“What are you sorry about?”
“For saying your mother wasn’t from here.”
Kit felt she was sorry for more, for hinting at a marriage that was less than satisfactory. “Oh, don’t be stupid, Clio. No one cares what you say about where my mother is from, you’re so boring. My mother’s from Dublin and that’s twenty times more interesting than being from old Limerick.”
“Sure,” said Clio.
The sunlight went out of the day. Kit didn’t enjoy the first summer outing on the lake. She felt Clio didn’t either, there was a sense of relief when they each went home.
RITA got two weeks holiday every July.
“I’ll miss going to Sister Madeleine,” she told Kit.
“Imagine missing lessons,” Kit said.
“Ah, it’s what you didn’t have, you see. Everyone wants what they don’t have.”
“What would you really like to do in the holidays?” Kit asked.
“I suppose not to have to go home. It’s not a home like this one. My mother’d hardly notice whether I was there or not, except to ask me for money.”
“Well, don’t go.”
“What else would I do?”
“Could you stay here and not work?” Kit suggested. “I’d bring you a cup of tea in the mornings.”
Rita laughed. “No, that wouldn’t work. But you’re right, I don’t have to go home.” Rita said she would discuss it with Sister Madeleine; the hermit might have an idea.
The hermit had a great idea. She thought that Mother Bernard above in the convent would simply love someone to come and help her spring-clean the parlor for a few hours a day, maybe even give it a lick of paint. And in return Rita could stay in the school and some of the nuns would give her a hand with the lessons.
Rita had a great holiday, she said, the best in her life.
“You mean it was nice staying with the nuns?”
“It was lovely, you don’t know the peace of the place and the lovely singing in the chapel, and I had a key and could go to the town to dances or to the pictures. And I got all my food and hours of help at my books.”
“You won’t leave us, will you, Rita?” Kit felt a shadow of change fall over them.
Rita was honest. “Not while you’re young and the way you are. Not till Emmet’s grown up a bit.”
“Mam would die if you left, Rita. You’re part of the family.”
“Your mother understands, honestly she does. She and I often talk about trying to take your chance in life, she encourages me to better myself. She knows it means I hope to be doing better than scrubbing floors.”
Kit’s eyes felt full of tears suddenly. “It’s not safe when you talk like that. I want things always to be the same, not to change.”
Rita said, “That’s not going to be the way it is. Look at the way Farouk stopped being a kitten and is a cat now, we wanted him to be a kitten forever. And look at the way those little ducklings in Sister Madeleine’s grew up and sailed away. And your mother wants you and Emmet to be young and nice like you are, but you’ll grow up and leave them. It’s the way of things.”
Kit wished it wasn’t the way of things, but she feared that Rita was right.
“Will you come out in the boat with me, Mam?” Kit asked.
“Lord no, my love. I’d not have time for that. Go on yourself with Clio.”
“I’m sick of Clio. I’d like you to come, I want to show you places you haven’t been.”
“No, Kit, it’s not possible.”
“But what do you do in the afternoons, Mam? What do you do that’s more important than coming out in the boat?”
It was only in the school holidays that Kit was aware of how her mother’s pattern of living differed from other people’s. Clio’s mother was always getting a bus or a lift to the big town to look at curtain material or to try on clothes, or to have coffee in one of the smart shops with friends. Mrs. Hanley and Mrs. Dillon were working in their shops, Philip O’Brien’s mother went up to the church and cleaned the brasses or arranged the flowers for Father Baily. There were mothers who went to Mother Bernard and helped in making things for the various sales of work, bazaars and functions that occurred regularly to aid the Order’s work on the missions.
Mother did none of these things. She spent time in the kitchen with Rita, helping, experimenting, improving the cooking, much more than other people’s mothers spent with maids. Mother arranged leaves and branches as decoration in their sitting room and framed pictures of the lake so that one whole wall had two dozen different views of Lough Glass. If people came in they were amazed to see the collection.
But people didn’t often come in.
And Mother’s work was swift and efficient. She had a lot of time on her own…all the time in the world to come out with Kit in the boat. “Tell me,” Kit asked again, “what do you like doing if you won’t come out with me?”
“I live my life the best I can,” her mother said. And Kit felt a shock at the faraway look that came over Helen McMahon’s face as she said it.
“Dad, why do you and Mam sleep in different rooms?” Kit asked.
She picked a time when the chemist’s was empty, when they would not be disturbed. Her father stood in his white coat behind the counter, his glasses pushed back on his head, his round, freckled face full of concentration. Kit was tolerated to sit on the high stool only if she didn’t distract him.
“What?” he said absently.
She began again, but he interrupted. “I heard you, but why do you ask?”
“I was just asking, Dad.”
“Did you ask your mother?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And she said it was because you snored.”
“So now you know.”
“Yes.”
“Any more questions, Kit, or can I get on with earning my living and making up compounds.”
“Why did you and Mam get married?”
“Because we loved each other, and still love each other.”
“How did you know?”
