“Mine wasn’t great either.”
She reached for him, but he pulled away. “Louis, please talk to me about the television set. I’m very interested, honestly. Truly, truly I am.” She was beseeching him now.
“No, Helena. It’s all right. This time the Dryden Hotel will have to manage without your advice.”
She pleaded with him again. “I spoke quickly. I’m sorry. You often do too when you’re tired. It doesn’t mean anything, not between us. Does it?”
“No. Of course not.” He was frosty.
She bit her lip. She would do whatever it took to get him back to the way he had been before she had so stupidly snapped at him. Did it need more apology or was it better to change the subject? She decided to move on. “We’ve been having all kinds of debates about how to celebrate the day, too,” she began cheerfully.
“How interesting.” Louis spoke with a deliberate sneer. She had never seen his face curl up like that.
“Love?” She felt her face redden.
“No, go on. Tell me more tales of Mr. Millar and Jessie Park. I mean, these are really interesting people now. Not just dross like the poor fools that try to earn a living in the Dryden Hotel.”
“I must have sounded sharper than I meant to. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” Lena hung her head.
She hoped he would come over and put his arms around her, say that it didn’t matter, that they were both overtired. Maybe he might say they would go out to the little Italian restaurant and they would be closer because of it. But he was a long time coming over to her and she began to doubt that this would happen.
She heard his hand on the door handle and looked up. “Where are you going, Louis?” she asked.
“Out.”
“But where out?”
“You told me, Helena, that the thing that drove you mad all those years in Lough Glass was when people kept asking you where you were going. Just out. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, it’s not enough. We love each other…don’t go.”
“We don’t want to stifle each other…”
“I won’t stifle you. Please.” She was begging now.
Had Martin begged her this way? Louis came toward her and took both her hands in his. “Listen, my love. We’re annoyed with each other. Let’s cool off.”
“Let me go out too if you want to. That’s what grown-ups do. We’re grown-ups, remember.”
His smile was so loving, so much part of him…it almost hurt her to see it. She felt almost paralyzed. Did she want to flounce out before him? Could she plead with him once more? She said nothing. Not a word. He released her hands, and she heard the door close behind him. She would not cry. She would not go down to Ivy for consolation. But she would go out.
She bought an apple and a piece of cheese at the corner shop, and walked on toward Millar’s Employment Agency. She let herself in, and looked around her with pleasure. This at least had been an achievement, something to show for her months in London. The little glass-covered notice board with carefully edited letters from satisfied customers, the blue and gold motif everywhere…the cushions covered by Jessie’s mother, who had now found a role in life, the gold-painted tray with the blue mugs, where coffee was served to all who came in.
Lena sat down at her desk and took out her files. Exactly what she needed. A few hours on her own to sort things through. This was the time she hardly ever had to herself, so anxious was she to run home and have everything ready for Louis.
Louis. She would not think about him because it made her shake with rage at the injustice of it all.
The time flew past. She could hardly believe that it was eleven. She felt her heart jump. This was later than she had intended to stay. He would be long home by now, and there might be more words if she were to say she had gone in to the agency. But she couldn’t pretend to have been wandering around London on her own all this time.
As she ran up the stairs she rehearsed what she would say, but first she would see what mood he was in. That was the secret. Respond to him, react, don’t fire off herself. She opened the door and the flat was empty. Louis had not come back yet. When he’d said he was going out, he’d meant it.
Her eyes were closed when he came in, but she was wide-awake. It was twenty past three. He slipped quietly into the bed beside her. He did not reach for her, which was his automatic gesture whenever he got into bed.
Where could he have been until this time in the morning? He was too proud to go back to his place of work, he wouldn’t have gone back to catch up on things like Lena had done. Which meant that he must have been in someone’s house. Someone he knew well enough to entertain him until all hours in the morning. She made her breathing sound even, as if she were asleep.
Lena Gray could swear that she slept not a wink that night.
Her head was full of pictures, but none of them were dreams. She pictured her daughter Kit. It would be her birthday on June 2nd, the day of the Coronation. She would be thirteen years of age, a girl whose mother was dead. If only she had been able to write to her even. Suppose Martin had let them think that she was far away and never coming back, but that she could still write them letters.
And as the light came up on London, and the yellow blinds on their window started to turn a pale color rather than seeming black like the night, Lena knew that was what she would do. She would write a letter to her daughter. Pretending to be someone else. The thought of it made her feel exhilarated. Nobody seeing her get up and dress would have thought that this was a woman who had not slept all night. Louis was surprised, she could see that.
“Less angry with the world today?” he asked, head on one side, waiting for her to apologize yet again. But he got no apology.
“Weren’t we like a pair of Kilkenny cats last night?” she said, marveling at it.
Louis paused. This wasn’t what he had expected. “What made us like that do you think?”
“As you said, crowding each other out.” She was anxious to be gone, it was written all over her.
