The Glass Lake (87 page)

         

“I'm going to throw myself on your mercy,” Clio said to Kit.

“Don't do that. You'll only regret it.” They were in Kit's flat. Clio had called unexpectedly.

“I need help desperately.”

“You're sure, then, you've had a test?”

“Yes, I sent a sample of urine into Holles Street under a false name.”

“And you still haven't told Michael?”

“I can't, Kit. It's too much for his father and mother. Two shotgun weddings in a few months.”

“But they won't have to pay for your one, your mother and father will.”

“Jesus, I know. Why do you think I'm so afraid? I have to tell them too.”

“Well, get it over with as quick as possible. Tell Michael today and I'll go home with you to Lough Glass and help you tell your parents. Now, will that do?” Kit looked at Clio, expecting to be thanked. She was being very generous. Clio had been nothing but dismissive and downright hostile about Stevie. Kit felt saintly to be returning such good for evil.

“No, that's not the favor I want.”

“What else can I do?” Kit asked.

“I want to get an abortion.”

“You're not serious?”

“It's the only way.”

“You must be mad. Don't you want to marry him? Don't you keep saying that from morning to night? Now you have to. He has to.”

“He mightn't.”

“Of course he will. Anyway, you can't think of the other.”

“Lots of people do. If we only knew where to go…I wanted you to ask around.”

“Well, I'm asking nothing of the sort. Get ahold of yourself, Clio. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Clio was sobbing. “You don't understand. You don't know how awful it's going to be. You don't know what it's like.”

Kit put her hand on Clio's shoulder. “Remember when we were younger we used to count the good points about things…”

“Did we?”

“Yes. Now let's see what are the plusses. He's respectable, your parents can't go berserk altogether as if it were someone like Stevie Sullivan.”

“That's true,” Clio said, sniffing.

“You love him and you think he loves you.”

“I think he does, yes.”

“His family can cope with shotgun weddings. They've been through it, they know the sky doesn't fall on you.”

“Yes, yes.”

“You can ask Maura to help you, intercede for you. She's terrific about heading off rows, I've watched her.”

“Would she? I get the feeling she's gone off me.”

“I'll ask her to,” Kit said.

“But suppose, suppose…”

“And Maura could suggest you live in her flat, it's a great place. Michael could buy it from her, she was thinking of selling it. It's got a garden, it would be nice for a baby.”

“Baby!” wailed Clio.

“That's what you're having,” Kit explained.

“And will you be my bridesmaid?” Clio asked. “Suppose it all worked out?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Thank you,” Kit said soothingly.

“And it needn't be big. Just a few of us…we could have it in the Central. Just Michael's family to come down, Mary Paula and Louis and…”

Kit's blood went cold. Louis Gray couldn't come to Lough Glass. She must think very fast. “I don't know if it's a good idea to have it at home. You know the way half the town will be offended if they're not asked.”

“But if it's small…”

“They'll still be offended, the doctor's daughter and we weren't asked. You know how they are…”

“But where else?”

“Do you remember the place Maura got married? That was nice…and she'd be flattered if you asked her to try and set that up.”

“Kit, you're very devious, you should have been an international spy,” Clio said in admiration.

         

The Central Hotel Lough Glass got four more bookings as a direct result of the New Year's Eve Dinner Dance.

Philip began to panic. “We can't have Christmas candles all over the place.”

“No, your parents are going to have to bite the bullet and get the place decorated. We can't disguise the walls forever. And suppose you had to have a lunch, something the light of day might shine on…then they'd see what it's really like.”

“Will you help me tell them?” he pleaded.

“Why me?” She felt she was involved with too much on too many levels.

“Because you sound businesslike and calm, and you don't sound all up in a heap like the rest of us,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Can I ask you something else?”

“What? Will I organize them a bank loan?” Kit asked with a grin.

“No, I want to ask you are you serious about Stevie Sullivan?”

“Now, Philip, we agreed…”

“We agreed that I wouldn't discuss my feelings for you or show you any sign of them. I've kept to that, haven't I?”

“Yes, of course you have. Yes indeed.”

“So could you tell me about Stevie?”

“Yes, I do love him a great deal. I didn't love anyone ever before but now I do. It's odd for someone to say it coldly out in the open, but you asked me and I'm telling you as a friend.”

“But Stevie, Kit? You know, we know, everyone knows what he's like.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I beg your pardon?”

“No, you're not going to be an ostrich about this. You and I used to make jokes about him and Orla Dillon and Deirdre Hanley and everything that moved.”

“Yes, that was then and this is now. And I hope you won't be part of any jokes about him and Kit McMahon, that would not be the action of a friend.”

“But I wouldn't be a friend if I didn't warn you and say maybe it's an infatuation or something. People are beginning to talk and they're very surprised.”

“Thank you, Philip. I know you mean well, and truly I thank you for it. Now, can we go back to talking about the hotel and what kind of pressure I'm going to have to bring to bear on poor Dan and Mildred.”

The huge refurbishment of the Central Hotel began almost at once.

Even if Dr. Kelly and his wife had wanted to hold the reception there they would not have been able. They were greatly helped over the whole distressing business by Maura.

“She's been so good to Clio,” Lilian said over and over. “And I always thought that there was a bit of friction between them of late.”

“Goes to show how wrong we are,” Peter Kelly said. He was surprised at how strongly he felt about the news of his daughter's pregnancy. And at how casually it was being taken by Michael O'Connor, the young man responsible, and by Clio herself.

They all seemed to think that because Maura was selling them her flat that everything was falling into place. There was no mention of all the illicit sex that had led to this. Dr. Kelly came from the generation where there was no sexual activity until you married. How had everything changed in his own family without his being aware of it?

