Lena was tired and aching next morning after a long night of love. She would have liked nothing better than to lie on in their hotel bedroom with a breakfast served in bed, but she had work to do.
She slipped out quietly so as not to wake Louis. He lay with his arm behind his head, his long lashes casting a shadow on his face. He was so handsome and she loved him so very much. Nothing he had done or might have done could ever change that.
When she got back to the hotel by taxi after two exhausting but hopefully profitable sessions he was waiting in the coffee lounge.
“You should have told me,” he said. “I’d have driven you. The car was for both of us, but I had no idea where your schools were.” Of course, if he had really wanted to know he could have phoned Millar’s. “Come on,” he said. “We’re off. I’ve planned a trip.”
They drove through the English countryside past farms and villages. Louis and Lena never compared the English countryside to the places they knew back home. It meant too much of a journey into what was over, what was best forgotten.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” he said, and he placed his hand on her knee. He looked so right driving James Williams’s car. Louis Gray was a man born to style and gracious living no matter what his original circumstances had been.
She saw the name of the village of Stoke Poges.
“But isn’t this where…?” she began.
“Yes…I wanted you to see the family’s pride and joy.”
“What!”
“‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day’…er…Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ by my ancestor Thomas Gray,” he said, and parked outside the gate of an absurdly picturesque churchyard.
“But you’re not a relation of that Gray…” she laughed, half believing he might be.
“Of course I am.”
“You never said.”
“You never asked me.”
“But not seriously!”
“We are who we say. I’m upset you don’t believe me,” he said.
“But Louis, you’re not from these parts…you’re from Wicklow…you’re not from Buckinghamshire in England.”
She knew scant details of his background. His father had died when he was young…he had older brothers and sisters who had all left home, gone abroad to work. They had not stayed in touch, he had not sought them out.
Because Lena had no family herself she always thought that people would rate a family highly.
Not Louis. He spoke little of his childhood, he neither blamed it nor harked back to it. It was now that mattered, he said. Now, not the past.
They walked to the poet’s tomb, they stroked the flat top of his grave. They read the poem to each other, remembering little bits of it from what they had learned by heart at school.
“‘…and leave the world to darkness and to me,’” read Lena.
“That’s it, Uncle Thomas,” Louis said.
“He wasn’t a relative really?”
“We are what we think we are,” Louis said.
“I love you, Lena,” Louis said later that night. He had woken up and found her sitting in her dressing gown by the window, smoking and looking out into the night.
“Why do you say that to me?” she asked.
“Because it’s true. And sometimes you look sad as if you had forgotten that it’s true.”
STEVIE Sullivan’s mother, Kathleen, was discharged from hospital and came back to Lough Glass.
“Don’t end up getting her cups of tea, Maura,” Peter Kelly advised his sister-in-law. “They can well afford to get a woman in to do it.”
“Who knows better than I what they can afford?” Maura answered. She did the books and knew exactly how well the motor business was working for the Sullivans, thanks entirely to the flair and hard work of Stevie. If he gave his full mind to it she didn’t dare to think how successful he would be.
He toured farms and explained to farmers who might be slow in making decisions the wisdom of improving their farm machinery and their pickup trucks before they had been run into the ground. Then he did up their original vehicles and sold them on to others. Nowhere did he break the law or indeed break faith in his clients. His success came from knowing how to suggest, rather than waiting for business to fall into his lap.
“Do you think we should arrange for someone to come in and look after your mother?” she asked Stevie.
“Oh I don’t know, Maura. She mightn’t want it. You know she’d say she’s the class that should be serving people rather than having people serve her.”
“You’ve changed all that, you’re in a different setup now.”
“Yes, I know that, you know it, my mother might not.”
“Let her benefit from it. I know a friend of Peggy’s who could come in.”
“Set it up, Maura. That is, if you haven’t already.”
She smiled at him. They liked each other. “No word yet on who did it?” Maura knew that Stevie had been talking to Sergeant O’Connor earlier on that day.
“No, they seemed to have gone off a flying saucer, whoever they were. Maybe it’s for the best, Sean says. It might put my mother into a trauma. He says it might make her worse than she is already if she had to identify them…pretty relaxed attitude to detecting crime if you ask me.”
“Very human attitude as well,” Maura said. “He may be kind but he’s not a fool, Sean O’Connor.”
“I know that, he gets inspired about lots of things. I know nobody gave him a hint.” Stevie looked hard at Maura, as if trying to get her to admit that she had ratted on his being with Orla Dillon.
“He knew chapter and verse, Stevie. I wouldn’t have told him but he knew already, and where to find you.”
“He knew how to frighten the wits out of me too,” Stevie said ruefully.
“Yes, well.” Maura pursed her lips.
“But by amazing chance Orla’s mother came up with the same argument at the same time. Beware the mountainy men. Orla’s so afraid of the troop of brothers-in-law coming for her with scythes and hatchets she won’t raise her eyes to greet me. So that little episode is over.” He looked for a moment like a small boy who has been told he can’t play football that afternoon. His lower lip stuck out mutinously.
