Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  *

  Elizabeth wrote when she heard that Aisling was going to the commercial college. She said she had a memory of it being a second-best sort of place.

  … I know I sound preachy, but is there any point in going there if it’s not the place that will give you the qualifications? Yes, I can hear Sister Catherine’s voice too, but they’re right. It’s something like having the right clothes and implements to climb a mountain. And isn’t life like a rotten mountain most of the time? I think you should go back to the convent and do the awful old stuff and get your Leaving Certificate, and then go to the commercial college, because once you had the exam, you’d be safe. Or that’s what I think.

  Aisling had thought about it. In a way Elizabeth was right. In a way it would be marvellous to cock a snook at the nuns, to put her finger to her nose and say, I got my Leaving and you told my Dad I was an ignoramus. … Yes, in a way. But it would be so hard, and she was miles behind, miles. And she couldn’t bear being with all those creepy ones who were brainy and who would think she had ideas above her station. And she’d look so silly crawling back and saying that she had been wrong not to have worked harder. It would be admitting that all her antics up to now had only been an act. No. She was going to go to the commercial school. She would get a good job from there, she’d do the kind of work she liked doing, not learning rivers and kinds of soil and trade winds in geography, and all the terms of the treaties and the lists of the penal laws, and all the endless, endless things in history.

  At least typing and book-keeping would be new, and shorthand, and she would start equal to everyone else, and this time she would work and come out top of the whole year… then she’d get herself a great job with maybe a bank manager or open an insurance office. And then that yellow-faced Sister Catherine with her thin whining voice wouldn’t be able to make sarcastic remarks, and Dad wouldn’t feel that it hadn’t been worthwhile to have her, and Mam would be delighted and say that Aisling had great spirit, and Elizabeth would write one of her letters and say she had been all wrong, that Aisling had done the right thing.

  Aisling wished that Elizabeth were here. It was silly to have a best friend miles away in England studying in a blue bedroom instead of here in Kilgarret where she should be.

  There were bridge classes two nights a week in the old WVS Hall. The fee of one and sixpence a night meant that only respectable people would attend, and it included tea and biscuits. Elizabeth enrolled Father and herself as soon as she saw the poster.

  ‘I don’t want to learn to play bridge,’ said Father.

  ‘Neither do I, but we’d better. Let’s look on it as some kind of survival raft.’ After four lessons, they began to enjoy it.

  One night as they walked home together, he said, ‘Once you realise that none of it means what it says, it’s quite interesting.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Elizabeth was thinking about Aunt Eileen. She hadn’t told her about the proposed bridge classes when last she wrote. Aunt Eileen would have approved of her being kind to Father but only wealthy Protestant people like the Grays played it in Kilgarret.

  ‘Well when you say two spades, it doesn’t mean that you have two spades. In fact it needn’t mean any spades at all. It’s just a code. It’s a way of telling your partner you have a fairly reasonable hand in most things. …’ Father was what might even be called animated. Elizabeth was about to tuck her hand into his arm, but she held back. If she did it once, then Father would expect her to be that kind of person always. They didn’t touch each other. They were managing very well on this formal level. Better keep it like that.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said seriously, ‘but then I think a lot of conversations become like that as you get older. Sort of code, not saying what you mean, and hoping everyone else knows the rules.’

  Mother did write quite a lot as it turned out. Elizabeth had expected the rare and rushed notes which had come with a leaden sense of duty around them all the time she had been in Kilgarret. She didn’t write much about life now with Harry, nor did she enquire about life in Clarence Gardens. Instead she talked of the old days, as if Elizabeth was a contemporary who might remember them with her. She talked about how they had been to tennis parties when she was young, parties where sometimes ten servants stood around with glasses of home-made lemonade which were poured from big glass jugs. Ten servants, standing all afternoon in the heat, while little madams and little masters flung their racquets on the ground or their sweaters and expected them to be picked up.

