Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  They kept making tea, pot after pot of it. The telling was not a litany of Tony’s wrongs, rather a higgledy-piggledy kaleidoscope of life in Kilgarret. There were no plans, no strategies, no working out of the future. No regrets, or if onlys … Tony emerged as a man who should never have married anyone. Nothing was spared, but nothing was lurid in the telling. Aisling seemed to regard Tony’s impotence as just one more reason why he was unsuited to marriage.

  ‘He should have been a priest like his brother. Yes, I mean it.’

  ‘But with his taste for drink, well, it wouldn’t have worked.’

  ‘I’m not being anti-clerical, but I think it would,’ Aisling said. ‘Look at the priest in Waterford that cured him that time, the two-bottles-a-day man, isn’t he grand now? Priests are able to look after each other, if one of them goes on the jar the others help him, take over some of his duties, don’t lead him into bad ways. They have no families to break up, drunken priests don’t. … It’s drunken married men that are the real pity.’

  Elizabeth told of Eileen’s phone call.

  ‘I’m not going to do it, I won’t meet her and have her lay the whole reasons out in front of me again. I’m not going to do it.’

  ‘But you will ring her, won’t you?’ Elizabeth hated to see Aisling wince when she made some facial gesture as she was doing now. She was trying to put on a cheerful smile and it hurt her lip.

  ‘Of course I’ll ring her. I can’t have Mam sitting there waiting in an empty shop – but it’s not going to do any good.’

  Henry came home at six o’clock.

  ‘Is she here?’ he whispered in the hall.

  ‘Yes, she’s having a sleep, I said I’d wake her again at ten o’clock to ring her mother. …’

  ‘Is she badly beaten up?’ Henry was concerned.

  ‘Just her face, it looks awful but she says it’s only bruising and one cut lip which is swollen. It’s a dreadful mess.’

  ‘Her face?’

  ‘Yes, that is a mess too but I meant the whole thing. Everyone seems to think she should have gone along with him, you know, living with him. It’s madness, he should have been locked up, for his own good.’

  ‘So why didn’t the family have him put away?’

  ‘The family could see nothing wrong with him. I don’t know, it’s a mystery, but the desperate thing is that she had to run away.’

  ‘In case he’d come after her and be even more violent, do you mean?’

  ‘No, it would cause too much upheaval her going back to her own home, or so she says.’

  ‘Perhaps it will all settle down again, when the first shock is over, maybe she’ll go back?’

  ‘She’ll never go back to Tony, I know that, the question is can she go back to Kilgarret and not live with him? I think she can, the place isn’t half as medieval as she makes out, but she’s terribly upset … I said she could stay here for as long as she likes, was that all right?’

  ‘Of course it was, you’re very good to your friends.’

  ‘She was always very good to me, very very good.’

  ‘You mean having you as an evacuee in the family?’

  ‘Yes, and a lot more.’

  *

  Elizabeth spoke to Eileen first.

  ‘The injury isn’t too bad at all, it looks very bad but it’s definitely not serious and won’t last.’

  ‘Thank you very much child, and is there any problem about telephoning …?’ Eileen sounded weary.

  ‘No, not at all, I’ll hand you over in a moment, she’s just having a cup of tea to wake her up, she’s slept four and a half hours. But the meeting might be difficult – anyway I’ll get her for you.’

  Elizabeth and Henry went into the kitchen and closed the door when Aisling went to the telephone. Henry had said to her that she was to talk for as long as she liked. He had been uneasy talking to a girl with such a battered face. He tried to avoid looking at her as he spoke – which made Aisling hang her head even more.

  ‘It will pass, Henry, today and tomorrow will be the worst. It will be gone by New Year’s Eve.’

  Now she stood speaking to her mother in the softly-lit hallway of the Battersea flat. Neither of them knew where Tony was.

  ‘I haven’t asked you to ring so that I can give out to you,’ Mam said.

  ‘I know, I know, Mam.’

  ‘And I hear that, bad though it all was, it will go and leave no scar.’

