Lena felt peaceful and happy as they came out into the cold wind. Just by the church was a kiosk that sold newspapers.
“They’re all the Irish provincial ones, or religious ones,” Louis said. “I’ll get a real paper from the man over here and we’ll go and have a Sunday drink…. Okay?”
Lena nodded her encouragement, but she looked at the headlines all the same. There were all the papers from home, The Kerryman, the Cork Examiner, the Wexford Echo, the Connaught Tribune. And among them the paper that was delivered to the pharmacy each Friday. They looked at it for the times of the cinema, the property for sale, for news of fellow county men and women who had done well in civil service examinations, postings overseas, who had married or celebrated a golden wedding.
She was about to look away when she saw there on the front page a picture of the lake in Lough Glass and some of the boats. Underneath it was the heading SEARCH CALLED OFF FOR MISSING LOUGH GLASS WOMAN.
With her eyes widening in disbelief she read that Helen McMahon, wife of noted Lough Glass pharmacist Martin McMahon, had last been seen walking by the treacherous lake waters on Wednesday, October 29th. Divers and volunteers had searched the reed-infested water of the lake that gave Lough Glass its name, but nothing had been found. A boat had been seen upside down and it was assumed that Mrs. McMahon must have taken it out and failed to cope with the sudden squalls that blow up in that region.
“Are you going to buy it?” asked the man who sold the papers. Helen handed him half a crown and began to walk away, still clutching the paper. “Hey, they’re dear, but not that dear…” he called after her with her change.
But she didn’t hear. “Louis…” she called, her voice roaring in her own ears. “Louis, oh my God…”
They lifted her to her feet, everyone suggesting something different, air, brandy, whiskey, water, tea, walk her around, sit her down.
The man trying to give her change kept insisting that it be put into her handbag.
Eventually his arms supported her along the road. Half walking, half being carried, she knew they were hastening to somewhere they could be alone. He kept saying that they should get a doctor.
“Believe me, there is nothing more to lose. Just get me somewhere away from people.”
“Please, darling, please.” There were mainly Irish accents in the bar, but they were far away. They were all concentrated on their own business. They had no interest in the man and woman who sat with the untouched brandy between them while they read unbelievingly the account of the search for Helen McMahon.
“He can’t have got the whole town out, guards, detectives from Dublin Castle.” Louis was shaking his head.
“He mustn’t have got the note,” Helen said. “He must have thought I was really in the lake…. Oh my God. Oh my God, what have I done?”
“But we’ve been over this a hundred times already. Where did you put the note?”
“In his room.”
“And how could he not see it? How, tell me?”
“Suppose he didn’t go in there?”
“Lena, have sense. He must have gone in there. They got the guards, for God’s sake. The guards would have gone in there even if he didn’t.”
“He couldn’t do all this, bring all this horror on the children, let them think I was lying dead in the bottom of the lake like poor Bridie Daly.”
“Who was she?”
“It doesn’t matter. Martin wouldn’t have done this, not to the children.”
“Well then, how could he not have got the note?” Louis’s face was anguished and he kept looking back at the account in case the article might go away.
“The maid, you say she wouldn’t have kept it…?”
“No, not a chance.”
“To blackmail you, or anything?”
“We’re talking about Rita. No, that’s not possible.”
“The children, then. Suppose one of them opened it…suppose they didn’t want to believe you’d gone. You know how strange children can be. Hid the note and pretended none of it was true.”
“No.” She spoke simply.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know them, Louis. They’re my children. First…they wouldn’t open it if it was addressed to Martin…but if they did…if they did…”
“Suppose they did. Just suppose it.”
“If Emmet opened it he would show it to his father. If Kit opened it she would have phoned me at Ivy’s. She would have telephoned the moment we arrived. She would have demanded that I come home.”
There was a silence.
A silence that seemed to have gone on forever when Louis spoke. “Will you accept that he read it?”
“I find it very hard to think he could have unleashed all this…” She waved at the newspaper.
“It might have been his only way of coping, you know.”
There was another silence.
“I’ll have to know, Louis.”
“What do you mean?”
“I must telephone him.” She almost went as if to stand up now. He looked at her in alarm.
“And say what? What would you say…?”
“Tell them to stop looking in the lake, tell my children I’m alive…”
“But you’re not going back to them. You’re not, are you?”
The longing in his eyes was almost too much to bear. “You know I’m not going back, Louis.”
“Then think. Think for a moment.”
“What is there to think about? You read it yourself, all that stuff about what I was wearing when I left. I’m a missing person…like you hear about on the news. They think I’m in the lake…” Her voice became almost hysterical. “They might even have a funeral, for God’s sake.”
“Not without a body, they can’t.”
“But they’ll have me presumed dead. I can’t be presumed dead. Not for my children. They must know their mother is alive and well and happy…not in the mud and reeds at the bottom of the lake in Lough Glass.”
“It’s not your fault they think that.”
