Light A Penny Candle (12 page)

‘We didn’t do anything,’ said one.

‘No, nothing, we were only playing, we never touched him,’ and there was a gabble of voices all trying to be freed of blame and guilt and involvement.

‘You listen to me,’ Aisling shouted. She glanced over at Elizabeth; they understood each other well enough. Elizabeth started to whisper to Donal. She still had her arm around his shoulder and she bent closer to his cold ear.

Aisling was formidable. ‘I know every one of your names. I know you all. Tonight my Mam and Dad will be down to the school. Brother Kevin will know who you all are and Brother Thomas and Brother John. All of them. They’ll deal with you. You know Donal has asthma. You could have killed him. You could all have been standing
down
in the courthouse if we hadn’t come along. You could have been young murderers. You hit him, or you knocked him down. …’

‘We only pulled his scarf off him.’

‘Yes, and nearly choked him. The worst thing you could do. Choke him and stop air getting into his chest. You stupid, thick murderer, Johnny Walsh, if Donal isn’t well you’re the cause.’

‘She’s only letting them think that, she’s only frightening them,’ Elizabeth muttered urgently to Donal. ‘She doesn’t mean it, but just look at them!’

Donal looked. They did indeed look frightened of Aisling.

‘Don’t say anything. …’ Johnny Walsh began in a whimper.

‘Don’t be such a coward! Don’t be such a murdering coward! I’ll not keep quiet and let you get away with it, murdering a boy with a bad heart and a bad chest!’ Aisling had the taste of power and loved it.

‘You haven’t a bad heart,’ hissed Elizabeth. ‘It’s for show.’ In the darkening evening, under the light drizzle, seven young lads were terrified.

‘He’s older than us, he’s fourteen months older than me. …’ began Eddie Moriarty, white with fear at the thought of what his parents would do to him when this came out.

‘Yes, and Jemmy in our shop is older than you and Paddy Hickey, the blind man, is older than you and you don’t torment them, you great eejit!’ shouted Aisling.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Johnny Walsh fearfully. Aisling had been thinking.

‘Pick up those bicycles. Now,’ she ordered. ‘Pick them up and wheel them back to town. Johnny and Eddie and you, Michael, come into my Da’s shop and tell him what’s happened. And tell him that from now on you’re going to look after Donal. No need to mention his heart, just tell him that Donal had a fall and that you seven are going to look after him and protect him until his chest gets better.’

It seemed like a glorious escape, but Johnny wanted to make sure he wasn’t walking into a trap.

‘What do we have to tell your father?’

‘That you’re going to see no harm comes to Donal. And you’d all better pray on your knees that Donal’s heart doesn’t give out during the night.’

Magnificent, like the leader of a procession, she marched in front of them back to the town and into the square, while Elizabeth and Donal followed. Donal’s face was wrapped up again in the scarf so no one else would see the giggles, and Elizabeth had one hand over her face. The other was holding Donal’s hand.

It was the only high spot in what was otherwise a very long, very dull term. Aisling thought it would never end. She was as defiant as she dared be, staying just within the limits, and she gave no time at all to her work. She fell behind in her marks and slipped from seventh to eighteenth in class in three weeks. Elizabeth had managed a steady average of tenth or eleventh – which was considered very good for a child who had never studied
the
basics. There was an element of suspicion that outside an Irish convent very little could have been taught; and that any child who had emerged fairly educated through a non-Irish, non-Catholic system must be a very diligent child indeed. She now joined in the religious knowledge classes; it had seemed silly to sit in the library reading a big Bible full of words she didn’t understand, when she could hear marvellous stones of apparitions and angels and sins and Jesus being so good to his mother. …

There had been some more worrying conversations about Elizabeth’s conversion. Some of the class wondered whether they should arrange for her first communion, so that she should have the chance to confess all her sins and get forgiveness at confession.

‘I don’t have all that many sins,’ Elizabeth had said innocently once, and everyone was horrified. She was riddled with sin, they all were, but Elizabeth was particularly bad because of all that original sin, as well.

