The Glass Lake (31 page)

So it's good now that he does play. I hope the dinner party goes well. I'd love to be a fly on the wall
.

“What'll happen if he marries again?” Ivy asked one day.

“Who?”

“Your ex. Martin.”

“Oh, he won't marry again.” Lena was surprised at the question.

“From all you tell me I know these characters better than
Mrs. Dale's Diary…
there's this Maura appearing a lot.”

“He wouldn't marry Maura.” Lena smiled at the thought.

“Well, why not? He thinks you're dead, he thinks he's free to marry. Wouldn't it be sensible?”

“Martin wasn't sensible when it came to love. If he had been sensible he'd have married Maura in the first place and none of this mess would have happened.”

“And Kit and Emmet would never have existed.”

“It might have been better. They're only existing for me in a limbo.”

“What's wrong, love?”

“I don't know, Ivy. I don't know.”

         

But Lena did know what was wrong.

Louis had been restless. He had been nearly five years in one place. He felt it was time to move on. He said they should go somewhere warm, like the south of Spain.

A lot more British people were going there these days. They could get a partnership there. There wasn't much he didn't know about the business. They could make a killing. Live in a proper climate.

“What about my job?” Lena had asked.

“It's only a job, darling. You went in there the first day and stayed…”

“So did you,” she countered. “But we both stayed because we got on, made something of the jobs…”

“Lena, there are millions of jobs…”

“They're our jobs, they're our careers. You practically run the Dryden, I practically run Millar's.”

“So? We're not married to them,” Louis had said.

“Nor to each other,” she had replied.

It was a bit of a problem, the marriage business. Technically, Helen McMahon was dead. If she went to get a birth certificate, then a corresponding death certificate might be produced. Better not to risk it and unearth the Lord knew how many problems.

That's what they had said. But there was a part of Lena that thought Louis had taken the whole thing very calmly. If he had really loved her with the deep love he claimed, he would have made some more determined attempts to marry her.

         

Jessie Park and Mr. Millar had a long romance. It was assisted throughout by the best efforts of Lena Gray. Often on a Saturday, Mr. Millar, Jessie, and Lena had lunch together. Then Lena would excuse herself early and leave them to chat.

They made the big decisions about the business at these meetings. Lena would take notes and type them up on Mondays. Business at the agency was booming, they needed to take on someone else. Probably someone young, they thought. Young and glamorous-looking.

“What about Dawn Jones?” Lena had suggested. “She's between jobs. We couldn't get much more glamorous than her.”

“Would Dawn find us lively enough?” Jessie wondered. “She usually likes places with lots going on.”

“Lots going on with us,” Mr. Millar said, missing the point.

“I think Dawn's a bit tired of getting pawed by people,” Lena said. “She might well be glad of a spell in a more responsible setting…”

Dawn Jones had been one of their earliest success stories. She had arrived for an interview looking like a tart about to set out for Soho, heavy makeup, low-cut sweater, and nicotine-stained fingers. “None of my sisters ever had an office job, I'd love to say I worked in an office,” Dawn had begged.

Her innocence and enthusiasm had appealed to Jessie and Lena. Tactfully they had advised her about dressing differently and she had been given a new hairdo in Grace West's salon. Her typing speeds were adequate, it had not proved difficult to place the lovely Dawn in any office. The problem was that it had proved difficult to persuade many of her employers and colleagues to keep their hands off her. There was something about Dawn even in a neat navy twin set and pale blue skirt that suggested excitement and adventure.

She had done a spell in the Dryden, in Mr. Williams's office. Louis had said she was sweet but silly. Nothing you could put a finger on, but just not someone you'd trust to take a message or type up a report. Dawn had left the Dryden after three months, James Williams had got a pleasant middle-aged woman, motherly, efficient, much more what was needed. An excellent reference had been provided for Dawn, but everywhere it was the same story. She was too sexy to be taken seriously.

Lena wondered if this might be to their advantage. Young girls loved someone to follow, a role model they could identify with. She and Jessie were too old and settled, if they saw Dawn in Millar's they might think that secretarial work was much more glittering than they had believed.

Jim Millar said yes, he saw the point, and Jessie said she thought Jim was absolutely right. So Dawn was approached.

“I'm not sure, Mrs. Gray, really. I don't know. Would I be right here, do you think?” Dawn looked doubtfully around the office.

“We're doing a face-lift, Dawn. And having journalists and photographers come in and everything.”

Lena knew she had won the battle. She sent a press release to the local newspapers and to the trade magazines. And with it she sent a description of Dawn Jones who had left her job in a model agency to join Millar's. The model agency had been a very brief interlude and one on which Dawn had not wanted to dwell. There were many definitions of modeling, it appeared. Still it gave her the necessary glamour to attract the interest of the press.

And if they came and took pictures of Dawn then they had to mention Millar's also, the agency where there was an emphasis on grooming and presentation as well as on typing and shorthand speeds. It was just the right approach and resulted in a great many inquiries for the agency.

Jessie and Jim were delighted.

“It's going so well I can hardly believe it.” Jessie was breathless.

“What would I do without my two girls?” said Jim Millar, looking at them both with pride.

“Do you think he's fond of me, Lena?” Jessie asked in a whisper when Mr. Millar had left.

“Of course he is, of course he is.” Lena was reassuring.