“I’m sure you’ll find other distractions,” Maura said unsympathetically.
“I suppose so,” Stevie said. There was no reason to tell Maura McMahon that her sister’s daughter, her own little niece Anna Kelly, had proved to be a very great distraction indeed.
“You can’t stay here forever, Francis,” Sister Madeleine said.
He sat shivering by her fire. With damp sacking hung ineffectually around it, the tree house was no protection against the start of a wet winter in Lough Glass. “Where would I go, Sister?” he asked. His face was thin and white. He had a hacking cough.
She had asked young Emmet McMahon for a cough bottle from his father and to her irritation Martin McMahon had sent back a message saying that it was going to be a harsh winter and he would very much prefer if Sister Madeleine went to visit Dr. Kelly and had herself and her chest looked at and listened to. She had got lozenges, but still Francis coughed and barked and looked like a man who should really be in a hospital bed.
“Sleep in my bed, Francis,” she said.
“But you, Sister?”
“I’ll sleep by the fire.”
“I can’t, I’m too dirty and shabby and bad. Your bed is snow-white.” But he craved a night in the warmth and peace.
She knew that. “I’ll give you some hot water to wash.”
“No, you often do that. But there’s too much of me.”
“Suppose I put a kind of cloth on the bed, in it even, like that you could wrap yourself in.”
“And something for under my head, Sister.”
She found an old bedspread which she warmed by the fire, and put some tea towels on her immaculate pillow slips. He was asleep in minutes, breathing c
oarsely and with a gurgle, as would a man with a chest infection. She sat at the open door watching him for a long time. Francis Xavier Byrne, somebody’s son. A man not right in the head, who should be allowed some freedom like the wild animals. He should not be chained up and fenced in. He couldn’t do any harm here, and he was learning to trust again. Soon, when he was better, she would give him his bus fare and he would go far away.
Kathleen Sullivan was better now, they said. Back from the hospital with a woman going in and out to look after her. Surely a loving God wouldn’t want to work out any revenge on poor Francis, that man sleeping there in his fitful turning sleep, shivering and coughing as he tossed in her bed.
Sister Madeleine knew that she would have to work something out about the bag of possessions, as he called it. Normally he never left it out of his hand. Tonight it was laid casually in her simple wooden chair. He was learning to trust, he couldn’t be handed over now. She would make it clear that he would have to return whatever money he stole from Sullivan’s garage. She would be responsible for doing it herself.
“What did you eat at the Indian restaurant?” Maura asked Emmet.
“I can’t remember, Maura. I’m sorry.”
“Was it fish or meat…or what?”
“I don’t know. Meat, I think.”
“Lord, and that girl saving her money to take you to a special meal.” Maura shook her head in mock despair.
“We had Knickerbocker Glory in Cafolla’s,” he said, desperate to sound as if he had been appreciative.
“Good, at least we know what remains in the mind,” Maura laughed.
“It’s just we were talking rather a lot and I ate without thinking.”
“I know, I know.” She was sympathetic. There was something bothering Emmet McMahon, but she wasn’t going to find it out.
She thought it might be the absence of Anna Kelly, but Emmet went out as soon as meals were over so perhaps he was meeting her then. She hoped they weren’t going to get too serious, and debated whether she should discuss it with her sister, Lilian. But Lilian had a poor track record as regards coping with either of her daughters’ emotional adventures. Maura thought that, as so often in life, the best thing to say was nothing.
“Hello Emmet.”
Anna Kelly had never looked so lovely. She wore a green coat with a white angora scarf around her neck. She was flushed and excited-looking, her blond hair held up by a green clip in a ponytail. She looked like a film star. Yet here she was in Lough Glass. Anna Kelly, who only a few weeks ago had been happy to kiss him and let him stroke her. Now she said that this couldn’t go on anymore, but that she wanted very much to be friends. She didn’t know how very, very hard that was for him.
But it would gain him nothing if he were to sulk. “Hello, Anna, how are things?” he said cheerfully.
“Awful…it’s like living in a German prisoner-of-war camp,” Anna grumbled.
“Oh, why’s that?”
“Where am I going, what am I doing, where will I be, who am I meeting, what time will I be back?” Anna groaned. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it would make you want to throw yourself into the lake.” There was a silence. “Oh Emmet, I’m so sorry,” Anna said.
“Sorry for what?” He was cold.
“What I said…like your mother and everything.”
“My mother drowned in a boating accident in the lake, she didn’t throw herself in because people kept asking her questions,” he said.
Her face was dark red.
He longed to reach out and hold her close to him, tell her that of course he knew that was what people had said and that he understood her embarrassment and that it didn’t matter one little bit. But he had been told they were no longer close, they were just friends. So he kept his hands in his pockets instead of reaching out for her. And he looked away.
She laid her hand on his arm. “Emmet?” she said in a small voice.
“Yes?” She had been going to ask him a favor; he knew that tone of voice. But her eyes met his and something in Anna Kelly’s mind told her this was not the time to ask a favor.
