Light A Penny Candle (37 page)

‘And you …?’ Elizabeth looked horrified. She looked so shocked that Aisling knew instinctively that it was going to irritate Johnny.

‘So you’re going to jump at it with him, Johnny?’ Aisling said hurriedly. ‘What a marvellous idea. Can you take time off from work too?’

‘Yes.’ Johnny was eager. ‘Stefan keeps asking me to take a break and now this seems too good to miss. Nick’s getting the tickets.’

‘When are you going?’ Elizabeth’s voice was a whisper.

‘Saturday, or Friday if he gets a sleeper on the train before.’

‘How great.’ Aisling had to speak at the top of her voice to try to cover the look of hurt and the stony silence from Elizabeth. ‘Is it the south of France or is it Spain … or where?’

‘It’s France, apparently there’s a village that a friend of Shirley’s was talking about… where you can hire a chalet or a tent… and you don’t need much food in this weather. Shirley said it was meant to be smashing.’

‘Is Shirley going with you?’ asked Aisling, before Elizabeth could ask the same question in a hurt little voice.

‘No, between ourselves, that’s part of the reason for the sudden hop. Shirl has been very wearying about everything, and Nick wants a bit of a breather. Too much domesticity and the dangerous clanking sound of wedding bells being yearned for.’

‘Oh, he’s quite right to run then,’ said Aisling. ‘That’s why I ran from Ireland. You need to put space between yourself and that sort of thing. Thank the Lord none of us have those kind of inclinations.’

She looked sideways at Elizabeth, praying that she would have recovered. She was amazed at what she saw. Elizabeth’s face was back to normal and she was smiling broadly.

‘Poor Shirl,’ she said, ‘I suppose I’ll have to comfort her when you’ve gone. I’ll try to get her interested in someone else.’

‘Oh, I think he quite likes her, it’s just that she’s such a hanger-on. …’

‘She’s rather pretty. I’m sure she’d find it easy to get another chap. Perhaps we’ll go on the prowl together when you’re off in
La Belle France
.’

‘Ah, but
you’re
not to have another chap. You’re not to be lost. Do you hear me?’

‘Um yes, well I’ll probably still be here. I’ll be rather too busy to go out prowling, so we’ll have to hope that I’m not swept away accidentally. No? I’ll work with Mr Worsky and Anna, I might even be a partner when you come back.’

Aisling looked in amazement at Elizabeth’s bright face. She was playing it so utterly right. Johnny was almost wavering. He was regretting slightly his decision to go, he was looking at her with enthusiasm and interest.

With a wave of understanding, Aisling realised that if Elizabeth was going to play the game by these rules it was
going
to be one long act from now to the very end. There could be no normal behaviour, no real reactions, no chance of saying what you felt, what you meant. It would be watching your step, planning your moves.

Elizabeth didn’t cry when they got home, she would not admit her shock and upset. She was calm and measured.

‘No, I refuse to get upset. I told you before he’s what I want. I’ll do anything to have him, anything. I’ve done so much already. I’m not going to lose it all by behaving like silly Shirley and whinging and whining because I’m not being taken along. …’

‘But for God’s sake, I know I’m not going to interfere, but wouldn’t it be reasonable to say. …’

‘I’m not talking about being reasonable. I really am much more like Mother than I thought. Mother wanted something more open and outgoing than Father and so do

I. Mother wanted Harry, everyone would have said that it was an unreasonable thing to want… but Mother went ahead and she did what was necessary to get Harry and she got him and that’s it. That’s what I’m going to do. …’

‘It’s different.’

‘Of course it’s different because Mother was dreadfully odd by the time she did it … but the principle is the same. …’

Aisling said, ‘I suppose I don’t know what it’s like to be so fond of someone that I’d do … well, do all you’ve done.’

‘Oh, you will Aisling. Honestly you will some day be as
fond
of someone as I am. It sounds a bit … as if I were an old woman giving you old wives’ advice … but you will find someone. And then just like they say in all the songs and the films … you’ll know.’

‘Yes, but once you do know, that’s when the troubles seem to begin,’ Aisling said doubtfully.

