Silver Wedding by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online

said. ‘This is the land you children came from , it’s a grand thing to have you back from all those red buses and crowds of people to walk your own soil again.’
    Grandpa Doyle had been to London once on a visit. Brendan knew that because of the pictures, the one on the wall taken outside Buckingham Palace, and the many in the albums. He couldn’t really remember the visit. Now as he looked at these two men standing in front of the house he felt an odd sense of having come home. Like those children’s stories he used to read when an adventure was coming to an end and they were coming out of the forest. He was afraid to speak in case it would ruin it.
    They had stayed a week there that time. Grandpa Doyle had been frail, and hadn’t walked very much further than his front door. But Vincent had taken them all over the place. Sometimes in the old car with its bockety trailer; the trailer had not changed since that first visit. Sometimes Vincent couldn’t be bothered to untackle it from the car even though there might be no need to transport a sheep, and it rattled along comfortingly behind them.
    Vincent used to go off to see his sheep twice a day. Sheep had a bad habit of falling over on their backs and lying there, legs heaving in the air; you have to right them, put them the right way up.
    Anna had asked was it only Uncle Vincent’s sheep that did this or was it all sheep? She didn’t want to speak about it when she got back to London in case it was just a habit of the Doyles’ sheep. Vincent had given her a funny look but had said quite agreeably that no harm could come from admitting that sheep fell over, it was a fairly common occurrence in the breed, even in England.
    Then Vincent would stop and mend walls; sheep were forever crashing through the little stone walls and dislodging bits of them, he explained. Yes, he confirmed to Anna before she had to ask, this too was a general failing in them as a species.
    In the town he brought them into a bar with high stools and bought them lemonade. None of them had ever been in a public house before. Helen asked for a pint of stout but didn’t get it. Vincent hadn’t minded. It was the barman who had said she was too young.
    Even way back then, Brendan had noticed that Vincent had never bothered to explain to people who they were; he didn’t fuss and introduce them as his brother’s children, explain that they were over here for a week’s visit, that in real life they lived in a lovely leafy suburb of North London called Pinner, and that they played tennis at weekends in the summer. Mother and Father would have managed to tell all that to almost anyone. Vincent just went on the way he always did, talking little, replying slowly and effortlessly when he was asked a question.
    Brendan got the feeling that he’d prefer
not
to be asked too many questions. Sometimes, even on that holiday, he and Vincent had walked miles together with hardly a word exchanged. It was extraordinarily restful.
    He hated it when the week was over.
    ‘Maybe we’ll come back again,’ he had said to Vincent as they left.
    ‘Maybe.’ Vincent hadn’t sounded sure.
    ‘Why do you think we might not?’ They were leaning on a gate to the small vegetable area. There were a few drills of potatoes there and easy things like cabbage and carrots and parsnips. Things that wouldn’t kill you looking after them, Vincent had explained.
    ‘Ah, there was a lot of talk about you all coming back here, but I think it came to nothing. Not after they saw the place.’
    Brendan’s heart skipped.
    ‘Coming back … for more than a holiday do you mean?’
    ‘Wasn’t that what it was all about?’
    ‘Was it?’
    He had seen his uncle’s eyes looking at him kindly.
    ‘Yerra, don’t worry yourself, Brendan boy, just live your life the best you can, and then one day you can go off and be where people won’t be getting at you.’
    ‘When would that day be?’
    ‘You’ll know when it arrives,’ Vincent