“Nothing, nothing at all.”
“Well, okay, then. I’ll see you, I expect.” His heart ached to tell her that he would always be here, whatever she wanted. But it would be wrong. Anna hated people who were weak, she had told him that. She liked the strong things about him. So he had to be strong now.
He saw Kevin Wall and shouted to him.
Kevin was pleased to see him. “What about your one?” he said, jerking his head back to where Anna stood forlorn on the road.
“Oh Anna, she and I were just having a chat.”
“I thought you were soft on her.”
“Don’t be mad, Kevin. She’s only a friend,” said Emmet McMahon, and walked off with his schoolmate without a backward glance.
Kit was doing her practical work in a Dublin hotel where they took a serious interest in the trainees. One week she was on the reception desk, and the next in the bar. Then she could be waiting tables, or supervising chambermaids. It wasn’t easy but she knew from the outset that it wouldn’t be.
“You must be mad,” Clio said when she came to call one day.
“You say that about every single thing I do.”
“Why be different this time?” Clio was sitting up at a high stool at the bar. “Do I get free drinks for knowing the barwoman?” she asked hopefully.
“Not a chance,” Kit said.
“Okay, I’ll buy one, then. Can I have a gin and lime?”
“Gin! Clio, you’re not serious.”
“Why not! Are you an apostle of temperance masquerading as a barmaid?”
“No, it’s just that we don’t drink gin.”
“You don’t. I do.”
“As you wish. The customer is always right.” Kit turned and filled the optic measure. In the mirror she saw Clio’s face. Clio was biting her lip; she looked very unhappy. Kit carefully put the ice lumps in with her silver tongs and pushed the lime bottle and the jug of water toward her friend. “Help yourself…” she said with a smile.
“Will you have one too?” Clio asked.
“Thanks, Clio. I’ll have a Club Orange.”
They drank companionably for a few moments. “Aunt Maura is becoming a bit nosy,” Clio said eventually.
“Ah, she’s only making conversation, asking us what we’re doing,” Kit defended her stepmother.
“I think she knows about me and Michael.”
“Well of course she does, you never stop talking about him.”
“No, I mean about the other bit, about sleeping with him and everything.”
“How could she know that?”
“I don’t know.” Clio bit her lip again.
“Well, stop looking at me, I didn’t tell her.”
“No, I know that.” Clio did know that much.
“What makes you think she knows?”
“She says things like…oh, I don’t know, awful cautionary tales about lack of respect, and girls not needing to do more than they want to…to keep men.”
“Well, you’re not doing more than you want to,” Kit said briskly. “According to yourself you’re only doing what you love doing.”
“Yes, that’s true but it’s not something you’d say to Aunt Maura…and apparently she knew Michael’s father.”
“Well, isn’t that good? They love knowing people and who people are.”
“I get the feeling she didn’t like him.”
“Oh?”
“And when I was in Michael’s house Mr. O’Connor said he sort of remembered her.”
“But not enthusiastically?”
“No, kind of furtively, if you know what I mean.”
“Maybe they had a romance.”
“I doubt it. Michael’s mother and father have been married forever.”
“I’m sure you’re imagining it,” Kit said, trying to console her.
“I wish we were young again. Things were easier then.”
&nb
sp; “You’re not even nineteen, a lot of people think that’s still young.”
“No, you know what I mean. It’s easy for you, Kit. It always has been. You’ll marry Philip O’Brien and run the Central and boot awful old Mildred and Dan down into some kind of cottage and be the real queen bee of everything.”
“As long as I remember you, you’ve been saying that and I’ve been saying I won’t. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Because we all do the same as our parents in the end. Your mother was glamorous and could have gone anywhere and done anything and yet she married your nice, safe father and came to live in a one-horse town like Lough Glass for security; you’ll do the same.”
“And what about you? Do you love Michael, Clio?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. What’s love?”
“I wish I knew that, too.” Kit spoke absently. She wondered if there was any truth in what Clio said, that people did what their mothers did. If so, there was a stormy future ahead for Kit.
Kevin O’Connor brought some friends into the bar of the hotel where Kit was working. As she served them one of his companions put a familiar hand on her bottom.
Kit tensed up immediately and looked him straight in the eye. “Remove your hand,” she said in a staccato voice like shots from a gun.
The boy dropped his arm immediately.
Kevin O’Connor looked at her, horrified. “Kit, I’m sorry, I swear…I mean…I swear…Matthew, why don’t you fuck off out of here if you can’t treat a woman with respect.”
Matthew, the offender, looked at his friend Kevin in open amazement. This was not the response he had expected. “I was only being friendly,” he blustered.
“Leave the company,” Kevin O’Connor ordered.
“Jesus, O’Connor, you’re an ignorant bollocks,” he said, aggrieved.
“If there is one more word of that language nobody will be served,” Kit said. She was confident and secure. Not only did Kevin respect her but he made sure that his loud-mouthed and ignorant friends did so too.
“Sorry, Kit,” he said to her sheepishly as a bewildered Matthew left the hotel.