The Glass Lake (74 page)

         

“How are you, Martin?”

“Oh, come in, Stevie.”

“No, I won't I'm rushing. Listen, has Kit gone back yet?”

“No, she's going down on the six o'clock bus. Why, did you want to see her?”

“It's just that I have to take a car to Dublin, I wondered did she want a lift.”

“Well, I'm sure she'd love it, you'll have a full car. Clio and Philip are going back too.”

“It's only a sports car, a two-seater. I thought I'd ask Kit since she was a neighbor's child.” His smile was winning. Maura was at the top of the stairs.

“I think they all travel as a team, Stevie. They're all so involved in this dinner dance they're organizing.”

His eyes met Maura's. She knew exactly what he was offering. And on Kit's behalf she was refusing it. He was going to have to get Maura McMahon on his side.

It was a long journey back to Dublin. The bus to the town, the train to Kingsbridge Station, and then a bus back to O'Connell Bridge.

“Will we go and have chips?” Philip said hopefully.

“I'm too tired, Philip.” Kit looked tired and pale.

“Wouldn't it be great if we had a car?” he said.

“You will, one day. Wait till we make your hotel into the ‘in' place in all of Ireland.”

He hated her calling it his hotel, it had been their place and their do earlier on. But he knew better than to give any hint of it. “Kevin O'Connor's father's bought another place.”

“That's because his daughter's getting married. He's bought a hotel for her husband. It's like a game for him…they're not people we want to be like.”

Philip waved her good-bye as he got his bus one way and Kit ran lightly down O'Connell Street in the other direction.

Stevie Sullivan was parked outside her door in a small red sports car.

“I don't believe you,” she said.

“I got an urge for a Chinese meal. Come on, get in.” She got into the car and they drove to a restaurant.

“Aren't you very fussy about your food. Imagine a good ham sandwich in Lough Glass wouldn't do you.”

“Not a bit, I fancied sweet-and-sour chicken, and if you've been out with the lovely Kit McMahon in the Castle Hotel one night, you somehow want more of the same the next night.”

The Chinese restaurant was fairly basic and simple. Kit looked around her. “Better not let them know in the Castle Hotel that you think this is more of the same,” she said.

“I want you, Kit,” he said.

“You can't have me, it's as simple as that.”

“That's very harsh.”

“The way you put it is harsh and demanding also.” She realized she was speaking to him as a real person, there was no simpering and playacting involved.

“What way should it have been put?” He was being serious also. Not falsely flirtatious. Not the Stevie Sullivan she had watched for years around her hometown.

“Well, it's a question of people wanting each other, isn't it? One doesn't say I want you, implying I mean to have you, as if you were a cowboy taking your head of cattle, or your ranch, or your woman from the saloon…that's not the way things should be done.”

“Okay, but I don't believe in a lot of fancy phrases either. I drove all the way up here to tell you that I want you, I want to be with you. I want to be with you properly, not just kissing and stroking each other in a car like last night.”

“Was it only last night, it seems ages ago.” She looked at him with surprise.

“Yes, it seems a lot longer to me too,” he said.

She lifted her eyes and looked at him. His face was absolutely sincere. She could see that. But then, this was the whole secret of Stevie Sullivan's charm. Everyone thought he was utterly sincere. Anna Kelly, Deirdre Hanley, Orla Dillon, dozens and dozens more that she could name, hundreds that she had never heard of.

He probably was sincere at the time. He just wasn't exclusive. That was his winning streak. He meant it, he meant it with everybody.

“I didn't mean to feel this way,” he said to her.

“No,” she agreed.

“It isn't at all what I thought would happen.”

“No, indeed.”

“Kit, stop yessing and noing and three-bags-fulling. Do you feel the same or don't you?” He was angry.

“I'm very fond of you…” she began.

“Fond!” He snorted.

“I was going to say unless I was very fond of you I wouldn't have been so warm and loving to you last night…”

“I don't believe this,” he said.

“What don't you believe?”

“I don't believe you're sitting here cool as a cucumber explaining your behavior, explaining it as if I were someone who had demanded an explanation. We held on to each other last night because we wanted to, and wanted to do a lot more. Why can't you be honest enough to admit it?” His eyes were hurt and his face very upset.

But then, this must be new for him. Everyone else including that little baby-face Anna still in her gym slip had probably gone along with his line of persuasion so easily. It must be strange if you were the great Stevie Sullivan. It must be strange and unpleasant to find yourself refused. Especially if you have just driven up from Lough Glass to Dublin, overtaking the bus and the train and then to be refused. But refuse she would.

“Why are we fighting?” she asked him.

“Because you are being so prissy and dishonest.”

“Prissy maybe, it's just the way the words come out, but dishonest no.”

“You sit there and say I mean nothing to you.”

“I didn't say that.”

“I've told you what I feel. I need you.”

“No, you don't.”

“Don't bloody tell me what I need and what I don't need.”

“I'm trying to say, without being cheap and vulgar, that anyone, just
anyone
would do.”

“And I'm trying not to sound cheap and vulgar either but you are a right prick-tease.”

Her coat was on the back of her chair, Kit began to put her arms back into it. “I'll go now, and let you finish your meal.” Her face was white. She was shaking with anger. At the words he had used, at the fact that she had let Emmet down, he would be back to Anna Kelly within twenty-four hours. And also the fact that she wanted him so much. She did need him. She would like nothing more than for him to go back with her to her little bed-sitter tonight.

How had it all gone so terribly wrong?

