Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  Aisling found this a hard one to deal with.

  ‘Sister Mary said that Reverend Mother knows all about Elizabeth not going to church and says that for her brand of Protestant religion that’s all right. Not all of the types of Protestants have to go to church you know.’ This was greeted with some doubt so she went on triumphantly, ‘After all, for all we know she mightn’t have been baptised.’

  ‘Weren’t you baptised?’ Joannie Murray examined Elizabeth like a possible leper. ‘Oh you must have been baptised, mustn’t you?’

  ‘Um,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Well were you?’ Aisling the Defender lost her patience and forgot her role momentarily. Really there were times when Elizabeth was very vague. Imagine not knowing whether you were baptised or not.

  ‘Christened do you mean?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Baptism.’

  ‘I did have a christening robe,’ Elizabeth recalled. It was in a box between layers of paper, and smelling of moth balls. That seemed to settle it. She had been baptised. Now the knotty problem. As a baptised Christian, shouldn’t she be going to a church of some kind? Aisling was at a loss. But only for a while.

  ‘We have no way of knowing whether she was baptised properly,’ she said firmly, if not, then it doesn’t count.’

  ‘We could do it ourselves,’ said Joannie Murray. ‘You know, pour the water and say the words at the same time.’

  Elizabeth looked around like a rabbit caught in a trap. Her eyes pleaded with Aisling. Mutely she begged to be rescued. She was disappointed.

  ‘Not now,’ Aisling said authoritatively, ‘she has to have instruction first. When she’s been instructed in the faith then we’ll do it. We’ll do it at break in the cloakroom.’

  ‘How long will it take to instruct her?’ They were eager now, anxious for the adventure of baptising someone. Elizabeth was the first possibly unbaptised person they had met.

  ‘She’s full of original sin of course,’ said one of the girls. ‘If she died the way she is she’d have to go to limbo.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better for her to go to limbo than risk hell? I mean if we baptised her now and she didn’t know what she should do she might go to hell. She’s better off as she is until she knows the rules,’ Aisling insisted.

  ‘But how long will instructing her take?’ Elizabeth too looked trustingly at Aisling. Instruction might only take ten minutes. It was hard to know with matters of faith.

  ‘About six months I think,’ Aisling said. They were disappointed and prepared to query her. ‘Sure she doesn’t even know a word of catechism. Not a word. There’d be no point in her being baptised until she knows it as well as the rest of us. It was just her bad luck that they didn’t do a proper job on her when she was a baby.’

  ‘Of course, they might have done it properly,’ Elizabeth piped up without very much hope.

  ‘Not a chance,’ said Aisling.

  ‘Probably didn’t get the water pouring and the words being said at the same time,’ Joannie said sagely. ‘That’s the important thing.’

  Her first Christmas in Kilgarret approached and Elizabeth was a much stronger and healthier child than the one who had crept across the square. Her skirt was even a little too tight around the waist and the pale face looked stronger and seemed less like Dresden china. Her voice was louder too. You now knew whether or not she was in the house.

  Each week she wrote a letter home; Eileen added a note and then gave the child the envelope to post. None of them knew whether the sparse replies were due to the terrible chaos of London during the blitz or to the normal inertia of Violet. The newspapers had been filled with stories of the blitz. The Emergency, as the trouble continued to be called, had reached very serious proportions. An average of 200 tons of bombs fell on London an hour. One night in October the bombing had been so intense that it was almost impossible to imagine that any kind of normal life could go on.

  Eileen said repeatedly that Violet was welcome to come to Kilgarret herself, and each time she wrote it she said a small prayer that she would not come. Not now, with everything so unsettled between Young Sean and his father. Not until they had time to do up the house in the spring. Not until she had a chance to put some manners on her own pack. She hadn’t realised how uncouth they must all be until she watched the dainty manners and considerate behaviour of Elizabeth. The child stood up politely when an adult came into the room, she offered her chair, she held doors open. Eileen sighed. It would take a large bomb to get any of hers out of their chairs unless they felt like getting up. She didn’t question Elizabeth’s decision to come to mass on Sunday, regarding it as a further part of belonging. It meant that she had to join the Saturday night inspection of clean shoes, clean socks. Berets, hats, gloves and missals laid out. Hair washed, clean necks, clean nails. It was the one day in the week when Sean and Eileen O’Connor could see some sense in what they were doing, working until their bodies ached. To admire five shining children at mass, a kind of reward.

