She looked across at Louis, her eyes full of hate.
Was he a moron that he didn’t know who they all were? He knew that Lena was married to Martin McMahon, pharmacist from Lough Glass. He knew that Clio was from Lough Glass. Did he just not care? Was his life with Lena so much in the past that it didn’t matter that her husband and daughter turned up at a festivity where he was with his pregnant wife?
Of course, he thought that they all thought Helen McMahon was dead, drowned in the lake and buried in the churchyard. But surely it must have cost him something to face these people.
Lena had never mentioned his name to Father. That much Kit knew. She had always said that she had loved another man. She had never pronounced his name because it made it too real. She had written it, of course, in the letter. But that was the letter Martin had never got.
There would be no singsong, no extended drinking in the bar of this quiet hotel. The proceedings would end earlier than most enthusiastic Irish wedding guests would have expected. Clio went to change.
“That was wonderful,” Kit lied as she helped her friend out of the dress.
“It was diabolical,” said Clio.
“You’re wrong, wait till you see the pictures.”
“Wait till I forget the look in everyone’s eyes, that’s more like. Jesus, isn’t Mrs. O’Connor a pill? Her own daughter’s pregnant and there’s not a word about it. But I’m the one who led her son astray, it’s written all over her face.”
“Stop now. It was great,” Kit soothed her.
“Stevie certainly behaved himself.”
“Good,” said Kit in a clipped tone.
“He sort of moved around and talked to people as if he’s used to it.”
“He probably is, in the car business.” Kit kept herself in control with dignity.
“No, I meant used to people like who were here.”
There would be no throwing the bouquet. Just a few more minutes showing off her going-away costume and then Clio and Michael would leave. The rest would follow soon after.
Louis Gray looked around him. The wedding had not been a huge social success. Even his practiced charm had seemed not to work. He was very uneasy about the whole connection with Lough Glass—of all the villages in Ireland, it was surely bad luck to get involved with this one. Still, he reassured himself, nobody there would have any suspicions; and he would have to face the place sometime. Probably sooner than later. And he would have to talk to Lena’s daughter as well. Might as well be now.
Louis came over to join Kit as she knew he would. He knew she was the daughter of Lena but he had no idea that she knew of any connection at all.
She wanted to be as far as possible from him, but it would be rude not to return his warm smile. “Great day, isn’t it?”
“Yes indeed.”
“But nothing between you and the best man? This won’t be the making of another wedding, I’m not going to get another lovely sister-in-law?”
“No, no. Kevin’s going out with my friend Frankie.” The words came out slowly, she felt very uneasy. She moved away.
Slightly at a loss, Louis turned to talk to someone else. Young women didn’t normally walk away from him like that. Stevie had been watching, he saw the way Louis had laid his hand on Kit’s arm with his easy, familiar charm. It had made Stevie rage inside.
The crowd were gathering near the door to wave good-bye to the bride and groom. Louis and Stevie were on the edge of the crowd. “You’re from Lough Glass too, Clio tells me. It sounds a good place, we must go there sometime,” he said.
Stevie put his face very near him. In a slow and deliberate voice he said: “You’ve been to Lough Glass.” There was a pause. And then with a heavy menace he said: “And if you know what’s good for you you won’t go again.” Then he moved away.
Louis had gone white. What did the fellow mean? He saw Stevie put his arm around Kit’s shoulder and she held his hand tightly. Kit McMahon, Lena’s daughter. And her boyfriend. But they didn’t know, for God’s sake.
None of them knew.
LENA was in Manchester, she wrote. The people were so friendly and they seemed to have more time for each other than in London, they weren’t always rushing off. And if you met someone you were likely to meet them again. More like Dublin really, though of course one met too many people in Dublin. Lena only vaguely remembered meeting Rita, but she knew Kit must have handled it. She wondered had she had a blackout or had she gone mad for a time.
It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that she be there for her daughter as much as Kit needed her.
Lena realized that she had to give up on Emmet. She had lost too much of his life to see him now. She had left when he was a child, a real child. Now he was old enough to hold a girl in his arms and tell her he loved her. There was no way she could come back into his life, and she was finished with fantasy…there would be none of that anymore.
She was even going to get herself a small flat in Manchester. Peggy Forbes lived with her mother and anyway it would not be a good idea to share a flat with someone from work. Peggy was divorced, fortyish, wonderful with people. When next Stevie and Kit came to England they should come to Manchester. Peggy would show them all what life in the North was like.
Sometimes Kit showed parts of the letters to Stevie.
“I don’t like reading what she’s written to you, it’s meant to be private.”
“I only show you bits, I keep the private bits.”
“Are they about me?”
“Sometimes.”
“Warnings, like don’t follow her down the primrose path?” He looked at her anxiously. He really wanted to know.
“They used to be. Not now.”
“When did she change?”
“When she met you.”
Clio and Michael moved into Maura’s flat almost immediately after the wedding. The price had been arranged very quickly. Fingers had written the check without haggling.
