Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  She hoped the child wouldn’t be a frightened pickaheen of a thing, afraid to open her mouth. Then it would really be out of the frying pan and into the fire for the girl … the blitz of London or the noisy O’Connors in full cry. It would be hard to know which was worse.

  In any event, the child might bring her closer to Violet again, after all these years. Eileen wished they could have kept in touch more. She had tried, Lord knows, writing often and giving little details about life in Kilgarret and sending Violet’s only child little gifts on birthdays – but Violet only scribbled a card from time to time. It annoyed Eileen that their closeness had seemed to vanish into the air, because it had been a very real closeness based on the fact that they had both been in that convent school on a false premise. Violet, because her family (wrongly) thought that a convent school might give their girl a little polish; Eileen, because her family thought that a convent school in England would be a cut above any kind of a Catholic education in the homeland.

  Still, she was going to be brought back into Eileen’s life again and Eileen was glad of it. Perhaps, in a year or two, when this terrible war was over, George and Violet might even come to stay in Donnelly’s Hotel on the other side of the square, and thank Eileen from the bottom of their hearts for putting roses back into the cheeks of their daughter. The friendship would blossom all over again, and Eileen would have someone to remember those long-gone days in St Mark’s which she couldn’t talk to anyone else about because they all said she was uppity to have been at an English school at all. …

  She would like to have gone up on the bus herself to meet the little girl. A day in Dublin would cheer her. No squinting over books and bills, she could collect Elizabeth in Dunlaoghaire when the boat got in – or Kingstown, as some people still called it, just to get a rise out of Sean – and then they could take a tram into Dublin. She could take Elizabeth to see the sights, maybe even climb Nelson’s Pillar, something else she had never done. But this was fanciful. … She couldn’t go, Young Sean must collect the girl. He had been so restless and ready to fight with his father over anything, Eileen thought a day off from the shop would be no harm. He was to go off that Tuesday after work, on the evening bus. He could stay with her cousin, who ran a small boarding house in Dunlaoghaire – half a dozen eggs would pay the compliment for giving him a bed in the sitting room for the night. He had strict instructions to be on the pier before the boat even berthed so that the child wouldn’t fear that no one had come to meet her. He was to tell her his name when he saw a ten-year-old in a green coat, with blonde hair, and carrying a brown suitcase and wearing a brown shoulder bag. He was to be welcoming, and give her some buttered brack and a bottle of orange squash while they waited for the bus home. On no account was he to dawdle so they would miss the bus. Eileen knew well Sean’s interest in collecting a ten-year-old girl from a mail-boat was minimal, but if he were to meet any group of young lads about to enlist in the British army, as he had done the last time he was in Dublin, his excitement would be enormous.

  Eileen arranged with the Mahers to collect the new kitten on the afternoon Elizabeth arrived; she wanted to have plenty of distract everyone if the arrival was not a success. She also wanted them all to think of the coming of Elizabeth with that of a new, black and white furry bundle, which was guaranteed to be a success.

  Mrs Moriarty was a very kind woman. She had a picnic of her own and shared some cold tinned peas with Elizabeth; they spooned them together out of the tin.

  ‘I didn’t know you were allowed to eat them cold,’ said Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s own little picnic was very dull in comparison; six small, neat sandwiches with the crusts all cut off, very little cheese in three and even less tomato in the other three. There was an apple and two biscuits, all wrapped in white paper – even a folded paper napkin as well.

  ‘Mother said I must make two meals of this, supper and breakfast,’ she said gravely. ‘But please do have a sandwich now in exchange for the peas.’

  Mrs Moriarty took one and pronounced it excellent.

  ‘Aren’t you a lucky little girl to have a Mammy make all that for you now?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I made it myself really, but Mother wrapped it,’ said Elizabeth.

