Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy
‘The bin-men don’t like grass clippings,’ said Father who had fiddled for forty-five minutes with fronds of honeysuckle.
She sighed. ‘They won’t know what’s in it Father, that’s why I used newspapers. It could be dismembered bodies for all they know.’
He didn’t laugh.
She cleared everything away and had a bath. A hot bath was meant to bring on a period if it was late. There were even stories of a hot bath bringing on even more than a period. Elizabeth felt almost faint when she allowed herself to think that. She patted her stomach, it was still flat. She must be imagining it. She really must have been fancying it. People’s periods were always late. The world was filled with false alarms, all the time.
Father had set the table for their supper. It was sardines and tomatoes on toast. Elizabeth was determined to cheer Father up. It became a game almost, like not walking on cracks in the pavement. ‘If I don’t walk on any lines then I will get an A for my essay.’ Just like that, exactly the same reasoning. ‘If I make Father cheerful and happy then it will turn out that I’m not pregnant.’
The garden was obviously the wrong area. His depression about the unmanageable jungle outside the door was not going to be lifted, no matter how much Elizabeth praised what had been done and agreed to do an hour every day … his head still shook ruefully as if there were things in that garden that Elizabeth could not understand, forces fighting back against amateur part-time gardening. She couldn’t really discuss bridge in case Mrs Ellis was remembered. Elizabeth tried but it didn’t work.
‘Do you think she has hopes of coming to live here Father?’ she asked as she trimmed the toast neatly and shook some dried herbs on the tomatoes.
‘I have no idea what that woman thinks or hopes. She is a very common woman. It was a great mistake of Mr Woods to introduce her to the club. He was very badly advised, and utterly misled.’
‘Why don’t you tell her to get lost then if she’s such a nuisance?’
‘Oh you can’t do that. You can’t tell someone not to come.’
‘Why don’t you start up different games then, without her? You know, just drop her casually if she’s so coarse and common? I mean you shouldn’t be forced to play bridge with someone you don’t like. People don’t have to do things they don’t want to.’ Johnny’s attitudes and words tripped lightly and effortlessly from her, but Father didn’t agree.
‘But of course you have to do things you don’t want to. That’s obvious. Everyone has to do things they don’t want to do all the time … Oh Elizabeth dear, don’t put any of those herbs and spices on my tomatoes … I don’t like them with that taste … thank you … no of course people can’t please themselves all the time.’
‘But if none of you like her, Father, and she got in by mistake, does that mean you have to put up with her forever?’
‘Yes, unfortunately it does.’
Elizabeth had scraped the dusting of dried herbs off Father’s tomatoes and when he wasn’t looking put them back on again. She set the plates on the table.
‘Tell me about when you were my age or a little older, like say in your twenties. Did people never do what they felt like then?’
‘I don’t know what you mean?’
‘You know, when you were starting at the bank, Father. Was the world full of people doing what they wanted to do or is it a sense of duty … one must do this, one must do that?’
‘I don’t really know. …’
‘But you MUST know Father, you must remember. You can’t have forgotten what it’s like to be twenty.’
‘No of course not. …’
‘Well what was it like?’
‘It was very depressing, that’s what it was. Everyone was just back from the war, so many wounded and maimed. Others swaggering, just like they were after the last show. Always making you feel that you had a featherbed life because you didn’t get accepted for the call-up.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I know, but tell that to the boys in uniform, practically accusing you of hiding under the bed. All blow and bluster. I went on my eighteenth birthday down to the town centre. My mother didn’t want me to, but I went, I didn’t wait.’
‘Some people went even before they were eighteen, didn’t they Father? Aisling’s brother Sean, the one that got killed, he told me that.’
‘I don’t know whether they did or they didn’t. I hope you’re not saying I should have gone before the age. …’
‘No, Father, I was only remembering something.
‘Well, I went the very day, and volunteered for my country but they put me in a reserve because I wasn’t strong enough. My spine was weak even then, that’s why I still can’t do that gardening. It’s impossible you know to keep a place this size with one. …’
‘Did you go out with a lot of other girls Father, before you met Mother …?’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘I just wanted to know did you have a lot of social life, and much going out when you were young?’
‘I told you, it was just after the Great War.’
‘Yes, but we hear about the twenties, and the flappers, and all the fun. You know, people doing the Charleston and having thé dansants and wearing those amazing hats looking like buckets. …’
‘What…?’
‘Oh Father, you know, you know the sort of image everyone has of the twenties.’
‘Well I assure you that wasn’t the image I had of it. That may have been for a few idle, irresponsible rich people born with silver spoons in their mouths. It wasn’t for me or for the people I worked with.’
‘But Mother was a sort of flapper girl wasn’t she? She used to wear clothes like that. I’ve seen the old pictures, and she went to thé dansants she told me. In fact she often writes about them still, and how she used to go and dance to the Savoy Orpheans. …’
‘But why all these questions … what are you asking me all this for?’
