When she looked back on her life there, thirteen years of living in the small community by the lake, Lena realized that there was so much she could have done. She could have suggested that she work with Mrs. Hanley and brighten up her dowdy shop, get in the kinds of clothes that the women of Lough Glass would have enjoyed wearing, colorful garments for the children…she would have suggested training one of the Hanley daughters as a dressmaker so that alterations could be done on the premises.
Or Mildred O’Brien in the hotel? Look at all the things she could have done to help the Central Hotel out of the last century, things that she was doing now with Louis for the Dryden.
If she had persuaded Martin to let her work in the pharmacy she could have done the kinds of windows and displays she was doing here in an employment agency where there was so little scope. Think what she might have done if she had all those soaps and cosmetics to work on. She could have lined the windows with greenery and draped them with fancy materials and papers so that no one could resist coming in.
But Martin wouldn’t hear of it. No wife of mine is going to have to go out to work. He used to say it with his face bursting with pride, as if by standing alone hour after hour in that dreary poky place he was somehow making her into a queen, someone who wouldn’t have to raise a hand.
A lot of the time she had felt grateful to him, Martin the undemanding husband who had taken her to a peaceful place by a big beautiful lake when her heart was broken and yearning for Louis who had left her. Martin who had asked her no questions and promised her escape from anxiety and a restful life.
But now she felt totally differently about him. No longer could she see his jokes as kindly meant and his funny faces as loving attempts to entertain her. Now she saw everything about him as a deep and destructive insecurity, a wish to trap her, keep her like a caged bird. A man who could not face up to the fact that his wife had left him for another man, but who had carried on a charade…even to the point of getting his friend Peter to identify a totally different body as hers.
What kind of people were these? They were barbarians. She had given birth to two children in a land of barbarians.
Lena ached for her children. Although she talked a little about them to Louis it was only skimming the surface. She could not let him know how large a part of her mind they occupied. Louis was in many ways a child himself…he would not want to share this part of her with Kit and Emmet. She loved and needed him so much, it would be an act of folly to weep and cling to him and tell him how much she missed her children. It would be to tell him that he was not enough for her, that the decision to go with him had involved too much sacrifice. And that was not true.
Old Sister Madeleine had once said to her that in the end people do what they want to do. Even not doing something is a decision. So she had decided to leave her children. She must remember that and face it, even though she could not have foreseen that Martin would go through this grotesque charade she had made the choice to leave them. She must have wanted to be with Louis more than with them.
It was a harsh fact to face but Lena felt stronger for admitting it to herself. She must plunge herself into her new life and live it without regret. Live it in as full a way as possible, do all the things that she always had the power to do but never the chance. Sometimes she wondered would they be surprised back in Lough Glass to know just how very much she was doing. And to know that there were not enough hours in the day for all she had to do.
That she was nearly running Millar’s Employment Agency on her own. Neither Mr. Millar nor Jessie Park had contributed one single idea to her entire reorganization program. But they were easy to lead and quick to agree that business had doubled. Bigger and more known bureaus had come to have a look at them. There had even been a feature about their new-look offices in a local paper. Lena had kept very much in the background.
“Please, Mrs. Gray, you would be an adornment to the picture,” Mr. Millar begged.
Lena had prepared for this. She had given Jessie a voucher to a hairdresser and the loan of a smart jacket to replace the old fuzzy cardigan.
“No, no truly. You are the ones who run it,” Lena said, refusing to pose for the press picture.
After all, she was meant to be dead. There was no use having her photograph in a newspaper. Who knew who might see it?
“You’re looking pale,” Ivy said to her one day.
“I don’t know what it is, but I don’t feel great certainly,” Lena agreed.
“Are you pregnant?” Ivy asked.
“No, not that.” Lena spoke sharply.
She saw Ivy look at her thoughtfully. Those small buttons of eyes understood everything. They probably understood that Louis and Lena would not have a child. The matter had been brought up and discussed. But both their careers were starting out so well here. Perhaps they should not think of it for the moment. Lena smiled wryly at the idea of putting things off for the moment. She was thirty-nine years of age. Next year she would be forty. The moment had probably passed already. The child that she had begun to lose in Brighton was her last. The two she had in Ireland were lost to her.
She was a woman with no children.
A career woman, as they were beginning to call themselves in the London of 1953.
“Suppose I were to send you a lot of business, could we come to a deal?” Lena asked Grace at the hairdresser’s.
Grace had once come to Millar’s, looking for a secretarial job. She was so elegant-looking and had such a way with customers that Lena realized she would be lost in an office. Her sympathetic personality was much more suited to a post where she would meet the public. Grace West, a tall, handsome young woman whose mother was from Trinidad, had been anxious to get what they called an office job. It would be such a step up. She had been doubtful at first about hairdressing. A lot of West Indian girls did that. It wouldn’t be seen as a great success.
