Light A Penny Candle (75 page)

She made him coffee, he admired the sleeping Eileen, he made small talk about Aisling, about Father, about the Worsky shop. Then he said, ‘I’m rather worried about Henry at the office, this is really what I wanted to talk to you about.’

Every antenna was quivering. She did
not
want to hear this conversation, she did not like the way it was being done. ‘Oh, anything about the office, don’t you think you should discuss that with Henry himself?’ She spoke lightly but firmly. A lesser man might have got the message and retreated.

But Simon was insistent. ‘No, it’s not telling tales, and tittle-tattle just for the sake of gossip, I’m worried about his work. He takes too much time and gets himself into knots. …’

‘Listen, Simon, I’m very serious, I know you mean well and that your motives are utterly honest … but you must understand that I cannot, I
will
not be drawn into a
discussion
about my husband’s work in your firm. You and he are old enough friends. You’ve known each other forever. You can tell him far more easily than me what’s wrong.’

‘But this is just it – he won’t listen to me.’

‘Well, I do not want to hear whatever it is and to be put in the position of having to decide whether to pass it on or not. No, it is not fair, and you will not do it to me. If I have a problem at work I speak about it to the person involved not to their husbands or wives. So should you.’

‘I tell you, I have tried, I do this as a last. …’

‘Or if I find people not able to listen to a conversation I write them a letter … it’s easier to list things in a letter.’

‘Some people are so sensitive and thin-skinned, imagining insult and rebuff, that they would think a letter was a worse way of doing it.’

She smiled thinly. ‘Well, I suppose if I were in that position I would do my best to find another way out, one that involved no conniving or disloyalty.’

‘You are a magnificent person,’ Simon said.

‘So you really did come here to seduce me …’ She tinkled a laugh she did not feel, the conversation had given her a cold fear in her heart.

‘Alas no, I don’t dare risk further rejection – but if you had married me, what a pair we would have been! Together we would have conquered the world! Why didn’t you marry me?’

‘Let me think. Oh I know, you didn’t ask me.’

Simon hit his forehead in a theatrical gesture. ‘Oh, of course!’ he said.

‘And also because I love Henry very dearly, so I married him,’ she said with a note of warning.

He took the warning, they talked a little more. Should they have a television? Simon was afraid that if he did he would stay in all night and forget to go prowling around in search of adventure. Elizabeth was afraid that she would sit glued to it all the time. He asked her if Aisling had any views on the new Pope, and Elizabeth said that Aisling’s only comment had been that if he was a man of seventy-six there was no way he was going to be eager to annul her marriage for her. That was her only interest in popes these days.

‘Has she given up her faith?’ asked Simon, imitating Aisling’s intonation.

‘It’s hard to know, you never know with Catholics. It seems to be much more part of them than you think. Even when they don’t believe, they have something inside them that makes them think they do.’

‘That’s very deep, too Jesuitical for me. I must leave.’ He left graciously, joking, waving flamboyantly as he ran lightly down the big marble stairs … never mentioning again the subject he had come to discuss.

Donal and Anna had put off their wedding until the spring. They thought it would be too overshadowed by Mam’s funeral. Anna had come to work in the shop.

‘What’s a graduate doing in the shop?’ muttered Aisling when she heard. ‘She’s a B.A. for heaven’s sake, what’s she doing rabbiting about with Mam’s ledgers and my ledgers?’

‘Why don’t you go over and sort her out?’ Elizabeth laughed.

‘I might just do that.’ Aisling was undecided.

‘Will you go home for Christmas do you think?’

‘I don’t know, Johnny hasn’t said anything, he may have a plan like last year.’

Elizabeth knew he had a plan but it wasn’t like last year, it involved Susie. Still, it wasn’t up to her, of course, to smooth the path for Aisling but she couldn’t bear to see the naked disappointment.

‘I’d say they’d love to have you back in Kilgarret, it’s going to be a rotten Christmas for your Dad.’

‘I know, but I don’t want to arrange to go and then Johnny suddenly say that we’re meant to be off to Spain or wherever. He’s been talking a lot more about Spain recently.’

