Silver Wedding

by Maeve Binchy

Genres: Family Life; Sagas; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A silver wedding means a family gathering - difficult occasions at the best of times. But for the Doyles - Deidre, Desmond and their children Anna, Helen and Brendan - it will be more difficult than most.

For each of them is keeping up a front; each of them is nursing a secret wound, or smarting over a hidden betrayal. As the day draws nearer, so the tension mounts, until finally the guests gather at the silver wedding party itself...

Read by Kate Binchy

(p) 1988 Audible Ltd

Release date: September 4, 2007

Publisher: Dell

Print pages: 400

Sample

AnnaAnna knew that he was doing his best to be interested. She could read his face so well. This was the same look she saw on his face when older actors would come up and join them in the club and tell old tales about people long gone. Joe tried to be interested then, too, it was a welcoming, courteous, earnest look. Hoping that it passed as genuine interest, hoping that the conversation wouldn't last too long."I'm sorry, I'm going on a bit," she apologized. She pulled a funny face at him as she sat at the other end of the bed dressed only in one of his shirts, the Sunday papers and a breakfast tray between them.Joe smiled back, a real smile this time."No, it's nice that you're so worked up about it, it's good to care about families."He meant it, she knew, in his heart he thought it was a Good Thing to care about families, like rescuing kittens from trees and beautiful sunsets and big collie dogs. In principle Joe was in favor of caring about families. But he didn't care at all about his own. He wouldn't have known how many years his parents were married. He probably didn't know how long he had been married himself. Something like a silver anniversary would not trouble Joe Ashe.Anna looked at him with the familiar feeling of tenderness and fear. Tender and protective—he looked so lovely lying there against the big pillows, his fair hair falling over his face, his thin brown shoulders so relaxed and easy. Fearful in case she would lose him, in case he would move on gently, effortlessly, out of her life, as he had moved into it.Joe Ashe never fought with people, he told Anna with his big boyish smile, life was much too short for fights. And it was true.When he was passed over for a part, when he got a bad review, there was the shrug: "Well, so it could have been different but let's not make a production out of it."Like his marriage to Janet. It was over, so why go on pretending? He just packed a small bag and left.Anna feared that one day in this very room he would pack a small bag and leave again. She would rail and plead as Janet had done and it would be no use. Janet had even come around and offered Anna money to go away. She wept about how happy she had been with Joe. She showed pictures of the two small sons. It would all be fine again if only Anna would go away."But he didn't leave you to come to me, he had been in a flat by himself for a year before he even met me," Anna had explained."Yes, and all that time I thought he would come back."Anna hated to remember Janet's tearstained face, and how she had made tea for her, and hated even more to think that her own face would be stained with tears like this one day, and as unexpectedly as it had all happened to Janet. She gave a little shiver as she looked at the handsome easy boy in her bed. Because even if he was twenty-eight years of age, he was still a boy. A gentle cruel boy."What are you thinking?" he asked.She didn't tell him. She never told him how much she thought about him and dreaded the day he would leave."I was thinking it's about time they did another film version of Romeo and Juliet. You're so handsome it would be unfair to the world not to get a chance to look at you," she said laughingly.He reached out and put the breakfast tray on the floor. The Sunday papers slid after it."Come here to me," said Joe. "My mind was running on the same lines entirely, entirely at all, "at all' as you Irish say.""What a superb imitation," Anna said dryly, but snuggling up to him all the same. "It's no wonder that you're the best actor in the whole wide world and renowned all over the globe for your great command of accents."She lay in his arms and didn't tell him about how worried she was about this silver wedding. She had seen from his face that she had already been going on about it far too long.In a million years Joe would not understand what it meant in their family. Mother and Father's twenty-fifth anniversary. They celebrated everything in the Doyle household. There were albums of memories, boxes chronicling past celebrations. On the wall of the sitting room at home there was a gallery of Major Celebrations. The wedding day itself, the three christenings. There was Grannie O'Hagan's sixtieth birthday, there was Grandpa Doyle's visit to London with all of them standing beside a