  Elizabeth read these letters carefully. She didn’t know whether Mother sounded wistful for those days, or if she was condemning their selfishness. Eventually she decided that Mother was belatedly trying to tell her something about her life, so perhaps the best thing to do was to reply in the same way, in generalities, telling little anecdotes. Elizabeth discussed the school and compared it to the convent in Ireland; she wrote about the odd people they met at bridge evenings; she sometimes enquired whether there was some way she didn’t know of to make a cake without the fruit all sinking to the bottom, or how to let down a skirt without the hem looking awful. Mother sent her a cookery book eagerly and told her about putting a ribbon or a braid around the edge of the skirt and seemed very pleased to have been asked. Elizabeth tried to think of some household query each week.

  She thought that Mother was lonely, she knew that Father was lonely, she felt that Aisling would have nothing to say to her these days and only wrote when Aunt Eileen wrote. She worried that Aunt Eileen was too busy and was only making up nice things to ask like she made up for Mother. She knew that Monica Hart thought she was a boring swot nowadays, no fun, and no use as a decoy for the various young men, since she insisted on staying at home and studying.

  And she didn’t even have the satisfaction of being a brilliant scholar after all this work. She just managed to keep at the top section of her form. Nobody considered her an outstanding pupil, it took her longer than it took the bright girls to understand what was being explained, but she worried at it like a dog at a bone. She would stand shyly beside the mathematics teacher who would look at her with exasperation.

  ‘I’ve been explaining this all week and you kept nodding, why didn’t you say you didn’t understand …?’ Then the explanation, quick and often impatient, but usually kind. It wasn’t usual to find a sixteen-year-old who would stand humbly after school, hair falling over her face, and admit that she wanted to understand complicated things but couldn’t. The teachers usually had the world neatly divided: either they understood and could do it and were a reward to you, or they didn’t and never would and idled their way through the school years. Elizabeth fell into neither category.

  The art master, Mr Brace, had a lot of time for her. She had been taught nothing at that school in Ireland, he told the other teachers in the staff room. He had asked her what she had done in art class and apparently it had only been pictures of the Virgin Mary, or scenes illustrating the mysteries of the rosary. The other teachers shook their heads absently. Irish convents were indeed full of all kinds of mysteries, but then Mr Brace with his liking for beer at lunchtime was not to be relied on for a factual description. The girls in the school called him Beer-Belly-Brace behind his back and complained to each other that he had smelly breath, but Elizabeth liked him. He explained things to her easily, as if she were on his own level. He used to ask her more and more questions about the convent school. His first wife had been a Roman Catholic but she had never mentioned the mysteries of the rosary. She, in turn, had never thought of perspective before Mr Brace explained it to her, and she flushed happily when he held up her still life as the best in the group. She even enjoyed his history of art classes, which none of the others even listened to. When he held up reproductions of the Old Masters, partly obscured by his dirty thumb-nail, she would look with interest at the picture rather than at Mr Brace’s stomach or finger-nails and she would try to imagine a world of castles and palaces and people with strange closed faces becau
se they were princes. She was very familiar with the Madonna pictures but wondered why they hadn’t painted any of Our Lady of Lourdes; the school in Kilgarret had been full of Lourdes pictures.

  ‘What was that?’ Mr Brace had asked. ‘I don’t know about it.’

  ‘Oh, it was maybe a hundred years ago, you know St Bernadette and all the miracles and the people being cured and all,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Well Raphael could hardly have known that in advance,’ said Mr Brace. ‘He wasn’t around to know about the miracles, was he?’

  Elizabeth reddened and determined not to speak again. Mr Brace was sorry for her and lent her some books on art history, and one of his precious books of reproductions.

  ‘I get bad-tempered, and shout at people in class,’ he said. ‘Some day you’ll be in front of a lot of kids and you’ll be the same.’

  ‘Oh, I won’t be a teacher,’ Elizabeth said definitely.

  ‘What will you be?’ he asked with interest.

