Light A Penny Candle (49 page)

‘We’re too old Mam, the quarter of a century … not much to be crowing about.’

‘You always did before,’ Eileen said, letting no anxiety into her voice. ‘I remember this time last year in the middle of all the plans for your wedding you suddenly stopped and said that you didn’t like your birthday being overshadowed.’

Aisling laughed. ‘Nor did I in those days, I suppose. Very carefree, nothing to worry about. Birthdays were big happy things.’

Eileen knew she was treading very gently. ‘And what has made you less carefree may one ask? A car, no less, and able to drive it like a madwoman; a grand man who thinks the world of you and will buy you whatever you set your heart on; a honeymoon where you met the Pope, a house that’s the talk of Kilgarret, and in and out of me as if you were never gone … and us all delighted to see you. Tell me what’s not carefree about that sort of a life?’

‘Mam.’ Aisling leaned forward, her eyes troubled. Eileen prayed that Niamh wouldn’t come bouncing in with screams and shouts about homework and exams.

‘Yes love?’

‘Mam, some things are a bit hard to put, you know?’

‘Oh I know, I know.’ Eileen gave a mock sign to take some of the tension out of the conversation. ‘When I was trying to talk to you and Elizabeth when you were teenagers I remember searching high and low for words … but I could never find them. …’

‘Yes, it’s a bit like that. I wanted to ask you something … tell you something … is it all right?’

Eileen looked at her. She was too old to take in her arms yet her face was just as young as when she came home with a broken schoolbag or a note of complaint from Sister Margaret. Eileen didn’t want her to blurt anything out too suddenly … something she might regret having told.

‘Child, you can ask me anything. Anything, and you can tell me anything too. But I’ll tell you something about telling. Often people are sorry they told things, they feel
they
let an outside person in on some secret and very unfairly. Then they resent the outside person … do you know what I mean? I wouldn’t want you to grow away from me because you told something that shouldn’t have been told. …’

‘Then you know?’ cried Aisling with a face full of horror.

‘Know? Know? What do I know, how can I know anything? Aisling, be reasonable. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I was only giving you a sort of general rule about confidences.’

‘You don’t want me to confide in you, is that it?’

‘God, girl, you’re very prickly. Listen I’ll tell you something. When your Dad and I got married, I remember this bit always and I’ll never forget it. Well we didn’t have a honeymoon or anything, just a weekend in Tramore in a guesthouse, and neither your father nor I were able to talk about the whole business of being in love or making love or anything, you know, we just did things … not talked about them.’

‘I know,’ said Aisling miserably.

‘So there were some of the things about making love and all that when your father started them … well, I didn’t know whether this was all right or not. You see he would only have been told about it from ignorant men working on the farm with him when he was a lad … his mother was dead, God rest her, and then he’d only have heard more things from ignorant fellows when he was serving his time in that hardware store. …’

‘Yes, Mam?’ Aisling was sympathetic and sorrowful.

‘So I didn’t know whether what he wanted to do … whether what we were doing was right or whether it was a sin, or what. Now, I had nobody to ask. Nobody in the world. I couldn’t ask my mother in one million years. She was as strict then as she had been when I was a child. To her I still was a child. She died five years later … and you know, Aisling, I wasn’t much older than you … but I never had a real conversation with her. Then Aunt Maureen was a nun, and she wouldn’t be much use, and your Aunt Peggy and Aunt Niamh were in America and I couldn’t write off to them and ask for advice … so.

‘So I never asked anyone. I just went ahead and did the things I thought were right and a few of the ones I didn’t, and didn’t do some of the ones I didn’t like, and that’s the way it always was. Now, some might say I was wrong not to have asked openly something that a girl had a right to know … but I was always glad that I never, sort of, betrayed us if you know what I mean. It was very intimate. It may have been silly, but it was between your father and me and to talk about it diminished him and us.’

‘I see,’ said Aisling.

‘So. I’m just saying that if it’s something that’s really personal it’s probably no harm to keep it to yourself for a while in case you could work it out.’

‘I have Mam.’

‘Yes. I’m sure you have. But love, we’re talking about thirty years ago in Old God’s time when we’re talking
about
me. Suppose when we’re talking about you and it’s something like … oh, let me see, like is it all right to have the woman on top and the man underneath … well, the answer is yes, of course. Do you see what I mean? I’m trying to gauge how personal it is to you.’