“You know, Kit, that’s it. I’m afraid it’s not very satisfactory, but that’s the only way I can explain it. I saw your mother at a friend’s house in Dublin, and I thought, isn’t she lovely and nice and fun and wouldn’t it be great if she’d go out with me. And she did, over and over, and then I asked her to marry me and she said yes.” He seemed to be telling it from the heart.
But Kit wasn’t convinced. “And did Mam feel the same?”
“Well, darling child. She must have felt the same. I mean, there was nobody with a great big stick saying you must marry this young chemist from Lough Glass who loves you to distraction. Her parents were dead, she didn’t do it to please anyone, because I was a safe bet or anything.”
“Were you a safe bet, Daddy?”
“I was a man with a steady job. In 1939 with the world on the edge of the war and everyone very confused by everything, a man with a good job was always a safe bet. Still is.”
“And were you surprised that she said yes?”
“No, darling, I wasn’t surprised, not at that stage…we loved each other, you see. I know it’s not like the pictures or the things you youngsters giggle about, but that’s what it was for us.” Kit was silent. “What is it, Kit? Why are you asking all this?”
“Nothing, Daddy. You know the way you get to wondering, that’s all.”
“I know the way you get to wondering,” he said.
And he left it there so Kit didn’t even have to think anymore about what Clio had said. Clio had told her that she overheard a conversation in her home where someone had said that Martin McMahon had a job keeping that wife of his tied to Lough Glass and the miracle of the whole thing being why she had ever come here in the first place.
“I’m only telling you,” Clio had said, “because you and I are best friends and I think you ought to know.”
“Sister Madeleine?”
“Yes, Kit.”
“Do you kno
w the way people tell you everything?”
“Well, they tell me things, Kit, because I haven’t much to tell them, you see. What with gathering sticks and picking flowers and saying my prayers, there isn’t much to tell.”
“Do people tell you their secrets, like, their sins even?”
Sister Madeleine was shocked. “No, Kit McMahon. Don’t you know as well as I do that the only one we’d tell our sins to is an anointed priest of God, who has the power to act between God and man.”
“Secrets, then?”
“What are you saying to me at all? Chook, chook, chook…will you look at the little bantams. Brother Healy was so kind. He gave me a clutch of eggs and they all hatched out beside the fire…it was like a miracle.” She knelt on the floor to direct the little chickens away from some perilous journey they were about to undertake and back into the box of straw she had prepared for them.
Kit would not be put off. “I came by myself today because…”
“Yes, I missed Clio. She’s a grand friend for you, isn’t she?”
“She is and she isn’t, Sister Madeleine. She told me that people were talking about my father and mother…and I wondered, I wanted to know maybe if you…”
Sister Madeleine straightened up, her lined, weather-beaten face was in a broad smile; it was as if she was willing the anxiety away from Kit. “Aren’t you the grown-up woman of twelve years of age, and don’t you know that everyone talks about everyone else. That’s what people do in a village…you’re not going to get all upset over that, are you?”
“No, but…”
Sister Madeleine seized the word “no.” “There. I knew you weren’t. You see, it’s a funny thing when people go miles and miles away to big cities where they know nobody and nobody knows them, the whole thing is turned around. It’s then they want people to be all interested in them and their doings.
“We are a funny sort of people, the human race.”
“It’s just that…” Kit began desperately. She didn’t want to discuss the human race, she wanted Sister Madeleine to tell her that everything was all right, that her mother wasn’t unhappy or wild or bad or whatever it was that Clio was suggesting.
But she didn’t get far.
Sister Madeleine was in full flight. “I knew you’d agree with me, and one of the funniest things—animals are much more simple. I don’t know why the Lord thought that we were so special. We’re not nearly as loving and good as the animal kingdom.”
The old dog, Whiskers, that Sister Madeleine had rescued when someone had tried to drown him in a bag, looked up when she said this. Whiskers seemed to understand when she was saying something good about animals, it was as if the tone of her voice changed. He gave a sort of gurgle to show he approved. “Whiskers agrees with me, and how’s Farouk? That fine noble cat of yours.”
“He’s fine, Sister Madeleine. Why don’t you come and see him?”
“Sure you know me, I’m not one to be visiting people’s houses. All I want to know is that he’s well and happy, and stalking around Lough Glass as if he owned it.”
There they were, talking about Farouk and Whiskers and the human race, and it would be rude now to go back to the reason why Kit had walked down the leafy lane to see Sister Madeleine on her own.
“How are things, Kit?”
“Fine, Mrs. Kelly.”
Lilian Kelly stood back to look more attentively at her daughter Clio’s friend, Kit. The child was very handsome, with that great head of dark curly hair and those unexpected blue eyes. She would probably be a beauty like her mother.
“And tell me, have you and Clio had a falling-out?”
“A falling-out?” Kit’s blue eyes were too innocent. She repeated the phrase with wonder, as if she hadn’t a clue what the words meant.
“Well, it’s just that up to now you’ve been like Siamese twins joined at the hip. But in the last few weeks you don’t seem to be going within a donkey’s roar of each other, and that seems a pity seeing that it’s the summer holidays.” She paused, waiting.
But she was getting nothing from Kit. “We didn’t have a row, honestly, Mrs. Kelly.”