  Elizabeth looked at him blankly. ‘I have no idea, but I suppose I’ll think of something when the time comes.’ Her face looked troubled. He was the first person who had asked her that question. Mother had never wondered what she would do and neither had Father. But perhaps a lot of people had to face this kind of decision alone. She tried to remind herself of what Aunt Eileen had always said to Aisling whenever there was a crisis or a cry that things were unfair. ‘Self-pity brings tears to the eyes quicker than anything else.’ Aunt Eileen would be proud of me, she thought from time to time as she walked by herself back to Clarence Gardens, her books under her arm, glad to be out of the big, tiled corridors in the school but not anxious to get back into the empty house.

  Often she delayed and walked by the library. They had little exhibitions from time to time and it was nice to stroll around and examine their tables full of model buildings, or ancient Greek reconstructions. The librarian, Mr Clarke, was a kind man. He was an albino and he had very poor sight. He told Elizabeth that in fact he could see much better than people had thought, it just looked worse because he peered so much. He had got the job during the war and had built up the library so well, now nobody could take it away from him. He found art books for Elizabeth to read and, even more helpfully, he got her the prospectus and application forms from the local art college.

  ‘I don’t think I could really study art, could I?’ Elizabeth asked him doubtfully. ‘I mean, I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘That’s why people study things,’ Mr Clarke said, his white head bobbing up and down excitedly. ‘That’s the point.’

  Walking back from the library, she often stopped and examined the window of Worsky’s second-hand shop, or rather, antique shop. There were lovely things in the window. She used to tell Mr Clarke about the funny little screens and wondered where they were made. Mr Clarke said she should go in and ask, the owner would be glad to tell her.

  ‘But I don’t have any money to buy anything, I can’t go in can I?’ Elizabeth was hesitant.

  ‘Of course you can, that’s what people like, even more than making a sale, to chat about beautiful things. …’

  And of course he was right. Mr Worsky showed her the panelling in the screens, explained how lacquering was done, and it was all so much more interesting than anything she had ever heard at school. She looked up more books in the library and told Mr Brace about it after art classes.

  If only Aisling were here, she thought a hundred times. She would make such fun of her three friends. Beer-Belly-Brace, the albino in the library and the old Polish refugee, Mr Worsky in the antique shop. But it was good to have three friends. And she was able to go to the cinema too, a lot of girls had no money for that, at least once a week she went to the balcony by herself, to the four-thirty show. She saw Gone With the Wind four times, and she quite understood why Ashley loved Melanie and not Scarlett. She had written that to Aisling and, as she expected, Aisling had disagreed. Aisling thought that Melanie was a wet, mopey, old baggage and she spoiled the story by being so good.

  Other people sang songs about being sweet sixteen and just sixteen and the joys of being seventeen. But Elizabeth didn’t join in much. She thought it was a long lonely apprenticeship, and the day she got the news of her scholarship to the art college, she hoped that the weary business of growing up was now over. Father said he hoped it would lead to a secure job; Mother wrote and said that a lot of Honourables were going to art school now and she might meet some. Aisling said she couldn’t understand it, Elizabeth had been no good at drawing at school, but Sister Martin who taught drawing was pleased. Mr Brace said she was the first of his pupils to do so well, Mr Clarke in the library gave her four old art books which were considered surplus stock and inscribed them all for her. And Mr Worsky in the antique shop said that now she was an official art student she might even like to come and work in the shop sometimes.

  She did get the job in Worsky’s antique shop. She called in one Saturday, shortly after she had started at the art college and felt she was a bona fide artistic person. At the back of the shop, lost in a catalogue, stood a much younger man than Mr Worsky. Elizabeth’s heart lurched, in case the shop had been sold. She hadn’t been in for a few weeks.

  ‘What can I get you?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘Or would you like to browse around a bit?’

  He was very very handsome, he had a sharp face – that’s what Elizabeth thought was the word you would use to describe it – sort of pointed features, and a lot of black hair falling over his forehead. He looked like a film star.

  ‘Oh, I wanted to see Mr Worsky. He is still here isn’t he?’

