Light A Penny Candle (3 page)

But it was this place with all its dangers and dirt, or else it was more trouble and anxiety and looking for Father’s cousins.

After a long time, and two pages, Violet spoke.

‘They’re going to take you.’

Elizabeth’s face went its bright red and white colour. Violet was irritated; she hated it when Elizabeth flushed in this vivid way over nothing at all.

‘When am I to go?’

‘Whenever we like. It will take time, of course. We have to pack, and I have to write to Eileen about school books … what you need. She’s full of welcomes but little practical advice about what to take with you and what you’ll need. Oh, and there’s this note for you. …’

Elizabeth took the single sheet of paper. It was the first letter she had ever got from anyone. She read it slowly to savour it.

Dear Elizabeth,

We are all so glad that your Mummy is lending you to us for a little while, and we hope you’ll be happy here. Kilgarret is very different from London but everyone is looking forward to meeting you and making you feel at home. You will share a room with Aisling, who is exactly the same age as you, there is only one week in the difference so we hope you’ll be great friends. Sister Mary at the school says you’ll probably know far more than all the class put together. Bring any toys or dolls or books you want,
we
’ve plenty of room here, and we’re counting the days till you come.

Auntie Eileen

At the bottom of the page in a section where someone had ruled lines to keep the writing straight, there was another note.

Dear Elizabeth,

I have left all the shelves on the left side of the room for you and half the press and half the dressing table. Be sure to come for Eamonn’s birthday, there will be a party. The Mahers’s kittens are sweet they have their eyes open. Mammy is going to get one for you and me to share.
Love, Aisling.

‘A kitten to share,’ said Elizabeth, her eyes shining.

‘And nothing about school fees, uniforms, anything,’ said Violet.

Donal’s cough was worse, but Doctor Lynch said there was no need to worry. Keep him warm, no draughts but plenty of fresh air all the same. How on earth did people manage that, Eileen wondered. He was finding the excitement about the girl from England almost too much for him.

‘When will she be here?’ he would ask a dozen times a day.

‘She’s going to be my friend, not yours,’ Aisling said.

‘Mam said she’d be
everyone’s
friend,’ he replied, his face clouding.

‘Yes, but mainly mine. After all, she wrote to me,’ said Aisling. This was undeniable. There had been a letter which Aisling had read out several times. It was very formal. It was the first proper letter Elizabeth had ever written. It had words like ‘grateful’ and ‘appreciate’ in it.

‘They must have a better educational system altogether over there,’ commented Eileen, reading it.

‘Why wouldn’t they? With all the wealth they made off the backs of other people,’ said Sean. It was Saturday lunchtime. He had come in for his bacon and cabbage lunch. The shop closed on Saturdays at half past one, and the afternoon was spent making up orders in the back yard, but at least it was his own time and he didn’t have to be in and out every time the door clanged open and the bell over the doorframe rang.

‘Now, I hope you won’t be going on with that kind of thing when the child arrives,’ said Eileen. ‘Isn’t it hard enough for her going to another country without having you running her down?’

‘And it isn’t even true either, Da,’ said Young Sean.

‘It is bloody true,’ said his father. ‘But your mother is right. When the child comes we’ll all hold our tongues and put our real thoughts out of our minds for a bit. It’s only fair on the little one.’

‘I don’t have to put my real thoughts anywhere out of sight,’ said Young Sean, ‘I don’t have any of this constant bellyaching about the British to make me feel good.’

Sean laid down his knife and fork and pointed across the table. Eileen interrupted quickly.

‘Will you listen to me, please. I was just about to say that when she comes it might be the opportunity for this family to improve its table manners. Like a lot of puppies you are, slopping food on the table cloth and speaking with your mouths full.’

‘Puppies don’t speak with their mouths full,’ said Eamonn. Donal laughed and, hearing the laughter, Niamh cooed and gurgled in the pram beside the table.

‘I’m sure she’ll think we’re very rude,’ said Aisling. Eileen was surprised to have support from this source.

‘We all talk at the same time and no one listens to anyone else,’ continued Aisling disapprovingly. Something in the way she said it, something schoolmistressish about her tone, made everyone laugh. She didn’t know why they were laughing and looked annoyed.

‘What’s so funny?’ she said, ‘what’s funny?’

