Silver Wedding by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online

the first to have agreed. Uncle Vincent wouldn't expect it, and there were no neighbours who would think it peculiar and talk poorly of them for not going. There had been a special Mass said for the repose of his soul in their parish church and everyone they knew from the parish sympathized.
    The headmaster said that a decision about how to spend the years of one's life was a very major decision; it wasn't like choosing what cinema to go to or what football team to support. And suddenly like a vision Brendan realized that he had to get away from this, he had to escape the constant discussions and whether this was the right decision or the wrong one, and how he must tell people he was a management trainee rather than a shopworker or whatever new set of pretences would appear. He knew with the greatest clarity that he had ever possessed that he would go back to Vincent's place and work there.
    Salthill, 26 Rosemary Drive, was not a house that you walked out of without explanations. But Brendan realized that these would be the very last explanations he would ever have to give. He would regard it as an ordeal by fire and water, he would grit his teeth and go through it.
    It had been worse than he could ever have imagined. Anna and Helen had wept, and pleaded and begged him not to go away. His mother had wept too and asked what she had done to deserve this; his father had wanted to know whether Vincent had put him up to this.
    'Vincent doesn't even know,' Brendan had said.
    Nothing would dissuade him. Brendan hadn't known that he possessed such strength. For four days the battle went on.
    His mother would come and sit on his bed with cups of drinking chocolate. 'All boys go through a period like this, a time of wanting to be on their own, to be away from the family apron strings. I've suggested to your father that you go on a little holiday over to Vincent, maybe that will get it all out of your system.'
    Brendan had refused. It would have been dishonest. Because once he went he would not come back.
    His father made overtures too. 'Listen, boy, perhaps I was a bit harsh the other night saying you were only going to try and inherit that heap of old stones, I didn't mean that to sound so blunt. But you know the way it will look. You can see how people will look at it.'
    Brendan couldn't, not then, not now.
    But he would never forget the look on Vincent's face when he arrived up the road.
    He had walked all the way from the town. Vincent was standing with the old dog, Shep, at the kitchen door. He shaded his eyes from the evening light as Brendan got nearer, and he could make out the shape in the sunset.
    'Well now,' he said.
    Brendan had said nothing. He had carried a small grip bag with him, all his possessions for a new life.
    'It's yourself,' Vincent had said. 'Come on in.'
    At no time that evening did he ask why Brendan had come or how long he was staying. He never inquired whether they knew his whereabouts back in London, or if the visit had official approval.
    Vincent's view was that all this would emerge as time went by, and slowly over the weeks and months it did.
    Days came and went. There was never a harsh word between the two Doyles," uncle and nephew. In fact there were very few words at all. When Brendan thought he might go to a dance nearby, Vincent said he thought that would be a great thing altogether. He had never been great shakes at the dancing himself but he heard that it was great exercise. He went to the tin on the dresser where the money was and handed Brendan forty pounds to kit himself out.
    From time to time Brendan helped himself from the tin. He had asked in the beginning, but Vincent had put a stop to that, saying the money was there for the both of them, and to take what he needed.
    Things had been getting expensive, and from time to time Brendan went and did an evening's work in a bar for an extra few pounds to add to the till. If Vincent knew about it he never acknowledged it, either to protest or to