Elizabeth’s father said that Aisling’s visit had been like a breath of fresh air. Mr Worsky and Anna Strepovsky gave her a picture of a fairy woman in a forest and said she should have it framed back in Ireland, perhaps it had to do with her name. … Monica gave her staff discount on a blouse she bought for Mam, and Johnny Stone kissed her goodbye on the cheek and said that some time next year he was going to take the van and Elizabeth to Ireland and do a tour of all the old houses which might sell their contents to him.

‘I’ll come with you if I’m not married to the Squire.’

‘Oh, don’t dream of marrying the Squire,’ said Johnny.

Elizabeth clung to her at the barrier in Euston.

‘I keep trying to fight down this awful feeling that I’ll never see you again, and that you’ll go home and think of everything that happened here and you’ll become revolted by it all. You’ll cut me out of your life.’

‘I’ll never cut you out of my life, I couldn’t, you’re part of it you silly old thing,’ said Aisling. ‘If it weren’t so soppy I’d say I love you.’

‘Well I love you too, I’ll never be able to thank you. Never.’

The crowds on the platform swallowed up Aisling in her turquoise summer coat as she walked down the length of the long train. And when she looked back at the barrier there were too many people and she couldn’t see Elizabeth in her grey dress waving and wiping her eyes with the corner of the red scarf which was meant to make her look jaunty.

XI

ELIZABETH THOUGHT THAT
it would be much easier to write to Aisling after the visit … but she found to her great disappointment that it was just as hard to explain, just as difficult to describe things. One set of restrictions had been replaced by another. It made her uneasy since she realised that she must assume Aisling was critical of Johnny. And yet Aisling had hardly said a word that could be interpreted as criticism. But then what she kept forgetting was that Johnny didn’t
know
there was any reason for him to feel especially protective and loving and grateful to Elizabeth at that time. Johnny didn’t know anything about the visit to Romford and the encounter with Mrs Norris, and he never would.

So the letters seemed strained, again. Elizabeth tried to write cheerful things about Father, but Father had never again been so cheerful since his fiftieth birthday. In fact at times Elizabeth wondered whether she had imagined Father singing all those songs. He never sang since, and she hadn’t mentioned the night to him.

*

It was odd that Aisling was able to write without restraint. Sometimes she would urge Elizabeth to burn the letters once they were read in case they would both be hanged or Aisling put in gaol for pornography. Her descriptions of the ever-frustrated passions of Tony Murray were hilarious, and often apologised for by the phrase, ‘But of course to a woman of the world like yourself all this must seem very amateur’. She asked questions too about Father and whether the awful woman who was after him was getting anywhere. She told Elizabeth to tell Stefan and Anna that she had enquired about old houses in Ireland and whether they might be bursting with antiques. The answer was yes, they might, but if anyone came over from England in a van to buy them from them they would immediately assume they were being robbed blind and would hold on to whatever they had.

She touched so lightly and so unsurely on the subject of Johnny, compared to everything else. The references to him were half-joking, guarded almost as if she had reread the sentence before allowing it to go. The rest of the letter was pure Aisling, sentences falling over each other … enthusiastic and maddening. Exactly the way she talked.

Aunt Eileen still wrote, cheery newsy letters, half-joking references to the handsome young man whom Aisling had described as being the best-looking man she had ever laid eyes on. Elizabeth found it hard to write about Johnny in any normal way so she wrote in an exaggerated style
saying
that the Lord and Master had gone off to Scotland, or the Answer to Hollywood had put up a new sign on the shop saying ‘Worsky and Stone’ and spent most of his day out on the pavement admiring it. She couldn’t write to anyone that she loved Johnny Stone so much that her heart was hurting from jumping up and down in her rib cage. That’s the kind of thing Aisling would have been able to say but then of course, Elizabeth remembered ruefully, Aisling’s heart wasn’t jumping up and down at all. It was staying exactly where it was, stationary and deliberating whether or not to lock itself permanently into Tony Murray’s heart.

