The Glass Lake (64 page)

“She's only pretty in a schoolgirl way,” Stevie said. Then the band began to play “A Fool Such as I” and he held her close to him for the slow swaying number. He held himself back from her to look at her face, flushed, eyes sparkling. “Now you, Kit McMahon, you are seriously good-looking,” he said.

She understood in those seconds why people had found him so sexy and attractive, why even married women had gone off with him and taken terrible risks. But of course he would be a ridiculous person to fall for, Kit told herself. Thank heavens she was only doing this ludicrous charade as a favor for her little brother. She reminded herself of this again as his arms tightened around her when they danced.

“You behaved like a spoiled brat,” Clio said to Anna. “I want you to know that I will never forgive you for this as long as I live.”

“Did I spoil your plans?” Anna asked.

“You were extremely discourteous to a friend who kindly drove me the whole way from Dublin.”

“And was about to drive you upstairs to bed if only little sister hadn't been here to guard your reputation.”

“Don't you dare even suggest such a thing.” Clio was white with rage.

“I think we're quits,” Anna said calmly. “You don't mention my bad manners, I don't mention your intentions.” She went back to her book.

Clio saw it was
Wuthering Heights
. “Poseur, affected show-off…pretending you read books like that for pleasure…”

“But I do,” Anna said. “There's real passion in this book, not just gropes and feels in motorcars. And anyway, aren't you the one studying English for a degree? I thought you would read a book a day, a classic I mean, for pleasure.”

“I could stab you with the bread knife and pretend it was an intruder that did it,” Clio said.

“Yes, but it wouldn't be worth it,” Anna said, going back to her reading.

         

Martin McMahon was annoyed when they got home. The door was open. “That's very careless of Emmet,” he grumbled. “Leaving a door swinging open on the street.”

“Maybe he's just gone upstairs,” Maura said, ever the peacemaker and wanting to find an excuse.

“Let me check the chemist's.” Martin always feared that people would break in in search of his medicines and drugs.

Maura went up the stairs without him. There didn't seem to be any sign of Emmet, but the light was on in the kitchen, so Maura went in there.

But it wasn't Emmet who sat there. It was a tramp, she thought first, a man with a torn coat that had been wet through. His shoes looked as if they had let in water and he was unshaven, and wild-looking even though he was asleep with his head lolling to one side.

Maura's hand flew to her throat. “Oh my God!” she said before she could stop herself. Her voice woke the man and he leaped to his feet. Maura saw that his eyes were wild and she clutched her throat in terror. “Please,” she said. “Please.”

The man stood up unsteadily. He looked around him for something that would serve as a weapon.

Maura knew with relief that the knives were at the very back of a drawer. He wouldn't find one easily. She was surprised at how rationally her mind was able to work. She prayed that Martin would come up the stairs, and then she prayed at the same time that he wouldn't. The man was like a wild animal who would see himself trapped by two people and flail even more dangerously. “I won't hurt you,” she said.

He gave a strangled cry, a sound that wasn't any words. But at the same time he picked up one of the kitchen chairs and lunged at Maura.

She moved away from him, leaving him the doorway free to make his exit. Please, please, God, may Martin not be coming up the stairs. “Go now. Run away, I'll say nothing,” she said in a voice a bit above a whisper. He looked at her, confused, and seemed to come after her again. She fell on her knees trying to avoid him.

When Martin came in and stood frozen in shock, blocking the doorway, he saw the tableau of his wife kneeling, cowering in terror from a wild man about to batter her with a chair. “Get off, get off her,” roared Martin, flinging himself on the man with the wild eyes.

The man raised the chair and beat Martin with it as Maura dragged herself to her feet to come and pull him off. Only the sound of Emmet's voice as he ran up the stairs shouting “What's wrong, what's wrong, what's happening?” broke the remorseless series of blows.

Now that there were three of them the man with the wet coat, the straggly hair, and wild, mad eyes realized he might be outnumbered. Grabbing up a soaking-wet bag of possessions, he pushed his way past Emmet and down the stairs.

“Daddy, D-Daddy,” Emmet stuttered out the words in his grief.

“Get Peter,” Maura said. “Phone him this minute.” Then she ran out the door and down the stairs.

“Maura, come back,” Emmet cried.

“He's not going to get away…he's not going to do this to Martin and get away.” In seconds she was at the door and looking out on the dark quiet street of Lough Glass. “Help!” she called. “Help! Get help, there's a man running down the road. Stop him, stop him. He's attacked Martin.”

Almost at once lights went on, doors opened. Maura saw young Michael Sullivan come out of the garage across the road, and the Walls in the hardware shop followed.

“Which way?” called Mr. Wall.

“He's gone down toward the Brother's.” The Walls started to shout too and roused the Hickeys over their meat shop and by the time the noise came to Foley's pub there were people out in the street running after the figure they saw staggering and stumbling away.

When Sergeant Sean O'Connor arrived on the scene the man with the wild eyes and the words that were hard to understand was firmly held. Held, it had to be said, by the after-hours drinkers from Foley's bar and some who had crossed the street from after-hours drinking at Paddles' place. But such niceties as the licensing laws were unimportant now.

“It's one of the knackers, bloody tinkers always the same,” said Mrs. Dillon from the newsagent's shop. She hadn't known such excitement in years as to witness the capture of a criminal just outside her door.

“It's not,” said Paddles.

Sergeant Sean O'Connor was indifferent as to who the man was. He moved him firmly into the Garda car under the efficient armlock of the young Garda who was with him. The sergeant was giving the impression that the fun was over. “You'll all be on your way home now,” he said mildly, looking at the two open-licensed premises beckoning warmly if illegally in the night.

