Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘She asked you to lose weight too?’ Aisling could hardly believe it.

  ‘Yes, but I’m getting on for fifty years of age. I should lose a bit and anyway I’ve more sense than you’ll ever have in your whole life.’

  Aisling said she couldn’t study her awful grammalogues and do her shorthand preparation after such a shocking discovery about her mother’s lack of honesty.

  ‘Go off and write to your friend then,’ said Mam. ‘Give Elizabeth my love, and ask her whether she might come over for the Great Wedding. …’

  ‘That’s an idea.’ Aisling’s face lit up. ‘Will I tell Joannie about it too, she’ll be home from France in September …?’

  ‘No, better do nothing until the love birds have sorted out whether the Murrays are on their list or not.’ Mam smiled.

  ‘You are laughing at them,’ Aisling said.

  ‘I am not,’ said Mam.

  Elizabeth sent a beautiful present for Maureen’s wedding. It arrived a good three weeks before the day, so there was plenty of time to admire it. It was a small, oval silver dish.

  ‘It’s what they call a bon-bon dish,’ Elizabeth had written. ‘But I don’t think anyone has bon-bons to put in them, we certainly don’t here. It would do for anything I suppose, maybe biscuits when you have your friends to tea, or bread even, if you were having people to lunch. It’s extraordinary to think of you as a married lady. You’re the first of my friends to become Mrs. I’ve sent a book on hallmarks too, so that you can work out what year it comes from and where it was made. It’s quite interesting. I’m always turning bits of silver upside down and looking up their history. If they don’t have these four marks then it isn’t silver. It’s a nice thing to know. I hope you’ll be very happy, and if I get good grades next June, perhaps I could come to Kilgarret for a visit and see everyone, and you could have me to tea.’

  Maureen was childlike in her enthusiasm. Elizabeth was the first person to have called her a married lady, she was the only one to make something special about being married.

  ‘She’s so educated, and interested in things,’ said Maureen, busy learning all the hallmarks to blind the Dalys with this new sophistication. ‘I wish you were more like Elizabeth, Aisling.’

  ‘Oh people have always been wishing that,’ said Aisling cheerfully, ‘but it never does them any good.’

  Secretly she thought it was a bit wet of Elizabeth to have written such a gooey letter to Maureen and she thought that looking up all these ridiculous names of towns and marks of sterling and makers was just typical.

  Dear Elizabeth,

  You said to write about the wedding, honestly I don’t know what to write. The main thing is that it went without any disasters. Father O’Mara was drunk, but people stopped him making a fool of himself, and Brendan Daly was a bit drunk. He’s my brother-in-law you know. I’ll be able to say things I heard from my brother-in-law, but I don’t think I heard anything from him. His sister Sheila, do you remember her at school? I’m not surprised if you don’t, she was mousy then and she is mousy now. She normally wears glasses but she didn’t for the wedding and she fell over everything, and her eyes were all screwed up trying to peer out. I told her she was better with them, but that was the wrong thing to say apparently. The speeches were endless, I looked really dreadful. I know I’ve thought I looked dreadful in the past but that was actual beauty compared to the bridesmaid dress. If ever you get over here I’ll show it to you. Maureen said it could be changed and used as a dance dress. I said I wanted to keep it for the rest of my life as fancy dress. Another wrong thing to say.

  I told you, didn’t I, about sort of going with Ned Barrett? There’s nothing to it, we go for walks by the river, and a bit of messing about, but nothing great. We go to the pictures and meet inside too. I don’t think they’d forbid me to meet him but I couldn’t bear all the fuss, and people saying ‘You’re next’. I don’t want to marry Ned Barrett, I just want to practise on him. I was practising a bit down by the river on the corner near the boathouse when who came by but Tony Murray, you know, Joannie’s brother. He gave me a desperate look. I think he thinks Joannie and I are sex maniacs, because of the incident. Joannie’s gone to learn a year’s domestic science in a place where nearly everyone else is a lady or an Hon. That’s how posh they’ve become. She says it’s awful and she’d prefer to be at home. I’ve got an interview soon for a job, a real job, in Murray’s. Mam says that if Joannie and I are friends then I’m stupid to go and work in the office for them and get a salary. It will change the relationship. I don’t agree. Everyone’s got to work somewhere. What are you doing? You never tell me properly.

