Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘Have a meal and find somewhere to stay I suppose,’ Johnny said.

  The small hotel had a fire and a bar. Johnny carried in their two bags and talked to the receptionist while Elizabeth warmed her hands over the flames. He came back and put his arm around her.

  ‘We’re in luck, they have a room.’

  The woman with the large key in her hand looked at Elizabeth’s gloveless and ringless hands.

  ‘Do you and your wife care to go up now and see the room?’ she asked with a smirk that made Elizabeth feel so angry she didn’t even care about the red flush she felt creeping over her face.

  ‘No, I’m sure it’s fine,’ Johnny said lightly, ‘we’ll have a drink if we may, seeing that we’re residents, and Elizabeth wants to use the telephone.’

  In a few minutes of merciful privacy, Elizabeth got through to the bank. Her father hated being disturbed at work for what he considered trivia. Brusque and irritated, he said that he understood, fine, fine, he’d see her tomorrow then. Goodbye. No regrets, no sympathy at her being caught by flooding, no enquiries about her visit to Preston, no hint that he might have missed her.

  No way of knowing that his daughter had one of the major decisions in her life ahead of her in the next few minutes.

  She stood longer than she needed, clutching the receiver in the dark little box, wondering what to do now. It must be her own fault, she must have given Johnny the impression that she slept with men and that it would be in order to book them a double room. If she was going to be adamant and refuse his suggestion, then the grown-up thing would be to do it immediately … the longer she left it the more awkward it would become.

  Johnny was sitting at a table with a beer, and a shandy.

  ‘I thought this is what you’d like,’ he said, smiling up at her, hoping that he had made the right choice.

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said. They were in a corner away from everyone. The chintzy little lounge bar of the hotel might fill up later with local ladies drinking port and lemon; through the door the bar with its dartboard stood dark and empty in the afternoon of winter. Nobody could hear them. There would be no public scene.

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said again. ‘A shandy’s fine, but Johnny about the room. I must tell you. …’

  ‘Oh sweet Elizabeth, I was just going to tell you. It’s got two beds, and it’s half the price of two rooms, and she doesn’t have two rooms. She said she had just one room left before I said anything so. …’

  ‘Yes, but. …’

  ‘So there wasn’t a chance for me to say “May I consult the lady?”’ He looked not at all upset, just as if he had to explain something that was self-evident. ‘And I’ll turn my back when you’re putting on your nightie and you promise not to peek at me.’

  ‘But. …’

  ‘We’ll be yards away from each other – we were only a few yards away from each other last night and neither of us got carried away.’

  Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself.

  ‘No, that’s true,’ she agreed.

  ‘Well.’ The problem was solved for Johnny.

  Elizabeth looked into her glass. If she were to make further protests it would appear as if she thought that Johnny was hopelessly besotted by her and was planning to seduce her. Since he said this wasn’t on his mind, it would be arrogant and even pathetic of her to keep up this insistence on a room of her own. But suppose, suppose that there was actually a game involved, and that her agreeing to go to the same room meant agreeing to much more. …

  Johnny said he had to telephone Mr Worsky, he’d be back in a moment. Did Elizabeth want to change? There was a bathroom at the end of the corridor apparently but if a bath was needed you had to ask the lady at the desk and she would get someone to turn on the geyser.

  He was gone.

  Elizabeth ran upstairs, and changed her blouse. She gave herself an icy wash and examined her face nervously at the bathroom mirror, which was speckled where the bits of mercury or silver had peeled off. She wasn’t at all pleased with what she saw. Her hair was so straight, and so pale and colourless. It wasn’t blonde like real blondes are blonde yellow-and-gold, it was white, almost as if she were an old woman or an albino. And her face. Oh Lord, why were some people’s faces the same colour all over when her face was patchy with great pools of red and valleys of white?

