Your loving mother,
Lena.
Kit was very worried. Lena had used the word “mother” again in a letter. Did she really have a breakdown? What was her warning about Stevie? And most of all why was she warning her to remember that Lena loved her whatever happened? What could happen that hadn’t happened already?
“Do you know what I’d love you to do?”
“No, I dread to think,” Kit said.
Clio’s eyes were too bright. “Could you pinch Maura’s cape for me to wear, she’ll not notice it’s gone. I’d pay your fare down to take it back after the wedding.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Kit asked.
“That’s my line to you. You’re the one who’s mad, not me. You’re the one whose name is up with Stevie Sullivan all over the place. My mother was asking me what you were up to.”
“I don’t give a damn what your mother thinks, asks, or says.”
“You’ve been saying that as long as I remember,” Clio said.
“I must have had some reason. You always quote her as if she knows everything and the rest of us know nothing.”
“Why are we fighting?” Clio asked.
“Because you were very rude and hurtful to me, as you almost always are.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not, you just want Maura’s cape.”
“For a loan. Look at the way we lend each other everything, shoes, bags, lipsticks…”
“But those are ours, not someone else’s.”
“She won’t know.”
Kit paused. Imagine the irony that she was being asked to lend someone Lena’s cape for Louis’s wedding. Maybe Louis had given that cape to Mother. Years and years ago. Father didn’t remember buying it. You’d remember buying a fur coat, for heaven’s sake.
Should she let Clio wear it? Startle Louis at his wedding with the memory of the gift he had given to Lena. But men were so hopeless. They remembered nothing. Suppose he remembered it, he’d just think Clio had another one like it. This was such a dangerous area anyway. Kit had hardly been able to think about it. Each day she dreaded the discovery that the handsome Louis Gray had lived in London with a mysterious Irishwoman, and the further—unthinkable—discovery that the Irishwoman was in fact Helen McMahon. She had been trying to push this fear to the back of her mind. Clio watched her during the pause. It was as if Kit was deliberating. Deciding whether to give it or not.
“No,” Kit said eventually. “Sorry for all the silly fighting and everything, but it’s just not possible.”
“I wish the bloody wedding was over,” Clio said. “Everyone’s very tense about it. Except the bridegroom apparently. He’s invited four people, and he’s as happy as Larry. He’s a real smasher, by the way, for an old man.”
“When did you meet him?”
“Oh, he’s here. They were having drinks at Michael’s father’s the other night. He holds your hand in a way that you think if things were different he might fancy you. Oh, and she’s definitely preggers. You’d know by the way she stands.”
“Would we go to the North, you and I, next weekend?” Stevie asked her.
“No,” Kit said. “I have to be in Dublin.”
“What for? I thought you’d like a nice drive. I’ve got a business meeting that will take about twenty-five minutes and then we could go and see a banned movie…”
“To drive me mad with lust…?”
“No, just for fun, and we might drive up the Antrim coast road. It’s meant to be gorgeous, like Kerry.”
“But we’d never do all that in a day.”
“We could stay the night. In separate rooms. Hand on heart, I swear.”
“No, I can’t, Stevie, not this Saturday. I want to stay in Dublin really.”
“Why?”
“Weren’t you the one who said we should be free as the air, not asking each other questions?”
“Yes, you’re right. I was. Sorry.”
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “I want to go to the church and watch Michael O’Connor’s sister getting married to this man, Louis Gray.”
Stevie looked at her. “I was about to say What on earth for…but I remembered that we were to be free as the air, so I won’t ask you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“But I am going to volunteer that if you’re not going to come with me to the North, I’ll be back that evening and maybe we’ll go out.”
“I hope so.” Her face was serious.
“So will we?”
“Could you call round to the flat, if I’m there I’m there.”
“That’s not much to drag a man a hundred and eighty miles back over long, dark roads from the North on a cold January night,” he said.
“It’s just that…well, it’s just that I’m worried about something. I’m afraid something might go wrong.”
“Would you like me to stay with you, be here just in case?”
She was tempted for a moment. But eventually she decided against it. This trip to the North might be the beginning of big business. And anyway she was probably mad. Lena couldn’t really be thinking of coming to Louis’s wedding.
Louis Gray felt his years. He had spent too many evenings with the young members of the O’Connor clan trying to prove himself a satisfactory brother-in-law. Their capacity for pints was endless. His turn to buy came up with startling speed. Mary Paula had severe morning sickness and was in no mood to console him. He had to be particularly consolatory to her.
Which was difficult since he was staying in one of the O’Connor hotels and she was in her father and mother’s house. He spent a lot of his time familiarizing himself with the regimen of the business he was about to join.
The staff were extremely respectful but Louis knew that this was because he was the prospective son-in-law of the chairman, and the heir apparent. These were not waiters, porters, desk clerks, who would lavish such attention on the general public.
He found Fingers O’Connor, his future father-in-law, a difficult man, his wife a tiresome fusspot. There were many aspects of these crowded days which he found confusing. Like Mary Paula’s brothers, two loutish lads; they seemed to be deeply involved in the affairs of Lough Glass, of all places. They had hurried home from London in order to attend some function there in the CHL.