‘Father, I’m only trying to get to know a bit more about you … we live in the same house and I hardly know anything about you. …’
‘Oh my dear, don’t be so silly. This is utter nonsense.’
‘No it’s not. We live here together for years and years without my even knowing what makes you happy and what makes you sad.’
‘I can tell you that these silly questions… what was it like all those years ago … make me sad rather than happy. …’
‘But why Father, why? You must have had happy bits when you were young?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Weren’t you happy when you and Mother were in love, and everything?’
‘Now I really don’t think. …’
‘But seriously Father, when you and Mother were expecting me, you know, when Mother went to the doctor and got it all confirmed. What did you do? What did you say, did you celebrate or what…?’
‘Please. …’
‘No, it’s interesting to me to know, I’d like to know. Did she come back and say, “It’s confirmed, I am pregnant. It will be born in May” or what?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Father I’m your only child, you MUST remember!’ Her voice was becoming shrill. She remembered to lower it.
‘Try to think Father. It would please me.’ He looked at her.
‘I remember your being born,’ he said eventually. ‘But I don’t remember the day I knew.’
‘And were you pleased, or did you think it was a worry and a problem?’
‘Of course I was pleased. …’
‘No, you might have thought it was just another thing to worry about. Why were you pleased? Did you look forward to my being born, being a small thing in a pram …?’
‘Yes, well of course I didn’t know about what a baby would be like in the house … but I was pleased. …’
‘Can you remember why you were pleased …?’
‘Well I think I thought it would make Violet … make your mother more content. She seemed restless.??
‘Even as long ago as then …?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And did it make her more content?’
‘Did what. …’
‘Did I make her more content…?’
‘In a way, yes.’
‘And what were your happiest times in those days, Father?’
‘Really my dear, I don’t enjoy this conversation. It’s probing and it’s too personal, and in a way it’s impertinent. People don’t ask other people those kind of questions.’
‘But how are people ever going to know what people feel…?’
‘They know enough my dear. It’s not necessary to know everything about people.’
‘You’re not right Father. It’s necessary to know much more than you want to know. You wouldn’t mind if you knew nothing about anyone just so long as people behaved correctly.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Oh but it is true. I’m begging you. I’m reaching out and begging you to tell me about yourself so that I can tell you about me … and make you involved in what I’m doing and feeling. …’
‘But I am very interested in what you do, and very proud of you. You mustn’t accuse me of. …’
‘Did you ever talk to Mother about feelings, you know, and what you thought and what you wanted and how much you loved her …?’
‘Elizabeth, really.’
‘Because honestly, if you didn’t, then I know why she went away. It was nothing to do with your not being good enough, or Harry being better. She probably went because she was lonely. …’
‘And do you think that her fancy Harry Elton is a great philosopher? Do you seriously think he sits down and debates about the meaning of life like you want …? Huh, what a thought.’
‘No I don’t suppose for a moment he does. But he makes up for it by laughing and joking. The ideal thing would be to have someone who could do both, but I’m beginning to think there’s no way you can have the best of both worlds. And Father, if you won’t laugh and you won’t talk then you’re the very worst of both worlds. …’
Father stood up and his face was hurt and red. His face muscles were working and his hands were clenched at his sides. He had never looked more wretched and humiliated.
‘Well,’ he stammered eventually. ‘Well, I must say. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, I really don’t. I was out there in the garden minding my own business, and you come home in a state. You come home and criticise the way I’m doing the garden, even though you never came out to give me a hand in it before … you criticise the way I spent my youth. You attack me for not being able to recall every second of your own life before and after you were born. …’ His voice gathered into a sob. ‘And then, as if that isn’t enough, you hurl accusations at me about hurtful things and upsetting times … and blame me for your mother walking out on her duty and running away.’
He had such pain in his voice that he could hardly get the words out.
‘I really don’t know what brought all this on. I can only hope that you had a tiff with your young man, and that I needn’t expect this kind of performance again.’
Father had never before acknowledged that Johnny was her young man. His brain would never now take in the intelligence that she and this young man had been rolling around naked on a floor in Earls Court a few hours previously and that she was very probably carrying the young man’s child, and that there had been no tiff and nor would there be one.
But the spell hadn’t worked. Father was not cheered up, Father was far from cheered up. This must mean that she was indeed pregnant.
She stood up.
‘You are quite right. I had a silly tiff. It is unforgivable of me to have taken it out on you. Quite unforgivable. I really apologise.’
Then she went upstairs, took some five-pound notes out of her savings box and wrote to Aisling.
X
AISLING HAD MORE adventures on her journey to London than she had ever been through in her life. She felt that she had been quite right to tell Tony Murray that she must go out and see the world.
