The Glass Lake (36 page)

But then, did anyone believe in God? Lena wondered.

How could Martin McMahon, a man she could have sworn had a firm personal faith in a God who was all-powerful, possibly contemplate a bigamous marriage with Maura Hayes?

He knew she was alive, Martin knew that he had a living wife.

Lena shook her head in disbelief at the thought of him standing in the church in Lough Glass while Father Baily pronounced him and Maura man and wife, having asked anyone to say if they knew any reason why they shouldn't be joined together.

Possibly Kit was imagining it all. The child might be lonely, well she must be lonely otherwise she wouldn't pour her heart and soul out like that in letters. Maybe she hoped for a pleasant, placid, unchallenging stepmother to replace the mother she had loved so much. The mother who was taken from her by her father's arrogance and vanity.

As these thoughts went through her head Lena worked on, organizing the new shelf space, encouraging the girls to fill it in the correct manner. Never again would they be confused about application forms, leaflets, documentation. This was a very professional setup.

She had even thought of a picnic for them, and as they all sat down to eat at three-thirty Lena said that she thought they had done brilliantly.

“But you're paying us until six, we'd better eat up quickly,” Dawn said.

Beautiful Dawn, who could have been a cover girl with her flawless skin and her shining hair. She looked years younger than she must be.

“No, you've worked like slaves, you all get paid until six, but relax, let's enjoy the feeling that we set up a great office.” Lena raised her cup of coffee from the blue and gold mugs, the mugs that were used to give clients coffee when they came to call and discuss work.

They tidied up and finished the sandwiches she had brought for them, and the shortbread biscuits. And she gave them each an envelope. “Go out and enjoy what little there is of the weekend,” she said.

They ran like children released from school. They were hardly more than that, the two younger ones. Dawn hung back for a moment. “That was fun, Mrs. Gray, I did enjoy it…nobody could ever have told me that a while back…that I'd enjoy working on a Sunday, but I did.”

“Don't run yourself down, Dawn…you could be a business tycoon if you wanted,” Lena laughed at her.

“No, I'm not cut out for it. Finding me a nice rich husband, that's what I'll start to doing soon.”

“Marriage isn't the only goal.”

“How can you say that, Mrs. Gray…you've got a gorgeous husband.”

“What…?” Lena had forgotten for a moment that of course Dawn had worked in the Dryden some time back. She would have known Louis then. “That's true, Dawn, I've been very lucky.”

“He's lucky too,” Dawn said. She looked as if she were going to say more but changed her mind. Lena waited. “Very lucky too,” Dawn said. Then she went out into the warm London air.

Lena sat at her desk and wondered whether Louis could possibly have had any kind of fling with Dawn Jones. Maybe he had even asked her to go to this conference with him and that she had changed her mind.

Dawn Jones, born in 1932, would have been a golden-haired moppet when Lena went up the aisle to her loveless marriage. It wasn't possible. Then she took a deep breath. No, it wasn't possible. This was the way to go mad. The surefire way to end up in a mental hospital.

Louis loved her, he told her that, he would be home to her tonight. Dawn was a brainless child. Louis probably hardly met her when she was in the Dryden, she had worked for James Williams. It was only because she was so tired and had so much on her mind. The phone rang shrilly beside her as she sat in the empty office. It was Jessie.

“Oh Jessie…well, it all went very well. Tell Jim that the place is fantastic, and the carpenters took all the rubbish away with them so you'd never know there had been any work done at all.” She was eager to give the good news.

“Lena, Lena, we're getting married,” Jessie cried. “Jim asked me to do him the honor of becoming his wife. Those were his words, Lena. Isn't it wonderful?”

Unaccountably two tears came down Lena's face. “It's wonderful news, Jessie. I'm so happy for you,” she said as the tears splashed into one of the blue and gold ashtrays.

“We're going round to tell Mother tonight, but I wanted you to be the very first to know.”

Lena said that she thought it was the most marvelous thing she had ever heard. She sat quite still for a long time after the call. She had an almost uncontrollable urge to ring her daughter.

But fortunately she just managed to control it.

After an age she stood up from her chair, cleaned the ashtray, packed the picnic things in her basket, and locked up the offices. She walked very slowly down the road with its Sunday evening crowds beginning to gather for whatever festivities they had in mind. She went home and lay on her bed to wait for Louis.

At eleven o'clock he burst into the flat. “Oh God, I missed you, Lena. Lena, I love you,” he said, and he launched himself at her like an overaffectionate puppy dog. “I brought you a rose,” he said.

It was all done up with a fern and a safety pin as if it were a corsage. It didn't matter where he got it, he might have found it, or bought it, or stood for ages while it was being made up. Someone could have left it on the train.

He had brought it for her. He smelled of the sea and she loved him. Nothing else mattered at all.

“K
IT
, you know that friend of yours and Clio's, this Mother Madeleine?” Clio's aunt Maura spoke hesitantly.

“Yes, she's Sister Madeleine, Miss Hayes.”

“I was wondering, would you mind if I went to see her?”

“About us, do you mean?” Kit and Clio had not been speaking for twenty days. It was the longest silence ever between them. Most of the town seemed to be aware of it.

