The Glass Lake (20 page)

Lena lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Now, for the first time since she had woken this morning, she was on her own. With time to think and no other calls on her time. But it didn't seem right somehow. The walls of the room, with their pink and orange paper, seemed to be closing in on her. She remembered the Count of Monte Cristo and how the walls of his cell moved a little every day. This must be happening in her room. There was definitely less distance between the table and the window than there had been before. By the time she had finished her cigarette she knew she could not stay there a minute longer.

She would go down to Ivy.

         

“I don't want you to think I'm going to be a dropper-in.”

“No, love. Don't say that. I can always do with the company.” Ivy had been doing the football pools. She gave it a great deal of time every week. When she won, it was going to change her life. She would buy a big hotel by the seaside, install a full-time manager, and she would live like a lady in a flat of her own on the top floor. “Isn't that right, Hearthrug?” she asked the old cat. The cat purred happily in anticipation.

Lena stroked his old grizzled head. “They're a great comfort, cats. I was very fond of Farouk at home, though he was truly the cat that walked by itself.” Her eyes seemed far away.

“Was that when you were a little girl?”

“No, no. Just back home,” Lena said. It was the first time she had let down her guard. She realized that Ivy had noticed.

Ivy said nothing but busied herself making the tea. There was no need to explain. Lena felt the same ease that she felt in Sister Madeleine's cottage.

Though two places more different it would be hard to find.

Sister Madeleine on this winter night would be sitting by her fire, speaking with some one of Lough Glass's citizens. It might be Rita planning her future, it might be Paddles, the man who had run a bar for thirty-seven years without ever having a drink in it. Perhaps it was Kathleen Sullivan, the mournful widow who ran the garage and seemed to despair over every aspect of it, including her two strapping sons. And there would be some animal sitting on a sack, a fox, a dog, a turkey that had been saved from becoming a Christmas dinner because it had the good luck to wander to the hermit's house.

And there would be no questioning, no trying to defend the indefensible.

As it was here in Earl's Court in the busy room where there was hardly a square inch of the wallpaper showing. The wall was covered with shelves of knickknacks and there were pictures of outings long ago. A big mirror was almost useless as a looking glass since so many letters and postcards had been wedged into its frame. There were vases of colored glass, gnomes, little egg cups, and souvenir ashtrays. And yet the place had the same feel. A place where you could be yourself.

And where no one would demand any explanation that you might not be ready to give.

And very simply, as if it had all been intended, Lena Gray began to tell Ivy Brown the story. The tea was poured, the packet of biscuits opened. And when it got to the bit about last Sunday, the discovery of the newspaper, the phone call home, Ivy stood up and without a word produced two small glasses and a bottle of brandy. Lena opened her handbag and showed the cutting. At no stage did Ivy's small, quizzical face look anything except sympathetic. It registered no shock, no disbelief, not even as they smoothed out the newspaper page and read of the death that had distressed everyone so much. Ivy seemed to take it all in, and to realize the enormity without resorting to panic.

Sister Madeleine never reached out and touched you. She gave warmth and support without the clasp or the embrace. Ivy Brown was the same. She stood across at the far side of her sitting room and leaned against the chest of drawers that held all her records.

Her arms were crossed. She looked like the kind of picture you would see in a newspaper to illustrate the British housewife. All that was needed was to have her hair in curlers. Her floral apron was tied tightly around her small frame, her mouth set in a grim line as she listened to the tale unfolding. The waves of solidarity and support were almost tangible. If she had held a weeping Lena close to her breast, she couldn't have radiated more concern.

“Well, love,” she said after a long pause. “You've made up your mind, haven't you?”

“No.” Lena was surprised. She had never been so much at sea.

“You have, Lena.” Ivy was very sure.

“Why do you say that? What have I decided to do?”

“You're not going to phone them, love. That's it, isn't it? You're not going to do a thing. You're going to let them think you're dead.”

