Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘Elizabeth, will you come back again? Please, when things are more settled down and there isn’t all this Twentieth-Century Fox stuff going on?’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’ll come back. Go on, Aisling, they’re calling you.’

  ‘And I’m right, aren’t I …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m doing the right thing? It will be fine …?’

  ‘Not now, Aisling … go.’

  ‘You’re my best friend. …’

  ‘And you’re mine. … Go.’

  The cheer was enormous when she got into the car and Aisling’s smile was almost as great. Shay had put a big cardboard notice on the back of the car with the word ‘Honeymooners’ scrawled on it. Tony had tried to take it off but Eileen had said he should stop when he was outside the town. The car with its badly made notice revved up and drove off … but to everyone’s delight it did one lap of the square before taking the Dublin road. Total strangers who had just come in on the afternoon bus cheered too. And then they were gone.

  PART THREE

  1954–1956

  XIV

  PEOPLE HAD TOLD them to be sure to get a hotel on the north side of Dublin so that they would be on the way to the airport when they had to set out in the morning. Aisling had said to Elizabeth that most friends and relations assumed that they were going to be so weak from the night of passion that they could hardly manage to drive to the airport at all. Maureen had said that there was a guesthouse she knew of which was actually only a mile from the airport. Dad had said they could do worse than go to the cousins in Dunlaoghaire. There would be no bad feeling because they had been sent a wedding invitation but business was brisk and they couldn’t be gone for a whole day. Dad had said that he heard they had the place much improved now, with carpets in all the bedrooms, wall to wall, and because they were family they’d get a cut.

  Aisling took no notice of them and had written to the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, booking a night’s accommodation in one of the best double rooms for Mr and Mrs Murray. In fact she had paused and reflected for a long time when she reread the words Mr and Mrs Murray. She remembered for no good reason all the whispered plans with Elizabeth years ago, years and years back when Elizabeth lived in Kilgarret. They would only marry for love, they would marry young men who roamed through the town, not awful businessmen who lived there. In those days Aisling had said suddenly that Elizabeth had a wider choice of business families because being a Protestant she could marry the Grays, and Elizabeth had complained and asked what was the point of learning all about contrition and grace and angels if she was still going to be considered a Protestant at the end of it?

  Being Mr and Mrs Murray wasn’t part of that plan. But then neither was having an abortion because Johnny Stone couldn’t be told that his attempts at contraception had failed. Aisling wondered what Elizabeth did nowadays to make sure that it never happened again. Aisling sighed a happy sigh. Thank God she wouldn’t have to bother with that. If she got pregnant it would be fine, she’d have the baby, and the next one, and Mam would help her look after them, and maybe Peggy would come and help her a bit. And Tony of course. She sighed again.

  Tony looked over at her, and put his hand on her knee.

  ‘Are you happy, Missus?’ he said, imitating some of the old shawlies who always called people Missus even though they knew their names as well as their own.

  ‘I’m very happy, Misthur,’ she mimicked back.

  ‘Great, so am I, and in no time we’ll be in Dublin and we’ll have that drink I’ve been thinking about at the back of my mind.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Aisling absently. She wondered would he have the drink in the bar of the Shelbourne or would they have it sent up to the room? In films drinks came in ice buckets on trolleys. They might even have that.

  ‘It’s grand to be back in the old Shelbourne,’ Tony said when the car had been safely parked and the porter had taken their cases. ‘Now for that drink. Right?’

  ‘Great,’ said Aisling. To her surprise they walked right through the hotel and out again once he had signed the book. It had been curiously disappointing – she thought he would hold her hand and they would giggle. But no. And now where were they going?

  ‘You wouldn’t want to drink in here, its too posh a bar, people with accents and notions of grandeur. We’ll go to a real bar.’

  Aisling had peeped into the bar, it looked marvellous. It had mirrors, and waiters in white jackets. There were one or two elegant women there and she thought she looked the match for them in her aquamarine suit and little hat. But no, they were almost running away from Stephen’s Green and on Baggot Street. Suddenly they were in a bar which wasn’t as nice as Maher’s and not quite as seedy as Hanrahan’s. But it had that sour smell of beer and stout that you get when a place is full of spilt glasses and barrels not properly cleaned.

