The Glass Lake (81 page)

“Haven't you the most beautiful view in the world!” Kit exclaimed.

“We do,” he said simply.

“I'm so proud of Lough Glass tonight,” Kit said. “I could shout it from the roofs. Usually I have to get ready for people to say Where? when I say I'm from here.”

“There's someone from the Castle Hotel…they came to report apparently.”

“Well, they'll have a lot to tell.” Kit managed to get them back to talking as the friends they were rather than being draped around each other.

“He was interested in the summerhouse, said it was a real feature. Apparently they just knocked one down over there…weren't we clever?” Philip said. They looked down from the big picture windows at the flood-lit summerhouse and the lake stretching away beyond it. “You couldn't wish for a better setting to see in the New Year,” Philip said.

Kit looked at the clock, it was a quarter to eleven. She had seventy-five minutes to get Stevie Sullivan out on the floor kissing her and wishing her Happy New Year in front of the town. She could barely wait.

Maura and Martin danced to the music of “On the Street Where You Live.” “This must be the only place in the world where almost everybody does live on the same street,” Martin said.

“Didn't they do a great job? It's much better than up at the Club, twenty times better.”

“You look lovely tonight, Maura.”

“And so do you, young and handsome.”

“No no, that's going too far,” he laughed at her.

“It's what I see.” Maura was transparently honest.

He held her a little closer.

Nearby Peter and Lilian danced, stiffly and a little bit away from each other. It had all the hallmarks of a duty dance. Peter would go to the bar shortly.

Philip O'Brien was dancing with his mother.

He was a boy who knew how to do things right, Martin thought. Then he looked around for his beautiful daughter in her eye-catching scarlet dress. As he looked he saw her take the hand of Stevie Sullivan from the garage. Stevie looked like a film star, dark and brooding. As they began to dance Martin thought they looked very much as if they had been dancing together for a long time. Which was of course ridiculous, they hardly knew each other, those two.

“Not now, Emmet. I have to do the decorations,” Anna Kelly snapped at him.

“Absolutely.” He appeared not to see her rudeness. “I just wanted to make sure I danced with everyone at our table. Patsy,” he raised his voice, “will you do me the honor?”

Patsy Hanley's face lit up. She had a very presentable taffeta dress with a big broad sash. Her mother beamed proudly from another table as she saw her daughter walk to the floor with handsome young Emmet McMahon from the pharmacy.

This was a night Lough Glass would remember forever. Kevin O'Connor was dancing with Frankie Barry. “This is a great place, isn't it,” he said.

“Would you look at the view,” Frankie said. “Philip O'Brien will be the biggest catch in Ireland with a hotel like this under his belt.”

“Play your cards right, then, Frankie,” Kevin said, laughing.

“No, I think he only has eyes for Miss McMahon…like the rest of you.”

“He'd want to be careful with Miss McMahon…she's the kind that could deal you a very sharp blow if you got out of order.”

“Yeah, well, that guy she calls the boy next door isn't getting kicked too far away, is he?” asked Frankie.

And they looked at the tableau of Kit McMahon and Stevie Sullivan dancing as if there were no other people in the room, and no one had existed at any other time.

         

“You look great, Clio,” Michael said.

“Why did you say that?”

“Because you do.”

“And?”

“And because you're looking very glum.”

“And?”

“Because I want you to come up to the room with me now.”

“Now, in front of everyone? You must be mad!”

“This may come as a severe shock to you, Clio, my dream girl, but nobody in this room is looking at us, or thinking about us…they've all got their own concerns.”

That was probably true. Clio looked at the dance floor. Kit must have gone quite mad, she was holding on to Stevie Sullivan as if she never wanted to let him go. Stevie Sullivan, who had been with everyone in the parish. She must have lost her mind.

“I'll go first as if I'm going to the ladies'. You wait for three mins. Okay?”

“Sure.” Michael had thought it would be more difficult.