  ‘No, no, so the man said. I told him about the fall I had hitting the chair.’

  ‘I see. I wish I could talk to you.’

  ‘Well I rang you, Mam, when you said.’ There was a muffled sound. ‘Mam, are you crying, you’re not crying, Mam?’

  ‘No, of course not, of course not. I was blowing my nose.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘Will you be able to come back?’

  ‘To work and live with you?’

  ‘No, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Then the answer’s no.’

  ‘You could stay with me for a bit.’

  ‘Permanently, or not at all.’

  ‘But nothing’s permanent, you know. Is Niamh permanent? Is Donal, is Eamonn? What’s permanent?’

  ‘It’s longer than you want me for.’

  ‘I’d have you forever, you know that, and so would your Dad. But. …’

  ‘But. …’

  ‘But it’s not reasonable. You’d have to try to make a go of the other.’

  ‘I have tried.’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘How much do they want? I could have lost an eye!’

  ‘There’s no “they”, Aisling … it’s only you I’m thinking about.’

  ‘There is a “they”, Mam there must be, otherwise why are we speaking this kind of pidgin English?’

  ‘You know why, and that’s different.’

  ‘Leave me be, Mam, leave me. I’ll ring you and I’ll write to you. I’ll write to the shop and it’ll look like a bill. I’ll put it in a brown envelope.’

  ‘Child, don’t start making arrangements as if it’s going to be for a long time.’

  ‘It is, Mam, it’s going to be forever as far as … as far as the former situaton was concerned.’

  ‘If you’d let me talk to you, to both of you … I blame myself, I didn’t know how bad things had got.’

  ‘No, Mam, no, I won’t sit around while short-term miracle cures are worked from Waterford, and the danger and threat of … of falling over another chair hangs over me. I won’t do it.’

  ‘I’ll come anywhere.’

  ‘I know, but you mustn’t.’

  ‘What can I do to help you, then?’

  ‘I’m feeling better here, and calmer – but tomorrow night I’ll be in a position to tell you more, or maybe the next day. It’s a question of writing to people. I’ll have to write to Jimmy Farrelly, for one thing.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jimmy, about arrangements, finance and all – no, don’t worry I only want very little, far less than I’m entitled to, but I’ll work it out. Elizabeth’s husband is a solicitor, he’ll help me.’

  ‘No, nothing like that, it’s far too soon, too final.’

  ‘I keep telling you, the sooner it’s done the better. And I’ll write to his Ma, she’s very nice. Mam, I changed my mind about her a lot over the time, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That’s where you could really help, by being nice to her. She’s kind of easy to distract, if you know what I mean … you can veer her away from the main point.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then do what’s best for yourselves, you know … whatever causes you the least problems.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that’s all, really.’

  ‘Are you not forgetting anything?’ Eileen’s voice was cold.

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘The other half of the bargain and the promise and the agreement.’ Aisling said nothing. ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yes. I�
�m trying to forget that part. I hope I will, but it’s not going to be easy. Perhaps when my face is better I’ll start trying seriously.’

  ‘But. …’

  ‘The best thing I could do is to forget all that. If I remember it I’d have to do something about it.’

  ‘Will you be all right there?’

  ‘Yes, Elizabeth’s marvellous, Mam, marvellous altogether, and Henry too, they’re so welcoming. They’ve got a grand room for me. I was able to sleep there like a baby. It was great. I really feel much better.’

  ‘I’m glad, child. I’m glad you’re with Elizabeth. I feel safe while you’re with her.’

  ‘Yes, well, I won’t stay long, I’ll get myself a place.’

  ‘Not yet, not yet.’

  ‘No, not this week. Will I ring you tomorrow, Mam, or the next night?’

  ‘The next night. I’ll ring you, I don’t want Elizabeth’s phone bill to be enormous.’

  ‘What do you tell Dad you’re doing in the shop at this hour?’

  ‘I tell him the truth. I tell him I want to do a bit of ledger work when it’s nice and quiet, and I do it too.’