“I know. That’s what Clio said.” Kit was anxious to be away. “Nobody listens to their own mother, so maybe you might listen to me instead. You and Clio need each other. This is a small place, you’ll always be glad to have a friend here. Whatever silliness this is it doesn’t matter, it’ll soon be over. Now you know where we live. Come on up to the house this evening, will you?”
“Clio knows where I live too, Mrs. Kelly.”
“God protect me from two such stubborn women. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the next generation…” Mrs. Kelly sighed and went off good-naturedly. Kit watched her go. Clio’s mother was large and square, she wore sensible clothes, today she had a cotton dress with white cuffs and collar, and a small daisy print. She was carrying a shopping basket. She was like the picture of a mother in a storybook.
Not like Kit’s own mother, who was very thin, and wore bright greens or crimson or royal blue, and her clothes were sort of floaty-looking. She looked much more like a dancer than a mother.
Kit sat on the wooden pier.
Their boat was tied up beside her, but there was an iron-hard rule that no one took the boat out alone. Someone had been drowned in the lake because she went out alone. It was ages ago but people still talked about it. Her body wasn’t found for a year, and during that year her soul used to haunt the lake calling out “Look in the reeds, look in the reeds.” Everyone knew this. It was enough to frighten the most foolhardy, even the boys, from going out on their own.
Kit watched enviously as she saw some of the older boys from the Brothers’ school untying a boat, but she would not go back up and pretend to Clio that everything was all right.
Because it wasn’t.
The days seemed very long. There was nobody to talk to. It didn’t seem fair to go down to Sister Madeleine on her own. It had been the place that she and Clio always went to, and that one time she had gone to try and find out things Sister Madeleine must have known what she was after. Rita was working always, or else she had her head in a book. Emmet was too young for any conversation. Daddy was busy and Mother…Mother. Mother expected Kit to be less clingy, less worried. It had been very easy when Clio was around. Perhaps Mrs. Kelly was right and they did need each other.
But she was not going to go up to that house.
She heard footsteps behind her and felt the spring of the wooden pier as someone walked along. It was Clio. She had two milk chocolate biscuits, their favorites.
“I wouldn’t go to your house, and you wouldn’t come to mine. This is neutral ground, all right?” she said.
Kit paused. “Sure.” She shrugged.
“We can just go on as we were before the fight.” Clio wanted it defined.
“There wasn’t a fight,” Kit reminded her.
“Yeah, I know. But I said something stupid about your mother.” There was a silence. Clio went on to fill it. “The truth is, Kit, that I was jealous. I’d love to have a mother who looks like a film star.”
Kit reached out and took one of the Club Milk biscuits. “Now you’re here we can take out the boat,” she said.
The row that had never been was over.
During the holidays Brother Healy came up to the convent for his annual discussion with Mother Bernard.
They had many things to discuss, and they got on well together when discussing them. There was the school curriculum for the year, the difficulty of getting lay teachers who would have the same sense of dedication, the terrible problem they shared about children being wild and undisciplined, preferring the goings-on on the cinema screen to real life as it should be lived in Ireland. They coordinated their timetables so that the girls should be released from school at one time and the boys at another, leaving less chances for the two sexes to meet each other and get involved in unnecessary familiarity.
Brother Healy and Mother Bernard were s
uch old friends now that they could even indulge in the odd little grumble, about the length of Father Baily’s sermons, for example. The man was inclined to be hypnotized by the sound of his own voice, they thought.
Or the excessive love the children had for that difficult Sister Madeleine. It was somehow highly irritating that this odd woman, who came from a deeply confused and ill-explained background, should have taken such an unexpected place in the hearts and minds of Lough Glass’s children, who would do anything for her. They were eager to save stamps, collect silver paper, and gather sticks for her fire. The boys had been outraged when Brother Healy had stamped on a spider. There had been a near mutiny in the classroom. And these were the same lads who would have pulled the wings off flies for sport a few years before.
Mother Bernard said that Sister Madeleine was altogether too tolerant for this world, she seemed to have a good word to say for everyone, including the enemies of the Church. She had told some of the impressionable girls that Communists might have their own very reasonable belief in dividing wealth equally. That had been a headache, Mother Bernard said…and one that she could have done without.
And it wasn’t only the children who were under her spell, Brother Healy said in an aggrieved tone. Oh no, no. A man who should know better, like Martin McMahon the chemist.
Brother Healy had heard with his own ears the man suggesting to Mrs. Sullivan, whose poor Billy had been carried off screaming, that she should go to Sister Madeleine for some advice about a nice soothing drink to make her sleep.
“Next stop will be black magic altogether,” said Mother Bernard, nodding feverishly in agreement.
And, of course, if Martin minded his business and paid a bit of attention to that fancy wife of his, he’d be better off. Brother Healy might have gone too far now in uncharitable gossip. He knew it and so did Mother Bernard. They both began to shuffle their papers together and end the meeting.
It would remain unsaid that Helen McMahon, with her disturbing good looks, walked too much alone, beating at the hedges with a blackthorn stick, her eyes and mind far, far away from Lough Glass and the people who lived there.