Anna Kelly came back to the table at that moment. “Would you like to dance?” she asked Michael

“Later, okay?” he said. He saw her face flush a dark red.

“Not if you were the only man in the room with his own legs would I dance with you, Michael,” she said. Michael watched her flounce over to a table where a lot of men sat. “I'm a great dancer,” he heard her say.

She was also a great-looking girl in that lime-green color. He wasn't surprised that about five of the men rose unsteadily to their feet to compete for the honor. At least it had distracted her.

Michael slipped out of the room and upstairs.

“I've put on the electric fire,” Clio said. She was already in the bed, her dress hanging carefully on the back of a chair. He was about to follow her with speed. “Lock the door, for God's sake,” she whispered.

“You're very experienced at this sort of thing,” Michael said in admiration.

Clio looked at him, alarmed. “You know I'm not. There's never been anyone but you.”

“Aha, so you say.”

“You know that's true, don't you?”

“Whatever you say, lady.” He had his arms around her.

Clio's eyes were troubled. Suppose Michael really thought she might have been with other people, then that stopped her being special. “I love you, Michael,” she said.

“Yes, and I love you too.” He spoke automatically, as people respond to a greeting. Wasn't it impossible to know if people really meant what they said?

         

The man dancing with Anna Kelly was a Ford dealer. He covered a big area and Stevie Sullivan was one of his best customers. The boy had a genius for knowing where the business was. He was definitely going places. Joe Murphy was delighted to be invited to this do tonight. Stevie had asked him did he want to bring his wife…but Joe thought no, there was no point in complicating things. Now with this little angel in his arms he was even more pleased he hadn't. There would have been great trouble getting someone to mind the children, and anyway Carmel was shy. She wouldn't mix well.

“You're a terrific dancer,” Anna said to him.

He held her tightly to him. This was a great place altogether. And to think that only this morning he had begun to think he was getting a bit old and fat, past the first excitement of youth. It had all been in his mind. “Let me dance you off your feet,” he said to Anna as he did a tricky showy sidestep. It was true what they always said about large men being light on their feet. She seemed delighted with him.

“Don't move away from me,” Stevie said.

“I think the music has stopped,” Kit told him.

“Well, that's only temporary.”

“I love you,” she said.

“People can lip-read phrases like that.”

“So you're afraid of what people may hear or read on your lips?”

“No, I'm not afraid. I love you, Kit McMahon. I love you until my heart aches. I can't bear any time without you. You're my woman…and I don't mean that in some awful possessive way…I mean I'm your man. That's what I mean.” He smiled at her, a lovely crooked smile.

They were near a window. The music had begun again. There hadn't been a question of their separating.

“Look at that moon,” Kit said. “It's as if we had arranged it with some electrician.”

“The lake looks lovely. Maybe we might go and have a walk down there later…you know, run down by the summerhouse and onto the shore.”

“I think it's probably the worst idea in the world.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “It is…I'd love to live down there, just beside the edge of the water…”

“Like Sister Madeleine used to.”

“Yes, we might have a little cottage, you and I, one day.”

“We'll not be together in a little cottage by the lake.”

“Why do you go and say that?” He looked genuinely upset.

“Because we're only fooling ourselves. But listen, enough of that.”

“A little cottage where the birds would come, where you could hear the water, like Sister Madeleine did.”

“I miss her,” Kit said.

“So do I.”

They were the two people in Lough Glass who might have been expected to resent the hermit. She had harbored the man who had injured their families. But they both knew it had been from a good heart.

“I wonder where she is tonight.”

“Oh, well tucked up in her bed in St. Brigid's,” Stevie said.

“St. Brigid's? You know where she is?” Nobody else knew. Her departure and her destination had always been a mystery.

“Yes, I've seen her, met her there.”

Kit could have fallen to the ground with astonishment. “I don't believe it.”

“True. I was up there trying to persuade the Reverend Mother that if they bought a station wagon for the old gardener to drive instead of a truck he could take them in to the station and do a whole rake of things. And I saw her, just standing there, the eyes as blue and strange as ever.”