So now naturally he wanted her to stay. “I didn’t mean that it was bad crowding out,” he began. It was as near to a climb-down as she would get.
“No, no. Of course not. See you this evening…”
“I didn’t wake you when I came back.”
“Lord no. I was asleep. Out like a light.” She kissed him quickly on the forehead, and he pulled her back to his lap.
“We don’t kiss like that. That’s for old people.”
“True, true,” she laughed, and responded to him, but she pulled away firmly. “Let’s not start anything we can’t continue…see you tonight, hey? hey?” She laughed at him suggestively.
“You’re a terrible tease,” he said.
They were happy again. But it wasn’t at the forefront of her mind. Her brain was racing with ways she could write to her daughter.
Mr. Millar was at work before her.
“You remind me of a story about the Little People,” he said to Lena.
“What Little People?”
“I don’t know…they used to come and do the work at night for some fairy prince, spin and weave or something and…do you know it?”
“I think I’ve heard of it all right, but why do I remind you of it?”
“I think someone must have come in at night and done all your work. The basket is full of letters written and notes made…”
“I came in for an hour or two last night.”
“I don’t know what lucky good fairy brought you here.” He took off his glasses and polished them. “My brother used to laugh at me, and say I had no business sense. Now, in a few short months he wants to buy in to the business. What do you think of that?”
“What do you think of it, Mr. Millar?” Lena knew that there was little love lost between the brothers.
“I’m happier doing it without his help really, Mrs. Gray. That is, if you’re going to stay.”
During the morning her thoughts went back to the conversations s
he had had with Kit about her life before she’d come to Lough Glass. They had of their nature been sparse. You didn’t tell a daughter that you married only because you were on the rebound and that your every waking thought was so filled with the memory of Louis Gray it didn’t really matter what you did. Had she spoken of the girls she was in digs with when she was at secretarial college? Possibly. It was so hard to remember. But if she couldn’t remember, then maybe Kit didn’t either.
She would write the letter and see how it looked.
Dear Kit,
You will find it strange to get a letter from someone you do not know. But a while back I read in an Irish newspaper of the death of your mother and I wanted to write and offer sympathy. I do not know your father because your mother and I were friends long long ago when we were very young, well before she met him. Sometimes she used to write to me about you all, and the life you lived in Lough Glass. I even remember the date you were born, and know that you will be thirteen very shortly.
Your mother was so pleased with her little girl, she wrote and told me about all the dark hair you had as a baby, and determined little fists. I don’t want to write to you at home in case it makes your father sad. Your mother told me that there was a sort of second postal system in Lough Glass and that people often write care of this nun.
If you would like to write to me, and to know more things about your mother as a girl when we were all only about four or five years older than you are now, then let me know.
I hope I might hear from you, but if not I will understand. At your age you will have more important things to do than writing to strangers in London.
Warm wishes for a happy birthday from your mother’s old friend,
Lena Gray.
When she put the letter into the red pillar box on the corner of the street, Lena left her hand for a long time on the mouth where the letters drop in. It was like reaching out and touching her daughter.
Tommy Bennet helped to sort the letters in the post office. Mona Fitz was very interested in the origin of a lot of them. She could comment when the Hanleys got a few dollars in a fat letter from America. Sometimes she examined the mail that arrived for Sister Madeleine. For a woman who said she had retreated from the world, she was still using quite a lot of the world’s services. Like the postal system.
Tommy Bennet deflected any comment. Sister Madeleine was a saint as far as he was concerned. She had done the impossible and made things all right when Tommy’s fifteen-year-old daughter came home with the most feared news in any Irish village, the news of an unexpected pregnancy. He had wept at Sister Madeleine’s fireplace. And somehow the hermit had made it all all right. A friend had been found and his daughter went to live with her. Another friend had been found somewhere else who adopted the baby And Sister Madeleine had found a third friend who gave the girl a job. Nobody in Lough Glass knew the secret. Nor even suspected there was anything unusual about the girl’s long absence.
Tommy delivered three letters to the hermit’s cottage on a warm sunny morning in late May. One contained a five-pound note, to be put to good causes. She gave the note to Tommy.
“Give it where it should be given.”
“I don’t like you trusting me to dole out all that money. I mightn’t give it away right.”
“What would I be doing with it? You know where it is needed,” she insisted.
Tommy always felt a hundred feet tall; Sister Madeleine thought he was a man of responsibility. Nobody else much did. His wife thought he was lazy, Mona Fitz the postmistress thought he was soft. His own daughter, whose life he had saved, thought him old-fashioned and strict, and knew nothing of her father’s role in all her good fortune.
“I’ll leave you in peace to read your other letters, Sister.”
“Put on a pot of tea for us both, it’s a thirsty walk up and down that lane.” Sister Madeleine shooed the collection of animals in front of her and sat on the little three-legged stool to read the letter addressed to her.
Dear Sister,
I am a friend of the late Helen McMahon, and would like to correspond with her daughter Kit.
