Light A Penny Candle (25 page)

Elizabeth burst into tears. Johnny paid the perplexed man twenty-five pounds instead of the twenty he had been quite willing to accept. In confusion, they bundled the furniture into the van while Elizabeth sobbed in the front
seat
. In silence they headed for Mr Worsky’s cousin’s house.

‘Do you think we might have a half pint somewhere while the storms abate?’ Johnny asked. It was the first thing he had said in eleven miles. Elizabeth nodded. She wasn’t able to speak.

They sat in a pub and, red-eyed, she drank a brandy and ginger wine which Johnny said might be just the thing. He made no attempt to cheer her up, to apologise for his loss of temper or to enquire why she cried so long and so deeply.

The brandy warmed her and she had another.

Then, in a small voice, she asked him about Liverpool. Was it a big place, suppose she wanted to find a small place called Jubilee Terrace, would that be possible? Was it idiotic? During her second brandy she told Johnny about Sean O’Connor and how Aunt Eileen had always said that if ever she got anywhere near Liverpool, could she say hallo to Amy Sparks. It was such ages ago, five years. Of course, Mrs Amy Sparks and her son Gerry might be dead. But just because Aunt Eileen had once said … no, it was silly. Johnny mustn’t listen to her, she was just being silly.

‘We’re far too early for Stefan’s cousin, why don’t we see if we can find it?’ said Johnny.

Gerry Sparks had had a stroke of luck, he said, in that he was good with his hands. He was a watchmaker and he could do a lot of work at home. They fixed a tray on his wheelchair, and he could spread all the bits and bobs out
on
it and look through his magnifying glass at them. It was a real bit of luck that they discovered his skill in the therapy classes, because the legs hadn’t taken. Not enough for them to grab on to, didn’t manage to use the muscles from the hips.

Mrs Sparks was now Mrs Benson. She had remarried, as a sensible thing to do; she was able to look after Mr Benson, and cook his meals, keep his shirts nice and clean, he could give her his pension. They had sold his little house and made a tidy profit. They were so pleased to meet Elizabeth and her young man; they knew all about her. Eileen O’Connor, a wonderful woman, wrote a long letter every Christmas and she sent money to the church in Liverpool where they had held this mass for Sean.

They talked about Sean. Gerry said he had been a great mate, he’d never had a mate like Sean before. Elizabeth said he had always been restless when she knew him in Kilgarret. But then she was very young and maybe she hadn’t really been able to talk to him.

‘I never knew a mate like him,’ Gerry Sparks said again. ‘Certainly never knew one since then.’

He looked down at his rug on the wheelchair.

‘Of course, like this it stands to reason I don’t make many mates these days.’

‘Yeah, that’s the trouble when you work on your own,’ Johnny agreed, having deliberately misunderstood him. ‘You don’t have mates at work, you miss that. Of course, there are advantages working on your own. If you feel like
knocking
off an hour earlier or taking a long lunch you can do it.’

Gerry brightened up. Together they talked about working on your own, piece-work rate for the hour. Johnny even went out to the car and asked Gerry’s advice about an old clock that he had picked up at a sale of work. ‘I only bought it for the face, but I think the insides are like scrambled egg.’ Gerry had his eyeglass out, and in minutes it was ticking. The small kitchen filled with pride until it burst. Elizabeth couldn’t have imagined anything that would have brought more pleasure. Addresses were exchanged, if ever any work came the way of Mr Worsky which needed the touch of a craftsman it would be sent to Gerry Sparks.

In the firelight and under the dim centre-bulb the peaky face and bent back of Gerry Sparks was joined with the handsome young Johnny Stone. If they had met in Italy they might have been mates too. But of course Johnny Stone wasn’t old enough to put on a uniform, and the year that he was just old enough they stopped fighting. Elizabeth and Mr and Mrs Benson seemed to exchange innocent, pleased looks about the conversation at the fire. But it was something that could never have been put into words.

Mr Worsky’s cousin was not at all interested in their visit to a house in Jubilee Terrace, a small, poor little place. She was very interested in Elizabeth, a lovely young woman, just right for Mr Stone, and very right for Mr Stone to settle down, too, no more of the romancing.

‘It’s just as well I’m not your young lady,’ said Elizabeth wearily as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom. ‘Since we left London this morning, everyone has assumed I am and that I have a dreadful time with you.’