sentry outside Buckingham Palace, a solemn young sentry in a busby who seemed to realize the importance of Grandpa Doyle's visit.There were the three first communions, and the three confirmations; there was a small sporting section, Brendan's school team the year he had been on the Seniors. There was an even smaller academic section, one graduation portrait of Anna herself, very studied and posed, holding her diploma as if it were a ton weight.Mother and Father always joked about the wall and said it was the most valuable collection in the world. What did they want with Old Masters and famous paintings, hadn't they gotten something much more valuable, a living wall telling the world what their life was all about?Anna had winced whenever they said that to people who came in. She winced now, lying in Joe's arms."Are you shuddering at me or is that passion?" he asked."Unbridled passion," she said, wondering, Was it normal to lie beside the most attractive man in London and think not of him but of the sitting-room wall back in the family home?The family home would have to be decorated for the silver wedding. There would be a lot of cardboard bells and silver ribbon. There would be flowers sprayed with a silver paint. They would have a tape of "The Anniversary Waltz" on the player. There would be windowsills full of cards, there might indeed be so many that it would call for an arrangement of streamers with the cards attached as they had for Christmas. The cake would have traditional decorations, the invitations would have silver edges. Inviting people to what? That was what was buzzing around Anna's head. As a family this was something they should organize for their parents. Anna and her sister, Helen, and her brother, Brendan.But it really meant Anna.She would have to do it all.Anna turned toward Joe and kissed him. She would not think about the anniversary anymore now. She would think about it tomorrow, when she was being paid to stand in a bookshop.She wouldn't think of it at this moment when there were far better things to think about."That's more like it. I thought you'd gone to sleep on me," Joe Ashe said, and held her very close to him.Anna Doyle worked in Books for People, a small bookshop much patronized by authors and publishers and all kinds of media. They never tired of saying that this was a bookshop with character, not like the big chains which were utterly without soul. Secretly Anna did not altogether agree.Too many times during her working day she had to refuse people who came in with perfectly normal requests for the latest best-seller, for a train timetable, for a book on freezer cookery. Always she had to direct them to a different shop. Anna felt that a bookshop worthy of the name should in fact stock such things instead of relying for its custom on a heavy psychology section, a detailed travel list, and poetry, sociology, and contemporary satire.It wasn't as if they were even proper specialists. She had intended to leave a year ago, but that was just when she met Joe. And when Joe had come to stay, it happened to coincide with Joe not having any work.Joe did a little here and there, and he was never broke. There was always enough to buy Anna a lovely Indian scarf, or a beautiful paper flower, or find the most glorious wild mushrooms in a Soho delicatessen.There was never any money for paying the rent or for the television, or the phone or the electricity. It would have been foolish of Anna to have left a steady job without having a better one lined up for herself. She stayed in Books for People, even though she hated the name, believing that most of the buyers of books were people anyway. The others who worked there were all perfectly pleasant, she never saw any of them outside work but there were occasional book signings, poetry evenings, and even a wine and cheese evening in aid of a small nearby theater. That was when she had met Joe Ashe.Anna was at work early on Monday morning. If she wanted time to think or to write letters, then to be in before the others was the only hope. There were only four of them who worked there; they each had a key. She switched off the burglar alarm, picked up the carton of milk and the mail from the mat. It was all circulars and handbills. The postman had not arrived yet. As Anna put on the electric kettle to make coffee, she caught sight of herself in the small mirror that was stuck to the wall. Her eyes looked large and anxious, she thought. Anna stroked her face thoughtfully. She looked pale and there were definitely shadows under the big brown eyes. Her hair was tied up with a bright pink ribbon matching exactly her pink T-shirt. She must put on a little makeup, she thought, or she would frighten the others.She wished she had gone ahead and gotten her hair cut that time. It had been so strange, she had made an appointment in a posh place where some of the Royal Family went to have their hair done. One of the girls who worked there as a stylist