She seemed to look straight at them, they all said it, Ivy, Jessie, everyone all around. And Lena thought it too. She looked back and waved at the woman who was going to be crowned. A woman who still had her little boy and girl. She felt tears spring into her eyes.
A man beside her clutched her arm. “It’s a great day, love, isn’t it. You’ll be able to tell your children about this.”
Lena squeezed his arm back. “Great day, great day,” she stumbled.
“DO you always know what to do, Sister Madeleine?”
“No, Kit, I hardly ever know what to do.”
“But you don’t worry about it.”
“No, that’s true. I don’t.”
“Is that why you weren’t good at being married?”
“I never said I wasn’t good at being married.”
“No, but you can’t have been, otherwise you’d still be married, wouldn’t you, not a nun?”
“Oh, you think I left a marriage and went into a convent, is that it?”
“But isn’t that what you told us, Clio and myself?” Poor Kit was wishing she hadn’t brought it up. The nun’s blue eyes were interested and alive, but giving nothing away. “I mean we didn’t just imagine it, did we?”
“I did have a husband once, but he left me. He went away far across the world.”
“Did you have a fight?” Kit was sympathetic.
“No, not at all. I thought everything was fine. He wasn’t happy, he said.” She looked out over the lake as she remembered it.
“And did the nuns take you then because he wasn’t coming back anymore?”
“Oh no. Not for a long time. I sat in the house polishing it and cleaning it and growing the flowers in the garden and telling everyone he was coming back soon…”
“Where was all this, Sister Madeleine?”
“Oh, far away from here. But anyway, the weeks passed and the months and one day I asked myself what I was doing, and God made a little voice in me say that all I was doing really was minding possessions, keeping silver clean and polishing glass…I surely should be doing something else.”
“So what did you do?”
“I sold it all, and I put the money in the bank for my husband, and I wrote a letter to a friend of his and said I was going to join a convent, and that if ever he came back everything was there for him.”
“And did he come back, Sister Madeleine?”
“I don’t know, Kit. I don’t think so.” She was very calm. Not sad or confused.
“So you were a nun?”
“For a while. Then one day I asked myself in the convent what was I doing. Polishing tables in the parlor, and polishing pews in the church and the marble around the base of the altar. And I heard the little voice from God again.”
“What did it say this time?” Kit scarcely dared to believe that Sister Madeleine was telling her all this.
“It said the same thing. It said that I was spending my time polishing and cleaning possessions. They weren’t mine admittedly, they belonged to the convent, but still it didn’t seem a good thing to be doing.”
“So you left and came here?”
“Yes. That was it, more or less.”
“And you couldn’t hear a voice from God saying that you’re wrapped up in possessions here because you haven’t any.” Kit looked around the spare house and marveled at how it had all turned out.
“Yes, I think it was the right thing to do. I hope so.”
“But it was God talking, wasn’t it?”
“Of course it was, but God is always talking to us. The thing is to be sure and hear the bit that he wants us to hear.”
“Like when making up your mind you think one thing is right and then you think the other is.” Kit seemed to know the problem of indecision.
“Exactly, Kit. You have to listen carefully and work out what is actually being said, what God wants you to do.”
“And is it an actual voice, like you and me talking?”
“No. It’s more a feeling.”
“So if I wasn’t sure whether to do something or not…I’d just wait and see which feeling was the stronger.”
“It usually works.” Kit closed her eyes. “But you can’t force it, Kit. It’s not like a fairy granting you three wishes or anything.” Kit stared out over the lake. It was so calm, not a ripple. A perfect June day. “Write to her, Kit,” Sister Madeleine said.
“What?” Kit started in alarm.
“You’re wondering whether to write to your mother’s friend or not. It can’t do any harm. Write to her.”
“LENA?”
“Ivy!”
Ivy hadn’t seen Louis was there too. “Did you think of coming down to the pub on Friday? Ernest was asking about you both the other day.”
“Hey, that would be good,” Louis said. “But can we never buy a drink there? That’s the only thing that turns me up about it. Tell Ernest, he’d understand.”
“The only thing Ernest can do for me, Louis, is to buy my friends a few beers. He loves to do it, give him the chance.”
“Oh, I’m easily turned into a kept man,” Louis said, continuing up the stairs.
Ivy called up after them, “I have that leaflet you wanted, Lena…you know, about those evening classes…”
Louis groaned. “She’s not taking up more activities, is she? Don’t encourage her, Ivy. Please, if you love me don’t encourage her.”
“They’re not for me, silly. They’re for the clients. Right, Ivy, I’ll come down later and have a look at them with you.” Her voice was calm, she looked as if nothing had happened. But inside she was churning.
A letter from her daughter.
Ivy was waiting, the letter in her hand. “It’s a child’s writing, Lena. You wrote to the children.”
“You knew that.”
“I didn’t know they’d write back. I’m frightened for you, I really am.”
“I’m frightened too.” They looked at each other for a long moment.
