Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  He certainly doesn’t look like Clark Gable. He’s fatter for a start. He’s got black curly hair and he’s sort of square-built. He’s not bad-looking but he’s certainly not like Clark Gable. Now I’ve told you everything, can’t you sit down and tell me everything? I didn’t tear up pages even though that bit about kissing looks a bit yucky.

  Love, Aisling

  Dear Aisling,

  I will, I promise. In about two weeks’ time. I’ll write everything. It’s just that there’s so much happening here. I’m very taken up. Two weeks. Everything. Gory details, nothing spared.

  Watch out for it.

  Love Elizabeth

  P.S. Do you love Tony Murray in any sort of way?

  Father said that he didn’t really want any celebrations for his half century. Nothing much to celebrate, he said. This annoyed Elizabeth greatly.

  ‘You’re the only father I’ve got and you’re going to be half a hundred. I think we should make a little fuss. Now here are the options: I can take you out to a hotel and buy a bottle of wine. I have a tiny savings account. I would be very glad to do that, Father. Or we can have all your bridge people here and make a party with some people from the bank too and one or two neighbours. …’

  ‘No, no, the bridge people wouldn’t enjoy a party if we didn’t play bridge,’ said Father.

  ‘Right, it’s just us,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘But a hotel is very dear,’ complained Father.

  ‘Right, it’s Saturday week. I’ll ask Johnny to dinner here, and we’ll have wine and high-class food.’

  ‘That would be very nice,’ said Father, relieved that there would be no need for him to do anything now except accept what was put in front of him. He was mightily pleased that he had managed to escape anything too festive.

  ‘He’s a nice chap, that Johnny Stone. He’s good company. I’d enjoy him coming to dinner,’ he said.

  Yes, thought Elizabeth, everyone enjoys Johnny Stone’s company. Now the hard part – asking him to dinner.

  ‘You won’t think I’m trying to cast a matrimonial net over you if I ask you to do me a favour?’

  They lay wrapped in sheets on the floor of Johnny’s flat, reading the Sunday papers and drinking milk with straws.

  ‘Mm what… making noises like a woman trying to pin me down?’ he asked, still reading the paper.

  ‘No, far from it, it’s just that one night Father’s going to be fifty, and there’s nobody he really likes … so I thought I’d cook a special dinner … a White special… and would you come to keep the conversation going?’

  Johnny looked up. ‘Aw, no love, I’d be butting in. It’s a family thing, a birthday.’

  ‘Hell, you know how family Father and I are… very little traditional family love in our house. And we’d look silly the two of us. No, we need an outsider to make it festive. Do come sweetheart. Please.’

  Johnny shook his head. ‘No, honestly, I’d only be in the way. I’m no good on the formal sentimental thing … you know that I even hate going home for Christmas with the Old Lady because she wants ceremonies and everything.’

  ‘But you were super with Mother and Harry.’

  ‘But that’s different, honeybunch. That was just a nice evening that developed. Not being asked formally or anything, you know, making a big thing.’

  ‘Please Johnny. Please.’

  He was reading the paper again. ‘No, heart. I’d be out of place. I wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Do you never do things you don’t like?’ Her voice sounded rather sharp.

  He looked up, surprised, ‘No, not often. Why?’

  ‘I do, a lot of the time, so do most people. Please Johnny, just one night to please me, and to make Father happy.’

  ‘No, dearest, ask another of your friends. Ask someone else.’

  It was settled. He was not coming. He would not do her the favour, he wouldn’t even consider it or discuss it. He assumed she had other friends, people as close as he was. He assumed that Kate and Edward and Lionel were on visiting terms.

  She had to accept this in Johnny or demand more. But she had just been shown the door had been closed. There was no more being offered. If she asked for more, she would get nothing, and what she had already would be withdrawn. She had seen Lily, a one-time girlfriend, come into the shop. She still liked Johnny, and Johnny was unfailingly charming but Lily had failed the examination at an earlier time and could not take it again. Lily had made scenes when Johnny refused to come to her end-of-term dance in college … let Elizabeth be warned.

