Black Lake

by Johanna Lane

  He circled up through the house. Every room had a set of blue ropes dividing it in two; he recognized very little of the furniture, which had been arranged to suit a family not his own. To his surprise, his room was the least changed. There was a wardrobe where the wardrobe had been, a bed where the bed had been, even a chair in the corner for an imaginary boy to throw his clothes on before going to sleep. The bed was in significantly better shape than his own; it didn’t sag in the middle. He touched the soft counterpane. It must have been brought up from Dublin. A train set, which had been his father’s and grandfather’s, was set up in one corner of the room. They should have asked him to assemble it; he would have done a much better job.

  Without moving the new cushions from the windowsill, he jumped up and looked out over the barn roof. Down below, the hens were clucking in their run like old women. A couple of bikes leant against the hedge, belonging probably to the girls from town, whom he could hear vividly now, below him, in faint murmurs and then loud bursts of laughter. In the distance there was a smattering of snow left on the summit of Mount Errigal, but Muckish and Dooish glowed greenly into the morning.

  The white government car drove up to the back of the house and parked on the patch of grass in front of the barn. Mr. Murphy was in the passenger seat. As he opened his door, a second car arrived, sliding into place beside the first. A man Philip recognized from town emerged; it was Frank Foyle, the county councillor. Fat and red-faced, he was always wearing rubber boots with his suit. He went towards Mr. Murphy with his arm outstretched. As they shook hands, the men looked up at the house. Philip stood back quickly and jumped off the sill, leaving the muddy shapes of his feet on the new cushions. He turned them over quickly before running down the back stairs.

  In the garden, a marquee was being hoisted into place on the lawn. Men carrying folding chairs and tables flitted in and out of it. None of them seemed interested in Philip, so he walked around, inspecting the preparations. The marquee was really quite big; he wondered how many people it would fit—a couple of hundred, at least? He hadn’t thought before about how many would actually come today, but more than a hundred seemed a lot.

  He walked around the periphery of the tent, watching how the men battened it down with wooden stakes. It had windows too, of clear plastic, with mock panes. Inside, he could see people setting up. The girls were coming out of the house now, carrying white cloths that they ballooned over the tables. Still more girls came with vases of flowers. They wore what looked like nurses’ uniforms—white, with a collar and lots of pockets—but they had tied little black aprons around their waists too. It reminded Philip of the time they’d gone to his uncle’s wedding in Dublin; the waitresses serving dinner in the hotel had looked just like that. He wondered if they would be here every day or if this was just for the opening. One of them, a girl with black hair pulled into a neat bun, stopped when she saw him looking in the window. She nudged the one next to her and whispered something in her ear.

  By the time the main gates were thrown open to the visitors, Philip was safely back in the cottage. He found Kate in her room. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by piles of clothes. When he opened the door, she looked up at him despairingly. “I’m supposed to be wearing the dress they got me in Dublin.”

  “Look at this.” He beckoned her out the door, towards their parents’ room. The bed was neatly made and the stack of magazines, which had swayed so precariously in the corner since the move, had disappeared, as had the accordion file. He led Kate over to the window. Though it was now late morning, the curtains were still tightly drawn. Where window met wall, he parted the fabric. They peered out.

  There were people on the avenue. Having parked their cars down by the gate, they were making their way up to the big house. They were conspicuously tourists, with their brightly colored windbreakers and hiking boots. They took in the steep hills and the dark lake. When they reached the cottages, their eyes traveled first over Francis and Mrs. Connolly’s, with its whitewashed walls and red door. Philip and Kate’s was another story—the garden remained a sea of mud and the house had yet to be painted out of its gray concrete state. The visitors seemed particularly interested in the new cottage and one couple even stopped at the gate to get a better look.

  Philip said, “Do you think they want to come in?”

  Kate pulled him away from the window.

