Silver Wedding (3 page)

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 was he by way of being a 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 pretence, 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 any more.

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, come on out of 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 left your bookshop to the last specially, I was thinking all day how nice it would be to see you. Don’t you accuse me of being faint-hearted, hey?’

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.

‘Weariness: I get tired of all the lies,’ she said. ‘Very tired.’

‘But you’re a big girl now, surely you don’t have to tell lies about your life and the way you live it.’

Anna nodded her head glumly. ‘I do, truly I do.’

‘Maybe you only think you do.’

‘No, I do. Like the telephone. I’ve told them at home that my phone has been taken out, so that they won’t ring me. That’s because there’s a message on the answerphone saying “This is Joe Ashe’s number”.
He
has to have it, you see, because he’s an actor and they can’t be out of touch.’

‘Of course,’ Ken said.

‘So naturally I don’t want my mother ringing and hearing a man’s voice. And I don’t want my father asking what’s this young man doing in
my
flat.’

‘True, he might well ask that, and why he hadn’t a machine of his own and number of his own,’ Ken said sternly.

‘So I have to be careful about not mentioning things like paying the phone bill, I have to remember I’m not meant to
be
on the phone. That’s just one of the nine million lies.’

‘Well, is it all right at the other end, of the line, I mean you don’t have to lie to this actor chap?’ Ken seemed anxious to know.

‘Lie? No, not at all, what would I have to lie about?’

‘I don’t know, you said all the lies you had to tell everywhere. I thought maybe he was a jealous macho fellow, you couldn’t tell him you went for a drink with me. That’s if we ever get anywhere near a drink.’ Ken looked ruefully at the tailbacks.

‘Oh no, you don’t understand, Joe would be glad to think I went for a drink with a friend. It’s just …’ Her voice trailed away. What was it just? It was just that there was an endless utterly endless need to pretend. Pretend she was having a good time in the odd club place where they went. Pretend she
understood
this casual relationship with his mother, his wife, his children. Pretend she liked these fringe theatres where he played small parts. Pretend she enjoyed lovemaking every time. Pretend she didn’t care about this heavy family business ahead of her.

‘I don’t lie to Joe,’ she said as if she were speaking to herself. ‘I just act a bit.’

There was a silence in the car.

‘Well, he
is
an actor, I suppose,’ Ken said, trying to revive the conversation a little.

That wasn’t it. The actor didn’t act at all, he never pretended to please anyone else. It was the actor’s girlfriend who did all the acting. How odd that she had never thought of it that way before.

They sat and talked easily when they eventually found a pub.

‘Do you want to ring your people to say you’ve been delayed?’ Ken suggested.

She looked at him, surprised that he should be so thoughtful.

‘Well, if they’ve bought steak and everything …’ he said.

Mother was touched. ‘That was nice of you dear, Father was beginning to look out for you. He said he’d walk down to the station.’

‘No, I’m getting a lift.’

‘Is it that Joe? Joe Ashe the actor?’

‘No, no, Mother, Ken Green, a friend from work.’

‘I don’t think I got enough steak …’

‘He’s not coming to supper, he’s just driving me there.’

‘Well, ask him in, won’t you? We love to meet your friends. Your father and I often wish you brought friends back here more often. That all of you did over the years.’ Her voice sounded wistful, as if she were looking at her wall of pictures and not getting a proper charge from them.

‘I’ll ask him in for a moment then,’ Anna said.

‘Could you bear it?’ she asked Ken.

‘I’d like it. I can be a beard.’

‘What on earth is that?’

‘Don’t you read your gossip magazines? It’s someone who distracts attention from your real love. If they get to meet upright fellows like me they won’t get the wind of evil sensual actor lovers who have their answering machines tied to your phone.’

‘Oh shut up,’ she laughed. It was easy laughter, not forced.

