Light A Penny Candle (51 page)

The red went from Elizabeth’s cheeks again. Johnny was smiling and pointing at Henry and everyone took their eyes away from him reluctantly and looked at Henry. But Elizabeth didn’t. With a glassy smile she looked at Johnny’s face as she heard Henry’s stumbling clichés … debts of gratitude, never spared herself, interesting and stimulating talks … he stuttered and repeated himself and all the time Johnny Stone’s face watched him with a pleasant, alert expression and when Henry finally ground to a halt it was Johnny who led the clapping and the cheers for Elizabeth. Her heart felt like a heavy weight and there
was
a choking sensation as if she had swallowed a hard crust of bread which would not go down.

Dear Elizabeth,

This is a picture of the beach in Brighton and the pier. But in fact we do not see much of it since play begins at 8.30 in the morning and there is only one hour for lunch. It is very interesting to meet so many bridge players from all over the country. Our club did well on Day One but we were allowed to slip behind yesterday. I find it all a very good change. I am glad you persuaded me to come here.

Regards, Father

Dear Elizabeth,

I am sending you two pounds ten shillings and an advertisement I cut out of the
Sunday Express
. Can you ever do me a great favour? Can you buy this strapless bra for me and send it to me? Mark the envelope old clothes so that the customs men don’t open it, and could you put in an old blouse or cardigan or something you don’t want so that I can tell Mam that’s what you sent? The bra costs forty-five shillings and the extra five shillings is for postage. I’m size thirty-four and if they have different cup sizes, which they may have, I’m kind of middle cup. About average. Thanks a million, and don’t tell anybody.

Love, Niamh

Dear Elizabeth,

Henry and I wish to take you up on your promise to have dinner with us. Will Saturday week be all right? Can you telephone us, either of us at the office, (telephone number above) to say if this is suitable and where we should collect you? It’s probably best not to leave any message in the event of our not being here. Efficient to the point of obsession they are about work matters, but private lives are wisest not entrusted to them.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Simon Burke

Dear Miss White,

Thank you very much for the kind donation you sent to the hospital. I have to inform you that the general opinion was that flowers would not be a suitable gift for your mother, Mrs Violet Elton, to receive considering her present state of health. Accordingly we went along with your alternative suggestion and have bought a floral arrangement for the Day Room of the ward. We would like to express our thanks to you for both the gift and for your understanding of the nature of your mother’s illness.

P. Hughes, Hospital Secretary

Hallo Funny-face,

I’ve arranged to collect no less than six Welsh dressers before I come back! Now how about that for a working holiday? And you thought I was just
sunning
myself in Bangor. It is super though, I must admit. No cares and a lot of rest. Remember that girl Grace Miller who was one of the people in your art course? She turned up here out of the blue, so we show each other the Mysteries of Wales … and wish you were here.

Home soon.

love always, Johnny

Roma. Anno Sancto.

There are millions and millions of people here, which is bad enough but those millions include
Father
John Murray … yes, he’s made it … and Mother-in-Law Murray and Joannie Murray who, between ourselves and the whole postal system, has become almost insane … and also the lovely young Mr and Mrs Tony Murray, toast of the continent. I dreamed last night you and I had some awful fight. We didn’t, did we?

Love, Aisling

XV

MAUREEN SAID SEVERAL
times to Mam that it was unusual for Aisling to be so long in getting pregnant. ‘It’s not as if she had any reason to wait about, Mam.’ No indeed, Eileen had agreed. ‘And, Lord knows, there’s plenty of money in that house, a nurse could come home with her for three months like the Grays have whenever a child is born. It can’t be the money or anything.’ She found Mam unresponsive. ‘Not of course that it’s my business or anything. It’s not the sort of thing you feel you should bring up talking to someone … even your own sister. You know, you never like to say anything.’

‘Oh I’m glad to hear that,’ Mam had said.

‘It’s just that Brendan’s mother was asking me yesterday was there no sign of a baby and I didn’t know what to say to her.’

Mam had looked up suddenly and with a flash of bad temper she had shouted, ‘Why don’t you tell old Ma Daly to go and take a running jump at herself all the way down the road to the lake and right into it!’

