The Glass Lake (79 page)

“I was hoping I might have a pint in Paddles' with Peter,” Martin said.

“No, have it in the bar.”

“It's a bit of a gloomy place…” he began.

“Wait until you see it tonight,” Kit promised.

Maura looked very well, she had on a black dress with black chiffon sleeves. “I hate wearing my coat over it but I suppose I'd freeze walking down without it…”

“It's only a few yards,” Kit said. “You look so nice it's a pity to spoil it.”

“Put on your coat, Maura, like a good woman, and don't be catching pneumonia.”

“Lilian's wearing a stole, but I always look like a washerwoman in one.” Maura's face seemed disappointed.

“Father, can I ask you something?” Martin looked a little surprised. “Do you remember the little fur stole that Mother had, it was like a little cape?”

“Yes, I think I do, why?”

“You probably don't remember because she hardly ever wore it. It's in my wardrobe in a box, in case I'd ever wear it. I don't think it suits me, why don't we give it to Maura to wear?” It was a risk, she knew this. They had never mentioned anything of Mother's before.

“That's very nice of you, Kit, but I really don't think…”

“Let me get it…I can, can't I, Father?”

“Child, it's yours and I'd be delighted if Maura would like it. Delighted.”

Kit was back in a moment. It was in tissue paper in a box. There was a faint whiff of mothballs. The little cape had a fastener in the front. It was old-fashioned, dated almost, but it might look smart on Maura. Kit draped it around her stepmother's shoulders and stepped back to look at the effect. “It's
lovely
on you…come and look in a mirror.”

It was indeed splendid. It could have been made for Maura around the shoulders but the fastener didn't meet. “This needs to be held together with some black ribbon,” Kit said quick as a flash. “I have some in a drawer.”

When she came back her father and Maura were holding hands, there were tears in Maura's eyes. She hoped nothing had gone wrong. “I was just saying that perhaps I shouldn't wear it. Someone might remember Helen wearing it on some other occasion…”

“I never saw Helen wear it, not in all my life.”

“Did you buy it for her, Father?”

“I don't remember that I did. No, she must have had it already, but I can't ever recall seeing it on her anywhere. I'd love you to wear it, Maura dear.”

“It might have been special to her.” Maura was still doubtful.

“No, it couldn't have been or else she'd have…” Kit stopped, horrified. She nearly said she would have taken it with her to London.

“Or else…?” Maura looked at her.

“Or else we'd have seen her wear it…Here, let me thread this ribbon in, you're the belle of the ball.”

“When are you going to put on your dress?”

“I have it down at the hotel, I didn't want to put it on until I'm through in the kitchen.”

“Does the chef not mind you taking over?”

“I don't think by any stretch of the imagination you could call Con Daly a chef…a cook is even stretching it a bit. He's so relieved that we're all there he's nearly licking our shoes with gratitude.”

Emmet came in wanting his bow tie tied. “A girlfriend should be doing this for you,” Maura said as she tied it expertly.

“Oh, I've no time to be interested in girls for a few years yet,” Emmet said.

Kit caught his eye and smiled.

“Very sensible,” Martin McMahon said. “The country would be in a better state if everyone thought the same.”

“I'll see you down there.” Kit ran off.

Stevie Sullivan knocked from an upstairs window. “Will you come on up here and help me dress?”

“Sadly no,” she called back. “I'm on duty five minutes ago, and the battle orders are very strict. I made most of them myself.”

“You're not exactly gussied up yourself,” he said, disappointed.

She was wearing her duffel coat and her hair still in big loose rollers was under a headscarf. “‘Gussied up'…what a marvelous phrase…see you later.”

He watched from the window as she ran into the hotel, the Central, which you wouldn't recognize with its smart barrels of greenery, its trimmed creeper, its glittering new sign perfectly illuminated by some fixture which also showed the old oak tree to its best.

Funny that Kit didn't see the naked longing in Philip O'Brien's face. She was not an unkind girl, she wouldn't play games with him. She simply didn't see that the young son of the hotel was head over heels in love with her.

