Their plan was to establish a branch of Millar’s in Manchester. They had found the perfect woman to run it for them. Peggy Forbes was busy training with them in London. All that was needed was the right premises, the suitable staff, and a big launch. There were so many applications from the North of England that it made sense to have a presence there. Peggy was a Lancashire woman herself. If all went well, and they were sure it would, they would make her a partner soon.
“I can’t bear that you’ve been on a plane before me,” Stevie said as they checked in their bags in Dublin Airport.
“Oh, you’ve done a lot of things I’ve never done. Far too many in fact.”
He hugged her there and then. “None of them were important,” he said.
“I know that,” Kit said loftily.
It wasn’t a barrier between them, his wicked past and her virginity. It would sort itself out. Kit knew that Stevie had hopes it would sort itself out on this visit to London.
“Will you tell her I know?” he asked.
“Yes, I will. Though I think she probably guesses. We can read what isn’t there when we write to each other. It’s uncanny.”
“I won’t try to please her, to impress her and pretend I’m good enough for you.” He spoke quite seriously.
“No, she’d see through you straight away,” Kit said as they walked through the duty-free shop.
“I wonder what I’ll get her.” He stopped and looked at the shelves of drink and cigarettes. He paused in front of the champagne. “It doesn’t matter whether she likes it or not. It’s festive. It’s celebration, that’s what it is,” he said.
From everything Lena had told her, this is exactly what Louis Gray would have said and done.
Lena was there to meet them. Stevie marveled at how well she looked. Her face had been gaunt two months ago, but now she was glowing with health and enthusiasm.
“I have a friend who insisted on driving me to meet you,” she said. “We’ve got to meet him outside.”
“I know you’ll be tied up with cars but if you’ve any time at all I’d be very happy to show you my neck of the woods…” James said. “It’s not that far out of town, and I’d love you all to come and stay in darkest Surrey.”
Kit saw Lena frown. “Maybe on another visit, James,” she said. “They don’t have all that much time.”
He was relaxed. “Certainly, but the offer’s there. I’d love to show you. There are rolling green fields and parkland in England as well as Ireland.”
“Probably much nicer here,” Stevie said. “Not covered in broken farm machinery and falling-down cottages.”
They had a meal in Earl’s Court and then James said good-bye. He was driving home tonight.
“All that way?” Stevie asked.
“It’s about as far from here to there as Lough Glass to Dublin,” Lena said.
“Oh well, that’s not too bad. I often drive that far four times a week, and back.” His eyes rested fondly on Kit.
“Isn’t it known that you’re a canonized saint?” Kit said.
Stevie took their luggage and said he’d leave them to talk. “I’ll put them in the right rooms, then I’ll come back for you,” he said.
They held hands, Kit and Lena, after he went. Kit looked with delight into her mother’s eyes. Everything would be all right.
“Lena, he knows,” she said. “I didn’t tell him, he just knew.”
“He’s a bright boy, and he loves you very much. Of course he knows, we should have realized.”
“It doesn’t matter, nothing will change.”
“I know.”
“I mean it. Who knows? Ivy does, Stevie does, in a sort of a way Sister Madeleine knows. Anyone else?” Kit looked at her mother.
“No, James doesn’t know.”
“And none of these people are going to do anything that will upset us?”
“No, of course not. I’m glad Stevie knows. Glad for you, because it’s a strain having to keep a secret.” Her face was thoughtful.
Kit realized that for years Lena had kept secrets. The letters first, and then the meeting. It must have been hard not to share that with someone you loved.
When he came back to collect them she stood up to kiss him. “It’s great to have you here in London, Stevie. Now take us both to our homes, will you?”
The weekend was magical. They went to Trafalgar Square and were photographed with the pigeons. “Wouldn’t Sister Madeleine go wild here?” Kit said. “She’d have to hire a transporter to get them all back with her, she’d be afraid they didn’t like traffic or the petrol fumes.”
They went to the National Gallery and wandered hand in hand around the pictures. “I’m going to have to learn about an artist a month as well as read a book a month,” Stevie said. “I don’t want you to be married to an ignoramus.” It was the first time he had said “married.” She looked at him sharply. “Someday,” he said with his heartbreaking grin.
Stevie went and looked at cars a lot. He took Ernest with him one day and James another. Both of them said he was a knowledgeable fellow. There was nothing about the engine or chassis of a car he didn’t understand.
Lena took Kit into her office. It was much larger and more splendid than Kit would have thought. And Lena was obviously the kingpin.
“A friend of mine from Ireland” was the introduction.
People seemed interested. Lena Gray brought so little of her private life into the office with her. Her handsome husband had not been seen or heard of for a long time. But nobody had asked straight out.
“And this is my own little broom cupboard,” Lena laughed as she closed the door behind them.
Kit looked around her in amazement. The big carved desk, the pictures and certificates on the wall, the framed tributes and newspaper cuttings, the fresh flowers in a blue and gold vase.
Kit seemed at a loss for words.
“What are you thinking?” Lena asked gently.
“Well, oddly enough I was thinking that it’s a great pity that people at home didn’t know and will never know how well you did.” There was a catch in her voice.
