The Glass Lake (76 page)

Now that her childbearing years were over he had discovered that he wanted to be a father. And he expected her to understand all this. Possibly even be glad for him. Louis Gray must be a man without any sensitivity at all. He must be lacking in any real brain as well. Perhaps he was a bit simple. Maybe that lopsided smile and those deep eyes were empty, meaningless things, not an indication of a loving soul.

Could it be true that he was only a shell and she hadn't seen it until now?

“Say something, please. Lena, say something.” His voice seemed very far away.

“What would you like me to say?”

“I suppose, impossible though it is, I'd like you to say that you understand.”

“That I understand?”

“And that you forgive me even.”

She still felt this strange clearness, and the very odd sensation that she was looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope, that he was miles away, and that his voice was far off.

“Very well,” she said.

“What?”

“That's what I'll say.”

“You'll say what?”

“What you'd like me to say, I understand what has happened, and I forgive you.”

“But you don't mean that. You don't really, you're only saying what I asked you to.”

“Come now, you can't have everything. How do we know what people mean? You said this morning as you were leaving, ‘Love you.' You said that to me this morning. And you didn't mean it.” She was quite calm.

“But I did in a way.”

Yes, in a way he had meant it. “So maybe I mean this in a way.”

“But Lena, you do realize it's over between us? I mean, I told Mary Paula, I told her I was telling you tonight. We're getting married in the New Year.”

“Married?” she said.

“Yes, here in London. I've had to get a letter of freedom, would you believe, from a priest.”

“A letter of freedom?”

“You know, to say that I haven't been married to anyone else.”

“Imagine,” she said.

“Are you all right, Lena?”

“Yes. What did you say her name was?”

“Mary Paula O'Connor. Her father's a hotelier. They're opening a new place in Ireland. I'm going to manage it.”

“Mary Paula O'Connor? Daughter of Fingers O'Connor?”

“Yes, I didn't think you'd have heard of him.”

“And will his family all be coming over for the wedding?”

“They're coming this New Year.” He was at perfect ease telling her these facts of his new life. Was he mad, clinically mad? That he didn't realize that he was speaking of the ruined splinters of her life.

“And are you going tonight?”

“Once we've talked.”

“We've talked, haven't we?” She was polite and distant.

“But I won't be back. You know sometimes in the past I went and came back…?”

“Did you?”

“You know I did. I want it to be clear how sad I am to stand here and tell you this…you've been so good, so understanding, and in many ways you gave up so much for me…”

“We gave up things for each other, didn't we?” She was bright and helpful.

“Yes we did, that's true.”

It was not true, Lena wanted to roar at him. Louis Gray had given up nothing. He had come to her when he was penniless, alone in the world, and had run through all his other options. How dare he end what they had in this welter of invention.

“So I suppose you'd better pack.”

“I don't think…”

“Or would you prefer to come back tomorrow and take things when I'm at work?”

“Wouldn't that be better…then you could sort of…”

“Sort of what?”

“Well, lay out what you want rid of and what you want to keep.”

“Well, I would imagine you'll take your clothes and things. I mean I wouldn't want those.”

“I'll leave all the things we got together, like pictures and books and bits of furniture.”

“Yes, I don't imagine you'd want those.”

“And of course I'll leave you the car.”

“No, I gave you the car as a present, Louis.”

“It's an office car.”

“No, I bought it for you.”

There were tears in his eyes. “You must keep it.”

“No, truly. I walk to work.”

There was a silence. “And I'll leave the key here,” he said. “When I'm going.”

“Or you could leave it with Ivy.”

“No, that would mean explaining.”

“Well, someone will have to explain to Ivy. She'd like to say good-bye, she's very fond of you.”

“I think it would be best if I left it on the mantelpiece.”

“Well, you must do what you think…”

“I can't just go like this.”

“Why not?”

“We haven't talked anything out…explained.”

“We have.”