came into the bookshop and they had started talking. The girl said she would give Anna a discount. But the night she met Joe at the benefit evening for the theater, he had told her that her thick dark hair was beautiful the way it was.He had asked her, as he so often did still, "What are you thinking?" And in those very early times she told him the truth. That she was thinking about having her hair cut the following day."Don't even consider it," Joe had said, and then suggested that they go to have a Greek meal and discuss this thing properly.They had sat together in the warm spring night and he had told her about his acting and she had told him about her family. How she lived in a flat because she had thought she was becoming too dependent on her family, too drawn into everything they did. She went home, of course, on Sundays and one other evening in the week. Joe had looked at her, enthralled. He had never known a life where adults kept going back to the nest.In days she was visiting his flat, days later he was visiting hers because it was more comfortable. He told Anna briefly and matter-of-factly about Janet and the two little boys. Anna told Joe about the college lecturer she had loved rather unwisely during her final years, resulting in a third-class degree and in a great sense of loss.Joe was surprised that she had told him about the college lecturer. There was no hassle about shared property, shared children. He had only told her about Janet because he was still married to her. Anna had wanted to tell everything, Joe hadn't really wanted to hear.It was only logical that he should come to live with her. He didn't suggest it, and for a while she wondered what she would say if she were invited to take up residence in his flat. It would be so hard to tell Mother and Father. But after one long lovely weekend, she decided to ask Joe if he would move in properly to her small ground-floor flat in Shepherd's Bush."Well, I will, if that's what you'd like," Joe had said, pleased but not surprised, willing but not overly grateful. He had gone back to his own place, done a deal about the rent, and with two tote bags and a leather jacket over his arm he had come to live with Anna Doyle.Anna Doyle, who had to keep his arrival very secret indeed from her mother and father, who lived in Pinner and in a world where daughters did not let married men come to spend an evening, let alone a lifetime.He had been with her since that April Monday a year ago. And now it was May 1985, and by a series of complicated maneuvers Anna had managed to keep the worlds of Pinner and Shepherd's Bush satisfactorily apart while flitting from one to the other with an ever-increasing sense of guilt.Joe's mother was fifty-six but looked years younger. She worked at the food counter of a bar where lots of actors gathered, and they saw her maybe two or three times a week. She was vague and friendly, giving them a wave as if they were just good customers. She hadn't known for about six months that they lived together. Joe simply hadn't bothered to tell her. When she heard, she said, "That's nice, dear," to Anna in exactly the same tone as she would have spoken to a total stranger who had asked for a slice of the veal and ham pie.Anna had wanted her to come around to the flat."What for?" Joe had asked in honest surprise.Next time she was in the pub, Anna went to the counter and asked Joe's mother herself."Would you like to come around and see us in the flat?""What for?" she had asked with interest.Anna was determined. "I don't know, a drink maybe.""Lord, dear, I never drink, seen enough of it in this place to turn you right against it, I tell you.""Well, just to see your son," Anna went on."I see him in here, don't I? He's a grown-up now, love, he doesn't want to be looking at his old mum, day in day out."Anna had watched them since with a fascination that was half horror and half envy. They were just two people who lived in the same city and who made easy casual conversation when they met.They never talked of other members of the family. Nothing about Joe's sister, who had been in a rehabilitation center on account of drugs; or the eldest brother, who was a mercenary soldier of some sort in Africa; or the youngest brother, who worked in television as a cameraman.She never asked about her grandchildren. Joe had told Anna that Janet did take them to see her sometimes, and occasionally he had taken the boys to a park nearby where his mother lived, and she had come along for a little while. He never took them to her home."I think she has a bloke there, a young fellow, she doesn't want a lot of grandchildren trailing around after her." To Joe it was simple and clear.To Anna it was like something from another planet.In Pinner, if there were grandchildren, they would have been the central pivot of the home, as the children had been for nearly a quarter of a century. Anna sighed again as she thought of the celebrations that lay ahead and