On the boat to Holyhead, an extremely handsome man with his shirt open at the neck had bought her a brandy and lemonade, not heeding her protests that she wouldn’t like it. Then he had taken her for a walk on deck, told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world, tried to kiss her, apologised, proposed marriage to her, and finally went into a corner and got very sick. Aisling, who had not realised that he was drunk, had her eyes wide and round in horror at it all, but was rescued by two university students who were going to get a holiday job canning vegetables and tried to persuade her to join them.
On the train going down to London she met a young Welsh school teacher who told her that he was going to live in London because he couldn’t stand his village any longer. Everyone was trying to pressurise him to get married. He felt that he should see the world first. Aisling eagerly told him of her own tale and how she was determined to see as much of the world as she could in two weeks, which was the holiday she had wrung from Daddy with difficulty. The Welshman was very scathing about the two-week element of it, he said it wasn’t nearly enough. She should go for much longer. Perhaps they should even go to France on a boat. But that was too wild for Aisling, she explained she was coming to see her friend because of a crisis. Her friend wanted someone to help her on her father’s birthday. The Welshman said that the friend sounded like someone from a madhouse. Sending money over to Ireland for someone to come to her father’s birthday. After four years too. He put his finger to his forehead and turned it around in further explanation of how loopy he thought the friend must be. Aisling then felt resentful of him and returned to her book.
Even at Euston station a middle-aged man asked her if she was lost and said he would be happy to share a taxi with her. But Aisling was looking out for Elizabeth.
She had telephoned Elizabeth early the morning after she got the letter and said of course, she would come that very night. Elizabeth’s accent sounded very English like the people in the films who said ‘frightfully’ and ‘jolly’. She said that Euston was a huge place but there were no problems because if Aisling just stayed there at the barrier when she came off the train they would have no trouble finding each other.
‘When I came over four years ago, I thought I’d been abandoned,’ Elizabeth had said.
‘Sure, weren’t we only children then,’ said Aisling, dismissing it.
Still Aisling’s eyes roamed anxiously through the crowds and she paused to comb her hair so that she would make a good impression. She wished she had a smarter suitcase. This one which Mother had used years ago was far too shabby for her nice new turquoise summer coat. But it had been a matter of buying new shoes or a new suitcase and the shoes seemed more important.
She must have walked right past Elizabeth, eyes still roaming the crowd, darting here and there looking for the pale blonde fifteen-year-old but with a few grown-up clothes on nowadays. Then Elizabeth pulled at her sleeve. …
‘Aisling?’ she said, almost hesitantly.
Aisling spun round.
They looked at each other for a moment … as if the words and greetings and reactions had been blown out of them like air after a punch in the solar plexus.
They spoke at the same instant.
‘Elizabeth, you saved my life by inviting me to come over. …’
‘Oh, Aisling, you’ve literally saved my life. …’
Then they burst out laughing. And Aisling linked arms.
‘Maybe we’re Siamese twins that should never have been separated. Maybe we’re going to go on saying the same thing at the same time always.’
‘Maybe, maybe,’ laughed Elizabeth. She tried to lift up the suitcase but it was heavy.
‘What on earth have you in this, rocks?’ she asked.
Aisling took it back. ‘No, food from the land of plenty. They all went mad: cake for your dad’s birthday, side of bacon smoked, oh and butter, all wrapped up in newspapers ten times and in
Elizabeth squeezed her arm and Aisling saw with surprise that in Elizabeth’s pale attractive face there were tears in the big blue eyes.
‘In a million years you’ll never know how glad I am to see you.’
‘And me to see you. On the bus to Dublin I began to worry in case you’d have got all different, but you’re not. You’re thinner though. Is it the fashion or is it this country full of shortages?’ She patted Elizabeth’s flat stomach admiringly. ‘There’s none of you there. You’re what they’d call a rake, in Kilgarret. I’m dead jealous.’
‘Oh there’s more than you think,’ said Elizabeth and got a fit of helpless giggles which were so infectious that Aisling started to laugh too though she couldn’t see why.
They stood under the big arch at Euston, unaware of the admiring and interested glances which were directed at the redhead and blonde, both of them wiping their eyes and clutching on to each other with a mirth that had quite a lot of hysteria in it.
From the start Aisling got on well with Father. Elizabeth could hardly believe how well she handled him. Father had been only mildly interested to hear that the visitor was arriving and had helped to take some of the boxes and other bits of lumber from the spare room to stack them in the garden shed. Elizabeth had gone to great trouble to make the guest room look nice. She had picked flowers and even bought a mirror from Johnny in the shop.
‘Staff discount,’ he had said, halving the price.
‘Hey, come on, we’re not going to cheat Mr Worsky. …’
‘When oh when will anyone realise that this is Worsky and Stone. … I am a partner here, cherub, I am trusted and loved. I cheat myself if I give it to you cheap. …’
‘I’m a worker here, Mr Stone. … I don’t want to see the business I have pride in go down the drain. …’
They laughed. Johnny was in great form this week. He was disappointed that they couldn’t meet because of her preparations for the friend from Ireland, but he took it lightly.