“I'm sure you knew, Daddy? You must have known I was pregnant,” Clio asked him.

“No, no. I assure you it came as a very great shock to me.”

“But doctors often know,” she persisted.

“Not this one.”

For no reason at all there came to his mind a memory, a memory of the night a long time ago when he had seen Helen McMahon and realized she was pregnant. And then she had thrown herself in the lake. At least the world had changed in some respects for the better, he thought to himself, and patted his daughter's arm.

         

“I'll tell you about what you'll wear as the bridesmaid,” Clio said. “I'm going to talk to Mary Paula about it tonight, and we'll choose what everyone will wear.”

“No, that's not the way round it at all. I'll tell you what I'm wearing as your bridesmaid,” Kit said.

“What?”

“I'm wearing a cream silk dress with a jacket to match and depending on what you want I'll either wear a big picture hat or some concoction of flowers and ribbons in my hair. It's three-quarters length. I am not wearing an evening dress to parade up an icy cold church, and I'm not dressing up in fancy-dress outfits for whatever color scheme you and Mary Paula think up…”

“I—I don't believe you,” Clio gasped.

“You'd better believe me, that's what you're going to get, or else change your bridesmaid.”

“I might easily do that.”

“It's your privilege, Clio. And please understand me that I don't mind at all if you do. There'll be no falling-out.” In many ways it would be marvelous if they could fall out. Then she wouldn't have to go to a family gathering and meet Louis. Mother's Louis. But a serious falling-out would cloud the day for too many people.

Kit sighed.

“I don't know what you're sighing about,” Clio said. “I'm the one putting up with all this. I'm the bride, for God's sake. People are meant to be nice to me.”

“I am nice to you,” Kit hissed at her. “I told you that clown would marry you, I told you about Maura as a middleman, about her flat, about the hotel in Dublin. Jesus, Mary, and Holy Saint Joseph, how much bloody nicer could I have been?”

Her violent outburst made them both laugh.

“You win,” said Clio. “I'll tell Mary Paula I've a mad bridesmaid. Just another cross to bear.”

Would you and Stevie come over to London? There's a special Car and Motor Show
, Lena wrote.
He'd love that and it would mean you and I could catch up on chat. Let me know if it's a good idea, and here's the fare anyway. I'm not paying for Stevie so that he'll have his pride, and he might
use that as a real chance to see new cars and meet people
.

Let me know what you think
.

Kit rang Lena.

“I opened it five minutes ago. We'd
love
to come to London. Now, how about that for being eager.”

“And Stevie? He'd love it too?”

Lena's voice was light and happy that they were going to accept.

“He doesn't know yet but he's going to be thrilled. When I tell him.”

“You sound very sure of him,” Lena said.

“I'm very sure he'd like this,” Kit said.

“Where are you? Let me imagine where you are now.”

“I'm in the phone box outside my flat. You know, the one you made the calls from when you were booking the plane.”

“I know it well, I can see you there now.”

“Well, you should see the big smile on my face.”

“I can imagine it. I can nearly see it,” Lena said.

         

Philip was walking along the road.

“
You
look very cheerful,” he said accusingly. It was so like something his mother would say.

She wondered did she have some of the same expressions as her mother. Perhaps everyone did. Take Clio—she said the same snobby things that Mrs. Kelly did, and Frankie Barry was shruggy and couldn't-care-less like her mother.

Perhaps I really am going to live the same kind of life as my mother, Kit thought with a shock. She looked at Philip as if she had never seen him before.

“Hey, Kit, take it easy…I mean it's good to look cheerful,” he said.

“What?”

“Listen, are you awake yet? You're like someone sleepwalking,” Philip grumbled.

She linked his arm on the way to college. They talked about things that they were not thinking about. Philip was wondering if Stevie. Sullivan and Kit had gone all the way. Kit was wondering what Philip and all the O'Briens would say if she told them she was cheerful because her long-dead mother had just invited her over to London.

I've booked you in a guest house near here. Two single rooms. You're my guests, you can make your own arrangements about the beds
, Lena wrote.

No need for any arrangements, I told you I'd tell you if there is any of that
, Kit wrote.

“I've friends coming over…I'll put that plan we have on hold for a couple of weeks,” Lena told the Millars at the Saturday lunch.

Their plan was to establish a branch of Millar's in Manchester. They had found the perfect woman to run it for them. Peggy Forbes was busy training with them in London. All that was needed was the right premises, the suitable staff, and a big launch. There were so many applications from the North of England that it made sense to have a presence there. Peggy was a Lancashire woman herself. If all went well, and they were sure it would, they would make her a partner soon.

         

“I can't bear that you've been on a plane before me,” Stevie said as they checked in their bags in Dublin Airport.

“Oh, you've done a lot of things I've never done. Far too many in fact.”

He hugged her there and then. “None of them were important,” he said.

“I know that,” Kit said loftily.

It wasn't a barrier between them, his wicked past and her virginity. It would sort itself out. Kit knew that Stevie had hopes it would sort itself out on this visit to London.

“Will you tell her I know?” he asked.

“Yes, I will. Though I think she probably guesses. We can read what isn't there when we write to each other. It's uncanny.”

“I won't try to please her, to impress her and pretend I'm good enough for you.” He spoke quite seriously.

“No, she'd see through you straight away,” Kit said as they walked through the duty-free shop.

“I wonder what I'll get her.” He stopped and looked at the shelves of drink and cigarettes. He paused in front of the champagne. “It doesn't matter whether she likes it or not. It's festive. It's celebration, that's what it is,” he said.

From everything Lena had told her, this is exactly what Louis Gray would have said and done.

Lena was there to meet them. Stevie marveled at how well she looked. Her face had been gaunt two months ago, but now she was glowing with health and enthusiasm.