Light A Penny Candle (76 page)

He came back and took her in his arms. ‘You have a fool for a husband.’

‘No, I don’t, I have the man I love.’

‘Eileen,’ he called and she crawled from the sitting room, ‘Eileen, you have a very foolish father, remember this always. But your mother, she’s worth a million pounds.’ Eileen smiled happily at them both.

‘Will we have a joint birthday party? It’ll be the last one before we’re thirty?’ Aisling examined her face as minutely for lines these days as she had done for spots long ago.

‘That’s a great idea. I’d like that. Any excuse is good enough for me.’

‘Right, will we have it in your place, it’s bigger?’

‘No, the neighbours, they’re difficult, and the stairs.’

Aisling looked up in surprise from examining her eyes.

‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Why do I think I can fool you? It’s Henry, he’s very unrelaxed these days, I think a party would fuss him.’

‘Great, we’ll have it here. Let’s make a list … Old faithfuls, Johnny, Simon, Stefan, Anna, your Pa?’

‘No, for God’s sake, let’s not ask Father, not to something that’s meant to be a bit of fun.’

‘Elizabeth, you said he was much better. …’

‘He is, but he’s not jolly … let’s not. …’

‘Fine. Johnny’s friend Nick is back living with him again.’

‘Oh, Nick from the travel agency …?’

‘Yes, he’s getting a divorce, his marriage went up the spout, he keeps saying … he’s quite nice. And I can ask the girl in the flat below, Julia. …’

‘Oh, I remember … the one that. …’

‘Yes, the one that Johnny was ogling. Well, if he does he does. I learned that from you. No point in trying to hide all the competition from him.’

‘You learned pretty fast.’

‘I was much older and sadder than you.’

‘You’re never really sad, Aisling, that’s your magic … that’s why Johnny likes you so much. I think he probably likes you more than anyone he ever met. I’ve never said it
before
because it seemed … well, intrusive, and maybe even giving you a false hope. But I’ve seen him and he listens to everything you say, and throws his head back, laughing. And he is delighted with all your bright ways.’

Aisling looked embarrassed.

‘Yes, I know, it does sound a bit flowery, but I know what I’m talking about. With me it was different. I was so young and so silly but I put on this great mask of independence for years. He admired my sort of gutsiness I think. But with you it’s different. I think he’ll stick with you. …’

Aisling stood up and stretched out her arms wide. ‘Yippee. That’s the best news I’ve heard yet. I’m never sure of him, not for one moment. Is that the only reason he’s so important – just because people can’t be sure of him?’

‘I don’t think it could be. Not unless he were really something to begin with. If he were empty and silly, half the world wouldn’t be breaking their hearts over him so regularly.’

‘Quite right. Now that you’ve told me this I think we’ll strike Julia off the list. Why let her come up two floors just to break her heart over Johnny Stone when you and I know she’s only wasting her time?’

Ethel Murray spent an hour sitting at the dining-room table and reading and rereading the letter she had written to Aisling. She would not send it, the girl would misunderstand it. The solicitor had told her she must make no remarks that could be taken up in any way and she must make no offers or promises. Did the letter give
anything
away or make any concessions? Who could be sure? She had wanted to write to the girl. But maybe it was wiser not. She was wracked with indecision. Why was there never anyone to advise her?

Eventually she tore it up and sent Aisling a telegram instead.

Regret inform you Tony Murray died peacefully today

Requiescat in Pace
.

Ethel Murray

‘She couldn’t go to the funeral. What on earth could she do? Standing up there at a dreadful little ceremony and from a hospital. I know what they’re like, Mother died in a hospital. It was terrible, terrible. Just the Murrays there, not speaking to her. Standing in widow’s weeds. Of course she couldn’t go. It would be ridiculous.’

‘All right, don’t go on so, I just said that I would have expected her to go. You said yourself that the Irish were very conscious of attending people’s funerals. That’s all.’

‘It’s the way you said it, you were criticising her.’

‘No I was not, but there are plenty of things I could criticise if I had a mind to. …’

‘Oh, let’s stop, Henry,’ Elizabeth said wearily. They seemed to be rowing all the time these days. About nothing. Once she saw Eileen looking at her. She wondered had she looked at Mother and Father like that when she was nearly two? And had they worried about her or each other?