  Love,

  Aisling

  Dear Aisling,

  I never tell properly! I tell you everything, you tell nothing! What incident makes Joannie’s brother think you’re sex maniacs? Why did you look so awful in the dress? What was it like? How is Donal’s chest? Is Peggy still there – you never mention her? What’s Maureen’s new house like? Is Uncle Sean’s business going well, does Aunt Eileen still work so hard? Are you really fat or was that just a remark of Maureen’s? There’s so much I don’t know. It makes Kilgarret all seem like a book I read ages ago about a place that’s not there any more.

  Anyway, to tell you properly about me. Well it’s hard because you don’t know what life here is like. If I said that Father looks much smarter these days and plays bridge three times a week, you wouldn’t know what a change that is. It’s as if Uncle Sean suddenly started going to tea parties or something. I get a letter from Mother every week. She and Harry have a shop. She keeps asking me to go and visit them and I’m going to go in November. Term has started in the art college. I didn’t realise how lucky I was to have got a place. They made about a dozen speeches telling us we were the crème de la crème and that we must fight to keep our places, because there are hundreds outside waiting for one of us to be thrown out.

  The others in the class are very nice. It’s a bit different to the convent, there are hardly any girls. Imagine. I think Aunt Eileen is right about not working for the Murrays. Suppose you wanted more salary, suppose they wanted to sack you? Won’t the other people who work for them feel a bit annoyed when you can go to their house and they can’t? Anyway I don’t suppose I know anything about it, it just doesn’t sound too easy.

  I’ve got a job too, on Saturdays. I work in the antique shop I told you about. It’s terrific. I dust the china and the small pieces of furniture, and I fill in stock lists and help when customers come in. It’s run by a super old man called Mr Worsky. He’s Polish, he came over here just before the war. He has two full-time people. His old lady friend, who is sweet but she’s almost blind, and an assistant called Johnny Stone. It sounds like a cowboy’s name doesn’t it? He’s rather like a cowboy too. Very handsome. But not in the shop a lot, alas. He’s prowling the country looking for antiques. Love to everyone. Do they remember me? Do they talk much about what became of me?

  Elizabeth

  VIII

  AISLING DID NOT get the job in Murray’s. In fact her interview lasted three minutes. She had dressed up exactly as they had told the girls to do in the commercial college; neat grey suit, grey short-sleeved jumper and white collar. No jewellery, very little make-up.

  With her gloved hand, she handed copies of her typewriting, shorthand and book-keeping certificates to Mr Meade, who had been running Murray’s since Joannie’s father had died. As long as most people could remember.

  Mr Meade had left the room to study the certificates as if there was a possibility they might be forgeries. Aisling looked around the office. It had a high ceiling and a lot of book-shelves and cabinets of different sizes and shapes. Their pigeon-holes were bursting with envelopes and files, with loosely tied together bunches of documents. It was very untidy and dusty, she thought disapprovingly. Even Mam’s little eyrie back in the shop was better than this. At no stage of their secretarial training had anyone told them about an office which seemed to have no pr
oper filing cabinets, no spacious tables and desks for working at. There was one corner of the room which had great boxes with hundreds of labels spilling on to the floor; many of the labels were stained and probably unusable. Aisling’s fingers itched to get at them.

  The room smelt funny too, of spices, or teas or coffees, she wasn’t sure which, because there was another waft coming in on top. A smell of drink … a bit like Maher’s on a Thursday night. This must be from the wine downstairs, she thought. She wondered how they could be so successful when they were so disorganised. At secretarial college they had stressed that an untidy office was an inefficient office. But then Maureen had said that they spent months learning how to make perfect corners on beds when she was training as a nurse, and mainly they never did them unless there was a fear that someone would inspect them.

  Mr Meade came back, and to his annoyance and to Aisling’s surprise, Tony Murray followed close behind him. Mr Meade seemed nervous in the presence of Mr Tony. Mr Tony seemed irritated to extremes by Mr Meade. The typing certificates were handed over.