  ‘Right ho,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Selfish bastard. Well, you’ll miss a good dinner, that’s for sure.’

  She looked sunny and uncaring. There was no way he would know the hurt and rejection she felt. No way he could see from her laughing face that she had come to a depressing conclusion about her love for him. She knew now that it would have to be one-sided and full of pretence if it were to continue. Johnny wasn’t going to meet anyone half-way or even a quarter of the way. You played the game in his territory and according to his rules.

  She forced herself to read the paper with a smile fixed on her face. She knew he was looking at her.

  ‘Come here, gorgeous,’ he said, unwrapping the sheet. ‘You’re much too attractive a girl to be reading papers. You should be giving pleasure to a passing gentleman, so you should.’

  She lay there happily and looked at the ceiling as his head lay peacefully on her bosom. He was dozing in the morning sun coming in the window. Soon they would get dressed and wander off to a pub on the river where he would get her a glass of shandy and they would eat their sandwiches.

  She had passed the examination. She could have flounced off in tears, she could have begged still more and annoyed him, and she could have sulked, but he would have taken no notice and eventually he would have wandered off to lunch alone.

  But no. Elizabeth had done none of these things and she had her reward here in her arms. He still loved her and wanted her. It was worth a few little sacrifices.

  Tony Murray told Aisling that he would like her to think seriously about him one summer night when the car had steamed up with passion and pushing and advances and rejections and squirmings.

  ‘I want you to know that I haven’t ever met anyone else who attracts me as much as you do.’

  ‘That’s nice Tony, but I’m still not going to take off my bra,’ said Aisling.

  ‘I’m glad you’re not. I know you aren’t the kind of girl who would go with anyone, and I respect you for it,’ he said, red-faced with exertion.

  ‘Well, that’s the way I am.’

  She was puzzled because she had let him go much further than what she considered wise. Surely there had been times when she had gone far beyond the level that someone should go before marriage. After all, it was quite obvious even to someone as inexperienced as Aisling sadly agreed that she was that Tony was satisfying his base desires in all these grapplings … and the nuns had said that to be the instrument of that was leading a man into mortal sin.

  Still, it would appear that Tony respected her.

  ‘I’m finding it very hard to go on with these kind of … outings,’ Tony said.

  ‘Oh, I like going out with you,’ Aisling said, deliberately misunderstanding him.

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. You know what I mean. I mean I like you so much I want to have you all to myself all the time. …’

  Aisling decided that this was very near to a proposal of marriage. She looked at Tony’s face for a moment, as if she and he were strangers.

  He was attractive enough looking, she supposed. He had this thick-set neck, and nice dark eyes. Other girls had told her that he was handsome, she heard people refer to him as a fine man. She knew that Daddy would approve. … ‘You’d be doing well if you married into the Murrays, girl,’ he used to say half-jokingly, but she thought he meant it. Mam had her reservations, but only because she thought Aisling was too giddy.

  Well I am too giddy, Ai
sling thought to herself with sudden conviction. And I’m not going to be railroaded into something I’m not sure about. I’m not going to let him ask me and have to say yes or no. I’m going to put it off, I’m going to be clever for once in my life.

  She kissed him lightly on the forehead.

  ‘You’re a very attractive man, Tony Murray, and you say such nice things you nearly sweep me off my feet. But you’re a grown-up, you know what you’re doing. I don’t, I’m only silly and young and I’ve never been anywhere.’

  He began to speak but she interrupted him.

  ‘I’m going to see a bit more of the world before I let myself fall for you … otherwise it would be pathetic. Look, you’ve been to university, you’ve lived away from home in Limerick and Dublin. You’ve been to France and to Rome. The furthest I’ve been is Dublin and spent a night in Dunlaoghaire … and that was with the whole family.

  ‘No, if I want you to think anything of me, I’ll have to grow up a bit, not just be the silly provincial Kilgarret girl. Then you’ll be mad about me.’

  ‘I fancy you now,’ mumbled Tony.

