Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  With a pang Elizabeth thought of Aisling and how her face would light up if she heard someone talking about gorgeous red hair. She wished again and again that it was easy to write what you felt. Her letters to Aisling seemed so dull and Aisling’s were very off-hand and breezy. If it weren’t for Aunt Eileen she would think that nobody in Kilgarret even remembered her.

  Violet wondered whether they should send some gift to Eileen’s family to thank them for all they had done for Elizabeth. She had discussed it with George.

  ‘You were the one who said that they wouldn’t notice an extra mouth at the table,’ he had grumbled. ‘Anyway, where are we going to get some kind of proper present as you call it?’

  Violet reflected.

  ‘They were very generous, you know, they bought her a bike, and when she left they told her to sell it and keep the money because it was hers not theirs. They bought her clothes, you know, underwear too.’

  ‘I thought we sent money for clothes.’

  ‘We did, but not enough. I mean, Eileen always wrote to say she’d bought Elizabeth a new winter coat with the money we sent, but Elizabeth tells me that she got everything the other children did, you know, and Sean used to give them all money for the cinema or whatever. I suppose I’m just a little worried in case we took it all too casually.’

  ‘You wrote and thanked them, didn’t you?’ George said in an aggrieved tone.

  ‘Oh certainly, I wrote and thanked… but you know they did a marvellous job on Elizabeth. She’s so grown-up and yet not changed at all. Did you know that she’s going to be in a form with sixteen-year-olds? She’s far ahead of what we had expected.’

  ‘She’s read quite a lot,’ George said, pleased. ‘She was telling me yesterday that she and Aisling used to read Wilkie Collins to each other at night. Only one of them could have the torch so they took it in turns to do the reading aloud.’ He laughed at the thought of it.

  Violet smiled too. ‘I don’t think she’s lonely or anything, but it would be nice to keep in contact. The trouble is there’s nothing for us to buy here. They’re the ones who can buy things. I wonder if they realise it?’

  ‘Why don’t you write again and say when rationing’s over well send them a gift to say thank you.’

  ‘I’ll need to say it tactfully,’ Violet mused. Eileen was always full of pride, and stubborn. She was very much her own person, and you had to go fairly carefully not to offend her.

  ‘Elizabeth was very fond of her. She doesn’t say much about her husband, though,’ George said.

  ‘I suppose he was busy and not home much, he was always a very hard worker. Rather uncouth but a lot of get-up-and-go.’

  ‘Not like some you could mention, I suppose.’

  Violet looked at him. ‘Oh George, my dear,’ she had said gently, ‘I wasn’t thinking of comparing him with you. You’ve got all the get-up-and-go you want… or any of us wants. Really, I wasn’t making a point. You must know that.’

  George looked surprised and pleased. He grunted and left her sitting at her desk. She had decided then that she would ask Harry Elton what he thought. Harry always knew exactly what to do. He had a feel for that sort of thing.

  Harry indeed had given it all some cheerful thought when he met Violet for a Saturday drink by the river.

  ‘Let’s treat it as a serious problem of state,’ he had laughed. He had been delighted at the defeat of Winston Churchill in the election the month before. Labour had said they would build five million houses and they were the boys to have in power. Harry was as sunny about this as he was about everything else.

  ‘Sorry for Churchill? Never. He was a great old geezer when we needed a bit of puffing and blowing. But now we need houses and jobs.’

  He took everything that Violet said as being important and worth discussing. Harry Elton never grunted. He probably didn’t know how to.

  The classrooms were only a little like the convent classrooms. They had bigger and better blackboards and good maps on the wall, but there were no statues, no holy pictures, no little altar to the Sacred Heart or the Little Flower which someone would be in charge of each week.

  Elizabeth found it very strange that classes did not begin with a prayer. She used to stand waiting for this to be said each time and then sit down quickly and shamefacedly.

  ‘You mean they prayed before every class?’ Monica was disbelieving.

  ‘Well yes, a short prayer.’

  ‘Before maths and history as well as RK?’

  ‘Oh yes, just a quick Hail Mary for an intention.’

