The Glass Lake (70 page)

“Have you told him that you're not allowed to go?”

“No, I'm too ashamed. I'll pretend to be sick or something, or I may just go.”

“You won't do that.” Kit knew Clio well enough to realize that she wouldn't defy her family this way.

“No, I want to have some kind of family left to present him with when we get engaged.”

“You really will get engaged, the Happy Ring House and all?” Kit was surprised.

“Oh, eventually, not yet. Not the Happy Ring House.”

Philip came in.

“We're talking about the future,” Kit said.

“Shut up,” Clio said.

“I knew you'd have things to giggle about,” Philip said defensively.

“Giggle?” Clio said. “I haven't giggled in years. Will we have double chips?”

“Yes, and cappuccino,” Kit said.

“I want your advice.” Philip had never asked their advice before, he had always offered it. They leaned forward, interested. “The floor in the Golf Club is banjaxed,” he said eventually. Clio and Kit looked at each other mystified. “Banjaxed completely,” he confirmed. “So you see, they won't be able to have their New Year's Eve Dinner Dance there, and I thought…well, I thought I'd try to have it in our hotel. In the Central.”

“In the Central?” cried Clio and Kit in such disbelief that Philip felt defensive.

“At least the floor isn't subsiding,” he said, hurt.

“No of course it isn't.” Kit felt they should look less astounded. “But a dance, a dinner dance.”

“The dining room is very big,” Philip said. It was indeed, a great gloomy barn of a place. Kit had eaten there only once, the day Philip had invited them for breakfast. Despite all Maura's praise it had seemed a cheerless kind of room. “And the band could be up in the bay window. We could have the curtains pulled back and if there was a moon the lake would look great.”

“They might all freeze to death watching it though,” Clio said.

“Philip would get proper heating,” Kit said.

He gave her a grateful look. “Yes, but I've only a few weeks. We'll have to tell the committee in the Golf Club that it can be done, and that it will be right…”

“They might take a bit of convincing,” Clio said.

“It's your father, Clio, and yours, Kit. They're kind of the ones who could make it happen.” The girls were silent. In neither home had much good ever been spoken of the Central Hotel. “And there's no floor, remember that.”

“They might mend their floor rather than go somewhere different,” Clio said.

“No, there's going to be a court case and all about their floor, the fellows that put it in gave them a guarantee and now it's falling to bits…”

“What do your parents say?” Kit cut through all the inessentials.

“They don't know yet.”

“They'll say no,” Clio said.

“Well, they will at first, but they might say yes later.”

“Six weeks after the dance is over.” Clio saw no good in anything or anyone in Lough Glass.

“So we must make them see it would be a great thing,” Philip said.

“Who's this ‘we'?” Kit asked suspiciously.

“Well, you, Kit. You could help me, I mean you're nearly qualified too, and you got such good marks…and if they hear you saying it could be done they'd believe you more than they would just me. No one ever thinks their own children grow up.”

Kit was thoughtful. There was the danger of being drawn into something which was doomed from the start. Who wanted to lock horns with Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien?

Philip looked so full of hope.

And wouldn't it be wonderful if it worked. A real glittering dance on their doorstep. A dance where she and Stevie Sullivan could whirl around together under colored lights. Where Emmet could get together with Anna Kelly again. Where Philip could show his gloomy parents that he was indeed a grown-up man with ideas of his own.

“Well?” he said, hardly daring to let out his breath.

“I can hear the tinkle of trays of very small stones at the Happy Ring House,” Clio murmured to her.

“I think it's a great idea, Philip,” cried Kit. “And this will solve all your problems too, Clio.”

“How's that?” Clio was suspicious.

“If there was a great dance that we'd all be helping at, a great smashing gala affair…then you could ask the magnificent Michael to come to that instead of you going to England.”

“It wouldn't work…”

“Yes, it would.” Kit warmed to the idea. “And I'd ask the awful dreadful Kevin too, just to make a party out of it. Oh stop looking at me like that, Philip. You know I can't stand Kevin, it's only to be sociable and make it good for Clio.”

