Maura would wear a cream-colored suit and a blue hat with a cream ribbon.
Maura’s wedding plans came as a surprise to her Dublin friends, who hadn’t somehow thought of sensible, golfing Maura as a likely bride. They heard of this kind widower, a pharmacist in a small country town, with two children whom Maura liked very much and who as far as she could tell seemed to be pleased that she was marrying their father. They learned with amazement that Maura had already found herself a job in this town. There was a position as a bookkeeper/administrator in a fast-growing motor business. It was two steps from her front door.
And her sister was married to the local doctor, and there was great golf. Her colleagues and friends were grudgingly pleased on her behalf. Father Baily from Lough Glass would attend as a guest, but the couple would be married by a priest who Maura knew in her own parish in Dublin. There would be about twenty people to lunch in a restaurant.
Maura had studied the earlier wedding pictures, the ones taken in 1939. On that occasion there had been sixty people. Maura recognized the brother and sisters of Martin, a dispersed, silent family who met only at funerals and weddings.
They would not be included in the guest list. It would look like asking for a present a second time around. She saw her sister Lilian, young and innocent-looking and Peter, stern as the best man. She saw the bridesmaid, a girl called Dorothy, and her eyes stayed long on the beautiful face of Helen Healy, the woman that Martin McMahon had loved with a wild and unreasonable love.
He had told her all about it one day by the lake. He had been truthful and fair, to everyone, to Helen, to himself, and to Maura. He said she was something that filled his mind like a sandstorm.
Maura’s eyes searched the face. What had she been thinking that day while she stood for the photographs? Had she hoped that the years with a kind, good man like Martin would smooth out the hurt of a man who had left her, a man she had loved and hoped to marry? The face was oval, the eyes were big and dark, the smile was sweet. But surely even someone who didn’t know the whole story could see that this was not the normal expression of a bride on her wedding day? This was someone looking out way beyond the camera to something no one else could see.
Maura put aside her reflections, and went back to her list. The O’Briens from the hotel were invited, mainly to get over their sense of grievance at the wedding not being held in their premises. Young Philip who was at the catering college with Kit might come too, Maura would ask Kit. It was foolish to assume that all young people liked each other just because they grew up next door.
IVY called Millar’s Agency.
“I’m afraid she’s with a client, Mrs. Brown,” Dawn said. “Can any of the rest of us help you?”
“No darling, tell her it’s Ivy. It’ll only take thirty seconds.”
“But Mrs. Brown, I know you’re a friend and everything, but she is with a very senior businessman, someone who might be able to put a lot of business her way. I don’t know whether she’d thank me or indeed thank you for being interrupted.”
“She’ll thank us,” Ivy said.
“Mrs. Gray, Mrs. Ivy Brown is most persistent. May I put her through for a short moment?”
“Thank you, yes, Dawn.” Lena’s voice was unruffled.
Ivy knew that Dawn would be listening. “Oh, Lena, sorry to interrupt you, but Mr. Tyrone turned up looking for his key. I told him I had given it to you.”
“And so you did.” Lena’s voice was bright.
“So I suppose I should mention to Mr. Tyrone when you might be back.”
“Tonight. Eight o’clock at the very earliest, and thank you so much for calling, Ivy.” Lena hung up.
But Ivy remained on the line until she heard the click showing that Dawn had hung up also. She smiled to herself grimly. They had never had to use a code before. How quick Lena was on the uptake. Together they had giggled about how handsome Louis was, that he really did look like a film star. Tyrone Power possibly.
Ivy would not give young Dawn the satisfaction of knowing that Mrs. Gray’s erring husband was back. And particularly Ivy did not want to let Dawn or anyone know how eagerly and willingly Lena would take him back.
Eight o’clock. That meant she must be going to the hairdresser.
Grace was philosophical. “Of course I don’t think you’re silly. I think you’re right. Look as well as you can…that way if he stays you’ll be glad you made the effort. If he doesn’t you’ll think you look so damn good anyway you’ll have no trouble getting any other man.”
“I don’t want any other man, of course,” said Lena.
“Of course,” Grace agreed. “That’s the problem. That’s the meaning of the universe, isn’t it?”
Ivy had been upstairs and tidied around. She had polished the table by the window and put a glass bowl of gold roses in the center of it. She had ironed some of Lena’s blouses and put fresh sheets on the bed. She had thrown out the remains of old, hastily grabbed meals, the packets of slightly stale biscuits, and installed instead some fresh bread, ham, and tomatoes. And a bottle of wine. Something that would not look as if she had been expecting Louis, but which gave no appearance of desperation either.
Ivy hadn’t prayed much in recent years, but she found herself offering up a little wish all day that Louis’s return would be glorious. That this time he would find something that would make him stay.
There was a cafe across the street, a place where workmen had heavy-duty sandwiches and big cups of tea. Louis Gray sat there, out of it because of his clothes and his suntan, but still acceptable because of his easy way with people, his need to know about the chances of a horse in the following day’s races. Out of the corner of his eye he watched number 27.
