A Christmas tree that had been set up in the hall to establish a festive mood for guests was now in the dining room, and everyone had a role, including spouses. Lena’s job was to do place cards.
Louis gave her the list. “They want artistic writing,” he explained. “It’s a mad idea, but you did volunteer.”
“No, I think it’s a good idea. It’ll be a souvenir of the day,” she said. She asked him to bring her a sheaf of Dryden Hotel notepaper, so that she could stick the name on top of each card. “It’s more like an invitation, then,” she said, and painstakingly wrote out the names. Barry Jones, Antonio Bari, Michael Kelly, Gladys Wood…Each one with great attention and little holly leaves and berries drawn as a border.
At the start they were shy, awkward to be allowed to sit down at the tables instead of serving at them or sweeping up under them. But James Williams kept circulating with the bowl of punch and soon the inhibitions went. By the time they were carving the turkey some of them had already pulled the Christmas crackers which were meant for the plum pudding stage. There was a roar of conversation from the twenty-nine strangely assorted people sitting around the table.
Lena slipped away to the ladies’ room and just beside the door she saw the little booth for the telephone. It was five-thirty in the afternoon. This time last year she had been down by the lake with the children, walking off the effects of the dinner. That’s what she would have called it, but escaping the stifling walls of the house is what it would have been. Martin had looked at her eagerly, but she had advised him to have a little sleep by the fire. At the time she had felt guilty denying her husband the simple pleasure of a walk with his own wife on Christmas Day.
Now she felt no pity, only rage with the man she had begged to play fair. If it had not been for Martin she could have spoken to Kit and to Emmet this Christmas, sent them presents, told them that she loved them, planned for them to come and see her at Easter.
Anger rose in her throat. She could feel it. Before she realized what she was doing she was in the phone box and dialing the operator. She gave the number and waited.
The operator came back. “It appears that Lough Glass is a small place, caller, with a manual exchange. Unless the call is in the nature of an emergency it cannot be put through on Christmas Day.”
“It is an emergency,” she said in a tight voice.
She heard the clicks and the sounds as the phone rang in the post office on the corner of Lakeview Road and the main street. It seemed to ring endlessly. Lena wondered that Mrs. Hanley next door hadn’t come in and answered it. She was as nosy as anyone in the town, surely she wondered who could be ringing for what emergency.
But eventually the slow feet of Mona Fitz must have moved themselves to the phone. Lena heard her halting voice and the sense of outrage that she had been woken from her sleep.
The number of the house was given.
“It’s only emergency calls on Christmas Day,” Mona said.
Lena clenched her fists with impatience. What trouble was it to the stupid woman just to plug the bloody piece of equipment into one of the row of holes in front of her. She could have it done and finished with by the time she went into all this tiresome explanation and cross-questioning.
“That’s what the caller says; it is an emergency.”
“Very well, so.”
Lena could imagine her putting on her glasses to direct the call a few yards down the street.
A few rings and she heard Martin reply. “Hallo,” he said, his voice hesitant and doubtful. Did he know that she would ring on Christmas Day? That he couldn’t keep her from her children forever just by pretending she was dead. Was he frightened now, and in an agony wondering how he was going to explain the whole terrible mess that he had created? “Hallo,” Martin said again. “Who’s that?”
The whole terrible mess. It could be undone in a moment. But so would Lena’s life. The life that had only just begun. She said nothing and clicked the bar in the cradle that held the receiver. She could hear the operator in London saying, “Are you there, caller? Your number has been reached…”
She could hear Mona Fitz saying, “What kind of an emergency call is this if there’s no one on the line?”
She heard Martin saying, “Hallo. Hallo. Who is it?”
Then Mona spoke to Martin. “I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world, Martin, but it’s a man from England, from London. They said it was an emergency.”
“A man…?” Martin sounded startled, but not guilty. He didn’t sound like a man who was trying to hush everything up. But then, she didn’t know him at all.
