Light A Penny Candle (16 page)

Elizabeth gritted her teeth. ‘But you know what I mean, Dad, you do. You must notice that Mother only has half of her attention here with us … she’s not really thinking about you and me. No Dad, it’s true. We don’t make the place fun enough for Mother, we’re very boring you and I, we don’t laugh and make jokes, I just read books and you read the paper, and I say “What did you say?” and you say “What’s that?” when she speaks. We’ve got no bit of … I don’t know … no bit of excitement in us.’ She stopped. He was silent for a moment. His face worked slightly as if he were about to speak but was afraid he might cry.

Please, please God may he not cry. Please good kind Lord may I not have made him cry
.

‘Well. Em … well,’ he mumbled.

Oh please God, I’ll never bring the subject up again. I’m so sorry God
, Elizabeth prayed. In her mind she saw the statue of the Sacret Heart on the landing in Kilgarret. The statue where Aisling would close her eyes and say,
‘Please
Kind Sacred Heart I’ll give you anything if we don’t have a test at school today.’

‘No, you’re right. I’ve got very little excitement in me. In fact I never had. But your mother always knew this. She wasn’t misled, you know. She wants reliability and a nice safe harbour as well as a laugh and … what you call a little excitement. So everyone is what they are … you understand. Some of us are hard-working and reliable and provide the home and the hearth, other people provide the fun and excitement. That’s the way the world is. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Father,’ whispered Elizabeth, ‘I see.’

‘No, there’s no need to apologise,’ Father said, not noticing that she hadn’t. ‘No, you were quite right to say what you did. A person should be honest. You’re a very good girl, Elizabeth. You are a great joy to me, and to your mother. We often talk about how lucky we are to have such a responsible little girl. Don’t think we don’t appreciate you.’

There was a hint of a snuffle in his voice. Elizabeth decided it must be headed off.

‘Oh I’m not all that great,’ she said. ‘Come on, let me be Black first and we’ll start the game.’

There was a present from every one of the O’Connors for Elizabeth at Christmas and a beret that Peggy had knitted, and holy pictures from four of the nuns, a calendar from Sister Catherine, and half a dozen Christmas cards from other people in the town.

Elizabeth was amazed as she unwrapped each gift. ‘Look Mother, this is from Eamonn. Imagine Eamonn writing a card, and two butterfly hairslides. Aren’t they lovely Mother, imagine Eamonn doing that! Do you think he went into the shop himself and asked Mrs McAllister? Oh, no, he couldn’t have. Perhaps Aunt Eileen got them.’

Violet was sitting at the table helping her to open them and flattening out the paper and untying the string.

‘Oh they are frightfully gaudy … but how sweet. Is Eamonn the delicate one, the invalid?’

‘No Mother, that’s Donal, Eamonn’s the eldest boy, well, eldest now. I told you, he’s going to work in the shop with Uncle Sean, he’s nearly seventeen. …’

Every card had a proper message … and Aisling’s enclosed a six-page letter which Elizabeth slipped into her pocket and read later.

‘They’re all frightfully holy, the cards. …’ Violet said, fingering them.

‘Well, you see, that’s what Christmas is all about there… you know cribs and mangers … they go on about it a lot,’ Elizabeth said. She felt a twinge of guilt now and then about having Lost Her Faith so easily on her return to England. She had tried to find the nearest Roman Catholic church, and visited it, but it was cold and damp, and very uninviting. But she felt sure that God (and Aisling’s class at school) would understand, and regard it as a temporary lapse. Later she would take it all up again.

‘What’s this one?’ A card in babyish writing fell from the pack.

‘That’s Niamh, she’s sweet Mother, she’s six. Were you not able to have any more children after me or did you just not want to? Or did they not turn up?’

‘How funny you are, dear, er, there were complications and so that meant you couldn’t have a sister.’

‘But it didn’t stop you sleeping in the same bed as Father? I mean could you still go on having … er …?’ Elizabeth stopped uncertainly.

Violet looked taken aback. ‘Eileen wrote to me that she had … explained all about … the facts of life and everything to you, she said she told you at the same time as Aisling … and that as far as she could see you seemed to have grasped everything satisfactorily. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘What haven’t I grasped?’ Elizabeth wanted to know.