Elizabeth knew that was right, she had heard him booking the holiday in Majorca for himself and Susie. ‘You should ask him outright what his plans are, not just wait about, there’s no point in everyone being messed around.’ Her voice was sharper than usual. Aisling wondered should she talk less about Johnny to Elizabeth, it was impossible to fathom what her real feelings towards him were.

Aisling went home to Kilgarret, where she heard to her great relief that Mrs Murray had gone to spend Christmas in Dublin with Joannie.

‘Do you know that your car is still there?’ Eamonn said
to
her. ‘I’m surprised to see you coming off the bus. I’d have thought you’d have used your car. Had it in Dublin, you know.’

‘My
car
?’ It seemed like a different world: the cream-coloured Ford Anglia that she had been given by Tony to celebrate her learning how to drive. ‘Where on earth is it?’

‘It’s back up behind the yard. Oh ages ago, the guards told Murray’s it had been abandoned at the airport, and eventually someone drove it back down here, and Mr Meade said it should be left up here. Mam said none of us were to drive it. I could have done with it, but that was an absolute.
Aisling’s car, the O’Connors will not drive round Kilgarret in the car Tony Murray bought for Aisling
’

‘Do you drink a lot Eamonn?’ she asked him suddenly.

‘What do you mean?’ He was annoyed and bewildered.

‘Well you used to, not like Tony but you used to get fairly pissed in Hanrahan’s a lot.’

‘No, I don’t drink so much since you ask. I was getting a desperate beer belly on me, and, well, I’ll be thirty this year. I thought I could get into the way of it, and after … after. …’

‘After the Tony business?’

‘Yes, after that a few of us drew in our horns.’

‘Okay, you can have the car.’

‘What? You can’t just say that, you can’t give me your car.’

‘I didn’t know I even had it until two minutes ago, of course I can. But trade it in, will you, get something else.
Everyone
will remember it too well. I’ll have the papers somewhere, I might even have them with me, I brought out a whole lot of papers to sort out. I’ll give them to you tonight.’

‘I’ll never be able to thank you, God, a car, me.’

‘It’s all right, Mam would like you to have a car. I have a feeling that she would. It would make you more independent.’

‘A car all of my own, I don’t believe it.’

Aisling had to look away so that he wouldn’t see how moved she was at his pleasure.

It was a strange, lonely Christmas; she felt she had grown away from them even in the few short months since Mam’s death. They had all been bound together by the sadness and tension of Mam’s funeral. Now it was different.

Donal was in Barrys’ most of the time. Anna had been most successful at work. She sat in Mam’s eyrie at first but had the sense to realise that this upset people.

‘My Lord, I thought it was Mrs O’Connor,’ they would say.

‘Of course, you soon will be Mrs O’Connor,’ they might add. Anna organised her own office, she decided to call Dad Mr O’C. Aisling smiled at that. She had thought Mrs M was more affectionate than ‘Mrs Murray’ too. It was odd, this whole in-law bit.

‘It will be nice for you to have Anna as a sister-in-law,’ she said to Niamh.

‘Yes, though it didn’t work for you and Joannie
Murray
. You were great friends before you married her brother and then you didn’t get on with her at all.’

‘I didn’t get on with either of them at all,’ said Aisling and they giggled.

Dad was low and sunk into himself, it was hard to see what would cheer him up. She took him for a walk on St Stephen’s Day. They walked out on to the Dublin road, a lot of cars passing them going to the races in Dublin and people they knew tooting their horns. ‘I wonder are they thinking that it’s two years today since that bold strap ran out of the place and here she is bold as brass back again? But maybe they’re not thinking about me at all. I might have to face that fact.’ Dad’s face looked gloomy; she felt he was only walking to please her, as she was to please him. ‘Maybe we’ll turn back now will we?’

He turned obediently and they faced down into the town. ‘You’re not to worry about us, Aisling, you know,’ he said out of the blue. ‘We’ll all be fine, and you have your own life to lead.’

‘I do worry.’

‘Well, it’s not going to do any good. Your mam is gone but she said to me before she went that nobody was to try to drag Aisling back from London, she’d come when she was good and ready.’

Aisling’s eyes filled with tears. How well Mam had understood.

‘But maybe I should come back, Dad.’

‘No, not until you’re good and ready. Your home is
always
here for you, but don’t come back to look after us, we’ll be fine.’

‘I know, Dad.’