Could it really only have been this morning that she had said goodbye to Father? She hadn’t given him a thought all day. Perhaps that’s what happened to Mother. But then they were married, which was different. She wondered whether Mother would like to be called Violet tomorrow. She wondered whether Johnny would come in and call like he had at the Sparks’s house. She wondered how Gerry Sparks got out of his wheelchair when he wanted to go to the bathroom, and whether she should try to stay awake and write to Aunt Eileen about the visit. …

There were three more calls on the way to Preston. Elizabeth said nothing about the prices offered to and accepted by a war widow, a clergyman and an elderly doctor. She helped willingly and cooperatively, she wrote things down in her little notebook and she scrambled under a bed in a loft with Johny where their hands touched over some old silver-backed brushes. When they took them downstairs the old doctor said that he vaguely remembered them from his childhood.

‘I’ll buy them if you like,’ Johnny said.

‘Oh, they’re filthy now, and the hair’s all rotting. I’d be ashamed to sell them, I’ll throw them out,’ said the old man.

‘They could be nice if we got them done up, polished you know, and new bristles,’ said Johnny.

He caught Elizabeth’s eye before she looked away.

‘And valuable, Doctor,’ he went on. ‘We might be able to sell them for a lot more than we give you.’

The old doctor smiled.

‘Well, I should hope so my boy,’ he said agreeably. ‘Otherwise what’s the whole business about?’

Johnny celebrated his triumph by avoiding Elizabeth’s eye.

When the signposts said that Preston was only five miles away Elizabeth turned to Johnny almost shyly.

‘I hope you’ll come and stay for supper. … I don’t think they’d have a bed for the night. Not if Harry’s been making all this palaver over doing up the guest room for me, you know. But supper would be super.’

‘Why don’t I just see you in the door, say Hi to Harry and Vi and push off, arrange what time to pick you up on Tuesday and let the family get together as nature intended?’

‘It’s not the family, you know that.’ Elizabeth sounded troubled.

‘I know but it’s enough strain on everyone without having a total stranger there sitting in on it.’

‘But you’re … you’re very good at making chat and sort of helping things along. Please come and stay.’

‘Listen, I’ll come in and see what I think. If I think it’s better for me to go I’ll toddle off, if I think I’m helping I’ll hang around a bit. Will that do?’

Elizabeth nodded. He took her hand and patted it. ‘You
don
’t have, you didn’t have any awkwardnesses in your family, you know with your mum who calls herself your-ever-loving-mother?’

‘Awkwardnesses? No. Not really.’ He negotiated the wet, slippy road. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘You know, like them being too loving or not loving enough. You know. Like them being not what you expected or wanted.’

‘Oh no, heavens, no,’ Johnny laughed. ‘My mother would like me to live with her and have a small car and drive her to see her friends … but I don’t like that as a way of life so I have no intention of doing it. None at all. My mother’s father wanted her to stay at home and look after him, but she didn’t, she ran away with my father. People do what they want to do. Once you know that and accept it you don’t have any problems.’

‘And your father?’

‘He ran off with someone else, with two someone elses. He ran off with people every ten years or so, my mother was the second. He’s frightfully keen on running off with people. …’

‘And you don’t see him?’

‘Why on earth should I? He doesn’t want to see me. Look, it’s not like your case, these folk have been painting a room for you for ages. They want you to come, you wanted to come … where’s the awkwardness? There’s no lies or demands or emotions.’

‘You hate that sort of thing, don’t you?’ said Elizabeth.

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘I think you do more than most, you were very annoyed when I was crying yesterday. I could see it.’

‘No, my dear, honestly, I wasn’t annoyed. It’s just, I don’t know, I don’t want to get involved in dramas and tears and heightened scenes. So I never do.’

‘It’s not a bad philosophy I suppose.’

‘It has its drawbacks. People think I’m a bit cold or selfish or too flippant… but perhaps all these things are true … Heigh ho, Preston, jewel of the North, here we come.’

‘Do stay to supper,’ she said.

‘If they ask me,’ he promised.

