Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘No Mother, I can’t, who’d look after Father? But I’ll come often to see you, honestly and I…’ Her voice broke.

  ‘What darling?’ Violet looked at her, trying to help out the words.

  ‘I was … I was wondering, if it happened because I went away? If I had been here during the war, would you and Dad have been more of a family, you know? More to keep you together.’

  ‘Oh my poor child.’ Violet put both her arms around Elizabeth, she hugged her, and swayed as her voice was saying soothingly into Elizabeth’s hair, ‘My poor child, in all the useless years that your father and I have been pretending to get along like normal people, you were the one thing that made any sense out of it all. You’ve always been the only thing that made sense of seventeen years of wrong turnings, and George thinks that too. If you were to blame yourself that would be the last straw.’

  Mother sat and talked for another hour, about loneliness and age and the fear that you might go to the grave not knowing any spark. She talked about the war and the blitz and about people making fresh starts. She said lamely that George might find a nice lady who shared his interests. And then to Elizabeth’s horror she went upstairs to pack.

  ‘You’re going now, Mother!’ she cried.

  ‘Darling, you don’t expect me to serve beans on toast and talk to your father normally when I’ve told him that I’ve committed adultery and am leaving him?’

  ‘No of course not,’ said Elizabeth.

  VII

  … OH DO STOP apologising for blots and lines being crooked and not knowing what to say. I just want you to say something. You were always the one who told me that the important thing was to say something, not to wait until I knew what to say, and thought it was right. I’ve started doing it. But you must continue to do it.

  If you knew what it was like here. If you had even just a small idea, I think you would be so stunned that even you would be speechless. It’s very kind of you to write and say perhaps they’ll get over it, but it’s not like that. It’s not a bit like Uncle Sean and Auntie Eileen shouting at each other, because that was only for the evening at most. And anyway they always talked immediately afterwards, and then there was the whole family… there were all of you, and the house, and the shop, and everything. Here there’s nothing, there’s only the two of them, and they keep telling me I’m grown-up.

  I wish I wish so much I could have stayed in Kilgarret. Suppose I had got a job after school there, or helped Aunt Eileen with the accounts or in the house or something. Then they might have had to hold off until I came back. They could have said they couldn’t have done anything serious until I was home. But, you see, the awful thing is that they both say to me that I’m so sensible and I’m so understanding … but I don’t understand anything. I’m not grown-up. I wish they could see that. Mr Elton keeps saying to me that he’d like me to call him Uncle Harry. I told him I was no relation and that, without wishing to be difficult, it was a bit artificial. That’s what I said.

  He said, ‘You called those people in Ireland Uncle and Auntie and you’d never met them, and look at how well that worked out.’ I said to him that that was totally different, that I had gone to live with you, I was part of the family. I told him I lived there for over a third of my life. (I just worked it out.) And then Mr Elton said, ‘Well, Elizabeth, your mother and I hope you’ll live with us a lot of the time, even most of the time too, so don’t you think it’s a bit formal to have all this “Mr” business? I don’t call you Miss White, now, do I?’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

  ‘Right, that’s a good girl,’ he said. He thought I was considering it. But I feel that if I did call him Uncle Harry it would be letting Father down somehow. Giving in or something, letting Father see that the other side had won.

  Father always calls him ‘Your-mother’s-friend-Mr-Elton’. She went to live in a boarding house. Well she calls it living there, but it’s so odd. She only pays a little because she helps the woman run the place. I went in there on Tuesday and she was in this awful room with all kinds of dirty sheets with a frightful smell and Mother was sorting them for the laundry. It really smelt foul. I said to Mother I couldn’t believe she was doing this, and she said that a woman had to have dignity, and that she couldn’t sit at home and wait for Father to make up his mind about the divorce, while eating his food and living in lodgings he had paid for; she had to make her own way.