‘But I thought that the original sin had been washed away after all the baptisms?’ Elizabeth had now been baptised four times. There had been doubt about the validity of the first one on the cloakroom floor. There had been an accusation that the water might not have flowed at exactly the same time as the words were being said. Then there was a long and bitter debate about whether the words should be said in Latin or English; one school of thought was convinced that lay baptisms were conducted in the vernacular. …

For no reason that was ever voiced, Elizabeth’s
conversion
had never been made public. There was an unspoken feeling that, for all the nuns were exhorting them to go and convert all races and spend their pocket money contributing to the conversion of little black babies, there might be a different attitude taken to doing the job on Elizabeth. It was also feared that if Elizabeth’s parents in England were to hear about it there might be great trouble.

Her mother’s letters seemed to come from another world, not just another country. Elizabeth was pleased that she wrote more often and that her letters did not consist of a list of instructions: be sure to take your medicine, wear your gloves, thank everyone. … As the war went on, Mother seemed to have cheered up, despite the complaints. There was no soap – the ration was three ounces every month: fancy trying to live a normal healthy life on three ounces of soap a month. There was no white bread – Mother had forgotten what it tasted like. She had friends in the munitions factory where she worked and very often she stayed overnight with Lily because it was such a long journey home and somehow in this depressing war, it was nice to have a friend to laugh with. Mother had changed her hair-style, she had a victory roll now; it looked funny at first but people said it suited her. Once or twice she said that she missed Elizabeth. She always ended her letters saying she hoped Elizabeth was well and happy and that it wouldn’t be long now until she could come home and they could all lead a nice normal life again.

Mother said very little about Father in her letters. And when she sent a pound for her birthday present, just before she was fourteen, Elizabeth realised with horror that she hadn’t mentioned Father for months.

Eileen was at her desk when Elizabeth came to talk to her.

‘Are you busy?’ she asked.

Eileen smiled. None of her own family would dream of asking such a question; they all assumed that she was always ready and willing to listen, to help, to act.

‘I’m not busy,’ she said, pulling up a chair. On her desk she had a shoe box filled with the shop accounts, the bills overdue that had to be sent out with a personal note. No firm reminders on a printed form could be sent to a farmer who might take offence and buy from the next town. She had a letter she now knew by heart from Mrs Sparks in Liverpool, an awkward, stunted little letter from a lonely widow whose son was away and who felt she had an ally in Sean’s mother. She wrote of her loneliness and her hopes that they’d be back soon, and how she hadn’t heard anything for six weeks and how she wondered whether Mrs O’Connor might have. She had a letter to a specialist in Dublin, and she had to plan which day to take Donal. She had a note from Sister Margaret saying that it was time they had young Niamh at school as she was nearly five now and could they bring her down towards the end of term so that it wouldn’t be so strange to her when she started in September. And, Sister Margaret said, wasn’t it the blessings of God how well young Donal had settled in at the
Brothers
’? She had heard from all sides how the youngest young hooligans were all a great support to him instead of picking on him. The Lord worked in mysterious ways. There was a letter from Maureen wondering would Da ever let her have three pounds for a gorgeous dance dress and she’d pay him back out of her allowance, when they started to get an allowance in summer. She had a letter from the County Home that said that Sean’s father was sinking fast and was very anxious to see them. They mustn’t be put off by the fact that he might not recognise them; he kept saying that he wanted to see his son and his family.

‘No, I’m not busy, child,’ said Eileen.

‘It’s just that, I don’t know how to say it, but, you know, there wouldn’t be any danger, could there, that my father is dead?’

‘
Dead
? Oh, God forbid it should be true – what makes you say that, child? Where did you get such an idea?’

Elizabeth produced a large envelope with a little sticker on it saying ‘Mother’s letters’. There were over fifty letters, each with the date they had arrived. She laid them out, picking up one from August 1943.

This is the last time Mother said anything about Father. She says he was upset because of women striking for equal pay with men, that they shouldn’t do that when there’s a war on. And then not ever again. Not even at Christmas. She doesn’t say Father sends his love. She doesn’t say anything about his ARP work. …’ Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Do you think something’s happened and she’s protecting me?’