“What do you mean, it’s not my fault? I left them.”
“It’s his fault,” Louis said slowly.
“How do you say that?”
“That’s what he told them. You gave him a choice of what he could say. This is what he said.”
“But he can’t say that. It’s preposterous. He can’t tell them their mother is dead. I want to see them. I want to meet them, watch them grow up.”
Louis looked at her sadly. “Did you ever think he would let you do that?”
“Of course I did.”
“That he would forgive you and say ‘There there, you have a nice life with Louis in London, and from time to time come home to Lough Glass and we’ll all kill the fatted calf.’”
“No, not like that.”
“But like what, then? Think, Lena. Think. This is Martin’s way. It might be the best way.”
She leaped to her feet. “To tell two innocent children that I’m dead because he can’t face telling them I left him!”
“Maybe he thinks that it’d be better for them. You’re always saying it’s a mass of whispers in that place, maybe the sympathy over a dead mother is better than the gossip over one that ran away.”
“I don’t believe any of this. I’m going to ring him, Louis. I have to.”
“That’s so unfair of you. You told the poor bastard that the one thing you’d do for him was let him sort it out whatever way he wanted. You’d give him that dignity, wasn’t that what you wrote…”
“I don’t know the exact words.”
“Was it or wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t have a carbon paper,” she snapped.
“But we went over it often enough.”
“That’s what I told him,” she agreed. “But I must know. I must know do they really…” All the fight had gone out of her.
“Suppose they do think you’re dead, Lena. Think, I beg you. Might not that be the best for the little girl an
d the little boy. If you phone now you’ll have to go home and explain everything. Martin will be in deep trouble. You’ll make it so much worse for him…think all the harm you might do.”
“I must know,” she said, tears falling down her face.
“Right. We’ll ring them.”
“What?”
“I’ll ring,” he said. “I’ll say I want to speak to you, find out what I’m told.”
“You can’t.”
“I’ll get change,” he said. His mouth was in a grim line as he went to the bar.
Lena drank the entire brandy in one gulp. It felt like swallowing nettles.
They didn’t phone from the bar, there was too much noise. But just along the road they came to a public box.
“What will you say?” Lena asked for the tenth time.
Louis had said little, but now as they heard the phone ringing he held her face in one hand and said, “I’ll say what’s right, trust me. I’ll wait to see what he says first.”
She gripped his hand tight and leaned very close so that she could hear.
“Lough Glass three double nine.” It was Kit’s voice.
Lena raised the hand that held Louis’s hand to her lips to bite back the words. Then the operator came on the line. “A call from London for you…go ahead, caller.”
“Hello.” Louis spoke in a slightly altered voice. “Is that McMahons’?”
“Yes, this is McMahons’ in Lough Glass.”
“Is Mr. McMahon there please?”
“No, I’m sorry. He’s out at the moment….” Lena’s eyes widened. Martin should be well back from Mass by now. They should have started their lunch. The house had gone to pieces since she left. Then she remembered this was a house in mourning, a house where everyone professed to think that she was drowned.
“When will he return?”
“May I ask who is calling please?” Lena smiled proudly. Only twelve and already practical and efficient. Don’t give information until you get information.
“My name’s Smith. I’m a commercial representative. I’ve been to your parents’ chemist’s in the nature of business calls.”
“This is our home, not the chemist’s,” Kit explained.
“I know, and I’m sorry to intrude on you. Might I have a word with your mother?” Lena squeezed his hand so hard it hurt him. Her eyes were enormous. What was the child going to say?
It seemed an age before she answered.
What did she want Kit to say? Something like “There’s been a lot of confusion over where my mother is, but it will all be sorted out before Christmas.”
“You’re ringing from London?” Kit said.
“That’s right, yes.”
“Then you won’t have heard. There’s been a terrible accident. My mother was drowned.” There was a pause as she struggled to get her breath again.
Louis said nothing. His face was white. Then in a choked voice he said, “I’m very sorry.”
“Yes, I know you would be.” The voice was very small.
Lena had often fantasized about her children talking to Louis. She knew they would like each other. Somehow she had felt it would turn out to be all right. But that was before this. Before this terrible turn in events.
“So where is your father now?” he asked.
“He’s having lunch with friends of ours. They’re trying to take his mind off things a bit.”
That would be the Kellys, thought Lena.
“And why did you not go?” Louis sounded genuinely caring. The lump in Lena’s throat was enormous.
“I thought someone should be here in case there was any news, you know…”
“What kind of news?”
“Well, they haven’t found…in case they found Mummy’s body,” said Kit. Louis’s face was working but he couldn’t speak. “Are you still there?” she asked.
“Yes…yes.”
“Will I ask my father to ring you?”
“No, no. It was just a call, in case I was going to be passing that way. Please don’t tell him and disturb him. I’m so sorry to have intruded…at such a time…”
“It was an accident,” Kit said. “They had prayers for the repose of her soul at Mass today.”
