Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  But it’s a release somehow to know that the little hints, the veiled enquiries, the polite wonderings don’t matter any more. I am now able to admit to myself that there isn’t going to be a fairy-tale ending. No bells ringing like they rang for you … well, we wouldn’t go anywhere with bells even if Johnny did want to get married. It would be a registry office. No huge happy family smiling, because there isn’t one. No wedding presents and honeymoons on the continent. Johnny is the new generation. Or so I have decided to believe. The generation that wants no commitments, no ties, no promises. It won’t tell any lies because there will be no need to lie.

  It sounds a bit futuristic, but funnily, since I have decided to accept things like that, Johnny and I are much happier. I didn’t actually spell it out to Johnny of course, men don’t want things spelled out. But really for the past weeks things have never been better. He insisted on coming up to Preston with me. He even came to see Mother. He said she was like a broken doll. He was marvellous with Harry, and when he went out to get a half dozen light ales – Harry lives with a couple of neighbours now – Harry said to me, ‘When’s he going to make an honest woman of you?’ I was able to tell Harry truly and without all that awkwardness that it wasn’t on the cards.

  Listen, you’ll never write to me again if I keep pouring my heart out to you. But you used to complain once that I was too buttoned-up in my letter-writing. So here’s the full whoosh of the waterfall.

  Tell me every single thing abut the honeymoon and I’ll burn the letters. Tell me about the Pope, and coming back to the bungalow, how Aunt Eileen and Uncle Sean were … they’ll miss you a lot, you know – but you do know. And about Mother-in-Law Murray. Things are great here but I would like to be there too sometimes. Oh, for the chance of a private plane and lots of money.

  Love to you and to Tony,

  Elizabeth

  Dear Elizabeth,

  Of course it’s all great, it’s just as good as I had hoped it would be. The house is very easy to keep clean – no horrible, dark corners. Of course, that means no nice corners to hide the dirt in either. I give it a huge going-over on a Thursday. Ma-in-Law comes for tea on Thursdays. I was very firm. The first week she was dropping in every second day and so I used to pretend I was going out. And I’d leap on my bicycle and say to her why don’t we fix a definite day for you to come? Poor old cow, I’m sorry for her in a way, but she’s a bore and a snob and one who Does Things for Show. Burn this letter.

  And what else? I’ve got an awful cookery book with things about filleting fish in it and stock and steamed puddings. None of the things I like. I enclose two pounds; could you buy me a nice one and send it to me? You know, something a bit sophisticated. Nothing about cod and nothing about boiled mutton. I can smell them as soon as I read the recipes.

  Not that Tony’s hard to please. He eats anything. He actually eats very little, I think, considering that he puts on weight easily. No breakfast, just tea. He has lunch at the hotel with Shay and some of the lads, and then home here about eight. He says he has his dinner eaten in the middle of the day so it’s only tea and brack really. But at the weekends I’d like to be able to cook something nice.

  You said that I’d have all day to be writing letters now. I thought you were right. I was going to write to you twice a week, but it’s odd. Nothing much happens to write about and still the nothing that is happening takes up a lot of time. I never find myself at a desk like your mother did writing letters. The time goes. I don’t know where. When I think of all I got done in the days I worked with Mam and Dad: a full job, dressed up to kill, books read during my lunch hour, home and helping Niamh with homework, or with Mam making something in the kitchen, then dressing myself up again after tea and out to the pictures with Tony and a bit of a court and home – and maybe in those days sitting down and writing you a long letter before going to bed. But now there’s no energy, no activity and no time.

  Maybe it happens to married women to keep them sort of weighed down so that they won’t run off and do anything foolish.

  I’ve been five months married now and honestly I can hardly list one thing that has happened. I just feel everything’s an awful effort. That’s why married women are such desperate bores. Stay as you are with your Johnny, you’re better off. I don’t mean I’m miserable or anything.

