The Glass Lake (90 page)

“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.”

“Why am I in trouble?”

“They know.”

“Who knows?”

“Everyone in Lough Glass knows.”

“What do they know, Louis?”

“They know about you.”

“I doubt that. Unless you told them.”

“I swear to God I haven't opened my mouth. Not to anyone. Up to now I haven't said a word.”

It was there, the threat. The blackmail in his tone. Up to now. “And who in particular seems to know things?” she asked.

“A fellow called Sullivan. Do you know him?”

“I remember him. His people own a garage.”

“And Kit…Kit knows. She was so rude to me just yesterday. She bit the head off me.”

“I doubt that.”

“She did. She said she heard rumors of my having a fight with my father-in-law.”

“I'm sorry to hear you've fallen out with your relations.” Her voice was so hard she could hardly recognize it herself.

“Lena, cut this out. I'm in trouble too.” She waited. “They expect me to have more cash than I have.”

“Yes?”

“And I was reading in the papers how you've opened a new office in Manchester…reading about the agency in the financial pages no less.”

“Yes. Aren't the Millars doing well.”

“I looked it up, Lena.”

“What?”

“I got someone to go to Companies House. You're a director.”

“So, Louis?”

“So you're a part of it. You're in a position to help me. I never begged in my life, I'm begging you now.”

“No indeed, that's not what you're doing, you're trying to blackmail me.”

“I thought you were saying this might be an open line.”

“It's probably not at my end, who knows about yours.”

There was a silence. “We parted friends, Lena, can we not remain friends?”

“We didn't part friends.”

“Yes we did. I remember the night.”

“We parted without a fight or a scene. I certainly wasn't your friend then, nor am I now.” There was a silence.

Lena spoke again. “So if that's all, may I wish you well. And hope you get over this problem with your father-in-law. I'm sure you will, you're a man of great charm.”

“One payment, Lena. You'll never hear me asking again.”

“No, I hope you won't telephone me again. If you do, I shall ask the staff not to put your call through.”

“You're not going to get away with this high-and-mighty attitude. You don't know who you're dealing with,” he cried.

“A man who owes his father-in-law money, it would appear.”

“Not in any sense like borrowing or stealing. It's just he expects me to have private means.”

“Or to put your hand in your pocket sometimes.”

That was exactly the phrase Fingers had used. Louis had lied to him, he had said he was saving for the birth of his baby.

“I have a son,” he said.

“That's wonderful,” Lena said.

“No, I need some money to start a savings account for him. That's what I
said
I was doing, saving toward an account.”

“Good-bye, Louis.”

“You'll be sorry.”

“What can you do to me?”

“I can bring you down. Tell these country plodders, Martin and Maura and Peter and all, that you're
not
dead. You're living the high life of a director of companies over in England. By God, that'll get the fur flying down there in Lough Glass. Bigamous marriage, Maura a woman of easy virtue…Kit and her brother abandoned by their feckless mother.”

He didn't even know Emmet's name, Lena realized. “Do that, Louis, and you go down further than you ever thought you could go down.”

“Easy threats,” he laughed.

“No, not at all. You made a great great mistake by telephoning me today with this news. If you had sold your blood pint by pint to the blood bank, or done a smash-and-grab raid at a jeweler's in Grafton Street, you'd have got your money quicker.”

“Lena…” he said.

But the line was dead.

         

She dialed Sullivan's garage. Maura McMahon answered the phone. Lena considered hanging up but time was of the essence. She disguised her voice into a poor imitation of a Cockney accent. She asked to speak to Stevie.

“I'm afraid he's not available at the moment. Can you tell me who's calling?”

She had forgotten Maura's accent. The courteous tones, the soft voice. She felt even more determined than ever that this woman should not be disturbed in the even tenor of her life. Her happiness with Martin McMahon must not be overturned.

“It's really quite urgent. This is a guesthouse in London where he was staying.”

“Oh yes?” Maura sounded anxious now, alert…

“And you're sure he can't come to the phone?”

“Was there a problem with the bill or anything?”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Lena knew her accent was all over the place but it was the best she could do.

“Well, can he return your call when he comes back?”

“When will that be?”

“Tomorrow. He's in Dublin.”

“Is there any way of contacting him there?”

“I'm afraid not. But if I could have your name and number…”

She gave Maura Ivy's name and telephone number. And then she put her head in her hands.

Stevie was her only hope.

         

Kit rang home that night and spoke to Maura.

“I hear Clio's an auntie-in-law,” Maura said.

“Oh, is that right?” Kit said.