Tony thought that Aisling looked even better when she came back from England than she had done before. He had found the days very long because he had no idea when they were going to end. His mother, disapproving and hard to please about this as well as everything else, became a severe trial to him. She had suggested that he might invite one of the Grays to the tennis club dance. Heedless of his protests that he didn’t even know the Gray girl and didn’t want to go to the dance with anyone, and would like to be allowed to mind his own business, she spoke on in a firm monologue which she believed was reaching him because of its constant repetition. Not that she had a thing against the little O’Connor girl, a charming child. Had she not always been made welcome at their house when she was a friend of Joannie’s but such a child, and so nice and so limited, and so young, and what a pity Tony didn’t
extend
his friends a little more. Why, Mrs Gray had been saying only last week. … Tony turned off his mind. He would often get up without excusing himself and leave the table, or walk from the sitting room with its view down towards the river. No explanation, no apologies, just one swinging movement into the car and a bold sweep down the drive.

Eileen O’Connor felt that the whole teasing game with Tony was going on too long. True, Aisling was an attractive girl, true there were more ways of getting your man than being available. And indeed it was a great relief after the Maureen and Brendan Daly situation to realise that this time the boot was on the other foot. Eileen and Sean had felt humiliated by the delay in Brendan Daly’s proposal. It was as if they had decided to keep the O’Connors on a string. Now Aisling was doing the whole thing in reverse and it was the Murrays who were dangling in uncertainty.

Any attempts now to know what Aisling’s intentions might be were skilfully diverted.

‘Do you think it’s worth painting your office? Will you still be with us next year?’

‘Of course I’ll be with you Mam. Were you thinking of firing me?’

‘No, but you know if you marry into the gentry you wouldn’t want to go on working here… you wouldn’t have to work for a living.’

‘Aw, Mam, the Murrays aren’t gentry, they’re as
ignorant
as we are. Anyway I’d like to see someone stopping me from doing what I want to do and I want to work here. What colour will we get it painted?’

‘Tony Murray wouldn’t want his wife working in a shop Aisling, you must know that.’

‘Then he can go and take a flying jump at himself. Listen, what about that bright orange paint that came in a while ago? With the doors white and me in my green coat I’d look like the Irish flag!’

She didn’t seem to be the slightest bit serious about him, yet she did see him almost every evening. What on earth was going to happen? Time would tell.

Maureen thought that Aisling had become unbearable since her visit to London. She had become more cocky and more of a show-off than ever. All these stories beginning: ‘When we were in Piccadilly Circus’… and ‘Elizabeth and I went for a fish supper in the Elephant and Castle’ … just plain showing off. Not a present bought for the babies. A feeble excuse about rationing in England, that was nonsense of course. Hadn’t the war been over for years now? Aisling was turning out to be quite poisonous, she even managed to make a jeer and a mock of things when she did deign to come to the house. Poor Brendan was most put out by her, and Brendan’s mother had said she was in danger of becoming quite fast with all this careering around the place with Tony Murray and no intentions made clear on any side.

*

Joannie Murray came back to Kilgarret from time to time, full of the great life she lived in Dublin. She found things increasingly fraught at Riverside House on every visit. People were constantly taking her aside to explain the truth of the situation as if her time spent working in the capital city had given her a new sophistication and insight into the big issues of a Kilgarret day. As far as Joannie could see they all revolved around her friend Aisling O’Connor. Mummy used to walk up and down the drawing room clenching and unclenching her hands and saying that she had nothing against Aisling.

From Aisling she got no joy either. Aisling said there was no mystery. She was very fond of Tony and he seemed to be fond of her. No, neither of them had the slightest intention of doing anything drastic like getting engaged. They were young for heaven’s sake. Tony wasn’t young, Joannie reminded her, Tony was very old, he was over thirty. Aisling would only giggle and say that thirty was like a spring chicken these days. Then Joannie would repeat this kind of conversation to Mummy, and Mummy would become bad-tempered and accuse Joannie of holding things back. It was really very wearying to come home to Riverside House for weekends. Joannie did it less and less.

Sean was getting tired of people asking him when they would see the great merger of the Murrays and O’Connors. One of these conglomerates, they were calling it with wheezy laughs, it could take over half the business
in
the east of Ireland, a firm that size. They were joking about a possible merger but they weren’t joking about Aisling. People wanted to know. Sean was irritated both with the curiosity of the people who came in to him in the shop or drank pints with him at Maher’s. He was even more irritated with Aisling.