Black Lake Page 13

  It’s hard to remember what I believed about John’s money at the beginning. He always seemed to have enough of it when he was in college, but life wasn’t particularly expensive then. As long as we could afford a loaf of bread, a tin of beans, and the odd night in the pub, we could stay alive quite happily. By the time we got married, I naively assumed that because he had this outlandish estate, he must also have a full bank account, a stash of vague, infinite wealth. He didn’t seem concerned about a career when we were in college—and this was when people were leaving for London after graduation because they couldn’t find jobs in Ireland.

  When the children were very small, he took care to hide our financial troubles from me, but I began to notice the look on his face when the electricity bill had to be paid or when there was some big outlay for the house or the grounds. Planning ahead is not one of John’s strengths, though I admit he has many of them, though I admit I loved him so much when I married him that I could see almost no weakness. But he must have known that we would run out of money eventually. I wouldn’t have minded going out to work. I would have happily found myself something to do in those early days when I was mooning about the place, useless. In college, I wanted to be a teacher. Perhaps that salary wouldn’t have been enough, but it would have been something. John would never countenance such a thing, but if he’d been honest with me, we might have survived. I remember the night, the children in bed, Mrs. Connolly rattling about in the kitchen, when John asked me, out of the blue, “Do you see us living here forever? I mean, do you ever see yourself living anywhere else?”

  “Not particularly.” I laughed. “I’m used to it now. It’s a good place to bring up the children.” I turned around, looked at him, and then understood it wasn’t a theoretical conversation. “Why?”

  Rubbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, he said, “Phil got most of the inheritance in exchange for me getting the house.” He sat back against the couch, the air gone out of him.

  I didn’t realize that he’d talked to Phil the previous week, that they’d already decided Dulough’s fate. John’s brother had managed to become a solicitor, to steer college in the direction of something lucrative. We visited him and his wife at their house in Foxrock from time to time, a tidy red-brick with a soulless garden, weeded to within an inch of its life. The order of their existence was such a contrast to the inevitable disorder that came with living at Dulough that it was obvious why Phil had wanted no part of the estate. But, as I found out, it didn’t mean that Phil wouldn’t be devastated if it was sold—that he wouldn’t see John as a failure for losing hundreds of years of family history. As unfair as I thought his position was, I couldn’t help but agree that something beyond bricks and mortar, gardens, hills, and island would be lost. What would my husband have been without Dulough? He was as much part of the place as if he’d been constructed out of its soil. He thought he could have lived somewhere else, but he couldn’t have.

  Kate and Philip were much more realistic about the move than I was. When we gathered them into John’s study last winter, it was Philip who understood the implications of the new arrangement. Where would it be forbidden for him to go now? He wanted a precise list, and when he realized that his bedroom in the big house would be off-limits but that other children—children he didn’t know—would be allowed in, I wondered what sort of damage we might be doing him.

  Just before the funeral, Francis showed me the hut that Philip had been building on the island. I was amazed at the work that went into it; the little stones shoved into the cracks so as to keep the wind out, the bracken on the floor, the neat planks lined up across the roof, which he’d even thought to make sure were covered in creosote. The ingenuity of it.

  We each had our rituals those late summer evenings after Philip died. I sat in the bay window of the upstairs sitting room, watching over the island until it got dark. Our daughter almost always emerged from somewhere below me—the forest, the avenue, the beach—and wandered about the gardens; sometimes she snapped deadheads or tried a cartwheel, others she sat cross-legged on the grass. I fretted about the damp seeping into her. But I found nothing serious to worry about in her behavior; these were all things she did before. The only difference now was that she was quieter, but wasn’t it to be expected?

