Free The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy

Just get the early train, will you? I’ll meet you.’
    ‘Brian?’
    ‘I’ll be on the platform.’ He hung up.
    She had to cash a cheque at the hotel. Mrs Ryan was interested as usual in everything. Maddy gave her no information. Her mind was too confused. She knew there would be no sleep tonight.
    For five years she had slept seven hours a night.
    But tonight she would not close her eyes. No matter how tired and old she might look next morning Maddy knew that there was no point in lying in that same bed where she had lain for years, seeking sleep.
    Instead she examined everything in her wardrobe.
    She chose a cream blouse and a blue skirt. She wore a soft blue woollen scarf around her neck. It wasn’t girlish but it was youthful. It didn’t look like the ageing school teacher grown old in her love for the faraway priest.
    Maddy smiled. At least she had kept her sense of humour. Whatever he was going to tell her he would like that.
    He didn’t seem to have got a day older. He was boyish, even at forty-five. His coat collar was up so she couldn’t see whether he still wore his roman collar, but she had told herself not to read anything into that. Out in the missions priests wore no clerical garb and yet they were as firmly priests as ever they had been.
    He saw her and ran to her. They hugged like a long-separated brother and sister, like old friends parted unwillingly, which is probably what they were. She pulled away from him to see his face, but still he hugged her. You can’t kiss someone who is hugging the life out of you.
    The crowd had thinned on the platform. Some caution seemed to seep back into him.
    ‘There was no one from home on the train, was there?’
    ‘Where’s home?’ She laughed at him. ‘In all your letters you say Vieja Piedra is home.’
    ‘And so it is.’ He seemed satisfied that they weren’t under surveillance. He tucked her arm into his and they walked to a nearby hotel. The lounge was small and dark, the coffee strong and scalding. Maddy Ross would remember for everthe way it stuck to the roof of her mouth when Brian Barry told her that he was going to leave the priesthood and marry Deirdre, one of the volunteers. It was like a patch of red-hot tar in her mouth. It wouldn’t go away as she nodded and listened and forced her face to smile through tales of growth, and understanding and love and the emptiness of vows taken at an early age before a boy was a man, and about a loving God not holding people to meaningless promises.
    And she heard how there was still a lot to be decided. Deirdre and he had realised that laicisation took such a long time, and brought so much grief, destroying the relationships of those who waited.
    But in South America the clergy had understood the core values. They had gone straight to the heart of things. They knew that a blessing could be given to a union of which God would patently approve. What was the expression that Maddy herself had used so many years ago? Something about thinking in terms of the Constitution rather than in petty Civil Service bye-laws.
    And he owed it all to Maddy. So often he had told that to Deirdre, who wanted to send her gratitude. If Maddy hadn’t proven to him that he could be courageous and open up his heart to the world and to love, this might never have happened.
    ‘Did you ever love me?’ Maddy asked him.
    ‘Of course I love you. I love you with all my heart. Nothing will destroy our love, not my marrying Deirdre or you marrying whoever you will. Maybe you have someone in mind?’ He was roguish now, playful even. She wanted to knock him down.
    ‘No. No plans as yet.’
    ‘Well you should, Maddy.’ Gone was the light-hearted banter, now he was being serious and caring. ‘A womanshould get married, and have children. That’s what a woman should do.’
    ‘And have you and Deirdre decided to have children?’ She tried to put the smile back in her voice. It was so easy to let a sneer creep in instead, to let him