Louis sighed. “It won’t be business, darling. It won’t be a matter of talking to sales directors, or marketing managers. You know that. It’ll be whatever I can get. Ivy will be very useful if I want a job as a hotel porter, or in a bar. She can say she’s known me for five years, not ten days.”
Lena looked at him aghast. “You can’t take a job like that, Louis. I won’t have it. It was never meant to be this way.”
“It was always meant to be this way,” he said, holding both her hands. “It’s just that I was the fool who didn’t see it. And you gave me the second chance.”
She cried for a long time.
She cried over the lost baby. And the dreams of Louis having a fine living, dreams which were based on nothing. She cried because she heard church bells ring somewhere in West London and she thought of her children going to Mass and she had absolutely no idea what Martin had told them about her. She cried because she knew she was a bad mother, the worst kind of mother. One who could leave her own children.
No wonder God had taken this much-wanted child away from her.
“I’ll make it all right, believe me.” His eyes had tears in them too.
“Louis, tell me something…?”
“Anything, my love. Anything.”
“Is God very angry with us…is that why this happened?” She touched her stomach as she spoke. “Is it a punishment, a warning?”
“Of course it isn’t.” He was utterly certain.
“But you’re not all that well up in God, you’ve not gone to Mass all the time.” She was doubtful.
“No. But I know he’s there, and he’s the God of Love. He said that himself, didn’t he. He said that was the greatest of the commandments, that you should have love for each other and for God.”
“Yes, but I think he meant that we should…”
“You think he meant…you think he meant…now, now, now. What way is this to go on? When you’re happy you think he meant great things for us. When you are low you think he meant punishments and all this doom and gloom.” He held his head on one side and smiled at her. “What kind of faith have you at all, that you start giving everyone bad motives? This was an accident. The doctor said it. Brought on by stress maybe…and he hadn’t an idea how much stress. Listen, love, you can’t start thinking that God is lined up against us. He was one of the things meant to be on our side.”
“I know.” She felt better, he was very reassuring.
“So?”
“So, I’ll stop attacking him and laying it all at his door.”
“Excellent. Now a great big blow, then help me find a job.”
She blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and looked through the Situations Vacant advertisements with a heart that was much less heavy.
“I’ll go to Mass myself next Sunday,” she said in a half mutter. “That way God will know I haven’t given up on him.”
“God knows that,” Louis said. “If you didn’t give up on me, who treated you really badly, you won’t give up on God.”
It was a strangely endless week.
On Monday, Louis came home despondent. There were any number of building jobs, he said. Half of Ireland seemed to be over in London signing on with subcontractors, using a different name for each job. But he hadn’t the build, the experience, or the liking to swing a pickax or carry a hod. It had been a wasted day.
He was determined to be cheerful. “Now, stop looking upset. Don’t get out of that bed, listen to me. This is just day one. Day two will be fine. If you’re going to look so mournful then it makes it worse for me. I can’t come home and tell you the truth; I’ll only have to be making up lies.”
She saw the reason in what he said. She lay awake Monday night while he slept beside her, but she didn’t let him know how anxious she was.
Day two was fine. Louis came home elated. He had got a job and would start tomorrow. As a hall porter in a big hotel, not far away on the Underground. He would begin at eight a.m. and work days for the first two weeks, but there was the possibility of nights after that. Which was great.
“Why is it great?” Lena wanted to know.
Because then, of course, he could use some of the days for going for interviews for other jobs, the ones for which they felt he was more suited. Meanwhile wasn’t that great. The rent was secure. It had taken him only twenty-four hours to find honorable employment.
Lena couldn’t smile. She forced her face but it wouldn’t go into the right position. “I can’t bear you having to do this,” she said.
“Jesus Christ, won’t it be hard enough to do the bloody thing without having to listen to you being so negative,” he burst out. Lena looked at him, stricken. But he was quick to apologize. “Forgive me, forgive me. I didn’t mean to lash out at you. It was a long day. I’m nearly forty. They sort of implied I might be too old for a job like this. It was hard, darling; I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
The reconciliation was as sweet as ever.
They had always known there would be things like this to trip them up along the way. The main thing was to recognize them, admit them. They were both so sorry.
On Wednesday night Louis had funny stories about the hotel. The head porter was a crook, the manager was hopelessly ineffectual, the receptionist had a moustache and she was a woman, the guests he had talked to were mainly American (GIs) serving in the various bases in Britain, nice fellows, kids a lot of them. The day had seemed long, but it was interesting.
Lena took a huge interest and learned all their names. On Thursday night Louis told her how the head porter had tried to take a tip that should have belonged to Louis, but the Scots lady had insisted.
“It’s for the nice wee man with the blue eyes,” she had said.
The head porter had smiled good-naturedly in front of the Scottish lady, but out of the corner of his mouth he had hissed to Louis, “I have my eye on you.”
“What did you say?” Lena showed great enthusiasm.
“I said that I had my eye on his job. That silenced him.”
Lena pealed with laughter.
Louis would be out of there, gone to something worthy of him in days, or weeks at the very worst.
