Light A Penny Candle (65 page)

Eileen dropped off now and then, after the big meal the heat of the room made her sleepy. Sean slept too, until the children laughed at him, with his glasses on, the paper clenched firmly in his hands and his mouth open giving loud snores.

‘What’s Christmas,’ he said crossly, ‘without a bit of a sleep?’

Mrs Murray’s eyes closed too. Aisling slipped out to the kitchen and did the washing-up. She set a tea tray too and
cut
some of the Christmas cake. Mrs Murray was going to send squares of it to Father John and to Joannie.

Could it be still only five o’clock? It felt like ten. She came in quietly, it was too soon to wake Mrs Murray. Let the woman sleep, she didn’t sleep much last night. Tony can’t have slept much either, in Fergusons’. His mouth was open, and he lay out in the chair by the fire. Aisling sat between them and looked at the flames making pictures and houses and palaces as she used to do when she was a child. A log fell out. It woke Tony. He reached out and poured himself a quarter glass of whisky. ‘What’s Christmas without a little drink?’ he said.

Mrs Murray thought the clock must be wrong; how could she have slept all that time? Heavens, she must do the washing-up, oh dear, weren’t they a marvellous pair, to do that, they shouldn’t have. No, really, they shouldn’t have done it.

A cup of tea was always nice after a big meal, the cake was moist, wasn’t it? Was it as good as last year? It was hard to remember last year’s but she thought this one was a bit dryer. Maybe not.

Tony was restless; he said he would prefer to spend the night in his own bed. ‘I’d like to go back to the bungalow, Ash,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to the races tomorrow I’ll have to have a good sleep. I like to be in my own bed, my own room.’

His mother looked stricken. ‘But that is your own
room
, your own bed, Tony, for years and years. If you can’t sleep here where can you sleep?’

Aisling said nothing.

‘Come on, Ash, you explain to her, I don’t sleep well, I get headaches.’

‘Not one night under your mother’s roof.’ Mrs Murray was becoming tremulous. ‘You were the Lord knows where last night, and now tonight you won’t even. …’

‘I was not the Lord knows where, I was
you
know where, Ash knows where, I was with the Fergusons. God all-bloody-mighty will you stop making it a mystery, as if I was in Mongolia? I sensibly didn’t drive home when I had a couple too many. Aren’t you always asking me to do that? Well, aren’t you?’ He looked more upset than Aisling had ever seen him.

‘Maybe tonight Tony’s right in a way, Mother-in-Law, that we should go back and sort ourselves out. Listen I’ll be up tomorrow to see you and thank you for a marvellous day. That was a feast, a feast is the only word for it. Wasn’t it Tony?’

‘Very good, grand, grand,’ Tony muttered.

‘So we’ll be off. It was a great Christmas, Mother,’ she said, kissing the thin, tense face.

Mrs Murray squeezed Aisling’s hand.

‘Well, if you think … I don’t know, rear a family and still it’s a lonely day.’

‘Well, they were fools not to be here for that spread, going to their monasteries and their house parties. Wait till I tell them what they missed.’

They waved goodbye and drove in silence through the dark wet countryside. One way back would pass the Coghlans’ cottage. Aisling decided not to take it. Tony’s face was set and hard.

The bungalow was cold and dark. She plugged in an electric fire and started to clear up some of the blood-stained table napkins which had been used by Shay for dabbing the wound.

‘Will I light a fire?’ she asked.

‘What for?’ he said.

‘It might be cheery, were you going to sit down? For the evening like?’

‘Ash will you stop
interrogating
me? It’s like living with a prison warder. Do I ask you all the time where you’re going, what you’re doing?’

‘I only asked you. …’

‘You only asked, you only asked. … I can’t bear this constant asking. I’m going out.’

‘But where on earth are you going? Listen, Tony, there’s drink here, plenty of it. Invite who you want in. Don’t go out on Christmas night, please. There’s nowhere open.’

‘There’s friends with houses open, friends who won’t nag, nag, question, question.’

‘Listen, Shay’s not at home, you know he said they were going up to Dublin tonight, you’re going to meet him at the races tomorrow. Won’t that do?’

Tony had his coat on.

‘Look, your eye has that terrible scab on it, if you knock it against anything it will open up and bleed, will you not
have
sense? I’ll light a fire and we’ll have a bottle of brandy. We’ll sit by the fire like the old times.’

