Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘Goodbye, Aisling,’ Henry interrupted. ‘Goodbye, thank you so much for being our bridesmaid, witness. You are good to have come all this way.’

  ‘Thank you Henry.’ Aisling fingered the little brooch with the pearl in it that Henry had given her. ‘It’s beautiful, I’ll never forget the day.’

  ‘Oh and say goodbye to Tony for me. I can’t see him,’ Henry said.

  ‘I spend my time saying goodbye to Tony for people, I think I should say goodbye to him myself. …’

  They all went downstairs in a happy troop, and clustered around the car. Elizabeth pecked at Father’s cheek; she had given Harry a hug on the stairs. She was kissed by everyone and when Johnny kissed her very tenderly he said, ‘You’re the loveliest lady I ever met, I always said it and I always meant it. Be very very happy.’

  Mrs Noble saw Tony and two men coming out of the bar where she had directed him, he had an arm around each of them. She blocked him from view by pretending great surprise. ‘Hallo, Mr Murray. Fancy seeing you here,’ she said, while she could hear the taxi revving up.

  ‘How do you know who I am?’ Tony growled suspiciously; he felt he was being prevented from doing something he wanted to do, but wasn’t sure what it was.

  The two men who were being dragged with him said, ‘Come on back in the pub mate, they close soon.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll all be in then, everyone’s coming in, in a moment,’ Mrs Noble said.

  ‘Great,’ said Tony, and re-entered just as the final cheer saw the taxi off. The crowd were dispersing on the pavement.

  Mrs Noble drew Aisling aside. ‘I thought I’d mention that he is in that establishment across the road Madam, if you wanted to know.’

  ‘You’re a brick,’ said Aisling, ‘I don’t want to know. I’m going to take my brother off to the pictures. But thank you for telling me, and thank you for getting him there.’

  ‘Not at all – a very high-spirited man, your husband.’

  ‘Very,’ said Aisling. ‘Listen, what will you do when the pub closes if he tries to get back into your place?’

  ‘I’ll tell him the crowd moved on, I’ll point him off towards … where would you like him to head …?’

  ‘I’d say the River Thames but that would sound a bit strong. Anywhere at all, he knows the hotel we’re staying at so he’ll end up there.’

  ‘Poor Aisling, this must be so awful for you, and the last time you saw Elizabeth was your own wedding,’ said Donal as they set off.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It must be sad for you … you know your wedding day turning out so great and now this so awful. …’

  ‘Actually, Donal, my own wedding day turned out pretty awful for me too, but that’s a long story and let’s not tell it now.’ She smiled at him and slowly his white, anxious face broke into a sort of a smile too, and they went off to buy an evening paper and see what film they would go to.

  XVII

  DONAL TOLD EVERYONE that the very same day they came home from London on the plane the British started their war, they went off to Suez.

  ‘It wasn’t a real war, stop going on as if you were out in the front line,’ Eamonn said. ‘Sorry Mam,’ he added suddenly when he saw Eileen’s face.

  ‘I wonder, when I’m dead and gone, will any of you remember you had an elder brother?’ Eileen said.

  ‘Oh Mam, of course we will.’

  ‘Go on about the wedding.’ Niamh was home for the weekend; she felt slighted that Elizabeth had not invited her, but Elizabeth was awfully stuffy and English in some ways. Fancy thinking that it might interfere with her studies.

  ‘I’ve told you everything, it was like a service only no altars, no music and he wasn’t a priest. And it was all in English of course, like Protestants anyway.’

  ‘No, the bit after.’

  Eileen sighed. ‘Donal, show her the photographs. He took lovely pictures, and they got them developed for cost in the chemist. He’s going to send copies to Elizabeth like she did at Aisling’s wedding.’

  ‘Janey, isn’t her father a small little man,’ remarked Niamh.

  ‘That’s not her father, that’s Harry.’

  ‘The husband?’ screamed Niamh, in disbelief.

  ‘No, her stepfather.’

  ‘God, it must have been very awkward having both of them there. Were there any scenes?’

  Donal paused for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. There were no scenes.’

