The Glass Lake (5 page)

“I wouldn't go to your house, and you wouldn't come to mine. This is neutral ground, all right?” she said.

Kit paused. “Sure.” She shrugged.

“We can just go on as we were before the fight.” Clio wanted it defined.

“There wasn't a fight,” Kit reminded her.

“Yeah, I know. But I said something stupid about your mother.” There was a silence. Clio went on to fill it. “The truth is, Kit, that I was jealous. I'd love to have a mother who looks like a film star.”

Kit reached out and took one of the Club Milk biscuits. “Now you're here we can take out the boat,” she said.

The row that had never been was over.

During the holidays Brother Healy came up to the convent for his annual discussion with Mother Bernard.

They had many things to discuss, and they got on well together when discussing them. There was the school curriculum for the year, the difficulty of getting lay teachers who would have the same sense of dedication, the terrible problem they shared about children being wild and undisciplined, preferring the goings-on on the cinema screen to real life as it should be lived in Ireland. They coordinated their timetables so that the girls should be released from school at one time and the boys at another, leaving less chances for the two sexes to meet each other and get involved in unnecessary familiarity.

Brother Healy and Mother Bernard were such old friends now that they could even indulge in the odd little grumble, about the length of Father Baily's sermons, for example. The man was inclined to be hypnotized by the sound of his own voice, they thought.

Or the excessive love the children had for that difficult Sister Madeleine. It was somehow highly irritating that this odd woman, who came from a deeply confused and ill-explained background, should have taken such an unexpected place in the hearts and minds of Lough Glass's children, who would do anything for her. They were eager to save stamps, collect silver paper, and gather sticks for her fire. The boys had been outraged when Brother Healy had stamped on a spider. There had been a near mutiny in the classroom. And these were the same lads who would have pulled the wings off flies for sport a few years before.

Mother Bernard said that Sister Madeleine was altogether too tolerant for this world, she seemed to have a good word to say for everyone, including the enemies of the Church. She had told some of the impressionable girls that Communists might have their own very reasonable belief in dividing wealth equally. That had been a headache, Mother Bernard said…and one that she could have done without.

And it wasn't only the children who were under her spell, Brother Healy said in an aggrieved tone. Oh no, no. A man who should know better, like Martin McMahon the chemist.

Brother Healy had heard with his own ears the man suggesting to Mrs. Sullivan, whose poor Billy had been carried off screaming, that she should go to Sister Madeleine for some advice about a nice soothing drink to make her sleep.

“Next stop will be black magic altogether,” said Mother Bernard, nodding feverishly in agreement.

And, of course, if Martin minded his business and paid a bit of attention to that fancy wife of his, he'd be better off. Brother Healy might have gone too far now in uncharitable gossip. He knew it and so did Mother Bernard. They both began to shuffle their papers together and end the meeting.

It would remain unsaid that Helen McMahon, with her disturbing good looks, walked too much alone, beating at the hedges with a blackthorn stick, her eyes and mind far, far away from Lough Glass and the people who lived there.

         

It was a Wednesday, and Martin McMahon closed his shop with a sigh of relief. The flypaper was thick with dead bluebottles. He must remove it quickly before Kit or Emmet came in with a lecture about their being God's creatures and how unfair of him to lure them to their death.

He was relieved that Kit and Clio Kelly seemed to have gotten over whatever childish squabble it had been that kept them apart for a few weeks. Girls were so intense at that age, it was impossible to know their minds. He had asked Helen if they should interfere, try to bring the children together, but Helen had said to let it run its course. And she had been right about everything.

When Helen said something it was always likely to happen. She had said that Emmet would be able to cope with his stutter, that he would laugh away the mimicry and criticism. That had come to pass. She had said Rita was a bright girl when everyone else had thought the child mentally deficient. Helen had known that Billy Sullivan was drinking behind his garage doors when no one else knew. And Helen had told him all those years ago that she could never love him totally but she would love him as much as she was able to.

Which wasn't nearly enough. But he knew it was that or nothing.

He had first met her when she was pining for someone else, and she had been open with him. It would not be fair to encourage his attentions, she had said, when her mind was so committed elsewhere. He had agreed to wait around. He had made more and more excuses to be in Dublin, to invite her out. Gradually they became close. She never spoke of the man who had left her to marry some girl with money.

And little by little the color returned to her cheeks. He invited her down here to see his place—his lake, his people—and she came and walked with him around the shores.

“It might not be the greatest love the world has ever known for you…but it will be for me,” he said.

She said it was the most beautiful proposal that a man could make. She would accept, she said. She sighed as she said it.

Helen had told him that she would stay with him, and if she ever left she would tell him why, and it would have to be for a very good reason. She said that it was dangerous to try to know somebody too well. People should have their own reserves, she said, the places they went in their minds, where no one else should follow.

He had agreed with her, of course. It was the price he paid for getting her as his wife. But he wished she didn't go off so often and so far in her mind and he dearly wished she wouldn't wander around the lake in all kinds of weather. She assured him that she loved to do this, it brought her peace to see the lake in its changing seasons. She knew all kinds of things about its nesting creatures. She felt at home there, at peace, she knew all the people around.

Once she had told him that it would be lovely to have a little cottage like Sister Madeleine's and have the lake water lap up to your door.

