Free Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy Page B

going to point out – in tones that no one could find offence in – that she got up every morning and saw the children off to school, then she went and did what amounted to a day’s work in an office, and not that she was complaining but she spent the afternoon listening to almighty bores rawmeishing out of them instead of getting on with her own work of which she had plenty, but she had stood in the bar to let her husband work . . . She would keep her voice very calm as she told him how she would like to take a cleaver to him and split him in two.
    Her humour was not helped by the behaviour of Eddie and Declan who had come into the pub, despite all the strictures against this, to know could they take possessionof the tortoise again. They had burst into the pub, mouths stained with the jam which Carrie had been making a very poor fist of setting. They looked like the children of tinkers both of them in the most torn clothes that they could have found. In front of the drinking population of Mountfern – who probably had looked at her askance because she was an outsider from the first day and had now committed the crime of going outside the family home to work – she had been guilty of the worst sin of all . . . neglecting her children. And had John supported her, had he removed them with an authoritative wave and a thunderous warning? He had
like hell
!
    John Ryan had put an arm around the shoulder of each small furious son and he chose with a slow deliberation for each of them a chocolate biscuit from the shelf behind the bar and he had walked them out as if they had been honoured guests instead of his own children who had broken his own most strict rule of coming into the family pub.
    But Kate would not let her tone betray her rage, otherwise he would just walk away from it saying that the last thing on earth he wanted was a fight. It was infuriating. The only way she could convince him of how badly he was behaving was to speak in a reasonable tone as if she were the most contented woman on earth.
    For a wild moment she wondered how the Mother of God would have coped, and then realised that Mary wouldn’t have had nearly as many problems in Nazareth. There was never any mention of her running Joseph’s carpentry business almost single-handed and doing another job for a local lawyer as well. Kate’s resentment knew no bounds.
    The last straggler finally went home. The glasses were washed, the windows opened to air the place, two clean dishcloths lay out to dry on the counter. Kate felt sweaty and weary, not in the mood to list her wrongs.
    Her husband smiled at her across the counter. ‘Will I pour you a port wine?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph isn’t that all I’d need tomorrow, a roaring port hangover.’
    ‘Just one glass each, we’ll bring it out to the side garden and I’ll tell you my plans for it.’
    She bit her lip. He was like a big child.
    ‘Well?’ He had the glass and the port bottle ready.
    She was too tired.
    ‘Hold on till I rinse this blouse out,’ she said, and took off the blue and white cotton blouse that was sticking to her back. Standing in her slip top and dark blue skirt, she looked flushed and very beautiful, John thought. He touched her neck where the long dark curly hair was loosely tied with a narrow blue ribbon.
    ‘That’s lovely for them to see that kind of carry on if they pass the window,’ she said shaking his hand away.
    ‘Well you’re the one who’s half-dressed, I’m quite respectable,’ he laughed.
    The blouse was left to hang on the back of a chair, it would be dry in the morning. Kate gave herself a quick sluice with the water in the sink that was meant to wash only glasses.
    ‘If we’re going to go to the side garden, let’s go then,’ she said more ungraciously than she felt; she was glad at any rate that he was calling it a garden rather than a yard. That was an advance.
    The moonlight made it look a great deal better than it seemed by day.