  One July evening, when I went downstairs and plunged outside, she found me. We walked back down the avenue, slapping our arms to keep the midges away. I could sense that she wanted to ask what I’d been doing, but something stopped her. Perhaps she didn’t want me to ask her the same question. So we each kept our silence. When we got back, Mrs. Connolly had put leftovers from the visitors’ cafeteria on the kitchen table: potato salad, cold chicken, carrot slaw, lasagna, brown bread, scones, puddings. I thought I would have to cook when we moved out of the big house, but, like a schoolgirl, I returned each evening to dinner ready for me. And each evening I pushed the puddings to the back of the fridge for John to devour when he got in. They would have done Kate no good anyway. I remember when I was exactly that age, the new fold of flesh around my middle, the tops of my arms like the beginnings of wings. I wanted to tell her that it wouldn’t last long, that it would be gone in a few years, but that would seem an eternity to her. So I hid the puddings and didn’t comment on the fact that she wouldn’t wear most of her clothes anymore, anything with buttons. I began planning a shopping trip to Dublin.

  That night, we saw another of the films John had been renting for us. I have to admit, I was bowled over by the vigilance with which he watched over that stack, always making sure that there were new ones to see. They were films meant to appeal to women: romance, exotic countries, period pieces. I’m not sure what we would have done those nights without them. Reading seemed to take so much more energy than it used to. Though I’d often run my fingers along the bookshelves up at the house, there seemed to be nothing I wanted to open. What did we do in the evenings before? I can barely remember. The children played, I suppose, or finished up abandoned homework, left behind when the sun came out and we ran outside. John was fortunate to have his work, and it was good of him to realize that Kate and I would need something to keep us occupied, too.

  We watched Out of Africa, and I sat there, trying to remember from the time John and I saw it years ago, whether there was a sex scene that I should be shielding her from. Then I thought that perhaps it didn’t matter so much now that she was almost a teenager. When Robert Redford washed Meryl Streep’s hair, down by the river, Kate said something very funny: “You couldn’t do that here, it’d be bloody freezing.” I don’t know where she picked up that word.

  In the time between tucking Kate in and going to bed myself, I walked up to the house to see why John hadn’t come back yet. The staff had left for the day; the only light came from his study. I thought, when I peeped through the door, that he’d be poring over some of the plans for the Visitors’ Center or doing something vaguely worthwhile-looking or official. But he had his feet up on his desk and the chair was swinging back on its two legs, the way we always told the children not to. When I walked in, he very nearly fell, and I think it was the embarrassment of it that made him confess his plans for Kate then.

  I still didn’t accept it. I didn’t think she’d be better off in Dublin. This wasn’t something we’d ever contemplated before, when there was no money, and having the money now wasn’t necessarily a good enough reason. When John came back, I wanted to tell him that we needed to shield her from those girls, the type of daughters his brother would eventually have, the type of girls I had to go to school with, who’d have played tennis and hockey all their lives, who’d have long, lean limbs and no generosity bred into them for girls like Kate. I wanted to say that she would be much better off at the school in town. If we didn’t think it was good enough, we could give her extra help in the evenings or spend the money on tutors, and she would be around the girls from here, who would have enough respect for this place to be nice to her. That would “socialize” her
, as John put it, quite enough.

  But he insisted that I had to see his alma mater before I passed judgment. We went, just me and Kate, on a morning when the fog came down and settled on the mountains and the water in the air curled our hair before we were even out the front door. We hadn’t seen my parents since the funeral. When we arrived, they were pale and deferential. My mother drew Kate into a suffocating hug. They put us in the guest room, in the big double bed they bought when I moved to Donegal in the hopes that John and I would stay. We should have come more often. I knew that my mother wanted to ask how we were coping, how we really were, so the first night I went to bed at the same time as Kate, though it was only half past nine and my parents were settling down to a few more hours of television.