  Perhaps I’ll feel better next week and write some real descriptions of things to you.

  Love, Aisling

  Dear Aisling, I’m writing this note immediately to you. I got your letter today and something occurred to me. Perhaps you are pregnant! Couldn’t that be it? Not that I’m a great expert on the matter but I did read a lot about it in books at that time, and remember that pregnancy brings lethargy. Go on, you might be Momma. I’ll write no more, I’ll just wait to hear. Do write back, whatever, won’t you? Love, E.

  Dear Elizabeth. No I’m not. I got the curse the morning your letter arrived. Thanks all the same. It seemed a reasonable thing to suppose. I’ll write next week. Love. Aisling

  Dear Aisling,

  Johnny and I are in Cornwall on a holiday. This is the hotel writing paper. It’s simply beautiful here, the sea is so wild, it’s very foreign, like being abroad.

  I didn’t hear from you for a few weeks. I hope everything’s all right. I become very stupid and oversensitive as we all know, and maybe I’m just being silly, but when I didn’t hear from you and when I remember your last letter, which was a bit curt and short, I wondered if I’d said anything to offend you. I rushed off that note about the possibility of your being pregnant. Perhaps it was crass, I don’t know. It seemed to me like an explanation for you being under par. I always think of you as being so bouncy and full of life. I always think of you as writing letters too. Please write and reassure your foolish friend Elizabeth

  Dearest Foolish Friend,

  No, of course I wasn’t being curt, of course you weren’t being crass. We’re too young to be curt and crass, that’s only for old ladies and not for friends anyway. No, the problem is that I don’t write as well as you. I give all the wrong impressions. Sister Margaret said I once described the school picnic as if it were the Pope’s funeral. If I try to describe ordinary everyday things I bring everyone down. No wonder you thought I was depressed and unlike myself.

  So, the news cheered me. Everything is great, really great. I’m so happy all the time, Tony is very devoted and loving and we’ve struck a bargain. In return for my entertaining his maternal battle-axe for tea and scones (made by Mam but pretended made by me) every Thursday then he’ll come home for the end of it, drive her back up to her house, go in and have a drink there, and make out it’s as if he never left home. She shows him the cracks and the leaks and the damp and he forgets all about it. Then he comes back to me. We go to Maher’s for a drink with Dad and Mam and then we have dinner at the hotel. Every Thursday. Remember what a treat it was to have a drink there once? Maureen is apparently pea-green again over the hotel business … but honestly I can’t spend my whole life trying not to make her jealous. I did tell you she’s having another baby didn’t I? She looks awful most of the time. If she’d cheer up I’d go down and collect her and take her out places, but God, she’s so bloody weepy. When I come with the car to see her, isn’t it fine for me having a big car under my backside? When I come without it, isn’t it a marvel that those who have cars don’t drive them? I’m not a bad driver now, but I hate reversing, in fact if I’m in the square I drive the whole way round in order not to have to turn.

  Now, foolish friend, do you believe I’m cheerful and not curt – and please write when you come back from your Cornish love nest to

  your inarticulate friend,

  Aisling

  The college principal asked Elizabeth if she would like to give some adult art classes after Christmas. She said she thought that would be nice but wondered whether she would be able to do them.

  ‘You’re silly, darling girl,’ Johnny had said. ‘These poor sods by their very nature know
nothing about art. There’s no fear of setting a genius on the wrong path as you might do with kids, or running into a bunch of know-alls, amongst the students. No, the adult-ed people will be a pushover. Lonely old men and women filling in their evening. They’ll be dead grateful for anything you teach them.’

  Johnny was both wrong and right. Lonely old men and women they were not, but dead grateful they were. It was a new venture, a course of twenty lessons over ten weeks. Elizabeth gave her object-painting classes on Tuesdays, and on Thursdays the principal lectured on the history of art. It was an attempt, he said, to try to share a little culture on a wider level.