On Friday, Louis was tired but he had a pay packet. They got paid every Friday, and his three days work paid the rent. They handed it to Ivy in an envelope.
“I think you’re well enough to go out and celebrate,” she said. “My treat. A couple of pints in a place that a friend of mine runs.”
They went on a red bus, Lena’s legs felt weak still, but she was buoyed up by the outing. Ivy pointed out places to her as the bus went through the London traffic, and Louis pointed out other places. She felt like a child on a birthday treat.
Ivy showed her a big office where she had worked during the war, and areas that had been bombed. She said that this was a great eel shop and that was a very honorable pawnbroker, in case they fell on a really bad time, and to be sure to say that Ivy had recommended him. Louis showed her restaurants and hotels and theatres. He knew all the names, but he didn’t have a little story to go with each one like Ivy did. This was part of Louis’s past, places she didn’t inquire about but was grateful to be shown. They got to a big noisy pub where Ivy knew a lot of the clientele.
“Very far from home for a local,” Louis said.
“Ah love, I used to work here, but we won’t go into all that now.”
“Certainly.” Louis squeezed Lena’s hand. This was more like it. Going out on a raffish adventure where things mustn’t be said…this was the kind of thing they liked.
They sat at a table the three of them. A lot of people came over and were introduced as Doris and Henry and Nobby and Steve and the landlord was called Ernest. A small man with a lot of tattoos up his arm. He made it his business to come to the table several times.
Lena and Louis noticed this because unlike in the pubs at home there wasn’t table service, you had to go up to the bar to get your pint refilled.
But not Ivy.
/> Their glasses of bitter and Louis’s pint were refilled by the guvnor, as people called him. Lena saw no money change hands. They had just enough to buy a drink themselves and offered, but the offer was waved away.
“Ernest will look after us,” Ivy said firmly. “He likes to do that.”
During the evening Lena saw Ivy’s eyes follow the small wizened man as he moved behind the bar and greeted customers. From time to time his eyes sought out Ivy’s and he smiled.
Some of the customers asked, “How’s Charlotte, then?” and Ernest always said, “Gone to her mother’s like every Friday.”
Lena knew why Ivy visited on Fridays only. She wondered how long it had been going on. Ivy might tell her sometime. But then again, she might not. This was not Lough Glass, where everyone’s life was discussed inside out until it had no meaning anymore.
Tonight in Paddles’ bar they would be saying…
Suddenly she realized with a start that she didn’t know what they would be saying. Had Martin said she had gone on a visit? Had he said she was sick? No, surely Peter Kelly would need to have been involved in that.
But what had he told the children? She felt her face redden with rage that he hadn’t told her what story he was going to give Kit and Emmet. She had urged him to tell them the truth if he could bear it, and to let them write to her. But that had obviously not been done.
Ivy was talking to Ernest, the two of them sitting together like a long-married couple while she picked pieces of fluff from the sleeve of his jacket.
Lena felt Louis’s eyes on her. She smiled, shaking away memories of Lough Glass. “What are you thinking about?” he asked her.
“I was thinking how I’m well enough to get a job now…and next week I’ll take us all out for a celebration,” she said.
“I don’t want you to have to work.”
“I don’t want you to either…but it’s only for a while…then we’ll have careers and a home like real people…” She smiled brightly.
It was one of the many lies she told him.
On Saturday, Lena dressed herself up and went to Millar’s Employment Agency. She stood outside and took three very deep breaths. She drew in the cold London air right down to her toes. This could be the start of many fruitless interviews. What would they want with her? A woman with no shorthand. No typing skills to speak of. No references. She was too old to be an office junior. She was too ill-equipped to be an office senior.
At the desk sat a woman in a cardigan, sucking a pencil. She had a pleasant smile and a vague expression on her face. She was a gentlewoman, not at all the sort of person you might have expected to come across in an employment agency.
She pushed a form across the desk and Lena filled it in with a shaking hand. At almost every category she felt she sounded like a loser. Be confident, she told herself. So she didn’t have any real experience or any written reference, but she had more than some of the school dropouts had, she had the ability to think on her own, to take the initiative. She smiled encouragingly at the woman in the cardigan, with hair like a bird’s nest, in order to hide her own feelings of dread. At least this wasn’t the kind of woman who would laugh at her and order her out of the office, implying that she had been wasting valuable time.
“There, I think that’s everything,” she said with a bright smile. Lena dug her nails into her palms as she watched the woman read slowly through the completed form. She willed herself not to explain, not to apologize.
“It’s rather hard to see…well, to know what exactly you could…where we might…”
Lena put on her most confident face. “Oh, I know I’m not the run-of-the-mill clerical or secretarial appointment,” she said, hardly believing the sound of her own voice. “But I was hoping that there might be something where my particular skills, more mature qualities might be useful.”
“Like what, exactly?” The woman at the other side of the desk was more embarrassed than she was, Lena realized.
“Excuse me, what is your name?” Lena asked.
“Miss Park, Jessica Park.”