  I said, why didn’t she go and move in with Mr Elton if that’s what she was going to do eventually? She said it was to do with disgrace and reputation. I said that Monica’s mother knew all about it already and I hadn’t said anything to Monica. She said there were legal terms like reputation and disgrace which I didn’t understand.

  Sometimes she talks as if her mind was gone, like poor Jemmy in the shop. But mainly she sounds like someone much younger than she is setting out on some kind of dangerous mission. I don’t blame Father for thinking it will blow over, but it won’t. Please write, I’ll go mad if I make any more dreadful silent suppers for Father with nothing else to think about.

  What does Aunt Eileen say?

  Love,

  Elizabeth

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I got your letter this morning. Mam gave it to me on my way downstairs. You won’t believe it but the postman still goes in to the kitchen to start messing with Peggy. I mean, they’re nearly a hundred, both of them, and he still thinks it’s great fun. Mam keeps a beady eye on them. Anyway, she said, why not take this stamped envelope, I’ve a bit of a note for Elizabeth myself in it. Mam must be like the fortune tellers, she couldn’t have known you said write back really quick.

  I think you should call him Harry. Very suddenly. Cut out all the nonsense about Uncles and Misses, if they’re making out you’re so grown-up, act grown-up. That’s one thing.

  Secondly, you’ll have to stop worrying about the two of them, they were never happy. Honestly, even when you were here you used to tell me about them going all cold and prickly with each other. It would have happened anyway. Dad was reading in the paper about half the English population getting separations and divorces because of the war.

  And another thing, it’s not even a sin for them. They were never properly married in a Catholic church or anything, so there’s nothing to be undoing or rending apart.

  And if your mother is looking and acting all young, well isn’t that great! Isn’t that what people are trying to do all the time? Whenever Mam says she feels like a girl again it’s always over something nice like a picnic or a run up a hill.

  And, I know Mam said it in her letter because she didn’t seal it so I know I was allowed to read it, why don’t you come over here for a bit? We could chat about it, and it’ll be the holidays soon, and I’d love to know you were coming. It’s dead lonely here without you. I’m very friendly with Joannie of course, and she’s much nicer than we thought last year. But it’s not the same as when you were here, it’s not living with someone and being able to say anything you like.

  What about your friend Monica (I still think it’s Niamh’s cat)? Is she able to laugh like we did? I don’t think she can be, otherwise you’d have told her and her mother all about the business at home.

  Listen, try to cheer up. I mean in a way they’re right. You are grown-up. We’re sixteen and a bit, and if people aren’t grown-up then when will they be?

  Can you talk to your Da about other things? Like we do with Dad here when he starts complaining about things. No, I don’t suppose that’s really a good example. At least he doesn’t complain about Mam going off with another man. It’s kind of unbelievable.

  But it must have been desperate. I’m very sorry. I’m not good at writing it, but it’s awful and I can’t find words to tell you how I wish and pray that it will somehow be all right.

  In the meantime you should go right up to him and call him Harry. Be sure to tell me what he says.

  Love,

  Aisling

  Dear Ai
sling,

  This is just a short letter. Calling him Harry was marvellous. He said ‘What?’ I said, ‘I said, no thank you, Harry.’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You asked me not to be so formal,’ I said.

  ‘Quite correct my dear,’ he said. But he was knocked sideways. Then I called him Harry in front of Father, and Father laughed. He said I was right, that’s exactly what Mother’s-gentleman-friend was: a real Flash Harry.

  Mother is pleased too. She says that she always knew I’d get round to liking him.

  It’s the first day of holidays, I’m going to stay with Monica for a week. Aunt Eileen suggested that maybe they might find it easier to talk if I wasn’t there. She said that there wasn’t much hope they’d get back together but they might be able to get formal things worked out if they didn’t have to keep looking at me. I think she’s right.

  Monica has this awful boyfriend, well he’s sort of unsuitable but she’s delighted. I’m coming to stay because it means we can all go out together and her mother thinks she’s only going out with me.

  Love to all of you. I’m sorry to hear from Auntie Eileen that Donal was worse, I hope he’s all right.