Lena spoke. “Sometimes I think that it’s a great pity that nobody here will ever know how well I did in a different way…they’ll never know that you are my daughter.”
They were speaking seriously now. It was a different mood.
“Did you keep Louis very much apart from your work too?”
“Yes. Some kind of protection, I suppose. I had to have an area I could control. Not that it always worked. One of the best girls we ever had working here was one of Louis’s lengthy list of lady friends, it turned out. Dawn, Dawn Jones. I still miss her.”
“What happened to her?”
“I sacked her…I couldn’t sit and look at part of Louis’s past every day,” Lena said.
“Half the country is part of Stevie’s past,” Kit said ruefully. “I’m having to put up with that.”
“Ah, but that’s different,” Lena said. “Past past is one thing, but when it’s meant to be the present and these kinds of people turn up then that’s not a good thing.”
“No, that’s true. I wouldn’t like that,” Kit said. She was biting her lip, Lena noticed.
“My mistake was that I looked the other way,” Lena told her. “I think being utterly unquestioning and forgetful about the past as I was, that’s right, but I should have let him know that I knew about the present…I think that was my mistake. I let him get away with everything just to keep him, or to keep some aspect of him.”
Kit’s mind was far away. It was with Clio saying that everyone knew Stevie was still running after girls. That if Kit wouldn’t go to bed with him then he wasn’t going to be short of people who would. It was a worrying thought.
The airport terminal was just down the road from them in the Cromwell Road. Lena came to see them off. “James would have driven us but you know…”
“You don’t want to be too beholden to him,” Kit suggested.
“Exactly. What a wonderful word.”
“I have to keep a dictionary beside me to keep up with her,” Stevie said.
“No you don’t, Stevie. You don’t fool me.”
“I’m not trying to sell you a car either, but why don’t you have one? Kit said you had.”
“She’s right. I gave it to Louis. Actually I bought it for him so I let him take it, that’s a more honest way of describing it.” She spoke of Louis so casually to Stevie, Kit was warmed by the sense of intimacy.
“You should have something, a little runaround that you could park easily. I’ll think up what you should have and tell you when you come back.”
“Not easy to come back to Lough Glass.”
“I meant to Dublin.”
“I don’t know, it’s funny. I got a really stupid feeling when I was flying away over the city after you drove me to the Dublin Airport. I felt that this was the last time I’d ever be there.”
“That’s a bit morbid,” Stevie said.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I knew I’d see you both again and go on seeing you…no, it wasn’t to do with death or plane crashes or anything…it was just I felt that was a period of my life that was over now. Like next time you come you could come to Manchester and see the setup we have there…”
“But Ireland’s your home.” Kit’s lip began to tremble.
“No, your home is your people, it’s not a place. Believe me that’s true. I’ll always have you, won’t I?”
“Are you not coming back to Dublin because Louis lives there?”
“He doesn’t live there, not in any sense for me, I swear to you it’s as if he was on the planet Mars. No it’s just I thought you’d be coming here more and more…”
“And you’ll come to our wedding? In a few years time,” Stevie said.
“Well, well, well. I didn’t know about this,” Lena said.
“Neither did I,” Kit said.
“Is it possibly an all-time first for the West London Air Terminal, a proposal in the lounge?”
She was taking it lightly, so Kit decided to do the same. “Listen, Lena, don’t mind him, by the time we get married, Stevie and I, you’ll be so old you’ll probably need a wheelchair. That’s the kind of time scale we’re working on.”
Their flight was called.
Stevie kissed her on both cheeks.
“I’ll never be able to thank you for all the good times you gave us, and introducing me to all your nice friends.” Kit hugged her with tears in her eyes.
The crowd was filing out the exit and down to the buses. It was time to go.
Then suddenly Stevie turned and went back to hug her too. “I’ll look after her, please believe me I’ll be good to her. If I thought I wouldn’t I’d go away now.” She was so surprised it nearly took her breath away.
When they were on the bus she asked him: “Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to,” he said. Then after a pause: “I got a funny feeling that I was never going to see her again.”
“Well, thank you very much,” Kit said in a fury. “Jesus, that’s a great thing to say. Which of you am I meant to be losing? Am I going to lose my mother or the man I’m going to marry?”
“Got you,” said Stevie happily. “You’ve promised to marry me. Did you hear that?” He turned to an American tourist. “Mary Katherine McMahon has agreed to marry me.”
“Think of the alimony,” said the man who looked as if he had had to think about a fair amount of it in his life.
CLIO’s wedding was going to be more difficult than Kit would have believed. And every detail of it apparently had to be discussed with her bridesmaid.
“I’ll ask Stevie if you insist,” Clio said, “but that means one more on Michael’s side and he says he has it down to a bare minimum already and that if he has one more it will open the floodgates.”
“Stevie’s busy anyway,” Kit said. He wasn’t busy and she was deeply annoyed that he had not been invited. He would also have been such a helpful person there if only stupid Clio realized.
But then two days later there was an aunt of Michael’s from Belfast who would be visiting Dublin. She would be included so Stevie could now come.
Clio grumbled about the hotel. It wasn’t smart enough.
“You wanted it small,” Kit said.