“No, Martin. I think I was only speaking to the operator…hold on till I see is he still there…”
Lena listened, she heard Martin and Mona and the operator discuss the fact that someone had definitely phoned that number. “It’s all right, I have the number the caller was phoning from. I’ll get them back,” he said.
She hung up, shaking from head to toe. Why had she done anything so stupid? Now they would call the hotel, and ask who had phoned Lough Glass in Ireland. Louis would be furious. The coins in her hand were hot and sweaty.
Then, as she knew it would, the phone rang. She lifted the receiver at the first sound. “Were you trying to call Lough Glass in the Irish Republic?”
“No,” Lena said, she tried to put a Cockney accent into her voice.
“But someone from that number was calling Lough Glass…”
“No, I said I was calling Loughrea…” she said.
The operator got back to the others. “It was the wrong place,” he said.
“I don’t know how you mixed up Lough Glass and Loughrea,” Mona grumbled.
“That’s all right, then,” said Martin.
“Caller, do you want to give me the Loughrea number, then…?” The operator was a man who had to work on Christmas Day and did not seem to be enjoying it.
Lena said nothing. In the background she heard the voice of her daughter asking who was on the phone.
“It’s nothing, Kit. It’s someone trying to phone Loughrea.” She couldn’t hear what Kit said, but whatever it was Martin laughed. Had she said “That’s a roundabout way to do it?”
“Caller?” The operator was impatient now.
“Listen, I’ve changed my mind, it’s too late,” she said.
“Thanks a million,” said the young man.
“So I’ll hang up now.” Lena was anxious that there should be no further checking on the number.
“Yes, madam.”
“And you are not going to call back?” She wanted to make sure it was safe to leave the booth.
“No, madam. Good-bye, madam.” She stood in the box feeling dizzy. She hadn’t been buried a month and her daughter was still able to laugh about things. She took deep breaths until she had the strength to walk back to the festivities.
“Are you all right?” It was James Williams who asked the question. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
“I’m fine. Did I miss anything?” she asked.
Louis was the center of a laughing group. Gladys Wood, whose name she had carefully written out, had a paper hat at a rakish angle, had her arm around Louis’s neck.
“Read my fortune to me again,” she shouted happily.
“It says you will meet a dark, handsome man,” Louis read obediently from the little piece of paper that Gladys had found in her Christmas cracker.
“I’ve met him,” screamed Gladys.
“Oh dear,” whispered James Williams. His benevolent smile of the owner glad to see the staff enjoying themselves was a little strained.
“A little overexcited.” Lena was amazed at her own power of speech. She had thought that after the incident on the telephone she might not be able to talk at all.
“For three hundred and sixty-four days a year that woman works in the still room, quiet as a mouse. Christmas, regular as clockwork, she gets drunk. And spends the rest of the year apologizing for it.”
“
Will she get sick, do you think?” Lena asked in a detached, professional way, as if she were asking the time of a train.
“Very probably, I fear.”
“Do you think someone should take her out…just in case?” Lena was looking at Louis’s jacket. It had been her Christmas present to him, and cost a lot of money. She didn’t want to see it ruined.
“Yes, I wonder could I prevail on you…”
“Well, I don’t think I am exactly the person who should approach her…after all, it is my husband she is manhandling. Perhaps it might be thought I had a special interest in seeing her escorted from the room.”
“You are truly wonderful, Mrs. Gray,” he said, flicking his fingers for Eric, the head porter.
“Lena,” she corrected him.
“Lena.” He smiled, and ordered Eric to get one of the girls to march Miss Wood out to the ladies’ room and to stay with her. Right now.
Louis ran his finger around his collar and smiled at them ruefully.
He could have escaped earlier, Lena thought with a flash of annoyance. But then, women always went for Louis, he was used to it. It made him smile, and she had to remember to smile about it too.
“WHAT are you going to make as a New Year resolution?” Clio was eager to know.
“I haven’t thought, what with everything.”
