My dear Lena,
I didn’t think I would be sad to read about Louis, that you think it’s over and that he may go away. Once this was the news I wanted to hear. I wanted you to be punished, and for him to leave you alone like you left us. But I don’t feel that anymore. I would much much prefer to think that he was there and that you had a good life together.
Perhaps it’s not true that he’s thinking of going away. It’s very hard to know what men are thinking. Not that I’m any kind of authority but I do know that hours and hours are spent in Frankie’s flat, in cafes and after lectures, talking about men and what they are thinking and what they’re planning…and it seems to turn out in the end that they’re not thinking about anything or planning anything. I just tell you that in case it’s some comfort.
Lena sat in the station cafe as the world moved about its business on either side of her…tears fell down her face, she didn’t even wipe them away, she just read on.
Kit wrote of the dance, the endless difficulties put in their way by Dan and Mildred O’Brien, the fear that the guests would all spend so long in Paddles’ before they arrived that there would be no bar business for the Central and that everyone would be drunk and disorderly.
And Kit wrote about Stevie Sullivan, about his childhood, what it had been like to have no shoes because his father had drunk the money that had been set aside to buy them. Stevie Sullivan wore the best of leather shoes now and always would. Stevie didn’t drink alcohol, he didn’t gamble, he worked hard, and of course as everyone knew had been a bit foolish in the past.
But one of the terrible things about a small Irish town was the way your past hung around forever. No one was allowed to make a fresh start. People still said he was old Billy Sullivan’s boy, a drunkard’s son. They said he was a wild boy who had been with all the girls in the parish. Wasn’t it strange that they couldn’t see how he had changed?
And as Lena read she heard the echo loud and clear. Kit thought of Stevie Sullivan in exactly the same protective and excusing way as she had thought of Louis Gray. She was blind to any criticism of him. She was her mother’s daughter and she was about to follow exactly the same path.
Lena sat for a long time in the cafe and then with heavy limbs got up and took a train to the south coast of England.
“Ivy?”
“Where are you, Lena?”
“In a nice place in Brighton. Quiet, warm.”
“What’s its telephone number?”
“Now listen…”
“Just tell me. I won’t ring you, just tell me for me, not for you.”
She read it from the wall beside the phone.
“I had a Mr. James Williams around here looking for you.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“What do you think? But he said most specially that if you were in touch to say he was very lonely for Christmas and he would love if you could…”
“Right, Ivy…you’re very good.”
“Have you anyone to talk to?”
“I don’t need anyone. I’m so tired.”
“All right. When will you ring me again?” She fixed a day, three days ahead. “And this James Williams…?”
“Will have to find someone else to play Santa Claus for him.”
“He looked very nice,” Ivy said.
“Good night, Ivy.”
“Good night, pet. I wish you were upstairs.”
“Louis, a minute.”
Louis looked up from all his plans of the O’Connor visit. They were being a very troublesome group, constantly changing their plans. Firstly there were going to be five of them, then four and now two, and then five for Christmas and only three for New Year. It had played hell with the booking schedules, as if he weren’t nervous enough meeting Mr. O’Connor.
He hadn’t yet been filled in about the forthcoming event. He might not be overjoyed to meet his future son-in-law for the second time and hear such news. But Mary Paula had assured him that she lived her own life. She was very much her own person, and had been for years. She was twenty-eight years of age, a grown-up.
Louis wished that things were different, that he was nearer to her age than to her father’s, that he had been able to prove himself at the new hotel before he proved himself able to father a child. Still, he would believe Mary Paula that it would sort itself out.
“Sorry, James,” he said. “I seem to be pulled in a hundred ways today.”
James Williams looked stern and unsmiling. “Lena’s not at work today.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“And she’s not at home, I went round to ask the landlady.”
“James, I don’t understand…”
“Where is she, Louis?”
“I have no idea. I spoke to her last night, I told her everything, I went round this morning, took my things, left my key as we arranged.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t think it’s any of your business, actually.”
“I think it is if my manager decides to take another job and move to another country, and then says oops I forgot to tell her when I ask how his wife is taking it.”
“She’s not my wife, I told you yesterday.”
“She bloody is your wife if you lived with her for years and told everyone she was.”
“You don’t know the story, Lena wasn’t free to marry.”
“Wasn’t she lucky the way things turned out.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s brought all this on.”
“I’ll tell you what’s brought it on, the behavior of a man who has acted like a selfish bastard. You’ve thought of nobody but yourself, Louis, all the time…self, self, self.”
“I’m not going to stay here and listen to this.”
“No, you’re bloody right you’re not. You can take your cards and leave today.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that I couldn’t look at your face while you worked out your notice.”
“You can’t be serious, James.”
“Never more so.”
“You’d let your personal feelings and the fact that you have always been attracted to Lena stand in the way of normal business behavior.”