  ‘I wish things were different, Mam.’

  ‘Goodnight, Aisling, God bless you. Go back to bed now. …’

  Before Aisling spoke to Mam again Simon called; he was horrified to see the injury that Aisling had got when she had fallen over a chair. He was sad, too, to hear the unconnected fact that she had left her husband.

  ‘He was the rather jolly bloke who sang at the wedding, wasn’t he?’ Simon asked.

  ‘That was the bloke,’ Aisling had agreed.

  Johnny had called too, with a huge plant-holder for Elizabeth.

  ‘Did the Squire beat you up?’ he said sympathetically to Aisling.

  ‘Yes,’ said Aisling, ‘but we say I fell over a chair.’

  ‘Oh, definitely, that’s what we’ll say,’ said Johnny. ‘But I’d like to go and punch his fat stupid mouth in. I could see at the wedding he was a bundle of trouble.’

  ‘Yes, he’s a bundle of trouble,’ said Aisling.

  Elizabeth had been available all the time. ‘You can cry, and I’ll cry too, if you like,’ she had said, ‘but I think it hurts your face so try not to. We’ll go on living a normal life around you, but any time you want me tell me and I’ll slip away from it.’

  Shortly before Mam was to ring Elizabeth said to Aisling in the kitchen, ‘I’m awfully afraid Father is about to enlist Henry as a bridge player. I can’t bear the game, and Henry is so polite he might just go and learn it, to be courteous.’

  ‘They get on very well, that’s great, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it surprises me all the time. Father was even saying tonight that he was flatterd to think the baby might be called George … Oh God.’

  ‘No, no, not really, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me? Isn’t that wonderful! Oh, Elizabeth I’m so pleased. Isn’t that marvellous? When, when did you find out?’

  ‘Just before Christmas, I was going to tell you when things settled down a bit.’

  The phone rang.

  ‘It’s a trunk call,’ shouted Henry.

  Mam told her that Ethel Murray had spent the entire day in the square, and Mam couldn’t go to work. Donal was out all day at work and so were Eamonn and Sean. Niamh had gone to Cork with Tim. Ethel Murray had contacted the priest in Waterford, who had come to Kilgarret. Tony hadn’t touched a drop of drink for twenty-four hours, he had told his mother, and the priest, and eventually told Mam that he had struck Aisling in drunkenness and he was extremely sorry. Everyone was delighted that he had taken all the blame so firmly upon himself. He acknowledged that the fault was all his. He begged Aisling to come back. He said that things would be different from now on. Mam sounded delighted as she regaled all this news.

  ‘Isn’t that great child, you were right all along,’ Mam said. ‘Now you can come home.’

  Aisling waited until her face looked less frightening before she set out to look for a job and a home. It took ten days before the bruising had died down and the scar on her lip had become less vivid. During this time she scoured the Jobs Vacant, and Apartments Vacant advertisements with eager eyes. It seemed to her that most of what she would earn in a Sit. Vac. would have to go on an Apart. Vac. She had never appreciated the advantage of living at home in the square and putting a couple of pounds a week into the post office for Mam, she hadn’t thought about the advantages of living in the bungalow bought by the Murrays’ money. She couldn’t remember any advantages living there. She had a year and a half’s wages in her own post office book, all in her own name so there was no trouble filling in the forms which were sent off to the GPO in Dublin to withdraw the money. She was touched to the point of tears by all the offers of help she got. However had she thought that the English were cold? Stefan and Anna had offered her a room and part-time work if she was stuck. They invited her to a meal one evening and served her a funny strong liqueur that made her cough.

  ‘You could become addicted to this stuff, you’ll have me as bad as my husband,’ she said.

  ‘It is good that you can talk about it like that,’ Stefan had said approvingly.

  Elizabeth’s father had been kind, too, even though Aisling felt there had been an undertone of disapproval. Mr White must see in her an echo of his wife’s behaviour. In fact he seemed amazed that there was no man at the root of Aisling’s flight. He offered her Elizabeth’s old bedroom at a token rent until she got herself settled.

