Light A Penny Candle (7 page)

And she thought she was doing a good job. Day by day Elizabeth began to appear more confident. That anxious upturned look was getting less frequent. Aisling noticed that she didn’t say sorry so much. She still wasn’t very forthcoming about secrets and confidences and though Aisling pressed her about a whole variety of subjects she seemed withdrawn.

‘But go on tell me about school … tell me about Monica … the first Monica.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Elizabeth would say.

‘Oh go on, go on. I tell you everything.’

‘Well, she was Monica Hart. She used to sit near me, that’s all.’

‘That’s
all
?’ Aisling was not only disappointed, she felt that Elizabeth was holding out on her. There must have been more.

Or about birthdays. What did Elizabeth do, who came to the house, what did she get as presents?

Elizabeth had got a cardigan last May when she had been ten, and a box of paints. Yes, that was all. No, no party. Yes, perhaps some of the girls at school had parties. No, not Monica Hart. Who did she miss most? Well Miss James. Miss James was very nice. Nicer than Sister Mary? Well different. Nicer in a way because she wasn’t a Holy Sister, You know, more a real person. Yes, she missed Miss James most.

‘Apart from your Mam and Dad,’ Aisling added just to have the record straight.

‘Oh yes. You said at school. Of course I miss my Mum and Dad.’

Aisling used to include Elizabeth’s parents in her prayers.

‘God bless me and make me good, and God bless Mam and Dad, and Peggy and Sean and Maureen and Eamonn and Donal and Niamh, and Sister Mary, and everyone in Kilgarret, and everyone in Wicklow, and in Ireland, and in
the
world. And God bless Elizabeth and make sure that her parents, Auntie Violet and Uncle George, are safe during all the things that are happening in London.’

Elizabeth used to say thank you at the end of these prayers which were chanted from the end of Aisling’s bed. But Aisling pointed out that she wasn’t saying them to Elizabeth, just to God.

Sometimes Elizabeth wondered what Mother would do if Aisling ran up to her and called her Auntie Violet. She was sure that Mother would think Aisling and all the O’Connors very rough. Which, of course, they were. But she hoped that Mother wouldn’t come over and see them just yet anyway. If Mother came now she might take Elizabeth away. Mother hated dirt, and really sometimes the house was very dirty.

Nobody ever cleaned the bathroom, and the kitchen had bits of food all over it, not just under nice food covers like Mother had. Mother would never understand sitting at a table where the cloth was full of stains, where nobody had their own napkin ring, where if something fell on the floor it was picked up and eaten as often as not. Mother had been here years and years ago and only remembered that it had been dirty. Elizabeth feared that it might have got even worse since those days.

Even in a few short weeks Elizabeth had become very defensive about her new home; she would hate to hear Mother criticise it, or Father to make a disparaging remark about the way they lived. When Sister Mary had corrected Aisling in class the other day Elizabeth’s face had burned.

‘Sit up straight child and tie that carroty hair back. Now do you hear me, Aisling O’Connor, don’t come into this classroom tomorrow without a bow on all that streelish hair.’

Elizabeth had been offended on Aisling’s behalf. To call her beautiful hair ‘carroty’. It was a great insult. Miss James would never have said anything about a pupil’s appearance. It just wasn’t done. But funnily, Aisling hadn’t minded at all; she had just shaken it back, giggled at Elizabeth and, when Sister Mary’s back was turned, made a face at her retreating presence which made all the other girls stuff their hands into their mouths to prevent a squeak escaping.

The other girls were from farms near Kilgarret, or else their parents had small businesses in the town. It was all so different here from home. Hardly anyone’s father went out to work at a place and then came home from it in the evening. There
was
a bank but there only seemed to be two people in it, not like Father’s bank. Eileen had pointed it out to her one day, as she pointed out lots of things which had some kind of link with home.

The pupils in the convent welcomed Elizabeth as a novelty but because she was so shy and timid some of them lost interest in her fairly quickly. This in itself was a relief, as she hated being the object of their attention. Aisling, as her self-appointed knight-in-armour, was often more of a menace than a help.

When the girls asked her about her other school, Aisling would intervene on her behalf. …

‘She doesn’t know much about it. It was bombed, you see, in the blitz. Everyone dead and buried in the rubble. …’

Sometimes Elizabeth would protest afterwards.

‘Honestly Aisling … you shouldn’t say that, I don’t think the school is all in rubble … it’s not true.’

‘Oh, it might be,’ Aisling would say airily. ‘Anyway, you talk so little about your life in London people think it’s funny. It’s better to have an excuse.’

Did she talk very little? Possibly. Mother hadn’t encouraged long tales with no middles or ends like Aisling, Eamonn and Donal related about their doings … Mother hadn’t been interested to enquire about the other girls at school and had even been bored when she talked about Miss James. It was all so
different
.

Nothing had led Elizabeth to expect their passionate interest in her soul. It had been explained to the class that since she was of the Protestant faith she would read her Bible during catechism classes. Green with envy for a lifestyle that didn’t include five hard questions of catechism each evening, the others pestered Elizabeth about her own particular route to God.

‘But you don’t go to church, not even the Protestant church,’ Joannie Murray persisted.

‘No. I … Auntie Eileen said she would take me … but, no. It’s a bit different you see,’ Elizabeth stammered.

‘But don’t you have to go to some church even if it’s only a Protestant church?’ Joannie Murray hated things to be inconclusive.

‘Well … yes if you can. I think.’

‘Why don’t you go to the Protestant church then? It’s just beside you … it’s nearer than our church and we all go up the hill to our church. Every Sunday and holidays of obligation. Otherwise we’d go to hell. Why won’t you have to go to hell?’

Aisling was usually at hand.

‘It’s different for her. She didn’t have the gift of faith.’

This satisfied some of them but not all.

‘The gift of faith is only hearing about God, she’s heard about God from us now.’

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.’