  Philip wasn’t sure what time the opening was to begin, but he knew that they were to wait in the cottage until their father came to bring them up to the big house. It was boring to hang around, and, after he’d had a late bowl of cereal, he fell asleep on top of his duvet. His mother woke him with a warm facecloth. His father and Kate were standing at his bedroom door, watching.

  “It’s time we went up, darling.” With her hand on the small of his back, she passed the cloth over his face.

  As they walked across the gravel towards the marquee, the girls were ferrying plates of sandwiches between the house and the tent. They were tiny finger sandwiches, made of fluffy white bread with the crusts cut off. Philip thought he saw cucumber poking out the side. He wanted one of those.

  It was evening inside the marquee; the plastic windows didn’t let in much light, which made the visitors’ faces look greenish. There must have been at least a hundred people, but Philip knew that he wasn’t very good at maths, so it was hard to tell. The tables had plenty of sandwiches and scones, and the girls wove amongst them, filling up tea and coffee cups. Local voices were all but lost amongst French, American, and German, but the visitors’ voices perceptibly died away when they recognized that the family had arrived.

  The tent was much bigger from the outside; when they went in, the family had to squeeze themselves between the visitors to get to the makeshift stage at the far end. His father seemed to know lots of people; he said hello to someone at almost every table they passed. Philip held on tightly to his hand, but his mother and Kate lagged behind, standing over by the door. They had to go back and fetch them, which Philip could tell annoyed his father.

  When they reached the stage, Frank Foyle met them, hand outstretched, just as he’d done earlier that morning with Mr. Murphy by the barn. When the farmer-politician reached down to pat Philip on the head, he got a good look at his red nose, the broken veins crisscrossing it like forked lightning. Mr. Foyle put his hand on Kate’s head, too. Philip grinned at her, but she was too disgusted to smile back.

  Mr. Murphy slowly came forwards from the back of the stage. He was very tall, much taller than Mr. Foyle, and a lick of his hair stood straight up at the front. When he shook hands with Philip’s father, Philip saw that they knew each other quite well; his father called him “Michael” and uncharacteristically clapped him on the shoulder. Philip and Kate were to sit between their parents on a row of chairs lined up at the back of the stage, with Mr. Murphy and Frank Foyle at each end. Philip turned to his mother; she was looking straight ahead. It was impossible for him to tell what she thought of all this, but he wished that she would turn to him, even for a second.

  The audience watched the stage expectantly, ready for a little entertainment. Frank Foyle blew into the microphone. “Thank you for coming. We’d like to extend a warm welcome to you all, whether you’re from across the water or just down the road.”

  He paused and turned around.

  Philip’s father put his hand down and gently silenced Philip’s feet, which had been thudding against the legs of the chair.

  Frank Foyle smiled indulgently and went back to his speech. “Today’s a great day, a great day indeed…”

  Philip sat directly opposite one of the plastic windows that looked out over the forest. He could see the trunks, dark and wet, and the giant ferns with leaves that cupped water for days after rainfall like they’d had last night. The path up there would be very muddy today, he thought, as Francis stepped out from behind a tree and peered in at him over the heads of the audience. Philip lifted his hand to wave, but the old man turned away and was en
gulfed by the forest again. Had Francis seen him? He wasn’t sure. But there he was again, closer now, not ten feet from the edge of the tent, looking in through the distorted panes. Philip waved and the audience turned to look behind them. Frank Foyle faltered for a moment but kept going, glancing up from time to time to see if they’d come back to him.

  “Now, if you’ll permit me. I’ll let you in on our plans for this grand old place. We have been awarded a very generous grant from the Office of Public Works.” He turned and nodded at Mr. Murphy. “And we have ambitious plans, ambitious plans. In addition to opening the house for guided tours, which you’ll be able to partake in the enjoyment of today, we’ll be building a Visitors’ Center down by the front gates, in the field where yous all parked your cars this morning. It will be a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly edifice, built right into the side of the hill so as not to disturb the natural habitat. There’ll be a restaurant serving full lunches, museum-type exhibits about the flora and fauna of the area, and”—he paused for effect—“a state-of-the-art cinema, which will show a film about Dulough. In the evenings there will be provision to use the space for visiting musicians and performances.”

