Light A Penny Candle (26 page)

‘I don’t think explanations would have done much good,’ Elizabeth said several times, feeling years older than she had felt the day Mother left Clarence Gardens. ‘Father doesn’t listen much, I’ve come to think.’

Sometimes Harry spoke about Father too, in a worried tone. ‘You’re a grown-up young woman, Elizabeth, and I don’t want to sound like an adult talking to a child … but
your
mother and I worry about you down in that house, it’s not healthy for a child to live alone with a … well with such a remote man as your father. Now Violet won’t hear a word against him, and I wouldn’t speak one word either against a person’s father but you have to agree that he’s an odd fish, a cold person. He has no blood. A real cold fish. There’s an art college in Preston. …’

‘I know, Harry, but. …’

‘And we’d be no interference, I mean you’ve been having your own way, you could have whoever you liked into your own room … that’s a fair offer. We’d give you a key, you could come and go. Violet’s eyes light up now that you’re here … and mine too. I think it’s champion, as they say here, to have you in and out. …’

‘You’re very kind, Harry,’ sighed Elizabeth, and meant it. And she also meant it when she said that Mother was marvellous to her and had been like the kind of elder sister you read about in books. But no, she must really stay where she was. And no, really, she wouldn’t join the general outcry against Father. He had a life to live just like everyone else, and he lived it. If he didn’t have much joy that was bad luck and circumstance.

They eventually stopped trying to change her mind. In her shiny new bedroom, Elizabeth lay awake at night listening to the strange sounds of a different city and wondered whether everyone else had to keep being kind to people and talking down to them. She wished that someone would make all the decisions for her, and consult her views and take her moods into consideration.

In what seemed like a totally separate part of her mind she wondered how Johnny was getting on, and whether he would come back with a rabbit for dinner as he had promised Harry he would.

The rabbit was a great success. Johnny had arrived when the shop was very busy. Mother and Harry were both dealing with children who spent thirty minutes trying to decide how to spend their tuppences and their sweet points. Tired women buying thin slices of pressed meat and packets of semolina, old men shuffling in for tobacco. Elizabeth had been reading in the kitchen when she heard the cries of welcome for Johnny in the shop. Harry rushed back in beaming like an idiot.

‘He’s here, he’s here, and he didn’t forget, he’s got the rabbit. Hurry Elizabeth, there’s a dear, get out the pot. Your mother will be in in a minute. …’

Elizabeth wondered how she could have ever feared Harry, or Mr Elton as she had called him then. How could she have thought him a sophisticated dangerous man, he was a big baby. She wished that he could be more cool, less excited, Johnny might think they were all very simple and overimpressed by him.

But no, Johnny seemed just as excited. ‘I’m going to spend the night here, and we’ll leave early tomorrow. Your mother’s invited me. We’ll have the best rabbit pie ever eaten in this country since before the war.’

It
was
the best rabbit pie that had been eaten in the country since the war. Elizabeth had made pastry, Johnny
had
gone to the pub for cider. They set a table and Mother made up her face. Johnny told them about how he had got the rabbit. The farmer who had been clearing out his furniture always offered people the chance to shoot a rabbit, because he was too old and arthritic to shoot himself, but he loved to go with another huntsman. Johnny had shot three, one for the farmer, one for his party and one, all wrapped up in wet grass at the back of the van, for Mr Worsky.

And they sang some songs, and Harry recited ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God’, and Mother did an imitation of how the nuns taught them to curtsey, which was hilarious. Elizabeth was pressed for a party piece. She didn’t have any, she said. Mother said that there were always songs in Ireland, that Elizabeth said people used to sing in Maher’s. With her hands by her side she began:

‘Oh Danny Boy

The pipes, the pipes are calling

From o’er the glens

And down the mountain side

The summer’s gone and all the leaves are falling

T’is you must go

Must go and I must bide. …’

Then they all joined in:

‘Oh come you back …

When sun shines in the meadow …

And when the fields are hushed and white with snow …

For I’ll be there in sunshine and in shadow …

Oh Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so.’