  Aisling called on Mrs Murray a week after their return. ‘Mother-in-Law, I think you’d better get in touch with that priest in Waterford again, sonny boy has broken out.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak in that flippant way, Aisling. We know it’s not Tony’s fault, the priest wrote it down in a letter. Try to be less … well, less joky about it.’

  ‘I think joky is the only way to be about it. What should I do – sit down and weep over it?’

  ‘No my dear, but if you tried to talk to him. …’

  ‘I have tried, I try morning noon and night. I went down to Shay Ferguson and I said to him that Tony would actually prefer to be off the drink, and perhaps he could help him by not encouraging him. He laughed and said that Tony liked his pint and his jar like any other man, and wasn’t it a pity that he was so hen-pecked.

  Mrs Murray sighed. ‘Oh my dear, I don’t know what to do, I really don’t. Will you stay and have some lunch with me …?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m on my way back to the shop. I only just ran up to you so that you’d know from me before anyone else. He’s only been in to work twice, and that’s just to get cash. Old Mother Meade is like a wet hen he’s so upset.’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, thank you Aisling, thank you. We’ll just have to hope it passes over. Is it as bad as … before …?’

  ‘Worse, Mother-in-Law. Worse. When I gave him his dinner yesterday he threw one plate on the floor and the other plate at me. That’s a new little refinement.’

  ‘Oh Aisling, how can you talk about it like that?’

  ‘Right, give me one other way of talking about it. Should I offer it up to the Holy Souls? Mrs M, the way I’m going I could get so many souls out of purgatory they’d have to close the place down. …’

  Eileen announced that she was going to Dublin for a day or two. She had to do quite a few things and it seemed more sensible to stay the night, or even two nights. She had to get all the material for the curtains; no point in paying out that money unless you saw the actual stuff; she was getting a new winter coat, doing early shopping for Christmas, getting her hair cut in that good place where she went for Aisling’s wedding.

  Niamh asked her to stay. ‘The flat isn’t what you’d call posh Mam, or even tidy, but it’s desperately handy for everything, you just have to walk along Baggot Street and Stephen’s Green and you’re in Grafton Street. …’

  ‘No, no, thank you child. I won’t settle in on top of you and your friends. I’ll go to Gretta in Dunlaoghaire. It’s nice to give her the turn.’

  ‘Would you like me to come up to Dublin with you?’ Aisling asked.

  ‘What, and have the two of us away on the same day from the shop, are you off your head?’ Eileen asked.

  Aisling noticed that they were coming to the end of those nice efficient ledger books which she had installed in the shop. You could only buy them in Dublin in that stationer’s in Nassau Street. Why wait and get them posted? Mam could easily put two of them in her suitcase. She decided to ring Gretta in Dunlaoghaire.

  ‘Your Mam here? Not at all, never heard a word that she was coming. I wish she’d let me know. Do you think she’ll be turning up tonight?’ Gretta sounded fussed and bewildered.

  Aisling thought fast. ‘No, it’s all my fault, I looked at the wrong date on the calendar – it was next week she was going to go up. I’m very sorry, Gretta.’

  ‘Well I hope she’ll let me know, I’m very full around Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure she will. I’m sorry for getting it wrong. Goodbye.’

  Dad
had said that Mam rang last night, she was settled into Gretta’s and everything was fine; she’d stay an extra day and be home on Friday.

  ‘Mam, you’re going to have to ring Gretta and talk to her,’ Aisling said when she was sure she had the office to herself.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I rang her when you were meant to be staying with her, and I caused all kinds of confusion. You’ll have to put her straight, say you got it all confused and you’ll be up after Christmas or something.’

  Mam’s face reddened. ‘She said I wasn’t there?’

  ‘Where were you Mam, is everything all right?’

  ‘Did you think I’d run off like poor Violet? Did you tell your father?’

  ‘Mam, what do you take me for? If you’d rung from Dublin I’d have known you were safe; if you weren’t with Gretta, well, there must have been a reason. Were you in hospital?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I couldn’t think what else it might have been. Are you all right Mam?’

  Eileen looked at her, smiling. ‘I am thank God, I’m absolutely fine. I’m all clear, and as sound as a bell, that’s what they said.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell us, Mam, why didn’t you let me go with you …?’