  Frank Foyle had turned around now; he was watching Kate’s and Philip’s faces with obvious satisfaction. He made a little clapping motion. Philip understood and, looking out over the audience, began to clap. Frank Foyle smiled down at him. He lifted his hands as if to stop thunderous applause. “May I remind you of all the amenities at your disposal today: Tours of the house will begin in half an hour or so—please assemble outside the front door for that. I’ll be cutting the ribbon before the first tour…enjoy the grounds, this great lady behind me”—Frank Foyle gestured to Philip’s mother—“has written a guide to the gardens; they’re available by the door. The tearooms will be opening on the patio behind the house at about two o’clock, as long as it doesn’t rain, but if so, they’ll be in the conservatory, also at the back of the house. Lastly, ladies and gents, we’d ask that you don’t go down to the beach or attempt to get out to the island. We’re not insured for any of you to be eaten by the sharks.”

  He smirked at his own joke, but Philip noticed that it was the same thing the men had said when he’d come up from building his hut. He wondered if they’d told Mr. Foyle that he’d been in trouble for going out to the island. He watched for a look that said he knew what Philip had been up to, but he didn’t even turn around. Instead he added, “And of course, I’d like to introduce you to the owners of the estate, sitting here patiently behind me. They’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have this afternoon. Now, please enjoy yourselves and come back soon; don’t forget that every time you return, there’ll be more amenities to enjoy.”

  The audience clapped limply, tired of him now. Frank Foyle turned and shook first Mr. Murphy’s hand, then Philip’s father’s and mother’s. People rose in relief. The brightly colored windbreakers and hiking boots made for the door. Philip turned to his parents, but his father was talking to Mr. Murphy, and his mother was nowhere to be seen, she having turned and slipped away as soon as the county councillor had finished his speech.

  John

  John watched Marianne leave, clutching her guide to the gardens and his history of the house. Murphy had kept his word and printed the whole lot; John was suddenly stricken with panic that Marianne might catch him in the lies he’d written. The IRA had never occupied Dulough. That was a story he’d stolen from his Wicklow cousins. John’s brother was the only other person capable of pointing out the falsehoods, but he was in Dublin, most likely on the golf course today, and anyway Phil would have endorsed this decision. But John knew that Marianne would be of the opinion that appropriating Irish history to suit his own ends was very cheap indeed. Though she’d never said it, he knew that she found Dulough’s past upsetting. The first time she saw the ruins of those cottages, she’d gone quiet and he had wondered whether she was reconsidering her love for him, a man with Philip the First’s blood in his veins.

  The rain began to fall softly on the marquee, just as it had during their wedding reception. He remembered that day well, how he’d woken in his bed at dawn, the instant knowledge that there could be no going back now. Not that he’d wanted to go back. He was seized that morning by a need to tell Marianne about Dulough, having, he realized, told her almost nothing. He went to her room and saw the white dress hanging on the cupboard door; her expression told him that he shouldn’t be there, that he shouldn’t see her before the ceremony, that he shouldn’t see the dress—and then he’d watched her reject all that. He sat her down on the bed and in the hour before the hair lady came told her all sorts of things, so many things that he’d been a little sheepish later, when he saw her again, about how much he’d packed into that hour. Unlike in the brochure, he told only truths, the surprisingly small amount of information he had about what had gone on in this place in the hundred and fifty years or so before she arrived. What was he doing? Was he trying to impress her? But she’d already said yes, the evidence hanging there on the cupboard door.

  It was she who’d insisted on the chapel, despite the fact that it might fall down around their guests’ ears. They had to perform the ceremony at ten o’clock in the morning so as to accommodate the tides. He remembered their family and friends trouping over the beach in their finery, heels sinking into the sand, Marianne’s veil trailing in the water, so that later it would leave a sticky, salty trail up the aisle.