‘And haven’t you contributed to the peace of nations already by giving that lout a car for under his backside so that he can drive himself off out of my sight?’

‘Dad, what a way to talk about Eamonn.’ They both laughed.

‘You know that I’d prefer to say a lot more, but seeing as it’s Christmas, and I was at communion, there’s no point in cursing and swearing.’

She did a lot of walking during her visit home. It was easier to think, walking. People nodded at her or stopped for a few words. Mainly they told her that her father was managing well enough and that young Anna Barry was being a great support. Nobody mentioned Tony or the Murrays. It was as if her marriage had never taken place.

She walked past the bungalow one day. It had bright new curtains. She wondered idly what had happened to all the furniture and what they had done with the fawn curtains when they put up these orange and white ones. The orange and white ones were nicer. They had done the garden too, the new people, cousins of Mr Moriarty, she remembered. She hoped they would be happy there. There was nothing wrong with the bungalow. She wondered who had wiped up all the blood in the end.

*

She walked to Maureen’s house. Maureen was surprised and not altogether pleased to see her.

‘What are you doing, lady of leisure?’ she asked.

‘I was calling to see you,’ said Aisling, feeling she had had this conversation with Maureen a million times. She was tired of it. She remembered Mam saying that Maureen had been born a moaner and would be one for the rest of her days. Aisling turned to go.

‘Oh, don’t be so huffy, come on in and have tea. It’s just that nobody knows what to make of you, that’s the problem. Nobody knows what you’re at.’

That was the problem all right.

Back in London after the holiday she discovered that Johnny had just come back from Majorca; it had only been a week’s visit. Susie was not in sight. Elizabeth had been right about that. She found that the three doctors were so happy to see her back – they realised that nobody could do their work like Miss O’Connor, she had indeed become indispensable – they said they would like to raise her wages and suggest that she have extra holidays if she would agree to stay with them for at least a year. Johnny had been right about that. She heard from Elizabeth that there had been some very awkward and embarrassing scene at Henry’s office because he had not got the expected New Year rise. Henry had become hysterical, and did what nobody ever did: he made his disappointment known in public. He had been slightly overexcited and caused great alarm to everyone. Simon had been right about that.

*

‘I don’t know what more I can say. I can’t tell you more clearly that we have enough, Henry, you and I and Eileen, we have plenty. We have more than almost anyone we know, can you not stop talking about the damn rise? It couldn’t matter one fig.’

‘Not to you, but to me it does. What have I been doing all those years? Why have I been slaving away and taking work home? Who has been more attentive to their work than I have, what other member of staff can honestly say that he has been as conscientious as I have?’

‘But that’s not the point. …’

‘It
is
the point, that’s what this office system is based on. It’s not marks for being brilliant.
God dammit
, Elizabeth, it’s not an American movie about lawyers, we’re not getting a bonus or rise for dramatic appearances in courts. It’s just a system, when the work is done well and reliably, everyone gets a rise. Well, not everyone, but anyone who has done their part. …’

‘Henry you’re upsetting yourself for. …’

‘Of course, I’m upset, I didn’t
get
a rise … can’t you see what that means?’

‘It means nothing, you’re becoming hysterical. Last year you got one, your work was not out of the ordinary; this year you didn’t, your work was not out of the ordinary for you. So what? We don’t need their money. We have plenty.’

‘You’ll
never
understand. …’

‘Apparently not, but I’d have some hope of understanding if you didn’t shout.’

‘I’m only upsetting you. I’ll go out. …’

‘Darling love, it’s Sunday lunchtime. We’re just about to have lunch. Why are you going out?’

‘I’m upset, as you said, very upset, there’s no point in upsetting you and Eileen.’

‘I love you. I love you so much, I wish you wouldn’t go out. You’re not upsetting me, you’re not upsetting Eileen. Look, she’s smiling at you … why don’t you take your coat off? Come back and sit down. …’ She had followed him to the door. He pressed the button for the lift. ‘Please Henry, stay and have lunch, this is the way we always thought it would be, you know, when neither of us had a proper home, the two of us and a baby and whatever we wanted for lunch, not what somebody else wanted. …’ The lift was coming up. ‘And I want you, I don’t want you wandering down to the embankment and getting your death of cold, that would upset me much more.’