Light A Penny Candle (41 page)

‘They wouldn’t get in, it’s
my
wedding,’ said Aisling with spirit.

‘They’d have to get in, it’s the House of God … everyone gets in,’ said Eamonn.

‘Just one day, as a favour Eamonn, just four hours, five at most, then you can go back to your friends in Hanrahan’s. Please?’

‘Crowd of idle layabouts in Hanrahan’s pub anyway,’ said Sean.

‘You weren’t ever in there Da,’ said Eamonn.

‘I wouldn’t want to go in there when I see what comes out. Listen here, Eamonn, the wedding is for your mother and your sister, it’s got nothing to do with us. One of these days some unfortunate half-witted girl will agree to marry you and her unfortunate brothers and father will have to dress themselves up like buffoons, and what’s more, spend a great deal of money on a meal and a lot of nonsense … so will you shut up and do it – it’s one of those things like cutting your toe-nails, no one likes doing it, but it has to be done. …’

‘Dad I’ll not do it, I’ll leave the town, I’ll leave home. You can’t ask me to do it, not to please anyone. Mam,
take
it seriously. Suppose I asked you to walk around the square here, seriously now, in your knickers, would you do it to please me, Mam, of course you wouldn’t, you’d say it was making a fool of yourself, and making yourself look ridiculous in front of your friends, no matter how much I wanted you to do it. …’

‘Eamonn keep a clean tongue in your head, don’t dream of speaking to your mother like that.’

Suddenly Aisling interrupted. ‘No, I think he’s right, he’d hate it, he’d not be able to do it. Why ask him to?’

Eamonn looked up nervously, sensing a trap.

‘No, I’m serious, Eamonn, I thought you’d look nice in a suit. All kinds of old gobdaws, much worse-looking than you, look terrific when they’re dolled up, they’d make you look at them twice. But no, what you said is right. If you wanted Mam or me to dress up like Red Indians or something for your wedding we wouldn’t. No, forget it. We’ll get some friend of Tony’s to do it with Donal. The trouble is most of Tony’s friends are about a hundred, but that doesn’t matter, he must have some youngish friends.’

Eamonn’s mouth was open, a combination of relief and disbelief. ‘God, Aisling, I won’t forget it, I really won’t. Mam you understand, don’t you?’

‘Don’t be a baby.’ Aisling was very cold. ‘You’ve got your way, don’t look for a pat on the back as well. You’re off the hook. I have to go and face that battle-axe of a Mrs Murray and explain why we need another usher.’

‘What will you say?’

Aisling looked at him innocently. ‘Well, what you said,
that
your friends from Hanrahan’s would come into the house of God and make a disruption for some reason, and that four hours is too long, even though poor Donal’s going to stick it.’

‘Don’t tell her that… it’s making an awful clown out of me … don’t put it like that.’

‘But what other way can I put it? Tell me. I can’t say that you’re sick, otherwise you’ll have to go to bed. I mean I have to tell the truth, don’t I?’

‘What will she say?’

‘She’ll be livid, like she is about everything. She’ll say that that’s all she might have expected, and that’s what’s so bloody unfair, because she’s constantly expecting rotten things and everything else is going marvellously. Daddy’s booked a great wedding breakfast, and paid for extra waitresses during the meal, and Mam has got everyone gorgeous clothes and I’ve behaved like an archangel I’m so good, so the old bag has nothing to complain about. Still, I do think you’re right. If it’s that awful for you, and if they’re going to invade the church, then you’re right not to do it.’

‘I didn’t say they’d invade the church … some of them mightn’t even hear of it until it was over.’

‘No. Eamonn, if it’s as bad as that you’d better not. Here Mam, throw me over my jacket, I’ll go and talk to the old demon and get it over.’

‘Oh I’ll do it, I’ll do it,’ Eamonn shouted. He left the room deaf to the protestations and assurances.

‘Oh, you’re learning fast,’ Mam laughed. ‘Go on now …
you’ve
won that battle, you probably have quite a few more to fight before the big day.’

‘You’re right, Mam,’ sighed Aisling, thinking of Tony. He had been very irritable last night. Since they would be married in five weeks time why couldn’t she take her hand away and give over all this modesty bit? What difference did five weeks make one way or the other? Aisling couldn’t think but she had a feeling that somehow it would make a difference and she felt it would be like giving up on some game if she were to give in now.

