Light A Penny Candle (15 page)

‘I expect it would,’ Elizabeth agreed emptily. She felt so ignorant about the world of films; now she was going to be a non-starter in the world of kissing too. The only field where she had any superiority was having come from a land of plenty. From a place where there was as much to eat as you could ever want, and where nobody stood in queues for anything.

‘What used they to eat on Sundays, tell me again,’ Monica would beg.

Elizabeth described the Sunday lunch; soup and homemade soda bread. Then a boiled chicken with white sauce and boiled bacon, and potatoes in their jackets, and cabbage cooked in the same water as the bacon so it tastes all flavoury. And apple tart and the top of the milk. And sometimes they had red lemonade and sometimes they had glasses of milk. Monica listened in a dream of gluttony, her mouth watering at the thought of it.

‘And teas, tell me about their teas.’

Sometimes Elizabeth wished she wouldn’t go on so about food because it made them all feel deprived. She told of the apple cake which Peggy made, and how it was like bread but there were bits of apple and sugar baked in it, or when they had black pudding spread on bread.

Monica said enviously, ‘They must have had very good connections.’

‘No, they didn’t have any connections … you see there wasn’t a war there.’

‘Of course there was a war there, there was a war everywhere, and what about the Enniskillens and all those, they’re Irish aren’t they?’

‘Yes, but it’s a different part of Ireland. There was a war up in the North but not… not where I was. That’s why I was there.’

Monica dismissed it.

‘You missed lots of fun not being here, I tell you. You could see all kinds of famous people … they were all round the place keeping up people’s spirits. I even spoke to Sarah Churchill once. You must know Sarah Churchill, she’s famous. She has gorgeous red hair.’

With a pang Elizabeth thought of Aisling and how her face would light up if she heard someone talking about gorgeous red hair. She wished again and again that it was easy to write what you felt. Her letters to Aisling seemed so dull and Aisling’s were very off-hand and breezy. If it weren’t for Aunt Eileen she would think that nobody in Kilgarret even remembered her.

Violet wondered whether they should send some gift to Eileen’s family to thank them for all they had done for Elizabeth. She had discussed it with George.

‘You were the one who said that they wouldn’t notice an extra mouth at the table,’ he had grumbled. ‘Anyway,
where
are we going to get some kind of proper present as you call it?’

Violet reflected.

‘They were very generous, you know, they bought her a bike, and when she left they told her to sell it and keep the money because it was hers not theirs. They bought her clothes, you know, underwear too.’

‘I thought we sent money for clothes.’

‘We did, but not enough. I mean, Eileen always wrote to say she’d bought Elizabeth a new winter coat with the money we sent, but Elizabeth tells me that she got everything the other children did, you know, and Sean used to give them all money for the cinema or whatever. I suppose I’m just a little worried in case we took it all too casually.’

‘You wrote and thanked them, didn’t you?’ George said in an aggrieved tone.

‘Oh certainly, I wrote and thanked… but you know they did a marvellous job on Elizabeth. She’s so grown-up and yet not changed at all. Did you know that she’s going to be in a form with sixteen-year-olds? She’s far ahead of what we had expected.’

‘She’s read quite a lot,’ George said, pleased. ‘She was telling me yesterday that she and Aisling used to read Wilkie Collins to each other at night. Only one of them could have the torch so they took it in turns to do the reading aloud.’ He laughed at the thought of it.

Violet smiled too. ‘I don’t think she’s lonely or anything, but it would be nice to keep in contact. The
trouble
is there’s nothing for us to buy here. They’re the ones who can buy things. I wonder if they realise it?’

‘Why don’t you write again and say when rationing’s over well send them a gift to say thank you.’

‘I’ll need to say it tactfully,’ Violet mused. Eileen was always full of pride, and stubborn. She was very much her own person, and you had to go fairly carefully not to offend her.

‘Elizabeth was very fond of her. She doesn’t say much about her husband, though,’ George said.

‘I suppose he was busy and not home much, he was always a very hard worker. Rather uncouth but a lot of get-up-and-go.’

‘Not like some you could mention, I suppose.’