‘Elizabeth, now I’m all for frankness, but there are some things you do not ask. People just don’t talk about it. It’s intimate, it’s between the two people themselves. Eileen wouldn’t tell you about her activities.’

‘But it was different with Aunt Eileen, Mother,’ said Elizabeth thoughtlessly, ‘I mean, everyone knew that she and Uncle Sean loved each other anyway. Despite all the things they said, they were obviously very fond of each other …’ Her voice trailed away again as she looked at her mother’s face.

Violet said nothing.

‘Oh Mother, what have I said?’ Elizabeth cried, stricken.

‘Nothing, dear.’ Violet stood up. ‘Nothing at all. Now,
do
they know in Kilgarret that there’s been a war here, and that we can’t go around getting them gifts like this …?’ Her voice was brittle.

‘Oh they know,’ said Elizabeth. She had sent a letter to Aunt Eileen five weeks ago enclosing four pounds and a lot of ready-written Christmas cards asking her to buy things in Mrs McAllister’s.

‘That’s all right then,’ said Violet briskly.

‘Mother I didn’t mean. …’

‘Gather up those things and tidy them away, won’t you dear?’ Violet said and she walked out of the room looking like people in films who’ve been deeply wounded and don’t want other people to know.

Dear Elizabeth,

This is meant to be a happy Christmas letter, but I’ve never felt so fed up in my life. Mam’s after saying that I should tell you all the news, but honestly there’s nothing to tell. The place is so boring and I look so awful, I look so ugly, and there’s nothing to do and everyone’s in bad tempers like weasels. Sister Catherine’s really a devil. I know you wouldn’t hear a word against her, and she had a soft spot for you because you understood all those awful things, trains coming into a station and the platform half a mile long… but really she’s the end. She has it in for me.

She called to the shop.
To the shop
. A nun coming all the way to talk to Mam at work. She said to Mam and Dad that I would have to be taken away from the
school
because I was a distraction and a bad influence on the rest of the class. I was getting one last chance.

Honestly it’s not fair. I don’t do nearly as much to disrupt her stupid classes as others I could mention. It’s only because she never liked me, it’s only because she can see me easily because of my hair. I wish you were here. You used to be able to make them see that things weren’t serious. She said that as a favour, and
one last chance
I’ll be taken back next term, but I’ll be watched like a hawk. What’s so new about that, I wonder? I’m watched like a hawk anyway.

I wish you could come here for Christmas and cheer us up. We never seemed to fight so much when you were here, or maybe we fight much more nowadays and it would still go on if you came back. But I don’t think so. Mam said after the vicious, evil Sister Catherine left that you had the right attitude about work, you just put your head down and did it. I wish I could. I wish I could put my head down but it’s so pointless. Seems so useless.

Maureen’s doing a line with that stupid Brendan Daly, you remember him, they live in that place with the huge falling-down barn we used to pass cycling to school when we went round by the river. We used to say it was more of a barn than a farm. Anyway, he’s serving his time in some food firm in Dublin and he met Maureen at a dance, and now they’re going out together. Imagine going all the way to Dublin and
having
a life of your own and meeting someone from Kilgarret! Joanie and I say that when we leave and go into the world the first question we’ll ask every single person is, ‘Are you from Kilgarret?’ Then we won’t be in any danger of falling for someone from here.

Maureen’s all silly and giggly and she actually calls him ‘my Brendan’. You’d die laughing if you heard her. Daddy was asking her would she get the ring for Christmas, and Maureen got all annoyed and said she was twenty-one and could do what she liked. Daddy said he was only asking a civil question and when Maureen had gone off in floods of tears, Mam said to Dad that he should be more gentle because Maureen was obviously hoping for the ring but didn’t dare to let us know that in case it didn’t happen.

Honestly imagine marrying Brendan Daly and his awful sticky-out teeth! Imagine going to bed in the same bed as him and imagine being stuck with him forever and ever for the rest of your life.

Joannie thinks it’s very funny, she keeps calling Brendan my ‘brother-in-law’ and whenever we’re going to school she says, ‘Will we ride past your in-laws’ barn?’ Joannie’s very funny now, you’d like her more than we did last term, she’s got more lively.