He was about to say more, she knew his face so well. He wanted to ask her to reassure him, tell him that she didn't think too badly of him, say that it had been great while it lasted, that she had found someone she loved too, that she was going to move to a new city, a new life…But he said nothing.

“I hope you'll be…” He stopped.

“I hope so too,” she said, agreeing with him.

He walked out the door.

She stared in front of her for a long time. What she hoped was that she would be dead by the time Louis Gray married Mary Paula O'Connor, the girlfriend who was going to have his son.

         

Ivy saw Louis Gray leaving. His face was white and stained with tears.

She didn't sleep well thinking of the woman upstairs. No matter how many times she told herself that she should go up to Lena she always answered herself with the fact that Lena Gray had survived on being able to put a brave face on things. It was up to Lena, and only her, when she let that face drop.

         

There was a letter from Kit next day.

Ivy was pleased. This meant she had an excuse to intercept Lena on the way out. The woman's face shocked her. It was as if someone had reached in and taken the life out of it.

“Thanks, Ivy.” Lena put the letter in her handbag. Even her voice was dead.

“You know where I am,” Ivy said.

“Indeed I do.”

Ivy stood at the door and watched her go up the street. There was no lift in her step. She stopped at the traffic lights and leaned her head against the lamppost.

         

In the office there was the usual excitement on the day of the office party. People had brought in clothes to dress up in after work.

“I'm going to have a big lunch this time,” Jennifer confided. “There was that year I got a bit tiddly and silly. This time I'm going to lay down a base for all that wine.”

“Good idea.” Lena nodded approvingly.

“A Mr. James Williams left a message asking you to ring him, Mrs. Gray.”

“Thank you,” said Lena.

“My mother sent you her love, I was there last night,” Jessie said.

“That's very kind of her, is she keeping well?”

All the answers were adequate, but they were lifeless. By lunchtime everyone in the office had decided that Mrs. Gray was sickening for flu. There had been a lot of it going about.

“It would be a shame if she missed the party,” Jennifer said.

Last year Louis Gray had turned up to collect her. He had stayed only five minutes, but long enough to make everyone feel they wished they knew him better.

She worked alone all morning, wanting no calls, no interruptions.

The receptionist came into her office. “Mr. Williams phoned again. I told him that I had given you the message. Was that right?”

“Absolutely. Thank you, dear.” It was a pleasant remark, but dismissing her.

“They're wondering are you ill, Mrs. Gray,” the girl said suddenly.

“I don't know. I hope not, thank you for asking.” Her smile was strained.

Then there was a phone call from Ivy. There were some names that always got through to Mrs. Gray, this was one. “Lena, it's only Ivy. Sorry to interrupt, but just thought I'd tell you that Mr. Tyrone has been and gone, in case you wanted to rest your weary head or anything.”

“Oh, thank you, Ivy. You must be psychic. I've got a load of stuff to finish up here, but I might well do that in the midafternoon.”

“Give you a bit of energy for your office party.”

“I think I'm coming down with a flu thing, I might have to cry off that.”

“I'll put a hot-water bottle in your bed around four o'clock.”

“Bless you, Ivy.”

“And you, dear Lena.”

She sent out for some Beechams Powders and asked for a mug of tea and a lemon drink.

“Anything to eat at all?” Jennifer was very sympathetic.

“No, but be a dear and try and keep people away from me. I'm trying hard to get through all this in case I have to take a couple of days off with flu.”

Jennifer seemed relieved that there was some physical explanation. She had looked at Lena several times that day and thought that her face was so drawn and abstracted that Mrs. Gray might be about to have some kind of mental breakdown. It was great to think it might only be flu.

She was very methodical. In her clear handwriting she attached a note to every one of the files that had to be dealt with. Here she suggested a letter offering a sizable reduction in consultancy fees to one client who was a good friend of the agency, there she suggested no allowances at all to another who was a late payer. She arranged that they cancel every one of her own public appearances and lectures for the next two months. There were reminders and notes from her own diary. Bills that should be paid, Christmas gifts that had been given in the past and would be expected now.