“Yes, I’m sure. I’m sure.”
“So that she’d be at peace,” Kit explained. “So I won’t say you rang?”
“No. No. And is your little brother managing all right?”
“How did you know I had a brother?”
“I think your father and mother said it when I was in the shop.”
“I bet she did, she was always talking about us.” Kit’s voice was near tears. “It was only the winds, you know. It would have been all right but for the winds.” There was a silence. The silences had eaten up a lot of the three minutes.
“Do you want further time, caller?” asked the operator.
“No, thank you. We have finished,” Louis said.
And across the distance on that wet November Sunday they heard Kit’s voice saying “Good-bye” and again, hesitantly, in case she hadn’t signed off properly, “Good-bye now.”
They hung up and held each other tight in the phone box as the rain lashed against the window. And anyone who came hoping to make a call saw the anguish between them and went away. Nobody could ask a couple who had obviously had such bad news to leave a phone box and go out into the real world.
“I could kill him,” Louis said when they were at home sitting in this half world of disbelief.
“If he did it on purpose.”
“Let’s go through it again.”
Louis would ask “How could he not know?” and always it was unanswerable.
They couldn’t sleep even though they needed to. They both had jobs to go to in the morning.
Once Louis asked in a wide-awake voice, “Did he think people wouldn’t buy his bloody cough bottles if they thought his wife had run away, but they would if she had drowned?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t know him at all.”
“You lived with him for thirteen years of your life.”
She was silent. Then an hour later she asked, “What did Kit mean about the winds…what winds?”
“I suppose the night we left.”
“I don’t remember any winds.”
“Neither do I, but then…”
He didn’t need to say any more. They would have noticed neither thunderstorm nor snow on the night they began their new life.
She had crossed to the far side of the lake before the gypsy camp where Louis was waiting with his car, well, his friend’s car. His friend had known nothing of the plan, only that Louis needed transport for the day. They had driven to Dublin and taken the tram to Dun Laoghaire. They were the first people on the boat. And they had talked all night from Holyhead to Euston, and laughed over their breakfast in a Lyons Corner House.
And all this time, every day and night since then, people in Lough Glass had assumed that Helen McMahon was at the bottom of their lake.
Louis was right. Martin’s bitterness must have been greater than any of them could ever have realized.
Jessie had a mother who was poorly. She had been poorly for a long time. Nothing that you could put your finger on. Lena learned this in a lot of detail on her first full day at work, on that first Monday.
“Why don’t you pop back and see her at lunchtime?” Lena suggested.
“Ooh, I couldn’t do that.” Jessie was very timid.
“Why ever not? I’m here, aren’t I. I can hold the fort.”
“No. I wouldn’t like to.”
“Jessie, I’m not going to take your job. I’m your assistant. I’m not going to go out and leave the place wide open to the public. If anything comes in that I can’t handle I’ll ask them to see Miss Park later on. What’s the sense of us both sitting here when you’re worried about your mother…?”
“But suppose Mr. Millar comes in?”
“I could say that you have gone to investigate better stationery. You
could, too, on your way. There’s a big place on the corner. Why don’t you see if they have any discounts for bulk buy? We do get a lot of envelopes at a time. They should give us a reduction.”
“Yes…I could do that.” Jessie was riddled with doubt.
“Please go,” Lena insisted. “Isn’t this why I was hired, to be a nice sensible mature woman who can keep things ticking over. Let me earn my wages.”
“Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be fine, I’ve lots to do.” Lena felt her smile was nailed onto her face. If only Jessie Park knew how much she did have to do, how many decisions she had to make if she could just get a little peace to make them.
While she was pretending to keep down a real job Lena Gray was going to have to decide today whether or not to telephone Lough Glass and say that Helen McMahon was alive and well. Hours of conversation with Louis had not convinced her. She couldn’t write her own obituary and move out of the lives of Kit and Emmet.
Even if the baby she had been carrying had continued to live within her she would still have had to face the fact that she had somehow allowed her son and daughter to believe she was dead. It was no use railing against Martin and his weakness of character. She wanted some time to think. Time on her own, where she had access to a telephone.
That’s why it was so important to get poor Jessie out of the office.
Lena delayed looking up the job opportunities for Louis. After all, a lot depended on what she did now. If she were to telephone home and tell the news that she was alive and well, then it might change everything. It might mean that she and Louis would not be starting their life as planned here, in London. It might mean that she would have to return home and face the consequences of everything she had done.
So it would be folly to try to set up interviews for him when she did not even know whether they would still be here. She tried to imagine the scene of Louis escorting her back to Lough Glass.
Her imagination let her down. She could not begin to run the conversation that would take place among the three of them, Martin, Louis, and herself, in the sitting room. There were no words, no explanations. She thought of the children holding her, clutching her. Of Kit saying “I knew you weren’t dead. I just knew it.” Of Emmet with his stutter getting worse until every word seemed to choke him.