  ‘We could arrange visits to galleries in the summer if this is a success,’ Elizabeth had offered, and the principal had looked at her with new approval.

  Some of the adults were young women, often in secretarial and office jobs. They seemed shy and timid and Elizabeth found herself having coffee in the college coffee shop with groups after the class ended at 9.30. Once or twice Johnny had looked in to collect her, flashing a smile of such charm that the entire group felt better for his having been there.

  ‘Do you think you could take them on a tour of the galleries if I set it up next term?’ she asked him one night. ‘They really do want to know about art, but they’re nervous to ask, they feel awkward, they think the world’s divided into Arty People and Non-Arty.’

  ‘Well, it is,’ said Johnny.

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘I am, you are, your Pa is not, my mate Nick is not. It doesn’t matter, it’s like being English or Greek, or being tall or short. It’s just the way things are.’

  Elizabeth was silent. She thought of the men and women who came to her Tuesday class. Perhaps it was just a bit of silliness pretending to open doors to them. But she thought that they really were learning something and several of them had said that they knew now what to look for when they saw a painting; before this they had thought it was a closed world.

  ‘You can learn anything,’ she said definitely.

  ‘Sure,’ Johnny said easily, ‘of course you can learn anything – but you can’t learn to be anything. You can’t change yourself. You can add a few facts and bits of information, but it doesn’t change the person.’

  ‘You’re very dismissive,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘I find them boring, duck, that’s all. The job’s a nice one for you, it earns you a few more shillings, respect of Big White Chief and it makes you happy … but a crusade which I’m going to join, it is not.’

  But in the summer term the principal said there was too much happening for him to set up another course, so Elizabeth was to feel free to do one herself. She printed little leaflets and offered a series of eight visits to the art galleries, each to be followed by a short discussion and coffee. She charged enough to pay for the art gallery entrance, and someone to serve tea and pass biscuits. She said it was ‘Art for Everybody’ and they even interviewed her for a local paper. ‘I don’t believe that the world is divided into the artistic and the non-artistic,’ she was quoted as saying. Stefan put up advertisements for her and so did her friend, Mr Clarke in the library. She told Stefan excitedly that if twenty people registered she would have enough to make it pay; anyone over that would be a bonus. On the day of her first lecture there were fifty-four students. She was ill twice during the afternoon in anticipation of it. But by seven o’clock she was standing talking to the curator at Late Opening Night, assuring him of cooperation, publicity and indeed increased revenue.

  Stefan had lent her a wonderful set of little library steps which she carried under her arm and climbed on so that people could see her whenever she stopped at a painting.

  The first time she climbed the little steps Elizabeth felt almost weak. Her voice started and it sounded faint and pathetic like a kitten. She had to clear her throat and begin again. This time it was not much better. How could she have assembled all these people, over fifty of them, and set herself up to take their money and make speeches at them? It was monstrous. Then she told herself firmly that it was exactly the same as she had been doing while in the college, they were the same kind of people, anxious to know more … anxious to have other eyes show them what to look for in a painting. Their blurred faces sharpened a little and she grabbed at the courage … this time she found her voice, firm and strong, this time she knew that she mustn’t think of how preposterous it was for Elizabeth White to have such notions about herself. This time she must just get on with it and tell them what had to be told.

  Long before she had settled them down with cups of tea for the discussion, she knew it had been a roaring success. She had suggested some books that they might like to read about painters and great paintings before next week. Shyly she had said that when she was a schoolgirl she had been encouraged to read about art by a librarian and an art teacher; and that many people believed it was not the same as being an artist, but it certainly let you know what being an artist was like. She said reluctantly that she could not accept people’s friends, husbands, wives or neighbours next week, that the numbers were rather too large already but that perhaps later they might consider having two separate sessions.

