Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘A fortune,’ Aisling said firmly. ‘I don’t write it up, of course, they have a book-keeper – as well they might. I leave all the information there in the files: who came, what was wrong, what happened, what was prescribed … then they work out some enormous fees. They have two sets of books, one for the income tax and one for themselves. I know that because I saw the book-keeper working once. Funny little woman – she looks like someone’s granny, not a fiddler.’

  ‘That’s very unfair of them,’ Henry said, it’s most unjust – if they make so much anyway why are they unwilling to pay taxes on it?’ Henry was getting quite worked up about the doctors now.

  ‘Henry, we’re not going to cure the corruption in Harley Street – or any other street. As Aisling, said, everyone’s doing it. Just because we don’t, it doesn’t mean the world is like us. Here, take your beautiful daughter from me for a while; I must go and do some work on this year’s art course or we’ll not earn enough money to pay taxes on.’ She smiled and handed Eileen over.

  Henry took the baby absently, still looking upset. ‘We earn enough money, I’ve had a rise. We manage. You don’t need to do the art course this year.’

  ‘But I do. We discussed it. Apart from liking it and wanting to do it, it really does bring in a nice little sum. …’ She turned to Aisling apologetically. ‘Why don’t you and your chap Johnny join up, then I’d know I had two pupils anyway?’

  Elizabeth had meant it as a joke, but Aisling answered her seriously. ‘I was going to do just that, I thought it might educate me a little … but Johnny said I would only confuse myself and tie my already garbled brain up into more knots.’

  Elizabeth laughed easily. ‘Oh yes, I know, pathetic once-weekly culture-seekers … middle-class aspirations … Readers’ Digest condensed art lessons. …’

  Aisling burst out laughing. ‘He told you he said all that to me?’

  ‘Aisling, Johnny has been saying that for years. He has always been wrong but he never changes his tune. Still, suit yourself. You’re missing the chance of a lifetime, isn’t she, Henry.’

  ‘What?’ Henry was still annoyed. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t listening.’

  Elizabeth kissed Henry suddenly. ‘If I hadn’t had my art course,’ she said, ‘I’d never have found you, think about that.’

  ‘Yes, but if you keep on having art courses, maybe you’ll find another one.’ Henry was almost good-humoured.

  ‘That’s the only reason I keep holding them, you know that!’

  *

  Aisling and Elizabeth pushed the pram through Battersea Park. Eileen was so wrapped up it was hard to see how she could get any benefit from the spring sunshine. Still, Aisling said, it was doing the grown-ups no harm to have a bit of exercise. As usual, they stopped at a bench for a cigarette.

  ‘Undoing the good of the healthy walk,’ Aisling would say, lighting up happily.

  ‘Does Johnny not try to get you to give them up?’

  ‘Oh, I smoke very little with him, one after a meal, and I’m forever brushing my teeth. He doesn’t go on at me so much now. Anyway, it’s only a phase, he’ll go back on them.’

  ‘No,’ said Elizabeth, ‘it’s not a phase, everything he does he means. He won’t go back on them.’

  ‘It hasn’t made any difference, between us, my being with Johnny?’ Aisling asked.

  ‘No, no, of course it hasn’t. I mean that.’

  ‘Yes, I know you said from the start … and I know you don’t have regrets or anything. After all, it was you that gave him up.’

  ‘Yes, in a way. …’

  ‘Does it bring it all back, you know, the good bits, the start, when you see me with him, when I talk about it all? You see. … it’s the only thing I’m not sure about. …’

  ‘About what, about me?’

  ‘Yes, I know how you feel for Henry and Eileen and I know almost every corner of your life as you do mine … but I don’t know about Johnny. If you cared for him so much once how had it turned into a sort of joky friendship by the time I came over here?’

  ‘Because that was the only way it could be. …’

  ‘That’s what I’m getting at. Do you regret it all, and wish that. … I don’t know, wish that you and he were married and that it was all great?’

  Elizabeth blew out a long breath of smoke. ‘I’m being as honest as I know how, I’m not playing with words. But for me to wish that is a nonsense. It’s like wishing for a square circle, or wishing that grass was blue instead of green. It’s a nonsense because it could never have happened.’