  Elizabeth tried to remember whether she had known any church-going on this scale at home, but she could not recall it. Mr and Mrs Flint were ‘church types’, Mother had said, but she hadn’t known that it meant all this washing and shoe polishing and great masses of people walking to and from a building where you knew everyone.

  The crib had been put up in the beginning of December. Great life-size figures of the Family in the stable and real straw. Aisling went to pray in front of it when mass was over, and put a penny into a big collection box which was covered in melted wax. This allowed you to light a candle and stick it with all the other lighted candles; apparently, if you did this you got a wish.

  ‘Do you get a wish even if you haven’t got the gift of faith?’ Elizabeth whispered on one occasion. Her wish would have been to receive a long cheerful letter from Mother and Father.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Aisling considered the matter seriously. ‘No, I’ve never heard that you do. Better not waste the penny, keep it for sweets in Mangans.’

  Christmas Day, for Elizabeth, had always been an anticlimax; so much looked forward to, so much talked about, but when it came it always seemed to bring some disapproval, or some other cause for complaint which she would pretend not to notice. Last year it had been one long discussion about rationing and arguments about how they could possibly manage. Elizabeth thought that the Day with the O’Connors would be utterly perfect. She expected a storybook Christmas for the first time in her life.

  For weeks they had all been making each other presents, and the cry of ‘Don’t come in!’ arose whenever you went into a room unexpectedly. To Elizabeth’s great surprise, Aisling talked enthusiastically about Santa Claus. Once or twice, Elizabeth had ventured a small doubt about him.

  ‘Do you think that there actually might not be a Santa Claus, you know, the gifts might come from … somewhere else?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Aisling said. ‘Sure, where else would they come from?’ She had lit several candles asking God to remind Santa Claus of her requests.

  Elizabeth had changed a great deal in her four months with the O’Connors. Once upon a time, she would have said nothing and just hoped that things would turn out for the best. Now, however, she felt able to intervene.

  ‘Auntie Eileen?’

  ‘Yes, darling?’ Eileen was writing in the big household book she filled in every Saturday.

  ‘I don’t want to interfere but … you see, Aisling is praying to the Holy Family people in the church and asking them to tell Santa Claus that she wants a bicycle … and, you know … just … I thought you should know as well, if you see what I mean, just in case she doesn’t tell you.’

  Eileen pulled the child towards her affectionately. ‘Now, that’s very kind of you to tell me that,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not that I’m asking you to buy expensive things like that, it’s just that Aisling believes very strongly that what you tell Santa Claus should be a secret, and she mightn’t tell you.’

  ‘Well
, I’ll keep that information very carefully in my mind,’ said Eileen solemnly. ‘Run off with you, now.’

  Christmas Eve was like a combination of Saturday nights with all the shoe polishing and neck washing, and the day of the Christmas play at school, all feverish excitement. Even grown-up people like Maureen and her friend Berna were giggling, and Young Sean was happy and wrapping up parcels.

  During the night Elizabeth heard the door open. She glanced worriedly over at Aisling’s bed but the red hair out on the pillow never stirred. Through half-closed eyes Elizabeth saw Sean place the bicycle, wrapped in brown paper and holly sprigs, at the end of Aisling’s bed. And to her amazement she saw a similar shape coming to the end of her own bed. Two sharp trickles of tears began in her eyes. They were such a kind family, she would never be able to thank them. She must really try to explain to Mother in her next letter how kind they were. Please could she find words that wouldn’t irritate Mother and make Mother feel that she was being criticised.

  Then it was morning and there were screams of excitement as Aisling in pyjamas tore off the wrapping paper. As Elizabeth swung her legs out of bed, Aisling, her face flushed with happiness, came over and gave her a great hug. She forced herself to put her arms around Aisling too. Though this was a new experience and she was always nervous of something new. Up to now they had only linked arms when coming home from school. That had been the closest contact. But now it was a sea of affection and excitement and it almost drowned Elizabeth with its unfamiliarity.