‘Mam!’ Maureen had cried in shock.

‘I’m sorry, it’s the time of life. I’m going through the menopause. Why don’t you go past your mother-in-law’s house and discuss that with her too?’

Maureen had looked shocked. ‘Well, I must say Mam, I don’t know what I said to bring all that on me.’

Mam had relented. ‘I know you don’t. As I said, I’m becoming a bad-tempered old woman. Will you have a cup of tea or would you be afraid that I might pour it over your head?’

Maureen laughed, relieved. ‘Oh Mam, you’re an awful eejit at times. You’re worse than Niamh with your antics.’

Niamh was delighted when the parcel arrived from Elizabeth. It had been waiting on the hall table and she snatched it away and ran up to her bedroom to check the contents. There it was, boned and firm, standing proudly as if it were a part of a woman’s body, a waist-length strapless bra in white satin. And with it a lemon chiffon blouse. The letter said nothing about the bra at all, it was the kind of a letter you could show to Mam easily. Wasn’t Elizabeth cunning, she must have been accustomed to doing all this kind of thing for years with Aisling, of course. There was a book on the reproductive organs which Aisling had among her other books but with a different cover on it. Perhaps Elizabeth had sent that in the old days. She tried on the bra: it made her stick out very naturally. Now she could wear that dress with the little bootlace straps, as they were called. She had told Mam that the dress was worn with a bolero and Mam had said
that
was fine. But she had no intention of wearing the bolero. Anna Barry and her brother were going to have a party at the hotel at the end of August. Everyone had been looking forward to it. Niamh had washed her hair every four days with Sta-Blond shampoo. She had this feeling that if she went to quite a lot of trouble secretly she would burst upon an unsuspecting world. That’s what Aisling had done at her wedding last year. Nobody had known how good-looking Aisling was until that day, and now even if she hadn’t combed her hair and just wore her old gaberdine raincoat streeling open, she still had the name of being beautiful. It was odd but true. Once people decided you were beautiful then you remained beautiful for the rest of your life.

Niamh was going to wear a pony-tail at the start of the evening with a plastic clip on it, and then as the night went on she was going to take off the bolero and let her hair fall loose and when she was dancing people would notice her suddenly. She had thought of nothing else but the party since the school holidays began. She was waiting for the results of her Leaving Certificate and if she got three Honours Dad was going to let her go to university. The first of the O’Connors to go to college. She had prayed herself into a near coma for a while.

Mam had wanted her to work in the shop, but Niamh had been very unwilling. She was afraid that if she once got into O’Connor’s she might never get out. She saw herself sitting for years in the little glass office that used to be Aisling’s and had been empty for a year since neither of
the
new assistants had worked out well. She thought that if her Leaving Certificate results were not good she would do typing and book-keeping in the morning in the secretarial college and work in O’Connor’s during the afternoon. Aisling had said she would have no need for shorthand in the shop. How dare Aisling interfere, why couldn’t she live her own life now and be grateful for it? It was what she had wanted wasn’t it? Why was she always down with Mam and filling Mam up with stupid ideas like Niamh working in the shop? What was she going for walks with Donal for? Why couldn’t she let Donal find friends of his own? Niamh thought that Aisling was just as mournful as Maureen in a way. God, the whole business would put you off marriage forever.

Donal was disappointed not to get any letters or postcards from Rome. ‘Aisling wrote three letters the first time she went,’ he complained.

‘Ah but she has the whole family out there now and the ordination and everything, she’s on her toes,’ said Sean. The girl can’t be rushing off every minute to write letters home.’

‘You’d think she’d send even one, to let us know how she’s getting on,’ Donal grumbled. ‘The place is very dead without her anyway.’

Eamonn was finishing his supper hastily, he thought he saw his mother looking round for rosary beads and the suggestion that since they were all gathered they might say it early tonight.

‘Isn’t it amazing that she doesn’t seem to be gone, not
like
Maureen? I mean we see as much of her as we ever did. She’s getting no value out of being married at all.’