  ‘What kind of intention?’ Monica was fascinated.

  ‘A sick nun, perhaps, or a happy death, or the conversion of China. …’ Elizabeth said, feeling a hopeless interpreter of the ways of the convent.

  She found the smell of chalk and disinfectant, the long dirty-cream-coloured corridors, more like a hospital than a school. It was a million miles from the incense-filled corridors around the chapel in the convent, the chapel where they dropped in almost every day to pray that Sister wouldn’t ask for their history essays today, or that they’d know the answer if the bishop came and asked a catechism question.

  ‘Was this Aisling more or less clever than you?’ asked Monica as they walked home from school. Monica was very anxious to be allowed to go up West to see the crowds and the royal family going into the Royal Variety Command Performance. It was going to be the first for seven years. Her mother had agreed only if her school work improved, so now she had a serious interest in it.

  ‘Aisling was much more clever, but she was very … I don’t know … the nuns said lazy or careless. I think she was just bored by it … she hadn’t time for it. It got in the way of all the fun. …’

  ‘And did she get higher marks than you?’ Monica was very annoyed at Elizabeth’s success at school. Her years in a foreign land had not hindered her; in fact they had made her forge ahead. All Sister Catherine’s patient work in the mathematics class had paid off, and she was top of her weekly tests in geography and grammar too. History and French were a little weak, but Elizabeth seemed to believe that if you were given homework you did it, if you were told you must learn a poem you learned it. …

  ‘If she tried, Aisling could be top at anything. Sometimes we used to make a bargain. If she would learn her work for school I would go and make us midnight feasts. I had to do that because Aunt Eileen never minded if I came down to the kitchen for food, but she always said Aisling was up to no good.’

  Monica walked moodily, kicking the heaps of leaves into the gutter. ‘I don’t know what my mother means by improve. I know more than she does already. How’s she going to know whether I improve or not. …’

  ‘I think you should just let her see you working … you know, have your school books out more than your magazines or film annuals. That would let her see you were improving.’

  Monica screamed with laughter. ‘Ooh you are deceitful Elizabeth White … I always thought you were really good. But you only pretend. …’

  Elizabeth wasn’t upset.

  ‘No, I do work hard, I’ve nothing else to do … and in Kilgarret I worked hard because I didn’t want to let Aunt Eileen down. But Aisling used to do that, she always pretended that she was working and she got away with it … she liked laughing really.’

  Monica said gloomily, That’s not a bad thing. Lots of people like a good laugh.’

  Elizabeth thought suddenly of her mother with her head thrown back. She never looked as young and happy as when she was having a good laugh. She seemed to be having more good laughs nowadays. And Aisling didn’t appreciate all Aunt Eileen did … not even a little. Wasn’t it funny how people often got the wrong mothers? Or the wrong daughters.

  In December the good news was announced that the beef content of sausages was going to be increased from thirty-seven per cent to forty per cent.

  ‘It doesn’t seem very much,’ Elizabeth commented to Father as they went for one of their Saturday rambles.

 
; ‘Oh, you should have tasted a sausage when the rationing was at its height,’ Father said. He loved telling Elizabeth about things she didn’t know.

  They had fallen into the habit of taking a Saturday stroll when Father would point out the various bombed sites, the condemned buildings and the streets which had had direct hits during the blitz. It was a catalogue of sadness, of disasters and near-disasters. Stories of Old Charlie, and Mr This and Mr That. There had been no laughter to remember, nothing very funny had happened. Nothing very dramatic had happened, like when Uncle Sean remembered things, where men were mighty and lads were brave. There were no tales of kindnesses, or how well people had behaved to other people, like Aunt Eileen always remembered. … With Father it was all defeat, and opportunities missed, and good deeds being misunderstood.

  ‘They must have been awful times Dad,’ she said as they were coming home down the street. The afternoon was dark and it was nice to think of a cup of soup in the warm kitchen. Mother might be back too, she usually met her friends from the munitions factory on Saturdays, which made it a good time to go for a walk with Father. Or Dad. Sometimes she called him Dad, he seemed to like it. It was what the O’Connors used to call Uncle Sean. They used to laugh when she had mentioned Mother and Father. Fother! Fother! they had pealed, as if it was an odd form of address.