  ‘And leave the shop?’

  ‘Oh, to hell with the shop, Mam, when you weren’t well.’

  ‘But I’m grand now, I promise you, there were cysts, and I was afraid, and Doctor Murphy wondered … and we thought the best thing was to be whipped in and out just like that.’

  ‘But why didn’t you say Mam, why drag yourself round getting coats and curtains …?’

  ‘I didn’t spend much time, just an hour, I picked the first coat I saw, and the curtains are fine, I knew that anyway.’ Eileen laughed at her own cleverness.

  ‘But you can’t do that, keeping things to yourself.’

  ‘Yes I can, and I’m not even going to mention it to anyone now.’

  ‘Even though you’re fine.’

  ‘No, because every time I go out of the room people will think I’m off secretly to a specialist. …’

  ‘What did they do to you, Mam?’

  ‘I had an examination under anaesthetic, you know probing around, and just two cysts, both benign, removed easily. …’

  ‘Poor Mam, poor Mam.’ Aisling was hardly able to speak, she was so distressed to think of Mam all by herself in that hospital.

  ‘But I’m fine, isn’t that good news?’

  ‘Are you sure, Mam, are you sure you’re not being brave about that too?’

  ‘No, that’s different. I wouldn’t be brave about that. If I was told that my days were going to be cut short I’d have to make plans for everyone. But they told me I was the healthiest fifty-six-year-old they’d dealt with for a long time.’

  ‘And you really are fine?’

  ‘Yes, my love, and I feel that years are taken off me now that I know that. You’re a very good girl not to raise a hue and cry about it all. If ever there was anything else, I would tell you. I mean it.’

  ‘Well, if that’s a promise?’

  ‘It is. Now I’d better go and calm Gretta down before she has the whole country alerted.’

  Brendan Daly told Maureen that he had seen Tony Murray driving that car of his when he was in no fit condition. Maureen said that she had heard something about it herself.

  ‘Well you’d better say something about it to Aisling, hadn’t you?’

  ‘What good will it do? It isn’t Aisling who’s driving dangerously.’

  ‘I know, but she should be told, in case something were to happen.’

  ‘I suppose she knows already, but I’ll tell her.’

  ‘Right. Now I feel I’ve done my duty. I heard in the creamery that he nearly lifted two people off the bridge the other afternoon.’

  ‘Oh God, isn’t he a maniac, wouldn’t you think with all that money he could get someone to take him home, or stay in the hotel if he’s had a few too many …?’

  Mrs Moriarty said to Donal that poor Tony Murray had been looking a bit under the weather recently; was anything the matter with him?

  ‘I don’t think so, Mrs Moriarty,’ Donal had said, his face as white as his coat. He hated any implied criticism of Aisling.

  ‘I don’t like poking my nose into other people’s business,’ she began.

  ‘I know you don’t.’ Donal smiled at her. ‘You’re a grand woman, you’re not like all the old gossips in this town. People’s characters are safe with you.’

  Mrs Moriarty felt slightly disappointed, but she thanked Donal for the compliment.

  ‘Anyway, it would be much worse if he was chasing the women,’ she said out of the blue, and went back into her little room behind the shop.

  Mrs Murray said that she had been wondering what was best to do for Christmas.

  ‘Cancel it,’ Aisling had suggested.

  ‘Not very helpful, dear.’ Mrs Murray was worried too, it was not fair to torment her with slick remarks.

  ‘What would you like us to do, Mother-in-Law?’

  ‘What do you think is best?’

  ‘Will we have Christmas dinner at your place? I’ll come and help you cook it. It might be more cheerful up there than in the bungalow, with all your family around. …’

  ‘I don’t know who will be here, Father John is helping with a Christmas liturgy in. …’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be more Christian if he were to help with his own brother?’

  ‘That’s not the point, he won’t be able to get away, two bishops and ten priests have been chosen, it’s an honour.’

  ‘All right, it’s an honour. But we’ll have Joannie, won’t we?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I had a letter. I don’t know where I put it, but she’s not sure. She thinks that some of the girls in her flat. …’

  ‘They’re not girls, they’re grown-up women, like Joannie, like me.’