  With her hands on her waist she looked critically at what she could see of her figure. It was very awkwardly shaped, she decided. Her breasts were small and pointy, she didn’t have that nice swell, that sort of ‘S’ shape that made people raise their eyebrows at each other. In fact she looked like a tall schoolgirl instead of a woman.

  With a mixture of relief and disappointment she realised that Johnny couldn’t possibly have had any designs on her. Thank heavens she hadn’t made a silly fuss.

  They had fish and chips in the fish shop up the street. It had looked much more inviting than the hotel dining room even though they did have to run to it through the sheets of rain. They talked about what Mr Worsky would say to each item they had got, and what Elizabeth would do next Saturday in the shop, and why Harry and Violet didn’t have any nice furniture, why it was all modern and new and cheap. They talked about Johnny’s mother who did have nice furniture, but who wasn’t warm and welcoming. She’d never put herself out to have a visitor to the house, she just expected her son to be there all the time and sniffed disappointedly when he was not.

  Elizabeth told him about Monica and her mother, and the complicated lies she had to tell when she went off with chaps. Monica had to keep a small notebook so that she did not get caught out. Johnny said that he thought Monica was very silly; she should tell her mother straight out that she was going to live her own life and she hoped that they could all be friends while she was living it. Then all she would have to put up with was a few sniffs.

  ‘It’s different for girls, you see,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Yes … so they keep saying,’ Johnny agreed.

  They ran back in the rain, and because they had had an early start decided that they should go to bed. Or go to sleep, as they kept calling it.

  ‘Do you think we should go back and let you get to sleep, you’ve a long day tomorrow, the drive back, and unpacking, then college?’ Johnny said.

  ‘Yes, I think I will sleep now,’ Elizabeth said.

  She sat on the side of her bed, the one where she had already put her blue nightdress under the pillow. There was heavy, purple-flocked wallpaper and a huge, ugly dressing table. A small, narrow wardrobe with no room for clothes stood filled with extra blankets and smelling of moth balls. There was one small, white chair; they would both have to put their clothes on that. Elizabeth examined her feet ruefully.

  ‘They got awfully wet, I’ll have to go and wash them.’ They felt like two little blocks of ice after the cold water, and she had splashed herself all over as well just in case Johnny did … well, it would be awful to smell of fish and chips.

  She put on her nightie in the bathroom and, peering left and right before she emerged, she decided it was safe to scamper back to their room. Johnny hadn’t used the tactful opportunity to get undressed, he was sitting reading the paper on the ugly white chair.

  Elizabeth hopped quickly into bed and held the sheets around her chin in an exaggerated imitation of someone shivering.

  ‘I knew you’d try to have your way with me and make me come in and warm you up,’ Johnny laughed pleasantly, still turning the pages of the paper.

  Elizabeth felt her neck and face go scarlet. ‘No, of course I didn’t, I wasn’t. …’

  He stood up and yawned. ‘I’m only teasing you, sweetheart,’ he said. He bent and gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Here, have a look at this and become informed about the world.’

  Grateful to have something to do while her embarrassed flushes died down, Elizabeth turned on her side away from him and tried to take in something, anything, on the sports page which was what she had opened. …

  She heard the c
reak of his bed, and again, relief mixed with a curious sense of defeat swept over her. Naturally, of course, it would be ridiculous to want to make love, suppose she became pregnant, suppose it hurt and she were to bleed all over the hotel bed, suppose she wasn’t able to do it, suppose he then turned aside and refused to have anything to do with her, which is what the nuns had told them in Kilgarret? If a man is allowed to have his way with a girl he will not respect her, he will have nothing more to do with her, he would not like his own sisters to behave in this way. …

  ‘Shall I put the light out or do you want to finish the paper?’

  She looked at him and smiled.

  ‘No, I’m so tired, I can’t really understand it, I think I’ll stop fighting it and go to sleep. …’

  He put his hand out of his bed and reached for hers. She gave it to him.