“But Pa, I’m sure that’s just the asking price,” Michael said. “She’d probably come down a couple of hundred if you start to bargain.”
“We’ll pay what’s asked.” Fingers had had enough reproofs from Maura Hayes and her stepdaughter Kit to do him for a long time. There would be no haggling and drawing their wrath on him.
“You must come round and see it,” Clio said. “You can even bring Stevie if you want to.”
“No thanks. I’ll come round some evening he’s not in Dublin.”
“Are there many of those?” Clio asked.
“Well, he does live and work in a place two hours journey away from here.” She knew she sounded defensive and sarcastic. Only Clio brought this out in her.
Clio was in very grumpy form the evening she did go around to the flat. “Have you had your tea?” she asked ungraciously.
“Well, no. But I’m not hungry,” said Kit.
“I didn’t think…”
“It doesn’t matter.” Kit wondered how you wouldn’t think, if you asked someone to visit you at six o’clock. Most people had something to eat in the evening.
Kit admired the place and the wedding presents. Some of them still unpacked stood around in boxes.
“I think I’m getting prenatal depression,” Clio said. “Did you ever hear of that?”
“No,” said Kit truthfully. “I heard you were meant to be excited and thrilled and knitting things and getting dinner for your husband and your friends.”
Clio burst into tears.
“Tell me, tell me,” Kit said. She knew she was going to hear some story of woes. Should Clio be shaken until her teeth rattled? Should this have been done years ago? Dr. Kelly and his wife had always let her get away with murder.
“Everything’s absolutely terrible. Michael was out all night on Wednesday, there was a party up in the hotel where he’s working and none of them got home. Louis didn’t even go back to the house that he lives in beside the hotel. And Mary Paula’s absolutely furious even though Louis gives he
r flowers every day. Michael’s given me no flowers, he just says I’m a nag. Already! I’m only a few weeks married and I’m a nag.”
“Shush, shush. He doesn’t mean it,” Kit said.
“And Daddy’s no help, nor Mummy. I said I’d like to go down and stay a few days there and they said no. All this about making my bed and having to lie in it. And I hate this place, it has Aunt Maura written all over it…Everyone’s in such bad tempers, Kit.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s because you’re being screwed silly by Stevie Sullivan and you can’t think of anything else.”
“I’m not, as it happens.”
“Well, maybe you should be.”
“Clio, you’re the one who’s upset. Talk to me. Let’s look at the good points. Michael stayed out only one night and he was with…your brother-in-law, so you don’t think he was up to no good.”
“I don’t know,” Clio said darkly. “Mary Paula told me there were other girls there, fast girls.”
Kit wondered wildly whether Mary Paula and Clio, who had both been pregnant brides in recent months, were actually in a position to be calling other girls fast. But she let it pass.
“What other good points are there?” Kit continued doggedly. “You have a lovely home, Michael’s got a job. You’re going to have a baby.”
“Which means I can’t have a job,” Clio complained.
“You didn’t want a job. You said you were going to college to get a husband. Now you’ve got one.”
“Nothing’s the same as it was,” Clio wept.
“No, it’s different, but we’ve got to change too. I suppose that’s it.”
“I wish we were young again, going to Sister Madeleine, coming home for tea.”
“Well, we’re the ones who have to make tea nowadays. Will I go out and get some things?”
“Would you? I feel so awful and waddly, I can’t move.”
“You’re as bad as Mary Paula. When’s her baby due?”
“This week, that’s why it’s all so awful about Louis and everything. And Michael’s father has had a row with Louis about money. Apparently he just pockets his salary every month and didn’t know he was meant to pay bills with it. There was an awful scene up there the other night.”
“Talking of money, I don’t have much, if I’m to buy things for supper…” said Kit.
“Oh, there’s a fiver under the clock.” Clio waved at it. The phone rang. “Will you answer it, Kit, please?”
It was Louis.
“That’s not Clio,” he said.
“No, it’s Kit McMahon. What can I do for you?”
“My wife’s been taken into hospital and she’s gone into labor.”
“Congratulations,” Kit said in a dull voice.
“No wait. I was hoping Clio could ring her father-in-law and tell him.”
“Why don’t you ring him yourself?”
“Well, to be perfectly frank I’ve had some words with him. I think he’d prefer to be told by another member of his family. I can’t find Michael, and Kevin’s nowhere either.”
“Yes, I heard there was a problem with your father-in-law all right.” Kit didn’t know why she had said this. It was just the thought of the freeloader Louis sponging off everyone that made her feel sick.
His voice had changed. “What do you mean you heard? Where did you hear this?”
“From Clio, who heard it from your wife.” She was brazen now.
“And is it any of your business?”
“No, none at all,” she agreed.
“So can you put me on to Clio?”
“She’s not here.”
“Well, all right, then.”
“Do you want me to ring Fingers?”
“What?”
“Fingers O’Connor. That’s his name, isn’t it?”
“That’s an offensive nickname certainly. His name is Mr. O’Connor.”
“Do you want me to ring him and tell him Mary Paula’s in the labor ward? That you didn’t want to tell him yourself?”
