, Mother Bernard. These decisions are never left to us, the people who know about how things should be done.”

They often asked each other why they bothered discussing things, but in their hearts they knew that they loved discussing things. As educators of Lough Glass's young they were united in facing the problems of the uncaring world.

Secretly Mother Bernard thought that Brother Healy had life easy. Boys were so simple and straightforward. They weren't devious like girls. Brother Healy thought that it must be a very easy number just to have little girls in uniform. They didn't write terrible words in the bicycle shed and beat each other black and blue in the yard. But neither of them had much faith that Father John, preacher extraordinary, would keep the minds and attention of the children of this lakeland town.

T
HE
day before schools reopened, the children were all down by the lake, enjoying the last hours of freedom, and even though they groaned about the awfulness of going back to the dreaded classroom the next day, quite a few of them were relieved that the long summer was over.

Philip O'Brien from the hotel was particularly pleased. It had been very hard to fill the hours. If he stayed in the hotel his father was inclined to say that he should wash the glasses or empty the ashtrays.

Emmet McMahon was looking forward to showing off his new confidence. A few weeks with Sister Madeleine had done wonders. He had even asked her if she could do the poems in his schoolbook, in case they might make sense like the ones in her book. As if you read them with your heart.

“Why doesn't Brother Healy teach them like that?” he asked Sister Madeleine.

But she had no explanation. She seemed insistent that Brother Healy did teach them like that. It was very unsatisfactory.

Clio Kelly didn't want to go back to school. She was fed up with school. She knew enough now, she wanted to go to a stage school in London and learn to dance and sing, and be discovered by a kind old man who owned a theatre.

Anna, her younger sister, would be quite happy when lessons started. Anna was in disgrace at home. She claimed she had seen the ghost. She said she saw the woman crying, she couldn't exactly hear what the words were but she thought it was “Look in the reeds, look in the reeds.” Her father had been unexpectedly cross with her and accused her of looking for notice.

“But I
did
see her,” Anna had wept.

“No, you did not see her. And you are not to go around saying you did. This is a hysterical enough place already without you adding to it. It's dangerous and foolish to let simple people think that an educated girl like you should give in to such foolishness.”

Even her mother had been unsympathetic. And Clio had a horrible smirk of superiority, as if she were saying to her family “Now, wasn't I right about how awful Anna is.”

Kit McMahon was pleased to be going back to school. She had made a promise that this year she would work very hard. It had been a promise made during the only good conversation she had had with her mother for as long as she could remember.

It was the day she got her first period. Mother had been marvelous, and said all the right things, like wasn't it great she was a woman now, and that this was a fine time to be a woman in Ireland. There was so much freedom and so many choices.

Kit expressed some doubt about this. Lough Glass wasn't a place that inspired you with a notion of wild and free, and she wondered how very unlimited were the options that lay ahead of her. But Mother had been serious. When the next decade came, when they got to the 1960s, there'd be nothing a woman couldn't do. Even this year people were beginning to accept that a woman could run things.

Look at poor Kathleen Sullivan over there across the road, filling tractors with fuel, supervising the man from the oil company when he came to restock. A few years ago they wouldn't have taken an order from a woman, preferring to deal with any man, even one as obviously incapable as Billy Sullivan.

“But it all depends on being ready for it, Kit. Will you promise me, whatever happens, that you'll work hard at school?”

“Yes, yes of course.” Kit was impatient. Why did it always have to come back to this in the end. But there was something in Mother's face that made this sound different.

“Sit here beside me and hold my hand, and promise me that you'll remember this day. It's an important day for you, let's mark it by something else. Let's make it the day you promised your mother that you'd prepare yourself for the world properly.” Kit had looked at her blankly. “I know it sounds like the old refrain…but if only I were your age again…if only…I would work so hard. Oh Kit, if I'd known…” Her mother's face was anguished.

Kit was very alarmed. “Known what? What is it, Mam? What didn't you know?”

“That being educated makes you free. Having a career, a place, a position, you can do what you want.”

“But you did what you wanted, didn't you? You married Dad, and you had us?” Kit knew her own face must be white, because she saw her mother's expression change.

Her mother stroked her cheek. “Yes, yes of course I did.” She was soothing, like she was when she told Emmet there were no demons in the dark, when she encouraged Farouk the cat to come out from a hidey place behind the sofa.

“So why did you wish…?”

“I don't wish it for myself, I wish it for you…so that you'll always be able to choose, you won't have to do things because there's nothing else to do.”

Mother was holding her hand. “Will you tell me something truly?” Kit had asked.

“Of course I will.”

“Are you happy? I often see you looking sad. Is this where you want to be?”

“I love you, Kit, I love Emmet, and I love your father with all my heart. He is the kindest and best man in the whole world. That is the truth. I would never lie to him and I don't lie to you either.” Mother was looking at her, she wasn't half looking out the window with her mind abstracted as she often did.