  Mrs Moriarty told Elizabeth that she was going home to live with her son and his scald of a wife in County Limerick. She had lived since she was a widow in England, and she loved the place, the bigness of London did your heart good. She had worked in a vegetable shop and everyone had been very pleasant and friendly, but now, what with her arthritis, and the blitz and everything, they insisted she came home. Mrs Moriarty didn’t like it a bit. She wouldn’t feel the same when the war was over, the others in the shop would think she had run away. But there was nothing she could do, her son and his brazen strap of a wife had been writing every week – they had even come over to plead with her. Everyone in their street said they were heartless to let a mother be roasted alive by bombs in London, so they had demanded that she come back.

  Elizabeth agreed that it was hard to make a journey when you didn’t want to, and as Mrs Moriarty spooned out some tinned pears she told her about Mother’s friends, the O’Connors, who lived in a dirty town in a house where everything was untidy and in a square where animals came and soiled the place. Mrs Moriarty said thoughtfully that maybe Elizabeth should keep her worries about the town being dirty to herself, that perhaps she shouldn’t pass on her mother’s views until she had had time to form an opinion of her own. Elizabeth flushed and said that she wouldn’t dream of saying anything like that when she got to Mrs O’Connor’s – it was only because Mrs Moriarty was a friend and had told her about the awful daughter-in-law. …

  They ate a tin of condensed milk to seal their conspiracy, and Elizabeth fell asleep with her head on Mrs Moriarty’s shoulder and didn’t stir until they were all woken up and turned out into the cold night air in Holyhead, with porters shouting to each other in Welsh and great confusion as they waited to be called into line for the mail-boat.

  ‘Will they speak like that in Ireland?’ asked Elizabeth nervously. The place seemed to be very unsafe with people shouting and laughing in a foreign language. Mother would have said something very putting down about it; Elizabeth tried to imagine what it might have been, but failed.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Moriarty. in Ireland we speak English, we’ve thrown out anything that was any good to us, like our language and our way of going on.’

  ‘And our mothers-in-law,’ said Elizabeth seriously.

  ‘That’s it,’ laughed Mrs Moriarty. ‘Well, if they’re bringing back mothers-in-law, Lord knows what else they might revive,’ and she leaned on Elizabeth’s shoulder as the line started to shuffle off slowly to the mail-boat, which stood large and awesome in the night.

  Sean hated people like Mrs Moriarty, people who clutched at your arm and whispered you confidences out of the side of their mouths as if you were in the know, and they were in the know, but somebody else was not in the know. He pulled away slightly as she started to hiss at him that the little girl was very tired and sick from the journey, and that her mother had a hard mouth, and that he and his family shouldn’t mind too much what she said.

  ‘I think those people are waving at you,’ he said eventually, in order to escape. A middle-aged man and woman were shouting, ‘Mam, Mam, we’re here!’

  Elizabeth looked up for the first time since she had agreed to Sean identifying who she was. She stared long and hard at Mrs Moriarty’s daughter-in-law, who had a smile of welcome nailed on her face.

  ‘She doesn’t look scalded any more,’ she said clearly. ‘Perhaps the burns have healed now.’

  Sean offered Elizabeth brack and lemonade as they walked in the early morning sunlight towards the bus stop.

  ‘Mam said you were to have this if you were hungry,’ he said ungraciously.

  ‘Do I have to?’ she asked. Her face was paler than her hair, her eyes were red and her legs were like sticks. He thought she was a miserable spec
imen.

  ‘No, indeed you don’t, it was only Mam being nice. I’ll eat it myself, I love brack,’ he said, loyalty to his mother coming unexpectedly to the fore.

  ‘I didn’t mean. …’ she said.

  ‘No matter.’ He unwrapped two huge doorsteps of brack with a lump of butter spread unevenly between them, and began to demolish them.

  ‘Is it cake?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘It’s brack, I told you it was brack, you said you didn’t want it.’

  ‘I didn’t know what it was.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask me?’ He wondered what kind of child would never have heard of brack.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  They walked in silence to the stop for the Bray bus. Her suitcase was heavy and it dragged her down; she wore her shoulder bag criss-crossed over her thin chest. She looked the picture of an orphan.