Clio had thought. “I’m going to get good-looking, really good-looking, mind.”
“But you are good-looking, aren’t you?”
“No I’m not. I’m going to read books and look at what beautiful people get themselves up like.”
“Do you mean clothes? We haven’t any money for clothes.”
“No. Just their faces, their way of going on.”
“We’re not allowed to wear makeup.”
“Well, we could put Vaseline on our eyelashes. It makes them grow. And I think we should suck in our cheeks a bit to give us interesting shapes in our faces,” said Clio.
They puckered their faces in and laughed at the results.
“There must be more to it than that,” Kit said. “It looks as if we’re going to kiss someone.”
“You could kiss Philip O’Brien; he’s always ogling you…”
“And who could you kiss?”
“Stevie Sullivan maybe.” Clio smiled archly.
“But isn’t he always kissing Deirdre Hanley?” Kit was surprised that Clio should choose someone so busy.
“She’s old. She’ll go off in looks, men often turn to younger women.”
“She’s only seventeen.”
“Yes, well. In 1953 she’ll be eighteen and she’ll go on and on, just getting older.”
“Do you like Stevie…?”
“No. But he’s good-looking.”
“And is Philip O’Brien good-looking?”
“No, but he’s keen on you.” Clio had the world sorted out.
There was snow in January. Anna Kelly threw a snowball at Emmet McMahon. In the time-honored ritual he scooped a handful of snow and pushed it down her neck as she screamed with excitement. He laughed too.
“Are you over it now?” Anna asked.
“Over it?”
“Your mammy being dead?”
“No, I’m not over it. I’ve sort of got used to it, I suppose.”
“Can I play with you and Kevin Wall?” she asked.
“No, Anna. I’m sorry, but you’re a girl.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“It’s the way it is.” Emmet was philosophical.
“Kit and Clio won’t let me play with them, they’re girls.”
“But they’re old girls.”
“Are they horrible to you like they are to me?” Anna hoped Emmet was a victim too.
“No, they’re not horrible at all.”
“I wish I was really really old. Like twenty. Then I’d know what to do.”
“What would you do?” Emmet was interested.
Anna was a funny little thing in her scarlet coat and pixie hood and red, excited face. “I’d come back here and take Clio and Kit out on the lake and hold them both under the water and drown them,” she said triumphantly. Then she remembered. “Oh Emmet,” she said. Emmet said nothing. “Emmet, I’m so sorry.”
He was walking away. Anna ran after him. “I’m so stupid. That’s why nobody will play with me. I just want you to know I forgot. That’s all. I just forgot.”
Emmet turned. “Yes, well. It was my mother and I didn’t forget.” He began to stammer at the words “forget” and “mother.” Anna had tears running down her face.
At that moment Stevie Sullivan came out of his garage. “Hey, leave her alone, Emmet. She’s only a baby. Don’t make her cry.”
Emmet turned on his heel and went into his house.
Anna turned her tear-stained face to Stevie. “I have no friends,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s a problem,” said Stevie, looking idly down the road toward Hanley’s Drapery in case he might catch sight of his enthusiastic friend Deirdre taking a little stroll down the snow-covered street of Lough Glass with plans for another meeting.
JAMES Williams took a personal interest in training Louis Gray to be the person that most customers met first when they arrived at the Dryden. He made sure that the handsome Irishman was well dressed and smartly turned out.
“I can get my shirts done in the hotel laundry,” Louis told Lena proudly. “That’ll save you washing and ironing.”
It certainly saved time and space. But in a way she had enjoyed doing it for him. It was part of playing husband and wife. Back in Lough Glass she had never done the ironing. Rita had done it as a matter of course. Sometimes now she wondered how had she spent her days in a home where she had no role.
And Louis told of more and more successes.
This was a place and a time where people just wanted proof that you could do a job and had the ability to get on with others. The war had changed everything. There was no need for written certificates and coming up through some traditional profession.