Louis hung up.
“What was that about?” Clio’s mouth was open in astonishment.
“That creep Louis Gray, afraid to talk to your father-in-law.”
“Why were you so rude to him?”
“I hate him.”
“Why on earth do you hate him?”
“I don’t know, irrational. Sometimes you get an irrational dislike.”
“Well, they’re my bloody in-laws, Kit. Don’t work out your own hatreds on them just because things aren’t going well with Stevie.”
“Who said things weren’t going well with Stevie?”
“They can’t be or else he wouldn’t have been at that party up in the hotel where Louis and Michael were. The one on Wednesday night.”
Kit looked at her in disbelief. “Stevie was there?”
“Yes, didn’t he tell you?”
“You know he didn’t tell me.”
Wednesday last…he had told her that he had to go to a function in Athlone. God damn him and all other conniving handsome men to the pit of hell. Kit put on her jacket and went to the door.
“Kit, the fiver,” Clio pointed to the mantelpiece.
“Get your own tea, Clio,” Kit said, and banged the door behind her.
She longed to write to Lena to tell her that Louis’s marriage was in trouble only five months after it had taken place. She ached to put her arms around her mother and cry. To ask her should she tackle Stevie, ask him straight out had he been there? Should she check if the function in Athlone had existed?
Wasn’t this the road her mother had gone down and lived to regret, the constant checking and then deciding to ignore it? She walked along looking at the other people, whose lives were not in ruins, going about their business. Men coming home from work, wives opening doors, children playing in gardens in the June evening sunshine.
She must not tell Lena the news of Louis’s fall from grace. Lena said her only peace was to know nothing of him. There was always the danger even at this late stage that Lena would take him back. Forget, forgive so much. After all, what was a wife and baby to forgive when she had put up with so much?
Lena and Peggy Forbes were having supper in an Indian restaurant in Manchester after the official opening. Peggy was forty-three, blond, well groomed. She had married very young and very foolishly, she said. A man who should have married a bookie. She had met him at the races, which should have given her some inkling but it hadn’t. She had been divorced at the age of twenty-seven, after six years of a very unsatisfactory marriage.
She began to work then, very hard. She got a great deal of pleasure from it, she said. Not the money itself, she didn’t regard wealth as a goal. She liked the people she met and enjoyed urging them on. She also liked the fact that she had some security and didn’t need to fear that some man was going to sell the dining table and chairs, as had happened to her on her twenty-fifth birthday.
Peggy said she didn’t usually tell her whole life story to someone but since Lena was putting such faith in her she wanted her to know the background.
“I have a very confused background myself,” Lena said. “I was married to two men, but neither marriage worked. I don’t say anything at work about either marriage, in fact most people at work know nothing about my first marriage and think my second one is still in existence.”
Peggy nodded. “It’s better that way,” she said.
“The only reason I’m telling you,” explained Lena, “is that I don’t want to respond to your frankness with a blank brick wall.”
“I wouldn’t have been upset.”
“That’s because you’re a practical woman, and you realize I’m the boss, but I would also like to be your friend.”
“I’m sure we’ll be that.”
“And it would be very nice if we could go out sometimes here in Manchester, to the pictures or for a meal. Maybe I could visit your mother? But I’m not one for clubs or that kind of evening out.”
/>
“Nor am I,” Peggy said. “The younger girls I work with pity me, and they’re always trying to get me out for what they call a good time.”
“I have that too,” Lena sympathized.
“The only thing I’m sorry about is that I didn’t have children. I’d have liked a daughter, wouldn’t you?”
Lena hesitated. “I have a daughter, as it happens. But that’s not known.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t talk about it,” Peggy said, and smiled a broad, friendly smile.
“We’re going to make this agency as big as the one in London,” Lena promised.
“We’ll be calling you our Junior Branch in five years time,” said Peggy.
“I really think we made a great choice.” Lena was talking to Jim and Jessie Millar back in the London office. They were amused to hear they would soon be the Junior Branch.
“That’s the spirit we need,” said Jim.
Lena smiled to herself, thinking about how cautious he had always been at the start, and how every change no matter how minor had to be negotiated past him with care.
The receptionist came in. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Gray, but you know what you said about using your initiative?”
“Yes, Karen. Who is it?”
“It’s Mr. Gray. He says it’s an emergency and he has to talk to you.”
“Use this room,” Jim Millar said, and he and Jessie got up to leave.
But Lena wouldn’t hear of it. “Take his number, Karen, and tell him I’ll ring back in five minutes.”
She went to her office and looked at herself in the mirror. She was alive and well. She was sane. He would not upset her. There was no emergency in his life that could touch her.
She telephoned the Dublin number and they answered with the name of a hotel. Louis was ringing her from work. What else was new?
“It’s Lena,” she said.
“Thanks for ringing back. I should have known you would, you were always so reliable.”
“That’s true. What can I do for you?” Her voice was calm.
“Are you alone?”
“As alone as any of us are on these kinds of lines. Why?”
“I’m in great trouble and so are you.”