  Love,

  Elizabeth

  Dear Elizabeth,

  Donal’s fine again, he had extreme unction, do you remember what that was? Annointing the hands and feet with holy oil, you only do it when people are dying. But he turned a corner. Sometimes it cures people. It cured Donal, he’s fine, he’s sitting up again and laughing. He has a fire in his room even though it’s July.

  Joannie has a boyfriend too, he’s David Gray, one of the Grays, a Protestant. He’s super-looking, but nobody’s meant to know. He writes her notes and says he thinks he’ll be able to take us both to Wexford next week in his cousin’s car. Wexford! In a car! With the Grays!

  Aren’t you sorry you didn’t come to stay with us instead of with Monica down the road? Why didn’t you come by the way?

  Love,

  Aisling

  When Elizabeth came back to the house in Clarence Gardens after her week with Monica, the first thing she noticed was how dirty it had become. All around the little rubbish pail in the kitchen there were bits of food, and the cooker was stained and crusted with old food that had been allowed to burn into the enamel. There was a smell of sour milk. The ashes in the sitting room had not been cleared and there was a trail of dirt around the front of the fireplace as if they had been very carelessly cleared on a previous occasion. The linen basket in the bathroom was open and clothes tumbled out on the floor. There was a sour smell in the bathroom too, and damp towels were rolled up in the corner.

  A tray with the remains of a breakfast was beside Father’s bed. Wasps buzzed around the jam and the milk had soured in the jug.

  Out the window Elizabeth saw the garden overgrown and unwelcoming; nettles and briars choked the plants that she had helped to plant in the spring. This was to be the first year that flowers were acceptable. Up to now only vegetables had had a right to grow in a garden.

  Elizabeth looked at Father’s pyjamas thrown on the floor. He had left her a note saying that he had gone to have a consultation with the firm of solicitors who did work for the bank. He said in the note that the manager had told him he must feel free to call on them in his personal capacity.

  Imagine. Father had sat down at this filthy table in the kitchen, leaving the house like a shipwreck and written about solicitors and personal capacity. He hadn’t put the dishes under the tap, he hadn’t said he was glad to have Elizabeth back.

  No wonder there was no light in his life nowadays.

  A wave of irritation about Mother came over Elizabeth suddenly. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. People had to stay where they were. Aunt Eileen didn’t like a lot of things, but there was no question of her running off. She did not like the way Uncle Sean talked about the British and the war, she didn’t like Eamonn’s ‘rough friends’, as they were called. She didn’t like the way Aisling answered back, or Maureen brought all her dirty clothes down in a bag from Dublin to be washed at weekends. She didn’t like Peggy’s hair falling into her eyes or the postman coming in to neck with Peggy when everyone was out. She didn’t like Niamh acting the baby to get her own way. Aunt Eileen got very cross if Donal went out without his coat or scarf, or if anyone ever mentioned the folly of Irishmen who had joined up during the war. But Aunt Eileen was able to cope. Her mouth would go into a tight line, and she would just get busier and busier. And even Monica Hart’s mother who was meant to have ‘nerves’ coped with things when they went wrong. There had been some trouble when Mr Hart came back but Mrs Hart hadn’t just packed her bag and left. And remember that poor Mrs Lynch, Berna’s mother, her husband was awful, really awful, he had come around to the house in the square and nearly frightened them to death and he had been found drunk in bus shelters and everything. And Mrs Lynch didn’t get on the next bus out of town.

  Mother was behaving very badly, and it was silly. Suppose things went wrong with Harry Elton? She couldn’t keep running away all the time. She really should face up to things. The nuns had always said that life was not meant to be easy. God had implanted in us a sense of restlessness so that when we got to heaven in the end, we’d calm down, and know the meaning of peace. That might well be true, certainly the restless bit was, everyone had it. Why did Mother give in to it when other people were able to damp it down?

