The Glass Lake (28 page)

“He doesn't see me in that way at all.” Jessie's face was long and sad.

“How do we know what way men see things? You'd need a fleet of interpreters to work out what they're thinking…but it's better you go on your own. You'll get to know him more than if I were there.”

“Do you think so? Do you think it will be all right?”

“Certainly it will, it's not as if he were a stranger, a man you only met at a party or somewhere. You and he have so much in common, shared so much already…” Lena was full of encouragement.

“But I never know what to say when you're not there.” Jessie looked flustered.

“Maybe this is the time to begin.”

“I hope I'll look all right. Do you think it's worth having a perm…?”

“Oh indeed I do, and anyway it will cost half nothing. Grace owes us. We've been sending so much business her way, she practically runs the salon on the people we refer.”

Jessie left for the salon cheerfully full of plans. Lena picked up the phone. “Grace, do me a favor. When Jessie makes a booking give her everything, I mean every single thing. I'll sort it out with you later. Nails, facial, color…anything you think.”

“She's never going to look for a new job?”

“Better than that,” Lena said, “she's looking for romance.”

D
EIRDRE
Hanley dropped by the pharmacy. “I came to know if you'd be needing an assistant or anything, Mr. McMahon,” she said.

“Are you going to study pharmacy, Deirdre?” Martin McMahon was surprised.

“No, but I wouldn't need to for working here, would I?”

“Well, to be any help to me you would really.” He spoke mildly.

She was a restless girl, Mrs. Hanley's daughter. A child who had always been loud in her impatience for the day when she could leave Lough Glass. Sometimes she had even said it to Helen and found, Martin feared, only too sympathetic an audience.

“But isn't it all a matter of trying to get people to buy makeup and all?” she asked.

“I think there's a bit more to it than that, Deirdre. But were you going to train as a beautician? Is that it?”

“You wouldn't need much training, Mr. McMahon. All you'd need is to talk one of the cosmetics companies into giving you a bit of a course, then you push their stuff, tell people it's great. You know the sort of thing.”

“And you'd like to do that in Lough Glass?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“But do you think…suppose we were able to find a place for you here, which I don't think is possible…do you think you'd be happy doing that?”

“Mr. McMahon, you have to do something from dawn to dusk to justify your existence. That's what it's all about,” Deirdre Hanley said.

“And you'd like your existence here in Lough Glass?” He'd had nothing but despair from this child about her hometown, what had changed her? Deirdre looked across the road at Sullivan's garage. It was only a glance, but Martin McMahon remembered having seen her with Stevie Sullivan on a few occasions. Usually down by the lake or away from the public eye. “What would your mother like you to do?” he asked suddenly.

“She'd like to get me out of here. She says she doesn't know why but she thinks it would be the best thing for me.”

“Go, Deirdre. You'd be much more exciting to him if you were an out-of-town girl.”

“Mr. McMahon, imagine you knowing all about women and life and everything,” said Deirdre in amazement.

“I know,” Martin McMahon said good-naturedly. “Isn't it extraordinary all right!”

         

“Will the pair of you come into the chemist's with me, do you think?” he asked the children that night.

“Now?” Emmet asked in surprise. Once the door had been locked their father hardly ever opened it again, unless it was an emergency for someone.

“No, I meant in the future,” he said.

“Would you like us to?” Kit asked.

“Only if you want to, or one of you wants to. It's long hours and you'd need to enjoy the work.”

“I thought I might be an actress,” Kit said.

“And I thought I'd be a priest out on the Missions,” Emmet said.

“Oh well then, it's all settled.” He looked from one to the other. “Father Emmet…out in Nigeria with his long white soutane, saving souls, and then back to catch the first night of Katherina McMahon in the Abbey Theatre. It'll be a busy life for me. I suppose I'd better take Deirdre Hanley in to help me.”

“Deirdre Hanley?” Emmet and Kit said in a voice of disbelief.

“She came looking for a job today, to help out.”

“You wouldn't want her, Daddy,” Kit said.

“I don't have to be a priest, it was just an idea,” Emmet rushed in.

“And I mightn't get accepted as an actress, to be honest…”

“So you might fall back on the chemist's; like if all else failed.”

“Exactly,” said Kit.

“Children are marvelous,” Martin McMahon said to the air around him. “Who'd be without them.”

O
N
the morning of June 2nd, Lena woke eagerly. Her daughter was thirteen today, she hoped Martin would mark the day for her, make it special, cheerful.

She got an urge to ring him and whisper encouragement down the phone. She longed to cry, and tell him that it was very hard to live without her children, but she knew this was a fanciful thing to indulge herself. She had a life to live. A life of her own. And here she was in London on the day of the Coronation.