Lena knew that Louis was not exaggerating when he said that being on that desk was being at the heart of the whole hotel. Everyone in the Dryden had to consult him about some aspect of the way the place ran. The housekeeper and the chambermaids checked about the times that the different rooms should be made up. He would talk to the chef about the possibility of placing a copy of the menu on a stand in the hall. This way when visitors were going out they might be persuaded to come back again for their lunch.
It was Louis who suggested that the porters wear name badges.
“I know who I am, thank you,” said Eric, the head porter, who had always regretted having allowed Louis to be taken on and to rise so far above him.
Louis never acknowledged any resentment. Perhaps he didn’t even see it. “Of course you do, Eric. And so do the regulars. But what about the Americans? They’ll want to know the name of the good guy who welcomed them to the Dryden.”
Eric saw the reason for it, but did not notice any increase in his tips. In fact, most of the dollars that changed hands went toward Louis Gray. Americans did appreciate the personal service, the way he remembered their names, how he could give them good suggestions of where to go and how to spend their holidays.
Nobody ever called Louis a manager, he was Mr. Gray-on-the-desk. People were urged to consult him on everything and Louis never let them down.
“I’d never get another job nearly as good as this. I must make myself as indispensable as I can possibly be here,” he said, and Lena knew he was right. Not even the most glowing reference would give Louis an entree to any similar position at another hotel. He had no written qualifications, but he would always get by on charm once installed.
Her mind went sometimes to his previous lives in Spain, in Greece. Even back in his early days in Dublin as a traveling salesman, which was how she had met him first, he was never impatient with people or seeming anxious to be out of their company but always restless to do more or get more out of what
ever was going. That was an extraordinary mixture in one man. He looked so alive with the lopsided small-boy smile.
Month by month his wages increased and so did his perks, a lot of this due to Lena. She had seen that there was a small storeroom behind the front desk. Little by little the place was transformed. All the old boxes, broken bicycles, and legless chairs were moved out. In their place came old tables beginning to show too much wear in bedrooms or reception rooms. Louis found an old umbrella stand and a row of brass coat hooks on a mahogany stand. No longer did he have to put his coat in the crowded area where staff garments were pushed. And yet no one could question it. He was giving himself no lordly airs. He was only taking over a disused room. Making the place tidier in fact.
Louis noted with pleasure that people who were senior to him in status in the hotel took him very seriously, but he moved cautiously.
“I can’t just go in there to that room and close the door, when I’m meant to be on the desk,” he said to Lena.
“Have you any friend in maintenance, someone who could put a pane of glass in the top of it? Like Ivy’s door. You could even have a curtain, a net curtain. Then you could see when you were wanted outside. It would give you the option of being in or out.”
And it worked.
James Williams, if he noticed the expansionist tendencies of the new clerk on the desk, must have approved of them, because nothing was said. And no one entered Louis Gray’s territory without knocking.
The months passed. Their love grew stronger. Lena was sure of that. There was nothing they could not talk about. They spoke of her children and how she had done the best thing for them. He praised her for her courage. “You’re like a heroine, a real-life heroine,” he would tell her. And he meant it. As he stroked her hair and took her face in his hands he said that she was like a lioness, that there was nothing she could not do.
Sometimes Lena wondered whether there might be other people in London living new lives like she was. Perhaps there were hundreds and thousands of them, people who left one way of living and took up another. It wasn’t as hard as it sounded. After all here she was with a new husband…in the eyes of the world anyway…a new home, a new job, a new look. Few people from Lough Glass would recognize the tailored, trim figure hastening through the streets of London as Helen McMahon, wife of Martin, the cheerful local chemist. If they saw her bending over files and encouraging young applicants for jobs in large companies they would be amazed. Mrs. McMahon, so private a person, someone who didn’t engage in long chats, yet here she was urging these girls to make the best of themselves, telling them the sky was the limit, begging them to take more night classes, increase their speeds, improve their image. How would Mrs. McMahon of Lough Glass know such things and get people to believe her?