Lake of Shadows

by Jane Arbor

  He showed mild interest in the fact that her chief was allowing her to continue to read for him from home. Meanwhile he himself, he told her, had just embarked on writing a new appraisal of the legendary tragedy of Deirdre, Naisi and Conchubor—viewing King Conchubor, not the ill-starred lovers, as the sympathetic figure of the story... No doubt Kate would like to see it when he had pulled it into shape?

  He put away his papers and came to the meal reluctantly. To both Bridie’s and Kate’s relief, he evinced no curiosity as to how she had travelled from the airport, but just as they were about to sit down he dropped a small domestic bombshell of his own by wondering aloud why young Regan hadn’t come, after showing himself eager enough when he was asked.

  Bridie’s jaw dropped and her glance at the cold lamb and buttered jacket potatoes was clearly a calculation of how far they could be stretched to include the feeding of a guest. “Oh, Father! D’you mean you asked Dennis to supper without telling me? When?”

  “When did I ask. him, or when was it he was to come?”

  “Both.”

  “It would be yesterday. I was at the Post Office for my tobacco and he was in for his letters. I asked him had he heard we had Kate coming back to us, and he said he had surely. So I asked him to supper tonight, and if I didn’t put a name to the hour we have our meal, hasn’t he been coming to this house for long enough to know it for himself?”

  With pardonable irony Bridie began, “Even though in two years or so he could have forgotten—” as footsteps crunched on the gravel outside she broke off to nod to Kate, “There he is now. You go, and I’ll lay an extra place.”

  At the door which Kate opened to Dennis they both spoke each other’s name in the same breath—

  “Kate!”

  “Dennis!”—but though Kate would have given much to echo his, “Why bless you, you’re still Kate—you haven’t changed a bit!” she could not. The words stuck in her throat.

  For he was no longer the gay, lithe Dennis she remembered, the change in him due less to the stiff, awkward movement of his injured hip than to some inner stress which had shadowed his eyes and thinned his sensitive face to its very bone structure.

  Her instinct towards him was one of deep pity, and it was upon that impulse that she kissed his cheek and left her hand in his as they went to join the others.

  Her father’s greeting to him was a placid, “Ah, Dennis—” as if he were the almost daily visitor to the house he had once been, and Bridie quoted, “ ‘If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake’, but now I’m afraid you’ll have cold lamb and like it!” As they ate the talk was mostly of the ‘Do you remember—?’ variety, and once or twice Dennis’s old infectious laugh rang out. The sore subject of changes on the Lake did not arise, though there was one near-flashpoint at mention of the Lakestrand Hotel.

  That was when Dennis asked Kate if she would care to drive in with him to Cork the following day, when he had to visit the foundry which cast the heavier work his forge could not accommodate.

  “Burke houses my car for me, so if you could get to the Lakestrand under your own steam, I’d meet you and we could go on from there,” he suggested. But before Kate could reply Professor Ruthven had pounced on the hated name and was grumbling, “Burke! I wonder, Dennis, you can bring yourself to have dealings with the fellow!”

  To which, however, Dennis only said evenly, “Why not? He’s been a good friend to me.” And then again to Kate, “Will you come?”

  After the meal the Professor went back to his study and Bridie said, “It’s your first evening, Kate. I’ll wash up; you stay and talk to Dennis.” But she rejoined them quite soon and again their talk explored their common ground until Dennis levered himself from his chair with the help of his stick and said he must go.

  Kate rose too. “You came across by dinghy? If you’ll wait while I get a coat, I’ll walk down with you to our stage,” she offered.

  “Ah, do that, will you?” He sounded pleased. Bridie stretched, said it had been quite a day and she was going to take a bath and go to bed. And when they had exchanged goodnights with her, the other two set out.

  They took the path between the trees, Kate matching her pace to Dennis’s encumbered limp. They walked the short way in silence, broaching no intimacies, until they came out on the staging with its tiny boathouse, beneath which the lake water gently slapped Dennis’s dinghy to the length of its tie-rope and back again.