*

‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ Johnny sat across the room, ‘I don’t know what I should do, sympathise or not.’

‘They don’t have a section on this in an etiquette book,’ Aisling said. She looked pale and tired. She had been awake all night. The telegram had been so cold. They were cutting her out, keeping her away, when she never had any quarrel with them. Tears of self-pity had come in the night. What would have been the right course, wait until he fell down from drink or his liver gave out in Kilgarret? Perhaps she should have done so earlier. He could never have lived two and a half years drinking the way he had been when she left him. Perhaps Mam was right, she should have stayed. Now she had enemies, hostile people who sent her bitter telegrams, she had people who didn’t know what to say to her. In Kilgarret and even here.

‘He was very nice, years ago, Johnny,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to become all maudlin and start crying for what could have been. But when he was much younger, when he used to come round and take me to the pictures, and talk to Mam and Dad, he was nice then. And we used to laugh at the pictures, and even that first time in Rome … he was very, very nice. He wasn’t always a bastard. …’

‘I know.’ Johnny was soothing.

‘He hadn’t a happy life, he never really liked working in the business, he didn’t get on with his mother – they rubbed each other up the wrong way. And then I wasn’t what he hoped either.’

‘Well, he was a bit of a disappointment to you too, chicken, don’t forget that.’

‘No, I don’t ever forget that. It’s just, well, it’s just such a waste, isn’t it? Here he is, dead in Lancashire, and nobody loved him and he never had any real happiness – dead from drink before he’s forty.’

‘He was a loser, the poor old Squire,’ said Johnny, and changed the subject.

At no time in the next months was it ever mentioned that Aisling was now a widow. She was now free to marry again. Aisling thought about it quite a lot. She thought that Johnny must have thought about it too, but it wasn’t something you said soon after a husband died. Any husband, even an estranged one. Elizabeth believed that Johnny had never given it a single thought. If Tony Murray were alive or dead, good or bad, present or absent, Johnny Stone would still have paid the same attention to Aisling. Aisling was certainly Johnny’s longest-lasting and brightest-burning romance apart from herself. In fact there were even fewer Susies and Julias than there had been. But marriage? Elizabeth was quite sure that this was never in Johnny’s plans.

Simon got engaged, out of the blue, to a very pretty Welsh girl called Bethan. They announced it quite unexpectedly at a gathering in the Battersea flat. Aisling and Johnny were there as well. It was going to be a very quiet wedding, they feared. Bethan’s parents were chapel, and very funny
about
drink and things, so the sooner and the quieter, the better.

In three weeks’ time actually.

‘Bet you she’s pregnant,’ Aisling whispered to Elizabeth when they were bringing things in from the kitchen.

‘Obviously, but how cunning to snatch Simon just at the right time of his professional life. He needs to settle down now, she’s nicely spoken. It could have been any of a dozen of them. Clever little Bethan.’

‘I wonder is Johnny at the right time?’ Aisling mused, with a gleam in her eye.

‘I don’t think it would be wise to find out,’ Elizabeth smiled. ‘Johnny doesn’t marry his pregnant ladies.’

‘Some of them didn’t give him a chance to decide whether he would or not. …’

In ten years that was the first time that the abortion had been mentioned.

Jimmy Farrelly, the solicitor from Kilgarret, had written to say that the Murrays had instructed a firm of solicitors in Dublin to handle the inheritance of Tony Murray. His letter was firm and to the point. There had been enough shillyshallying during Tony’s lifetime, Aisling must now decide to claim what was rightfully hers. The law said she was entitled to a one-third share in the business, Murray’s Provisions and Vintners; the other two shares were owned by Joannie and Mrs Murray. She owned the bungalow completely – it had not been sold, as she had heard, it had been let to the present inhabitants. She might wish to come
to
some arrangement about being bought out of the firm, but it was only sensible for her own future to come to a realistic decision soon. The longer the whole thing was held in abeyance, the less likely it was she would get her fair share. Mrs Murray and Joannie had instructed their solicitors to disinherit Aisling on the ground of deserting her husband.