  Elizabeth sighed and just as she was about to boil a saucepan of water and start to cope with the mess an even greater wave of irritation came over her. He didn’t love her, any more than he loved Mother. Father was incapable of loving people, he had become so wrapped up in himself and his worries he didn’t even seem able to see the fact that there were other people around.

  Elizabeth put down the saucepan again. For months she had worried about him, she had tried to console him, she had played draughts with him, kept away from subjects that might upset him, steered away from danger areas and tried to keep an atmosphere of normality in the house. Things were not normal. He and Mother didn’t even like each other any more. They both said they loved Elizabeth, and presumably they both wished her well, and were sorry that things hadn’t turned out the way that people always hoped they would turn out when they were young and had a baby girl.

  And if things weren’t normal and if Father and Mother had actually spent the week deciding something so utterly non-normal as whether Father should divorce Mother for adultery and desertion or whether Mother should want Father to be a gentleman and go off to Brighton with a lady and pretend to spend the night with her so that a detective could say that Father was committing adultery, then that was about as non-normal as things could get.

  Elizabeth stood up full of resolution. So why on earth should she, Elizabeth, pretend that things were normal? Why should she be the only one of the three of them acting as if nothing had happened? She was going to please herself now. Everyone else seemed to be acting as if they lived as individuals. So, what did she want to do, because whatever it was she was jolly well going to do it.

  She didn’t want to run away to Kilgarret. First there would be too much trouble, too much upset. Auntie Eileen would have to cope with Mother and Father, both writing and telephoning and perhaps even coming over to Kilgarret. Anyway, Aisling might not want her now, Aisling seemed very busy for the summer with her friend Joannie Murray and all these friends of Joannie’s, the Grays who lived in a big house with stables outside the town. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the same with Aisling, and she’d be in the way. It would be hard at the convent too. Sister Catherine would want to know why she was back, the nuns wouldn’t understand about divorce and Mother going off with Harry Elton, and even less about Elizabeth running away. Uncle Sean? He always liked her, perhaps he would just say that it was a further sign of the decaying English empire that their marriages couldn’t even hold together. But would it be fair to ask them to pay for her? It would cost money to have her. And perhaps Father would be so cross he wouldn’t send any
.

  No, going to Kilgarret would hurt too many people. And it wouldn’t work. She couldn’t go and live with the Harts; they wouldn’t agree, it would be too strange to move a few streets away. It would cause too much talk. She didn’t want to live with Mother and Harry because that would be saying she approved of what they were doing, and she did not. Anyway they giggled too much and made jokes that left her out and then said, ‘Sorry Darling’. But she would not live in this house clearing up dirt and rubbish and trying to look after Father and cheer him up, getting no thanks and no love in return.

  Elizabeth went to her desk and got a pad of paper. Then, very carefully, she wrote three letters.

  Mother, Father and Harry

  You have all said that you want the best for me. Thank you. I want the best for you all too.

  I do not think that coming back to a cold, dirty house with no explanations from any of you is the best for me. I do not think it is even half-way towards the best.

  I am going back to the Harts. I shall tell them that you would like another week to make up your minds about the future. I shall return again next Saturday to see what you have all worked out.

  I am about to begin my last two years at school; at the end of these holidays I will need somewhere to live where I can study and have peace and freedom from worry. I would prefer to live here in Clarence Gardens with Father, but I am not going to clean the place up so that it will be fit for us. It is like a pig-sty. If you decide that this is where I shall live please make arrangements to have it cleaned, and tell me what you intend to do about laundry from now on. I do not mind doing the cooking for Father and myself, but if I am going to study hard I will not have time to stand in queues for things, so there should be some other arrangement made about shopping.

  I am sorry to sound so business-like about this, but I have been shocked and hurt, sitting here realising that nobody is giving any thought to what is going to happen next.

  You will all say that I am upset. I am. I have taken fifteen shillings from the piggy bank because I think if I am going to ask the Harts if I may stay another week I should give them a present. That’s something nobody ever thinks of either.