The return from Rome was fretful and exhausting. Father John was full of names of priests in this order and that order, and of those who had come to the ordination and those who hadn’t. Aisling thought he sounded like an old woman. Mrs Murray sounded like a very old woman indeed. She seemed twenty years older than when they had left Ireland, the noise and the heat and the crowds had been very wearing. Aisling had felt sorry for her and had fanned her in the evenings beside an open window while Tony and Joannie went out on their regular four-hour search for a restaurant, coming back plastered both of them with the intelligence that the restaurant in the hotel was as good as anything they had seen in their travels.

By the time they arrived in Dublin Aisling had decided that enough was enough and made a clear announcement as they were collecting their luggage. Tony and I are staying in Dublin tonight, we’ll come down tomorrow.’

‘Oh, I’ll stay with you and the three of us will go down in the morning,’ Joannie said eagerly.

‘No, we’re getting a lift with friends,’ Aisling said firmly.

‘You haven’t got any friends,’ Joannie said.

‘Don’t be childish,’ Aisling snapped. ‘Mrs Murray, we’ll help you into the car and see you off all three of you. We’ll be home tomorrow night, and ready for the first mass on Sunday.’

‘Well yes, the least you could do.’ John was huffy and annoyed at being taken by surprise. They moved awkwardly towards the car, as disparate a group of five people as ever you saw. Aisling wondered what other people made of them.

Tony, who had slept the whole way home, was now awake and ready for an evening on the town. He went along smoothly with the notion that they had business to do, people to see, arrangements to make, and brushed aside the irritated squeakings of disbelief about why it hadn’t been mentioned before, and who they could be meeting on a Saturday morning. …

‘Where are you staying then?’ Joannie asked, hoping to catch them out.

‘With my relations in Dunlaoghaire,’ Aisling rattled back. ‘Tony hasn’t met them yet, it will be a nice opportunity.’

‘That’s right, looking forward to meeting them,’ said Tony, and Aisling threw him a grateful look.

‘Well then we can drive you there, no point in leaving you to get taxis ten miles into town from here, ten miles out of Dunlaoghaire, is there?’ Joannie’s voice was silky. She felt sure she had trapped them somehow.

‘That’s a great idea,’ Aisling said sunnily, and somehow the hour and three quarters through rush-hour traffic was endured.

Then they were at the guesthouse. Aisling jumped out first and ran to the door; in case there was going to be confusion she wanted to try to have a head start in sorting it out.

‘Aisling child, how grand to see you,’ Mam’s cousin
Gretta
Ross greeted her. ‘Did you bring your fine husband for me to have a look at?’

‘I brought him to stay for a night if that’s all right,’ she said quickly.

‘Honoured we are, and delighted … where is he …?’

Gretta went out to the car and shook hands with everyone while Tony was unloading the boot.

‘Isn’t he as handsome as they all said?’ she said, ‘I’m delighted you were able to come to me at last.’

The rest of the Murrays went unwillingly, having refused a cup of tea because John said he must drive on and get them home at a reasonable hour. He gave Gretta Ross his blessing which she asked for and Aisling noticed with a vicious delight that Joannie seemed quite put out to find her suspicions unfounded.

‘You’re very good Gretta, I just wanted to get away from them all for a bit and have an evening on our own, if you get me.’

‘I’m delighted to see you child, and very pleased you thought of coming here. Come on now, we’ll shift these bags up to the room on the right of the stairs up here, it’s nice, it looks out at the harbour. Yes, and have a bit of a wash or a lie down and please yourselves, I’ve a lot of things to busy me. You might like to go out and have a nice walk, go off up Killiney hill or somewhere and look down at the view. When you get back there’ll be a plate of cold chicken – help yourselves. It’ll all be there in the dining room for you. I have about twelve in for supper tonight so I’ll not be able to entertain you anyway!’

‘God, that’s great isn’t it?’ said Tony when he’d shaken out a clean shirt for himself and given himself a wash. ‘That was sheer genius on your part getting rid of them all like that. I’d had all I could take and you probably had too.’

‘Yes, I was afraid if we went back to Kilgarret we might never get away tonight.’

‘You’re a genius I say, I can’t say it too often. Now will you put on your clothes like a good girl and come on and we’ll head off somewhere and have a drink. I’m parched.’