how she would have to face up to them, as she had to face up to so many things on her own.It was no use sitting in an empty bookshop with a coffee and a grievance that Joe wasn't as other men, supportive and willing to share these kinds of things with her. She had known there would be nothing like that from the first evening together.What she had to do now was work out how the silver wedding could be organized in October in a way that wouldn't drive everyone mad.Helen would be no use, that was for certain. She would send an illuminated card signed by all the sisters, she would invite Mother and Father to a special folk Mass with the community, she would get the day off and come out to Pinner in her drab gray sweater and skirt, her hair dull and lifeless and the big cross on a chain around her neck constantly in her hand. Helen didn't even look like a nun, she looked like someone a bit dopey and badly dressed retreating behind the big crucifix. And in many ways that's what she was. Helen would turn up, all right, if everything was organized, and in her canvas bag she would take back any uneaten food because one nun loved gingerbread and another had a weakness for anything with salmon in it.With a sense of despair Anna could see months ahead into the future, with her younger sister Helen a member of a religious community in South London, picking her way through the food like a scavenger and filling a tin of biscuits with foil-wrapped tidbits.But at least Helen would be there. Would Brendan come at all? That was the real worry, and the one she had been trying to avoid thinking about. If Brendan Doyle did not get the train and boat and then the train again and make it to Pinner for his parents' twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, they might as well call the whole thing off now. The disgrace would never be disguised, the emptiness would never be forgotten.An incomplete family picture on the wall.They would probably lie and say that he was in Ireland and couldn't be spared from the farm, the harvest, or the shearing or whatever people did on farms in October.But Anna knew with sickening clarity that it would be a paper-thin excuse. The best man and the maid of honor would know there had been a coldness, and the neighbors would know, and the priests would know.And the shine would be taken off the silver.How to get him back, that was the problem. Or was it? What to get him back for? Perhaps that was a bigger problem.Brendan had always been so quiet when he was a schoolboy. Who would have known that he felt this strange longing to go away from the family to such a remote place? Anna had been so shocked the day he told them. Utterly straightforward and with no care about what it would do to the rest of the family."I'm not going back to school in September, it's no use trying to persuade me. I'll never get any exams, and I don't need them. I'm going to Vincent. In Ireland. I'll go as soon as I can leave."They had railed and beseeched. With no success. This is what he was going to do."But why are you doing this to us?" Mother had cried."I'm not doing anything to you." Brendan had been mild. "I'm doing it for me, it's not going to cost you any money. It's the farm where Father grew up, I thought you'd be pleased.""Don't think he'll turn the farm over to you automatically," Father had spluttered. "That old recluse could just as well leave it to the missions. You could easily find you've put in all that hard work for nothing.""Father, I'm not thinking of inheritances and wills and people dying, I'm thinking of how I'd like to spend my days. I was happy there, and Vincent could do with another pair of hands.""Well, if he does, isn't it a wonder that he never married and provided himself with a few pairs of hands of his own around the place without asking strangers in to him?""Hardly a stranger, Father," Brendan had said. "I am his own flesh and blood, his brother's child."It had been a nightmare.And the communication since had been minimal, cards at Christmas and on birthdays. Perhaps anniversaries. Anna couldn't remember. Anniversaries. How was she going to assemble the cast for this one?The maid of honor, as they always called her, was Maureen Barry. She was Mother's best friend. They had been at school together back in Ireland. Maureen had never married; she was the same age as Mother, forty-six, though she looked younger. She had two dress shops in Dublin—she refused to call them boutiques. Perhaps Anna could talk to Maureen and see what would be best. But a warning bell went off loudly in her head. Mother was a great one for not letting things go outside the family.There had always been secrets from Maureen.Like the time that Father had lost his job. It couldn't be told.Like the time that Helen ran away when she was fourteen. That was never breathed to Maureen. Mother had said that nothing mattered in the end, everything could be sorted out just so long as family matters weren't aired