“No, you wanted it small,” Clio said.
“Is Michael happy about the baby?”
“Please don’t talk about the baby,” Clio hushed her.
“Look, I’m not going to get up at the wedding breakfast and make a speech about it, but I was just asking you if your future husband is pleased about fatherhood.”
“Well, he’s not like Louis, if that’s what you mean. Louis never has his hand off Mary Paula’s stomach. He’s so boring about it, he thinks it’s kicking or twitching or something.”
“Yours is smaller, younger, it’s not doing that.”
“Oh, shut up about mine,” Clio said. “It’s the honeymoon that’s the problem now. Mr. O’Connor thinks that Michael should do this kind of intensive course in bookkeeping so that he can put him into one of the hotels.”
“Yes, well, that makes sense. He’s not trained as a hotelier, he’ll need some job.”
“We wanted to go to the South of France,” Clio complained. She looked like a four-year-old whose dolly had been taken away.
“Will you wear that fur cape that looked so well on you? It would be a nice thing for Clio’s wedding,” Martin asked.
“No love, if you don’t mind. I have a different outfit planned.”
“It really did look smart on you,” Martin said.
“I’ll keep it and wear it at Kit’s wedding,” Maura said.
“Don’t tell me that’s going to be imminent.” Martin McMahon looked alarmed.
“No, of course not,” Maura laughed. “But she will marry one day and with luck you and I will be here for it.”
“She’s very taken with Stevie.” He sounded worried.
“I know. I was alarmed in the beginning but he’s a reformed boy. None of the lassies ringing him up. The only one he rushes out of the office to see is Kit.”
“I suppose there are men who can be reformed by a woman.” Martin McMahon was doubtful.
“Well, it’s part of history certainly.” Maura was reassuring, hoping he wouldn’t ask her what part of history. All she could think of was Helen of Troy or Cleopatra or Kittie O’Shea, who had brought Parnell down, all of them troublemakers. She couldn’t think of a single woman apart from in a Wild West movie who had reformed a man.
It was a curiously dispiriting day, Clio Kelly’s wedding day.
Any appearance of jollity and papering over pregnancy problems that the O’Connors had been able to muster had been used up. Fingers O’Connor had grasped Maura McMahon by the arm as soon as he saw her. “Bad business this, bad business,” he said.
Maura removed his hand very deliberately. “Perhaps if you had shown your children some better example in the way to behave it might not have happened,” she said primly.
Lilian Kelly certainly never expected her first daughter’s wedding to take place under such a cloud. Many times in her mind she had planned it. Always seeing it taking place in her own hometown, with the reception in the Castle Hotel. This anonymous Dublin church and the same hotel as poor Maura had chosen all seemed very second rate.
Clio wore a white dress but Kit looked extremely casual in that outfit. The girl was pretty, there was no gainsaying that, and her big soft white hat with the long ribbons was elegant.
It was some scant consolation to Lilian Kelly to know that Kit’s disgrace was even greater than Clio’s. All right, so everyone might suspect that Clio’s wedding had been somewhat rushed, but at least she was marrying into the O’Connor family. Kit was hanging around with that teddy boy, the boy with the terrible reputation, son of poor old Kathleen and her mad drunken husband. That was a seriously unacceptable thing to do.
Stevie was a gre
at addition to the wedding party, as Kit had known he would be. He talked to Michael’s aunt about Belfast, told her of his visits there on motor-related business, promised to look out for a good secondhand Morris Minor the next time he was up there. He asked Mr. O’Connor educated questions about the hotel business, promised Father Baily about the possibility of getting a car for a raffle. He spoke to Maura in such clear terms about the visit to London that she was reassured that there had been different rooms in the guesthouse.
“How did you find it?” she asked innocently.
“Oh, in this business you’re always finding fellows who know places,” he said.
He spoke to Kevin about the great night on New Year’s Eve.
He told Martin McMahon about his plans to expand the garage. “I don’t want to be ruining life for all my good neighbors if I do get more business…I’ll move down the town to more open space,” he said, allaying a worry Martin had been keeping to himself for some time.
And then he approached Mary Paula and Louis. Louis was so warm and easygoing Stevie felt a lump in his throat. It was for this man that Kit’s mother left home, allowed a drowning to be believed. She had lived with him and with his betrayals for so long until it had almost cost her her mind.
Louis spoke of his own car, a Triumph Herald he had got in London. He had had it awhile now but it still looked good and was no trouble. No, he had bought it new.
The bile rose in Stevie’s throat as he heard the story unfold. How Mary Paula had first met him when he was driving it to a seminar. She had admired the man in the white Triumph. “I said to him, ‘That’s a nice car,’ he said to me, ‘Let’s take it on a test drive, then,’” and neither of them had gone to the seminar at all.
“Don’t tell that to my father-in-law though,” Louis whispered. “He might think I was unreliable.” Mary Paula giggled.
“And you’re not?” Stevie said stonily.
“No.” Louis looked alarmed. The boy was looking at him oddly.
Stevie moved away very quickly. Kit had been watching. “Please,” she whispered in his ear. “Please, for her sake, we must say nothing. For Father, for Maura.”