  ‘You’re a great little companion, it’s been a smashing trip. Night love.’ He turned out the light and turned over in his bed. Elizabeth heard eleven o’clock strike, and midnight, on the town hall clock, and some time before one the storm rattled against the windows so much that it woke Johnny from his even sleep.

  ‘Hey, are you awake?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s a horrible storm.’

  ‘Are you frightened of it?’

  ‘No, not at all. No. Of course not.’

  ‘Pity,’ he yawned, ‘I hoped you were. I’m terrified of it, of course.’

  ‘Silly,’ she giggled.

  He lit a match to look at his watch. ‘Oh, that’s great, hours more sleep.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth. She could hear him sitting up, and swinging his legs out of bed. He leaned over and held her hand.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said in a little squeak. In the dark he stood up; she felt him sit on her bed. Her heart was nearly coming through her rib cage.

  ‘Give me a little hug,’ he said. She reached up and found him without seeing him. He held her very tightly.

  ‘I’m very fond of you, you’re a lovely little girl,’ he said. She said nothing. ‘Very fond of you.’ He was stroking her hair and her back, in long strokes. She felt very safe. ‘And you’re very very lovely.’ She clung to him even more tightly, he was moving her gently back on the pillow; soon she would be lying down.

  ‘I’m not very. …’

  ‘We won’t do anything unless you want to … if you want to we can do anything. …’

  ‘You see. …’

  ‘You’re very, very lovely.’ He stroked on and on and she couldn’t really find the right words. ‘I’d like to be very, very close to you.’

  ‘But you see. …’

  ‘There’ll be no problem about that, I’ll take great care. …’

  ‘But I never. …’

  ‘I know, I know, I’ll be very gentle … but only if you want to.’ Silence. He stroked her and held her to him. ‘Do you want to love me, Elizabeth, do you want to be very close to me …?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He was gentle, and it didn’t matter that she didn’t know what to do, he knew enough it seemed. It didn’t hurt so much as it was uncomfortable. It wasn’t all those piercing pains you heard about in giggled conversations, and it certainly wasn’t all that soaring joy either, but Johnny seemed very happy. He lay on her, his head on her breasts and his arms around her.

  ‘You’re a lovely little girl, Elizabeth, you made me very happy.’

  She held him in the dark, she pulled the covers over him and she heard the town hall clock strike two. She must have missed three, but she heard it again at four o’clock, and she thought of Aisling and how they had wondered which of them would be the first to Do It, and now Elizabeth had won. Or perhaps she hadn’t won. After all, she didn’t think she was going to write and describe this. It was too important, you couldn’t put it on paper, it would sound disloyal and cheap. Instead of love, which is what it was.

  IX

  Dear Elizabeth,

  That was a great book altogether, you always find marvellous presents, you have so much imagination. I’m sending you this scarf … it’s awful I know, but Kilgarret’s a far cry from London and you know there’s nothing to buy here. Mam and Daddy loved the book too, they said you were very clever to find all those old pictures of Ireland in one book. I love the old ones, when Dunlaoghaire was still Kingstown … a lot of people, like the Grays and those, still call it Kingstown of course.

  Honestly, there’s not much to say about the way things are. You’d have to come over yourself and see. I don’t feel nineteen. I always thought that when I’d be nineteen I’d be different, I’d be a different shape, my face would be thinner and more knowing. I thought I’d have a different life … and know a lot different people than when I was young. But it all seems to be more of the same thing.

  Well, I suppose I have changed a bit. I can’t stand that Ned Barrett near me. I think I’ve practised all he knows anyway and I’ll have to find someone who knows a bit more. From my desk here in the office I can see the bus come in, and twice a day I look at it hopefully in case somebody exciting will step off and book into the hotel. Isn’t that pathetic for a grown-up woman in the middle of the twentieth century? Do you remember this time five years ago when we were fourteen and I got my period on my birthday and you didn’t, and we thought you were abnormal and Mam had to sort us out? I don’t know that being over-normal has done me any good. I wish you’d tell me something about your own life and who you practise on and everything. I feel it would be hard to talk to you. Mam says that’s ridiculous, it would take five minutes and we’d be cackling like young geese the way we used to.