Violet looked at him. ‘Oh George, my dear,’ she had said gently, ‘I wasn’t thinking of comparing him with you. You’ve got all the get-up-and-go you want… or any of us wants. Really, I wasn’t making a point. You must know that.’

George looked surprised and pleased. He grunted and left her sitting at her desk. She had decided then that she would ask Harry Elton what he thought. Harry always knew exactly what to do. He had a feel for that sort of thing.

Harry indeed had given it all some cheerful thought when he met Violet for a Saturday drink by the river.

‘Let’s treat it as a serious problem of state,’ he had laughed. He had been delighted at the defeat of Winston
Churchill
in the election the month before. Labour had said they would build five million houses and they were the boys to have in power. Harry was as sunny about this as he was about everything else.

‘Sorry for Churchill? Never. He was a great old geezer when we needed a bit of puffing and blowing. But now we need houses and jobs.’

He took everything that Violet said as being important and worth discussing. Harry Elton never grunted. He probably didn’t know how to.

The classrooms were only a little like the convent classrooms. They had bigger and better blackboards and good maps on the wall, but there were no statues, no holy pictures, no little altar to the Sacred Heart or the Little Flower which someone would be in charge of each week.

Elizabeth found it very strange that classes did not begin with a prayer. She used to stand waiting for this to be said each time and then sit down quickly and shamefacedly.

‘You mean they prayed before every class?’ Monica was disbelieving.

‘Well yes, a short prayer.’

‘Before maths and history as well as RK?’

‘Oh yes, just a quick Hail Mary for an intention.’

‘What kind of intention?’ Monica was fascinated.

‘A sick nun, perhaps, or a happy death, or the conversion of China. …’ Elizabeth said, feeling a hopeless interpreter of the ways of the convent.

She found the smell of chalk and disinfectant, the long
dirty
-cream-coloured corridors, more like a hospital than a school. It was a million miles from the incense-filled corridors around the chapel in the convent, the chapel where they dropped in almost every day to pray that Sister wouldn’t ask for their history essays today, or that they’d know the answer if the bishop came and asked a catechism question.

‘Was this Aisling more or less clever than you?’ asked Monica as they walked home from school. Monica was very anxious to be allowed to go up West to see the crowds and the royal family going into the Royal Variety Command Performance. It was going to be the first for seven years. Her mother had agreed only if her school work improved, so now she had a serious interest in it.

‘Aisling was much more clever, but she was very … I don’t know … the nuns said lazy or careless. I think she was just bored by it … she hadn’t time for it. It got in the way of all the fun. …’

‘And did she get higher marks than you?’ Monica was very annoyed at Elizabeth’s success at school. Her years in a foreign land had not hindered her; in fact they had made her forge ahead. All Sister Catherine’s patient work in the mathematics class had paid off, and she was top of her weekly tests in geography and grammar too. History and French were a little weak, but Elizabeth seemed to believe that if you were given homework you did it, if you were told you must learn a poem you learned it. …

‘If she tried, Aisling could be top at anything. Sometimes we used to make a bargain. If she would learn her work for school I would go and make us midnight feasts. I had to do that because Aunt Eileen never minded if I came down to the kitchen for food, but she always said Aisling was up to no good.’

Monica walked moodily, kicking the heaps of leaves into the gutter. ‘I don’t know what my mother means by improve. I know more than she does already. How’s she going to know whether I improve or not. …’

‘I think you should just let her see you working … you know, have your school books out more than your magazines or film annuals. That would let her see you were improving.’

Monica screamed with laughter. ‘Ooh you are deceitful Elizabeth White … I always thought you were really good. But you only pretend. …’

Elizabeth wasn’t upset.

‘No, I do work hard, I’ve nothing else to do … and in Kilgarret I worked hard because I didn’t want to let Aunt Eileen down. But Aisling used to do that, she always pretended that she was working and she got away with it … she liked laughing really.’

Monica said gloomily, That’s not a bad thing. Lots of people like a good laugh.’

Elizabeth thought suddenly of her mother with her head thrown back. She never looked as young and happy as when she was having a good laugh. She seemed to be having more good laughs nowadays. And Aisling didn’t
appreciate
all Aunt Eileen did … not even a little. Wasn’t it funny how people often got the wrong mothers? Or the wrong daughters.