‘It’s more personal that that, Mam.’

‘I see. I see, child.’ Eileen sat still. Then, ‘I’ll always listen, I’ll always be here, but if you tell me don’t run away then and be sorry you told me … that’s what I don’t want.’

‘I’d never do that.’

‘You might. Here, since I’m confiding so much I’ll tell you more. I never let Maureen tell me anything bad about Brendan Daly. Never.’

‘Then it must be hard to have a conversation with her, she rarely talks of anything else, except when she’s giving out to me,’ said Aisling.

‘No, when she starts I turn it into an attack on the weather, the house, the mother-in-law, anything except Brendan, because, you see, she is very fond of him most of the time … and if she was feeling all lovey-dovey with him and then remembered she had told me he was the greatest criminal walking free from gaol, she’d feel she had to be defensive.’

‘I don’t feel that about Tony, Mam.’

‘I know, I’m trying to give you an example, child. I’m not saying it’s the same thing. You couldn’t dislike Tony, he’s a great fellow, and he’d give you the earth.’

‘Yes.’

‘So I’m still here … you can tell me anything. I just pointed out all those things in case… well, just in case. …’

‘You’re very good, Mam. I never realised when I was young how good you were.’

‘You’re still young. And I’m not good. I’m full of self-preservation. Maybe that’s what I should teach you instead of how to make scones. Anyone can be a good listener. It’s easy. All you say is, “Go on, go on, tell me. Yes. No. Never.” That’s easy. It’s hard to be a wise listener.’

Sean was tired that evening and for once it was only the two of them for supper. Niamh was meant to be doing her homework with her friend Sheila; Donal had gone to his book-keeping classes. Eamonn had announced he wouldn’t be home, a few of them were going out for a walk in the country.

‘That’s nice for him to get a bit of air these nice evenings,’ Eileen said.

‘Cock fighting, that’s what it is, a crowd from Hanrahan’s have arranged it. They think the rest of us are blind eejits and don’t know. I’d like to ring Sergeant Quinn and tell him where it is and have the lot of them caught. It’s a very cruel wrong thing that … grown men throwing pound notes and ten-shilling notes on the ground watching two animals tearing each other to bits.’

‘I suppose Sergeant Quinn knows well it’s on,’ Eileen said.

‘I suppose he does.’ Sean was reading the
Irish Independent
.

She felt very lonely and foolish at the end of the table with nobody there, only a husband behind a paper.

‘Aisling was in today, for a long time. There’s something troubling her.’

‘What right has she to have something troubling her? Hasn’t she got all she wants for the rest of her life? Look at me, stuck in that shop with an amadan of a son who’s only a laughing stock. She’s not stuck in there with people so thick that Jemmy is the brightest of them some days.’

‘Oh, Sean, will you stop it, put down that paper, and stop pitying yourself? Stop it now. Haven’t we done a lot for ourselves and the children, and really and truly if it’s as bad as all that why don’t you sell it?’

‘Ah, quit talking rubbish, there’s no sense in you talking like that.’

‘Listen to me, I helped you build it up, I’m nearly fifty-five years of age, I’m tired, I’m very tired too when I come home in the evening. But today I came home early, so I don’t have the financial worries and burdens of the shop on my shoulders, I have a new worry about Aisling. That’s what I wanted to talk about, not let loose on myself an avalanche of complaints about everything from Eamonn, to tax men, to the rain in the yard, to O’Rourke’s bullocks breaking the door. They broke the bloody door two years ago – you were paid for it, can it be dropped from the catalogue now?’

Sean laughed, ‘I didn’t mention O’Rourke’s bullocks this evening.’

Eileen laughed too. ‘That’s because I didn’t give you time to … but it’s quite reasonable if you want to sell the
place
, quit. If Eamonn’s such a layabout and on his way to the gallows, well he’ll go won’t he, and he won’t need the shop after our time, and Donal will be a chemist, and Niamh will marry … so what have we to do it for? I ask you? Why is that rubbish?’

‘I’m sorry. You’re perfectly right. It’s just a manner of speech. I only complain because I’m tired.’