They had another drink. She told Ken Green about the anniversary. She told him briefly that her sister was a nun, her brother had dropped out and gone to work on the farm of her father’s eldest brother Vincent, a small rundown place on Ireland’s west coast. Feeling a little lighter and easier already, she told him that this was why she was having supper with her parents. For the first time in a long while she was going to come right out in the open, ask them what they wanted, tell them the limitations. Explain the problems.

‘Don’t go too heavily on the limitations and problems, if they’re like you say, dwell more on the celebratory side,’ he advised.

‘Did your parents have a silver wedding?’

‘Two years ago,’ Ken said.

‘Was it great?’ she asked.

‘Not really.’

‘Oh.’

‘When I know you better I’ll tell you all about it,’ he said.

‘I thought we knew each other well now?’ Anna was disappointed.

‘No. I need more than one drink to tell the details of my whole life.’

Anna felt unreasonably annoyed that she had told him all about Joe Ashe and about how he had to be kept a secret at home.

‘I think I talk too much,’ she said contritely.

‘No, you’re just a nicer person. I’m rather buttoned up,’ Ken said. ‘Come on, drink that back and we’ll head for the Saltmines.’

‘The what?’

‘Isn’t that what you said your house was called?’

Anna laughed and hit him with her handbag. He made her feel normal again. The way she had felt a long time ago when it was great to be part of the Doyle family, instead of walking through a minefield which is what it was like these days.

*

Mother was waiting on the step.

‘I came out in case you had any difficulty parking,’ she explained.

‘Thanks, but it seemed to be quite clear … we were lucky.’ Ken spoke easily.

‘We haven’t heard much about you, so this is a nice surprise.’ Her mother’s eyes were bright, too bright.

‘Yes, it’s a surprise for me too. I don’t know Anna very well, we just talk when I go to the bookshop. I invited her for a drink this evening and as it was one of her evenings for coming to Pinner it seemed like a good chance of a drive and a chat.’

Ken Green was a salesman, Anna remembered. He earned his living selling books, getting bigger orders than booksellers wanted to give, forcing them to do window displays, encouraging them to take large cardboard presentation packs. Naturally he would be able to sell himself as well.

Her father liked him too.

Ken managed to ask the right questions, not the wrong ones. He asked easily what line of business Mr Doyle was in. Her father’s usual mulish defensive look came on his face. His voice took on the familiar pitch he had when he spoke of work, and rationalization.

Most people shuffled and sort of sympathized, mixed with jollying Desmond Doyle along when he began the tale of woe, the company that had been going along very nicely thank you until in the cause
of
rationalization a lot of jobs, perfectly sound secure jobs, went. Desmond Doyle’s job had got changed, he told Ken Green. Changed utterly. It wasn’t the same breed of men in business these days.

Anna felt weary. It was always the same, Father’s version of the story. The truth was that Father had been sacked over what Mother called a personality conflict. But it was a secret. A great secret nobody was to know. At school it was never to be mentioned. Anna’s first great habits of secrecy must have begun then, she realized. Perhaps that was when the secrecy all began. Because a year later Father was employed again by the same firm. And that was never explained either.

Ken Green didn’t mutter agreement about the world in general and the ways of businessmen in particular.

‘How did you manage to survive the rationalization? Were you in some essential post?’

Anna’s hand flew to her mouth. No one had been as direct as this before in this household. Anna’s mother looked with alarmed glances from one face to another. There was a short pause.

‘I didn’t survive it; as it happens,’ Desmond Doyle said. ‘I was out for a year. But they brought me back, when there was a change of personnel along the line, when some personality differences had been ironed out.’

Anna’s hand remained at her mouth. This was the
first
time that Father had
ever
acknowledged that he had been a year unemployed. She was almost afraid to see how her mother had taken it.

Ken was nodding in agreement. ‘That often happens, it’s something like putting all the pieces into a paper bag and shaking a few of them back on to the board. Though the pieces aren’t always put back in the right holes?’ He smiled encouragingly.