“You’ve had your reference, Louis, you’ve had the buildup that got you the new job, and made you an acceptable son-in-law for this Irish tycoon. Now get out of here.”
Louis’s handsome face was very hard and cold. “It won’t do you any good, all this posturing. Lena won’t think any better of you. She thinks you’re a cold, dull fish already, now she’ll think you’re just a petty one.”
“By this afternoon, Louis.” James Williams turned and left.
It took a lot of time and ingenuity but Louis Gray had many contacts and friends in the hotel business. He found a suite in another hotel, somewhere he could entertain the O’Connors in style. He would turn the whole business to his advantage, say that he had left the Dryden to concentrate on them properly.
Now of course he would have to organize a whole Christmas and New Year program for them. He must think what to do. For a wild moment he thought of asking Lena, she was always great about ideas and thinking up the right thing for the right occasion.
Wasn’t it absurd that she had come to his mind just like that? But it was only natural, they had been together for so long it was obvious that they should still automatically think of consulting each other. He wondered whether James Williams was right about her having disappeared from work and from the flat in Earl’s Court.
It was improbable; Lena had seemed so calm. As if she had known this was all inevitable. And the one sure and certain thing was that in any time of crisis you’d find Lena at her desk in that bloody agency. She was more married to Millar’s than she ever would be to a man.
All the shops in Brighton were full of Christmas gifts. Lena looked in the windows at things she would like to have bought for her daughter. She had a handbag full of money. She could have bought the necklace and earrings
set in a little musical box. She could have got her that smart coat which would have done so much for her coloring. The manicure set in the genuine leather case. The overnight case with the smart two-tone trim—it would be ideal for going up and down between Dublin and Lough Glass.
But why was she torturing herself? She would not send anything to her daughter.
This was a Christmas when she would give no presents and get none. When she would have to stay far from a church lest the sound of carols make her weep. She must not listen to the radio in case the programs of goodwill and celebration pointed out too clearly what she had lost.
The waves were high and crashing onto the big beach.
Was this the beach she had walked with Louis when she was expecting his child? It seemed like a different age, and two different people. When she was here that time she had been waiting for the letter of abuse, and the torrent of rage and blame from Martin. She didn’t know that they were dragging the lake in Lough Glass looking for her.
If she had the time all over again…?
But it was an empty speculation. She wouldn’t have the time all over again. It was useless to work out what she would have done. She must think what to do now. She walked, the spray and salt air in her face, her hair wet and curling in the damp. She didn’t see anyone glance at her and wonder why a handsome woman should walk so ceaselessly, hands deep in pockets, unaware of the world around her, the weather, the season of the year.
Then she found a shelter and sat down to write to Kit. She wrote on pages of a notebook. Not her usual style of letter. And she didn’t read it over as she normally would have done. Back at the guest house she got an envelope and stamp and went out to find a pillar box. She felt a little better, as if she had spoken to a good friend.
KIT’s heart gave a jump when she saw the envelope with her mother’s writing on it laid on the hall table upstairs. Surely her father had recognized it. That was the way Mother had always written. But apparently not.
It was the day before Christmas Eve. Kit and Philip had just come back from Dublin. Maura had decorated the house. It wasn’t the same as Mother used to do, Mother would have had all leaves and ivy and holly. Maura had bought paper decorations and tinsel.
The house looked very festive. There were lots of Christmas cards on the mantelpiece and around the mirror. Maura sent and received many more than Helen McMahon had ever known.
Kit felt a rush of anxiety. Why had her mother been so rash as to write here? She was anxious to be alone to read the letter, but they were welcoming her home. Emmet had carried up her luggage including the dress box with the extravagant new dress bought on the compensation money. She had spent a fortune on it, and didn’t want anyone to see it before the dance in case there might be a question of its being somewhat revealing.
She had told Clio that it was a bargain, marked down in a pre-Christmas sale.
“There are no pre-Christmas sales,” Clio had said sagely. “You are turning into a mysterious and very sinister liar.”
Maura was offering soup to take the chill off her, her father was eager to tell her all the news and how the Golf Club committee had thrown themselves behind the great New Year’s Eve Dance. But Kit couldn’t wait to be away from them. Eventually she decided that the bathroom was her only hope of peace and quiet. Sitting on the side of the bath she read
My dear Kit,
This is to wish you a very happy Christmas this year and every Christmas.
I was so pleased with the letter you wrote to me, I read in a railway station. All around there were people living their own lives, making journeys to see people or escape from people and I just sat there and read your letter over and over.
It’s good to know that Stevie Sullivan was able to rise above his childhood and triumph over all the bad things that happened to him in his youth. It must have made him very strong. Of course the same goes for you. You had a lot happen to you in your youth that shouldn’t have happened and you coped with it. You coped with the death of a mother, and the rumors about that death. You thought your mother had committed suicide and was in hell. You met a ghost. You survived that.