He put his head in his hands. “Don't go,” he mumbled.

“I'd better.” Her voice was shaky now and he looked up.

He saw her lip trembling and reached out his hand for hers. “I'm very, very sorry. I wish more than anything I could have the last minute back so that I wouldn't say that. I'm so sorry.”

“It's all right, I know. I know.”

“No you don't know, Kit,” he said, and she saw he had tears in his eyes. “You don't know. I've never felt like this before. I want you so much I can't bear it.” She looked at him distressed. “Listen. This is the worst thing that could have happened. I just meant to go to a dance with you, to have a little fling if you felt like it. I didn't mean all this.”

“All what?” She marveled at how calm-her voice was.

“All the way I feel. I suppose it's love, I haven't ever loved anyone before…but I'm so eager to see you and to know what you'll say…and to touch you and see you laugh…” His words came tumbling out. “Is that it, do you think?” he asked her. He really wanted to know.

“Is that what?”

“Is that love? I didn't love anyone up to now, so it's hard to recognize.”

“I don't know,” she said truthfully. “If that's truly the way you feel then it might be.”

“And you?”

She had forgotten her coat now, now they talked as equals. “I suppose it's the same, I didn't mean this to happen either. I thought, I thought…”

“What did you think? You started it, you asked me to the dance.”

“I know.” She was guilt-ridden. She could never tell him why she had done that. They were much too far in for that ever to come to the surface.

“So what did you hope? What did you think would happen?”

“That you'd be a nice man to join our party…which you certainly were…but I didn't expect that I'd get so close to you, so involved.”

“You won't say
love
.”

“I haven't loved anybody either,” she said. “So I don't know.”

“Aren't we a real pair of cold zombies. Most people of our age have loved dozens of people.”

“Or what they say is love,” Kit said.

“Or what they think is love,” Stevie said. There was a silence. “I'm sorry for what I said,” he spoke up eventually.

“And I'm sorry for saying anyone would do, that was coarse.” She was apologetic.

“I'm not hungry anymore.” He pushed his plate away.

“Me neither.”

He was cheery and apologetic to the Chinese waiter, who seemed impassive about the whole business.

“They must be mystified by us, coming from as far away as they do,” Kit said.

“Anyone would be mystified by us,” Stevie said. He helped her into the tiny, low car.

He dropped her at her door and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I'll see you again during the week, I hope.” He looked at her, his face a question.

“I'd love that if you're going to be up here again.”

“I'll be here tomorrow night, for example.”

Her voice was still shaky, she didn't know whether to make a little joke or not. “Lord, you'll have the road worn out with all that traveling up and down.”

“I'm not going back tonight, I'll wait until tomorrow night.”

“And who'll mind the little shop?”

“Your stepmother. And we'll start with a clean slate tomorrow.” He looked like an eager, nervous schoolboy. He reminded her of her brother Emmet when he was struggling and hoping that the right words would come out. Not like the great Stevie Sullivan.

“A shiny, clean slate,” she said.

“I love you, Kit,” he said, and turned the car and was gone.

Kit lay awake all night. There was a church clock that struck every quarter of an hour. She wondered why it hadn't driven her mad before. She got up and made herself some tea. She looked around the room, small, untidy, but full of character, her good dresses hanging on hooks on the wall because the wardrobe wasn't big enough. Shelves of books, a little homemade desk with a small red lamp. She had blue-and-white pillowcases. It would have been a lovely, warm, friendly place to have brought Stevie Sullivan back for the night.

As the clock chimed on and Kit sat hugging her knees she wondered why she had been so adamant. It wasn't such a big deal. She had been the one making it so. Look at Clio, the skies hadn't fallen on her. She sat there, confused and lonely. She wondered could she ever tell Lena about it. She might. Lena had been through all this kind of thing, she would know what it felt like.

L
ENA
always organized the office party. That way she could keep control of it. It would be dangerous to leave it to one of the younger, giddier girls or even Jennifer. They would pick an entirely unsuitable place with a wrong atmosphere.

Lena always found a restaurant with atmosphere, somewhere that Italian, Greek, or Spanish waiters would join in the fun but where there would be no silliness.

She had seen office parties go so wrong. She had heard stories from the girls who had moved on from perfectly satisfactory posts only because they had been compromised or done the wrong thing at the annual office party.

“Lord, I'm so sensible,” Lena said to Grace.

“You look too good to be sensible.” Lena looked at Grace's reflection in the mirror. They had been friends for too long to let Grace lie without being caught. The look of reproach was enough. Grace began to backtrack. “Too thin of course, too tired, but still good.”

“I'm a scrawny old turkey, Grace. I used to see them in Lough Glass, they were survivors. They looked so woebegone and bedraggled at Christmas no one would kill them. They escaped the oven year after year.”

“So will you,” Grace said tenderly.

“Not this year. No, the time comes for every old turkey, even if the bones only make soup.”

“Will you and Louis join us for Christmas dinner?” Ivy asked her on the stairs.

“You're very good, Ivy.”

“That means no.” Ivy looked at her shrewdly.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I know you so well.”

“It doesn't mean no, it means I don't know.” There was a silence. “It sounds very rude.”

“No, love, it sounds very sad.”

“That's exactly what it is, Ivy, very sad.” Lena walked up the stairs with a heavy tread.

Jessie Millar was spending the evening with her mother. Every Thursday she went around to Mrs. Park while Jim went to the Rotary Club. Every weekend they took her mother out to Sunday lunch.