Light A Penny Candle (20 page)

‘Um.’ Aisling was vague. ‘Mam, would Mrs White, you know, Elizabeth’s mother … would she technically be in mortal sin and everything, living with Mr Elton? I know she’s not a Catholic, but she was at a Catholic school with you … and she was baptised … and it could be a sin.’

Mam ran after her with the tea towel she happened to have in her hands and started to belt her around the legs. … ‘Will you go away you stupid idiotic child and stop bothering me about sin! Sin, sin and more sin … what nonsense you all talk.’

But Mam was laughing. Laughing at somebody breaking their marriage vows. … Mam was hard to fathom sometimes. …

‘I wonder where they did it?’ Joannie speculated as they both rubbed Vaseline on to their eyelashes with the narrow bits of combs, flicking them upwards.

‘Did what? Who?’ Aisling concentrated intensely but the lash wouldn’t bend. ‘The best I can do is to make these look like spikes. Why do yours bend? Are they made of weaker fibre or what?’

‘I think they’re naturally curly, I have a feeling they
might
be.’ Joannie examined her eyelashes, pleased. ‘No, I was talking about the couple, you know. Elizabeth’s mother and that man … where did they make love?’

‘I never thought of that. His house maybe?’

‘But he didn’t have a house remember, always in lodging houses. They couldn’t go there. Maybe they went to hotel rooms for the afternoons.’

Aisling thought about that. ‘I think you have to stay in a hotel once you book in. I don’t think you can leave at teatime and say that’s enough. Maybe they didn’t do it at all, maybe they only held hands and necked.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ Joannie was very cross. ‘Of course they did it, wasn’t adultery mentioned and all? I mean, necking isn’t adultery. Anyway you’d never leave one man and go off with another unless you’d done it with the other. Stands to reason.’

Aisling didn’t agree with this. She put down her mirror and hugged her knees as she sat on Joannie’s bed. She looked around the big room with its windows down to the floor. The Murrays’ house was one of the best houses of Kilgarret. Eamonn always said, ‘Off to your friends the Rockefellers?’ when she went to Joannie’s house.

‘I think you’ve got it all wrong, Joannie,’ she said seriously. ‘I think you think that most of the world is much more interested in doing it than they really are. Elizabeth and I used to say we’d never mind if we never did it as long as we lived. …’

‘Ah, but that was ages ago … I bet you feel different now.’

‘No I don’t,’ said Aisling with spirit. ‘I really mean this. I think it’s something everyone goes on about and makes a big thing out of and nobody likes it at all. It’s love people want. That’s different to doing it.’

‘They’re meant to be the same.’ Joannie’s round face was puzzled. ‘Didn’t you listen when Sister Catherine said that love was the highest expression of doing it – or was it doing it was the highest expression of love? Remember, we nearly choked trying to keep straight faces in class? It was a scream.’

‘Sister Catherine never talked about doing it!’ Aisling was amazed at the very idea.

‘No, she didn’t use those words … she said something about the high something of married love resulting in the creation of children … if that’s not doing it what is?’

‘Yes, I remember. But, honestly, I think it’s the love bit that people want, that’s what all the songs are about and the films and the poems, not all this other thing.’

‘But the other thing is lovely!’ Joannie said.

‘How do you know, you’re only going on what people say.’

‘Well, David’s done it.’

‘He never has.’

‘He says he has.’

This was electrifying news.

‘What did he say it was like?’ Aisling was so excited she nearly fell off the bed.

‘He says it was perfect pleasure … and that I’d love it,’ Joannie said smugly.

‘That’s no description.
Perfect pleasure
, sure that’s no help at all, and of course he wants you to think you’d love it, then you would go all the way with him. …’

‘Well, then we’d know anyway … we’d not be sitting round and talking about it and guessing,’ said Joannie mutinously.

‘That’s true mind you,’ said Aisling. ‘But would you mind?’

‘I’d love it,’ said Joannie.

They both whooped with laughter.

‘Then you must. That’s definite,’ said Aisling.

‘Well, why won’t you?’ Joannie was anxious at being thrust into the role of trail-blazer.