  But Elizabeth felt she could never call Violet ‘Mum’ or ‘Mummy’. That was what you called rounder, older people. She was Mother – or nothing.

  ‘Perhaps Mother will be home,’ she said as an attempt to cheer him up. His face had grown sombre in the telling of another gloomy story.

  ‘No, Mother’s going out, there’s a reunion party for all her munitions people … or some war workers, anyway. In a hotel. She said she wouldn’t bother coming back, she’d go straight on.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth. She didn’t particularly mind. She was going to read anyway for the evening, and then when Saturday Night Theatre came on the radio she would make some sardines on toast and cocoa. Mother had done some washing that morning, it would dry near the fire and they would have to sit close in for warmth.

  ‘We could play draughts,’ Father said.

  Elizabeth found draughts very boring. She wished that Father would learn to play chess. But chess and bridge were for intellectuals, he said. How could she convince him that it had only taken her half an hour to learn the pieces and the moves and then you knew it for life. She and Aisling used to play but Aisling was too impatient, she never cared about strategy or plans, she just exchanged pieces mercilessly until they were both left with hardly anything on the board. Elizabeth used to play with Donal – out of kindness because Donal wasn’t really any good. He kept walking into awful trouble without seeing it coming. But she had played with him to be kind. Now she was playing draughts with Father to be kind. She wondered if Aunt Eileen would pat her on the head and say she was a great child if she were to see her playing draughts with Father.

  The play turned out to be a historical one and Father said he couldn’t bear all those play-acting ways of going on, calling people Thee and Thou, so when they had finished the sardines, he brought out the draughts board.

  ‘Shall we take it in turns to be Black?’ he asked, his face anxious.

  ‘Do you mind Mother going out with Mr Elton and all the munitions people, Dad?’ she said.

  Father was very surprised.

  ‘Mind?’ he repeated. ‘Mind? It’s not a matter of minding. It’s not a matter of going out with Mr Elton … it’s all of them going to a reunion.’

  ‘I know Dad, but you know, that’s all Mother likes doing. Don’t you want her to like being at home, and being with us …?’

  ‘Heavens above, what are you saying? Of course Mother likes being at home with us, she’s just gone out to one reunion party tonight. Just one night and you start saying that she’s always out.’

  Elizabeth looked down. She felt she had gone too far, but retreating was going to be just as bad. He would keep asking her what on earth she had meant, and he would go over and over the comforting clichés as if repetition made them more true.

  ‘She’s entitled to her night out like anyone is. She worked very hard during the war. Naturally she likes to meet her friends and talk about the times they had. …’

  Elizabeth gritted her teeth. ‘But you know what I mean, Dad, you do. You must notice that Mother only has half of her attention here with us … she’s not really thinking about you and me. No Dad, it’s true. We don’t make the place fun enough for Mother, we’re very boring you and I, we don’t laugh and make jokes, I just read books and you read the paper, and I say “What did you say?” and you say “What’s that?” when she speaks. We’ve got no bit of … I don’t know … no bit of excitement in us.’ She stopped. He was silent for a moment. His face worked slightly as if he were about to speak but was afraid he might cry.

  Please, please God may he not cry. Please good kind Lord may I not have made him cry.

  ‘Well. Em … well,’ he mumbled.

  Oh please God, I’ll never bring the subject up again. I’m so sorry God, Elizabeth prayed. In her mind she saw the statue of the Sacret Heart on the landing in Kilgarret. The statue where Aisling would close her eyes and say, ‘Please Kind Sacred Heart I’ll give you anything if we don’t have a test at school today.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I’ve got very little excitement in me. In fact I never had. But your mother always knew this. She wasn’t misled, you know. She wants reliability and a nice safe harbour as well as a laugh and … what you call a little excitement. So everyone is what they are … you understand. Some of us are hard-working and reliable and provide the home and the hearth, other people provide the fun and excitement. That’s the way the world is. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ whispered Elizabeth, ‘I see.’