  The next morning, we were on the road in good time for our ten o’clock appointment. Kate was quiet in the passenger seat. It’s a quiet I’ve got used to, with the odd sigh or breath, as if, tantalizingly, she might say something. The books tell me not to ask questions, to let her talk in her own good time, but sometimes it takes all my willpower not to say, “What…What?” I did wonder what she was thinking that morning. Was she hiding her relief at the thought of escaping Dulough, or was she suddenly afraid of going so far away to school? That was how little I understood her then. As I drove, I tried to pinpoint the moment I stopped knowing what she was thinking. I searched for an illustrative event, a day when her behavior suddenly surprised me, but I couldn’t think past May; it was as if a fog came down over that part of my mind, as if my memories were like the Donegal mountains—covered. Perhaps it was my brain protecting me; they are, we’re always being told, amazing things. I looked over at her, but she was resolutely staring out the window.

  The school was a disappointment. To listen to John, you’d think it was a paradise second only to Dulough. It was true that he’d kept the friends he made there, perhaps more so than the ones he’d made in college. It had relocated to the suburbs since he went, though, the precious land in the middle of town making the school enough money to have much bigger grounds on the outskirts of the city. From its reputation, I expected grand buildings, rolling lawns—to be at least a little intimidated. But a roundabout guided the car onto a long and badly maintained tarmac road, to the right of which were several squat, concrete buildings. In the distance I saw portacabins like the makeshift offices used by Mr. Murphy. It was ugly, and I felt hope rise in me that Kate wouldn’t like it.

  A woman came to meet us at the front door of the main building. She was the head of the French Department. It was clear that this was her calling, that she took a particular pleasure in selling the school. “Welcome, Katherine! You”—she glanced at Kate—“can call me Madame Fitzgerald, and you”—she said to me with a wink—“can call me Vivienne.”

  Kate listened to Madame Fitzgerald politely on the tour, inclining her head, looking her in the eye. I wondered when we’d managed to teach her such good manners. Then, out of nowhere, this woman said to our daughter, “And am I to understand it that you’ve recently had a bereavement in the family?”

  “My brother drowned in May.”

  Yes, he drowned in May, fast, in a matter of seconds, barely ten feet from the beach, with Francis running down the headland and wading into the water. Kate could say it aloud, at twelve, and there I was, nearing forty and lost for words.

  “Ne t’inquiète pas, Kate, on s’occupera bien de toi ici. Do you know what that means? We’ll look after you here.”

  And I was outraged that John had told them, that he’d sent me down unarmed. And worse, Kate.

  At the hockey grounds, Madame Fitzgerald nodded to an artificial grass pitch surrounded by floodlights. Girls in short gray skirts, their mouths protruding with gum shields, passed balls back and forth. “That,” Madame Fitzgerald said with reverence, “is the first eleven. They’re getting a head start.” And when Kate and I looked blank, she added, “For the season.” Kate studied the girls, with no idea what a first eleven was. None of them looked up or seemed to take any notice of their French mistress leading us around, but there was a self-consciousness to their playing, a tight showiness to their passes that suggested to me that they knew they were part of the advertisement.

  The last leg of the tour was the dorms. The girls shared cubicles made for two, a narrow bed on each side, little lockers, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers. The mattresses were thin, the walls covered in stains left behind by Blu-Tack. I tried to imagine Kate whispering to the girl in the next bed after lights-out.

  Outside, I thanked Madame Fitzgerald and told her that we would be able to find our way back to the car park ourselves.

  “So, what did you think?” I asked Kate.

  “I don’t want to play hockey.”

  “You don’t have to, darling,” I said, rejoicing.

  “I think Madame Fitzgerald said you did. She said everyone plays.”

  “You could swim. It couldn’t possibly be as cold as it is at Dulough.” I looked at her and smiled, feeling generous, relieved.

  “Yes,” she said, tiredly. “I could swim, I suppose.”

  She talked as I drove us into town. She asked what it was like to grow up in Dublin. I told her that it was not as nice as growing up in Donegal. Did she realize what a privileged childhood she’d had—that most children don’t live in big houses and ramble infinitely?