  ‘You don’t drink in places like this in Kilgarret,’ she said, ‘you drink in the hotel. Why won’t we drink back in the hotel? It’s nicer.’

  ‘I can’t go into a bar in Kilgarret or I’d have everyone in the town asking me for a loan of ten shillings, or travellers from the business coming up and trying to buy me a drink and tell me how they should be promoted. That’s why I have to drink in the hotel. But here it’s all right, no one will know who we are.’

  Aisling looked around her. Men with caps on barely looked up from their pints, a group of young fellows near the door laughed and jeered about something. The table was covered with dirty glasses and overflowing ashtrays.

  ‘Oh come on back, the bar in the Shelbourne has drink too, it’s much nicer,’ she begged.

  But Tony was at the counter. He indicated one of the tables with a nod of his head.

  ‘Gin?’ he asked.

  She heard him order a large gin, a large Power’s and a pint of Guinness. She looked with distaste at the table and the barman sent a man around to clean it. The man was a bit slow, like Jemmy back in the shop. He kept looking at Aisling as he wiped the ash and rings of beer. His cloth was so greasy the table didn’t look much better after his efforts. Aisling saw an evening newspaper and she picked it up smartly. She put two pages on the table and two on the chair. Now she would only get newsprint on her, she thought angrily. At least it would be better than God knows what other dirt.

  ‘That’s grand,’ said Tony, coming back to the table with the drinks. He saw no criticism in her improvements. ‘Well, here’s good luck to us,’ he said, raising the pint first and then having a swallow of the whisky before Aisling had even touched her gin. ‘As you said we’re a fine pair.’

  A man with the red nose of a drinker and a shabby, crumpled suit that might once have been a good one leaned over and said to Tony as he might have addressed a regular in the pub, ‘And what has yourself and your lady-friend all dolled up in a Saturday evening?’

  Tony was delighted. ‘I’d like you to know that’s no lady-friend, that’s my wife,’ he said and roared with laughter.

  The man peered at Aisling. ‘Aw, well, it doesn’t do any harm to take the wife out now and then, I always say. Were you at the races?’

  ‘No, we were at a wedding,’ said Tony winking and leering and looking so stupid that Aisling wanted to get up and walk away. With a jolt she realised that she couldn’t do that any more.

  ‘Oh, a wedding. Was it near here?’ the man wanted to know.

  ‘No, down the country. Two real country bumpkins.’

  The man laughed. ‘Oh, nothing as bad as a culchie wedding I always say. They can get desperately pretentious down in the country.’

  Tony’s face was all smiles. ‘I could go along with you, I could lead you on and make a fool of you … but you look too good a man to do that to. It was our own wedding. Now what do you make of that?’ and he sat back beaming.

  The man, his eyes dulled with drink, knew something was expected of him. He stood up and shook hands with both of them. ‘My sincere congratulations and my warmest felicitations. Under normal circumstances I
would be the first to offer you a. …’

  Tony seemed to understand the man’s predicament as if he had been inspired by the Holy Ghost. This was a man who was about to offer them a drink to celebrate their wedding but had no money. This was a drunk, a pathetic shambling drunk, exactly the kind of man who would want to borrow ten shillings from Tony back home, a man with extravagant promises. Maybe a civil servant once, or a clerk somewhere. Aisling raged inside and her gin and tonic tasted like acid. Tony was at the counter. The man, their new friend, wouldn’t touch Power’s, he was a man who drank Bushmill’s, never touched any whisky only Black Bush, he said. Funny how many good things came out of the North when you stopped to think about it.