‘I really want whatever will make you peaceful, so I’m just pointing out to you that there are alternatives. Don’t think you work ten hours in there a day for necessity. It’s only because you choose to.’

‘That’s true, that’s true. I must stop flaring up over nothing. It’s bad for the blood pressure as well as being unfair on you. What’s ailing Aisling?’

‘I don’t know, she began to tell me and she stopped.’

‘Oh, I suppose she had a row with young Murray, she’ll get over it.’

‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

‘Ah, she’s well able for him, probably gave him a telling off about all the beer he puts away. You know Aisling can be a bit of a boss. I wonder where she can have inherited that?’

Eileen didn’t laugh as he had expected.

‘Maybe she’s starting a child? You remember how cranky you always were when you were carrying them? That must be it.’ Sean looked pleased.

‘No.’ Eileen was definite. ‘No, I have a feeling that that may be the very least likely explanation in the whole world.’

*

Johnny had to take more notice of the course eventually because it had been so successful. Elizabeth had managed to hit just the right note – informative without being above people’s heads, simple without being patronising. Already there was talk of another course to follow this one.

‘I’ll really miss it you know, when it’s over,’ she said to Stefan. ‘Only two more and that’s it, then it’s the summer and people all go away. It’s a bit flat.’

‘Why don’t you have a party to round it off?’ Stefan had said.

‘But where? The thought of having any kind of gathering in Father’s house. …’

‘You could have it here,’ Stefan said suddenly. ‘This is a huge room – you could have a hundred people here, if we pulled back all the furniture. It would be very nice, it would be a very good setting.’

‘And it would be an advertisement for your business, Stefan,’ cried Anna excitedly. ‘Think, all those people who like art to come at once into our shop.’

‘Perhaps it looks too commercial … perhaps people might think that was behind it,’ Stefan said, his face falling.

But Elizabeth was thrilled. ‘It’s a wonderful idea, I can’t think of anything I’d like more. I did make a lot more money than I thought, so if I were to buy some bottles of wine and offer it around … it would be a nice gesture. But Stefan, it would be too much trouble … moving everything back against the wall. …’

‘Well, you can help, and Johnny. …’

‘Oh, Johnny.’ Her face was anxious. ‘I don’t think he would approve. He doesn’t think much of the art classes, you know. I think he’d say it was a waste of effort.’

‘Well he can say what he likes. I am not dead yet, I am still the senior partner. I say there is to be a party and a party there will be.’

‘And my sister, she will come to help pass the glasses of wine,’ said Anna.

‘But Johnny. …’

‘Leave Johnny Stone to me.’ Stefan smiled encouragingly. ‘You are not afraid of Johnny Stone, you are a director of this little company are you not? Johnny borrows things from the store like the chandelier when his posh friends have a party and he brings it back. Do you object? No. Do I object? No. Johnny will be very happy to help. It will be the first time that either of us has done anything for you in all your years of working here. Now go away and plan it all.’

‘Oh Stefan, thank you.’

‘And no apologies, excuses or anything to Johnny, mind.’

‘I understand.’

‘I hope you do.’

She had never been directed so firmly by Stefan about how to behave towards Johnny, and she knew he was right. If she were to be full of explanations and excuses, Johnny’s irritation and scorn would grow greater. How wise of Stefan to warn her. As she walked home, a fleeting
stab
of annoyance about Johnny went through her. Why did everyone have to be so careful of him and walk around him as if he were an unexploded mine? Stefan was right, she
was
a director, even though that was only so that the shop could be a business and claim tax relief, and Johnny
did
do whatever he liked with the place and nobody commented, and, true, Stefan was
not
dead yet and if he wanted to give a party for Elizabeth and her art group so he damn well
would
give it.

Laughing aloud at her resolution she turned in the gate of Clarence Gardens and almost bumped into Father.

‘Heavens, Elizabeth, you’re talking to yourself. You really are,’ he said in alarm.

‘No, Father, I’m only laughing to myself, that’s quite different, it’s almost respectable.’

‘It’s what mad old ladies do coming into the bank. They talk to themselves and mutter. Old spinsters, it’s awful to see them. Really Elizabeth, don’t be silly about it. It looks quite dreadful.’