  For lunch, we went to Grafton Street, to the Bewley’s that isn’t Bewley’s anymore. John and I used to go there when the pubs closed. The first time I brought him, he was taken aback at having late-night breakfasts, having been brought up under a regime of set meals at set times, but I soon got him hooked.

  The new owners had kept the old chairs and the stained glass windows, which I was glad of. The menu these days was all panini and pizzas. We each had a caprese panino. I imagined that Italians would be appalled by what passes for their staple in Ireland, watery cheese and a couple of cold, tasteless tomato slices on a baguette. Kate asked to try my coffee. She sipped and made a face. I laughed. She wasn’t so grown-up yet.

  We shopped at random, wandering in and out of inappropriate places, neither of us knowing where to go. I was struck by the cheapness of even expensive clothes, by the bad quality of the fabric, by the shoddy cuts. Kate ran her hands along jeans, sweatshirts; she avoided dresses and skirts like the plague. It was a relief to buy her some new clothes; even if I didn’t much like her choices, I was glad she’d be less self-conscious now. In the changing rooms, we looked at each other in the mirror. I could be passing my flesh on to her: As my body collapses in on itself, hers grows.

  That night, when Kate was brushing her teeth, my dad called me into the sitting room. I was worried he was going to ask me about Philip. Instead he said, “You’re in for a bit of weather.” I looked at the forecast; there were big swirls over the Atlantic. To be honest, I was glad to have an excuse to leave earlier than we meant to; the sooner I got Kate away from the pull of the city, the better.

  The next day, we did the journey back up in less than four hours. A record for us. It felt good to see John waiting there at the window, to know that he’d been looking forward to us getting back, that he’d felt our absence. I swung the car into the driveway. Kate got out, gave him a very teenager-y hug, and went off, lugging her shopping bags into the house. He came around to my door and spent the rest of the hug that was intended for Kate on me. And out of the blue I was crying, quite literally, on his shoulder. “Did something happen in Dublin?” I shook my head like a child, no, nothing in particular. He held on to me there as I soaked his shirt, so that afterwards he had to find another one. Now that I knew she didn’t want to go to that school, I found that I was nearly able to forgive him for trying to send her.

  When I’d finished, he made me a cup of instant coffee and told me that he and Francis had spent the day looking for the deer herd and battening down the hatches. He’d even taken the Buddha and hidden him in the shed. I began to worry about the new garden, exposed up there on the hil
l, the rhododendrons not big enough to shield it yet.

  As we sat at the kitchen table, Kate came out in a new pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but, God bless him, I don’t think John’s noticed the changes in her body. She moved noisily about, making herself a cup of tea.

  Later on, the wind became a living thing. I could hear it gathering in the hills, rushing towards the cottage, hurling itself at our bedroom window, so that I worried the glass might blow in. It was impossible to sleep. John regretted not staying up at the house, picturing what he might find in the morning. I reminded him that it wasn’t the first storm, that we were well prepared. But my imagination wasn’t far behind his. Outside, in the darkness, I could picture the trees bending with the wind, plants uprooted and carried away, walls toppled, and fierce waves. I pulled my mind back from the island as best I could, from the blackness that surrounded it, from the gales that blew over it, from the loneliness that enveloped it on a night like that.

  We emerged early in the morning, almost sleepless, moments after the Connollys came out into their own front garden. We walked down the avenue, the five of us, and rounded the main gates. The house was untouched. We surveyed it thoroughly—there was not a broken window or a fallen drainpipe, and we could see no evidence of tiles having come off the roof. Mrs. Connolly went to the kitchen to get a head start on the day’s baking and Francis went off in search of the deer. John walked with me through the grounds and up to my garden on the headland. It had been more or less spared too. We stood side by side, looking out at the dark, flat sea, the calm of it making us wonder whether the wind and rain had really ever happened at all. Then we saw the island. The point on the horizon which had been occupied by the church was empty.