abroad, and neighbors and friends weren't told all of the Doyle business. It seemed to be a very effective and soothing cure when things went wrong, so the family had always stuck to it.You would think that Anna should phone Maureen Barry now and ask her as Mother's oldest friend what was best to do about Brendan and about the anniversary in general.But Mother would curl up and die if she thought there was the remotest possibility of any member of the family revealing a secret outside it. And the coldness with Brendan was a big secret.There were no family members who could be asked to act as intermediaries.So what kind of party? The day was a Saturday, it could be a lunch. There were a lot of hotels around Pinner, Harrow, Northwood, and restaurants and places used to doing functions like this. Perhaps a hotel would be best.It would be formal, for one thing. The banqueting manager would advise about toasts and cakes and photographs.There wouldn't have to be weeks of intensive cleaning of the family home and manicuring the front garden.But a lifetime as the eldest of the Doyles had taught Anna that a hotel would not be right. There were all those dismissive remarks about hotels in the past, destructive and critical remarks about this family, which couldn't be bothered having the thing in their own home, or the other family, which would be quite glad to invite you to a common hotel, an impersonal place, but wouldn't let you over their own doorstep, thank you very much.It would have to be home, the invitation would have to say in silver lettering that the guest was being invited to Salthill, 26 Rosemary Drive, Pinner. Salthill had been a seaside resort over in the West of Ireland where Mother and Maureen Barry used to go when they were young, it had been lovely, they said. Father had never been there, he said there was little time for long family holidays when he was a boy making his way in Ireland.Wearily Anna made the list; it would be this size if there wasn't an Irish contingent, and that size if there were. It could be this size if there was to be a sit-down meal, that size if it were a buffet. This size if it were just drinks and snacks, that size if it were a proper meal.And who would pay for it?Very often the children did, she knew that.But Helen had taken a vow of poverty and had nothing. Brendan, even if he did come, which wasn't likely, was working for an agricultural worker's wages. Anna had very little money to spend on such a party.She had very little money indeed. By dint of hard saving, no lunches, and a few wise buys at Oxfam, she had saved £132. It was in the building society hoping to become £200, and then, when Joe had £200, they were going to Greece together. Joe had £11 at the moment, so he had a longer way to go. But he was sure to get a part soon. His agent had said there were a lot of things coming up. He'd be working any day now.Anna hoped that he would, she really and truly did.If he got something good, something where they recognized him properly, something steady, then everything else could fall into place. Not just the Greek holiday but everything. He could arrange a settlement for his sons, give Janet something that would make her feel independent, begin the divorce proceedings. Then Anna could risk leaving Books for People and go to a bigger shop; she would easily get promotion in a large bookshop, a graduate, experienced in the trade already. They would love her.The time had gone by in thought, and soon the keys were turning in the door and the others arriving. Soon the door was open to the public. Planning was over yet again.At lunchtime Anna made up her mind that she would go out to Pinner that evening and ask her parents straight out how they would like to celebrate the day. It seemed less celebratory than telling them that it was all in hand. But to try to do that was nonsense, really, and she could still get it wrong. She would ask them straight out.She rang them to say she would be coming over. Her mother was pleased."That's good, Anna, we haven't seen you for ages and ages. I was just saying to Daddy I hope Anna's all right and there's nothing wrong."Anna gritted her teeth."Why would there be anything wrong?""Well, it's just been so long, and we don't know what you do.""Mother, it's been eight days. I was with you last weekend.""Yes, but we don't know how you are getting on. . . .""I ring you almost every day, you know how I'm getting on and what I do, get up in Shepherd's Bush and get the tube in here, and then I go home again. That is what I do, Mother, like a great many million people in London do." Her voice rose in rage at her mother's attitude.The reply was surprisingly mild. "Why are you shouting at me, Anna, my dear child? I only said I was delighted you were coming over this evening, your father will be overjoyed. Will we have a little steak and mushrooms? That's what we'll have as a celebration to welcome you back. Yes, I'll run down to the butcher's