Read Online A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy - Free Book Online Page A

to the fair-ground that came every year to a nearby town. There would be fireworks and bumper cars, a big wheel and a lot of fun.
    And apparently Carmel liked it a lot.
    It was touching to see Rigger getting dressed up to take his girl out in the old van. Chicky sighed as she saw them heading off by the cliffs. Rigger didn’t drink so she never worried about there being any danger ahead. She could not have foreseen the conversation a few short months later.
    Carmel was pregnant.
    Carmel Hickey, aged seventeen and about to sit her Leaving Certificate, was going to have the child of Rigger, who was eighteen. They loved each other, so were going to run away to England and get married. Rigger was very sorry to let Chicky down and leave her like this, but he said it was the only thing to do. There was no question of a termination and Carmel’s parents would kill them both. There would be no tolerance in the Hickey family.
    Chicky was unnaturally calm about it all.
    First thing she said was they must tell nobody. Nobody at all.
    Carmel was to do her exams as if nothing was wrong. Then, in three weeks’ time when the exams were over, they could get married here, in Stoneybridge, and take it from there.
    Rigger looked at her as if she was mad.
    ‘Chicky, you have no idea what they’ll be like. They’ll skin me alive. They have such hopes for her: a career, a life and eventually a great catch as a husband. They don’t want her married to a dead end like me. They’d never stand for it, not in a million years. We have to run away.’
    ‘There’s been far too much running away,’ Chicky said. ‘Your mother ran away from here. I ran away. You ran away. It has to stop sometime. Let it stop now.’
    ‘But what can I offer Carmel?’
    ‘You have a job here – a good job – you have savings already in the post office. I’ll let you have that cottage beside the walled garden. You can make a home there. You will be providing all the produce for Stone House and for anyone else you can sell it to. You’re a genuine businessman, for God’s sake. These days they’d be hard put to find anyone so ready and able to make a home for their daughter.’
    ‘No, Chicky. You don’t know what they’re like.’
    ‘I do know what they are like. I’ve known the Hickeys all my life. I’m not saying they’ll be pleased, but it beats the hell out of getting the Guards to find you in England or asking the Salvation Army to trace you.’
    ‘Married? Here in Stoneybridge?’
    ‘If that’s what you want then yes. I think you’re both too young. You could get married much later, but if you want it now then leave Father Johnson to me.’
    ‘It won’t work.’
    ‘It will if you say absolutely nothing and just get that house done. You have to have it ready to show to the Hickeys the day you tell them that Carmel is pregnant.’
    ‘Chicky, be reasonable. If it were going to work, we can’t do all this in three weeks or a month.’
    ‘If I tell the builders that Stone Cottage is the priority then we can. And you can take some of the furniture we have stored here.’
    He looked at her with some hope in his eyes. ‘Do you really think . . .?’
    ‘We haven’t a minute to waste, and don’t tell your mother either. Not yet.’
    ‘Oh God, she’s going to go mad too. More bad news.’
    ‘Not when she hears it as a package. Not when she hears that you have a house, a proper job and a bride. Where’s the bad news there? Aren’t these the things she always hoped for, for you?’
    Carmel Hickey proved to be amazingly practical. She swore she would focus entirely on her exams while saying that she wanted to learn bookkeeping and commercial studies as a career. She insisted that Rigger spend every waking hour getting Stone Cottage up and running. She seemed vastly relieved that they were not going to catch the emigrant ship and live on nothing in England.
    Carmel had every confidence in Chicky, even to the point of keeping Father Johnson on