He had been there for an hour. Ivy said that Lena would be back at eight. Lena would not know he was coming home. When he saw her coming he excused himself from a conversation on form, and slipped across the road. He wanted to catch her as she went up the stairs.
He saw her legs disappearing around the corner. “Lena,” he called softly.
She looked around, glowing and confident. A woman that any man would stop to look at. Her hair, which never ceased to amaze him, was shining, her makeup perfect. No other woman returning home after a long working day looked like this. He went up and stood close to her. She smelled as fresh as a daisy, her eyes were big and dancing with interest and surprise. “Well, well, well,” Lena said slowly.
“You didn’t call in to Ivy.”
“I don’t every night, no.” They were speaking like old friends.
“Can I come in?” He pointed upward at their flat.
“Well, Louis, it’s your home. Of course you can come in.” How had she learned to be such an actress! She marveled at her own skills.
“I gave my key back to Ivy, she said you had it.”
“As indeed I have.” Lena knew that Ivy would have returned the key in her absence. And as she went in to the newly cleaned flat her heart filled with love for the good woman downstairs. Everything was perfect for the reconciliation, for the promises, the assurances, the night of love. And there on the mantelpiece where no one could miss it in a small glass dish was Louis’s key. Lena went straight over to it, picked it up and handed it to him.
“I brought some champagne,” Louis said.
“That’s nice.” Lena had steeled herself, drilled herself all day, to be calm.
“I thought if you’d let me come home it would be a celebration, and if you wouldn’t then I could drink it to console myself.” He smiled his boyish smile.
Lena smiled back. In a way it was no different to her going to the hairdresser’s and having a facial. As Grace had said, if Louis stayed then it would be a celebration, if not a consolation. Very much the same thing.
“Let’s celebrate, then,” she said, and she turned her face a little to one side as he came to take her in his arms. She didn’t want him to see how much she hungered to hold him so tight that she would squeeze the breath from him. She
wanted to kiss his lips, his eyes, his neck, to take his clothes off slowly and walk with him into the bedroom. But this way she would seem too eager.
He moved her face to kiss her lips. “I’m a fool, Lena,” he said.
“No more than most of us,” she said.
“This is my home, I knew that five minutes after I left it.”
“And now you’re back,” she said.
“Don’t you want to know…to hear…?”
“Oh no, I do most certainly not want to know…Now, are you going to pour me a glass of champagne, or is this all just an empty promise?”
“There’ll be no more empty promises, Lena,” he said. “I’ll love you forever and I’ll never leave again.”
KIT had been helpful. “What would you like me to wear?” she had asked Maura.
“Oh, Kit, whatever you like. Whatever you think would be nice for later.”
“No, it’s your day, you should have a say in it,” Kit had said. Maura’s eyes had filled with tears. She tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come. “And Daddy’s,” Kit had added. “But men don’t really notice things of importance. Tell me if there’s anything I can do that would help to make it nice for you.”
“The fact that you are happy your father is marrying me makes it very nice for me,” Maura said, having found her voice at last.
“And Emmet too, Maura. It’s just that he’s hopeless at saying it.”
“A boy remembers a mother in a different way, I suppose.”
“No, that’s not so, he was only nine when it happened. And anyway I was always the one who was closer to her. I understood her more, he was still a baby in many ways. He just saw her as ‘there’s my mummy’…he didn’t know her as a person, as I did.”
“I hope she’d be pleased that Martin’s marrying again. You see, I’m such a different person, it would be no question of trying to be a second Helen…”
“I’m sure she would,” Kit said.
Kit asked herself how was it that she was allowing a marriage to go ahead that was sinful. There was a bit in the service which asked if anyone knew any impediment to this couple’s being joined together. And when the priest asked this, Kit, who knew that her father had a living wife, would say nothing. She had after all asked Sister Madeleine, and Sister Madeleine had said to do what she thought was right.
It was a huge responsibility but she would do it.
Kit settled into the College of Catering with great ease.
The very first week she met a girl called Frankie Barry with dancing eyes and a sense of rebellion. Frankie was going to go to America eventually and travel coast to coast, managing a hotel here and there along the way.
“Would we be able to do that, do you think?” Kit was doubtful.
“Certainly we will. Aren’t we going to do the City and Guilds Exams? That’s the highest qualification in the world,” said Frankie confidently.
Kit was pleased about this. There would be no fear of ending up jobless after two and a half years and having to go meekly into the Central Hotel and work with Philip’s awful parents and maybe marry him just to keep everyone quiet.
Philip was enjoying the college too. He showed her proudly how he had sewed on his own name tapes. “Aren’t you the little treasure,” Kit had teased him. “A prize for any girl.” But he had flushed and she felt ashamed. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he fancied Frankie. She tried to bring them together, but it didn’t work. Frankie had a flat with two other girls, Philip lived in his uncle’s house, Kit was in the hostel.