  Aisling had manoeuvred them to a sitting position as if by accident. This would mean that the fumbling and grappling could be considered at an end. …

  ‘Yes, but wait until I’m sophisticated, then I’ll be a magnificent prize,’ she tinkled.

  ‘I don’t want you sophisticated.’ He sounded mulish.

  ‘You want me with a bit more sense and a bit more polish don’t you? Come on. You’d love to have me a bit smart, not just plain ignorant like I am.’

  ‘Where are you going to learn all this sophistication and to be smart and polished?’ Tony grumbled.

  And indeed Aisling wasn’t sure how to answer that even though her brain was working feverishly on an answer that would satisfy him.

  ‘Well, I haven’t it all settled yet, but I’m thinking of doing a little travelling. Not going away permanently or anything, just broadening my mind, and seeing a bit of the world. I’m not even twenty yet, Tony. I may seem all right now but I could turn into one of those awful dreary women you see up at the church with nothing on their minds except what the priest said to them and what Mrs So and So was wearing.’

  ‘You’d never …’

  ‘Oh but I might, I can see the signs of it in me already.’

  Aisling had warmed to her cause now and felt she had the upper hand. It was time to leave the subject.

  ‘But listen, I’ll tell you next week where and when I’ll be going off to see the world.’

  He agreed with a grunt, and reluctantly drove her back to the house in the square.

  Mother was up as usual.

  ‘You’re a bit late,’ she said mildly and without much sense of disapproval.

  ‘I know. We went for a drive after the pictures and he spent a lot of time talking.’

  Aisling looked at herself hastily in the mirror to make sure her lipstick wasn’t all over her face and that her blouse was buttoned correctly.

  But Mam didn’t seem to be inspecting her. ‘I just waited till you came in,’ she said, folding her knitting and starting to turn off lights.

  ‘Well Mam, there’s no need. You know I’m all right, and that nothing … that I wouldn’t … that I’d always come home.’

  ‘Of course I do, child, but in a way you’re my oldest, aren’t you? Maureen was away in Dublin at your age, and well, boys are different. It would never matter what time Sean or Eamonn came in.’

  ‘I’m no trouble to you now am I? Nice, reliable assistant in the shop, walking out decorously with the town’s best catch … and Mam honestly, I’m not such an eejit. I told him tonight that I was too young to be serious about anything. That I’d have to see the world first.’

  Mam laughed. ‘And where are you going to go to first in the world? Wicklow Town, maybe as far as Wexford?’

  ‘I’ll go somewhere Mam. It’s just to let him know that I know my limitations in a way.’

  Mam ruffled her hair and laughed again. ‘You’re an entertainment in yourself. No wonder Tony Murray’s delighted with you.’

  On the hall table was a letter from London. Aisling snatched it eagerly and took it up to bed. This was the promised letter from Elizabeth which was going to tell her everything. It seemed quite thick as well.

  She took a glass of milk and a piece of cake from the kitchen first and sat down to enjoy the story.

  But when she opened the envelope the letter was very short. What made the bulkiness was a parcel of four five-pound notes, English ones with pictures of the King of England on them wrapped in tissue paper.

  The letter was certainly not telling at all.

  Dear Aisling,

  Is it silly to remember things we did as children, or is it not? Do you remember, when we became blood sisters by mixing our blood in the bottle, we swore to help each other if one was in trouble?

  I need your help now. Please, please come to England. I’m sending you the money for the fare. Please come now. You must be here for Saturday. It’s Father’s fiftieth birthday and I can’t cope with it by myself. Please come. I’ll tell you everything when you get here. Don’t let Aunt Eileen know how urgent it is. Pretend that you just want a holiday. Please.

  Elizabeth

  Well, thought Aisling, isn’t that the best bit of luck ever? A chance to see the world and broaden my mind not ten minutes after I started looking for one. It’s fate.

  Elizabeth hadn’t noticed that her breasts were getting bigger but she had noticed that her period was very late. It was now three weeks overdue. It had never been more than four days late. She had deliberately put it out of her mind in the hope that it might have been nervousness, tension or any of the reasons which she had read in a medical magazine.