But Clio's aunt laughed. “No, not at all about you…about me. I gather she's a very fine person at sorting things out.”

“Yes, but some things can't be sorted out.” Kit was very adamant about that. And Sister Madeleine was about the only person in the place who hadn't urged her to make it up with Clio.

“It's just that I didn't want to be moving in on her if you thought it was your territory…”

Kit looked at the woman with new respect. “No, no. Everyone sort of talks to her, and she tells nothing on, it's like the seal of confession.”

“So, if I went to see her it would just be considered like a passerby dropping in?”

“That's very nice of you, Miss Hayes, to ask I mean.”

“I wouldn't want to tread on your toes. And do you think you might ever feel like calling me Maura?”

“I'd be happy to,” said Kit. And indeed she was, more than happy. It would be great.

Imagine saying it in front of Mrs. Kelly. Better still, imagine saying it in front of Clio.

         

“Sister Madeleine, I'm Maura Hayes.”

“Of course you are, Haven't I often seen you at Mass on a Sunday with Dr. Kelly.”

“I hear nothing but good about you, Sister.”

“I'm blessed to live in such a warm place, Maura. Would you join me in a cup of tea and some nice scones? Rita up in McMahon's is a gifted cook and she often leaves me a batch of these in case someone drops by.”

“A fine girl indeed. Sister. Maybe she should better herself.”

“I know, I know. It's a problem.”

They both knew the problems. Rita would not leave the McMahons until the place was settled. The question was now which of them would mention that a solution might be in sight.

The hermit decided to make it easy for Maura Hayes. “Of course you're a regular visitor here to these parts yourself,” she said.

“I do come down often. My sister has such a happy home here herself.”

“And one day you might make a happy home yourself.”

“There are many who might say I was far too old to be considering any such thing.”

“I wouldn't say that, Maura. I've never been a great advocate of young marriages myself. They don't seem to work somehow. The danger, of course, in leaving it late is that you mightn't be able to replace what had gone before. That would be a danger only if you were trying to replace it with the same thing. I wouldn't imagine you'd be trying to do that.”

“No indeed. If it were to happen I'm sure it would be a very different variety.”

“Well then…I feel very sure it would work very well.” The kettle that had been moved to the center of the fire began to hiss and splutter. The old nun lifted it away deftly.

By the time they had finished their tea a lot had been straightened out. Without confidences being broken or anyone named by name Maura understood that if Martin McMahon was to be enthusiastic about a union there would be no opposition in his house. The daughter Kit would be going to Dublin to study hotel management. The son Emmet was like all boys, hardly aware of his surroundings. The maid Rita was only looking for an excuse to leave the family in good hands so that she could go to live in Dublin. There was a chance of a position in a car-hire company. Warmly recommended by Sullivan's of Lough Glass, she would be sure to get the position and start a fuller life.

“I wouldn't ever be anything like as special as Helen,” Maura said in a small voice.

“No, of course not.”

Maura ached to ask what she was really like, what had she talked about, had she ever said what made her soul so tormented and so far away as she paced the length and breadth of Lough Glass. But there would be no point. The nun would just look away across the lake, the lake where Helen had met her death, and would speak distantly. It's hard to know what anyone's like, she might say. Maura would not ask. Instead she said: “If it does work out…and Martin and I do make a life together, do you think that Helen McMahon would have been pleased rather than upset about it?”

The nun's eyes seemed very far away, as if she were thinking of something much farther away than the lake. There was a long silence. Then she spoke. “I think she would be very pleased,” she said slowly. “Very pleased indeed.”

T
HEY
moved into the new flat two weeks after Scarborough. Louis was loving and enthusiastic about it all. He didn't mention Spain anymore. He said no more about England being finished and men of vision getting out while the going was good. He was so much the old Louis that the days and nights of bleak despair almost disappeared.

Almost, but not quite. He was still out very late. And he resented it terribly if Lena asked him why.

“Sweetheart, is it clocking in and clocking out at home as well as at work?” he said impatiently.

And of course she had been wrong about that weekend. Lots of people had said to her it was a pity she wasn't there, the whole thing had been an innocent mix-up. And she must have been mad to think there was anything between him and Dawn Jones. Dawn worked beside her day in and day out, putting in extra hours coming up to the official opening of the new premises. If Louis telephoned Dawn would say, “Oh hello, Mr. Gray, I'll get her for you now.” Unless she was trained in the Royal Shakespeare Company she wouldn't have been able to do that and hide a liaison. Lena felt she had been foolishly suspicious, yet she knew that this was not the same Louis who had run with her to London so eagerly and without a care.

This was a man who did not feel caught up with her to the exclusion of all others as he had once been, as she still was. Sometimes he stayed on a bit in the Dryden because a few of them were having a drink in the pub around the corner. It didn't do to be seen imbibing on your own premises.

“You were having a drink rather than coming home?” Lena had said. But she had only said it once in that hurt tone.

“Jesus Christ, Lena. If I tell you where I am you get offended, and if I don't tell you where I am you get offended. Shall we go down to some ironmonger now and get a ball and chain welded on and it would save us a lot of trouble.”