Then she dictated a long memo to Jessie incorporating a lot of what she had done.

About three o'clock she came and told them that she had been trying to fight it but she had to give in now to what seemed like a bad flu germ. “I'll keep away from you all in the hopes of not spreading it any further,” she said.

They all tut-tutted and said she looked dreadful.

“Will I come round and see you'll be all right?” Jessie asked.

“No, no. I'll be well looked after.”

They saw the elegant Mrs. Gray whose eyes were blurred and hollowed. None of them had ever remembered her taking a day off work in all their time there. It was such a pity that she would miss the party.

Lena was well known in the bank. “Sorry for leaving it toward closing time,” she said to the young manager.

“Good customers like you are allowed all kinds of leniencies,” he said.

“Right, I'd like to take up a little of your time. You see, I'm going away for a few weeks, I need to withdraw quite an amount of cash from my own account for myself.”

“There's no problem there, Mrs. Gray.”

“And I want to leave instructions that I won't be countersigning checks for the office for the next few weeks.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Millar will be the only signatories needed.”

“I have typed you a letter to that effect.”

“Always efficient,” he murmured admiringly.

“Yes, I hope so, but on this occasion I haven't yet informed Mr. and Mrs. Millar of my intention to take some time off because I don't know how much time it might take me…to get well…”

“Are you going to have an operation?”

“No, no. Just an illness I have to shake off. So I want everything to go smoothly in my absence.”

“Certainly…I quite understand.” He didn't understand anything at all, but he knew the woman who had been running that agency almost single-handed was giving him some kind of message. She was trying to tell him that she would be back at the helm sometime, and that he wasn't to give the Millars their head to run the agency into the ground.

A very complicated request for a banker.

But Mrs. Gray was a complex lady. He had always thought that. For one thing, she took hardly anything out of the business for herself. For another, she had bought her husband a car which she would have been perfectly entitled to have asked for as an office perk.

It was good to see women doing so well but they were, no matter what anyone said, hard to understand.

         

“I suppose you're not in a drinking mood.” Ivy looked hopeful.

“Not a chance, Ivy. But come up and talk to me for a bit, will you?”

They went into the flat and Lena looked at the mantelpiece. There was the key in a little glass dish. The dish was new. It was good too, cut glass, probably one of the only presents he had ever bought for her. Beside it was a card. A plain white card with the words
Thank you
written on it.

She tore the card in two, and gave the dish to Ivy. “Would you like that?”

“I can't take that.”

“It's you or the dustbin.”

“Well, it's a nice thing, sure I'll have it. I'll leave it downstairs till you want it back.”

“That'll be a time,” Lena said. She opened the wardrobe and took out her two suitcases.

“Lena, no. Not you too,” Ivy cried.

“Just for a while. I'll be back, Louis won't.”

“Of course he will. He always comes back.”

“No.”

“Don't go. Where are you going anyway just before Christmas? You haven't any friends anywhere. Stay with me, stay here.”

“I'll be back, I swear.”

“I need you at Christmas. Ernest and I need you.”

“No, you're just afraid I'll kill myself. I did think of it last night, but I'm through that now, I won't.”

“One day you'll look back on this…” Ivy began.

“I know.” She was folding her clothes neatly and putting her shoes into bags. Years of taking short trips to give talks and lectures had made packing second nature.

“Where are you going?”

“I don't know.”

“You wouldn't let me walk out saying I didn't know where I was going. Come on, be fair, why should I let you?”

“I'll ring you.”

“When? Tonight?”

“No, in a few days.”

“I'm not letting you go.”

“Ivy, you mean well, but…”

“Don't ‘but Ivy' me…See how bloody good I am! I'm not asking you one question about your private life, I didn't come upstairs last night after he left even though I saw him go. You'll never have such a friend as me anywhere, don't throw it back in my face.”

“I'll ring you tonight.”

“And give me an answer about where you're staying?”

“I swear.”