“I wish I knew what to do, I'm so inexperienced at all this sort of thing…you'd know, Lena?”

“No, I'm pretty hopeless too,” Lena said. She felt she spoke the truth, until recently she had no idea how to produce the kind of passion that Louis had for her. She would have given anything on earth to know.

“But you're so…well, so terrific-looking and you've got such a gorgeous husband. I was wondering had you any hints or anything…?” Jessie's big pale eyes were full of innocence and hope.

“I think he's a man who takes his time over things but makes the right decision in the end,” Lena said.

“Suppose someone else comes along?” Jessica was biting her lower lip.

“No, not for Mr. Millar, believe me.”

And Jessie did because Lena looked so authoritative. If only she knew, Lena thought, if only she knew where she was asking advice about love and marriage.

Dawn was delighted with all the publicity. “You've really done me a good turn, Mrs. Gray,” she said, “and I like working here with women actually. I didn't think I would. They're sort of more reasonable than men, aren't they?”

“Some of them are, I suppose.” Lena tried to hide her smile. Dawn was proving a wise choice. They had even included her name in the brochure they sent out, just in order to use her picture.

Lena was proud of all they had achieved, she couldn't help talking about it to Louis. He was still in poor form but at least he had stopped mentioning Spain.

“You're putting a lot of effort into that place,” Louis said to her.

“So are you, in the Dryden…it's the kind of people we are.” She sat on the floor with her head in his lap. She loved the evenings they had together, the shabby flat was in no way small and shabby to her.

“What's the point?” Louis said, waving around him. “Working our guts out to keep four walls in a kip like this?”

“It isn't a kip.” Lena was indignant.

“Well, it's hardly the Camino Real,” he said, his mouth turned down. He was playing with her hair as she spoke, idly twisting the strands around.

Louis touched a lot, he wasn't a man to sit in his own space and make statements across a table, he always had a hand on her arm or neck, or was stroking her cheek.

“What's the Camino Real?” she asked.

“It's just a phrase, like the kind of names hotels would have, but in Spain…where we could easily work…” She was silent. “Easily,” he said again, his big dark eyes pleading at her.

She felt a rising panic in her throat. She must keep the conversation away from Spain. Lena would have given up so much else, so much that was far more important. She could arrange for Kit to write to her anywhere, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that if Louis went to Spain he would go alone. She could not get a passport. Lena Gray did not exist.

“D
O
you think we should get drunk?” Clio asked Kit.

“Now?” They were walking up to school for the last frantic weeks of revision before the exams.

“Well, not this minute but soonish…it's an experience we haven't yet had.”

“How soonish? Should we turn round and go back to Paddles' or maybe ask Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien to make us a few cocktails before class?”

“You make a jeer out of everything,” Clio complained.

“I do not.” Kit was indignant. “I'm prepared to do anything, you know I am. But I think it might be poor timing to get plastered just coming up to the exams. Suppose it took ahold of us like those old fellows with runny eyes and red noses waiting for Foley's to open…”

Clio giggled. Sometimes Kit could be very funny. But then sometimes for no reason she flared up and took offense. There were certain subjects that made her very touchy. Clio was dying to ask her whether she thought that Aunt Maura might be going to get engaged to Kit's father, and if she would like the idea of having a stepmother and of their being cousins. But this was territory she mustn't venture into.

She would love to know whether Aunt Maura and Mr. McMahon…well…courted a bit. And if they got married would they do it properly in bed? Normally these were things you could talk about with a best friend, but with Kit McMahon there were so many areas that were off limits.

“Have you ever been drunk, properly out-of-your-mind drunk?” Kit asked Stevie Sullivan.

“Why do you ask?” he said. He was handsome even when covered in grease and wearing filthy overalls. But unreliable of course. Everyone knew that.

“It's just that you've done most things…Clio and I are thinking of getting drunk when we finish our exams and I was looking for suggestions. Like what's cheap and quick and wouldn't make us too sick?”

“You're asking the wrong one, I don't know.”

“I bet you do,” Kit insisted.

“No, truly, we had too much of that in this house when I was young.”

Kit had forgotten. She felt ashamed that she hadn't remembered the alcoholic father who saw animals and all kinds of things emerging from walls when he was in the horrors. But she decided against apologizing, she hated people saying thoughtless things about drownings or people gone missing and then being covered with confusion. She disliked the embarrassment and the apologies more than the original mistake.

“Yes, I suppose that makes sense,” she said in a matter-of-fact way.

“It does to me, but not to Michael. He'd drink it off a sore foot as they say.”

“God, who are they, the people who say that?” Kit recoiled at the thought.

“The low kind of people I mix with, Kit McMahon,” he said, and left her.

         

There was always a keen rivalry between Mother Bernard and Brother Healy about the Leaving Certificate results. They were published in the local newspaper so that all could see and compare. Brother Healy always said that the odds were weighted in favor of Mother Bernard. Girls did all those easy subjects like art and domestic science. It was not so difficult for Mother Bernard to build up a frightening total of passes and honors among her pupils.

But the nuns were adamant that she had a harder route to go. Many of the small farmers were anxious for their daughters to learn only the basic skills that would turn them into acceptable farmers' wives. When the time came they were suspicious of girls learning French and Latin. They would have preferred classes in butter making and poultry raising and in many ways they had a point. Why raise the expectations of a girl who was going to leave her father's house and move into one fairly similar a parish away?