Donal was sitting beside her. ‘They’re laughing because it’s true,’ he said. Aisling felt better and laughed a little herself.

They would have to be at the station early to look for someone reliable to look after Elizabeth on the journey. It had been thought that Violet might go with her as far as Holyhead, but it seemed a waste because she would have had to turn around and come back again, and the trains took hours and hours with all the delays and the shortage of fuel, and then of course there was the whole matter of
the
fare – it seemed senseless to throw money away in these hard times. …

George had wondered whether they should pay the O’Connors for Elizabeth’s board; but Violet had said no. Evacuees in England didn’t pay the host families, it was all part of the war effort. George had pointed out that Ireland wasn’t part of the war effort; Violet had sniffed and said they should be, they jolly well should be, and anyway, the principle was the same. She had given Elizabeth five pounds and told her to spend it
intelligently
.

At Euston, Violet looked around for respectable middle-aged women to whom Elizabeth might be entrusted. She wanted someone travelling alone. A woman chatting might forget to look after her charge. She had several failures. One was only going to Crewe. One was waiting for her gentleman friend, one was coughing so much that Elizabeth would surely catch some disease from her. Finally, Violet settled on a woman who walked with a stick. She offered Elizabeth’s services as a runner of errands and a helper with luggage on the trip. The woman was pleased with the arrangement and promised to deliver Elizabeth into the hands of a young man called Sean O’Connor at Dunlaoghaire when the boat docked. The woman settled herself into a corner and said she would leave Elizabeth to say goodbye to her parents alone.

Mother gave her a kiss on the cheek and said to
try
to be a good girl and not to cause Mrs O’Connor too much trouble. Father said goodbye very formally. Elizabeth looked up at him.

‘Goodbye, Father,’ she said gravely. He bent to hug her; he hugged her for a long time. She felt her arms clasping round his neck, but looked at Mother and detected those early signs of impatience. She released him.

‘You’ll write lots of letters, write and tell us everything,’ he said.

‘Yes, but you’re not to go asking Eileen for letter-paper and stamps, those things cost money.’

‘I have money! I have five pounds!’ cried Elizabeth.

‘Hush! Don’t let everyone in the station hear you! That’s the way to get robbed,’ said Violet warningly.

Elizabeth’s face went red and white again, her heart started beating and she heard the train doors slamming.

‘It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine,’ she said.

‘Good girl,’ said Mother.

‘Don’t cry, now, you’re a big girl,’ said Father.

Two big tears ran down Elizabeth’s face.

‘She had no intention of crying until you mentioned it,’ said Violet. ‘Now look what you’ve started.’

The train moved out, and among all the other people waving on the platform stood Mother and Father. Stiffly. Elizabeth shook her head to clear away the tears and as the blur went she saw them standing as if each of them was holding their elbows close in to their sides for fear of touching the other.

II

DONAL WANTED TO
know had all Elizabeth’s brothers and sisters died. Were they killed dead?

‘Don’t be silly,’ Peggy had said. ‘Of course they didn’t die.’

‘Then where are they? Why aren’t they coming?’ Donal was feeling left out because Aisling had appropriated the coming guest so firmly. It was a question of ‘my friend Elizabeth won’t like that’ and ‘when my friend Elizabeth arrives’. Donal hoped that there might be a secret cache of brothers and sisters he could adopt himself.

‘There was only one of her,’ said Peggy.

‘There’s never only one of people,’ complained Donal. ‘There’s families. What happened to them?’

Eileen couldn’t manage to elicit similar enthusiasm from the rest of them. Only Aisling and Donal were excited. Young Sean never noticed who was in the house anyway; Maureen said that it was going to be painful having someone else as silly as Aisling around. Eamonn said he was not going to wash himself for some awful girl he had
never
met, and anyway he
did
wash … enough. Niamh, cutting a tooth, was red-faced and angry and cried in long, sharp bouts. Eileen herself had a few moments’ worry about Violet’s little girl. The letter had been very stilted, the girl was used to a much more gracious way of living. If Violet’s short, sharp and unhelpful glimpses into her life were accurate. …

She hoped the child wouldn’t be a frightened pickaheen of a thing, afraid to open her mouth. Then it would really be out of the frying pan and into the fire for the girl … the blitz of London or the noisy O’Connors in full cry. It would be hard to know which was worse.

