by Maeve Binchy
‘No.’
‘What, no shepherd’s pie? Oh, that settles it, I’ll have to stay here.’
She whispered, ‘But the whole life, the plans … the plans. Gerry, you’ve been so good, God Almighty, five months and not a drop. If you were going to have a drink, why here, why at this place, why not with friends?’
‘I haven’t any friends,’ he said.
‘Neither have I,’ she said seriously. ‘I was thinking that not long ago.’
‘So.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll go and find us some.’
He was sick three times during the night, retching and heaving into the handbasin in their room. Next morning she brought him a pot of tea and a packet of aspirins, half a grapefruit and the Irish Times. He took them all weakly. There was a picture of the wedding they had been at, of the young couple. They looked smiling and happy. Emma sat down on the bed and began to pour tea.
‘Hey, it’s after nine, aren’t you going to work?’ he asked.
‘Not today. I’m taking the day off.’
‘Won’t they fire you? Recession and all that?’
‘I don’t think so. Not for one day.’
‘That’s the problem hiring married women, isn’t it, they have to stay at home and look after their babies?’
‘Gerry.’
‘You told them you’d no babies, but still here you are staying at home looking after one.’
‘Stop it, have your tea …’
His shoulders were shaking. His head was in his hands. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, poor poor Emma, I’m sorry. I’m so ashamed.’
‘Stop now, drink your tea.’
‘What did I do?’
‘We won’t talk about it now while you feel so rotten. Come on.’
‘I must know.’
‘No worse than before, you know.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, it’s hard to describe, general carry-on, a bit of singing. A bit of telling them that you had had the cure and you could cope with drink now, a servant not a master …’
‘Jesus.’
They were silent, both of them.
‘Go to work, Emma, please.’
‘No. It’s all right, I tell you.’
‘Why are you staying at home?’
‘To look after you,’ she said simply.
‘To do sentry duty,’ he said sadly.
‘No, of course not. It’s your decision, you know that well. I can’t be a gaoler. I don’t want to be.’
He took her hand. ‘I’m very very sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does. I just want you to get inside my head. Everything was so drab and hard and relentless. Same old thing. Dear Johnny, I don’t know whether you remember my work. Dear Freddie. Dear Everybody …’
‘Shush, stop.’
‘No thanks, I’ll have a Perrier water, no, thanks, I don’t drink, no, seriously, I’d prefer a soft drink, nothing anywhere, nothing, nothing. Do you blame me for trying to colour it up a bit, just once, with somebody else’s champagne? Do you? Do you?’
‘No, I don’t. I didn’t realise it was so grey for you. Is it all the time?’
‘All the bloody time, all day, every day.’
She went downstairs then and sat in the kitchen. She sat at the kitchen table and decided that she would leave him. Not now, of course, not today, not even this year. She would wait until Helen’s fourteenth birthday perhaps, in June. Paul would be sixteen, nearly seventeen then. They would be well able to decide for themselves what to do. She made herself a cup of instant coffee and stirred it thoughtfully. The trouble about most people leaving home is that they do it on impulse. She wouldn’t do that. She’d give herself plenty of time and do it right. She would find a job first, a good job. It was a pity about RTE, but it was too close, too near, in every sense. She could rise there and get on if she had only herself to think of. But no, of course not, she had to get away. Maybe London, or some other part of Dublin anyway, not on her own doorstep. It would cause too much excitement.
She heard him upstairs brushing his teeth. She knew that he would go out for a drink this morning. There was no way she could play sentry. Suppose he said he wanted to go out and buy something; she could offer to get it for him, but he would think up a job that he could only do himself.
There were maybe another thirty-five or forty years to go. She couldn’t spend them with her heart all tied up in a ball like a clenched fist. She could not spend those years half-waking, half-sleeping in an armchair, wondering how they would bring him in. And even more frightening was sitting watching and waiting in case he broke out, the watching and waiting of the last five months. She would be blamed of course … selfish, heartless, no sense of her duty. Could you believe that anyone would do it? Emma believed that quite a lot of people could do it, and would if the occasion presented itself, or if the situation was as bad at home as hers was.