People shuffled around noncommittally.

“Is Martin McMahon all right?” asked Dan O'Brien, who had run from the hotel to see the cause of the commotion.

“The doctor is with him now, he won't want a flood of people in on top of him. So I won't detain any of you from your beds,” said Sean O'Connor, taking his prisoner into custody.

“It's not very deep, Maura.” Peter Kelly knelt on the floor beside his friend Martin.

“But he's unconscious.”

“That's because he hit his head falling down…”

“Has he concussion?”

“I don't know. We'll get him to hospital.”

“My God, Peter, what'll we do? I will kill that madman with my own bare hands if Martin's badly hurt.”

“No, his pulse is fine. He's going to be fine.”

“Do you mean that? Or is it just to make me feel better?”

“Maura, he'll be grand.”

“Can he hear me?” she asked.

“No, I wouldn't think so. No, not now. But he'll come around, he'll be fine.”

Just in case, Maura knelt beside him and kissed his bloodstained face. “You're going to be fine, Martin. I've seen Peter's eyes, he means it. And I love you, I love you with all my heart. You make me sing with happiness.”

Emmet McMahon and Peter Kelly exchanged glances. They knew they weren't meant to hear such a declaration of love. It was very private and neither of them would ever refer to it again.

         

It was a long night in the cell. Sean O'Connor got dry clothes for the dirty and shivering man in his charge. He even gave him a cup of tea though his heart wasn't in it. He had seen the blood on the floor of the McMahons' kitchen and was still awaiting news from the hospital about Martin's condition.

The man was deranged and made little sense. He spoke a lot about his sister. Or was it his sister? She'd want to know where he was and what had happened to him. Mostly he rambled and moved from sentence to sentence without finishing the first. His words were confused. He needed to be in a psychiatric home, Sean O'Connor guessed. Perhaps he had even come from one. As he left the cell he saw the man curl up to sleep on the bench-style bed. He was mumbling names over and over. None of them made any sense to Sergeant O'Connor.

         

Lilian was still up when Peter Kelly got back from the hospital.

“It's all right,” he reassured her from the door. “It's all right. He's regained consciousness, they're testing him for concussion, and he's had a lot of X rays. No, he'll be fine.”

Lilian let out her breath in relief. “And Maura?”

“Insisted on staying in there in the hospital with him. Brought Emmet with her. They found them beds.”

“Was it necessary?”

“It was what she wanted to do,” Peter said, pouring himself a brandy.

“I had some tea ready.”

“I'm past tea,” Peter said. He sat down at the kitchen table. “The girls in? Did Clio come home?”

“Yes, both of them like vipers. You could cut the atmosphere. They had some huge row which was still simmering.”

“What else is new?” Peter sounded weary.

“Who was he? Was it one of the tinkers?”

“No it wasn't. Why do people automatically blame them?”

“Because they're different, that's why. What was he, then?”

“God knows…some tramp who came in.”

“There aren't any tramps in Lough Glass. Anyway how did he get in?”

“Emmet left the door open. The poor lad is nearly dead with grief. He thinks it was all his fault. That's why Maura brought him with her.”

They were silent. Lilian was thinking that Maura seemed to get on much better with her two stepchildren than she, Lilian, did with her natural children. She looked at Peter and wondered if he had any of the same thoughts running through his mind.

         

Kevin O'Connor danced with Kit. “Eventually I was able to prise you away from the lounge lizard,” he said.

“Whatever else he is he isn't that,” Kit said.

“Oh really? He looks as if he'd stepped straight from the pages of a glossy magazine…with all the shine intact. Years of escorting ladies through crowded dance floors.”

“No, years of working long hours getting rust out of cars, tuning engines, selling tractors…”

“How do you know all that?”

“He's the boy next door, he's from Lough Glass.”

“Jesus, half of Dublin seems to be from that one-horse town. Clio as well. Well, it sure breeds fine-looking women.” His arms tightened a little around her.

Kit was about to pull away when she saw Stevie Sullivan looking at her over Frankie's shoulder. She didn't pull away, instead she smiled up at Kevin. “Any tighter and I'll put my knee up with a sudden jerk,” she said, still smiling sweetly.

“You'll what…?” He looked alarmed.

“You won't be able to walk for a week,” Kit said, her face never changing. She could see Stevie watching them with interest, but with no idea of what was being said.

It wasn't all that difficult to get men to fancy you if you tried, Kit decided.

The dance was over at midnight. All Saturday night dances in Dublin had to end then, it was so that it wouldn't go on into the Sabbath Day. The national anthem was played and they went for their coats. Kevin O'Connor and his friend Matthew wondered casually if people might like to come around to their flat for a beer or a coffee. And to play records. Matthew managed to put such a leer of suggestiveness into the words “play records” that nobody was in any doubt about what he meant.

“I'll walk you back to the hostel,” Stevie suggested to Kit.

“It's not a hostel actually, it's a bed-sit,” Kit said.

“Well, if I'd have known that, then I might have had somewhere to lay my weary head.” He smiled at her.

“Oh no, no weary heads, only my own,” Kit was relaxed. This was surely going well.

“I might have tried to persuade you.” He smiled.

“I wouldn't have counted on it. No, better to have made your own arrangements.”

“Mine are simple, I drive back to the ranch, now.”

“Now, at this time?”

“No rest for the self-employed.”

“But tomorrow's Sunday.”

“What other day do I have of meeting farmers, when they come in to Mass, telling them all about new equipment?”