Clio was beginning to see the possibilities. “Where would they stay…?” she asked

“At the hotel,” Kit said.

“I'm not sure if they'd think…”

“The hotel will be terrific…” Kit insisted.

“It's only a few weeks,” Philip said in a panic.

“Then we've got to work very hard. On everybody.”

“Everybody?”

“Yes, Clio's got to tell her parents and I've got to tell mine, and we'll get your father enthusiastic and awful Mrs. Hickey, she's a great organizer.”

“She's not in the Golf Club though, is she?” Clio found a flaw.

“No, but she'd love to be in with that crowd so she'll work like the divil.”

“When will we start?” Philip's eyes were shining now.

“This weekend. We'll all go home on the train on Friday night. They won't know what's hit them.”

         

“I don't think Dan would be able to take on the Golf Club Dinner Dance,” Kit's father said. “Haven't you always said yourself that the place smells of stale gravy?”

“We've got a few weeks to get that smell out of the place,” Kit said. “Oh, go on, Father, be enthusiastic. It's people like you and Clio's father we need to push it that way.”

“I'm not the leading social light in the town…”

“No, but you could bring all the Golf Club crowd with you…otherwise it'll all be in the big town in some well-known place and the poor old Central will never get a chance to show what it can do.”

“You've always said that the best thing it could do was fall to the ground.” Martin was shaking his head at the complete change of attitude.

“But I've grown up a bit. I want something that will be good for Lough Glass. And for Philip. He's been my friend for years.”

Maura intervened. “It would be much handier, Martin, if it could be here…and wouldn't it be lovely if we were all there. Emmet's keen to go, and Clio and Anna…it would be a family outing for us rather than just the four oldies up in the Club.”

“And you can't be in the Club anyway because of the floor,” Kit said.

“Well, I'd be very glad to give Dan and Mildred the turn…but do they want to? I mean they never want to do anything new.”

“If they thought that all you lot were coming…the quality…they'd agree.”

“We're not the quality,” Martin said.

“No, but we're as near as it gets in Lough Glass,” Kit sighed.

         

“Will we help them, Philip, Kit, and Clio?” Emmet asked Anna.

“I don't want to do anything to help Clio. I'll take part in anything at all that might lead to her downfall,” Anna said.

“You don't mean that.”

“Oh but I do. Just because you get on with Kit doesn't mean it's the normal thing to do.”

“I know.” Emmet did know. Very few people had a sister as marvelous as Kit. Someone who promised to help him and did. She had been very successful indeed at distracting Stevie Sullivan's attention away from Anna Kelly.

Emmet thought that Kit was reasonably good-looking. Of course, being her brother it was hard to look at things objectively, but he couldn't understand why Stevie would feel drawn to her instead of the beautiful Anna.

But whatever Kit was doing it was working. “I hope it's not an awful bore for you,” he had said to Kit.

“No,” Kit had assured him. “I'm quite enjoying it actually. But don't assume it's working totally. I wouldn't rush in there to Anna, you know.”

“You're right,” he said sagely. And he had been cautious.

He could see that Anna was still hanging around hoping that Stevie would be available, but he always seemed to be in Dublin these days, she grumbled.

“Never mind, I'm sure he'll be around at Christmas.” Emmet was encouraging.

“Yes? Well, I hope so.”

“So you'll help in the dance…it's a place you could go with him.”

Anna hadn't thought of that. It was indeed a heaven-sent opportunity, a glittering dance on their doorstep. She began to think of what she would wear. “You're very kind, Emmet. I really appreciate it, what with you fancying me and all that.”

“That's all right.” Emmet was courteous. “After all, you fancied me too for a while, maybe we might get back to the way we were, but I understand that's not the situation at present.”

“You deserve someone terrific,” Anna said. “Someone much more worthy of you than Patsy Hanley.”

“Patsy's quite nice to talk to when you know her,” Emmet lied.