  But in no time there were shouts and calls, and squeaks and hoots on a trumpet, and more shouts. …

  ‘Down here in two minutes or Christmas or no Christmas you’ll feel the palm of my hand!’

  It was still dark as they went up the hill to the church calling and wishing people Happy Christmas. Several people asked Elizabeth what she got in her stocking… and Doctor Lynch, Berna’s father, pinched her cheek and asked her was an Irish Christmas better than an English one. His wife pulled him away crossly.

  There were sausages and eggs for breakfast, paper table napkins on the table. Niamh sat up in her high chair and gurgled at them. There was more suppressed excitement since presents were going to be given afterwards beside the fire. The big things had come in the night but the individual ones would come now, and then the girls could go out in the square with their bicycles, Maureen could parade with her new jacket and matching beret, Eamonn with his football and boots, Donal with his scooter. Then it would be in again for the huge goose that was already cooking in the range.

  There were oohs and aahs over the presents, the pincushions, the bookmarks, the dish painted as an ashtray for Da, the necklace made of carefully threaded beads. But there was the greatest applause for the presents that Maureen gave. For Mam there was beautiful soap, and for Da there was a proper man’s scarf. For Aisling and Elizabeth big bangles with coloured glass in them; for Eamonn a big light for his bicycle; for Donal a funny furry hat, and even for the baby a rattle. She had given her elder brother two matching hair brushes like gentlemen used in picture books, and for Peggy she had a sparkling brooch.

  Maureen had been the last to do the distributing. She had asked if she could be and it seemed a glorious end to the present-giving. The air was so full of gratitude and re-examination of gifts that none of them except Elizabeth noted the anxious glances exchanged between Auntie Eileen and Uncle Sean. She couldn’t interpret them – it was as if they alone had seen some hidden disaster. Uncle Sean evidently had decided to let Auntie deal with it, whatever it was. Elizabeth’s face was reddening with anxiety, she knew it was.

  ‘Right everyone, clear up all the mess, paper into this box, string into that, and don’t lose anything!’ Eileen supervised a huge sweep on the room. ‘Now all of you out in the square, yes, you too, Sean, get a bit of exercise … and Donal, of course you can child … wrap up well. No, leave your furry hat here, that’s the boy.’

  In minutes she had the room cleared of people and presents. Elizabeth’s heart pounded because she knew something was very wrong. She went into the kitchen with Peggy and helped to fold the paper up into squares. Peggy kept up a monologue about how much there was to be done for the meal and how little help anyone gave… but she was only muttering, and didn’t expect any answer.

  The voices came clearly from the next room.

  ‘No, Maureen, sit down. Come on sit down. …’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean Ma, what is it?’

  ‘Maureen, where did you get the money to pay for these things … where?’

  ‘Ma, I don’t know what you mean. I saved up my pocket money like everyone else. … Of course I did Ma.’

  ‘We’re not fools Maureen … look at these things. They cost a fortune. That soap you bought your mother … it’s fifteen shillings. I saw it myself in the chemist.’

  ‘But Da, I didn’t. …’

  ‘Just tell us where you got the money child, that’s all your father and I want to know. Tell us quickly and don’t ruin the day for all the rest of them.’

  ‘I never took any of your money Mam, you can look in your desk, I didn’t take a penny. …’

  ‘I didn’t miss anything Sean.’

  ‘And I didn’t touch anything in your pocket, Da. …’

  ‘Come on, Maureen, you get a shilling a week, you have pounds’ worth of stuff here. Pounds and pounds. Can’t you see your mother and I are heart-scalded over it. …’

  ‘Is this the thanks I get for giving you nice Christmas presents. …’ Maureen had begun to cry. ‘Is this … all … you … say, accuse me of stealing from you?’

  ‘Well, the only other alternative … is that you stole them from the shops.’ Eileen’s voice was shaking as she voiced the suspicion.

  ‘I bought them,’ persisted Maureen.