Every one of them, including Johnny, had tears in their eyes. Oh God, thought Elizabeth, why do I have to wreck everything? Why couldn’t she have found a cheerful song to sing, something that would have made people laugh like everyone else was able to do? Why did she have to pick the most mournful song in the world? The one party she had been to since she came back from Kilgarret and now she had to close it down by singing a sad song.

They were washing-up and scraping chairs and putting things away. Everyone was saying what a great night it had been. Mother fussed about sheets and blankets for Johnny, Harry said better be on the road tomorrow before six o’clock in order to avoid the worst of the traffic and the big lorries in the narrow streets.

Elizabeth didn’t sleep, she kept jerking awake in the middle of a bad dream where Gerry Sparks from his wheelchair was holding her wrist.

‘Why did you come to see me if you weren’t going to marry me?’ he cried over and over again. Elizabeth felt herself running away while his mother Mrs Benson and Harry shouted after her, ‘You’re always the same, you start things without thinking and you hurt people. …’

*

After their last afternoon call at an orphange, where Johnny bought four boxes full of old cutlery, the rain became so heavy that they had to pull in to the side of the road. The windscreen wipers couldn’t cope with the torrents hurtling at them. As they sat waiting for it to ease a policeman with a flashing torch came to the window.

‘Road’s flooded ahead, you’ll never get past. We’re turning back traffic already. You take your missus back to the town there, only a mile or two, you’ll not get to London tonight.’

‘Well, you’re my witness. I did try to get you home!’ Johnny laughed goodnaturedly as he reversed the car and was waved on by the policeman in the sheets of rain.

‘What will we do?’ Elizabeth asked. She wished she could take everything as casually and cheerfully as Johnny did. Already her mind was racing with problems. What would Father say when she didn’t turn up? Should she telephone him now before he left the bank? What time would she get back tomorrow? How could she explain about missing her lectures? Might Mr Worsky think that she and Johnny were just having a good time flitting about the country in his van?

‘Have a meal and find somewhere to stay I suppose,’ Johnny said.

The small hotel had a fire and a bar. Johnny carried in their two bags and talked to the receptionist while Elizabeth warmed her hands over the flames. He came back and put his arm around her.

‘We’re in luck, they have a room.’

The woman with the large key in her hand looked at Elizabeth’s gloveless and ringless hands.

‘Do you and your wife care to go up now and see the room?’ she asked with a smirk that made Elizabeth feel so angry she didn’t even care about the red flush she felt creeping over her face.

‘No, I’m sure it’s fine,’ Johnny said lightly, ‘we’ll have a drink if we may, seeing that we’re residents, and Elizabeth wants to use the telephone.’

In a few minutes of merciful privacy, Elizabeth got through to the bank. Her father hated being disturbed at work for what he considered trivia. Brusque and irritated, he said that he understood, fine, fine, he’d see her tomorrow then. Goodbye. No regrets, no sympathy at her being caught by flooding, no enquiries about her visit to Preston, no hint that he might have missed her.

No way of knowing that his daughter had one of the major decisions in her life ahead of her in the next few minutes.

She stood longer than she needed, clutching the receiver in the dark little box, wondering what to do now. It must be her own fault, she must have given Johnny the impression that she slept with men and that it would be in order to book them a double room. If she was going to be adamant and refuse his suggestion, then the grown-up thing would be to do it immediately … the longer she left it the more awkward it would become.

Johnny was sitting at a table with a beer, and a shandy.

‘I thought this is what you’d like,’ he said, smiling up at her, hoping that he had made the right choice.

‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said. They were in a corner away from everyone. The chintzy little lounge bar of the hotel might fill up later with local ladies drinking port and lemon; through the door the bar with its dartboard stood dark and empty in the afternoon of winter. Nobody could hear them. There would be no public scene.

‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said again. ‘A shandy’s fine, but Johnny about the room. I must tell you. …’

‘Oh sweet Elizabeth, I was just going to tell
you
. It’s got two beds, and it’s half the price of two rooms, and she doesn’t have two rooms. She said she had just one room left before I said anything so. …’

‘Yes, but. …’

‘So there wasn’t a chance for me to say “May I consult the lady?”’ He looked not at all upset, just as if he had to explain something that was self-evident. ‘And I’ll turn my back when you’re putting on your nightie and you promise not to peek at me.’