They talked for what must have been hours.

Lena told of how Louis had loved her and left her. How he had come back. How this was the life she had dreamed of. She painted a picture of Martin McMahon that she hoped was fair. Until yesterday she would have spoken with admiration and deep affection. There would have been guilt, even though she had kept her part of the bargain to the letter.

But the letter was it.

His reaction had killed any feeling that she ever had for him. The man was a monster, a victim of small-town respectability. They went through it bit by bit, as she had done with Louis. The possibility of the letter not getting to him. The eventual knowledge that this must not be a reasonable thing to suppose.

But with Ivy it was not tense to talk. She didn't have to fear upsetting her at every turn. And in the end Ivy was as unshaken as she had been at the outset.

Louis Gray was the love of Lena's life. She had waited for him for thirteen years, and now they were together. Ivy and Lena both knew that nothing would be done that would jeopardize this.

“But my children?” Lena's voice was shaky. It was as if she knew that tears were not far away.

“What can you give them by going back?” Ivy asked. The silence between them was not a hostile one. Lena tried to think. She could hold them, and stroke them. But that would be taking, not giving. She might shame them. And then she would leave them again anyway. “Why do you have to leave them twice?” Ivy asked. “Wasn't once hard enough?”

“If they drag the lake and don't find a body, they'll know I'm not dead…they'll start looking…” As she spoke Lena knew she had begun to make up her mind. She was in fact only hunting for flaws or danger areas in the plan.

“You said it was a deep lake.”

“Yes, yes.”

“So there may well have been people who drowned there and were never found.”

“Yes, that's true…”

“You love him, Lena…let him know you're not going back to your other life. Let him be very sure. He doesn't want you wavering or dithering.”

“He left me to waver and dither for half a lifetime.”

“Yes. But you forgave him, you ran off with him. Don't end up losing them all.”

“Maybe I only ran after a dream.” Lena did not sound convinced. She said it only so that Ivy would contradict her.

“It seems substantial enough. Don't lose him, Lena. There'll be too many waiting to catch him if you let him fall from your grasp.” She seemed to speak with great authority.

“Do you know all this because you did it?”

“No, love. I know it because I didn't do it.” Lena looked at her blankly. “Ernest, in the pub. He may not be a looker like your Louis is…but he's the man I loved…and still do.”

“Ernest? That we met on Friday?”

“Ernest that I've met every Friday for years now.”

“Why do you meet him on Fridays?”

“Because it's what makes the week have a bit of purpose for me…and because his cow of a wife goes to her mother on Fridays.”

“And what happened?”

“I hadn't the guts. I wasn't brave enough.” Again the silence was an easy one. Ivy refilled their brandy glasses. “I worked in the pub with him. I'd just started when the war broke out. Ron, that's my husband, he was called up. Anyway, it was a good time then. It sounds silly to say we all enjoyed the war, but you know what I mean. Folk were very friendly. You didn't know whether anyone would be here next week. It made for a lot of shortcuts. I might never have got to know Ernest if it hadn't been for the time…. You see, there were air-raid warnings, and we went down to shelters, and we all listened to the radio in the pub. It was very close, like people being wrecked together after a ship goes down.”

Ivy smiled at the memory of it all. “He had two children and Charlotte was all eyes of course, suspecting things before they even began. And there was lots of chat about our brave boys fighting at the front and the tarts of wives having a great time running around. Everyone got the drift of it, it made things very unpleasant.”

“And did you love Ron at all?”

“No. Not like I knew love was when I met Ernest. You see, girls just got married then. And I wasn't a raving beauty as you can see. I didn't get many offers. I was glad to take Ron. I was twenty-nine, nearly thirty, when we married. He was ten years older. He wanted everything just so. He liked a nice clean house, a good meal on the table. He didn't ever want to go out. When we didn't have children he didn't seem all that put out. I think he thought they'd mess up the house. I went and got myself tested and all, but he wouldn't. I said we might adopt and he said he wouldn't raise another man's son.”