  Francis had worked hard to get the church ready, pulling weeds from between the pews, cleaning the altar of the remnants of birds and small animals. It was a glorious day; but for one quick shower, the sun shone from early in the morning until after eight o’clock that night, when the stragglers came inside to finish the whiskey and the wine. Mostly Trinity people, he remembered. He hadn’t seen that lot in years; the problem with living in such an out-of-the-way place was that no one ever visited. At least there’d be more people around now, he thought.

  Mrs. Connolly had done all the food for the wedding herself, with no help, despite the fact that Marianne had circled the kitchen in the days preceding their marriage, offering her services. She had been rebuffed, out of kindness, for hadn’t the bride better things to be doing than chopping and peeling? Marianne told him that she had not dared to say, well, no, actually she hadn’t.

  But the day had really come off very well, he thought. The Irish and English guests alike had been charmed by Dulough. In the middle of the afternoon, when the sky suddenly darkened and for half an hour emptied its contents on Donegal, he remembered children running around the house, playing hide-and-seek, and adults milling, glasses in hand, glad to be on a sofa after those wrought-iron chairs. He remembered standing in the bay window with Marianne, watching the men, who seemed to appear from nowhere, in their white jackets, tipping chairs against tables so that they wouldn’t hold the rain. That was the moment he had felt married to her, looking out over their gardens, and past them, to the sea. Someone had taken a photograph, one of their college friends, and John had been surprised, on opening the envelope with the Dublin postmark, not that the photo had been taken without his knowledge, but that he and Marianne were standing inches apart, without touching, which is not how he remembered it.

  John had thought, as they drove back from Dublin a few weeks ago, after their weekend in the Shelbourne, that things were looking up, that Marianne had got the anger out of her system. He felt sure they had come to an understanding in that hotel room, a room far grander than his old college digs, but enough of a reminder of their student days to invoke a truce.

  He knew better than to follow her as she fled the marquee now. Mrs. Connolly was wrong; there had to be unsaid things between husbands and wives, and he had learnt that, though these were the things that saved you, they separated you too.

  Philip

  A few hours later, the ribbon cut and the tours begun, Philip was back in the big house. He had come to ask Bríd, the guide, if he could hear one of her tal
ks. He stood in the hall, listening, but there was no sound, not even the girls in the kitchen.

  He went upstairs, the new carpet as soft as grass. Still nothing. Instinctively, he turned towards his bedroom; the door was open and there was a smear of mud on the threshold. He skirted the room with the intention of going out the other door and disappearing down the back stairs, but at the foot of the bed there was a little boy playing with the old train set. The boy was holding the pea-green engine and running it roughly backwards and forwards over a lone piece of track. The rest had been pulled apart and lay scattered on the floor. A signalman was wedged underneath the cupboard door, his head cracked and lolling to one side. As Philip stood, wondering what he should do, the boy looked up.

  Philip strode over to where he was kneeling and grabbed the engine out of his hands. Mr. Murphy had asked if it could be used as a prop; he had not said that it would be played with. This was not what he had agreed to. The boy fled underneath the bed. Philip bent down. “This is my bedroom.” The boy looked out at him from behind the folds of the counterpane. “You’ve got to be careful; if you run it hard, you’ll break the wheels, see?” He turned the engine over and held it up to the boy’s nose, so he could see the row of wheels that ran along the bottom. Then, handing the engine back, he pulled the broken signalman from underneath the cupboard door, examined him carefully, and slipped him into his pocket to be glued later.

  Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, Philip put a pile of miniature people in the gap between his legs, so that they wouldn’t be stepped on. He began to assemble the track. The boy stayed quiet under the bed. Philip had nearly forgotten about him when, after ten minutes or so, he crawled out and sat opposite. Philip handed him a few pieces of track as a peace offering.

  When they had finished, it spiraled around a good portion of the room. They began to assemble a long train of cars.