  ‘Yes, well, she calls them the girls, they were thinking of going to a house party they saw advertised in Scotland. …’

  ‘Were they thinking that, by God? Isn’t she a selfish cow?’

  ‘Aisling please.’

  ‘She is, Mrs Murray, a cow, a selfish cow. And what do that group of clowns want going to house parties for? Haven’t they their own homes …?’

  ‘You’re not going to change things by calling them names.’ Mrs Murray looked hurt and upset.

  Aisling agreed that she was right. ‘All right, Mother-in-Law, it’s you and me for Christmas. Let’s try to make it a good day.’

  ‘And Tony, of course. …’ Tony’s mother said.

  ‘Oh, and Tony of course.’

  Niamh looked very down at the mouth when she came back to Kilgarret for the Christmas holidays.

  ‘It’s Tim, this fellow, he’s gone off with a really dreadful girl – she has nothing to recommend her, Aisling, she’s a real Holy Joe, and she wears awful, long, straggly knitted cardigans.’

  ‘Oh yes. Well do you think he’s serious about your one in the cardigan or do you think it’s just a passing fancy?’

  ‘I don’t know, but you know the real thing … I can’t tell this to Mam, obviously … but I’m afraid he’ll tell people about us … and you know, I don’t want them to get the wrong impression. …’

  ‘Tell what?’

  ‘Oh, you know, about us, him and me, I wouldn’t want people to think that I’d, well … with anyone. Tim was special. I’m not indiscriminate, and I wouldn’t want him to tell people I was.’

  ‘Do you mean you went to bed with him?’ Aisling’s face was round with disbelief.

  ‘Well yes, he is my boyfriend. Was my boyfriend.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Well, suit yourself, Aisling, but don’t go blabbing to Mam, she’d murder me.’

  ‘It’s very hard to know when Aisling’s joking and when she’s deadly earnest.’ Elizabeth was reading the letter to Henry, who was pinning holly and ivy around the room.


  ‘What does she say?’

  ‘Oh, you know it’s all about the horrific Christmas, three of them rolling around a huge empty house.’

  ‘I thought she had a big family.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s going to be with Tony’s mother for some reason, alone. And Tony, she thinks, may have some difficulty in lasting the day with them.’

  ‘Dear me, is he still very drinky?’

  ‘What a marvellous word. Drinky. Yes, he is very drinky. It started at our wedding weekend and seems to have gone on since. Oh well, maybe another priest will cure him. Aisling is amazing, she never seems to be as upset as she should be.’

  ‘Would you be upset if I was drinky and didn’t come home?’ Henry smiled down at her from the chair he was standing on.

  ‘I’d be very upset indeed. So don’t try it. And if you were very drinky indeed, which is what I think Tony is, then I’d leave you. I’d just go.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she do that? Leave Tony?’

  ‘Oh, they don’t do that in Ireland.’

  Father managed very well without her. Elizabeth was pleased but slightly annoyed to notice this. Just as he had settled into a routine of life without Mother, so he did in a life without Elizabeth. He kept a little notebook in the kitchen with the words ‘Ask Elizabeth’ on it. When the queries had been answered they were ticked, and sometimes the answers written down.

  ‘Tea-cup stains,’ he had written, and then beside it, ‘I am only rinsing them. E says I should rub them with scourer inside and if stain bad try soaking in salt or soda.’ ‘Sour smell in sink.’ ‘E thinks it could be dishcloths not properly washed and left to air.’

  What a narrow and organised life he liked to lead. Everything in its little box, neatly ticked and docketed and filed away. He had been pleasantly surprised when she had invited him for Christmas, and suggested that he come and spend three days.

  ‘That’s very nice of you my dear. But stay? At night?’

  ‘Well, why not Father? Henry would be very happy for you to come. And it would be nicer than flogging home all the way to Clarence Gardens.’

  ‘That’s very generous of Henry and of you. Shall I pack a suitcase?’

  Sometimes she wanted to shake him until he fell limp from the shaking. He agreed eventually to spend Christmas night itself, but he would return home on Boxing Day.