  They leaned side by side on the handrail above it, and Dennis said abruptly:

  “Tell now about London, Kate. Was the job all you hoped? And the life? And what really brought you back?”

  That involved telling him about Basil; who he was; how she had met him and that they hadn’t lost touch, since he would be coming over to see her very soon.

  He asked the same question as Bridie—were they engaged? And when she said No, but that she wasn’t afraid Basil didn’t care for her enough, he said he was glad for her, very very glad. This Basil had better deserve her. But when she left home, hadn’t he, Dennis, forecast that he was giving her two years or less before she’d be bidding him to dance at her wedding to an Englishman, and he hadn’t been so far out at that, had he?

  But as Kate laughed her agreement, already he had caught himself up.

  “Is it ‘dance’ I said? A power of dancing I’ll be doing at your wedding or another’s from now on! Because I’m saddled with this thing”—his elbow nudged his stick—“for good, you know. But I daresay you’ll have heard that of me already?” His tone was bitter.

  Kate said, “Yes, Bridie told me. But, Dennis, you mustn’t let it matter so much, too much! You—”

  “I know! It’s happened before; it will again. It could be worse, and at least I’m alive. Accept. Come to terms. Learn to live with it. Count my blessings—Oh, Kate,” he turned on her, “I’d hoped you’d spare me the platitudes, the bromides. Are you going to let me down?”

  “You know I’m not, if there’s anything—But those things aren’t platitudes. They’re—well, they’re experience that could help you if you’d let them.”

  “Like ‘Time heals everything’? That’s a real greybeards’ classic, and I’ve often wondered how long they suggest one should sit with folded hands, waiting to prove whether it does or not.”

  “Oh, Dennis, time is different for everyone, and how can I tell you how long, when I’ve mostly been happy all my life and haven’t had anything for time to heal? No, I think you’ve just got to try to live each day for what it’s worth and believe you’ll be happy again in the end.”

  “And be thankful like mad, I suppose, that I can still swim—if I’m helped in and out of the water; that I can drive a car—if it’s specially adapted; that I can still design in iron—but can’t stand over a forge for more than a couple of hours at a time? All right. Fair enough. But what about the rest, Kate? The ‘If onlys—!’ The regrets. The ‘Never another chance’. The—the guilt?”

  Kate looked at him, appalled. “The guilt? You mean your wife’s death? But you can’t blame yourself for that! It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s how they brought it in. ‘Complete exoneration of the car-driver’—me. There was this character who had parked his broken-down lorry at the roadside to go in search of a garage, just before lighting-up time. He had to go further than he thought and meanwhile I came along in patchy fog and ran into it. Aileen’s side of the car was ripped clean open—But the point is we needn’t have been on the road. We were only going over to her people for a drink. She was hatching a cold and didn’t want to go, but I persuaded her. And if I hadn’t, she would still be alive. If I hadn’t, Kate! If only I hadn’t. That’s what I’m left to live with for the rest of my days!”

  “Oh, Dennis, you mustn’t destroy yourself like that! Something of the sort might have happened on any other night when you hadn’t been able to choose whether you went out or not. No one else blames you. I’m sure Aileen’s people don’t. And can you imagine that s
he would want you to suffer like this? You must know she wouldn’t!” urged Kate.

  “I gave her a lot of chance, didn’t I?” he muttered. As his head went despairingly into his hands, Kate put a compassionate arm about his shoulders. There was silence for a minute until she asked, “You loved her very much?”

  He nodded. “I can’t describe it. We compared notes afterwards and we agreed it happened for both of us in much the same way—like an electric shock. For myself, I’d never known before what it was to feel so beholden to another person or to take such delight in them. That’s love, isn’t it, Kate? You should know.”

  She remembered Basil with a warm glow. “I think I do. It is like that—I wish I had known Aileen,” she said.

  “I do too. But there wasn’t time. And we didn’t have a wedding, we just got married. And afterwards we had a mere three weeks—”

  “And later? Wouldn’t it have helped if you had stayed in the north where her people were and where you had had those three weeks?”