She heard Gerry come downstairs.
‘I brought down the tray,’ he said like a child expecting to be praised.
‘Oh, that’s grand, thanks.’ She took it from him. He hadn’t touched the grapefruit, nor the tea.
‘Look, I’m fine. Why don’t you go into work? Seriously, Emma, you’d only be half an hour late.’
‘Well, I might, if you’re sure …’
‘No, I’m in great shape now,’ he said.
‘What are you going to do this morning, follow up some of those letters?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He was impatient.
‘I might go in.’ She stood up. His face was pure relief.
‘Do. You’d feel better. I know you and your funny ways.’
‘Listen before I go. There’s a job going in Paddy’s business, only an assistant at the moment, but if you were interested he said that he’d be delighted for you to come in, for a year or two, say, until you got yourself straight.’ She looked at him hopefully.
He looked back restlessly. He didn’t know that so much of his future and hers rested on the reply he gave.
‘An assistant? A dogsbody to Paddy, Paddy of all people. Jesus, he must be mad to suggest it. He only suggested it so that he could crow. I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.’
‘Right. I just thought you should know.’
‘Oh, I’m not saying a word against you, it’s that eejit Paddy.’
‘Well, take it easy.’
‘You’re very good to me, not giving out, not telling me what an utter fool I made of myself, of both of us.’
‘There’s no point.’
‘I’ll make it up to you. Listen, I have to go into town for a couple of things this morning, is there anything you …?’
She shook her head wordlessly and went to the garage to take out her bicycle. She wheeled it to the gate and looked back and waved. It didn’t matter that people would blame her. They blamed her already. A man doesn’t drink like that unless there’s something very wrong with his marriage. In a way her leaving would give Gerry more dignity. People would say that the poor divil must have had a lot to put up with over the years.
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LIGHT A PENNY CANDLE
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‘Evacuated from Blitz-battered London, shy and genteel Elizabeth White is sent to stay with the boisterous O’Connors in Kilgarret, Ireland. It is the beginning of an unshakeable bond between Elizabeth and Aisling O’Connor, a friendship which will endure through twenty turbulent years of change and chaos, joy and sorrow, soaring dreams and searing betrayals …
Writing with warmth, wit and great compassion, Maeve Binchy tells a magnificent story of the lives and loves of two women, bound together in a friendship that nothing can tear asunder – not even the man who threatens to come between them forever.
‘Binchy’s novels are never less than entertaining. They are, without exception, repositories of common sense and good humour … chronicled with tenderness and wit’
Sunday Times
‘Brilliant: a remarkable,
panoramic and vastly entertaining novel’
Irish Press
‘Warm, witty and with a deep understanding of what makes us tick, it’s little wonder that Maeve Binchy’s bewitching stories have become world beaters’
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CIRCLE OF FRIENDS
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Big, generous-hearted Benny and elfin Eve Malone have been best friends growing up in sleepy Knockglen. Their one thought is to get to Dublin, to university and to freedom …
On their first day at University College, Dublin, the inseparable pair are thrown together with fellow students Nan Malone, beautiful but selfish, and handsome Jack Foley. But trouble is brewing for Benny and Eve’s new circle of friends, and before long, they find passion, tragedy – and the independence they yearned for.
‘Binchy’s novels are never less than entertaining. They are, without exception, repositories of common sense and good humour … chronicled with tenderness and wit’
Sunday Times
‘Full of warmth and pure delight’
Woman & Home
‘As gripping as a blockbuster, but infinitely gentler and wiser’
Cosmopolitan
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SILVER WEDDING
Maeve Binchy
Desmond and Deirdre Doyle will have been married for twenty-five years in October. It falls to the Doyles’ eldest daughter, Anna, to decide how best to commemorate her parents’ Silver Wedding. No use asking her sister Helen, living in her London convent, or her brother Brendan, who has chosen another form of exile on a bleak farm in the West of Ireland.
