Whitethorn Woods

by Maeve Binchy

  A few of our friends asked Bob and myself what we were doing for our twenty-fifth, for our silver wedding. We said we didn’t know because we knew the children must have planned something for us. They knew the date well, 1 April, because we always used to celebrate it when they were young.

  April Fool’s Day!

  Imagine, we made the biggest promise of our life on that day, wasn’t that typical, we would laugh. We would get them a big ice cream cake, enough for everyone to have second helpings. Our friends in the street and Bob’s sister and my cousin had all organised big silver wedding parties when it was their anniversaries. These had been great gatherings where we played the records of songs that were popular back when we were first married.

  I wondered where John and Amy would choose.

  The family and friends already knew and I realised that they were only asking us about it to make the surprise even greater for us when it happened. Because we were so used to saving for the children’s fund anyway, we had put a bit away and I got Bob a new dark grey suit and a smart white shirt, and myself a navy crêpe dress and a matching handbag. Surely we would be smart enough for anything they could spring on us.

  The time was getting nearer and there was no hint about what they had planned. In fact Amy was keeping up the fiction in a big way, saying that she and Tim, that was the man she was personal assistant to, if you know what I mean, would be going to Paris that weekend. I pretended to take her seriously. Just as I pretended to think John was going deep-sea diving with some of the guys in his office, he told me that he had bought a new wet suit and all the gear.

  Two days before, I began to worry. Two couples we knew had asked us to have supper with them, one in an Indian restaurant, one in an Italian.

  They said the day should be marked. And when I said that it would be, I got a look I didn’t like. I decided I had better clear it all up one way or another before Bob got too disappointed. He was trying his suit on every second day and admiring himself in the bedroom mirror. I rang Amy at work.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ she said – she used to call me ‘Mam’ but it was ‘Mother’ now.

  ‘About your weekend,’ I said. ‘Are you really going away, love? I mean, this weekend?’

  She was on her high horse at once. ‘Now, Mother. Please. Up to now you never interfered, you always let me live my own life, don’t tell me that now you’ve joined in the general hue and cry about Tim. His marriage is dead, Mother, there’s nothing hole in the corner about our going to Paris. Please don’t join in the general chorus against it all …’

  I told her that I hadn’t intended to criticise her trip to Paris, I hadn’t even known whether Tim was married or not. That wasn’t why I was ringing, certainly not.

  ‘So why were you ringing then, Mother?’ My daughter could be so sharp. So very hurtful.

  I blurted it out. ‘Because I wondered, had you forgotten our silver wedding on Saturday?’ I said before I could stop myself.

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘Your dad and I will have been married for twenty-five years. We thought that maybe you and John were going to … well, had arranged something for us, like a party. It’s just that the neighbours keep asking and you know …’

  I heard her catch her breath sharply. ‘Oh, Mother, yes. April Fool’s Day. Oh God, yes …’ she said.

  And I knew then that she really had forgotten. And that John had forgotten. And that there would be no party.

  And it was Thursday, too late for us to invite anyone and make a celebration. Bob’s heart would be broken, he had always found it harder than I did that his little girl didn’t come home that much and see her parents these days. He had so looked forward to wearing his new suit and he was going to sing ‘You Make Me Feel So Young’. He had speculated that they might have rented the room over The Yellow Bird pub because he had heard there was a function there next Saturday.

  I thought about Bob’s sister, who was always inclined to be a bit critical of our children, and my big-hearted cousin, and the marvellous parties they and their families had arranged. And I thought about my navy crêpe dress and the matching handbag. About the years of sitting in a draught at the checkout at the supermarket to make more money for the fund. I thought about how the fund had paid for that good jacket when she was going to the interview for her first job, and how their friends had always been invited into this house to have birthday feasts for Amy and John. I thought about the long hours Bob had put in on the road when his eyes were red and tired and his shoulders stiff in order to get the bicycles and the radios and then the CD players. I thought about all those journeys to Lego-land and the wildlife parks. I remembered the day trips across the Channel to France.

  And I felt for one dangerous moment as if I didn’t care if I never talked to either Amy or John again.

  Then I pulled myself together sharply. What had it all been for, a quarter of a century of saving and working and holding a home together to give them more than we had ever known? It couldn’t end in a petulant sulk like this. I had to get them out of this big failure on their part, reassure them that it didn’t matter. I must speak quickly before Amy started to apologise.

  So I interrupted her just as she was assembling her speech. ‘You see, your dad and I are going away together for the weekend so we wanted to be sure that you hadn’t made any other plans …’

  ‘Mother – I’m so sorry …’ she was interrupting now. But I must not let her apologise.

  Everything would change if she did.

  ‘So, that’s absolutely fine, then, and if you are sending flowers could you send them to your dad’s sister for us, as we’ll be away.’

  Amy gulped. ‘Yes, of course, Mother.’

  ‘And we’ll keep the real celebration for the pearl.’

  ‘The pearl?’