this afternoon, and get it. . . . That's simply great you're going to come back. I can't wait to tell your father, I'll give him a ring at work now and tell him.""Don't . . . Mother, just . . . well, I mean . . .""Of course I'll tell him, give him pleasure, something to look forward to."When she hung up, Anna stood motionless, hand on the receiver, and thought about the one time she had brought Joe to lunch at Salthill, 26 Rosemary Drive. She had invited him as "a friend" and had spent the entire journey making him promise not to reveal that he was (a) living with her and (b) married to someone else."Which is the more dangerous one to let slip?" Joe had asked, grinning."They're both equally dangerous," she had said with such seriousness that he had leaned over and kissed her on the nose in the train in front of everyone.It had been all right as a visit, Anna had thought. Mother and Father had inquired politely about Joe's acting career and whether he knew famous actors and actresses.In the kitchen Mother had asked if he was Anna's boyfriend."Just a friend," Anna had insisted.On the way home she asked Joe what he had made of them."Very nice but very tense people," he had said.Tense? Mother and Father. She had never thought of them as tense. But in a way it was true.And Joe didn't know what they were like when there was no outsider there, Mother wondering why Helen hadn't been there on two occasions during the week when they had telephoned her convent. Father striding around the garden snapping the heads off flowers and saying that boy was so restless and idle that he could only end up with the job of village idiot sucking straws on a small farm, it was hard to know why he had to go back to the one village in Ireland where they were known, and live with the one man in Ireland who could be guaranteed to give the worst impression of the Doyles and all their activities, his own brother, Brendan's Uncle Vincent. Just to inherit that miserable farm.Joe had seen none of this side of things and yet he still thought her parents tense.She had pursued it. Why? How did it show itself?But Joe didn't want to be drawn."It's like this," he had said to her, smiling to take any hurt out of his words. "Some people just live that kind of life where this can be said and that can't be said, and people think what can be told and what can't. It's a way of going on where everything is a pretense, an act. . . . Now that doesn't bother me if people want to live like that. It's not my way, but people make up a lot of rules and live by them. . . .""We're not like that!" She was stung."I'm not criticizing you, my love. I'm just telling you what I see. . . . I see Hare Krishnas shaving their heads and dancing and waving bells. I see you and your family acting things out just like they do. I don't let the Hare Krishnas get up my nose, I won't let your old man and old lady either. Right?" He had grinned at her winningly.She had grinned back with a hollow empty feeling inside her and resolved not to go on about home anymore.The day came to an end. One of the nicer publishing reps was there as the shop closed. He asked her to come and have a drink."I'm going to darkest Pinner," Anna said. "I'd better set out now.""I'm driving that way, why don't we have a drink en route?" he said."Nobody's driving to Pinner." She laughed."Oh, how do you know I don't have a mistress out that way, or am hoping to acquire one?" he teased."We wouldn't discuss such things in Rosemary Drive," Anna said, mock primly."Come on, get in, the car's on a double yellow line." He laughed.He was Ken Green, she had talked to him a lot at the bookshop. They had both started work the same day, it had been a common bond.He was going to leave his company and join a bigger one, so was she; neither of them had done it."Do you think we're just cowards?" she asked him as he negotiated the rush-hour traffic."No, there are always reasons. What's holding you back, these moral folk in Rosemary Drive?""How do you know they're moral folk?" she said, surprised."You just told me there'd be no talk of mistresses in your house," Ken said."Too true, they'd be very disappointed to know that I was one myself," Anna said."So would I." Ken seemed serious."Oh, stop that." She laughed at him. "It's always easy to pay compliments to someone you know is tied up, much safer. If I told you I was free and on the rampage, you'd run a hundred miles from me instead of offering me a drink.""Absolutely wrong. I especially left your bookshop for last. I was thinking all day how nice it would be to see you. Don't you accuse me of being fainthearted."She patted his knee companionably. "No. I misjudged you." She sighed deeply. It was easy to talk to Ken, she didn't have to watch what she said. Like she would when she got to Salthill in Rosemary Drive. Like she would when she got back to Joe later on."Was that a sigh of pleasure?" he asked.With Joe or with Mother or Father she would have said yes.&