         

Clio knew just how to play it. She wouldn't plead with her parents to support the Central's bid to get into the big time in terms of entertainment. Instead, she put on the look of an early Christian martyr.

“Clio, sweetheart, please cheer up. We were looking forward to your coming home, now you just sit there as if the world were coming to an end.”

“It is as far as I'm concerned, Daddy.”

“We can't leave you off there to England with people we don't know.”

“So you said. I gave in, you've won. But I'm not expected to be happy about it.”

“We all have a life to live, Clio. Your mother is very upset by you.”

“And I'm very upset by her and by you. These are facts, Daddy.”

“You'll have a good Christmas here.”

“Sure.”

“And perhaps your friend Michael would come here and see you, see us all.”

“I can't invite him here; nothing ever happens in Lough Glass. You'd have to give a person a reason for driving from Dublin.”

That night in Paddles', Peter Kelly heard about the plans that were afoot.

“I suppose we should support them,” Martin McMahon said.

“God, this might be the direct answer from God that we were looking for.” Dr. Kelly seemed very pleased. “Count us in, Martin, and if this doesn't put a smile on Clio's face nothing will.”

Clio didn't sound enthusiastic.

“I thought you'd be pleased,” her father said, disappointed.

“Yes, but it probably won't happen. You know all the old Golf Club fuddy-duddies won't think the Central is good enough for their precious party on New Year's Eve.”

“It's not, it's a terrible hotel…you and Kit have always been to the forefront of saying what a desperate place it is.” He was bewildered now.

“Things will always be desperate while old people don't make any move to change them,” Clio said.

“Yes, I know that's your view. We've ruined everything for you, but what are your lot doing? Tell me that, except sitting around complaining and sulking.”

“I'd help Philip get the hotel into good shape if his awful old parents and everyone else's awful old parents didn't go round shaking their shaggy locks and saying that things should just stay as they were.”

Peter Kelly ran his hand over his rapidly balding head. “It's very nice of you to refer to my shaggy locks,” he said, hoping to coax a smile out of her.

Clio gave a watery smile. “You're not the worst, Daddy.”

“And you all would like us to have the dinner dance there…even though we're crumbling old geriatrics…”

“Yes. The rest of us would be normal,” she said.

“I hope you have a daughter yourself one day and you'll know how much you'd love her to praise you instead of always finding fault,” he said in a rare mood of admitting his affection for her. Normally they had a joky sparring relationship.

“I'm sure I'll be a terrific mother when the time comes,” Clio said.

But she spoke with a slightly hollow note. She was five days late with her period, she fervently hoped the time to be a mother hadn't come yet.

         

“They won't come here,” Philip's father said, sniffing.

“They've had many a year when they could come, but they preferred their great ugly concrete barn of a Golf Club,” Mildred said.

Philip gritted his teeth. He would not lose his temper. Part of a hotelier's training was to remain outwardly calm when inwardly seething. They had been told that often enough. He had to practice it often enough in the various establishments where he had done his practical work.

“They have nowhere else to go,” he said.

“And we'd put ourselves out for one year, then they'd go back next year to their old shed out there.” His mother felt very keenly the fact that she was not part of the Lough Glass golfing set. The fact that she didn't play the game seemed to her irrelevant.

“It could be such a success that they'd want it here next time, and so would other people.”

“How would they know?” Dan O'Brien asked. “That it had been a success, if it was a success?”

“We'd take photographs. Send them to the papers, magazines even.”

“You'd be off back to Dublin and we'd be left with the work of it.”

“No. I'd come back, every weekend, and I'll be home for the Christmas holidays.”

“And what would you know…” his father began.

Philip sounded weary, but he knew that Kit and Clio were having similar arguments in their families. “I don't know everything, but we're hoteliers, Father. All three of us, isn't that right, Mother? And if we're ever going to get a chance to do something different, a bit exciting…isn't this one being handed to us on a plate?” He didn't know why or what words he had used but it worked.