  ‘Well, that’s what we always thought, your dad and I, the silver wasn’t important for us. But what with my name being Pearl and everything, the big showy party would be on our pearl anniversary …’ I beamed goodwill and anticipation down the phone.

  ‘Which is … um … ?’ my daughter asked.

  ‘The thirtieth, of course,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Only another five years, so you and John had better get planning. We’ll make that the party of all time.’

  Her voice was full of gratitude. ‘Thank you, Mam,’ she said. Not ‘Mother’, I noticed.

  Then I thought of where I would take Bob for the outing and booked us a weekend in Blackpool. Bob’s sister would be impressed with the flowers. I knew the bouquet would be guiltily enormous. When all was said and done it was much better than allowing myself to wallow in self-pity.

  They didn’t call me Brainbox Pearl at school for nothing.

  Part 2 – Generous John

  In the office they used to call me Generous John.

  It all had to do with a silly tradition I established; it was just that every Friday I offered everyone a drink of fizzy wine and some smoked salmon on a biscuit at my desk. It started the weekend off well. People who had nowhere to go enjoyed it; those who were going somewhere always stopped by for a while and it was much better than getting smashed in a pub like a lot of other offices did. And for the cost of two or at the most three bottles of something not too pricey. For this and one packet of Marks and Spencer’s smoked salmon, a few water biscuits and a chopped-up lemon I got the reputation of being one really generous guy.

  We are a good group in our office anyway. It’s not an earth-shaking place – most of us think we might like to be somewhere more glittery by the time we’re thirty.

  But come on, it’s a job and the place has a good name in the business, so what the hell.

  I like it, and I share a big bright flat with two of my colleagues.

  My sister rang the office one day and asked to speak to John. ‘Do you mean Generous John or the other John?’ they asked. She said she thought she must mean the other but she was wrong.

  Amy was surprised. ‘You’re not generous,’ she said accusin
gly.

  ‘No, but I’m not mean,’ I said. She admitted that was true and we talked on easily.

  Are we close as brother and sister? Not really. Well, there’s the bond of course that we survived our upbringing. And we’ve lots of shared memories. But we have lived very different lives.

  Amy went to one of those fancy secretarial colleges that teaches women to dress well and social skills as well as office procedure. And she learned well, she’s as slim as a pencil, wears very smart designer jackets. Very groomed and cool looking. She has only one blind spot – that guy Tim.

  Tim has a wealthy wife, a huge house, a couple of kids at ruinously expensive schools. He has a demanding job as CEO of his company, so he wasn’t going to risk the package by going off into the sunset with my sister, glamorous as she may be and trophy wife material as she undoubtedly was. But Amy couldn’t or wouldn’t see this and by the time she did see it, it would all be too late.

  I tried to tell her this one night when we had supper together but boy, did it fall on stony and unwelcoming ground. I was told pretty sharpish that it was none of my business, that I didn’t understand the first thing about it.

  I was also reminded rather firmly that when I looked at myself in the mirror I would realise that I was no great advertisement for true and undying love. I had never had a proper girlfriend at all.

  This was not strictly true and I was annoyed by what she said. But Amy and I papered over the cracks and never talked to each other about our private lives again.

  Then I met Linda. After that of course I wanted to talk about my private life to everyone.

  Linda was a fantastic-looking girl who had been transferred from head office to us for six months. She never actually went back. She was Irish actually but very together – none of all that drippy Irish colleen thing. She was bright as a button and very popular.

  And of all the guys she could have had, which was most of them, she actually fancied me. Which was very pleasing.

  One Friday over the smoked salmon she actually asked me straight out how did Generous John spend the rest of his Friday night, and I heard myself saying in this awful voice that whatever Lovely Linda suggested would be fine with Generous John, and we went out to an Italian restaurant. And then we saw a lot of each other.

  She took me home to meet her parents. Her father was an Irish banker with some huge job and they lived in a big house with a garden, and an orchard and Labrador dogs.

  They didn’t quiz me about my family – but Linda did.

  ‘When am I going to meet them? Ever? In this century maybe?’ she kept asking.

  Now I wasn’t so stupid as to pretend that my people were classy like hers were or anything, that sort of thing is only laying up heartache ahead. No, indeed, I had told her that I was born in a small terraced house, and my parents were working class. But I couldn’t bring her to meet my mother and father. Not yet.

  Dad’s awful sister Dervla would want to come in and inspect her. My mother’s noisy cousin would find an excuse to come round. They would be talking about places back in the Old Country and trying to find links with Linda’s family. It would all be too awful.

  I would be apologising for them and then hating myself for feeling that way.

  No, keep them apart as long as possible. That was best.

  Now, meeting my sister Amy, that was another thing. I invited Amy to a sushi bar to meet Linda and she brought the dreaded Tim. He kept running his hand through his hair and saying he had to be at the next place. Amy was looking at him as if she had suddenly been turned into a spaniel dog instead of a highly efficient personal assistant, which is what she was.

  When they left I shrugged at Linda and apologised for him. ‘I don’t know why she puts up with him.’

  ‘I do,’ Linda said.

  I was amazed.

