Light A Penny Candle (28 page)

Nobody at college noticed that she had lost her virginity. Kate asked her had she had a nice weekend, and told her about an awful party where somebody had stolen neat alcohol from a laboratory and everyone had drunk it in lemonade and been very ill.

Father hadn’t noticed any change in her either. He had been fussed and anxious because that tiresome Mrs Ellis had wanted to come around and help with the preparations for the bridge party and he had told her his daughter would be there. Now his daughter had turned out to be late home from the North, late back from college and was doing only the most perfunctory of suppers.

‘But this is my night for entertaining. You always
arrange
sandwiches and … savouries,’ Father began to whine.

‘Father, this is indeed your night, and you can make your own savouries and sandwiches. I have biscuits, and a small amount of cheese there. There’s bread in that tin, and butter in the larder. It’s your night to do it.’

‘But that’s not what we agreed. …’

‘How could anyone agree anything with you Father? Answer me that. How could anyone make any possible kind of bargain about anything? I have just come back from my first visit to your wife. Your ex-wife. The woman you married twenty years ago … and presumably you loved her then and she loved you. But what have you asked me about her? Not one thing. Mother could be lying in a fever hospital breathing her last for all you care. Mother could be wretchedly unhappy. She could be a million things. But no enquiry from you. At least she asked how you were, and Harry did, and they wanted to know how your life went on. But you don’t have it in your cold heart to ask one question about them.’

She was near tears.

Father sat down. This is uncalled for,’ he said, looking like a schoolboy who is forced to accept a punishment without knowing what the crime was.

‘Give me the bloody bread and I’ll butter it for you. I’ll cut off the crusts, and I’ll leave the tray ready. …’

‘But you are going to serve it, aren’t you …?’

‘You really are the limit. I never understood what Mother meant by a cold fish until now. I really didn’t.’

‘I knew that Violet and that man would turn you against me. I knew that’s what they had in their minds when they made all that fuss about inviting you to stay.’

Elizabeth looked at him in disbelief and unexpectedly she began to cry. Through her fingers she tried not to see Father moving the bread away lest it become damp with her tears and unsuitable for sandwiches.

Mr Worsky noticed. He was the only one. He saw a change in Elizabeth and felt sure he knew the reason. She talked as if she were part of a family with himself and Anna Strepovsky at the head of it, and Johnny as the heir-apparent. Elizabeth talked as if she were marrying into a royal house. Stefan Worsky laughed to himself at his fanciful imagery but really that is what it was like.

‘Mr Worsky, I wonder if you thought about having a new sign painted for the shop? You know we do lettering at the college and the teachers are always looking for a real job to do. … I was saying to Johnny last night that something in gold leaf might be nice … did he tell you? No? Well I don’t want to be intrusive with my ideas. …’

And another time.

‘Johnny and I were going to paint the name of your shop on the car. Would you like that or do you prefer to be more discreet? Johnny bet me two shillings one way, but I won’t tell you which he said.’

He had confided his suspicions to Anna Strepovsky but she had snorted at him and said he was full of imagination.

‘It’s typical of a man to think that because a woman looks happy it can only be because she has been pleasured by a man.’

Mr Worsky wasn’t prepared to argue about principles and beliefs but he was prepared to wager any money that he was right about Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was full of worries about what would happen next. Whether Johnny might want to try it again, and if so where and when? And should she appear enthusiastic, or should she try to go along with the theory that the one night in the hotel had been an isolated happening? She wondered too about contraception. Johnny had said that he had looked after that side of it and there would be no danger. She wasn’t experienced enough to know quite what he meant but presumably it meant that there were no little sperms inside her which might prove fertile, because he had organised it so that they would be on the hotel sheet instead. Her face still burned at the thought of whoever had to make that bed next day, but it would have been so unromantic and wrong to have tried to wash the sheet herself at the time.

He had said to her that night that next time he would ‘get something’ and she had nodded peacefully, yet there had been no talk of a next time. But Johnny had been utterly delightful and had seemed overjoyed when she called in on her way home from lectures and even skipped the whole of Friday afternoon’s classes to see how the new acquisitions looked once they had been polished and arranged for the Saturday business.