Then Ivy pulled out a chair. “Sit down and read it. I’ll get us both a drink.”
Lena began to read.
Dear Miss Gray,
Or maybe it’s Mrs. Gray, you didn’t say. I took a long time to answer because I was thinking. I almost felt afraid. I don’t know what I was afraid of. I think I am worried that you’ll tell me something sad about my mother, like that she wrote to you and said she didn’t love us or she was unhappy in Lough Glass.
So I wanted you to know she had a great time here, a really good time. We have a terrific home, and Daddy is so good to everyone, and was best of all to Mother because he didn’t fuss her. He knew she liked to walk by herself, and even if he was lonely he let her go. Sometimes he would stand at the kitchen window at the back of the house where it looks down over the lake and he’d say, “Look, there’s your mother walking by the lake, she loves the lake in Lough Glass.” And she had a lot of friends here, the Kellys were great friends of all ours, and my mother knew everyone in the town, and they all still talk about her. So I thought I’d tell you that, in case you were going to tell Emmet and myself that mother didn’t have a good time or had any complaints. So that you would know what it was like.
I haven’t told Emmet about your letter because he’s very young and doesn’t really understand anything at all. It’s not much of a letter but I wanted to explain.
Yours faithfully,
Kit McMahon
Lena looked at Ivy. Her face was empty, as if someone had reached in and taken all the life and feeling out of it. Ivy wondered if Lena was going to faint, she had never seen such a deathly white.
“Oh my God, Ivy,” she said. “My God. What have I done? Oh Ivy, what on God’s earth have I done?”
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Ivy soothed.
“I have destroyed so many lives. Oh, I wish I were at the bottom of the lake like they all think. That’s where I deserve to be.”
“Stop it!” Ivy spoke in a voice that Lena had never heard her use.
“Stop it this minute. I can’t abide that kind of self-pity. Think. You have a man upstairs who loves you and who is the love of your life. And now you have a chance to set the record straight, to make amends to this child.”
“How can I make amends? How can I ever undo all this…?”
“Tell her Helen McMahon was as happy as a sandboy. Tell her a pack of lies, let her have some good thoughts about her mother. You can do that.”
“It would all be a lie. I can’t write my daughter lies.”
“Well you sure as hell can’t write her the truth, can you?” Ivy said, refilling the glasses.
CLIO’s aunt Maura brought them both Coronation mugs. She had a great time in London, she said. It was very exciting. Everyone was in such a good mood.
She was always very kind to Kit, and managed to say the right thing much more often than Mrs. Kelly did. “You look lovely, Kit, you’re so tall and strong-looking too. Your mother would be proud of you.” Mrs. Kelly always said “your poor mother,” as if Mother was someone to be pitied. “She had a great love for this place, she knew every fern and reed that grew by the lake,” Clio’s aunt Maura said, and Kit agreed. Mrs. Kelly would have steered clear of any mention of the lake, a difficult thing to do in Lough Glass.
And it was true that Mother knew all the plants. Kit had heard that from Lena Gray, Mother’s friend in London. Kit had been asked to call her Lena, not Miss or Mrs. The woman typed such long, interesting letters about Mother that Kit would love to have shown them to Dad. Surely it would cheer up his sad heart to read about how much Mother loved the place, sunset over the lake in the evenings, and the little clumps of primroses and cowslips in the spring. But she knew that Lena Gray was right, these were thoughts that somehow didn’t concern anyone else.
And Kit’s heart was full to think that her mother had loved her so much she had written all these things about her to a woman in England. It was so strange that Mother had never mentioned her. How private Mother must have been to have kept this great friendship all to herself.
LENA kept all her letters from Kit in Ivy’s flat. “It’s not that I don’t trust Louis,” she told Ivy.
“I know, love.” Ivy did know.
“It’s such a comfort to me,” Lena said.
“I know, love, I know.”
“But you’re warning me again about something, aren’t you?”
“Don’t tell her too much. Don’t get too close to her.”
“SISTER Madeleine?”
“Yes, Kit.”
“Do I ask too many questions?”
“Not at all. It’s good to ask questions, people don’t have to answer them any more fully than they want to.”
“So, I was wondering…” She paused. It was as if she didn’t want to know the answer. “I was wondering did my mother use you as a letter box too?”
“Why do you ask that, child?”
“Well, you see her friend, Lena…she sort of said that she and mother were writing to each other all the time, and I never saw any letters coming from England up at home. We’d have noticed the stamp, you see.”
“I know, I know.” Sister Madeleine was thoughtful. But she had not said yes or no.
“So did she, do you think?”
“Did she what, Kit?”
“Did she get letters addressed to her through you…?”
“Well, of course, there could be lots of ways…everyone does things differently.” Sister Madeleine was sliding away without refusing to answer.
“How do you mean?” Kit was trying her best.
“About people being different? It’s a thing that could keep you thinking every day of your life how different we all are. And how different the animals are from each other. Like how do the little ducks know they can swim, and the little sparrows know they can fly. And people have such different ways of looking at things.
