The Glass Lake (61 page)

         

On that Saturday in November Martin McMahon told his wife Maura that they were going to get a new car. He had been discussing it with Stevie Sullivan but it was a surprise until now.

“That's the one the great spit-and-polish job was being done in.” Maura was delighted. “I can tell you we're not getting anything half looked at. Stevie was under the hood and lying under the chassis, examining every inch of it.”

“Are you pleased? We'll be able to go on outings without fearing that it'll never start again.” He was like an excited child.

“You're the best husband that ever lived,” she said.

“I wasn't always a good husband.” There was a shadow on his face.

Maura was annoyed that it had come back. “To me you always were, and are.”

“Yes, but I don't know.” He tried hard to shrug off the mood.

She could see him almost physically struggling. She laid her hand on his arm. “Wherever Helen's soul is today it's at peace, Martin. We've told each other that so often…and we believe it. None of us can look back on any year, any hour even, and not wish that we had done something differently. But remember, we worked all this out. Time spent regretting is time wasted.”

He nodded. She could see the shadow beginning to lessen.

L
ENA
Gray was explaining to Jim and Jessie Millar that she would be buying the car through the firm.

“But of course you can have a car,” Mr. Millar said. “Haven't I asked you a dozen times to take something out of this firm that you built up to be what it is.”

“I won't use it, Jim. It's for my husband, so I want to pay for it.”

“No, the principle is still the same.”

“You don't take things out of the firm for your own personal use, I will not either.”

K
IT
arranged that they should have a little party in Frankie's flat. The girls would provide some wine, and cheese on biscuits. Later on at the hotel the boys would pay for drinks, so this sort of evened it out.

“They're not coming back for coffee,” Frankie explained very firmly. “The landlady here has her hand on the phone to all of our mothers if a fellow comes into the house after ten o'clock.”

The others agreed. Bringing guys back to a flat afterward was asking for it. It was cheap.

Clio heard about the party and came down to challenge Kit.

“Why was I excluded?” she asked.

“You weren't included, that's a totally different thing. This is just friends to do with catering.”

“Kevin O'Connor is going,” Clio said.

“Yes. It may have escaped your notice and probably everyone else's but he
is
meant to be in catering, you know.”

“Well, it may have escaped your notice that I happen to be going out with his brother,” Clio said.

“Clio, you and Michael can afford to go to the Gresham to a dance every night they have one,” Kit said.

“I wish I knew what you were planning to do with your life, Kit McMahon,” Clio said.

“So do I,” Kit agreed fervently.

         

The Blue Lagoon
was showing in the town. It would have been great to go with Anna, but Emmet knew he mustn't weaken. He saw Patsy Hanley walking disconsolately down the main street of Lough Glass. “Would you like to go to the pictures tonight?” he said quickly before he could change his mind.

Patsy blushed with pleasure. “Me? Just me, like a date?”

“Sure.”

“I'd love that,” she said, and scampered home to get organized.

Anna Kelly had intended to go to
The Blue Lagoon
with some of the girls from her class, but fortunately for her pride she heard that Patsy Hanley was going to go with Emmet. They would all be on the same bus.

She wouldn't let anyone see her being a wallflower. She would stay at home. In fact, she would stay at home alone because her mother and father would be having dinner at the Golf Club. Anna felt this was a very bad way of spending a Saturday night.

Philip sat with his father and mother in the dining room. The walls were a mournful brown, the tablecloths were stained with the memory of too many sauce bottles. The lighting was poor, and the service was slow.

Philip knew that this was not a hotel that would tempt anyone to make a return visit; it was not the place that would invite a business traveler to come back with his family. It was going to be a long and uphill road to transform it. He had hoped to have Kit McMahon at his side. And perhaps that hope was not so far-fetched. Sister Madeleine had been very confident and sure when she spoke. She had extraordinary piercing eyes; you believed everything they said, and she had assured him that Kit McMahon had no other love.

Philip sat trying to work out what other problems Kit might have that took up her time and attention. His parents looked at him without much pleasure.

“You're gone for weeks on end and then not a word out of you when you come home,” his mother complained.

“You know, son, if you're ever going to make any kind of a fist out of the hotel business you're going to have to be outgoing, greet people,” said Philip's father, Dan O'Brien, who had never been known to begin any conversation except with a list of moans and complaints.

“You're right,” he said agreeably. “I'm luckier than a lot of the others, I have a hotel in my family where I can learn.”

They looked at him suspiciously, in case he was making fun of them, but could see no sign of it.

Philip nailed a smile to his face and wondered whether any other young man of his age was having such an appalling Saturday night.

         

“Who'll be first?” Frankie wondered as they admired the table.

It looked very festive with its colored candles and paper napkins, and plates of food. They had speared an orange with little cocktail sticks, each one bearing a cube of cheese and a portion of pineapple. They had stuffed hard-boiled eggs, where the yolks had been taken out, mixed with mayonnaise, and put back. There were bottles of beer and glasses of red and white wine.

“I bet you it'll be that Kevin O'Connor,” Kit grumbled.