“Oh Ivy, I'm so sorry.”

“Yes. Well, it was no worse than a lot of people had. And from what you say, people in your Lough Glass put up with whatever hand they were dealt too.”

“Absolutely. All of them except me.”

“Well, I had your chance and didn't take it. That's why I know what I'm talking about….”

“Ernest?” Lena asked.

“Yes. He said we should go off together. But I was guilty. I was dead guilty. There I was, my husband out fighting for his country. Ernest with a wife and family. I was afraid. Afraid he'd regret it, that I wouldn't be woman enough for him. Afraid that Ron would have a breakdown…. I didn't go, you see.”

“And what happened in the pub?”

“The pub. Yes. There was more action there than there was out at the front, I tell you. Charlotte seemed to know all about it by radar. She knew when he had asked me to go with him, and when I had said no. She picked her time perfectly. She said that she'd like me to leave and not darken the door again while she was on the premises. I left that day.”

“What did you do?”

“I went back to our flat and I cleaned it until it shone. When Ron came home from the war he had less to say than before he went. He was very discontented…the country didn't appreciate the soldiers, he said. There was no pleasing him. And then the lovely Charlotte wrote to him and told him that she thought he ought to know. It drove him over the top. He said I was filth and I was disgusting and he didn't want to know. There's a nice depressing story for you, isn't it, love?”

“What are you telling me?”

“I'm telling you I have my Friday nights.”

“And Ron?”

“He left. It was strange really. He just said he wanted to hear no more about it. He moved out that very week, the week he heard from Charlotte.”

“And did you want him to stay?”

“At the time I suppose I did. I was frightened. I had no one, I had nothing to show for my life. But of course he had to go, he hated me, and I didn't even know him. I moved here to this flat…it was as different to the place we had together as you could imagine. I cleaned the house, and I did cleaning in other houses. I got the money together and when the house went on the market I got a mortgage and bought it.”

“Wasn't that wonderful?” Lena's eyes shone with admiration.

“Cold comfort, as they say. Believe me, Lena, very cold. When I think of what I could have had.”

“And did you think…will she…suppose she…”

“It's too late, love, I made my decision. I let go of my chance.”

There was a silence.

“I know what you're telling me,” Lena said eventually.

“You have him, you love him, you've always loved him. If you ring them at home you'll have lost everything.”

“So I have to fake being dead?”

“You never pretended to be dead. You left a letter telling what you did. You can't be blamed for what they think.”

“Kit and Emmet?” Lena's face was white.

“This way they'll remember you with love, not hate.”

“I don't think I can do it.”

“I've seen you look at him. You'll do it,” said Ivy.

         

Louis was back in high good humor at seven-thirty in the morning. “So you're going to take the day off and spoil me?” he asked, head on one side, looking at her with the half smile she loved so much.

“Better than that,” Lena said to him. “I'm going to drag you into bed with me now, and love you to death, then let you sleep peacefully for the day.”

He was about to complain. But she had already taken off her blouse slowly in the way he liked to see her undress. “You're a very bossy lady,” he said. She had started to unbutton his shirt.

He was asleep before she left the flat.

         

“You always look so bright and cheerful, Mrs. Gray,” said Mr. Millar approvingly. She looked up at him from her desk, pleased.

She had crept from her bed so as not to wake Louis, she had dressed in the bathroom, she had run along through the rush hour crowds on wet streets. Her mind was racing at the enormity of allowing her children to think of her evermore as having drowned in the lake beside their home. She had miscarried a child.

And yet this man thought she looked bright and cheerful.

Back in Lough Glass people always thought she looked tired. “Have you had the flu, Mrs. McMahon?” they might ask in Hickey's, the butchers. “Do you need a tonic at all?” Peter Kelly had boomed so often. “You look pale, Helen my love,” Martin must have said a hundred times a year.