  ‘I’m afraid I would not be much company for you,’ he said, ‘I’m a very private sort of person you know.’

  Simon and Henry said they would ask a barrister friend of theirs to look up the legal situation for her. There would be knotty problems because of there being no divorce in Ireland for one thing, and the interpretation of the law of domicile for another. A wife’s domicile was always judged as being in the country where her husband lived. But they were sure they could iron it out so that he would have to pay her maintenance. They seemed to enjoy discussing it as a technical problem as well as doing it on her behalf.

  It was Johnny Stone who seemed to understand better than anyone that she really wanted to be finished with the whole business.

  ‘Don’t take anything from the Squire. You’re a bright strong woman, you can make a living better than the Squire. If you go about fighting and haggling for his money this way and that way you’ll never be shut of him. Wipe him out, start again.’

  That’s what she really wanted to do, but it was only Elizabeth who realised that wiping out Tony seemed to mean wiping out her whole life in Kilgarret as well.

  Aisling went for long winter walks in Battersea Park with Elizabeth, talking about the baby; they read baby books to see what shape it was now. They said that they wouldn’t make the mistakes with the baby that everyone else had made with them.

  ‘I’ll never make him feel awkward and stupid,’ Elizabeth said. ‘That’s what Mother made me feel when I was little. I remember being so afraid of her when I came home from school, and so afraid of her fighting with Father.’

  ‘I wasn’t afraid of that,’ Aisling remembered. ‘No, we weren’t made to feel stupid, and she didn’t fight with Dad, but Mam was very set in her ways, what was right was right, what was wrong was wrong. She’s still like that in a way. It makes things very sure and certain. It makes them too damn rigid. If Mam had been a bit more flexible. …’

  Elizabeth didn’t fully agree. ‘I don’t want to keep praising her out of some politeness, but she was utterly reliable. If you knew how important that sort of thing is … Mother was difficult, and then flighty, and then disappeared. Father was moody and weak and so much the underdog. Even before I came to Kilgarret and learned about prayer and sin I used to pray that they would be like a mother and father in a children’s story book, yours were like that.’

  ‘Well young George or young Eileen will be lucky. I’m becoming silly about the baby myself, and I’m falling in lo
ve with Henry, too, so you’d better move me out soon.’

  Henry had indeed decided to learn bridge. ‘It’s only one evening a week,’ he had pleaded to Elizabeth, ‘I can go on the evening that you do the accounts with Johnny and Stefan. They have a lesson first and then a game, and then a discussion and then tea. …’

  ‘But it’s so awful there, remember, I went to one. Full of awful lonely people staring at the teacher thinking that if they learn this awful points system their lives will be transformed. I only took Father to one because he was lonely and had no social life. You’re not lonely and you do have a social life.’

  ‘I’d like to be able to play a hand of bridge with your father from time to time,’ he said mutinously.

  ‘If that’s all it was, a hand with Father, it would be great. I’d encourage you like anything. But it’s not a game for two, it’s a game for four. Awful, awful people come to the house and they talk about nothing except the game and they demand teas with dainty sandwiches.’

  ‘Why don’t you take it up again, and Aisling could learn, too? It would be super in the winter evenings.’

  ‘Henry, we have each other for the winter evenings. Stop preparing for some long lonely session. We don’t need to play bloody bridge.’

  ‘Don’t be so doctrinaire, Elizabeth,’ Aisling said. ‘I think he’s right, and I will learn with him. I’m not a total beginner, Henry, I used to play a bit with Mrs Murray and Joannie and John, when her children deigned to come home and see her. But they were all so busy talking about other things I don’t think I concentrated properly. …’

  Later, Aisling said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but he was so eager, and it would be nice for me to play bridge if I’m going to live on my own in London. Better than shove ha’penny, I think, as a social skill.’

  ‘Aisling, you are ridiculous, of course I don’t mind, I’m delighted. I was just afraid Henry would become a fuddy-duddy. You know, like Father.’