‘Well, use your head! How can I? You can’t go off and knock at someone’s door. Hallo I’m Aisling O’Connor and my friend Joannie Murray would like me to sample sexual intercourse with someone to give her courage before she does it with David Gray, so may I come in and shall we take our clothes off now?’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘But what else could I do?
You’re
the one who has a fellow and
you’re
the one whose fellow says it would be pure pleasure for you, and
you’re
the one who’s mad to try it. I’m only just being a supporter that’s all.’

‘I’d never do it, I’m only talking about it. I’d be terrified of having a baby. Anyway, David’s only asking me because he expects me to say no. Nobody with any sense would say yes.’

‘Because he’d leave you once he had got his way do you mean?’

‘Well, yes, and anyway he wouldn’t be able to trust me would he? You see if I did it with him, then what’s to stop him thinking I’d do it with anyone else?’

‘There has to be a flaw in that, somewhere,’ said Aisling. ‘How does anyone ever get together with anyone else if that’s what they all think?’

‘They get married first silly, then it’s all right,’ said Joannie confidently.

‘But what about the
pure pleasure
one, the one who did go the whole way?’

‘That was in south Gloucestershire, when he was on holiday. They all do, there, apparently it’s a different kind of way of going on, it’s not like here.’

‘Well, why didn’t he do it with lots of people if it was going on all around him?’

‘Aisling O’Connor, you deliberately pick holes in what people say. It’s impossible to talk to you,’ said Joannie.

‘I’m just interested, that’s all,’ said Aisling. ‘Everyone else seems to think being interested in things is unhealthy. I’ll never know why.’

Joannie’s family liked having Aisling around the house; she was so bright and funny, they thought. Everything Aisling said seemed witty and entertaining when she said it at the Murrays’ table. It seemed self-centred and showing-off according to Mam, Eamonn and Maureen when she said it at home. For the first time, she began to realise that in the Murrays’ house she was a treat, but at home they had had enough of her. Perhaps that was why
everyone
liked Elizabeth so much in Kilgarret. Because she was a treat. When she went back to her own place it had been awful. Anyway it was just as well that the Murrays did like her because things at home were very depressing. Donal’s illness had left a shadow of terror on Mam. Every time he coughed she would glance at him, while pretending not to.

The day that Father Kearney had come with the extreme unction had been dreadful. One of the nuns had come first to prepare the room and Donal for the sacrament. Da had been very annoyed at that and said that nuns were interfering busybodies and how could a child like Donal need to be prepared for anything? Mam had held Donal’s hand all the time and smiled. Peggy had been crying at the door and Mam had thought she had a cold and said she should go down and sit at the fire rather than stand there in the draught. Father Kearney said that the sacrament worked in one of two ways: it brought back health and strength, or it gave comfort to the sick person to make a happy death. Eamonn had said something under his breath about covering your bets and Mam had nearly murdered him afterwards. Told him to keep his heathen beliefs out of a sick child’s bedroom.

Anyway, Donal was better; he had to be careful never to catch pneumonia again and Mam seemed to think that pneumonia was like an enemy outside the door waiting to come in. Aisling felt it was very peculiar of God to keep sending bad fortune to people who could bear it least. After all, Sean hadn’t been a bad person, he had been a
good
person who had believed in a cause, and God had let him be blown up, and Donal was by far the nicest of the whole family and God kept giving him whistling chests and bouts of pneumonia on top of his weak lungs. Maureen and Eamonn were awful and they were both as healthy as bullocks. God had no sense of fair play. Mam worked hard and was up till all hours and did she get any holiday or nice clothes? No, she didn’t. Aisling herself had worked like a slave at school this year and what had she got? Any reward? Any thanks? Just a grudging admission that she had come to her senses at last and made an attempt to catch up on lost time. Mrs Murray said that there was a line about ‘Whom the Lord loveth He persecuteth’. They found it eventually and Aisling said that the Lord must be simply mad about her because He persecuted her from morning to night with awful hair, straight eyelashes and demon nuns. Mrs Murray and John, who was Joannie’s brother, a clerical student, thought that was very funny. Aisling repeated the remark at home in case Mam might find it funny and it would make her laugh. Mam said it was blasphemous and that there was great danger that Aisling was becoming a show-off.