  There was a silence.

  Then, ‘And after all that time, all that involvement, you still don’t feel jealous or envious … or think that if you were free …?’

  ‘No. No, I do mean that and I want you to believe it.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand it,’ Aisling said as they stood up to move on. ‘But then you’ve been in love twice and I’ve never been in love at all.’

  ‘Not even with Johnny?’

  ‘No. I’m fascinated with him, but I’m not in love, not the way people are who would do anything for the loved one. I don’t put him before me. …’

  ‘You will,’ Elizabeth said.

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I did what you asked and it wasn’t a nice thing to do. The place is a real posh place for a start, very very pricey and they all speak with marbles in their mouths, the staff that is.

  I said I was enquiring about Mr Murray on behalf of an intermediary who wondered whether his wife should come to see him. Oh, they wanted to give no information away. I gave details on the understanding that his family in Ireland were not to be told. I said I had met him at a wedding in London and would like to resume the acquaintance.

  He was sitting in the garden, and a male nurse was beside him. He looked terrible. He’s both fatter and thinner than on your wedding day, his face seems swollen and yet his neck looks thin and hangs in folds of skin.

  He didn’t remember me, I said we’d all met at your wedding. He didn’t seem to recall that either.

  So I said that I lived nearby and maybe I might call in once or twice, and he more or less said suit yourself. Then the old biddy who runs the place sort of warmed a bit to me when she saw I really had met him. Anyway, she said he’d never come out of there. She didn’t put it like that, Elizabeth, but that’s what she said really. It’s worse than where your poor mother was because it pretends to be normal, yet they have these male nurses padding round beside the patients trying to look invisible. It gave me the creeps, and if it’s all the same to you I won’t go again. He’s not a man, he’s a shell.

  Love to you, Henry and my lovely Eileen,

  From Harry

  ‘I asked Harry to go and look at Tony for you,’ Elizabeth said.

  Aisling was startled. ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s too big a part of your life to cut off and forget.’

  ‘Surely you don’t want me to try and go … after all you know and heard. …’

  ‘No, no indeed, but I … we should know how he was.’

  ‘And how does Harry say he is?’

  ‘Like a shell.’

  ‘Oh God. Like a shell.’

  Johnny said they should go to Greece. He said she should ask for a month.

  ‘Nobody gets a month off in my kind of job. I’m lucky they’re going to give me three weeks. I had the two weeks at Christmas, remember, when we went to Cornwall.’

  ‘That was last year’s holiday, this is this year’s.’

  ‘Oh, but I couldn’t take a whole month. …’

  ‘September is beautiful in Greece.

  ‘I’ll ask, but I don’t know … I don’t want to annoy them either.’

  ‘Look, I’ll go for a month, you come for as long as you can. Right? That way there’s no fuss.’

  He was right, of course, but somehow it annoyed Aisling. She felt that she wasn’t the whole reason for the holiday in Greece. She felt that Johnny would have been going anywa
y.

  *

  Father said that it was a pity Aisling had dropped out of the bridge classes, she had been very quick and would have made a good player. Elizabeth explained that she was going about with Johnny Stone.

  ‘No!’ said Father. ‘Your chap Johnny Stone?’

  ‘Yes, he used to be my chap, but not now, obviously.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Father said, ‘I hope he treats her better than he treated you.’

  Elizabeth felt a wave of resentment and irritation. She would like to have screamed at him. Yet she knew that to an outsider, it was treating a girl shabbily to have an affair with her for seven years and make no suggestion of marriage. And possibly, in many ways, it was shabby.

  ‘Do you tell Aunt Eileen anything about Johnny in your letters?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘What could I tell her in the name of God?’

  ‘You know, that you’re happy, that you’re seeing him – I didn’t mean saying you were sleeping with him.’

  ‘But Mam would be horrified to know I was seeing a man. I’m a married woman to Mam, still, you know. I couldn’t tell her a thing about Johnny. Mam only sees romance as leading to the altar and while Tony’s around there would be no way of going to the altar with Johnny, so Mam can’t be told.’