  ‘These seem to be in order, Mr Tony,’ said Mr Meade. He had examined each piece of paper carefully.

  ‘Yes, well she’s been there a year, they must have taught her to type,’ said Tony ungraciously.

  Mr Meade looked put out.

  ‘What makes you think you would like to work here?’ he asked precisely.

  Aisling was ready for that one. ‘I’ve always thought it would be most interesting to work in a company that offers such variety,’ she said, as if reciting lines from a play. ‘Murray’s is an old-established firm with a long history of business with continental Europe. There would be an opportunity for me to know about the wine trade, the tea blending, the whiskey bonding as well as high-class grocery-trade.’

  ‘You would be sitting in an office typing out bills and stocks lists. How the hell will you learn the wine business there?’ interrupted Tony.

  ‘Well I will be close to it, connected with it sort of …’ Aisling stammered. Tony had always been nice to her, courteous, even joky she thought. Why had he turned into this kind of hectoring figure?

  It seemed to puzzle Mr Meade too. ‘I’m sure that… er, Miss O’Connor, realises …’ he began.

  ‘Quit talking like a parrot, Aisling, what on earth do you want to work here for? It’s the same work you could do for your mother over in the square. Why aren’t you in there typing bills and stock lists instead of wanting to come here?’

  Aisling’s eyes blazed back at him in rage. If he was going to break the rules and make a mockery out of the interview, then so was she. She had played fair, worn gloves, kept her eyes down, answered politely. Now she’d answer him as he wanted.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Tony Murray,’ she said, conscious of the shock on Mr Meade’s face without even looking. ‘I’ll tell you exactly why I want to work here. Here I work in my own twin-set and skirt, in Mam’s shop I’d wear an overall; here I’d get money from your family and I’d spend it as I bloody pleased, in Ma and Da’s shop they’d be giving me money like pocket money and complaining and saying sit up, and stop fidgeting, and why aren’t these done, like they say to Eamonn. In Murray’s I’d be someone, I’d be that new Miss O’Connor in the accounts office, I’d meet people, I’d have a bit of class because I was good enough to be hired by the great almighty Murrays, and a friend of the family. That’s why I thought I’d like to work here. Now you tell me why you don’t want me. …’

  ‘Because you’re a friend of Joannie, and we like you coming up to the house, and you’re a splash of colour around the place, and I don’t want to be paying you a wage packet every week. You stupid thick girl. That’s why.’ He slammed out of the room.

  Aisling shrugged. ‘Well give me those back, Mr Meade, I gather I haven’t got the job.’ She picked up her certificates, put them back in her envelope, peeled off her gloves and put them into her handbag. Thanks all the same,’ she said shaking hands in a totally over-familiar way for a job applicant.

  Mr Meade watched her swinging out through the shop. He had no idea why Mr Tony had behaved in that extraordinary way, but in his heart he was quite relieved. That little O’Connor girl, with her mane of red hair, could have been trouble. She might have been quite a disruptive force in Murray’s, and they didn’t need that.

  *

  Mr Worsky was delighted with Elizabeth White. She was exactly the kind of child he would have liked, solemn and alert. His two sons had been interested only in kicking a ball round the yard back in Poland, and wherever they were today they would never have been thoughtful and interested in beautiful things. She was polite and attentive, she had a little notebook where she wrote down what he told her about furniture. Once she had said that it was she who should pay him for his training rather than take money for her Saturday help in the shop. When she left art school she would love to work as a picture restorer, she thought, or an expert adviser on furniture. They spent happy Saturdays and sometimes both of them would sigh with impatience when a customer came in.

  Johnny Stone liked the girl too. Mr Worsky could see that. Johnny would speak flirtatiously to her when they were examining porcelain or the inlaid work on some desk. Elizabeth never responded coquettishly, since she had never seen the remarks as admiration. In a kind fatherly way, Mr Worsky made a few tentative efforts to warn Elizabeth about Johnny Stone’s charms and how successful they were.

  ‘For a boy of barely twenty-one he has amazing succès with the ladies.’