Dublin was filled with things to do. The problem was to choose. She arranged to go and meet Rita. Philip was waiting patiently for her after the lecture, as she knew he would be.
“No, Philip. I have arranged to meet someone, honestly.”
“Who?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean is it anyone I know?” Philip realized that he had been too proprietorial.
“It is actually. It’s Rita Moore.”
“Rita, your maid from Lough Glass?”
“Yes.” Kit didn’t like the snobbish way he said it, it was very like his mother.
“I mean you’re meeting her in a cafe…and everything,” he said, astounded by the democracy of it all.
“No, of course not…I’m going to sit down at a table and ask her to serve me and then eat on her own.”
“I only asked.”
“And you were told,” Kit said shortly.
Rita wanted all the news, and details of how Peggy, the daily who came for a few hours, was doing her job.
“Will Miss Hayes make any changes, do you think?”
“I hope so…” Kit said. “I mean I’d like her to make it into her place, you know, not just move into our place.”
“She’s going to ask me to the wedding,” Rita said.
“I know…what are you going to wear?”
“I saw a suit in Clery’s. It’s the very thing. And I might get shoes to match. It’s a sort of light green. What’ll you wear yourself, Kit?”
“I don’t know. Daddy gave me money to buy an outfit. I haven’t seen anything I like yet.”
Next morning at the college Kit was told that there was a parcel for her.
When she saw that it was from London she took it to the ladies’ cloakroom, where, heart beating like a hammer, she opened it. What could Lena Gray be doing now? What awful secret was there here that was going to upset them all?
She unpacked the gray and white silk dress in amazement and read the note. The dress didn’t look like much, but that wasn’t important…what was important was the note.
I thought you might like this to wear at the wedding. L.
She read it over and over.
What it meant was that she was giving her blessing to the wedding. Helen McMahon was saying that the marriage would go ahead and she would not interfere. Tears came down Kit’s face, tears of pure relief.
She looked at the dress again. It was silk, maybe even pure silk. It must have cost a fortune. She would try it on tonight and then she would think of what she would write.
That is if she did write.
But you’d have to write to thank for something like this. Which was probably what Lena wanted.
Clio’s hostel was near the university. There were girls from all over Ireland there, some of them from very posh families. Most of them had never heard of Lough Glass. Lots of them had been to boarding schools and knew each other. It wasn’t as easy as Clio had thought to make friends. And it was the same at lectures. In some magical way other people seemed to know each other.
Clio found her first days at University College Dublin much less fun than she had hoped they would be. For the first time in her life she was a little bit lonely. For the first time she realized she was a very small fish in a pond so big she couldn’t even see the edges.
She cheered herself up with the thought that however bad it was for her, it must be worse for Kit with all those awful hotel people from everywhere. And down at the other end of O’Connell Street, miles away from where all the action was.
Kit went out to supper with Philip O’Brien. She invited him and said it was her treat.
“What’s this about?” Philip was suspicious.
“I want to talk to you properly, and if I am your guest then I think you’ve invited me out, like asking someone out.”
“Well, you’re asking me out, isn’t that the same?” he grumbled.
“You know it isn’t,” Kit said firmly.
He was tall, Philip, and his freckles seemed to suit him more, his hair had stopped standing up at odd angles, he didn’t have that slightly puzzled look he’d had as a youngster, he had a sense of humor. In most ways he was the perfect friend. Apart from one way, and that’s what Kit wanted to talk about.
“I’m going to have spaghetti,” she said, looking at the menu.
“It’s probably tinned,” Philip said.
“Good. I loved tinned spaghetti. It’s muc
h easier to eat.”
“Don’t let them hear you saying that in the training college. They’ll think we’re a couple of yahoos.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” Kit said.
“What? Spaghetti?”
“No, the word you said, a couple of yahoos…”
“A lot of them are from Dublin or from big cities. They think everyone from a place like Lough Glass would be a yahoo.”
“I’m not talking about the word ‘yahoo,’ it’s the word ‘couple’ that worried me.”
“It is what you call two people.” Philip was aggrieved.
“It’s not what you call us. I have my whole life to live and things to worry about. I can’t find myself sliding into a sort of pairing with you as well as everything else…”
“I don’t see what’s so terrible…” he began.
“It’s not terrible, it’s just something that has to be agreed between two people, not assumed by one and the other go along without thinking.”
“Then, will you be my girlfriend?” Philip asked.
“No, Philip.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to be me. I want to be without a boyfriend.”
“Forever?”
“No, not forever but until I meet one, and it might be you, and we both agree.”
“But you have met me.” Philip was very confused now.
“Philip, I’m your friend, not your girlfriend. And if you say But you are a girl I’ll stick my fork in your eyes.”
“I’ll always want you as my girlfriend,” he said simply. “You can go off with whoever you like, but I’ll always be there for you in Lough Glass with the hotel, and maybe we might even get married.”
“Philip, you’re eighteen. Nobody gets married at eighteen.” The waitress was standing there.