  Elizabeth felt that whether Tony were around or not there would be no way to the altar with Johnny, but said nothing. I might not even be right, she thought to herself suddenly. Perhaps he is thinking of settling down, maybe he’s had enough flings. Perhaps he might want to marry Aisling and have a child.

  The thought disturbed her, and she was annoyed at herself for being disturbed.

  But Aisling had told Donal about the affair. Donal after all had met Johnny at Elizabeth’s wedding and had liked him. He also knew vaguely that he was the long-standing lover in Elizabeth’s past. Donal was flattered to be told the secret, but his words of encouragement and enthusiasm were tinged with a caution that Aisling didn’t like to read.

  Donal was now engaged to Anna Barry; she would do her B.A. Honours in September and they would marry in October. He would so much like Aisling to be at the wedding – but if she couldn’t he’d understand. He was glad she was happy and having a romance with Johnny Stone, but he hoped she wouldn’t get hurt. After all it was easy for Johnny to take advantage of her, new in London, fresh from a broken marriage. He hoped she wasn’t being foolish. After all, he had used Elizabeth for a long time, and she had to throw him over in the end. He was sure it would all turn out for the best. Mam had been much better and was looking forward to the wedding, because the Barrys would have to organise it. Aisling and Tony’s bungalow had been sold to a cousin of Mr Moriarty’s who said that it was a marvellous labour-saving house. But Aisling probably knew that already. He hoped that she would make a lot of new friends in London as well as Johnny. Anna sent her love.

  Patronising little sod, Aisling thought in a fury. Then she softened. It wasn’t his fault, he was still a lovely gentle boy; he had just been steeped through and through with the values of Kilgarret. He was a little provincial; her smashing brother Donal had become a small-minded little provincial chemist.

  Johnny said they should go to Greece by train and ship. It would take nearly five days to get there and five days back. That was why they needed at least a month. Aisling hadn’t asked the doctors yet, in fact she thought that she might send them a telegram from Greece with an imaginary ailment. She wondered would they travel as man and wife … it hadn’t occurred before. That cottage in Cornwall had belonged to friends of Johnny, so there had been no need for deception. Aisling had been lonely last Christmas. It was the anniversary of all her troubles and she was lucky to have found a marvellous man to whisk her off to the wild seas and peace of the countryside. But she had been lonely for earlier Christmases, the ones in the square.

  But a real summer holiday was something different. She could hardly wait for it. Elizabeth had been envious.

  ‘I’m bright green, that’s what I am. No, never did I go off to Greece with Johnny, or anyone. …’

  ‘But he said he was always travelling. …’

  ‘So he was, but without me. I couldn’t go, there was Father, or there was Mother, or there was work … no wild roamings around Europe like you.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have gone.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Elizabeth cuddled Eileen, who always smiled at exactly the right time, as if on cue. ‘Anyway, if I had gone, everything might have been different, and I mightn’t have you … and that would have been dweadful, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Elizabeth, you swore no baby talk!’

  ‘So I did, but I forget. Anyway, I heard you cooing at her yesterday.’

  ‘Ah, that was different. It’s coming up to her birthday, everyone’s allowed a few coos at a birthday.’

  They had a cake with one candle, and they sang to her: Henry, Elizabeth, Johnny and Aisling, Simon and Father. Eileen put both her fat little arms in the air and waved. They were having a slice of cake when the telephone rang.

  ‘It’s for you, Aisling. It’s your father,’ Henry said.

  Elizabeth stood up at the same time.

  ‘My God,’ said Aisling. ‘It must be Mam.’

  ‘It could be anything, don’t panic,’ said Elizabeth.

  Side by side they went into the hall.

  ‘What will we do?’ Aisling asked.

  ‘Talk to him, it may be nothing.’ Elizabeth took Aisling’s other hand as she picked up the receiver.

  From the sitting room the birthday party saw them standing together in a shaft of sunlight. Both of them rigid as if waiting for a blow.

  ‘Yes Dad. Of course you were right to ring, Dad. …’

  ‘And when did they tell you?