“And did you speak to her?”

“Of course I did.”

“Stevie, you amaze me.”

“I'll take you out there to see her one day, she'd love that.”

“Maybe she's hiding from people.”

“She may be, but not from us.”

She felt a shiver of pleasure the way he said “us.”

And the dances went on and on. Bobby Boylan and his band fueling themselves with the pints that Philip thoughtfully provided at regular intervals.

The clearing-up had been a dream of efficiency. Kit and Philip had insisted that the kitchen be scrubbed, that utensils be seen to have been cleaned by being turned upside down to prove that even the bottoms had been scoured. Dishcloths and towels washed were hanging on a line. Food was either covered and put in the fridge or if it was for dogs or pigs it was in buckets out in a scullery, each one covered and labeled. Philip wanted to make sure that a few people were casually allowed to see the kitchen after the event, something that would never have been considered remotely likely up to now in the Central.

A certain level of democracy had been allowed. Con Daly and the rest of the staff had been allowed to join the revelers. An extra table had been added for them near the kitchen door. In between serving drinks and cleaning tables the solemn waitresses and the more gleeful waiters would come and sit, to enjoy the first and finest dance they had ever seen.

“Could I have the next dance?” Kevin O'Connor approached Anna Kelly. She was really a beautiful girl. He didn't know why his brother referred to her as some kind of monster or a savage dog.

“I beg your pardon,” she said as if he had made the most incredibly obscene suggestion.

“I was just asking you to dance.”

“And what made you think I might dance with you?” Anna asked. She was still seething with indignation about Michael having refused her. His twin brother was equally horrible.

“Well, we are at a dance.” Kevin was uncertain of himself. Perhaps he was uncouth and forward. He remembered the solicitor's letter and shivered. “I meant no offense,” he said humbly.

“I'm glad to hear it,” Anna Kelly said sternly, and walked away.

Joe Murphy had been an unwise partner to have picked. He had let his hands roam around her in a very intimate way and even suggested that they go to his car, which was a brand-new model, he said, and there were only five of them in Ireland. She had found it necessary to lose him rather speedily.

But Stevie had seen her dance with him. She made sure Stevie saw her all the time. What was he doing with Kit, for heaven's sake? A duty dance was a duty dance, but this was ridiculous.

She looked around for her sister. Clio had been gone for ages. Then Anna's intelligent eyes noticed that Michael O'Connor wasn't there either. First she went to look for them in the summerhouse. They had all said during the preparations that it would be an ideal place for courting couples; only the outside was lit up. Nobody could see what was going on inside. There was a long bench there with a long cushion. It would have been cold of course…

But Anna tiptoed around to peer in. There was no sign of her sister and Michael O'Connor. She paused to look out at the lake. It had never been more beautiful. Why was Stevie Sullivan taking so long to recognize that she was there, all dressed up, grown up, and waiting for him? He could be standing out in the moonlight with her now. Or in the summerhouse.

She was just about to move onto the path, when she saw a shape. There were so many shadows here that she thought it was part of the hedge, but she realized now it was somebody crouching there. The shape stood up, it was a woman. A woman in a long woolen skirt and a cloak, a cloak that she pulled up over her face and head when she saw Anna could see her. Then she ran away, down the path that went toward the lake.

Anna got such a fright that she couldn't even find a voice to scream with. Her breath was gone. This woman must have been just beside her for about five minutes, and would have said nothing, shown no presence until Anna had gone back to the path. Who was she, and what was she looking at?

Probably one of the travelers. They were always stealing things, no matter what her father said. They might have come to see could they get at people's valuables. Fur coats and the like. Anna had thought Kit and Clio were stupid to insist that there be a proper cloakroom with someone to mind it. But now she realized they were right. Tinkers, travelers, whatever you wanted to call them, they weren't the same as other people. Imagine crouching in a garden instead of getting on with your life.