In December the good news was announced that the beef content of sausages was going to be increased from thirty-seven per cent to forty per cent.

‘It doesn’t seem very much,’ Elizabeth commented to Father as they went for one of their Saturday rambles.

‘Oh, you should have tasted a sausage when the rationing was at its height,’ Father said. He loved telling Elizabeth about things she didn’t know.

They had fallen into the habit of taking a Saturday stroll when Father would point out the various bombed sites, the condemned buildings and the streets which had had direct hits during the blitz. It was a catalogue of sadness, of disasters and near-disasters. Stories of Old Charlie, and Mr This and Mr That. There had been no laughter to remember, nothing very funny had happened. Nothing very dramatic had happened, like when Uncle Sean remembered things, where men were mighty and lads were brave. There were no tales of kindnesses, or how well people had behaved to other people, like Aunt Eileen always remembered. … With Father it was all defeat, and opportunities missed, and good deeds being misunderstood.

‘They must have been awful times Dad,’ she said as they were coming home down the street. The afternoon was dark and it was nice to think of a cup of soup in the warm kitchen. Mother might be back too, she usually met her
friends
from the munitions factory on Saturdays, which made it a good time to go for a walk with Father. Or Dad. Sometimes she called him Dad, he seemed to like it. It was what the O’Connors used to call Uncle Sean. They used to laugh when she had mentioned Mother and Father. F
o
ther! F
o
ther! they had pealed, as if it was an odd form of address.

But Elizabeth felt she could never call Violet ‘Mum’ or ‘Mummy’. That was what you called rounder, older people. She was Mother – or nothing.

‘Perhaps Mother will be home,’ she said as an attempt to cheer him up. His face had grown sombre in the telling of another gloomy story.

‘No, Mother’s going out, there’s a reunion party for all her munitions people … or some war workers, anyway. In a hotel. She said she wouldn’t bother coming back, she’d go straight on.’

‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth. She didn’t particularly mind. She was going to read anyway for the evening, and then when
Saturday Night Theatre
came on the radio she would make some sardines on toast and cocoa. Mother had done some washing that morning, it would dry near the fire and they would have to sit close in for warmth.

‘We could play draughts,’ Father said.

Elizabeth found draughts very boring. She wished that Father would learn to play chess. But chess and bridge were for intellectuals, he said. How could she convince him that it had only taken her half an hour to learn the pieces and the moves and then you knew it for life. She
and
Aisling used to play but Aisling was too impatient, she never cared about strategy or plans, she just exchanged pieces mercilessly until they were both left with hardly anything on the board. Elizabeth used to play with Donal – out of kindness because Donal wasn’t really any good. He kept walking into awful trouble without seeing it coming. But she had played with him to be kind. Now she was playing draughts with Father to be kind. She wondered if Aunt Eileen would pat her on the head and say she was a great child if she were to see her playing draughts with Father.

The play turned out to be a historical one and Father said he couldn’t bear all those play-acting ways of going on, calling people Thee and Thou, so when they had finished the sardines, he brought out the draughts board.

‘Shall we take it in turns to be Black?’ he asked, his face anxious.

‘Do you mind Mother going out with Mr Elton and all the munitions people, Dad?’ she said.

Father was very surprised.

‘Mind?’ he repeated. ‘Mind? It’s not a matter of minding. It’s not a matter of going out with Mr Elton … it’s all of them going to a reunion.’

‘I know Dad, but you know, that’s all Mother likes doing. Don’t you want her to like being at home, and being with us …?’

‘Heavens above, what are you saying? Of course Mother likes being at home with us, she’s just gone out to
one
reunion party tonight. Just one night and you start saying that she’s always out.’

Elizabeth looked down. She felt she had gone too far, but retreating was going to be just as bad. He would keep asking her what on earth she had meant, and he would go over and over the comforting clichés as if repetition made them more true.

‘She’s entitled to her night out like anyone is. She worked very hard during the war. Naturally she likes to meet her friends and talk about the times they had. …’