  Elizabeth was longing to discuss her triumph with someone; but Johnny had said he would be out of town for the night; no explanation, but possibly pique that she had started this scheme in spite of him, Elizabeth had thought. Father would have no interest, Stefan would be in bed and asleep, the keys to his beloved shop under his pillow. Elizabeth began a letter to Aisling telling her all about it. But she stopped after three paragraphs. It was almost the end of April. She hadn’t had a letter from Aisling for … it must be months now. No, she had written at Christmas, of course, and after it to thank her for the old-fashioned traycloths, saying that Ma Murray went yellow with being impressed when she saw them. There had been a brief mention of Maureen’s new baby, and of Donal being in the chest hospital for three weeks for observation, but he was fine again. Elizabeth had heard from Aunt Eileen the usual inconsequential things which Elizabeth loved to read. But there had been no word at all from Aisling since January. Months ago. Elizabeth tore up the letter. Aisling couldn’t be interested in hearing all her silly tales, could she? If Aisling were interested she’d have written. Some sort of letter.

  ‘What are you going to do for your birthday?’ Mam asked Aisling at the beginning of May. They sat together companionably in the kitchen with a sense of achievement. Mam had said she had been meaning to tidy the drawers in the kitchen dresser for three years and Aisling had said they should do it now and give it an hour – not a minute more. They found old letters which Aisling put in a paper bag marked ‘Old letters for Mam to drool over later and to say how sweet we all were when we were young’. They found string and buttons and coins. Aisling had them into string bags and button boxes and money boxes like a flash.

  ‘You’re a great little worker,’ Mam had said. ‘I’m surprised you’re not working like a beaver up in that new house.’

  ‘Sure, it’s all done there, there’s nothing to do,’ Aisling had said, lining the drawers with new paper. ‘Now, Mam, you can fill them all up again with rubbish and I’ll come round next year and tidy them up for you.’

  They laughed at the role reversal and opened a tin of shortbread to eat with the tea.

  ‘My birthday, I don’t know. I’d forgotten all about it,’ Aisling said.

  ‘Well, that’s a big change. I remember you and Elizabeth like two little puppies planning birthday treats from April on. I wonder does she still make a fuss of it?’

  ‘We’re too old Mam, the quarter of a century … not much to be crowing about.’

  ‘You always did before,’ Eileen said, letting no anxiety into her voice. ‘I remember this time last year in the middle of all the plans for your wedding you suddenly stopped and said that you didn’t like your birthday being overshadowed.’

  Aisling laughed. ‘Nor did I in those days, I suppose. Very carefree, nothing to worry
about. Birthdays were big happy things.’

  Eileen knew she was treading very gently. ‘And what has made you less carefree may one ask? A car, no less, and able to drive it like a madwoman; a grand man who thinks the world of you and will buy you whatever you set your heart on; a honeymoon where you met the Pope, a house that’s the talk of Kilgarret, and in and out of me as if you were never gone … and us all delighted to see you. Tell me what’s not carefree about that sort of a life?’

  ‘Mam.’ Aisling leaned forward, her eyes troubled. Eileen prayed that Niamh wouldn’t come bouncing in with screams and shouts about homework and exams.

  ‘Yes love?’

  ‘Mam, some things are a bit hard to put, you know?’

  ‘Oh I know, I know.’ Eileen gave a mock sign to take some of the tension out of the conversation. ‘When I was trying to talk to you and Elizabeth when you were teenagers I remember searching high and low for words … but I could never find them. …’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit like that. I wanted to ask you something … tell you something … is it all right?’

  Eileen looked at her. She was too old to take in her arms yet her face was just as young as when she came home with a broken schoolbag or a note of complaint from Sister Margaret. Eileen didn’t want her to blurt anything out too suddenly … something she might regret having told.

  ‘Child, you can ask me anything. Anything, and you can tell me anything too. But I’ll tell you something about telling. Often people are sorry they told things, they feel they let an outside person in on some secret and very unfairly. Then they resent the outside person … do you know what I mean? I wouldn’t want you to grow away from me because you told something that shouldn’t have been told. …’