‘I’ll take you out to the cinema tomorrow night if you’re free,’ Johnny had said. ‘And then you can come back to my place and I’ll cook you a Johnny Stone special.’

She smiled back at him.

‘I’d love that. Will it be rabbit?’

‘No sweetheart, nothing as good, but it might be a Spam special. Will that be all right?’

She nodded happily.

‘Oh, Tom and Nick won’t be there. They’ll be going away for the weekend,’ he added casually, ‘so we’ll have the place to ourselves and we won’t be interrupted by their larking about.’

‘I see.’ Elizabeth saw. And was happy at what she saw. She used her savings to buy a very pretty slip the following morning, she put a toothbrush, toothpaste and talcum powder in her handbag and told her father that she was going to the cinema and to a party afterwards. She would possibly be very late. He accepted it with the same air of defeat that he seemed to accept everything. She had her own key so there would be no problems. Oh, and could Father leave the kitchen nice and tidy in case someone drove her home from the party and she invited them in for cocoa?

Father didn’t even say he hoped she would have a good time.

Tom and Nick didn’t go away nearly often enough. Tom worked in a motor salesroom and Nick in a travel agency. They were both flattering to Elizabeth and considered her
to
be Johnny’s latest. A phrase which was beginning to annoy her. When it changed to Johnny’s girl she began to feel more secure. They were forever making mockingly gallant remarks in front of her.

‘If ever you grow tired of this lady, Johnny, be sure to let me know. I could sure step into your shoes. …’

Each of the boys had their own bedroom in the big Earls Court flat. But even though it would have been perfectly feasible, it was never suggested that Elizabeth should stay when the other flatmates were there. It was something to do with treating her as a lady and protecting her reputation, Elizabeth thought. She knew she could have a great laugh with Aunt Eileen about such a double standard … but then remembering with a shock that of course she could have no such thing. Aunt Eileen would have disapproved strongly. Her wise tolerance, her almost boundless understanding for every kind of situation, would not have included this. Elizabeth realised that Aunt Eileen would have spoken very directly.

‘What you are doing is wrong. It’s silly, irresponsible and wrong. God invented marriage for a very good reason. So that two people could work out the best kind of life possible together, protected by rules … by laws, by what the people around you agree is right. You and this boy are being very silly and playing dangerous games. If he really likes you as much as you think he does, and as much as you like him, then why doesn’t he do the normal thing… why doesn’t he tell you this, and tell your mother and father, and propose that you get married? Why does he
sneak
you in and out of his flat like a criminal, like a common girl…?’

Aunt Eileen never said these words, but they were as clear to Elizabeth as if she had. They were an amalgam of attitudes and other warnings and chastisements and all that had gone before.

But she shook herself firmly. She was a grown-up woman of nineteen. She lived in London, not a backwater like Kilgarret. She didn’t have all the Roman Catholic fears about sin and modesty and immodesty and purity and impurity. People didn’t think like that in the real world. Aunt Eileen was just old-fashioned. She was a great person but old-fashioned.

Sometimes Elizabeth was able to invite Johnny to Clarence Gardens, not that Father ever went away for the night. But there were always the afternoons. Johnny often did deliveries and had the van at his disposal during the daytime. Elizabeth was often able to sneak away from a lecture or a practical class. They surrounded it with excitement … a picnic lunch in the kitchen, a double bolt drawn across the front door just in case the impossible happened and Father came home from the bank before twenty-three minutes past six in the evening. Up to Elizabeth’s bedroom where the bed was small but the light was romantic and some of the harsher blues had been replaced by a style of her own choosing.

Johnny had once made a gesture towards the more comfortable main bedroom by an inclination of his head, but Elizabeth without words was able to convey that this
was
not to be considered. She loved him so utterly now she felt that she could talk to him and understand him without either of them having to speak in sentences. He too was delighted with her warmth and responsiveness. She was a little darling in every way, he told her over and over.

Sometimes as they lay in her tiny bed on an afternoon with the curtains drawn and the companionably shared cigarette passed between them, she felt as if she had never known such happiness; but always she knew that there was a step over which she must not cross. She must not ask him to swear love to her, she mustn’t ask him to tell her that he was going to be forever faithful. She must hint at nothing more permanent than what they had. That way he was happy and loving, that way no shadow crossed his face.