  He shook his head. “Only one. Two of them were honeymoon. And though I tried for long enough for the Soames’ sake, the north without Aileen wasn’t for me. So I came back to the lake, only to find it’s no easier here—” He broke off and his fist thumped the handrail in impotent fury.

  “Why, why, why had she to die and I to live, and the whole thing all my fault? Tell me, Kate—tell me!”

  But there was no human answer to that, as he must know. Kate could only shake her head in pitying silence and presently he straightened and looked at the luminous dial of his watch.

  “Time you were rid of me tonight, Kate. I’ll try to behave tomorrow. You’ll be all right going back?”

  She assured him she would. They said their good-nights and she watched the dinghy bob away towards the Island until she lost it in the darkness. But when she turned she did not retrace her way up the path to the house. Instead, on impulse, she kept to the shore. A quarter of a mile along it she could strike up on to the road at a stone bridge over a culvert and from there turn back and reach home by way of the ride.

  There was no moon, but the night had a Gulf Stream warmth to it and when she reached the bridge she climbed up to it and sat on its high parapet, half turned to the lake, half to the road, thinking about the long day and the problems it had posed since Conor Burke had met her at the airport.

  The darkness made the lights of his hotel the only landmark to be seen, and reluctantly she allowed that by night it was by no means the offence it was by day. In fact, it almost had something ... Its vague white shape revealed good lines and its lights, reflected in the lake, were so many shimmering paths. Long, mostly single-storied, it could be, Kate’s fancy suggested, a ship anchored for the night on a glass-smooth lagoon. Through half-shut eyes she viewed it so, conjuring with the hope that in time she would forgive the massacre which had gone to its building and come to terms with the idea that it and its brash owner were there to stay. Meanwhile she saw herself tom between Bridie’s liking for the man and her father’s feud with him; hunting with the hounds, running with Bridie’s hares. She wished she had known enough of Conor Burke to get Norah’s opinion of him. But placid Norah, with her ‘not to worry’ mentality, had probably taken the whole thing in her stride, disturbed by it not at all.

  At last Kate decided it was time to abandon her perch and go home. Keeping a grip on the parapet while she groped for the foothold she had used when climbing up, she turned outward for the jump down into the road, then checked to allow the passing of a car approaching fast from the direction of Morah Beg and Cork. But as the long beam of its headlights raked towards her, were on her, she felt soft stone crumble and shift under her feet, and suddenly she had no choice but to jump...

  In her instinctive need to land short of the car’s wheels she came down on all fours, blinded by its lights and sickened by a now rare though still familiar pain in her right kneecap. She heard brakes shriek and tyres tear at the road surface. The car stopped within its own length and the driver had come back to her before she was fully on her feet.

  He stood over her, a shock-headed figure she recognised. Conor Burke ... Then his fingers bit in to the flesh of her upper arm and he stood her upright to face him.

  “Well—” he said on a long-drawn note. “And what would you say you were at, leaping about on the high way like a sporting hare at this time of night? D’you know what time it is, hm?”

  “No—Yes—” Shaken and in pain, Kate’s reaction was sharp irritation. “Heavens, what on earth does the time matter?” she retorted.

  He looked her up and down. “Nothing—except that at such an hour I’d expect you to be in your bed, and how is it that you’re not?”

  “I’ve been out for a walk.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. That is, Dennis Regan had been to supper with us, and after I’d seen him down to our stage I decided to go back by the shore and the road. Then I sat up there for a while”—she pointed to the bridge top—“and when you came along I was just about to come down.”

  “Choosing your moment so that you would hop handily into the path of my car? You must have seen it coming, or should I have my headlights checked?”

  Kate said testily, “Of course I saw you coming and meant to let you pass. But I missed my foothold in a crevice and had to jump when I did. And come to that, you weren’t exactly dawdling along, were you?”