In many ways I think you are well suited for each other. Of course, like every mother I worry for you. But perhaps I don’t have the right to have those feelings. Maybe they were forfeited a long time ago.
It was kind of you to say that perhaps Louis was not thinking of going. But in fact he has gone. He is going to get married to someone else. Somebody much younger and they will have a child. So that part of my life is over now.
I just wanted to reassure you that I will make no more trouble for all the people I have hurt so much already. You may worry that since Louis has left me I might become like a ship without a rudder. So I wanted you to set your heart at ease. I will disturb nothing that has been done.
I tell you this because I know it will cross your mind and also because I have an ache, a yearning to go back to Lough Glass and to see the dance that you have all been preparing. I had this feeling I could watch from the outside. So in a way I am writing this to tell myself that I must not go. May it be a great success for you all.
Peace, Kit. Peace and goodwill. Isn’t that what we are all looking for when all is said and done?
Your loving mother,
Lena.
Kit sat in the bathroom looking at the letter in disbelief. This wasn’t the kind of letter Lena wrote. The sentences were all wrong. Short jerky phrases, ramblings about sitting in railway stations. Lena had addressed this letter to the pharmacy, she had signed it your loving mother.
Louis had left her, he was getting married to another woman. Lena was not able to cope.
Kit behaved normally. She was sure that nobody knew there was a thing wrong. She wrapped gifts, she delivered Christmas cards by hand, she spent hours in the Central Hotel, she kept her voice and smile polite for Philip’s parents, she made lists and timetables. She listened to Clio’s ramblings and complaints about Anna, about her parents, about Aunt Maura, about Michael not ringing to say good-bye before he left for London.
Her only hope was to work as hard as she could. When it was all over she would think what she could do to help Lena. But now there was nothing she could say or do or write that would help. She felt very much alone.
On Christmas Eve she lay awake for a long time and wondered about her mother lying in bed alone in that flat in London. She wished she could telephone her. But it would be easier to contact the planet Mars than to make a phone call from Lough Glass at Christmastime to someone in London.
And suppose Lena was so disturbed that she let everything be revealed. Suppose the phone call unhinged her and she told Maura and Father that she was alive…suppose Emmet were to hear.
Kit lay in her bed and wished she could tell someone. The only person she could tell was Stevie Sullivan.
But it wasn’t her secret to tell.
The feeling of anxiety remained with her on Christmas Day and for no reason Kit found herself crying just at the wrong time. They were all getting ready to go up to Kellys’ for a sherry and present giving.
Everyone wanted to go, Maura to see her sister, Father to see his friend Peter, Emmet to see the beloved Anna…only Kit didn’t want to go.
But go she must. “I’ll follow you up there,” she called as she heard them getting ready to leave. She needed just a little time to compose herself, get herself ready for the Kellys.
She splashed cold water on her face and left the house. Her heart was like lead on this Christmas morning.
“Hey, wait for me.” Stevie Sullivan had seen Kit leaving her house and he ran after her. She turned around to look at him. His smile was broad, his delight to see her was written all over his face. “You didn’t call to say happy Christmas,” he accused her.
“I thought I’d see you at Mass.”
“Oh, I was at the back of the church, humble you know, not putting myself forward.”
“Talking, doing deals I imagine,” she mocked him.<
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He looked at her closely. “You’ve been crying,” he said.
“Does it show? I couldn’t bear the third degree from Clio.”
“Only to me, I know every little bit of your face. Why were you crying, Kit?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No thank you, Stevie. No.”
“Will you ever tell me?”
“I might someday.”
“You’ll have forgotten.”
“No, I’ll never forget why I’m crying today.” She sounded very serious.
“Michael and Kevin are having the time of Reilly over in London,” Clio said. “He rang last night.” Clio was pleased at this.
“What’s she like, the sister?” Kit asked.
“I don’t know, I met her only once.”
“And the fellow she’s marrying?”
“Oh, he’s as old as the hills apparently. Michael says he could be her father.”
“But nice?”
“Apparently.”
“Is he a sugar daddy sort?”
“No, the total reverse, he hasn’t a penny according to Michael.”
“But he’s going to be admitted to the ranks?”
“Yes, apparently he’s a dynamo in the hotel industry over in London.”
“Why isn’t he rich then?” Kit wondered.
“Search me,” Clio said. “But she’s very stuck on him. Michael thinks that she might be pregnant.”
“No!” Kit’s eyes were round with excitement.
“Well, the marriage is very speedy apparently, speedier than one would have thought.”
“What’s his name?” Kit didn’t care very much, but anything was better than answering Clio’s questions.
“Louis. There, isn’t that romantic? Louis Gray.”
On the day after Christmas, Kit asked Stevie to drive her into the big town.