  ‘Because she loves him,’ said Linda as if it were obvious.

  And to my huge regret Linda didn’t stay with me in my room in our big airy apartment. Girls often stayed overnight; with my room-mates I would have been so proud to see Linda drinking freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast, wearing my dressing gown.

  But no, she was adamant, and I couldn’t stay in the flat she shared with another woman either. We could spend the odd overnight in a hotel when we were away somewhere, so it wasn’t sex itself that was out. No, it was what Linda called ‘dreaded domesticity’.

  We must wait until we were sure, she said, and then get our own place.

  I kept saying that I was sure but she said, nonsense, I couldn’t be yet, and meanwhile, could she meet my parents? I wondered, would they be worse at home or if I brought them here to London? It was a puzzler. At least in London awful Aunt Dervla wouldn’t be around and half the street would not be peering and examining us. But then they would be so lacking in confidence in London.

  I put it off and off.

  One day Linda rang from a business trip to say she was only fifteen miles from my home town and she’d love to call and see my parents. I lied to her, I told her they were away. When she came back, I began to bluster about what a pity it was they had missed each other, but she cut straight across me.

  ‘I didn’t miss them, John, I went to see them,’ she said.

  ‘But they were away,’ I gasped.

  ‘They must have come back,’ she said.

  ‘And?’ I asked.

  ‘And we had tea and cheese on toast and I told them a bit about what kind of work we do, you and I, and your Aunt Dervla came in and she said maybe we would all meet at The Silver sometime. What’s The Silver, John? Is it a hotel or a pub or something?’

  ‘I don’t know, I suppose so,’ I muttered.

  Linda had met my parents, been to my house, met Aunt Dervla and survived it. This must be love.

  I tried to tell Amy but she was very worked up about a visit to Paris with Tim and she didn’t really listen. I wondered, should I ask my parents to London sometime. After all, they had met Linda now so the worst bit was over. And they might not be so ill at ease as if she was a complete stranger. But there was never any real time for it, and there was a lot else going on.

  We worked long hours and then on the weekends we windsurfed all summer long. Some of us were planning deep-sea diving in the autumn. And okay, I did feel a bit bad sometimes when I thought how little they had and how much I had. But honestly, that’s the way things are. Look at people out in Africa, they have nothing at all. And we can’t cure it. So what’s the point about feeling bad all the time?

  Linda was always going home to see her family, but it was different for her. And not so far away. She was always telephoning them, telling them nonsensical things. I didn’t ring them at my home because Bob and Pearl were really the kind of people who would panic when there was a phone call. Always thought it was bad news, and they’d be warning me to save my money even though I was phoning from the office. And I did mean to book them a show, some musical, you know, that they’d like and an overnight in a hotel. But as I say, the time just passed.

  And then I get this phone call from Amy completely from left field, saying that we were meant to have arranged some awful silver wedding party for them. So that was what they meant when they said to Linda that they would be seeing her at the silver. It wasn’t a pub at all. It was a bloody twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

  ‘Shit!’ I said several times to Amy, and she was in total agreement.

  ‘If they had only said,’ she repeated over and over. ‘They never say anything and expect us to be inspired about everything.’

  I thought for a moment about the big birthday cards they sent me every year with a linen handkerchief tucked inside or a bookmark or something useless. But then of course people would remember their children’s birthdays – when I have children, when Linda and I have a son and daughter, we’ll remember birthdays too. Though I must say she’s always dashing off for something for people’s anniversaries or birthdays at home. But then girls are different.

  Which i
s why it’s so annoying about Amy, that she should have remembered this goddamned silver wedding. I said, okay, okay, damage limitation, let’s do something for them in London, have a dinner, champagne or something, send a limo for them. But oh no. Amy can’t be there. She and Tim have some weekend in Paris that just can’t be cancelled. She is so selfish, Amy, at times, and foolish. Very foolish.

  There was some kind of psychobabble about making the pearl wedding Mum’s big celebration, because of her name and everything. A pearl wedding is thirty years apparently.

  God knows where we’ll all be by then. Linda and I will be married, that’s for sure, and Tim will be on to a newer younger model than my sister, that’s also for sure.

  So I said, let’s send a bouquet each to awful Aunt Dervla’s house, and I said that maybe they were better off in Blackpool on their own, and I said we’d do a big number for the pearl wedding but somehow I didn’t entirely convince either Amy or myself.

  I told Linda all about it that evening. She listened to me very quietly. She looked at me as if she had never really seen me before.

  I didn’t really like the look. It was as if there was some kind of notice on my head.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her anxiously.

  ‘Nothing, nothing at all,’ she said. ‘Go on, tell me more.’

  So I went on talking and told her that my mother and father were of course – as she knew because she had met them – the salt of the earth. But what they were was too easily satisfied. It was pathetic, the way they set store by little things. And my mother liked looking well in front of her cousin, of all people, a dreadful woman with no grace, no style, no standards. And they were in awe of Aunt Dervla, my father’s bossy elder sister who thought she knew everything but had only been south of Watford twice.