‘What old times?’

‘When we got married first. It’s only a waste going out.’

‘I won’t be late, I’ll be back tonight.’

‘But where …?’

Aisling went to bed eventually. It was cold, despite the electric fire. She wore a cardigan over her nightdress. She slipped into the small divan and took a book she had loved as a child,
The Turf Cutter’s Donkey
by Patricia Lynch. She read it slowly, like she and Elizabeth had done; she remembered explaining the bits that Elizabeth didn’t understand about cutting turf in the bogs. She thought of Elizabeth and Henry and their nice flat in London and Mr White going to stay with them. She remembered the way Henry had looked at Elizabeth during the wedding reception. Tony had never looked at her like that. Why had he wanted to marry her? Or anyone? Had his drinking pattern been started then, only she just didn’t see it? Why had she thought that he loved her? She had never thought that she loved him. Not like people love in books. Not like Elizabeth had loved Johnny, or even how Niamh was crazy about this medical student. She had never felt that for Tony. Maybe this was the punishment for marrying someone you didn’t love. But how the hell were you supposed to know in Kilgarret what was love and what wasn’t?

‘I must have been mad to marry him. Quite, quite mad,’ she said aloud. And somehow when she had said it, she felt a bit better. At least the situation had been defined.
Aisling
O’Connor married Tony Murray because she was quite mad.

Eileen was surprised that Aisling didn’t go to Leopardstown to the races.

‘You used to love going up there on St Stephen’s Day,’ she said, when Aisling came in to pick at bits of the cold turkey around lunchtime. ‘Leave that alone, there’ll be no lunch if you keep taking the best bits.’

‘I didn’t feel like it, Tony thinks I’m eyeing him and watching him … which I am, I suppose. He keeps saying “It’s only my second”, when it’s his seventh. I only annoy him and everyone else.’

‘But shouldn’t you be with him? Maureen told me she saw him this morning and he had a terrible cut on his eye. I’m not repeating things, now, to make trouble, it’s just because you brought the subject up.’

‘He braked hard in the car yesterday morning, just avoided killing young Lionel Coghlan, from what I can understand. The child was on a new bike. Lionel has bruises and two cracked ribs, Tony has a cut on his eyebrow which probably needs attention but he won’t go near a doctor or a hospital.’

‘Merciful Lord.’ Eileen was shocked.

‘Oh yes, the Coghlans keep saying, thank the Lord Tony didn’t do himself any serious injury, and wasn’t he marvellous to swerve and avoid Lionel, and Lionel is white-faced, in the bed there trying to say he was only playing with his new bike when this drunk maniac came
round
the corner at a hundred miles an hour. Well, Lionel’s not saying that because he doesn’t know how, but that’s what he should be saying.’

‘But Tony wasn’t drunk in the morning, yesterday, was he?’

‘He was filled with the night before’s drink, he had no coordination, he was drunk.’

‘Well, thank God that nothing worse happened.’

‘Mam, what am I to do, will it be like this always?’

‘You know he took the pledge before, a lot of people take it after Christmas.’

‘Mam do I have to stay with him? Couldn’t I get … well … an annulment or something?’

‘What?’

‘You know, I told you about the other business, I’d have no trouble proving that to any court.’

‘Are you mad? Are you stark raving mad?’

‘But I
can’t
spend the rest of my life, Mam, I’m only twenty-six, I can’t. …’

‘Just tell me, what did you promise?’

‘What do you mean, promise?’

‘Up in that church, in front of all of us, what did you promise?’

‘At the wedding, do you mean?’

‘At the sacrament of matrimony, tell me some of the things you said. …’

‘The words of the ceremony. …’

‘Not words, Aisling, a promise, a bargain, a solemn promise … what did you agree to do?’

‘You mean better or worse, sickness or health. …’

‘I mean that, and you meant it too, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, well. But I didn’t know it was different. … It can’t be counted.’

‘Do you know what you are trying to do? Put aside the whole sacrament of matrimony. Oh dear, I didn’t know it wouldn’t all be sweetness and light. Sorry, let me start all over again. Is that what you think people should do? Is it?’

‘Mam, I don’t care what people do. I can’t be expected to stay married to a man who doesn’t want me in any way, who doesn’t care whether I’m here or not. I cannot be expected to stand like an eejit beside him for the next fifty years, which is what you seem to think.’