In any event, the child might bring her closer to Violet again, after all these years. Eileen wished they could have kept in touch more. She had tried, Lord knows, writing often and giving little details about life in Kilgarret and sending Violet’s only child little gifts on birthdays – but Violet only scribbled a card from time to time. It annoyed Eileen that their closeness had seemed to vanish into the air, because it had been a very real closeness based on the fact that they had both been in that convent school on a false premise. Violet, because her family (wrongly) thought that a convent school might give their girl a little polish; Eileen, because her family thought that a convent school in England would be a cut above any kind of a Catholic education in the homeland.

Still, she was going to be brought back into Eileen’s life again and Eileen was glad of it. Perhaps, in a year or two, when this terrible war was over, George and Violet might
even
come to stay in Donnelly’s Hotel on the other side of the square, and thank Eileen from the bottom of their hearts for putting roses back into the cheeks of their daughter. The friendship would blossom all over again, and Eileen would have someone to remember those long-gone days in St Mark’s which she couldn’t talk to anyone else about because they all said she was uppity to have been at an English school at all. …

She would like to have gone up on the bus herself to meet the little girl. A day in Dublin would cheer her. No squinting over books and bills, she could collect Elizabeth in Dunlaoghaire when the boat got in – or Kingstown, as some people still called it, just to get a rise out of Sean – and then they could take a tram into Dublin. She could take Elizabeth to see the sights, maybe even climb Nelson’s Pillar, something else she had never done. But this was fanciful. … She couldn’t go, Young Sean must collect the girl. He had been so restless and ready to fight with his father over anything, Eileen thought a day off from the shop would be no harm. He was to go off that Tuesday after work, on the evening bus. He could stay with her cousin, who ran a small boarding house in Dunlaoghaire – half a dozen eggs would pay the compliment for giving him a bed in the sitting room for the night. He had strict instructions to be on the pier before the boat even berthed so that the child wouldn’t fear that no one had come to meet her. He was to tell her his name when he saw a ten-year-old in a green coat, with blonde hair, and carrying a brown suitcase and wearing a brown shoulder bag. He
was
to be welcoming, and give her some buttered brack and a bottle of orange squash while they waited for the bus home. On no account was he to dawdle so they would miss the bus. Eileen knew well Sean’s interest in collecting a ten-year-old girl from a mail-boat was minimal, but if he were to meet any group of young lads about to enlist in the British army, as he had done the last time he was in Dublin, his excitement would be enormous.

Eileen arranged with the Mahers to collect the new kitten on the afternoon Elizabeth arrived; she wanted to have plenty of distract everyone if the arrival was not a success. She also wanted them all to think of the coming of Elizabeth with that of a new, black and white furry bundle, which was guaranteed to be a success.

Mrs Moriarty was a very kind woman. She had a picnic of her own and shared some cold tinned peas with Elizabeth; they spooned them together out of the tin.

‘I didn’t know you were allowed to eat them cold,’ said Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s own little picnic was very dull in comparison; six small, neat sandwiches with the crusts all cut off, very little cheese in three and even less tomato in the other three. There was an apple and two biscuits, all wrapped in white paper – even a folded paper napkin as well.

‘Mother said I must make two meals of this, supper and breakfast,’ she said gravely. ‘But please do have a sandwich now in exchange for the peas.’

Mrs Moriarty took one and pronounced it excellent.

‘Aren’t you a lucky little girl to have a Mammy make all that for you now?’ she said.

‘Well, I made it myself really, but Mother wrapped it,’ said Elizabeth.

Mrs Moriarty told Elizabeth that she was going home to live with her son and his scald of a wife in County Limerick. She had lived since she was a widow in England, and she loved the place, the bigness of London did your heart good. She had worked in a vegetable shop and everyone had been very pleasant and friendly, but now, what with her arthritis, and the blitz and everything, they insisted she came home. Mrs Moriarty didn’t like it a bit. She wouldn’t feel the same when the war was over, the others in the shop would think she had run away. But there was nothing she could do, her son and his brazen strap of a wife had been writing every week – they had even come over to plead with her. Everyone in their street said they were heartless to let a mother be roasted alive by bombs in London, so they had demanded that she come back.