  Aisling decided to turn her mind off. She blotted Tony and this man out, she fixed a smile on her face and she worked out what she would have for dinner. She planned her menu, she planned the bedroom scene, where she would wear her new cream nightie and lacy dressing-gown which had to be called a negligee – it was never going to be called a dressing-gown when you considered how much it cost. She planned how she was going to come into the room having undressed in the bathroom … she had been delighted that they had got a bedroom with a bathroom attached. Otherwise she would have had to walk down the corridor in her negligee. She planned that after it had all happened they would lie there and talk about the future, and Tony would say that he was glad they had waited for their wedding night.

  In the middle of all this she heard Tony’s voice and felt his elbow nudging her.

  ‘You’re very silent, Ash, is everything all right?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She smiled, and he went back to his conversation and she went back into her mind. The next morning they would drive to the airport and she wouldn’t be a bit afraid of the plane. After all, a grown-up, married woman who would have had sexual intercourse by that stage … naturally she wouldn’t be as eejity and gormless as other people.

  She got another nudge.

  ‘Gerry knows a great pub altogether, a known pint house, I said we’d go and have the one there.’

  ‘Will we not be a bit late for dinner in the hotel?’ she said, the frostiness plain even to the man who drank Bushmill’s whisky.

  ‘Well, maybe old son another night. …’ he began.

  But Tony Murray had felt no frost. ‘Nonsense, tonight’s the night, we might never find you again in this city, two culchies like ourselves.’ He laughed loudly. Aisling got up obediently and Tony put his arm around her shoulder.

  ‘Didn’t I get the best girl in Kilgarret, Gerry?’ he asked the drunk.

  ‘Tony, you got the very best,’ said the drunk firmly.

  *

  There was no dinner in the Shelbourne; the time spent planning whether to have melon or grapefruit or soup as a starter had been wasted. At closing time, Gerry had told them where to get chips. He wouldn’t have any himself, he had kept his money for the last bus, but anyway, money or no money, he often found that he didn’t fancy food after a few scoops of an evening. He shook their hands and wished them the best. He was no drunker than when they had met four hours earlier. He seemed no redder in the nose, no more dulled in the eye. Aisling was hardly changed either. She had accepted no more gin, only glasses of tonic water. And in the last pub they didn’t have any so she had just sat there with nothing in front of her and her mind closed. Now, chips finished, and Tony laughing like a schoolboy, they walked back through the city. In her handbag was a key to one of the most expensive hotel rooms in Ireland; they had money and planned to have had a dinner for the two of them. But instead it had been bar after bar. Five of them counting the first place. In the hall the porters looked at each other and smiled behind Tony’s back as he fumbled for change.

  ‘There’s no need for a tip now, they’ve not done anything for us,’ hissed Aisling.

  ‘I’d like to give them a tip, it’s my money, it’s my wedding night,’ stumbled Tony, swaying. ‘It’s my bloody wedding night, I’ll give as many tips as I please.’

  The porters thanked him. He gave one a half crown and the other two shillings.

  ‘Fight it out between you,’ he said.

  ‘Goodnight sir, thank you,’ they both said, and Aisling tried to support him as he staggered making them a mock courteous bow.

  ‘Leave me be, woman. She’s the same as all of them you know, can’t wait to get me upstairs.’

  The porters smiled, embarrassed for Aisling whom they could see was sobbing. And humiliated. The older porter took pity on her.

  ‘Mam, let me go ahead with the key,’ he said. And as Tony staggered along the corridor the kindly man said to Aisling, ‘If you knew how many honeymoon couples we get Madam, and the men are always scared out of their minds. I think we men are definitely the weaker sex. I’ve always thought it.’

  ‘You’re a very kind man,’ Aisling said.

  ‘Nonsense, you’ll be the happiest couple in the world, never mind.’

  Inside the bedroom Tony was all smiles.

  ‘Come on, let me at you,’ he said to Aisling.

  ‘Let me get my suit off me first,’ said Aisling. It was filthy already but she didn’t want it torn.