On Louis’s many previous secret visits to Lough Glass there had been no such hotel, only a run-down flyblown place that you would be afraid to go into. But the O’Connor boys were saying that its Georgian frontage and old-style charm might be the very thing that visitors to Ireland needed and looked for, rather than modern purpose-built blocks. It sounded utterly right to Louis, who couldn’t of course agree with this notion since his future was tied up in a very plain functional modern hotel block, the management of which was going to be his wedding present from Fingers O’Connor.
Louis had looked up old acquaintances in Dublin. He was always able to parry questions about himself, usually he used a rueful laugh. “Ah, you don’t want to be hearing all the mistakes I made, tell me about you now. Things going well?”
He had found a best man with no trouble. A man he had known in the retail business years ago. Presentable and unimaginative. Harry Nolan—a man who would think it reasonable that Louis Gray return to Ireland because he had managed to seduce the twenty-eight-year-old daughter of a wealthy hotelier and get a key management contract as a reward for making an honest woman of her.
Harry had many social skills, and like Louis was a better listener than talker. He was married but explained to Louis that his wife would not be a social addition to the scene so let the ceremony pass without involving her.
Ireland had changed, Harry assured his friend Louis. Business was business, people took chances where they could. Look at them both. They had been selling ladies’ underwear once, now Louis was made, a hotelier of the future, Harry himself was the manager of a very important Grafton Street store and a man who moved in society.
Harry had been a
perfect choice. The night before the wedding Louis and Harry had two drinks. Neither of them felt they could be confident of looking well after a batter, so the night was a moderate one.
Louis looked out over the Dublin roofs from his hotel room. He wished he could stop thinking about Lena, and where she was tonight. She had assured him she understood. Why was it so disturbing that she hadn’t been seen at work or at home since?
He made one more call to Ivy. He disguised his voice and changed his name but he always felt she saw through him.
“I was wondering where Mrs. Gray is? I’ve made many attempts to contact her at work,” he said.
“She’s gone away,” Ivy’s sepulchral voice replied. “Nobody knows where or why. So I’m afraid I cannot help you.”
It was cold but fine. There was a thin winter sunlight when Harry Nolan and Louis Gray arrived at University Church in St. Stephen’s Green. The Saturday traffic passed by, people craning out of buses to see who was assembling at the smart church where wealthier people married.
“An hour from now the job will be done and we’ll be in the Russell getting stuck into the gins and tonics,” said Harry.
Louis peered into the distance. He was jittery today. Everything seemed to have a resonance of some kind. It turned out that Mary Paula’s brother Michael had every intention of marrying that pretty Clio, the doctor’s daughter from Lough Glass. Someone that Lena probably knew well. He reminded himself that they all thought Helen McMahon was dead. Nobody would ever believe him if it were brought up that he had lived with her for so many years.
Then, as he stood there in the sunlight, he saw a woman across the road, a woman in dark glasses who reminded him so much of Lena that it made him feel weak.
“I don’t suppose you brought any kind of sustenance,” he asked Harry.
“Yes, hip flask of brandy. Let’s get inside the vestry before you attack it,” Harry said.
Fingers O’Connor helped his daughter out of the large limousine. The others had gone into the church ahead. “You look lovely, Mary Paula,” he said. “I hope he’ll be good to you.”
“He’s what I want, Daddy,” she said.
“Well then.” He sounded not entirely convinced.
“I don’t look fat, do I?”
“No, of course you don’t. Look at the people all admiring you.” A small crowd of passersby had stopped to smile at the bride. Some of them even went into the back of the church to watch the ceremony from a discreet distance.
Kit had her head in her hands as if she were praying. She wore a belted raincoat and a checked head scarf. She was sure that none of the wedding party would see her. They were so far behind the action…those who had come to look on. But she wasn’t praying, she was peering through her fingers. There were elderly people with their rosary beads talking silently but earnestly to God and his mother. There were a couple of students who were obviously killing time before lunch in Grafton Street. There were a couple of down-and-outs, a man in a sacking coat and a woman with five carrier bags.
She couldn’t see Lena.
And then she saw a figure beside a confession box. A woman in a long, dark woolen skirt, and a very smart military-style jacket. She had been wearing a head scarf and dark glasses but she removed these and Kit saw her putting on a smart hat, a hat with a feather, a hat that had cost more than any headgear at this stylish but small wedding. The woman straightened herself up and prepared to join the body of the guests. She was going to sit on the groom’s side.
Lena had done what Kit had hoped and prayed she would not do. She had come to Dublin and was going to break up Louis Gray’s marriage day. She was going to lose anything she had left. Her dignity, her anonymity, and possibly her freedom. She might well be about to attack the groom or the bride. Lena’s eyes were wild, Kit saw. She could not be held responsible for what she did. She might spend the night and a great deal of her life in prison.
The bride had gone up the church with her father and had been handed over to Louis, who stood there beaming.