“I don't think he's all that bad,” Frankie said. “You have him actually crawling on the ground he's so afraid of you, and still you won't be civil to him.”

“He has been very uncivil to me indeed in the past,” Kit said. “It's hard to forget that sort of thing.”

“You have to forget.” Frankie shrugged. She almost shrugged herself out of her strapless taffeta dress and made a note not to raise her shoulders again.

“Do you, though?” Kit was wondering.

“Do you what?”

“Do you have to forget?”

“Jesus, Kit, of course you do, otherwise wars would be going on forever and women would be commiting suicide over fellows they loved.”

“But what's the point of anything if it can be forgotten, wiped out, start again?” Kit asked.

“Listen, we're having a party, not a debate,” Frankie said. “Who do you hope to end up with tonight?”

“I don't know. Maybe the fellow from my own hometown. He's very good-looking, Stevie.” Kit said this partly to put the glamorous Frankie in the position of knowing that Stevie was out of bounds, partly to convince herself. In her heart she knew that Stevie was cheap and obvious.

The doorbell rang. “Here we go,” said Frankie, bouncing off to answer it. Frankie came back in, eyes rolling up to heaven and followed by the most handsome man that any of them were ever likely to see in a long time.

In his dinner jacket and his hair longish but clean and shiny, with his outdoor look from working all weathers, more fit than any of the college sportsmen, and with a smile that would stop a hundred women in their tracks, Stevie Sullivan was like something that stepped down from a poster outside a cinema.

“Well, don't you look great!” Kit said before she could help herself.

“You beat me to it,” he said. His eyes were warm and admiring on her bare shoulders and the peach-colored silk dress with its halter neckline.

Kit had been worried about not wearing a bra, but the girl in the shop had assured her the dress was so well formed in the bodice that no undergarment was needed. She thought she felt Stevie Sullivan's eyes examining the bodice as if he were making the assessment too, but then she was sure she imagined it.

The doorbell rang again at that moment and several more guests arrived. One was Kevin O'Connor. He made straight for Kit. “I just want to say that Matthew is here, but he's under observation from all of us. Anything untoward and he'll be sent home. Just so that you understand.”

“Matthew?” Kit said, confused.

“Yes, who made the unfortunate mistake and behaved in a manner that was unseemly when you were working in the bar. That's him over there at the door. I said I'd come in and clear it with you. He's replacing Harry, you see.”

“It's all right. He may stay,” Kit said regally. “As long as everything is under control.”

“You have my word on that,” Kevin assured her.

“My God, Kit McMahon, don't you have Dublin brought down to size,” Stevie said admiringly.

“Ah you don't know the half of it, Stevie.” She tucked her arm companionably in his and brought him around to introduce him. She saw from the looks he was getting that she wasn't alone in her admiration. Stevie Sullivan dressed up and in a place like this was a knockout. Far too good for Clio's horrible little sister. Suddenly Kit remembered the purpose of the whole evening. She must distract him from Anna so that Anna would go back humbly to Emmet. She must dazzle the eyes out of him at this dance. It mightn't work but she was certainly going to give it her best try.

         

It was the usual Saturday night in the Golf Club and the Kellys and the McMahons were finishing their dinner as they did so many weekends. It seemed impossible to believe that this had not always been the way things were.

They talked about the children. Clio wasn't studying that much, they knew. When she came home for visits it was always to sleep. “I don't think she sleeps at all in Dublin.” Lilian worried about her elder daughter. Maura McMahon worried about where Clio slept but this was not the time or the place to bring up such a subject.

“Apparently Kit is going to a dance tonight,” Peter Kelly said. “Clio was on the phone full of envy about it all.”

“That's right. They were having a party in some girl's flat first, I think it was the College of Catering people.” Martin was always a peacemaker.

“Oh I'm sure. Anyway, Clio said that if she could get a lift home she'd come tonight.”

“That would be nice,” Maura said a little insincerely. She found her niece trying and unrestful. There was always some hidden tension there.

“I left a plate of sandwiches out for her,” Lilian said, fussing. “Anna's not going to eat ever again she says, she has this belief that she's as fat as a pig. Lord, they can be very hard to cope with sometimes.”

“I see young Philip's home,” Martin said. “They could have come down together for the company.”

“Oh she's full of some boy with a posh car. He might drive her.” Lilian sounded worried.

“Will he want to stay?” Peter asked.

“That wasn't mentioned. And you know Clio, she'd snap your head off if you asked a question. We'll have to wait and see. I did leave out some clean sheets and pillowcases in case.”

Maura said nothing. She knew the boy in the posh car was the son of Fingers O'Connor.

Francis Fingleton O'Connor was a legendary hotelier who had made a fortune through his four strategically placed hotels in Ireland. But he was even more legendary in his belief that he was attractive to all women, and that all a woman needed to make her feel feminine and desired was a grope and a feel, and a few suggestive remarks. Maura had met him on more than one occasion through her work and had disliked him intensely. She had kept her hostility until she was sure she was not observed and then had told him that his attentions were unwelcome, in such a firm tone that even Fingers O'Connor understood. But about this, as about so many things, she kept her own counsel.