  ‘Oh does he?’ Elizabeth sounded interested, rather than hurt.

  Mr Worsky went on then, sure that he was treading on no hurt young love. ‘Oh a proper Prince Charming … that is why he finds such wonderful things when he goes to people’s houses. They let him in, they let him come and rummage in their back rooms and their attics. They let Johnny Stone do what he likes.’

  ‘Marvellous for us that they do, isn’t it?’ said Elizabeth enthusiastically, and Mr Worsky was touched that she thought herself part of his little shop and relieved that she did not seem to have become a victim of the famous Johnny line of chat.

  Elizabeth was too busy to think of romance. She envied other students at college who had less complicated lives to lead. She had to organise the food for the week, she had to balance books like Dora in David Copperfield – except that she did it swiftly. Father felt that money was trickling down a drain unless he could see neat columns of figures. The cleaning lady sometimes didn’t clean too thoroughly since she felt it was infra-dig to be working for a chit of a girl in a house where the mother had hopped it. Why didn’t the girl do the cleaning herself, she wondered. Elizabeth had to tread the careful path which would ensure a higher standard of work without the cleaning lady’s dignity being offended to the degree of her putting on her coat and leaving them.

  Then there was Father. His bridge playing had been so successful it meant that he had to play host to his group every two weeks or so. On these occasions Elizabeth made sandwiches, served tea and emptied ashtrays. She thought it was worth it because it paid dividends. Father was out at other people’s houses almost every second night. She didn’t have to feel guilty about him, she didn’t have to talk to him, except to ask him about his game when he came home. His face would light up as he helped himself to a small tot of ginger wine, and he became almost animated describing how he had finessed a queen, or his partner had gone for a grand slam on no evidence whatsoever.

  Father cared nothing about the Saturdays at the antique shop. He had warned her to be sure to see that Mr Worsky paid her on the nail, foreigners could be very decent but many of them could be highly unreliable. But Father never asked her how much she got, nor did it affect her allowance. Girls need their pin money, he was apt to say from time to time. Father didn’t realise either how well Elizabeth ran his house for him. But by encouraging him earnestly to grow his own vegetables, she saved them a great deal of money, as well as using up Father’s copious spare time at weekends. Elizabeth also gave
drawing lessons to two little girls who came to the house and sat with their drawing books at the kitchen table while she did her weekly bake. She made bread, pastry, cake, a casserole and peeled all the potatoes that would be needed for the week, leaving them in water which she changed every day. She topped and tailed fruit, she pressed every left-over into something else. It was a three-hour session; and all the while she overlooked the two children, correcting their perspective, lightening their shading and neatening their calligraphy. Their mother, who had artistic hopes and no money, gave Elizabeth jams, bottled plums, chutneys and even candied peel, for their lessons. It worked very well, and Elizabeth ran Father’s home very comfortably while keeping a good quarter of the money it should have taken, in her own little tin box upstairs. Even Aunt Eileen, with all her religion, could hardly have disapproved, Elizabeth thought. … She really did earn the money and if Father had anyone else, even Mother, it would have been spent in areas where Elizabeth was able to save. She didn’t know why she was saving. Perhaps it was for flight like Mother, perhaps it was to set herself up in business, like Mr Worsky. It might even be for a velvet dress. Johnny Stone had told her about a singer he had seen who wore a rose-coloured velvet dress and it had made her seem like a flower. She had blonde hair and a rose velvet dress; Johnny had said it was like heaven.

  Aisling had been mystified by the whole afternoon in Murray’s, when she had gone along confidently expecting to get a job. She was at a loss to explain it to anyone. Mam had been right of course, and so, at long distance, had Elizabeth. Joannie wasn’t there so there was nobody to ask, nobody to discuss it with. From nowhere Aisling remembered a line from one of Elizabeth’s letters saying the hardest thing about growing up is not having anyone to ask. Aisling had thought it was only because the White family had more or less disappeared, leaving Elizabeth on her own; but now she realised that it was more than that. There are some things you can’t just throw on somebody’s else’s life. This was one of them. She decided that since she was all dressed up she would get another job instead.