Kit slipped into the kitchen, she didn't want to join the loud voices that were coming from the bar, she could hear Matthew booming away. She must remember to warn Kevin that very strict control should be exercised over Matthew.

The kitchen was too hot, she opened a window but the draft blew things from a shelf. “Hold the back door open with a chair,” she ordered.

“I'll do it, that's the very thing,” said Con Daly in his spotless whites. There had been a time when Con always looked as if somebody had spilled the contents of thirty-five dinner plates over him.

The young waitresses were standing in a little group, giggling with excitement. Kit frowned. How many times had she tried to tell them…but then when she and Clio were young they did nothing but laugh and giggle for about three years. Suppose they had been asked to help in O'Brien's.

“Listen,” she said to the girls. “I know you think we're all quite old and probably mad, but I want to tell you what we're doing. We're trying to show that we can be as good as and better than the grown-ups. And the grown-ups think we're still children…so we need to look desperately polished. We need to be able to pronounce starters.”

“Hors d'oeuvres.”

“We need to know what tarragon is…”

“It's an herb in the sauce,” they said.

“But most of all we want them to think you are real waitresses, not schoolgirls. For some reason laughing and enjoying yourself make you look amateur. I don't know why, so I can't let you do it. We can all laugh our heads off when it's over. And Philip has said that if there's no laughing there's going to be an extra four shillings each for all of you.” This was serious money. They looked at each other in disbelief. “But that's everyone. One giggler and nobody gets the four shillings extra. Okay?”

They nodded, faces solemn, afraid to meet each other's eyes.

“Great,” Kit said. “Now, what else was I going to do?”

“Get dressed, I think,” said one of the girls. The others reddened but managed not to laugh. Kit had them well frightened into earning their extra wage.

She took the scarlet dress from its hanger. Philip had told her she could change in his room. He had tidied it and left around it all kinds of things that would make her think better of him. Books he hadn't read, clean towels and a kind of soap that he had never used but it was expensive.

The dress fit perfectly, it was an off-the-shoulder model so there would be no bra. But again it was so perfectly molded that there would be no need. As she stood in her half slip and washed herself at Philip's handbasin Kit studied her face in the mirror. Her heart was not in tonight's festivities. If only she had been able to ring Lena and talk to her.

She was tired from all the work involved. She looked pale, she thought. She must be sure not to waste tonight's opportunities. That's what it had all been about. She mustn't grant an inch to the poisonous little Anna Kelly, who had bought a lime-colored dress in Brown Thomas. Reports were that it looked a knockout. Kit hadn't killed herself getting this hotel off the ground just so that Philip's parents could sit back and take all the credit. She had wanted an arena, a public place to allow Stevie Sullivan to be seen to fall for her.

She needed to wipe the two mean little eyes of Anna Kelly and make her flee sobbing back to poor innocent Emmet, who would of course take her. Kit had made a promise that she was going to deliver. But now it was much more than that, it was something she wanted so much and so badly that it nearly hurt.

There was a sizable crowd by the time that Kit made her entrance but Stevie and his clients had not arrived. Her eyes raked the room for them, but she couldn't see them. She went to where her father and Maura were standing with the Kellys. Maura was still wearing the little cape.

Lilian had admired it. “Very smart indeed,” she had said, slightly enviously Maura thought.

“Yes, I think I'll leave it on for a bit, I can't imagine the O'Briens having the place warm enough,” Maura whispered.

“I haven't seen you wearing it before.”

“Not much cause really,” Maura said. She had decided not to tell her sister that it had once belonged to Helen. And it was obvious that Lilian had never seen it before. What a strange woman Helen McMahon must have been to have had a lovely thing like this and never worn it.

“I wouldn't have believed the place, Kit.” Her father looked around him in amazement. “I'll have to let you into the pharmacy next.”

“Fine, as long as you don't object to holes in the walls every two minutes like Mildred O'Brien did,” Kit whispered. “Her bloody walls were falling down and great wedges of damp like lumps of penicillin and she says
Not too many nails in the wall
.”