‘I do think. I certainly think that’s what you should do, and will do.’ Eileen looked at the stricken face, eyes dark-ringed and troubled. ‘Everything seems worse than it is this time of the year, there’s too much fluster and too many expectations. … Don’t be so dramatic, it will all work out.’

‘So you think, Mam, that no matter what happens, the only thing to do is to stay with Tony and hope that things will get better and will all work out?’

‘Of course I do, that’s the only thing
to
think, child. Will you come on up to the fire with me and have a cup of tea? I was making a sandwich for your father and myself – we’ll all have a bit of lunch together. Will you do that, he’ll be delighted to see you.’ Eileen was coaxing.

‘No Mam, I think I’ll go back to the bungalow.’

‘No, stay here, you’re cross with me now. You’re in a kind of a sulk, aren’t you?’

‘No, Mam, I’m not sulking. I asked you what you thought and you told me.’

‘But child, you can’t have expected me to say anything except what I did.’

‘I expected you to say that there was a case for annulment. I think that’s what I expected, but you didn’t.’

‘We’re not talking about technicalities. We’re talking. …’

Mrs Murray was surprised too that she hadn’t gone to the races. They had a cup of tea in the kitchen.

‘That was a great meal you cooked, can I have a bit of the turkey?’

Ethel Murray bustled around happily getting plates and knives, though Aisling only wanted to taste the skin and to please her by praising it all.

‘I suppose he’ll be all right at the races,’ she said.

‘Oh, I hope so … he’s a hard man to fathom. Can I ask you something seriously? Not wanting a polite answer, you know?’

‘Certainly you can.’ But Mrs Murray looked worried.

‘Would he have been better if he hadn’t married? You know, he didn’t drink all that much when he lived with you, do you think if he were single again, it might be … you know, like it was?’

‘But how can he be single again, isn’t he married now?’

‘Yes, but try to think, suppose he wasn’t, he hadn’t. …’

‘I don’t know, I really don’t. I don’t think it would have made any difference, he does drink too much, he drank before he got married and even more after, but I don’t
think
the marriage is the cause of it.’ She took Aisling’s hand. ‘You’re not to reproach yourself, you do everything that can be done, you’re a grand little wife, if only he had the sense. …’

‘No, you misunderstand me, I wasn’t asking was I a good or a bad wife, I was wondering did you think that Tony was really a bachelor at heart?’

Mrs Murray looked bewildered. ‘Well, I suppose there’s a bit of the boy in every man. Is that what you mean?’

Aisling gave up. ‘That’s what I meant. Hold on, don’t give me all that much. I’m going over to Maureen’s, I’ll have to eat something there too.’

Maureen’s house looked inviting and homely. Aisling wondered why she had always thought it was so bleak and dreadful. There was a big crib covered with cotton wool, the baby slept in a pram peacefully, Patrick and Peggy played with toys on the floor and Brendan Og read his new book.

‘I’d have thought you were at the races, no ties, nothing to keep you at home.’

‘Well I didn’t go, I came to see you instead.’

Maureen said she would heat up some mince pies.

‘I hear you saw Tony’s face,’ Aisling said.

‘I didn’t mean to go blabbing to Mam, oh God, now you think I’m talking about you all the time. Wouldn’t you think Mam would have had the sense …?’

‘No, I’m not picking a row, I just wanted to ask you … do you think people talk about Tony a lot?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know, his drinking, fights down in Hanrahan’s, him neglecting the business and all.’

‘Oh Aisling, I never hear anything, I mean what would people say …?’

‘I don’t know, I was asking you. I wonder do they think he’s in a bad way … do people think he’s the kind of man that … you know … should be … ought to be …?’

‘Aisling, what are you on about?’

‘I don’t think I’m the right person for Tony to live with.’

‘But who on earth else would he live with?’

‘I don’t know, he could go back to his mother, or he could take a room in the hotel, or in Fergusons’, they have rooms there, they were going to do them up once, I remember. Maybe they could do them up for Tony.’

‘Are you feeling all right? What’s this, some sort of game or joke?’

‘No. I was just looking at alternatives.’

‘And what would you do?’

‘I could go back to Mam and Dad.’

‘Aisling, you could
not
.’

‘Why couldn’t I?’ Aisling looked genuinely interested. ‘Just why not? That way everyone would be happy.’