And Maureen had blossomed a lot with Aisling’s visits. She, in turn, began to get an unexpected and not at all welcome idea about how lonely Maureen’s life must be. Mam was right to have urged her to share the wedding with her sister. Maureen was obviously very short of excitement out in that dreary place. It was neither farm nor private house … a big awkward building almost on the side of the road with four acres stretching up behind it. No crops, only a few geese, a donkey, hens, a sheepdog and other farmers using the land as grazing. Maureen’s attempts to make a garden had been ridiculed by the Daly clan, but her newfound ally, Aisling, seemed to regard this as a challenge.

‘You don’t understand, they think in terms of getting value out of the land, they’d think a garden was a stupid town idea, you know, ideas above my station. You can’t eat flowers. …’

‘But act the innocent, the flowers sort of grew … don’t be telling them that you’re planting a garden, do the work
when
there’s no one around. I’ll help you, I’ll bring out a few plants and seeds, sure Dad has them in the shop, I’ll say it’s for a present for you. You can blame me.’

‘God, Aisling, you’re learning fast, you’ll be well able for the Murrays.’

‘I think I’ll need to be.’

Indeed, Mrs Murray had been surprised to discover that the O’Connors were held in much higher esteem than she had believed. An established business in the town and well thought of. All the children bright and able to give account for themselves, except perhaps for the brother who hung about the doorway of Hanrahan’s public house on Saturdays or at closing time of an evening. Aisling was well-spoken and would look presentable as a bride. There were even those who described her glowingly and said she was one of the most attractive girls in Kilgarret. It wasn’t what she had hoped for, but then Mrs Murray sighed and realised that she hadn’t got a lot of the things she had hoped for. Joannie was vague and mysterious about her life in Dublin and threw tantrums and caused scenes if any criticism was suggested. She invited no friends to stay, and seemed to need an unending allowance to supplement what she earned with the wine importers. She had developed no sense of business and saintly Mr Meade said that he didn’t think she had any commercial leaning towards running the family firm.

A priest in the family was a consolation, and John would be ordained next year. But somehow she had hoped that her son might be a short-cut to understanding and help; she had
hoped
that John would have words of consolation and open up brighter paths for her to believe in when things were bad. But in fact he was still her son, complaining when Tony took all the hot water for the bath, saying that Joannie was loud and on his last visit he had been disappointed with the front of Murray’s, saying that it looked shabby and run down. He said that his father would not like to think that the place was being neglected and this had managed to annoy every single person who heard him say it. Mrs Murray had expected a priest in the family to smooth down troubles, not to add to them. But at least John had been helpful about the honeymoon and had said Tony and Aisling should attend a papal audience, where they would get their papal benediction personally from the hands of the Pope. Mrs Murray had told a lot of people about this, it was one of the high spots. She had said to Tony that sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night and thought about it. Her son kissing the ring of Pope Pius XII, actually there in the same room as him. It used to send a shiver down her spine. Tony had said that he agreed, the Pope did look a bit spooky; he’d probably send a shiver down anyone’s spine. Mrs Murray had been extremely upset.

Aisling certainly seemed to know how to manage Tony, though. She had said to him quite firmly that his wedding suit was too tight.

‘It’s all right when I hold myself like this,’ Tony had said defiantly.

‘But you won’t, you’ll fall over, you’re holding your breath,’ she said.

‘I’m not going on any diet, I’m not giving up drinking pints just to fit into a wedding jacket better,’ he said, scowling at the thought.

Aisling laughed. ‘Did anyone suggest you should? What a stupid idea, just to look well on the day. No, I don’t think you should dream of losing a stone to fit into it, no, get him to let it out and you can be grand and comfortable.’

Tony gave up drinking pints for a month. Anyone could stay off the beer for a month, a few scoops of gin and soda to keep body and soul together. He lost the stone in three and a half weeks. Mrs Murray marvelled at it. She felt sure that this is what Aisling had intended when she was dismissing the very idea of it. She was a proper little madam that one.

Two weeks before the day Aisling and Tony walked out to see how the new bungalow was getting on. Aisling said she wanted to time the length it took her to walk from home. At a leisurely pace it was ten minutes.