  It all seems a long time ago. Thanks again for the book. Joannie says the plates in it are so nice I could have them framed but I don’t think so, it’s nicer as a book. I hope it didn’t cost a lot of money. The scarf seems a mean kind of present.

  Love from Aisling

  Dear Aisling,

  I loved the scarf. No, I’m not being polite. Mr Worsky said it made me look very glamorous when I wore it this morning in the shop. I never thought of getting anything red because my face gets so red when I blush I thought the two would clash. Perhaps I blush less nowadays. Anyway it looks super, and I wore it under a cream coloured blouse and I thought I looked très snob.

  Yes, it is hard isn’t it, the letters? I don’t suppose either of us really believes that the other would be interested in long details of what goes on each day. I am interested because I know Kilgarret and even though it’s so long I can still remember it … and whose shop was next to whose shop. I don’t know where your office is. Is it in the eyrie beside Aunt Eileen? It can’t be, you wouldn’t be able to see the bus from there, so where is it? I didn’t know your friend Joannie Murray was back. I thought she was at a finishing school abroad. You don’t mention Donal. Does that mean he’s well again? You don’t tell me anything about Maureen’s baby, you just said it was a boy. You’re an aunt.

  Really, I’d tell you about things here, but you don’t know Mr Worsky or his lady friend, who now asks me to call her Anna, even though she’s about seventy, or Johnny Stone who’s the nice partner now of Mr Worsky. He’s wonderful fun. And since you never even met Father, I can’t tell you about this simply awful woman who has designs on him. I’d love Father to get married of course, but this woman is the end. Father can’t bear her and he doesn’t know how to get her out of the bridge circle.

  And Mother’s letters sound a bit funny from time to time. She writes a lot, but odd kinds of things, all about the past. She even forgot my birthday. I’m not complaining, but it does seem odd, I mean, she has only one daughter. Aunt Eileen never forgets and she has five children and a grandchild.

  College is smashing at the moment too. We have a lot of classes out in the open because of the weather … and it’s so marvellous to go into a park, twelve of us with easels and all our stuff and set up like real artists to paint a view or a clump of trees. The others are very easy-
going. I do have friends, like Kate and Edward and Lionel … I’m sure I’ve mentioned them to you in letters. Sometimes they have parties in Kate’s flat. She has a whole three-room flat of her own, because her parents are dead and her guardian thinks that this is what people should have. Imagine!

  But I don’t go to many of the things people organise in college. I find the dances a bit dreary. I prefer just talking to people and about things I’m interested in, I suppose. I remember Aunt Eileen once told me that we have to pretend to be interested in some things out of kindness to other people. I do that with Father and Mother so I’m nor going to do it in my own life as well.

  I spend a lot of time in Mr Worsky’s shop I suppose. I drop in after college, or I go down there on my bike after Father’s supper. Now that Johnny is a partner there’s a lot of changes and little improvements, and sometimes there are four of us because Mr Worsky’s friend Anna (aged seventy I swear) joins in. It’s a bit like a family I should imagine, and yet none of us is related to any of the others. Isn’t that odd?

  Love and thank you again for the scarf. It makes me look jaunty. That’s what Johnny Stone said.

  Elizabeth

  EILEEN ALWAYS REMINDED the family of Elizabeth’s birthday each May. She even organised separate birthday cards so that Eamonn, Donal and Niamh could sign them. This year Eamonn had mutinied.

  ‘Mam, I’m far too old now to be sending silly cards with flowers and horseshoes on them to some woman in England that I can hardly remember.’

  ‘Elizabeth White was reared in this house with you for five years like a sister, and you’ll remember her as long as I say so,’ said Eileen sharply.

  ‘But Mam, she’s gone for years and years. I was only a child when she was here. I’m grown-up now, she’ll think I’m sweet on her or something. It’s ludicrous.’