  Sean’s mind was full of the boy he had met last night in the guesthouse. Terry was seventeen, too young to join up, but he said that you could always say your birth certificate went up in the Customs House fire. Nobody in England knew when that was. Terry was off on the very same mail-boat when it turned around. He’d go to the nearest recruitment centre and he’d be in uniform in a couple of weeks. Sean couldn’t sleep a wink from envy. Terry had spoken of other friends who had gone a month ago. Earning proper salaries, real wages, training, drilling, handling weapons, learning all the skill needed; going across the sea soon, but it was all hush-hush. Terry, too, worked for his father, on a small farm. He knew what it was like to get no real money, only pocket money, and a so-called training. He knew what it was like not to be allowed to grow up, your mam asking if you had been to confession, your da asking you to do a bit around the house to help your mam. No life. No chance to get into a uniform. …

  ‘What kind of uniform does your da wear?’ he asked Elizabeth suddenly.

  Her little white face became all flushed, as if someone had hit her with a strong hand and left the marks of a slap.

  ‘He … isn’t … doesn’t … you see he didn’t have to go to the war. He’s at home.’

  ‘Why was that?’ demanded Sean, his slight and marginal interest in this new girl waning as she couldn’t even provide him with information about the day to day business of war.

  ‘He had to stay in the bank, I think … I think they needed. …’ And Elizabeth’s face was working with the effort of trying to explain honestly something she had never understood, but which she knew was something that made Mother and Father prickly with each other.

  ‘I think they had to keep senior men with bad chests,’ she said eventually.

  Sean looked at her without interest, his mind back with Terry and enlistment. They waited in Bray for the Wicklow bus.

  ‘Do you want to go to the lavatory before the bus comes?’ he asked suddenly. In all her ten years, Elizabeth had never been asked such a direct and embarrassing question.

  ‘Er, yes, please,’ she said.

  Young Sean indicated two public conveniences with a jerk of his head.

  ‘Over there, don’t be all day and all night, the bus’ll be here in five minutes.’

  Elizabeth scampered up to the two low buildings. But there was no ‘Ladies’ or ‘Gents’ written on them. She had found it adventurous enough to use a public toilet in London with Mother, who had always insisted that she use lots of lavatory paper to guard her from all the infections which lay in the seat, but here the problem was monumental. There only seemed to be sets of initials over the doors, no names. One had MNA, the other FIR. Elizabeth gave it some thought. She looked back at Sean. He already thought she was silly, what would he think if she ran back to ask him which convenience she should use? Think hard. M must be for males, F for females. Courageously, she walked into the Fir.

  Four men stood with their backs to her as she walked in. She wondered whether they were painting the wall in front of them, or doing some kind of repairs, and hesitated before going past them to seek the entry to the Ladies’.

  One of the men turned around and, to her horror, his trousers were undone. He was an old man, without many teeth, and his cap was on back to front.

  ‘Get on out of here, girlie, go on home and don’t be a bold little girl,’ he shouted. The other men turned around.

  ‘Get on off with you… you’ll see plenty of it when you’re older!’ shouted a young man, and the others laughed.

  Scarlet, her heart pounding, Elizabeth ran out to where Sean was shouting at her to hurry as the bus had just come around the corner.

  ‘Holy God, did you go into the Men’s?’ he asked, and before she could say anything he added warningly, ‘Don’t tell that to Mam or she’ll beat the bottom off you.’ Elizabeth’s brown case was snatched and thrown on the roof rack of the bus.

  ‘It says Cill Maintain!’ she cried, it doesn’t say Wicklow, this is the wrong bus!’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, will you get in,’ said Young Sean, who had found it hard enough to have to travel with a normal ten-year-old, but one who was obviously mentally disturbed was proving even worse.

  It began to rain just then, as the bus headed off, passing by the fields of green, each surrounded by a hedge of darker green; and Elizabeth stared hard out of the window willing the tears back into her head. She was also willing herself to hold on until the bus stopped at another convenience where someone might tell her the significance of all these initials. It seemed like weeks since she had left London, and she realised to her horror that it was less than twenty-four hours.