  ‘No, there’s no need to apologise,’ Father said, not noticing that she hadn’t. ‘No, you were quite right to say what you did. A person should be honest. You’re a very good girl, Elizabeth. You are a great joy to me, and to your mother. We often talk about how lucky we are to have such a responsible little girl. Don’t think we don’t appreciate you.’

  There was a hint of a snuffle in his voice. Elizabeth decided it must be headed off.

  ‘Oh I’m not all that great,’ she said. ‘Come on, let me be Black first and we’ll start the game.’

  There was a present from every one of the O’Connors for Elizabeth at Christmas and a beret that Peggy had knitted, and holy pictures from four of the nuns, a calendar from Sister Catherine, and half a dozen Christmas cards from other people in the town.

  Elizabeth was amazed as she unwrapped each gift. ‘Look Mother, this is from Eamonn. Imagine Eamonn writing a card, and two butterfly hairslides. Aren’t they lovely Mother, imagine Eamonn doing that! Do you think he went into the shop himself and asked Mrs McAllister? Oh, no, he couldn’t have. Perhaps Aunt Eileen got them.’

  Violet was sitting at the table helping her to open them and flattening out the paper and untying the string.

  ‘Oh they are frightfully gaudy … but how sweet. Is Eamonn the delicate one, the invalid?’

  ‘No Mother, that’s Donal, Eamonn’s the eldest boy, well, eldest now. I told you, he’s going to work in the shop with Uncle Sean, he’s nearly seventeen. …’

  Every card had a proper message … and Aisling’s enclosed a six-page letter which Elizabeth slipped into her pocket and read later.

  ‘They’re all frightfully holy, the cards. …’ Violet said, fingering them.

  ‘Well, you see, that’s what Christmas is all about there… you know cribs and mangers … they go on about it a lot,’ Elizabeth said. She felt a twinge of guilt now and then about having Lost Her Faith so easily on her return to England. She had tried to find the nearest Roman Catholic church, and visited it, but it was cold and damp, and very uninviting. But she felt sure that God (and Aisling’s class at school) would understand, and regard it as a temporary la
pse. Later she would take it all up again.

  ‘What’s this one?’ A card in babyish writing fell from the pack.

  ‘That’s Niamh, she’s sweet Mother, she’s six. Were you not able to have any more children after me or did you just not want to? Or did they not turn up?’

  ‘How funny you are, dear, er, there were complications and so that meant you couldn’t have a sister.’

  ‘But it didn’t stop you sleeping in the same bed as Father? I mean could you still go on having … er …?’ Elizabeth stopped uncertainly.

  Violet looked taken aback. ‘Eileen wrote to me that she had … explained all about … the facts of life and everything to you, she said she told you at the same time as Aisling … and that as far as she could see you seemed to have grasped everything satisfactorily. Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What haven’t I grasped?’ Elizabeth wanted to know.

  ‘Elizabeth, now I’m all for frankness, but there are some things you do not ask. People just don’t talk about it. It’s intimate, it’s between the two people themselves. Eileen wouldn’t tell you about her activities.’

  ‘But it was different with Aunt Eileen, Mother,’ said Elizabeth thoughtlessly, ‘I mean, everyone knew that she and Uncle Sean loved each other anyway. Despite all the things they said, they were obviously very fond of each other …’ Her voice trailed away again as she looked at her mother’s face.

  Violet said nothing.

  ‘Oh Mother, what have I said?’ Elizabeth cried, stricken.

  ‘Nothing, dear.’ Violet stood up. ‘Nothing at all. Now, do they know in Kilgarret that there’s been a war here, and that we can’t go around getting them gifts like this …?’ Her voice was brittle.

  ‘Oh they know,’ said Elizabeth. She had sent a letter to Aunt Eileen five weeks ago enclosing four pounds and a lot of ready-written Christmas cards asking her to buy things in Mrs McAllister’s.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said Violet briskly.

  ‘Mother I didn’t mean. …’

  ‘Gather up those things and tidy them away, won’t you dear?’ Violet said and she walked out of the room looking like people in films who’ve been deeply wounded and don’t want other people to know.