  The young man smiled. ‘Oh yes, of course he is, he’s having something he hasn’t had for a long time. A day off. I’m Johnny Stone, his assistant.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, he told me about you.’ Elizabeth smiled with relief. ‘But he described you as an old man, or I mean I thought you were much older. …’

  ‘He didn’t describe you to me at all… but you are very young and very attractive, if I may say so.’

  Elizabeth smiled and blushed a bit. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘You’re very kind. I’m Elizabeth White and he once sort of, half-said that if there was extra work here on a Saturday morning he might consider me.’

  ‘If he doesn’t, he is a very foolish man, and Stefan Worsky is not that.’

  ‘Oh good, then you’re on my side,’ said Elizabeth earnestly. ‘Can you tell him that I’ve started now, up at the art college, and I’m doing design courses, as well as history of art, and if it’s all right I might call in one afternoon during the week and ask him if he’d really like me to help out on Saturdays. …’ She looked around. The place was empty. ‘It’s not very busy, do you think he’d really need help?’

  ‘It’s early still,’ said Johnny Stone. ‘In half an hour the place will be humming. I could ask you to start this morning but that would be a bit pushy. I bet I’ll see you next Saturday. I certainly hope so. …’

  ‘I hope so too, Mr Stone,’ Elizabeth said solemnly.

  ‘Oh come on,’ he said.

  ‘I hope so too, Johnny,’ she said, shaking his hand.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said.

  The engagement between Maureen O’Connor and Brendan Daly was announced in spring, and a September wedding was planned. It certainly came as no surprise to anyone; the surprise had been that they had waited so long. Their walking-out period had been considered long even by Kilgarret standards. Eamonn had heard a joke about them; he heard that Brendan had finally plucked up courage to ask Maureen and he had said, ‘Would you like to be buried with my people?’ He had thought it was great, and he kept telling everyone, until his father had told him to shut his big ignorant mouth.

  ‘Isn’t it bad enough having the girl being made a fool of by that brood of tinkers without having you laughing like a horse?’

  Eamonn was stunned. He had no idea anyone was being made a fool of; he checked it out with Aisling.

  �
�Apparently, by being seen with him or something, she was saying that she was willing; by his not naming the day it looks as if he was taking a bit of time to make up his mind. They’re all cracked in this town,’ Aisling said absently. ‘But what’s the worry? She wanted him, she’s getting him. That’s the system.’

  Maureen had been talking about the clothes for the wedding non-stop. Aisling and Sheila Daly were to wear pink. Pink was the right colour for bridesmaids’ dresses. It was a pity about Aisling’s hair, and the clash, but it couldn’t be helped, Maureen wasn’t going to change her whole wedding just because her younger sister had such extraordinary red hair. Aisling shrugged. She could always have Niamh. No, that wouldn’t do, it would look as if there had been a row, it would give cause for gossip. Anyway Aisling and Sheila Daly were around the same height.

  Occasionally, Aisling tried to ask Mam was Maureen being normal about this wedding, or was she a bit disturbed; but Mam wasn’t giving any sensible answers. She said that a wedding day was something so special that people should be allowed to have any kinds of fancies they wanted. After the wedding day, being married soon settled down to ordinary things again, so that’s why people let brides go into such states of excitement. No, Mam hadn’t been able to go into a state of excitement herself because things were difficult in those days, there was less money, things were more chancy, people had to concentrate so hard on having a living, a stake in somewhere. Mam’s family had lost any bit of money they ever thought they had; Dad’s family had nothing. But this was now; things were far better than the terrible twenties. …

  ‘But Mam, she’s daft altogether, it’s only old Brendan Daly. I mean it’s only the Dalys she’s marrying, you’d think it was the royal family. Do you know she asked me to get thinner for the day! To lose a bit of weight for the ceremony. I couldn’t believe it.’

  Mam laughed. ‘Will you wear a corset and tighten it up a bit and tell her you’ve lost weight? That’s what I’m going to do.’