Sometimes he spoke of people who had broken the rules.

Tom had a girlfriend, a nice little poppet she had been, but an engagement ring had been high on her list of priorities, and she kept taking him home to meet Mother.

‘Oh dear, I took you home to meet Mother,’ said Elizabeth archly.

‘Ah yes, but you didn’t do it with a gleam in your eye,’ Johnny had laughed.

He had bought awful contraceptives in little packets, things which looked totally unsuitable until they were actually put on, which seemed to be an irritation and a nuisance to him. Elizabeth wondered what she could do to circumvent this. She didn’t want to rely on the safe period
which
she knew only too well was the method of contraception which had ensured such enormous families all over Ireland. Kate and some of the other girls at college had said that the safe period was a dangerous period. It didn’t exist.

‘But isn’t there anything a woman can do?’ she asked Kate, feeling foolish.

Kate said there were a lot of things and described them all very graphically but they seemed much worse to Elizabeth than the rubber contraceptives so she left things as they were. Johnny never seemed to think that there was anything else she should do so she supposed it was just what everyone else had to put up with.

He told her little more about himself in those intimate times. His mother he spoke of jokingly, he wasn’t close to his brother either, he had not even the mildest wonder as to where his father might be, and whether any stepbrothers or sisters existed.

When his mother wrote cheerful, inconsequential letters he seemed pleased and told Elizabeth some of the things she said. When she wrote about how lonely she felt and how hard it was to have two ungrateful sons, he just dismissed her.

‘Querulous old demon,’ he said without the slightest concern.

‘Shall I ever meet her? Will you take me to see her?’ Elizabeth asked once. It had been a mistake.

‘What for?’ Johnny began to frown.

‘Oh I don’t know, to tell her to stop being a querulous
old
demon and irritating her handsome son,’ she laughed, trying to retrieve things.

It worked.

‘Yeah, why not? We’ll go some time,’ said Johnny.

Father had given Elizabeth a jewellery box for her nineteenth birthday. He had actually gone to Mr Worsky’s shop and asked Johnny’s advice about a gift. He had met Johnny half a dozen times and believed him to be a nicely spoken young chap who was now a partner in Mr Worsky’s business which-must-under-no-circumstances-be-called-a-second-hand-shop.

He said he would like a surprise gift and wanted to pay about thirty shillings or two pounds at the most. Johnny steered him towards an antique box saying it was a snip at thirty shillings. Father grunted that it seemed a lot to pay for an empty box but took it. Johnny put the extra nine pounds into the till so that Mr Worsky should not be cheated on the lovely carved casket, and he bought a little marcasite clip with a bluebird in it as his own gift.

Elizabeth, knowing the value of the casket, was touched and amazed that Father had spent so much on her present. In no way did Johnny diminish the gift for her. Johnny had helped her to find the book of watercolours for Aisling also. Together they had looked through them and she had told him about the Wicklow mountains, and the river Slaney in Wexford and the old houses half falling down but beautiful with perfect Georgian doors, and covered with creeper.

‘Perhaps you and I should go over and take a van each. Stefan would have to buy a new showroom when we came back. Hey, that’s not a bad idea. Maybe we’ll do that in the summer. We could take the van to the boat and then hire another van when we’re there. What do you think? And we could go to see your friends, these O’Connors, you’re always saying you wanted to go back. Hey? Why not?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘You’re not enthusiastic, you’ve always said you’d love to go back.’

‘Yes, no, I am.’

‘Well then?’

‘Sure, maybe in the summer some time.’

She was hesitant. She didn’t want to say that she didn’t want to go back like this. Back as a hustler going into people’s houses and taking away their old treasures, into homes where she had been welcomed as a little refugee during the war. She didn’t want to go now all grown-up and hard and sophisticated and knowing the price of things and making a profit. She could never say to Johnny that it looked shabby somehow to go back to Kilgarret with a chap but no Understanding … when Maureen had been having an Understanding with Brendan Daly, and the hopes that Peggy would have an Understanding with her Christy. But that’s exactly what Elizabeth would like to have now … an Understanding. She would like to know where she stood with Johnny and unless she did she would not like to present him to her other home in Kilgarret.