‘I don’t mind what you do, child, your mother would have known more about such things than I do. Do what you think is fair. That woman has had a lot of trouble, if she can be pleased in some fair way try to see to it. You’ll always have your share of this business, such as it is, after my time’

‘Oh Dad, stop talking about
your time
, and
after your time
,’ she cried and hung up the phone.

Maureen said she should take them for everything she could. Otherwise they’d all be laughing stocks, everyone knew that Tony Murray was a drunk and a wife-beater. She had put up with a great deal too much. Take what she could. And to hell with their feelings.

Donal said it was hard to know, but living in a small town he felt sure that things should be worked out in a way that everyone could live peaceably together. It wasn’t his affair, but he would urge Aisling to think of the future when she might want to live back in Kilgarret, and it was better not to have too many old sores to reopen.

*

Eamonn said that if she had to give back the car there’d be a problem because he had done a trade-in, and given fifty pounds of his own money to get a Cortina. But he could work it out.

Niamh wrote and said that since Aisling had asked their views she would be happy to give hers. If the law said the property belonged to his wife, take it. If she felt like making an act of great generosity to the dreadful Murrays, make it with part of the property, but one of these days Aisling would not be a dynamic twenty-nine-year-old, she would be a rich old bag.

Aisling asked Johnny what he thought she should do.

‘What would the Squire have wanted?’ he said.

‘At what stage?’

‘When he was still sane.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘You must.’

‘No, I haven’t, in the lovey-dovey bit, of course, he’d have wanted me to have the moon.’

‘Then take the moon, chicken,’ said Johnny.

Jimmy Farrelly said it was very simple; he explained that Aisling was prepared to go into open court with a description of her life with Tony Murray and her reasons and justification for leaving him. She could produce witnesses from hospitals, and his own letters received
almost
three years ago. He said she was not unwilling to be generous about the business once any opposition to her right to inherit was withdrawn. Off the record he had told Mrs Murray that she would not press her share for the third of the firm, new deeds of association could be drawn up, dividing it between the two women, Joannie and Ethel Murray.

He said it had been electrifying; once they had heard she was prepared to fight it, all opposition fizzled out. Probate was granted, and Aisling inherited everything that had belonged to Tony Murray. His stocks and snares were transferred to her, the house was sold at a reasonable price to the cousins of the Moriartys, and that money was lodged to her account in England. She abdicated any right to a share in the business of Murray’s, and she directed that Tony’s car should be given to Mr Meade in the shop.

‘God, I never knew anything happen so quickly,’ Jimmy Farrelly said to his wife. ‘Once those Murrays knew that Aisling O’Connor was prepared to fight it and tell about Tony they went down like a pack of cards. He must have had something desperate to hide, and he was the nicest fellow you could meet, when he was sober.’

It was all completed shortly before Christmas … and Aisling pointed out to Johnny that she was now a wealthy widow. ‘You shouldn’t pass me over, men like you are always on the lookout for wealthy widows.’

‘But I haven’t passed you over, I’ve found you and you’re mine,’ Johnny said, slightly puzzled.

‘And when will you make an honest woman of me?’ she asked, lightly teasing but in deadly earnest.

He stood up. They had been sitting on the end of her bed. He walked to the window and looked out. There was a light snowfall. ‘You mean it, chicken, don’t you?’

‘Well, don’t you want to?’ She sat on the bed, her beautiful red hair falling down her back, and her turquoise dressing-gown making her look like a stab of colour against the white bedclothes.

‘We
are
together, you
are
an honest woman, you’ve always been an honest woman.’ He looked beseeching.

‘I’d like to be your wife.’

‘You are in every way, every possible way. This is better than being married.’

‘How do we know, we haven’t tried being married?’

‘You have,’ he said.

‘To each other,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I do, very, very much, but I don’t feel … I’m sorry – don’t think me very weak. …’

‘No, not weak.’

‘What then?’

‘I don’t know. Mean, I suppose. Afraid to try it, afraid to take me on.’

‘Ah, heavens above, Aisling, that’s not true. I’ve taken you on. I’m besotted with you.’