  But on the Sunday night after Johnny had driven her home to Clarence Gardens and sped off again, she could no longer dismiss it. Twenty-one days. She checked the calendar again and even smiled ruefully since she knew that this is what so many nervous girls all over the world must be doing at that minute. Saying to themselves that it couldn’t possibly be true, and it couldn’t happen to them, and trying to get rid of the hard knot of fear and disbelief that was forming in their chests.

  Elizabeth looked out the window and saw Father in the garden. For some reason his ineffectual pottering, his unsuccessful attempts to trail the honeysuckle over the wall, and his sense of bafflement because it lay on the ground and got tangled, seemed to her unbearably sad. He could be seventy she thought, not fifty. He looked so dull and beaten and as if he had always known he would never amount to anything.

  If Johnny had been in that garden there would have been life and laughter. There would have been movement and experiment and sudden flashes of inspiration, and determined hammering of stakes into the ground. If Mother was here in one of her good moods she would laugh too and go at it with interest, and Harry would bluster and laugh and make some fun out of it. But Father looked as if he were already dead and as if everything he did were some kind of sad duty forced on him beyond the grave.

  Poor dead Father, nothing to live for, nothing to hope for; even bridge had revealed untoward dangers with that terrible widow Ellis in pursuit of him. Elizabeth decided to put away the calendar and its message of despair and go down to the garden to help him.

  He was surprised to see her.

  ‘Oh hallo. Didn’t know you were in.’

  ‘Yes, I came in about an hour ago.’

  ‘Did you have tea?’

  ‘No, I’d have called you if I had made tea. No, I went upstairs to my room for a bit.’

  ‘Oh I see.’

  ‘What are you doing, Father?’

  ‘My dear, what do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to do something with this wilderness of a garden.’

  ‘Yes, but what in particular? If you tell me what it is, perhaps I can help.’

  ‘Well … I don’t think it would be any use …’ He stood looking like an old bewildered bird.

&
nbsp; ‘Are you weeding this bed?’ she asked through gritted teeth.

  ‘Well … it’s so overgrown … you see.’ He waved at it.

  ‘Yes so it is. Shall we start weeding it now, then, Father? You start at that end, and I’ll start here… and we’ll meet in the middle.’

  ‘I don’t know if that would work.’

  She controlled her voice with a great effort, by taking it down an octave from where she had been about to speak.

  ‘Why would it not work, Father?’ Each word equal emphasis, no sign of rage on her face.

  ‘You know, knowing which are the weeds … and which are flowers … it’s so difficult to see … it’s so overgrown you see.’

  ‘We could take this kind of grass out, that’s obviously weed. Then we could look at it again and have a reassessment.’

  She stood there looking at him hopefully. Could he not catch a little enthusiasm from her?

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Elizabeth went purposefully to the little shed, and took out some cardboard. She folded it into a kneeling mat. She went to her end of the big flower bed and started to wrench big tufts of grass out. ‘Hey, look, this is beginning to look better already,’ she called out. But he stood there, unsure, unwilling to go along with this sudden outburst.

  ‘Come on, Father,’ she called. ‘In half an hour we’ll have made it look like Kew Gardens.’

  He bent over and fiddled again with the honeysuckle.

  ‘This isn’t a weed, don’t dig up this, this is honeysuckle.’

  ‘I know Father, we’re just taking grass. Come on. I’ll be catching up on you if you don’t start.’

  ‘It’s such a wilderness,’ he sighed. ‘No one person could do a garden like this. Not anyone who has a full-time job like I do. Nobody could do a big garden like this without help.’

  ‘You’ve GOT help,’ called Elizabeth on all fours from the back of the flower bed. ‘I’m helping you.’

  ‘You see,’ he said. ‘It was allowed to get into this state, and now you need a man twice a week in it.’

  Elizabeth worked on. It took her forty-five minutes. The sweat was rolling down her forehead and her clothes were sticking to her. She gathered up a mound of coarse grass, and packed it tightly wrapped in old newspapers into the bottom of the dustbin.