For a variety of reasons I do not wish to write to her at her house. I have said to the child that I do not wish to make Martin McMahon sad to see reminders of his dead wife coming to his home, but the truth is that I was part of Helen’s earlier life when she loved another man. This would make it inappropriate for me to resurrect such memories for him.
I shall write nothing disturbing to the girl, and you are at liberty to read my letters in case you think that the effect will be unsettling. I am sending what I hope will be the first of many letters to you. I am marking the corner of the envelope KM so that you will know they are for her. And perhaps you might send some message to say whether this is acceptable to you.
Yours sincerely,
Lena Gray.
It was neatly typed. There was an address in West London. And it said in capital letters PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU WRITE C/O MRS. IVY BROWN. Sister Madeleine looked out over the lake for a long time. When Tommy made the tea and brought it out to her he stood for quite a while looking at the small woman entirely lost in thought.
“Clio, you’re great with the dogs. Will you go and see if you can find Ambrose for me,” Sister Madeleine said later that day.
“Where’s he gone, Sister?”
“I couldn’t say truthfully, but he’s lying low somewhere and you’ve always been able to make dogs come to you.”
Clio headed off, pleased to be singled out.
Kit looked after her jealously. “I’m better with cats really myself,” she said.
“Don’t I know it,” Sister Madeleine agreed. “The cats nearly talk to you, Kit McMahon. Even half-wild cats.” She gave Kit the letter.
There were very few words, but Kit knew it was something to be opened at home alone. And probably not something to be shared with Clio. Nor, since it had been addressed to Sister Madeleine’s home, something to be shared with her father.
She must have read the letter forty times. She knew every line of it by heart. Mother had told this woman all about her, about her little fists, her dark hair. She might have told her more. The letter was typed, which made it easy to read. But it looked like a business letter that would come to the pharmacy.
She sounded nice, but a bit standoffish too. Was it Mrs. Gray or Miss Gray? Did she want to know more? Kit felt reassured because Sister Madeleine had said that Mother had in the past mentioned this woman as a friend.
“I didn’t know Mother had any friends,” Kit had said.
“Your mother was a friend to everyone,” Sister Madeleine had said.
“She was, I know she was.” Kit’s eyes were shining. “People liked her a lot, didn’t they?”
“Very much so.” The old nun nodded in agreement.
“But you didn’t know her well, she didn’t come here all that often, did she?” Kit was eager to hear more good about her mother. “But you don’t have to meet people often to know them.” That was true. You sort of knew immediately who you liked and who you didn’t. “What did you and Mother talk about when she came here?”
“Oh, this and that.” There was a seal of confession on anyone’s conversations with Sister Madeleine.
“But did she talk about this Lena Gray?” Kit’s face was troubled.
“She mainly talked about you, about you and Emmet.” Helen McMahon on her infrequent visits spoke with such love about her children that it was inconceivable she could have drowned herself and left them behind.
Sister Madeleine had always believed that.
It took Kit two weeks to think of something to write back. She began once or twice. But it always seemed wrong, it seemed like a school essay, or else too friendly for someone she hardly knew. She wondered what Mother would have done. Mother would have thought about it for a bit, not rushed in.
That’s what Kit would do too.
“I’VE given your address, Ivy, in case I get any post,” Lena sa
id.
“Well, it’s your address too, isn’t it?” Ivy was mystified.
“No, I mean your flat.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t.”
“Are you going to tell me then?”
“It’s just that I want to get a letter from Ireland now and then that I’d prefer Louis didn’t know about.”
“Be very careful, Lena.”
“No. It’s nothing like love letters…”
There was a silence between them.
“But it’s from Ireland?”
“Yes. It’s a kind of lifeline to my daughter…”
“Who thinks you’re dead?”
“Yes. I’m not pretending to be me, I’m pretending to be someone else. Another me.”
“I wouldn’t, love. I really wouldn’t.”
“I’ve done it now.”
“You’re not still sulking about the television in the hotel?” Louis asked.
“Of course not. I was never sulking in fact, I was being bad tempered. You were the one who was sulking. Let’s get the memory of the row right.” Her eyes laughed and there was nothing but ease and pleasure between them.
“Right, so you’ll come and watch it down there…”
“Certainly not. If I’m going to be in London for a big historic occasion like this, I’m going to watch it on the street.”
“You’ll have to queue all night with rugs and a flask?”
“No, of course I won’t. Ivy and Jessie have found a corner.”
“And what about me? What about Mr. Millar and Jessie’s mother, and the rest of the cast?”
“You have to work, you’ve told me a dozen times. Ivy doesn’t want to go to Ernest’s pub because the horrible Charlotte will be there. Mrs. Park will be parked on a potty at a neighbor’s, looking at their television. Mr. Millar will be with his brother whom he hates…now does that answer the interrogation?” she asked jokily.
“I love you,” Louis said suddenly.
“I should hope so. Didn’t I run away with you?” she said.