“Yes, but when you’re running the place, then you’ll be a success,” Lena had said.
Grace did not do people’s hair, she made the appointments, she kept the till, she strolled around in her elegant suits, advising and admiring.
“A little more conditioner on Mrs. Jones, I think,” she would say. “Why not give Miss Nixon an extra rinse with a little squeeze of fresh lemon?” Customers thought they were getting special attention. They loved it.
“What’s the deal?” Grace pretended to be resigned. She was standing behind the chair as Lena got her usual Friday shampoo and set. Only the best hairdresser in the salon was allowed to touch Mrs. Gray’s wavy dark hair.
The others didn’t see that no money changed hands. Grace knew how to pay her debts. Lena Gray had got her this position by advising her every step of the way. They had almost rehearsed the interview line by line.
“A lot of the girls who come in to us…they haven’t an idea how to present themselves.”
“Who are you telling?” Grace remembered how self-deprecating and humble she had been until Lena taught her how to make her height, her color, and her startlingly stylish good looks into an asset.
“You were always a looker,” Lena said. “No, they come in with frightened faces and no makeup, or else looking like something from a music hall. Suppose I sent you at least ten a week, would you throw in a free makeup lesson as well?”
“Ten a week? You’d never get that.” Grace’s eyes were wide in disbelief.
“That would be the deal…if I get fewer you don’t have to give the discount.”
“What kind of makeup lesson? In a classroom?”
“No. Just telling them what would suit them. You don’t sell them anything, just tell them how to put it on so it doesn’t look as if it was laid on with a garden trowel.”
Grace laughed. “You have such funny ways of putting things.”
“What do you think? Is it worth your while?”
“Of course it is…someday when you’re famous I’ll say that I helped you on in your career, like you did for me.”
; “Famous. I doubt it.”
“I don’t. I see that Mr. Millar handing over to you. I see big interviews in the papers…” Grace was excited.
“No. I don’t see that at all.” Lena spoke quietly.
Whatever happened there would be no interviews with her in any paper. Not now.
CLIO was a month older than Kit, so for the whole month of May she was thirteen. “There’s many a country I could get married in,” she said loftily.
“Ah, wouldn’t that be a very foolish thing to do all the same,” Sister Madeleine said. They were arranging the blossoms that the girls had brought in a series of jars along the windowsill.
“Isn’t it good to get married early?” Clio asked. It seemed to be her one superiority, having reached an age where technically in some faroff land she might be able to be a bride.
“No, not good at all.” Sister Madeleine was adamant.
“But if that’s what you’re going to do eventually, why not do it soon?” Clio asked.
“Because you might marry the wrong person, you eejit,” Kit said.
“You could do that anytime,” Clio said.
They looked at Sister Madeleine for another view. “It’s all a matter of luck anyway,” she said, poking.
“Well, of course it was different for you, since you had a vocation. There was no luck about that. You had the call from God,” Clio said.
There was a silence.
“Would you like to have been married at all, Sister Madeleine, do you think?” Kit asked.
“Oh I was,” Sister Madeleine looked at them with her clear blue eyes, smiling as if they should have known this.
They looked at her openmouthed.
“Married?” said Kit.
“To a man?” asked Clio.
“It was a long time ago,” Sister Madeleine said, as if that explained everything. The goose came in the door at that moment, waddling and looking from side to side foolishly. “Well, would you look at Bernadette.” Sister Madeleine’s face creased into a smile, as if a friend had come in for tea. “You’re welcome in, Bernadette. The girls here will get you a bit of cornmeal in a nice dish now.”
Clio and Kit would hear no more about Sister Madeleine’s marriage.
“She did say married?”
“Yes, I heard her.”
“To a man. Not just to Christ or anything.”
“No. She agreed with that. She said it was long ago.”
They sat down on mossy stone by the lakeside.
“She couldn’t have been married. Not sleeping with a man and all.”
“Well, she said it, didn’t she?”
“I wonder does anyone else know,” Clio said.
“I’m not going to tell anyone, are you?” Kit said suddenly.
Clio seemed disappointed. It would have been a great thing to tell. “She didn’t say to keep it a secret.”
“No, Clio, but she sort of trusted us, didn’t she?”
Clio thought about it. This way there was some importance attached to the momentous piece of information they had just been given. If they were guardians of a huge and privileged piece of information that no one else knew, then Clio Kelly could just about keep it to herself. “I suppose so.”
“Imagine her telling us. You and me,” Kit said in wonder.
Clio liked that. “She knows we wouldn’t let each other down,” she said.
They walked home companionably and came up from the lake by Paddles’ bar. Paddles was standing at his door. “When will you ladies be old enough to frequent my premises?” he asked.
They giggled. “Ah, it’ll be a few years yet, Paddles,” Clio said.