  Eileen had left the shop early, just in case the bus arrived sooner than expected. She wanted to be sure that she was there to welcome the child. Peggy was screeching, Aisling tongue-tied, Eamonn truculent, Donal unintelligible. … This would be no way to start a new life in the country. She smoothed her skirt and tidied stray wisps of hair, wondering how Violet looked now: she had always had fine hair and a milk-white face. Perhaps the little girl would be the same, not covered with freckles like all the O’Connors.

  The table had been laid with more than usual care. Eileen had sent back a cloth which was badly stained – Peggy was annoyed that standards were seeming to be raised. Aisling ran in.

  ‘Since you’re home, Mammy, will we go on up to Maher’s and get the kitten now and have it ready for your one when she arrives?’

  ‘Her name is Elizabeth, not your one,’ snapped Eileen. ‘No, the kitten is for both of you to share.’

  ‘I know,’ said Aisling unconvincingly. Eamonn had bounded in behind her.

  ‘Two paws each,’ he giggled. ‘One lot for you and one lot for her.’

  ‘I’ll have the front paws,’ said Aisling thoughtfully.

  ‘That’s not fair, then she’d only get the bottom!’ Eamonn snorted at his own audacity.

  ‘Don’t say “bottom”, Mammy will belt you,’ retorted Aisling, looking sideways at her mother like a troublemaker.

  Eileen wasn’t paying attention. ‘Come here to me now Aisling and I’ll brush your hair. It’s like a furze bush. Stand still now.’ The brush was always on the mantelpiece of the breakfast room by the clock and it was taken down on Saturday nights for a weekly assault. Maureen and Aisling hated it and squirmed away – the boys were usually able to rely on their father for rescue.

  ‘Stop titivating them, Eileen,’ he would say, ‘sure aren’t they men? Their hair is fine. Leave them alone now.’ But he never had any salvation for the long curly hair of his daughters. Aisling pulled and resisted.

  ‘It’s worse than getting ready for mass,’ she complained.

  ‘Don’t say anything bad about mass, that’s a sin,’ said Eamonn, delighted to have caught her out in a crime equal to his own. ‘Mammy, she said she hated getting ready for mass.’

  ‘No, she didn’t, she said she hated having her hair brushed. Aisling wouldn’t say anything bad about God’s Holy Mass, would you, Aisling?’

  ‘No, Mammy,’ said Aisling, eyes lowered. Eamonn was annoyed. Usually any question
of insulting Holy God brought great retribution on the head of the culprit.

  Peggy was still in a bad humour and she felt that times were about to change for the worse.

  ‘Will I get Donal up, Mam? He says he’s mad to be down here when the one arrives and he knows there’s a fire. He says he doesn’t want the one to think he’s. …’

  ‘Peggy, Elizabeth White is called Elizabeth. She is not the one. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Mam. I know, Mam,’ said Peggy, alarmed.

  The hair brush was put away.

  ‘I’ll go up for him now.’ Eileen crossed the room, but as she did so she looked automatically out on to the square. The bus must have arrived. There were straggles of people coming across the square from Donnelly’s Hotel, where the Dublin bus drew up each day. And there was Sean, walking ahead, kicking moodily at a stone. Her big, handsome, restless son, worried and unhappy about something. Eileen’s heart skipped with worry about him, as it so often did.

  And behind him, dragging her own heavy case, was a white-faced little girl. Smaller and thinner than Aisling with hair so pale that it didn’t look like hair at all. The green coat made her look more pale and wan than ever. She had a school hat with elastic under her chin and one of her gloves, attached by elastic to her sleeve, flapped about.

  There, in the square in Kilgarret, her eyes like two big holes burned in a blanket, stood Elizabeth.

  Just as she had predicted, Eileen noticed that Aisling had become awkward and tongue-tied.

  ‘No, you go down, Mammy,’ she said.

  ‘Is she there? What’s she like?’ cried Eamonn. He rushed to the window and saw the little figure.