  ‘God almighty, those hair brushes you gave Sean, they’re over two pounds!’ roared Sean. ‘You’re not leaving this room till we know. Christmas dinner or no Christmas dinner … if I have to shake every bone out of your body, I’ll find out. Don’t treat us like fools. Bought them indeed. …’

  ‘You’ll have to tell us soon or later, your father is right. Tell us now.’

  ‘I bought you Christmas presents to please you and this is all you say. …’

  ‘I’m going to go up to Doctor Lynch’s house and see whether their family got fine presents from that Berna of theirs. Maybe the two of you were in this together. Maybe Berna will tell us if you won’t. …’

  ‘No!’ It was a scream. ‘No Da, don’t go. Please don’t go.’

  There were sobs from Eileen, and shocked noises and wailings from Maureen as well as her mother. There was the sound of great slappings and a chair turning over. Elizabeth heard Aunt Eileen pleading with Uncle Sean not to be so hard.

  ‘Leave her, Sean, leave her till you calm down.’

  ‘Calm down. Stealing from every other trader in the town. Into their shops with that brat of a Lynch girl. Five shops, five families who’ve done business with us for years and this brat goes in and steals from them. Jesus Christ, what’s there to be calm about … you’re going in to every one of them when the shops open. Every single one of them do you hear, every item will be returned. And the Lynches will be told too, mind that. They’re not going to live in innocence over the pair of thieves we have stalking the town. …’

  Elizabeth exchanged a fearful glance with Peggy as they heard another blow and another scream.

  ‘Don’t you be minding all that now,’ said Peggy. ‘Better not to poke your nose into others’ affairs. Better to hear nothing and say nothing.’

  ‘I know,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But it’s going to spoil Christmas.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Peggy. ‘We’ll have a grand Christmas.’

  ‘Ah, Da you can’t hit a girl like that, stop it, Da, stop it!’

  ‘Go away, Sean, I don’t want you here, get out, it’s my business.’

  ‘Da, you can’t hit Maureen like that, Ma stop him, he’s hit her
on the head. Stop it, Da, stop it, you’re too big, you’ll kill her.’

  Elizabeth fled from the kitchen and got her new bicycle. Round and round the square she cycled, trying to brush the tears out of her eyes. She didn’t want the others to ask her what was wrong. She had no hope that they would even get together for the goose now. Aunt Eileen had probably gone to the bedroom, Sean gone off out after the row with his father. Uncle Sean might have taken the keys and gone back into the store, and Maureen – heaven knew what would happen to Maureen. It was all turning out badly like everything always did. It was so unfair.

  Other children who lived in the square had bicycles too and tricycles and scooters; there were marvellous tales about how Martin Ryan had seen the leg of Santa disappearing up a chimney and Maire Kennedy had heard the reindeer coming into the square. Aisling had already learned how to do tricks on her new bicycle … she was swooping around where the bus would stop on a normal day with both hands spread out wide and her red hair flying behind her. She saw Elizabeth looking at her and pedalled over.

  ‘What’s wrong, you look sad?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you thinking of your own family and being a bit lonely?’ Sometimes Aisling got great fits of concern over Elizabeth’s temporary orphan status.

  ‘Well, a bit,’ Elizabeth lied.

  ‘You have our family now, and we’ll have a grand Christmas,’ she said firmly.

  At that moment, the O’Connors were called from the top of the steps by Eileen.

  ‘Come on my four. Wash hands and ready for Christmas Feast. …’

  She looked quite calm again, Elizabeth thought, and then felt a little lift at being called one of her four. Unwillingly, Eamonn, Donal and Aisling gathered their gifts and left their friends. A cursory hand wash was done and all hands dried simultaneously on a wet towel. The table was all set and Christmas crackers criss-crossed between each plate. As they slid to their places, Aunt Eileen said almost casually, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s been a mistake about some of the presents, could you give Maureen back what she gave you; there was a mistake about some of the prices. It has to be sorted out.’ There was a bit of a grumble, a demand for reassurance that he would still get his bicycle light back from Eamonn. But it was over. The crisis was somehow finished. Maureen’s eyes were very red, and so were Young Sean’s. But no comment was made, and they pulled crackers with everyone else.