The bedroom almost brought tears to Elizabeth’s eyes. Only the thought of having Johnny see her once more with a red, puffy face held them back. Harry had bought expensive and hideous ornaments which stood on a shelf. ‘Girls like pretty things,’ he said proudly as he looked at them. The utility furniture had all been painted white and so had rather a nice little bookcase which used to have doors. Elizabeth could see the hinges but they were painted over too. The bed had a flouncy blue and white spread; pictures in what she would now think of as the most awful chocolate-box tradition in shiny new frames covered the walls. In those days of shortages Harry had painted everything in sight. The blue carpet went wall to wall and you could see that he had stitched scraps together to get it to fit properly. His face beamed with achievement.

Johnny spoke first. He was marvelling at the things that should be marvelled at, how perfect the paint surface was … were three? three … yes, he had thought there must be three coats. Johnny marvelled too at how cleverly the electricity work had been done, a light over the bed, another over the wash-hand basin. He praised the bright, clear colours which made it look so cheery even in winter. As he spoke, Elizabeth found her tongue to praise and thank and marvel. She left her bag on the bed and looked around her with gratitude that nearly made Harry crack apart, so broad was his smile. Spontaneously she hugged him, and when she saw the delight in Mother’s eyes she hugged Mother too. It had been a peck on the cheek as she had come in the front door of the shabby little corner shop.

‘Oh Mother, this is great,’ she cried. Mother hugged her back. Over Mother’s shoulder she saw Johnny nodding slightly and she knew she had been right to decide not to say Violet.

Johnny stayed to supper, the atmosphere growing more and more cordial. Harry was like a big child, he had grown fatter and more genial in the two years. Mother had become even thinner, if that were possible; she seemed nervy, she smoked a lot and her eyes looked huge in her thin face. She jumped up half a dozen times, nervous, anxious to please.

They both seemed pleased, in a childish and obvious way, that Johnny did not know Father, Elizabeth thought; in fact Harry went so far as to say, ‘That’s good, lad, we’re the first to have a look at you, eh?’ as if Elizabeth had taken Johnny there on some kind of tour of approval.

Elizabeth answered that one without any embarrassment.

‘The reason that Johnny doesn’t know Father is that Johnny is in Mr Worsky’s and Father, as you said in your letter, Mother, hardly knows where the antique shop is.’ She paused and, lest it appear to leave an opportunity for Father to be criticised, she spoke again. ‘You would be amazed at Father really, both of you. He is such a bridge addict now. No worries about what to get him for Christmas, new cards or scoring pads, or little bridge ashtrays. And he meets people all the time. As soon as somebody new comes to the area, if they can play bridge he’s met them in a week.’

‘Fancy George having a whole circle of friends.’ Mother was mildly amazed, as if it were a story about someone she knew a long time ago.

‘They’re not exactly friends.’ Elizabeth was thoughtful.

‘Of course they’re friends,’ interrupted Johnny, ‘if he goes to their houses and they come to Clarence Gardens, what are they? Enemies? Honestly, Elizabeth, you want people to exchange blood from their arms like Red Indians.’

Everyone laughed.

‘We did that in Ireland once, Aisling and I,’ said Elizabeth suddenly. ‘I’d quite forgotten.’

‘Yes, well you see,’ said Harry meaninglessly. He was trying to say something that would make that Johnny realise he was on his side.

It worked. Johnny put his arm around Harry’s shoulder. ‘Let the girls talk a bit, Harry, and you show me
this
workshop of yours, and if you come across any of those old weighing scales on your travels, you know the old-fashioned ones with brass weights. …’

Mother lit another cigarette and leaned across to clutch Elizabeth’s arm.

‘Oh, my dear, he’s so nice, he’s such a nice young man. I’m simply delighted for you. I worried about that too … you know, as well as anything else. I worried that you mightn’t have a boyfriend or a social life. You mention so little about it in your letters.’

Elizabeth sighed. ‘I suppose it’s useless my telling you that he isn’t my boyfriend. Really, until today and yesterday we’ve hardly even had a proper conversation. He’s someone I work with on Saturdays. But I agree, he is very nice, isn’t he? He’s been great company, simply smashing on the trip. The time just flew by.’

‘I know,’ said Mother. ‘That’s what’s wonderful about being with the right person.’

They spoke of him a lot during the weekend, which was a good thing as it kept them off the topic of Father.

Mother felt guilty about Father, she felt guilty about walking out with no proper explanations.