Mildred was standing like royalty near the fireplace, accepting compliments from everyone. “Well, the old place
does
have its charm,” she was saying modestly, as if it had looked like this all the time.

Then Kit joined Clio and the O'Connors. Clio wore a cream dress with a neckline of rosebud. It was attractive but it wasn't startling. You wouldn't pick Clio out in the crowd like you would Kit in her scarlet dress. Or Anna in her bright lime color. Clio seemed to sense it and the corners of her mouth turned down.

“Welcome to Lough Glass,” Kit said to the group.

“You look terrific,” Frankie Barry said.

“Thanks, it's very startling anyway. If I were in London you'd think I was a pillar box.”

“Or a bus,” Clio said. Everyone looked at her, surprised. “They're red too,” Clio said lamely.

“Yes, of course,” Kit said. “Tell me, how was your trip to London?” she asked the O'Connor twins.

“Fabulous…” Michael said.

“No one there to hold a candle to you, Kit,” Kevin said.

Clio looked crosser than ever.

But Kit appeared not to notice. “Tell me about your sister's fiancé. Did he turn out to be okay?”

Clio wished she had thought to ask. Kit was winning everybody there. She didn't even remotely like Kevin O'Connor, and yet he was hanging on her every word.

“He was okay,” Kevin said. “Like old and everything, but an all-right fellow. You could see why she likes him. He drove us all round London in his car…down the docks, to Covent Garden…he was like a guide…in a way.”

“Did he not have to go to work?” Kit asked.

“Well, it was Christmas.”

“But isn't that the terrible thing about hotel work, we have to work at Christmas?”

Kevin looked at Michael. “That's true. I suppose he had time off.”

“I think he's left his hotel, you know, already. And they're getting married very soon. Real soon, wink, wink,” Michael said, nudging Clio.

Clio looked annoyed, but Kit was interested. “And will you all be going over for the wedding again?”

“No, they're coming over here. It'll be in Dublin.”

Kit wanted to ask had they met his family, what had he been doing up to now. She wanted to get the two stupid boneheaded O'Connor boys up against a wall and beat the answers out of them. Then she wanted to tell them that Mary Paula had got herself hooked to a liar and deceiver in the international league. She wanted to say that she could tell them a story about their future brother-in-law and his deceptions that would make their pale, greasy hair stand on end.

“Clio, is that a new watch?” she asked.

Clio had been displaying her wrist in a way that simply called out for attention. “Yes, Michael gave it to me.” There was a little simper.

“It's lovely,” Kit said, and they all admired it.

Next year it would be the engagement ring. That's the way the mating dance worked. The watch was a preliminary. Kit looked at Clio with new eyes as if she had never seen her before. Clio was going to marry Michael O'Connor. She would soon be a sister-in-law of Louis Gray's.

Mrs. Hanley was loud in her praise of how well the young people had done. “My Patsy was involved in it all,” she told Mrs. Dillon from the news agency. “I'm surprised your Orla wasn't in on it from the start.”

“Well, of course Orla has her own life to lead, what with being married and living so far out in the country.”

“She won't be here tonight, will she?” Mrs. Hanley asked.

“One never knows,” said Mrs. Dillon distantly, and moved away.

She had told her daughter Orla that there was no question of her turning up alone at the Golf Club Dance. She either came with her husband and a family party or she didn't come at all. “That crowd wouldn't know what a dance was,” Orla had said. “And I'll go on my own if I like, there'll be plenty who'll dance with me.” Mrs. Dillon, who feared greatly that Stevie Sullivan might dance only too much with her, had her mouth set in a grim line.

The buzz of conversation had become almost a roar when Philip and Kit decided that Bobby Boylan and his band should begin to play. They hadn't wanted them to start until the noise level was already high.

“Something gentle without too many rat-tat-tats to start,” Philip had suggested.

“What does he mean rat-tat-tats?” Bobby Boylan asked indignantly.

“I think he means reverberating drum sounds,” Kit said apologetically.