Silver Wedding by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online Page B

silly face.
    'What's wrong with her at all, is she hurt?' Brendan asked.
    'No. Not a scratch on her.'
    'Then what's all that caterwauling out of her?'
    Vincent looked long at the distressed sheep. 'That's the one that lay on its lamb. Crushed the little thing to death,' he said.
    'Stupid thicko sheep," Brendan said. 'Sits on her own perfectly good lamb, then gets stuck in a gate, that's what gives sheep a bad name.'
    The ewe looked at him trustingly and gave a great baaa into the air.
    'She doesn't know I'm insulting her,' Brendan said.
    'Divil a bit she'd care. She's looking for the lamb.'
    'Doesn't she know she suffocated it?'
    'Not at all. How would she know that?' Vincent said.
    Companionably the two men walked back towards the house to make their lunch.
    Vincent's eyes fell on the envelopes and cards.
    'Well now, it's your birthday,' he said. 'Imagine that.'
    'Yes.' Brendan sounded grumpy.
    His uncle looked at him for a while.
    'It's good of them to remember you, it would be scant remembering you'd get if you had to rely on me.'
    'I don't worry about remembering.. . not that sort.' He was still bad-tempered as he washed the potatoes at the sink and put them into the big saucepan of water.
    'Will I put them up on the mantelpiece for you?'
    Vincent had never said anything like that.
    'No, no. I wouldn't like that.'
    'All right so.' His uncle collected them neatly and left them in a little pile. He saw Anna's long typed letter but made no comment. During the meal he waited for the boy to speak.
    'Anna has this notion I should go over to England and play games for some silver wedding celebrations. Silver,' he scoffed at the word.
    'That's how many?' Vincent asked.
    'Twenty-five glorious years.'
    'Are they that long married? Lord, Lord.'
    'You weren't at the wedding yourself?'
    'God Brendan, what would take me to a wedding, I ask you?'
    'They want me to go over. I'm not going next or near it.'
    'Well, we all do what we want to do.'
    Brendan thought about that for a long time.
    'I suppose we do in the end,' he said.
    They lit their cigarettes to smoke while they drank their big mugs of tea.
    'And they don't want me there, I'd only be an embarrassment.
    Mother would have to be explaining me to people, and why I 't didn't do this or look like that, and Father would be quizzing me, asking me questions.'
    'Well, you said you weren't going so what's the worry about it?'
    'It's not till October,' Brendan said.
    'October, is that a fact?' Vincent looked puzzled.
    'I know, isn't it just like them to be setting h all up now?'
    They left it for a while but his face was troubled, and his uncle knew he would speak of it again.
    'In a way, of course, once in a few years isn't much to go over. In a way of looking at it, it mightn't be much to give them.'
    'It's your own decision, lad.'
    'You wouldn't point me one way or the other, I suppose?'
    'Indeed I would not.'
    'It might be too expensive for us to afford the fare.' Brendan looked up at the biscuit tin, maybe this was an out.
    'There's always the money for the fare, you know that.'
    He did know it. He had just been hoping that they could use it as an excuse. Even to themselves.
    'And I would only be one of a crowd, if I were to go it would be better to go on my own some time.'
    'Whatever you say yourself.'
    Outside they heard a bleating. The sheep with the foolish face, the one that had suffocated her lamb was still looking for it. She had come towards the house hoping that it might have strayed in there. Vincent and Brendan looked out the kitchen window. The sheep Still called out.
    'She'd have been a hopeless mother to it even if it had lived,' Brendan said.
    'She doesn't know that, she's just living by some kind of instinct. She'd like to see it for a bit. To know that it's all right, sort of.'
    It was one of the longest speeches his uncle had ever made. He looked at his uncle and reached out to touch him. He put his arm gently around the older man's shoulder, feeling moved to the