Aisling liked talking to John Murray when he was home on occasional weekends from the seminary. He told them things about their trainings which were meant to be secrets. He told the enthralled Joannie and Aisling that sometimes they had lessons in manners so that when they were priests they wouldn’t make eejits of themselves and bring down the respect of the clergy by eating with their
knives
and shovelling the food into their mouths with their hands. Aisling thought this was uproarious, but as usual got no enthusiasm when she told the tales at home.

‘If that young Murray is cracked enough to go joining the priests when he has all that big family business to have a share in then he’s even more cracked to be telling tales about how daft they’re all inside there,’ said Dad.

Mam was naturally annoyed at the disrespect Dad showed for the church, but she was also annoyed with John Murray. ‘That place is like his family now, you don’t go round telling secrets about the family. It’s disloyal.’

Aisling remembered a few small acts of disloyalty when she had made the Murrays rock with laughter by imitating Dad coming in from work and being like a sultan asking for water to wash himself, a clean towel, his slippers, and the best chair … without words. He didn’t have to speak, so well were his little impatient gestures known; and whoever was handy – Peggy, Niamh or Aisling herself – would run to fill the needs. He never made these little signs at Mam. It was like a pantomime and Aisling had caught it very well. She reddened thinking how cross they would be if ever they knew how she had parodied the nightly routine. But she didn’t feel disloyal spending most of the summer in the Murrays’ house. It was so sunny and it had a big garden that went down to the river. If you wanted to sit in the sun you took out a deck-chair, not a folded rug or one of the kitchen cushions to put on the step of the yard like at home. There were always cakes and biscuits in the Murrays’ house that went back into tins after meals,
not
like at home where once a thing was out it was eaten and that was that.

Joannie’s romance with David Gray came to a head when school started. He didn’t have anything to do until October and he begged her to skip school, so they could go off for the whole day together. Joannie, tempted and almost weakening, realised the dangers, even though Aisling agreed to cover for her.

‘I could say to Sister Catherine that you were taken bad on the way to school, and I had to take you home.’

‘She’d not believe the daylight from you,’ said Joannie honestly if ungratefully.

‘Well anyone she would believe the daylight from wouldn’t do it, that’s the whole problem,’ said Aisling.

David’s blandishments proved too much. He was going to pack a picnic hamper he said, and some cider. He had a loan of a car they could have the whole day, go off to some place in the mountains or by the sea. Joannie decided to risk it. She thought her best chance of success was to leave Aisling out of it. Reluctantly Aisling agreed. She was still considered – grossly unfairly – to be a trouble-maker; there was no point in creating suspicion for Joannie.

It was by great luck a day when the Murray house would be empty. Mrs Murray was going to Dublin, shopping, John would not be back from the seminary; nobody was likely to call; Tony, the other brother, was in Limerick learning the trade in a wine merchant’s, he would not be back. Noreen, the Murrays’ maid, was on holiday, she had gone to her people in Wexford. It was the
one
day in the whole year that Joannie would have an alibi.

Twenty minutes into the first lesson, which was Christian doctrine, Joannie stood up and said she felt sick; after some time in the cloakroom she came back and said she felt awful, and could she go home? Sister Catherine looked round the class for a girl to accompany her; her eye didn’t rest for a second on Aisling, who was amongst those waving an enthusiastic hand to be the companion. ‘Mary Brady, you go with Joannie, and when you have her safely delivered there, come straight back.’ Sister Catherine had chosen the class goody-goody, the Child of Mary, the most reliable and honest girl in the school, whose intention of becoming a nun and joining the order the day she left school was known to everyone. Wistfully Aisling looked out of the window and saw Joannie Murray setting off on her adventure. She found it very hard to concentrate on the Acts of the Apostles.

When Mary Brady came back, eyes virtuously downcast, Sister Catherine asked was everything all right.

The innocent accomplice explained that Joannie had seen her mother and waved to her at the window and she had gone in and was fine. Sister Catherine thanked Mary for her help, Mary smiled, and Aisling O’Connor sighed a sigh of pure envy.

A mystery always hung over the details of that day. Like how the whole idea of the picnic came to be abandoned so early and what the cider had tasted like, and why they
decided
to drink it in Mrs Murray’s bedroom. And it was never clearly explained why Tony, who lived with cousins in Limerick, had come home unexpectedly, and why he had been so upset. The combination of all these things had been a confusion Aisling had never known.