Kit had seen him only once, but she remembered his smile. She even remembered how Clio had said that Louis Gray made you feel special. He made you feel that if things were different he might fancy you. She saw him there in front of everyone, like a handsome actor about to say his lines, and she realized that was all he had ever been and would ever be. Her wonderful mother could not, must not, lose anything over anyone as worthless as this.
Kit almost threw herself from one side of the church to the other. Nobody saw them, they were far too far behind the main action for anyone except the regular Rosary sayers or scattered minds to notice them. She caught Lena’s arm before Lena had time to get more than a few steps up the aisle.
“What!” Lena wheeled on her.
“Take me with you,” Kit hissed.
“Get out of here,” Lena said.
“Whatever you do, Mother, I’m going with you,” Kit whispered. “If you drag yourself down by this you’ll drag me too.”
“Kit, leave me, leave me. This has nothing to do with you.” They struggled in the shadowy part of the church, unnoticed by the congregation near the altar rails who had their backs to them.
“I mean it,” Kit said. “If you have a knife or a gun I’m going with you, they can arrest me too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I haven’t anything like that.”
“Well, whatever trouble you’re going to make I’ll stand there too.” By this stage the sacristan and two of the altar boys had noticed some fracas and strained to look, but none of the guests turned. “Believe me, I mean it,” Kit said.
“What are you doing to your life?” Lena said, her eyes wild with panic.
“I’m doing nothing to it, you’re the one destroying it,” Kit said. It was a moment that went on forever. Kit felt the arm loosen, the resolve go. “Come out with me, come now.” Lena stood there. “Mother, come with me.”
“Don’t call me that,” Lena said.
Kit felt she was breathing normally. Things were back as they were. If Lena was prepared to retreat into the cover story again the crisis might be over.
Kit propelled her mother out into the open where it was crisp and cold. A wind blew along the street, raising little bits of litter from the gutters. Soon the bride and groom would come out and people would throw confetti. They must be long gone by then.
Lena said nothing. Not a word.
“Are you tired, Lena?” Kit asked her.
“So tired I could lie down here on the road and sleep.”
“Come on, we’ll go to the corner, there are taxis over there on a rank.”
Lena didn’t ask where the taxi would take them. As they turned the corner a woman cried, “Kit.” They both turned to see a smart woman in a swagger coat. It was Rita. Rita Moore who had worked with them in Lough Glass. Kit and Rita hugged each other. “This is a friend of mine, Lena Gray, from England.”
“How do you do,” Rita said.
“Hello, Rita.”
Rita’s head snapped up to look at her again as if she recognized the greeting.
“Lena’s been a great friend of mine and given me lots of good advice. She runs an employment agency,” Kit said desperately.
Rita was calm. “Of course, and what a good business to be in these days. Young people need all the advice they can get. You must get a lot of satisfaction in your work.”
Lena said nothing.
“We’ve got to rush now,” Kit said.
“Great to see you, Kit.” Her eyes stayed long on Lena. “And you too, Mrs.…Mrs. Gray,” she said.
“She knew,” Lena said when they were around the corner.
“Of course she didn’t,” said Kit. “But let’s get you away really quickly in case we meet anyone else. It could be Mona Fitz’s day for a shopping excursion.”
The first taximan looked at them expectantly. “Where to, ladies?” he asked.
Lena looked blank. “Will we go first and collect your case?”
&nbs
p; “Case?”
“Suitcase, luggage, wherever you left it.” Kit tried to sound casual.
“I have no luggage,” Lena said.
Kit shivered. She might never know what her mother had intended to do at the wedding of Mary Paula O’Connor and Louis Gray. Lena had come to Dublin with no possessions, no plans of where she would stay at night. It was as if she had not expected to be a free agent by the time night fell.
“Will you come home and stay in my flat, rest now and stay the night?” Kit said. “I’ve always wanted to have you to stay. And there’s a nightie for you and a hot-water bottle…”
“And will we fit in the bed?”
“I’ll sleep on cushions on the floor.” There was a pause. “I’d love you to come, Lena.” Another pause. “I don’t ask for much,” Kit said.
“It’s very true, you don’t,” Lena said.
Kit gave the taximan her address.
They climbed the stairs slowly. Lena said nothing when Kit opened the door. “Well, say you like it. Say it’s nice…it’s got character…” Kit was desperate. “Say it’s got possibilities even.”
Lena smiled at her. “I’ve dreamed so often what this place would be like. I thought the window was on the other side,” she said.
“And what did you dream you might be offered for lunch when you came here?” Kit asked.
Lena saw on the little table beside the gas ring that there were four tomatoes and a loaf of bread.
“In my dreams I always had tomato sandwiches and tea,” she said.
After that it was all right. The talked to each other as friends.
And then finally, worn out, Lena went to sleep in the little single bed. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon. But Kit felt her mother might not have slept for many a night before now. Kit sat in a chair and looked out the window. She felt very empty. She wished that Stevie would come. The darkness came but she didn’t put on a light.
About eight o’clock she saw Stevie’s car. He paused to look up at her window. He had never been in this room. What a different way for him to see it from the way she had planned. With her mother lying in her bed.