Everyone was listening to the wireless from the moment they got up. It was as if they feared the whole thing might be canceled. They wanted to know every detail. The newspapers were full of the splendor of the day and a minute-by-minute itinerary of how the procession would go to Westminster Abbey, and a step-by-step guide to the ceremony.

Lena looked around her with delight at the crowds who were determined to enjoy the great day. Less than ten years ago they had been in the middle of a terrible war. Thirteen years ago, the day her child was born, the day that Martin had wept for joy at her bedside to say they had a beautiful daughter, there had been fear and panic in these streets in London.

In a way, Lena thought, the English don't have enough celebrations…they don't have Saint Patrick's Days, and Corpus Christi processions, and the Blessings of the Boats, and pilgrimages to Croagh Patrick, and all the things that give people a chance to take a day off and think about something else. It was heartening to see them all smile and talk to strangers. She made her way to the corner that Ivy had managed to secure by knowing the family who owned a small shop there. The children had been out since long before dawn guarding the places for them. There were little wooden stools and picnic baskets, and flags and bunting.

For a moment Lena felt as if she were outside herself looking at it all from somewhere else. She didn't feel part of the great excitement and anticipation. The knowledge that the young Queen was going to pass feet away didn't fill her with awe. But neither was it foreign to her. These were as much her people as were those who lived in the main street of Lough Glass.

She was as much at home here as she would be anywhere in the world.

They settled into their vantage point and heard the news about Everest. Britain had conquered the highest mountain in the world; the excitement knew no bounds. The roar became louder as the carriages came into view, the horses gleaming and decorated, the magnificent brocades and livery. And then the smiling but slightly anxious face of Princess Elizabeth, as they still referred to her, waving her gloved hand, eagerly responding to all the love and welcome from the pavements.

She seemed to look straight at them, they all said it, Ivy, Jessie, everyone all around. And Lena thought it too. She looked back and waved at the woman who was going to be crowned. A woman who still had her little boy and girl. She felt tears spring into her eyes.

A man beside her clutched her arm. “It's a great day, love, isn't it. You'll be able to tell your children about this.”

Lena squeezed his arm back. “Great day, great day,” she stumbled.

“D
O
you always know what to do, Sister Madeleine?”

“No, Kit, I hardly ever know what to do.”

“But you don't worry about it.”

“No, that's true. I don't.”

“Is that why you weren't good at being married?”

“I never said I wasn't good at being married.”

“No, but you can't have been, otherwise you'd still be married, wouldn't you, not a nun?”

“Oh, you think I left a marriage and went into a convent, is that it?”

“But isn't that what you told us, Clio and myself?” Poor Kit was wishing she hadn't brought it up. The nun's blue eyes were interested and alive, but giving nothing away. “I mean we didn't just imagine it, did we?”

“I did have a husband once, but he left me. He went away far across the world.”

“Did you have a fight?” Kit was sympathetic.

“No, not at all. I thought everything was fine. He wasn't happy, he said.” She looked out over the lake as she remembered it.

“And did the nuns take you then because he wasn't coming back anymore?”

“Oh no. Not for a long time. I sat in the house polishing it and cleaning it and growing the flowers in the garden and telling everyone he was coming back soon…”

“Where was all this, Sister Madeleine?”

“Oh, far away from here. But anyway, the weeks passed and the months and one day I asked myself what I was doing, and God made a little voice in me say that all I was doing really was minding possessions, keeping silver clean and polishing glass…I surely should be doing something else.”

“So what did you do?”

“I sold it all, and I put the money in the bank for my husband, and I wrote a letter to a friend of his and said I was going to join a convent, and that if ever he came back everything was there for him.”

“And did he come back, Sister Madeleine?”

“I don't know, Kit. I don't think so.” She was very calm. Not sad or confused.

“So you were a nun?”

“For a while. Then one day I asked myself in the convent what was I doing. Polishing tables in the parlor, and polishing pews in the church and the marble around the base of the altar. And I heard the little voice from God again.”

“What did it say this time?” Kit scarcely dared to believe that Sister Madeleine was telling her all this.

“It said the same thing. It said that I was spending my time polishing and cleaning possessions. They weren't mine admittedly, they belonged to the convent, but still it didn't seem a good thing to be doing.”

“So you left and came here?”

“Yes. That was it, more or less.”

“And you couldn't hear a voice from God saying that you're wrapped up in possessions here because you haven't any.” Kit looked around the spare house and marveled at how it had all turned out.