‘But. …’

‘We’ll be yards away from each other – we were only a few yards away from each other last night and neither of us got carried away.’

Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself.

‘No, that’s true,’ she agreed.

‘Well.’ The problem was solved for Johnny.

Elizabeth looked into her glass. If she were to make further protests it would appear as if she thought that
Johnny
was hopelessly besotted by her and was planning to seduce her. Since he said this wasn’t on his mind, it would be arrogant and even pathetic of her to keep up this insistence on a room of her own. But suppose, suppose that there was actually a game involved, and that her agreeing to go to the same room meant agreeing to much more. …

Johnny said he had to telephone Mr Worsky, he’d be back in a moment. Did Elizabeth want to change? There was a bathroom at the end of the corridor apparently but if a bath was needed you had to ask the lady at the desk and she would get someone to turn on the geyser.

He was gone.

Elizabeth ran upstairs, and changed her blouse. She gave herself an icy wash and examined her face nervously at the bathroom mirror, which was speckled where the bits of mercury or silver had peeled off. She wasn’t at all pleased with what she saw. Her hair was so straight, and so pale and colourless. It wasn’t blonde like real blondes are blonde yellow-and-gold, it was white, almost as if she were an old woman or an albino. And her face. Oh Lord, why were some people’s faces the same colour all over when her face was patchy with great pools of red and valleys of white?

With her hands on her waist she looked critically at what she could see of her figure. It was very awkwardly shaped, she decided. Her breasts were small and pointy, she didn’t have that nice swell, that sort of ‘S’ shape that made people raise their eyebrows at each other. In fact she looked like a tall schoolgirl instead of a woman.

With a mixture of relief and disappointment she realised that Johnny couldn’t possibly have had any designs on her. Thank heavens she hadn’t made a silly fuss.

They had fish and chips in the fish shop up the street. It had looked much more inviting than the hotel dining room even though they did have to run to it through the sheets of rain. They talked about what Mr Worsky would say to each item they had got, and what Elizabeth would do next Saturday in the shop, and why Harry and Violet didn’t have any nice furniture, why it was all modern and new and cheap. They talked about Johnny’s mother who
did
have nice furniture, but who wasn’t warm and welcoming. She’d never put herself out to have a visitor to the house, she just expected her son to be there all the time and sniffed disappointedly when he was not.

Elizabeth told him about Monica and
her
mother, and the complicated lies she had to tell when she went off with chaps. Monica had to keep a small notebook so that she did not get caught out. Johnny said that he thought Monica was very silly; she should tell her mother straight out that she was going to live her own life and she hoped that they could all be friends while she was living it. Then all she would have to put up with was a few sniffs.

‘It’s different for girls, you see,’ Elizabeth said.

‘Yes … so they keep saying,’ Johnny agreed.

They ran back in the rain, and because they had had an early start decided that they should go to bed. Or go
to sleep
, as they kept calling it.

‘Do you think we should go back and let you get to sleep, you’ve a long day tomorrow, the drive back, and unpacking, then college?’ Johnny said.

‘Yes, I think I will sleep now,’ Elizabeth said.

She sat on the side of her bed, the one where she had already put her blue nightdress under the pillow. There was heavy, purple-flocked wallpaper and a huge, ugly dressing table. A small, narrow wardrobe with no room for clothes stood filled with extra blankets and smelling of moth balls. There was one small, white chair; they would both have to put their clothes on that. Elizabeth examined her feet ruefully.

‘They got awfully wet, I’ll have to go and wash them.’ They felt like two little blocks of ice after the cold water, and she had splashed herself all over as well just in case Johnny did … well, it would be awful to smell of fish and chips.

She put on her nightie in the bathroom and, peering left and right before she emerged, she decided it was safe to scamper back to their room. Johnny hadn’t used the tactful opportunity to get undressed, he was sitting reading the paper on the ugly white chair.