“All right, you can go then.”

“Why aren't you begging me to stay?”

“You need to be out of these four walls…they still have Louis's memory written over them. If I knew when you were coming back I'd repaper the rooms.”

Lena managed a weak smile. “No need to go that far.”

“I would if I thought he really wasn't coming back. I don't want him to come and put his imprint on a whole new set of wallpaper.”

“No. Truly, he's getting married.”

Ivy didn't dare to meet Lena's eyes. She looked at the floor. “Right then,” she sort of mumbled. “New wallpaper. A small print, do you think, or maybe Regency stripes?”

“Stripes,” Lena said, remembering the huge sunflowers and birds of paradise on Ivy's own walls.

“Tonight before midnight. All right?”

“Yes, Mother,” Lena said.

She went to Victoria Station. She couldn't think why. It was that or Euston.

Euston would take her to Ireland. She knew it would be dangerous to go, she must go to Ireland only when she was calm, prepared, ready for whatever might happen. She saw the destinations of the trains. In half an hour there was a train to Brighton, that's where she would go. She would walk along that pier, and the beach and the promenade. She would feel the rain in her face and she would remember their plans and hopes when she was carrying his child. And maybe she might make some sense out of what had happened and plan what to do with the rest of her life.

For so many of the girls who had gone through Millar's she had been the crossroad, she had made them face decisions, take control of their lives, create a destiny for themselves. Now the legendary Mrs. Gray would take herself in hand.

She sat in a cafe and watched the pre-Christmas crowds swelling around. There were people on their way to and from office parties. There were shoppers up from the country for the day. There were businessmen going home after a day's work. Every one of them had a life to lead, a life with hopes and disappointments.

When she opened her handbag to get her purse and pay for the coffee she saw with a shock Kit's letter to her, unopened. Never before had her daughter written a letter which had not been enjoyed as soon as she could find the time. But today had been a day like no other. It would not have been possible to lose herself in Kit's world until she had escaped from her own. Here in the anonymity of this huge railway station, this was the right place to read it.

My dear Lena
,

I didn't think I would be sad to read about Louis, that you think it's over and that he may go away. Once this was the news I wanted to hear. I wanted you to be punished, and for him to leave you alone like you left us. But I don't feel that anymore. I would much much prefer to think that he was there and that you had a good life together
.

Perhaps it's not true that he's thinking of going away. It's very hard to know what men are thinking. Not that I'm any kind of authority but I do know that hours and hours are spent in Frankie's flat, in cafes and after lectures, talking about men and what they are thinking and what they're planning…and it seems to turn out in the end that they're not thinking about anything or planning anything. I just tell you that in case it's some comfort
.

Lena sat in the station cafe as the world moved about its business on either side of her…tears fell down her face, she didn't even wipe them away, she just read on.

Kit wrote of the dance, the endless difficulties put in their way by Dan and Mildred O'Brien, the fear that the guests would all spend so long in Paddles' before they arrived that there would be no bar business for the Central and that everyone would be drunk and disorderly.

And Kit wrote about Stevie Sullivan, about his childhood, what it had been like to have no shoes because his father had drunk the money that had been set aside to buy them. Stevie Sullivan wore the best of leather shoes now and always would. Stevie didn't drink alcohol, he didn't gamble, he worked hard, and of course as everyone knew had been a bit foolish in the past.

But one of the terrible things about a small Irish town was the way your past hung around forever. No one was allowed to make a fresh start. People still said he was old Billy Sullivan's boy, a drunkard's son. They said he was a wild boy who had been with all the girls in the parish. Wasn't it strange that they couldn't see how he had changed?

And as Lena read she heard the echo loud and clear. Kit thought of Stevie Sullivan in exactly the same protective and excusing way as she had thought of Louis Gray. She was blind to any criticism of him. She was her mother's daughter and she was about to follow exactly the same path.

Lena sat for a long time in the cafe and then with heavy limbs got up and took a train to the south coast of England.