Maeve Binchy - A Week in Summer

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2005 by Maeve Binchy

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

eISBN: 978-0-307-95726-9

This story was originally published by Cumann Merriman in 2005.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Cover design by Amy Citron

v3.1

They say that when beginning a story you should always try to catch people at some interesting juncture of their lives, like when they have to make a choice or a decision, or when someone betrayed them, or at the start of love or the end of love. It is better to come across them at some kind of crisis than in the middle of a long, lazy summer where nothing happens.

Maeve Binchy, The Maeve Binchy Writers Club

Do you know what I think should be banned? Those advertisements for cruise holidays for mature people. You get this suave man in a dinner jacket, hair lightly streaked with gray, looking into the eyes of a woman with a pashmina stole around her slim, firm shoulders, to protect her against the night breezes as they stand on deck together. There is a hint that they have been at it like rabbits all afternoon and that they cant wait for the captains cocktail party and gala dinner to end, so they can be at it all over again.

Are there people like this or is it just a fantasy dreamed up by an advertising agency, to sell holidays to us middle-aged Americans? Something that will leave the rest of us unsettled and unhappy? In any event, it is not important; its not relevant to us. We had never had a real vacation. Not even when the girls, Mel and Margy, were children. Brian used to say, in his farming days: Find me a cow that doesnt need to be milked for three weeks, and then well have a vacation.

And when the bottom fell out of the dairy-cattle market, as it didfor Brian, anywayhe was into growing corn in Illinois and flax in North Dakota, and in those days you couldnt take a vacation, either, because there was always something to be planted or watered or reaped or saved. And when the bottom had fallen out of flax and cornfor Brian, anywayhe studied mathematics and became a math teacher at a private school.

Other teachers had vacations. In fact, people were always saying they met teachers on vacations. But not Brian, because there were papers to mark, or courses to do, or students to tutor, and he liked going up to the attic and writing little bits of poetry that he never showed to anyone. But anyway, what with all this hey presto, the vacation was soon over.

Me? Oh, I have worked forever at the same thing. Like my mother before me, I bake things. I used to work as a patisserie chef in a big hotel, but after I met Brian I had to think up something a bit more mobile. Something that could move easily when he did. So now I make cakes and casseroles and pies and deliver them to peoples homes. I had to be ready to get up and go to the next place, so it was good to have a craft or trade or skill, whatever you might call it, to take with us.

People everywhere want to eat, and lots of younger women dont have time to cook. Youd be surprised how many deep-dish apple pies I make in their own pottery dishes. They even pretend to their husbands that they cooked it themselves. I have to be very careful about how and when I make my deliveries.

Now, I know I could have taken a vacation on my own. There was nothing to stop me from going to Europe or on a cruise or to the Grand Canyon. But that wasnt the point. It wasnt just to be able to say that I had been somewhere. Im way too old for that. My customers who buy deep-dish apple pie and lamb stew wouldnt think more of me if I said I had been on a cruise to Alaska or on a train through the capitals of Europe. No, I just wanted to travel with Brian, and he just didnt want to go anywhere at all.

I wanted it for Brian and me. Something to remember. Something to look back on during the long evenings when we were on our own.

Mel and Margy were away a lot; there was always something for them to do during the summer holidays, when the school term was finished. There was this camp and that camp; the children loved camp. And because Brian had had so many careers and we had moved so much and so often, we thought it best for the girls to go to boarding school. It would give them more stability and enable them to keep their friends. And, heavens, they had so many friends.

A lot of these friends had parents who were much younger than we were. We are conscious of being older parents. I mean, Brian was forty when we married, and I was thirty-eight. We didnt want to seem too geriatric. All parents live on different planets from their children, they say, and, Lord, Ive seen enough of it in the houses where I deliver food. But older parents? Thats a solar system even farther away. Anyway, why should the girls hang out around our home, with Brian always so worried about everything, big lines of worry etched into his forehead, and me always up to my elbows in pastry dough? Not much fun with us. And I remembered my own childhood. I didnt want to hang around my house when I was younger, either.

And, of course, I could have gone away with my girlfriends. (All right, were all in our fifties, but we think of ourselves as girls and we always will.) But I didnt want to spend our hard-earned money on a vacation with them. I wanted to be with Brian. I love Brian. I always have, since the day I met him, with his dreams and poetry and hopes of changing the world. It didnt matter that he didnt earn much of a living or that nobody thought very highly of him. He was the man I wanted; always has been. I can just see him in a tuxedo, like the men in the advertisements. I can see us spending long afternoons in a bedroom, a cabin, a sleeping-car compartment. Wherever. I can see us exchanging a knowing glance that says there will be more of that later on. Im not sure why I can see this so clearly, but somehow I can. And Brian needs a holiday even more than I do these days. You see, he has just been suspended from his school. Its August now, and he hasnt any position for September, when the school year starts. A man of fifty-seven without a job. And all because he had to speak his mind. And whats more, to speak it at the parent-teacher association.

It was the occasion for congratulating the school for doing so well and for concentrating on the positive side of things. But my Brian had to choose the occasion to tell people that he did not think the war in Iraq was a just war. This was in a community that had already lost two young men on tours of duty. They didnt even wait until the next day to tell him that his services would no longer be needed. The principal came around to our house that night and said he was sorry, but feeling was running too high. Ill only teach math in future, poor Brian had promised. Too late, the principal said.

It hit Brian very hard. He didnt want me to tell the girls. I dont mind you knowing that Im an all-time loser, he pleaded, but I dont want my daughters to know this. Not yet. But Mel and Margy would have to know come September, when Brian wasnt returning to school, I told him. Hey, honey, he said. Theyre not really all that interested in what I do or dont do. Just give me time, Kathleen, just give me a little time. I know I dont deserve it, but I cant breathe properly. This would give me some breathing space.