Eileen rocked her in her arms, the soothing words and the denials, the positive statements tumbling out. Of course he was fine, of course they’d have heard, of course they would, it was that things had changed so much in England, and since Mother was going out to work she now had a much broader life and she didn’t just write about home. And men were hopeless at writing letters, sure just look at Uncle Sean now, he was most concerned to know how Maureen was getting on up in Dublin, but did he ever put pen to paper to write to her? Never. And then people don’t always keep mentioning the same things, after all when Eileen wrote to Sean she often made no mention of his father. …

It had slipped out.

‘Do you write to Sean? Oh, I didn’t know. Where is he?’

‘He’s in Africa, he’s grand, he’s got a lovely English friend called Gerry Sparks. He often asks after you in his letters … now to go back to you and your worries. We’ll go and ring up home for you on your birthday. We’ll go into the shop tomorrow night and make a three-minute call. We’ll even book it tonight. And you can tell them that it’s their big, fourteen-year-old girl talking. How about that?’

‘Will it be very expensive?’ Elizabeth wondered.

‘Not at all, and isn’t it a birthday?’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Elizabeth, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand and her nose on a sleeve.

‘Oh, Elizabeth, there’s just one thing. …’

‘I know, Auntie Eileen, they’re your business, the letters to Sean. I know.’

The next letter that came said that Sean and Gerry had left North Africa. They had been in the Anzio landings and now were well into Italy. Sean wrote that the Italian countryside was beautiful and bits of it would remind you of County Wicklow. There was even less life in his words and he wished for the fighting to end. He was glad that everything was well at home. Gerry’s mum had written about how you wouldn’t recognise Liverpool after all the raids. It was strange to think that nothing had happened in Ireland. He wrote that they might well see Rome. When he thought of all he had learned about the Holy City at the Brothers’ and now he was going to see it! He was telling Gerry about it but Gerry hadn’t heard of anything and didn’t know about the Vatican and St Peter’s. He’d write a letter from Rome, a proper letter and Mam could take it down to Brother John and show him that a boy didn’t need a Leaving Certificate to get to the Holy City.

But Sean and Gerry didn’t get to the Holy City with the rest of the allies. A minefield in the Italian countryside that looked a bit like County Wicklow took both legs off Gerry Sparks from Liverpool, aged twenty-one; and twenty yards away killed outright his friend Sean O’Connor from Kilgarret who still had four months to go before he was twenty-one.

Private S. O’Connor had listed his address as the small terraced house in Liverpool where Amy Sparks received the news. She sat in her dark kitchen and thought of her only son. She read the telegram over and over again,
thinking
that she should react more. Then she prepared herself to tell the mother of Gerry’s mate that Sean O’Connor would not be coming back to Kilgarret.

The call came through to the shop, and Eileen took it in her little eyrie. She listened without tears as Mrs Sparks explained. She waited calmly until the sobbing of the woman she had never met ceased. She sympathised in a low voice over Gerry, she said she was glad to hear that he would recover. She agreed that it was a blessing that Sean had been killed outright, but that it was great that Mrs Sparks would be able to look after Gerry.

‘You sound such a wonderful woman,’ Amy Sparks sobbed. ‘Sean always did say “My Mam is grand”. That’s what he called you,
grand
.’

‘He didn’t mean it in the English sense, like a grand lady,’ said Eileen. ‘I was at school in England, I remember it was used differently.’

‘Perhaps, if you ever came over to see your old school, perhaps you could come and stay with me. Perhaps you could come and see Gerry when they bring him back. …’ The longing in her voice was clear. ‘There’d be no restrictions on you travelling.’

Eileen didn’t even pause.

‘I’ll come very soon. If Gerry is coming back the week after next I’ll come too.’ She heard Amy Sparks gasp down the telephone. ‘If there had been a funeral for Sean I’d have come.’

For some reason that she couldn’t explain to herself afterwards, Eileen didn’t tell anyone for four days. In that
time
she went mechanically around her daily jobs, doing them with almost superhuman energy. It was as if she had made up a game with rules: she mustn’t cry. If she let herself go and cried it would be worse for Sean. She had to be strong. Otherwise his whole life had no meaning, going out to that terrible place and being blown up. It would just be meaningless if people at home just wept great tears for him.