But it is unthinkable not to have a party, even though for the Doyles, family occasions are more difficult than for most. For each of them is keeping up a front, nursing a secret wound, or smarting over a hidden betrayal. And as the day draws nearer, so the tension mounts, until finally the guests gather at the party itself …
‘Maeve Binchy is one of the few writers who can pull at your heartstrings … she has a touching belief in goodness, but knows that bad things happen … reading her books is like gossiping with old friends’
Daily Express
‘A joy to read from start to finish’
Best
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VICTORIA LINE, CENTRAL LINE
Maeve Binchy
At Notting Hill, a mysterious secretary harbours a secret on her journey to work; at Highbury and Islington, a young man has a sudden change of heart; while at Holborn, a disastrous reunion is about to take place …
From Green Park to Brixton, Shepherd’s Bush to Chancery Lane, the nameless faces travelling on the Tube each have their own tales to tell. In this vintage collection of stories, Maeve Binchy brings this cross-section of London society vividly to life with her unforgettable humour and compassion.
‘Reading these tales is like listening to someone talking: someone you very much want to hear’
Sunday Telegraph
‘An adept storyteller with a sharp eye or social nuances and a pleasing affection for her characters’
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‘Full of warmth and pure delight’
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LILAC BUS
Maeve Binchy
Each Friday, Tom Fitzgerald drives the same people home from Dublin to spend the weekend in Rathdoon. Nancy, Dee, Kev and Celia – each has their own secret story, unknown to their fellow passengers. And of course Tom himself has his own reasons for returning home so regularly …
Once again, Maeve Binchy has conjured up a cast of very human characters with real joys and real sadnesses, portrayed with her trademark wit, compassion and warmth.
‘Touching, gossipy and as warming as a feather bed’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Has a lovely warm heart … Her prose is magnificently simple and lucid’
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‘Compulsive reading … Ms Binchy has the true story-teller’s knack’
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ECHOES
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Growing up in a seaside town, Clare O’Brien and David Power shout their hearts’ desires into the echo cave, praying that their destiny will lead them far away from Castlebay, the small town in which they live.
Years later, in Dublin, their paths cross again – David, following in his father’s footsteps, is studying medicine, and Clare has won a scholarship to University College.
But eventually Castlebay draws them back – and it is against a backdrop of empty grey skies, sea-spray and wind that this drama of ambition, betrayal and love finally reaches its turbulent conclusion …
‘A powerful story of love and jealously’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Compuslive reading … Ms Binchy has the true storyteller’s knack’
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‘Binchy’s novels are never less than entertaining. They are, without exception, repositories of common sense and good humour … chronicled with tenderness and wit’
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FIREFLY SUMMER
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Kate and John Ryan are happy in Mountfern, a peaceful and friendly village, and, for their four young children, an unchanging backdrop to a golden childhood. The summers are long and hot, and the twins Michael and Dara, and their siblings Eddie and Declan have, in the ivy-clad ruins of Fernscourt, the once-grand house on the bank of the river burned down during the Troubles, a place to play like no other.
Then Patrick O’Neill, an Irish American with a great deal of money in his pocket, buys the ruins of Fernscourt. No-one in Mountfern could have guessed what Patrick’s dream would mean for their small village, and it’s not until the very end of this tale of love won and lost that Patrick O’Neill himself will understand the irony and significance of his grand dream for Fernscourt …
‘Warm, humorous, sad and happy. Reading it is a joy’
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‘An adept storyteller with a sharp eye or social nuances and a pleasing affection for her characters’
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‘Warm, witty and with a deep understanding of what makes us tick, it’s little wonder that Maeve Binchy’s bewitching stories have become world beaters’
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