He had laughed at that. “Isn't it hard enough to squash the whole family into this place…how would we fit in the hermit's cottage?” he had asked.

“I didn't mean the whole family, I was thinking of going there by myself.” Her eyes had been far away that day. He hadn't followed her train of thought; it had been too unsettling.

         

Martin let himself in his own front door beside the chemist's shop. It led straight upstairs to what they called their house. Even though Kit had complained that they were the only people she knew who had a house without a downstairs.

Rita was setting the table. “The mistress won't be here, sir. She said to say she'll see you after your game of golf.”

He was disappointed and it showed.

“Women have to have their time off, too,” Kit said defensively.

“Of course they do,” he said over-jovially. “And it's a Wednesday so everyone except Rita has an afternoon off. I'm going to play a round of golf with Clio's father. I'm feeling in powerful form, I'm going to beat him into the ground today. I can see a few pars coming up, and a birdie and an eagle and…maybe an albatross.”

“Why are they all called after birds?” Emmet wanted to know.

“I suppose because the ball soars like a bird, or it should anyway…. Come on, I'll be Mother,” he said, and began to ladle out the lamb stew.

He realized that he had been saying this more and more recently. He wondered why on earth had Helen not said she was going out. Where on earth could she be?

         

From the golf course you got fine views of the lake. People said it was one of the most attractive courses in Ireland. Not as rugged as the great championship courses on the coast, but very varied with rolling parkland and many clusters of trees. And always the lake, dark blue today with hardly any shadows on it.

Peter Kelly and Martin McMahon stopped to rest and look down from the eighth green upon the high ground. Unlike at busier golf courses, they were holding nobody up. There was always time to stand and look down on Lough Glass and its lake.

“The tinkers are back, I see.” Peter pointed out the colored roofs of caravans on the far shore of the lake.

“They're like the seasons, aren't they? Always coming back the same way and at the same time.”

“Desperate life to inflict on the children, though. Some of them come up to get bits of machinery out of them or with dog bites…you'd pity them,” said the doctor.

“They come in to me, too, only the very odd time. Often I tell them they know more than I do,” Martin laughed. He had indeed said that between the travelers and old Madeleine there was a very good second line of defense as regards medicine in Lough Glass.

“Some of them are very fine-looking people.” Peter peered into the distance, where two women walked by the water's edge. Martin looked too, and then they both moved at the same time to go back to line up their shots. It was as if they both thought one of the women looked very like Helen McMahon but neither of them wanted to say it.

         

Clio told Kit that there was a woman among the travelers who told fortunes. And that she knew everything that was going to happen. But that Mother Bernard would kill you stone-dead if you went anywhere near her.

“What would Sister Madeleine say?” Kit wondered.

This was a good idea. Sister Madeleine wasn't black and white about things. Happily they scampered off down the lane to consult her. She thought it might well be possible, some people did have a gift.

“How much silver do you think she'd need to cross her palm, would a threepence do?” Kit wondered.

“I'd say she'd want more, what would you say, Sister Madeleine?” Clio was excited. It was her birthday next week, maybe they might get enough money before the caravans left. How marvelous to know the future.

But to their disappointment Sister Madeleine didn't seem at all in favor of it. She never told anyone not to do anything, she didn't use words like “foolish” or “unwise,” Sister Madeleine never spoke of sin or things being wrong. She just looked at them with her eyes burning from her brown lined face and her look said everything. “It's not safe to know the future,” she said.

And in the silence that followed both Clio and Kit felt themselves shiver. They were glad when Whiskers stood up and gave a long, unexplained yowl at nothing in particular.

         

Rita made her quiet way down the narrow road to Sister Madeleine's cottage. She carried her poetry book and the warm shortbread that was just out of the oven. To her surprise she heard voices. Usually the hermit was alone when she called for her lessons.

She was about to move away but Sister Madeleine called out. “Come on in, Rita. We'll have a cup of tea together.”

It was the tinker woman who told fortunes. Rita knew her immediately, because she had been to her last year. She had given her half a crown and had heard that her life would change, she would have seven times by seven times the land that her father had owned. That would mean she was to have nearly fifty acres. The woman had seen that she would have a life with book learning, and she would marry a man who was at this moment across the sea. She also saw that the children of the marriage would be difficult, it wasn't clear whether in their health or their disposition. She said that Rita would be buried when she died in a big cemetery, not in the churchyard in Lough Glass.

It had been very exciting to go to the woman, who told fortunes only by the lakeshore. She had said she didn't like doing it near the camps, near her own people. They didn't approve of her doing it. She said it was because she was too good. Listening to her, Rita had believed that this might be true. Everything had been said with a great, calm certainty. And the bits about the book learning had begun to come true.

Rita had been struck then and now how like the mistress she was. If you saw them in a poor light you'd swear that the tinker woman and Mrs. McMahon were sisters. She wondered what she was doing here with Sister Madeleine, but she would never know.

“Rita and I read poetry together.” Sister Madeleine made the only gesture she would ever make toward an introduction. The woman nodded as if she only expected as much; she was sure that everything else she had seen in the future was true also.

And suddenly, with a slight sense of alarm, so was Rita. There was a man across the sea who would marry her, she would have fifty acres of land, and money in her own right. She would have children and they would not be easy. She thought about her tombstone, far away in a city with lots of other crosses nearby.