It’s funny in your letters when you mention Monica. I always think of the cat. I never heard of anyone else called Monica. When you said you went to
Brief Encounter
with Monica I thought for a moment that you had taken a cat to the cinema. I saw
it
too, it came here two weeks ago for three nights. Everyone cried except me. I thought they were stupid not to go away together. I mean in England they can do that, there’s divorce and everything and it’s not against the religion. There was no reason for them to stay with their awful husbands and wives, except just to make a plot.

I said that to Mam and she said I had a lot to learn about loyalty and making a bargain and keeping it. Whatever I say or do it appears I have a lot to learn.

I have awful spots, on my forehead and on my chin. Joannie says that you can’t see them much but when I asked Eamonn he said they were like lighthouses and that if people got lost they could see their way home by the red glares on my face.

Can you think of one single piece of cheering news to tell me? Like that you’ll come and stay, or come back and live here. Or what am I to do to get that rotten, bad, half-mad Sister Catherine off my trail?

Happy Christmas to you all, we couldn’t get over that picture of you and your mother. Mam has it in her bedroom on the dressing table. Your mother looks like a beauty queen. Do you get on well with her these days? It must be funny going back and finding a new mother in a way.

Love from a very miserable

Aisling

Mother developed a bad flu just before Christmas. The doctor came and said she must build herself up more, that she had gone to skin and bone. Father and Elizabeth tried to give the doctor a picture of what Mother normally ate during an average day. She had no bread, no potatoes, no puddings. She just picked at things. She looked very pale and listless.

‘I’m sorry to be such a trouble,’ she kept saying. Father and Elizabeth had been preparing for Christmas in their own ways, making chains of paper, gathering greenery, holly and ivy from the common, making fancy place cards for the table, reading recipes for novel seasonal punches. Now Mother was ill and it would all be in vain. She refused to have her bed taken downstairs to where the one fire burned.

‘That’s out of the question,’ she said faintly. ‘Only invalids and old people have their beds taken down to the living room. I shall stay here until it’s gone.’

Elizabeth offered to have the chimney in the bedroom swept and light a fire there, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. She wore mittens and had two hot-water bottles and that was fine. She lay uncomplainingly, her hair lank on the pillow. Father was totally unable to cope with it all. In the bedroom he stood wringing his hands saying, ‘Violet, is there anything we can do?’ in a hushed, death-chamber voice that obviously drove Violet to the limits of her patience with him. Downstairs he would rail senselessly at anything from current dieting fads, to the shortages in the war, to Mother getting colds going to meet friends from the munitions factory.

Monica’s mother taught Elizabeth how to make broths and hot drinks and how to make a cold compress without drowning the patient and saturating the bed. On Christmas Eve the doctor assured them that there was no danger of pneumonia and that it was just a matter of a slow return to her old energy and her old self. Elizabeth, cheered greatly by the pronouncement, became impatient with Father who was still grumbling and muttering about doctors being know-alls and knowing nothing when it came to it.

‘Father, do you never see any good in anything? Can you never see light at the end of the tunnel?’ she snapped.

‘Not really,’ he said.

‘But that’s a dreadful way to live,’ she said.

‘In my experience, lights at the end of the tunnel tend to flicker out,’ said Father.

Elizabeth thought of last Christmas as she prepared Mother’s beef tea. Last Christmas Day, walking in the frost and early-morning darkness up to mass, shouting greetings at everyone, full of anticipation for the day ahead. Little Niamh had fallen and cut her knee. There had been enormous sympathy, dabbing with clean white handkerchiefs, taking her to a street lamp to examine the wound, but Niamh, more frightened than hurt, was roaring in great bellows.

‘Oh Niamh, for goodness’ sake stop crying,’ Aisling had said. ‘Your leg isn’t going to fall off. Don’t spoil Christmas Day.’

‘You can’t spoil Christmas Day,’ Donal had said.

Eileen had lifted the hefty five-year-old up in her arms. ‘Tie a bandage on it Sean,’ she had said briskly. ‘Poor old warrior Niamh. But Donal’s right, of course it won’t spoil Christmas Day, nothing can spoil Christmas Day.’

Mother’s hand was very thin. The soup spoon looked big and heavy when she held it.

‘I’m sorry you’re having such an awful Christmas, my darling,’ she said to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth sat like a guard watching that she finished every mouthful.