“Well, the place will be honored, Miss Kelly, when you’re ready for us.”
They clutched each other with laughter the whole way home. Imagine, whatever age you were, wanting to go into Paddles’ bar!
“Maybe you could have your thirteenth birthday there. We could send out invitations. Miss Kit McMahon will be launched into society at Paddles’ bar on June second 1953.”
They laughed so much they had to hold on to the wall of the Central Hotel to stop themselves falling.
“You’re having great fun.” Philip was very envious.
“We’re planning Kit’s birthday party,” Clio said.
“Are you having a party?” Philip brightened up.
“Of course not. She’s in mourning,” Clio snapped. “But that’s no reason why we couldn’t have a laugh over it.”
EVERYONE in London was getting ready for the Coronation. There would be bunting on the houses in the street. Ivy was getting hers ready. She had had some since the end of the war, kept as a sort of souvenir from the really memorable days down in the King’s Head.
“It’ll be a great day,” she told Lena.
“I suppose so.”
“Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re not all that interested, being Irish and all.”
“No, it’s not that. Of course I’m interested. I keep forgetting it…I’m working so hard these days.”
“Don’t I see it. You’re home later every night.”
“Well, so’s Louis…”
“Don’t work too hard, love.” Ivy’s face was full of concern.
And she was right, of course. Lena did stay later and later at the agency, writing letters to large companies explaining the kind of screening techniques they used, how Millar’s did not just send any applicant for any job. She also had a mailing list of schools and secretarial colleges. A Millar’s girl would get much more than a list of job opportunities. She would get career advice and more intelligent women would assess her potential, giving young applicants the necessary confidence to prepare them for interviews and for their early working careers.
Mention was made of the low-price hairdressing and makeup services and of the fashion suggestions. Business was increasing at a great rate. Mr. Millar had doubled her salary in six months. Lena had insisted on a similar rise for Jessie Park.
“We’re a team, Mr. Millar. I couldn’t work without Jessie,” she had said.
Mr. Millar’s eyes were sharp. He saw the changed image and new confidence of Miss Park, who had been the most mouselike of employees. If Lena Gray could do this for the woman that she had outstripped a hundredfold and still remain loyal and supportive, then she was indeed a treasure and must be humored. Anyway, profits were looking very good. He could afford to pay Jessie as well.
He had met Mrs. Gray’s husband once, a strikingly handsome Irishman. A hotel manager, it appeared. She was very quiet and uninformative about her private life. Which made a refreshing change to the daily detail they got from Jessie Park.
“Mr. Millar,” Lena said. “Miss Park and I were wondering should we do a special window display for the Coronation?”
“But what would we say in our window?”
Jessie looked at them eagerly. Jessie didn’t look so hopeless these days, she had a smartly fastened blouse with the modern cameo brooch. Instead of a picture it said “Millar’s” in the blue and gold which had become the company colors.
The cushions on the new chairs were blue and gold, as was the decoration on their stationery, the fresh paint on the exterior, the frames for the pictures on the walls. Jessie used to wear floppy open-necked blouses until Lena had thought up this smart new uniform for them…a white blouse, a blue skirt, and a gold-looking scarf. Jessie’s new hairstyle and the occasional application of makeup had transformed her.
Lena had even suggested that with an increased wage packet Jessie might pay someone to look after her mother on an occasional evening, and she could get accustomed to having some free time. It was such a relief to hear Jessie talking about how much she had enjoyed Singing in the Rain. Lena and Mr. Millar would have listened to every song and every line of the dialogue over and over rather than revert to Mrs. Park’s eating difficulties.
The old Jessie would have agreed with Mr. Millar that she didn’t know she was sure, but today Jessie spoke up. “In a way, Mr. Millar, our
very colors are royal, you know. A nice blue and gold display in the window, with a picture of the new Queen…”
“Yes, that’s a great idea,” Lena said. “We could put something like ‘Welcome to a New Elizabethan Age…from Millar’s, who look to a great future for all of us.’”
They loved it. They were so excited. A lump came to Lena’s throat at their eagerness. Were the English much more simple and less critical than the Irish? Or was it that she had never been able to play any part in the town where she had withered away for thirteen years?
“Do you think they should get a television in the hotel for the Coronation?” Louis asked.
“You mean they haven’t got one? Not one in the whole place?”
“No. It sort of prides itself on being quiet.”
“It’ll pride itself on being empty before long.” He looked at her in surprise. This wasn’t the usual way Lena spoke. It was too sharp.
“Very well. I’ll know not to ask in future,” Louis said. He had a funny tight look around his lips.
“Louis!” she cried in alarm. “Oh Louis, please don’t sulk.”
“Sulk? Me! I’m not sulking. You’re the one who bit the head off me.” He was really hurt.
“I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.” There was a silence. “Louis, I had a rotten day.”