  She hung the jacket on the back of a chair, and folded the skirt, she stood before him in her slip and her blouse.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ he said.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ she said. ‘Can’t I get out my lovely new negligee? I want to put that on. Please.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. He sat down in a velvet armchair, suddenly, as if the strength had gone from his legs. Aisling opened the suitcase she had packed so carefully with the dinner dress she had intended to wear on top, the negligee and nightie set underneath and the washbag with flowers on it beside that. She slipped into the bathroom and washed quickly. She would love to have soaked in a long bath but she was afraid that he would not want to wait as long as that.

  She looked at her face, which seemed to her tired and drawn, pulled her long hair back and tied it loosely with the cream ribbon she had bought specially for the occasion. She put on more perfume … and rubbed a little rouge into her cheeks. She looked better now. Oh God, may he not be too drunk. Please God, may he not hurt her. Please. After all God, I did wait until I got married, a lot of people don’t, a great many people don’t. I kept my part of the bargain God, please let him not be too rough with me. She went into the room and twirled around so that he would get the full view of the negligee.

  Tony was asleep in the armchair. His mouth was open and he was snoring.

  Aisling took off the negligee and hung it carefully on one of the hotel hangers. She switched off the light in the bathroom; took the extra blanket which had been left in the wardrobe and put it over Tony. She raised his head slightly and slipped a pillow behind his neck. She loosened his shoes and took them off and she put his feet on another pillow. She had seen someone do that in a film once, where a man had gone out and got drunk over this woman and when he came home she took his army boots off and put his feet on a cushion. It had seemed a lovely thing for her to do in the film. But of course in the film he had been crying and saying he loved her. He hadn’t been snoring like Tony Murray. Her husband.

  Dublin airport

  Just a quick word to thank you for being such a support and help. Don’t leave another million years before you come back to Kilgarret. Everything in Dublin super. Roll on Rome.

  love from

  Aisling Murray

  Hotel San Martino

  Another picture for your collection. This is the Holy City or the Eternal City as we called it at school. It’s very very hot, and there are an awful lot of poor people, much poorer than you’d see in Wicklow, and lots of the Italians have no religion. There’s a bank called Sancto Spirito. Imagine having your savings in the Holy Ghost Bank! The hotel is beautiful and there’s an old-fashioned lift you can see through. Tomorrow we see Il Papa. Tony sends his love, or he would if he knew I was writing to you.

  Love,

  Aisling
r />   Hotel San Martino

  There were a hundred people there, and we were introduced to him. Signor e Signora Murray d’Irlanda. It was unbelievable. I still don’t believe it happened. Every time I see pictures of him, I keep saying to Tony … he met US. Still very hot. I roam about and look at ruins quite a lot, you’d be proud of me. We have meals in restaurants on the side of the street, not inside at all. Just like those pictures you see in Paris. The wine is very cheap and we drink it with every single meal. Except breakfast.

  Love from

  Signora Murray

  It’s got even hotter. Everyone else in Rome is golden and sun-tanned, but because of my awful colouring I just burn. So I’ve bought a parasol. Remember we used to have toy parasols once? Tony doesn’t want to go out in the heat, so we see a great deal of indoor things. I went to the catacombs. The poor martyrs, didn’t they have an awful time for their faith when it’s so easy for us? I’m quite looking forward to seeing Kilgarret where it’s cool and green … and wet, I gather from Mam’s letter.

  Love, Aisling.

  Mam, thank you very much for writing here. Nobody else did, I expect they didn’t think it would arrive. You’re an angel to tell me the bungalow is so far ahead. Thank God we won’t have to stay with the old Bag … I’ll have to put this card into an envelope now, won’t I? Everything is smashing Ma, and as I said in the other card, thank you and Dad a million times. I hope the wedding didn’t exhaust you and leave you broke or anything. I’m so looking forward to being home. I must try to remember I live with Tony now rather than saying goodbye to him in the square and running up to you and Dad like I used to. Tell the boys thanks again too and Niamh. Wasn’t it great that Elizabeth came over for the wedding, and didn’t she look marvellous? I’ve sent her a few cards from here. It must be very lonely for her back in London, I was thinking.