“Take your mother now. She knew every name of every child over there in the gypsy camp, and they all knew her yet they lived such different lives. They would have done anything for your mother.”
“So, you mean she could have had letters addressed there…”
“Neither you nor I would ask them, would we, Kit? It’s like what we’ve always said, people are special…they have their own lives in their souls to live. And I wouldn’t tell anyone about our conversations or who writes letters to whom. And you wouldn’t tell Clio about what I told you, all about my cleaning those possessions, because we know that it doesn’t have to come up. Not that we’re making secrets or anything—there’s just no need to know.”
“I know.” Kit knew that she would never know whether this was the letter box for Lena Gray and Mother. But she was sure it was. Now only one problem. If Lena was so nice and such a close friend, why couldn’t Father have known about it?
Mother Bernard welcomed Rita to the convent with pleasure. “Are you sure that you want to do this, Rita? We love your excellent work here, of course, but I wonder are we taking advantage of you?”
“No, Mother. It is a pleasure. I love to clean your beautiful things. I get lodgings like the Queen of England wouldn’t have…”
“I can’t see her coming to a convent in Lough Glass on her travels, mind you.” Mother Bernard, of course, disapproved of the new Queen of England thinking herself the head of a church. Any church.
“Well, it’s her loss, Mother, I tell you that. And I don’t want to go back to my family, they don’t need me and they only upset me. Also…” She paused.
“Do you have a young man in Lough Glass possibly?” Mother Bernard was coy.
“No, not a fear of it, Mother. No, what I was going to say, I don’t like to be too far from Emmet and Kit. My heart goes out to them.”
“Kit seems to be managing very well, better than I would have thought.”
“Yes, of the three of them she does seem to have found some kind of peace. It’s as if she had a secret. Maybe she prays to her mother, do you think?”
Mother Bernard didn’t want to go as far as this.
Although it would be a sin against charity to go around repeating it, Mother Bernard was one of the very sizable number who believed that Helen McMahon might well have ended her own life, and would therefore not be in a place where anyone might pray to her with any hope of an answer.
Chapter Five
MAURA was very reassuring to her sister Lilian Kelly. “They’re all terrible between thirteen and sixteen. It’s their glands…it’s to do with nature.”
“Nobody has a nature like Clio. I’ll swing for her before it’s over, I really will.”
“No, no. I see it everywhere. It’s their bodies, you see. They’re all ready to breed and raise families, but society won’t let them, and so it’s a very confused time…”
“All we need is for them to be breeding all round us. That’s the only thing she hasn’t done yet.” Lilian Kelly’s mouth was grim.
Clio was a handful. The odd thing was that Kit, the motherless girl who had been restless and wild herself, seemed to have settled down. Clio’s blond good looks had caught the attention of many a young man, but her parents had been strict. There would be no outings of that sort until the summer she left school. Lessons were important. Fun could come later.
Maura came down almost every weekend. She said it was no distance from Dublin. She loved seeing them all. And as the months and indeed years went by the weekends had fallen into a pattern. There would be a supper up at Kellys’ on a Friday night. And the next day spent playing golf. Martin McMahon had been assured by his friend the doctor that exercise was essential for a man in his forties. They would have dinner at the golf club on a Saturday night.
Martin had to be persuaded that it was a good thing to leave his children to their own devices some of the time. “I’m sure Helen would want you to encourage them to be independent,” Maura had said. And that had settled it. Martin McMahon liked the easy way that she mentioned his dead wife. So many people dropped their voices when they mentioned her. If they men
tioned her at all.
But while every other girl fought with a mother, Kit McMahon developed a friendship that became closer and closer with her mother’s friend, Lena. Lena’s typed letters arrived at Sister Madeleine’s cottage week after week, pages and pages of conversation and memory and reaction to things that Kit wrote to her.
Sister Madeleine mentioned the letters once. And only once. “She writes long letters, your mother’s friend?”
Kit had paused for a moment. “I’d show them to you, Sister Madeleine, but it’s hard to say…it’s kind of…not exactly a secret but you’d get the feeling she’s writing only to me.”
“Oh, child. Don’t think for a moment that I’d want to read what she says. She tells you good things about your mother…”
“Marvelous things, they must have known every single thing about each other. But then, they wrote to each other a lot. You know that because they must have written through here.” Sister Madeleine looked into the fire and said nothing. “I feel so much better about Mother. I know her properly, what she was like as a child and everything. It’s like finding her diary or something…”
“That’s a great blessing for you,” Sister Madeleine said, and she watched the little flame catch the wood.
LENA had a ritual about reading the letters.
It was in Ivy’s flat at the kitchen table, surrounded by the cluttered shelves and the walls on which there wasn’t an inch of free space, so great was the festooning of postcards, scarves, ornaments, and posters.
She would sip her small brandy and be transported to a world of breezes on the lake, end-of-term exams, Father Baily’s being an hour late because he had forgotten that the clocks went on.