“Well, Miss Park, you know maybe the kind of firm that wants someone who can try anything, not a young woman on her way up through some kind of ladder. Somewhere that I could turn my hand to anything, to answering the phone, doing the filing, making the tea, keeping the place nice, thinking up new ideas…” Lena looked around the dingy office of Millar’s Employment Agency, waving her hands to illustrate her point.
“I know what you mean, every office wants someone like you,” said Miss Park wistfully. At that point the phone rang and immediately after, two girls came in saying they just wanted leaflets, and the phone rang again.
Lena sat there biting her lip. Nothing in her life as wife of the pharmacist in Lough Glass had prepared her for the action she was about to take.
She must forget that she was an insignificant housewife from a small Irish village. She must remember that she was a career woman in a huge capital city. She watched the other woman speaking ineffectually and breathlessly on the telephone.
It had given Lena time to think. When Jessica Park was free again she decided to speak her thoughts. “For example, here in this office,” she said, hoping the shake in her voice was not obvious. “I can see you’re very busy. Perhaps this is just the kind of place I might be useful.”
Jessica Park was not a decision maker; she seemed alarmed. “Oh no, I don’t think so…” she began.
“Well, why not? You seem very overworked. I could do some of the more routine stuff, you know, keep the files…”
“But I don’t know anything about you…”
“You know everything about me.” She indicated the form.
“I don’t run the place…Mr. Millar will need…”
“Why don’t I start now…. You can see whether I’m any good or not, and then you can ask Mr. Millar.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure…”
Lena paused. It was hard to tell what age Jessica Park was. She might have been forty or forty-five. But she could equally have been thirty-five, a woman who had taken no care of herself and aged beyond her years.
Lena decided to choose this option. “Well, Jessica. I’ll call you that because I can see you’re younger than I am…why don’t we give it a try? Nothing to lose, nothing to pay if it doesn’t work out.”
“Jessie, actually, and I’m a little older than you,” Jessie admitted. “But all right. Just so long as we don’t get into any trouble.”
“What trouble can we get into? Look, I’ll find a chair and sit beside you.”
Before Jessie could change her mind Lena was installed. She sharpened pencils, tidied up the desk, and rearranged the enrollment forms so that there was a carbon paper attached to each one and a second sheet below.
“I never thought of that,” Jessie said in wonder.
“Of course you did,” said Lena. “It’s just you’re too busy to have time for it.” Lena answered the phone with a cheerful “Millar’s Employment Agency, how can we help you?” which was a vast improvement on Jessie’s tentative “Hello.”
She said that she would really like to become familiar with the filing system, that way she could be of the greatest assistance. Jessie gave her vague outlines and left her to it. Lena’s eyes raked through the lists until she found what she wanted. It wasn’t long before she tracked down the section that she was really interested in.
The situations vacant in sales and marketing.
The kinds of jobs that Louis Gray might be able to apply for, once they knew what was wanted and where to go.
“You mean you just walked in and said they needed you?” Louis was amazed.
“More or less,” Lena laughed, hardly daring to believe it had worked. There was no need to tell him how frightened she had been.
Mr. Millar had said that Miss Park was intelligent to have picked a mature woman from the many people she saw, and to suggest her. Jessie had been delighted with the unexpected praise. Lena would start on
Monday.
She said nothing to Louis about her real reason for taking the job. And the possible gold mine it might turn out to be for them. She wanted to call these firms herself in her role as employment agency and arm herself with the information.
Then Louis could apply on his own behalf.
It was all working out for the best. Lena thought she would be able to talk to God without bitterness at Mass next day.
Ivy was so sorry but she didn’t know where there were Roman Catholic churches. She was always seeing them. She’d ask. She said there was a great big one in Kilburn, Quex Road it was. Always huge crowds going in and out of it on a Sunday. That might be the place.
“Kilburn…would it be a bit Irish for us? Would people know us?” she asked Louis.
“No,” he said. “There’s hardly anyone from Lough Glass emigrated since you’ve left.”
“No, no of course not. But you…would people know you?”
“It doesn’t matter if they know me, love. It’s you who’s on the run. Anyway, am I coming?”
“I’d like you to, if you wouldn’t hate it. Just to give thanks.”
“Well, I’ve a lot to give thanks for. Of course I’ll come.”
It was such an adventure going to Mass in London.
Finding the right bus, remembering which direction to take it. Crossing Kilburn High Road and following the crowd with head scarves and collars turned up against the cold. There were a few Polish people, and Italians too.
They knew nobody.
Lena compared it to the Sunday journey to Mass in Lough Glass. Good morning Mrs. Hanley, Mr. Foley, Dan, Mildred, Mr. Hickey, Mother Bernard, Mrs. Dillon, Hallo Lilian, Hallo Peter. How nice to see you again, Maura. How are you, Kathleen? Stevie? You were exhausted before you got up to the church. And then when you got there you recognized everyone’s cough and splutter. And you knew what Father Baily would say before he said it.
The familiar Latin words washed over her. It must be terrible being a Protestant. You couldn’t have the same service all over the world. You wouldn’t understand Protestants in Africa or Germany. Being a Catholic was so safe. And indeed if you were like Louis, so simple. It was a God of Love up there looking down.