‘That’s grand,’ she laughed. ‘If you hit me a belt over something I can be back in town and have a posse rounded up in no time.’

Tony looked hurt. ‘That’s a stupid thing to say, I’d never hit you … you’re like a flower,’ he said.

Aisling was touched. ‘It’s only my sense of humour. You’re right, it was a stupid thing to say. That’s nice of you to say I’m like a flower. Will we grow lots of flowers? I like delphiniums and lupins … we never had any room for them back in the yard in the square.’

‘You can grow whatever you like,’ Tony said expansively.

Aisling felt that Mam was right, Maureen had a lot of things to put up with. Imagine having to hide flowers from those pig-ignorant Dalys. She put her arm in Tony’s as they walked through the unfinished house. Tony had been annoyed because the plumbers hadn’t completed last week. Aisling wished that there weren’t so many windows and opportunities for her mother-in-law to cluck over them and interrogate her about curtains not even ordered, discussed or thought about.

Suddenly he turned to her as they poked disconsolately into the half-finished kitchen cupboards filled with wood shavings.

‘It’ll be grand you know.’

‘Oh, I know, sure there’s ages of time, I mean we’ll be four weeks in Rome … that’s six weeks altogether,’ she said, trying to be cheerful.

‘No, I don’t mean the house, the whole thing, you know, being married?’ He looked eager. And pleading.

Aisling felt very old. ‘Of course it will be grand. How could it not be, aren’t we the best-matched pair in the whole town?’

‘I love you, Aisling,’ Tony said, without any attempt to touch her.

‘Then I’m really very, very lucky,’ Aisling said. I am, I really
am
, she told herself.

Johnny was annoyed that he hadn’t been invited to the wedding, but Elizabeth was cool and firm. It was
tempting
, very tempting to take him with her. The handsome Johnny Stone would steal the show, he would be proof that little shy Elizabeth White had done well out in the big world. He would be so charming too … even Aunt Eileen would fall for him. She could imagine him sitting on a high stool with Uncle Sean asking about the business and really wanting to know. In a flight of fancy she even saw him in the convent parlour. That he would be a success was never in doubt … but she felt it would be wrong. And, anyway, even more important, it was Aisling’s day, not hers. Johnny would be a distraction, he would take from the bride and groom.

But she didn’t tell him that.

Aisling was jumping up and down outside the glass partition. Elizabeth had to wait until her suitcases came off the plane and it seemed like a very long wait. Aisling kept making mouthing sounds and sign language and pointing her finger in the direction of the door and making a face. Elizabeth resigned herself to understanding nothing. She thought Aisling looked magnificent in her navy blazer and a green kilt. She even flashed her large engagement ring through the glass partition and mimed that the diamonds were too heavy for her hand to support. The prospect of marrying the Squire in a week’s time certainly hadn’t tamed her, Elizabeth noted with relief.

Eventually the cases arrived and she was out, she was hugging Aisling like a schoolgirl after a hockey match. Within minutes they were away.

*

They had timed it well. Eileen had just come in and was having her customary cup of tea in the kitchen … the tea that divided the working day in the shop from the working day at home. Between mouthfuls she was instructing young Siobhan, the new maid who had replaced Peggy, on how to set out the salad.

‘Don’t throw it all together in the dish, Siobhan, lay the lettuce leaves out in lines and a bit of ham on top of each one, and then a bit of tomato on each one. No, give it here to me, I’ll do it. Niamh, move your school books, they’ve no business here, they’ll get covered with food. Move them do you hear, up to your room. Is Donal back in yet?’

At that, the door opened and Elizabeth entered. Aisling was behind her, laughing and holding a suitcase in each hand.

Eileen put down the cup and stood up. This tall, slim woman, this girl with the beautiful scarf draped around her shoulders, with the elegant gold pin and safety chain pinned on her lovely cream-coloured dress … Eileen could hardly believe it was the child with the cut knees, gawky on her bicycle, nervous and anxious to please, flushing and stammering … this was a different person altogether.

She stood at the door looking across the big kitchen and then she ran, she ran like a child and threw her arms round Eileen and squeezed her so tightly her breath nearly stopped. She smelt of expensive soap or talcum powder, but she shook and trembled as much as she had ever done when she lived in the house.