  ‘And did they tell her, does she know?

  ‘Oh God. Oh dear God.

  ‘And how long do they say …?

  ‘Oh no, surely not, surely they must say more than that …?

  ‘And does she have pain Dad …?

  ‘Of course, Dad. Tomorrow. No, don’t worry about that. I’ll sort it out at this end. Tomorrow.’

  The doctors had been very understanding. Aisling thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t asked them for the month’s holiday; that would have marked her down as flighty. They might not even have believed the tale of a dying mother. She spent two hours writing out a very clear set of instructions for whoever would come from the secretarial agency to do her job.

  ‘Choose an auld one like myself, don’t get a flighty little thing,’ she said to Doctor Steiner.

  ‘How old are you?’ he said laughing.

  ‘Oh, it’s in my file, you know well enough, twenty-eight.’

  ‘You had your mother a long time, compared to some,’ he said gently.

  ‘Yes, but I ran away from her … that’s what’s hard.’

  ‘Still, you’re going back now, when she needs you.’

  ‘Yes, and Elizabeth’s coming with me, that’s the best bit.’

  Henry had been amazed when Elizabeth announced that she wanted to go to Ireland.

  ‘You can’t possibily go, what will we do with Eileen?’

  ‘I’ll take her with me.’

  ‘You must be mad. Listen, darling, you’re just upset by everything. You can’t possibly take a year-old baby across the sea to Ireland to look at a dying woman.’

  ‘That’s not the way I see it. I want to go.’

  ‘But work and everything. …’

  ‘There’s no work. The course has only one more lecture. One of the others will give it and tidy up. No college. No, it’s all fine. We’ve booked the plane.’

  ‘You’re going to take Eileen on the plane?’

  ‘Henry, you come too if you like, you look as if we’re all running away and abandoning you. …’

  ‘No, no, of course you must go, I’m sorry, it’s all come as a shock. I suppose I didn’t realise how much she meant to you … to both of you. … Aisling has been here for a year and more,
and, not going back to see her, well, it’s a bit sudden, everyone flying off at the drop of a hat.’

  ‘It’s not the drop of a hat. Eileen has cancer, everywhere, all over her. They opened her up and closed her immediately. She only has a couple of weeks to live.’

  The air hostess said she had never seen such a beautiful baby and Eileen had smiled, and Aisling and Elizabeth smiled wanly too. They were both very tired. Aisling had organised her work and her flat. And her social life.

  ‘So I can’t possibly go to Greece.’

  ‘But when it’s all over, you’ll need a holiday – that’s the very time to go to Greece,’ Johnny had said.

  ‘No. And anyway I’ll have used up more than my holidays by then.’

  ‘Oh, stop talking about holidays as if you were a schoolgirl, this is compassionate leave.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to go to Greece on your own – unless you’d like to put it off until next year?’

  ‘Well, you know best.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I’m very very sorry, you know. You know how sorry I am.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Aisling had said. But he wasn’t sorry enough to come to Ireland, or even to the airport.

  ‘Never mind,’ Elizabeth had said, reading her thoughts. ‘He didn’t go to my mother’s funeral either.’

  They hired a car at the airport and drove into Dublin. The city was filled with tourists, Americans and foreigners of every description. They blinked in the sunlight in the crowded streets.

  ‘I don’t know what they want to gather here for … full of noise and traffic. Why don’t they go off down the country?’

  ‘They like souvenirs and shops,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It’s some kind of human weakness. When I used to take those tours to the National Gallery or the Tate, people wanted to slip away from the group and see the shops. I ask you. Often the same kind of shops they had in Dulwich or wherever.’

  ‘Shay Ferguson was going to do up rooms near his awful garage, and let them to tourists. I wonder did he ever do it, now that his playmate Tony was taken from him?’

  ‘It’s going to be hard for you going back, you’ll be an object of interest to them, won’t you?’

  ‘Honestly, Elizabeth, I couldn’t give a damn. If they’re such gossips and so low as to be more interested in me and my doings than in poor Mam, well let them.’