Chestnut Street Read Online Free Page B

mother’s face was set in such hard disapproving lines it didn’t look like a face anymore, it looked like a diagram.
    Maura couldn’t wait to get back to Dublin. To Dublin and to Larry. Larry, the
love
of her life. Maura hadn’t told them anything at home about Larry, and she told Larry a fairly edited version of things at home. It wasn’t that she was being secretive or deliberately trying to live two separate lives, pretending to be different things to different people, it was just that the vocabulary wasn’t there. There weren’t the words to say to her mother.
    “Look, please don’t worry about me. I’m not remotely jealous of poor Mary marrying that
ahmadahn
Paudie Ryan. I have a terrific fellow altogether in Dublin, and we’re as good as living together, I’m in his flat so much and he’s in mine, and it’s all great.”
    She might as well tell her mother that Martians had arrived in the hardware shop with an order for a spaceship.
    And even though she could talk about everything to Larry, and they got on so well on every level, she couldn’t really explain her inquisitive mother, who automatically counted up to nine on her fingers when she heard of a pregnancy to check that it was all within the correct timescale. How could she tell Larry about her sister, the nun, with the earnest face, saying that the women’s movement had a lot to answer for, or about her silent father, or her discontented brother making swipes and gropes at women because he was afraid of them. Or about Brendan, the evil-tempered spoiled brat who got away with pure murder.
    The worlds would have to continue to live apart. Maura sighed as she got into her car to drive back to Dublin.
    “I wonder would some men think driving a car was a bit fast,” her mother said, having given the matter some thought.
    “I wonder,” Maura said, keeping her temper with difficulty by stamping a nightmarish grin on her face.
    “It couldn’t be that that’s holding the men back,” her mother speculated.
    “Perhaps I should take the car into the square and burn it symbolically—would that do, do you think?” Maura offered, still smiling idiotically.
    “Oh, wait till you end up like your aunt Anna—that’ll soften your cough for you,” said her mother.
    Maura drove back to Dublin wondering had her mother ever even remotely loved the silent man in the hardware shop. Why had they had four children together, one of them at an age when people might have thought they were past that sort of thing. It was a mystery.
    Larry cooked dinner for her. He told her that she looked beautiful when she was tired. He said he had another short story accepted. He said they should go to Greece for a holiday. He told her about the beautiful light out on the Greek islands. He told her he loved her. And she fell asleep in his arms.
    Maura got the letter from Deirdre a few months later. She and David were getting married. David’s father and brother loved fishing; if they could combine it with a week on a riverbank then they’d swallow the Catholic ceremony and come over to Ireland by car. Would Maura be the bridesmaid? She could wear whatever she liked, honestly, none of that caper of dressing her up in puce like Mary had done to poor Paudie’s unfortunate sister. Please, would Maura do this for her—it would be just one day out of their lives, then they could go on living as they wanted to live. Forever.
    Maura read the letter many times. Something in it had touched her. Deirdre, fast Deirdre, leading a liberated life in Wales, wasgoing to give her parents the day they wanted so desperately, the day that would mark them out as respectable people in their community; they would marry off a daughter in the parish church in the local hotel, everyone would come and listen to them make their vows. Deirdre didn’t need it; she had been living with David for two years, she would not be living back in her hometown afterwards, it wasn’t as if she sought the