  He looked at her in mock admiration. “D’you know, I couldn’t have turned the haft of an awkward argument better than that myself? However, I didn’t hit you? You’re riled because you’d like to blame me, but you’re not hurt?”

  “No, of course not. The car didn’t touch me.” But she winced as she spoke, and at once his hand was again on her arm.

  “You are hurt,” he accused. “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing. Just a legacy from school games. My kneecap slips. But it goes back just as easily as it goes out, and then—There! It’s back. I’m all right.”

  “You are not. Come, get into the car and I’ll drive you home. You’re not fit for the walk. What if that knee should give out on you again on the way?”

  “There’s no reason why it should. I can walk, really.”

  Fists on hips, he stood his ground. “You aren’t going to be let, woman dear. Now, do you get into the car or do I put you there?”

  Seething under “Woman dear”—Irish for “my good woman” and equally inflaming—Kate said, “Oh, very well,” and was surprised and chagrined to find how glad she was of the support of his hand beneath her elbow.

  He turned the car, and as it gathered speed she said, “This is—kind. But there’s not much point in it, as I shall still have to walk the length of the ride after you have dropped me. You really shouldn’t have troubled.”

  He half-turned towards her. “And who said I wasn’t driving you to your door?” he enquired conversationally.

  “But this afternoon you didn’t ... couldn’t because of—”

  “ ‘Couldn’t’ is a strong word. My leaving you then was by Bridie’s orders, and I’m not the one to seek trouble for her with the Professor. But in the present case, he should thank me for being handy when you lighted down from your wall, and you should be grateful that I appreciate you’re equal to fighting your own battles,” he countered.

  “Implying that you think Bridie isn’t, so you don’t mind conniving at her deceiving her father on occasion?” Kate snapped.

  Conor Burke considered the point. “And that’s another strong word—‘deceive’,” he said. “But since the Professor’s quarrel with me isn’t Bridie’s, where’s the great harm in her sometimes holding her tongue, in order to keep the peace?”

  “She shouldn’t try to keep the peace at the price of her loyalty to Father.”

  “And you’d expect her to weigh the one against the. other when she finds herself in a jam? I suppose the next thing will be that you’ll want to stop the child from asking a helping hand of me when she happens t
o need it?” he accused.

  Kate said stiffly, “I’ve already told her I don’t think she should ask favours of you while you and Father—”

  “Nor, I daresay, should she come over to the Lakestrand when she has need to swim or dance or get together with youngsters of her own age? Nor even to see my mother, who is very fond of her? In the name of loyalty to a side she never asked to be on, you’d stop all that for her?”

  His concern for Bridie was so sincere that Kate felt oddly ashamed. On the defensive, she said, “Now you’re being rather unfair. Since I’ve put it to her, she realises herself she oughtn’t to put—any of us—under obligation to you. But obviously, even if I could, I wouldn’t stop her from seeing you or your mother or going to the Lakestrand whenever she wishes, as long as Father knows she does.”

  Conor Burke nodded. “I see. Aiding and abetting, however worthy the cause—out. Social visiting, as long as all above board—still in. So, under Count One, Bridie won’t be turning in the car for Phelan to tune, I take it?”

  “She knows I’d rather she didn’t.”

  “On the other hand, under Count Two we could even hope to see you at the Lakestrand yourself sometime?”

  Kate hesitated. “I—expect so,” she said. And then, remembering her date with Dennis, “In fact, quite soon. Tomorrow. I’m meeting Dennis Regan there in the morning, and driving with him to Cork.”

  Her companion turned a long, speculative look upon her. “Are you. now?” It was the last remark which passed between them until he took the hazards of the ride with care and set her down at her door.

  For the keeping of her rendezvous with Dennis, Kate had meant to borrow Bridie’s bicycle. But as her kneecap was still tender the next morning she was glad when Bridie came in from the garage to announce that the car had temporarily repented of its ways and she advised Kate to make use of it while it was in the mood.

  As she drove along the shore road, Kate saw Dennis’s dinghy crossing the lake and he was in the hotel forecourt waiting for her when she arrived.