Read Online The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy - Free Book Online Page B

many people. As he would smile at the poor Peruvians in the dry valley, who had been calling out for him. She said nothing.
    And for the first time in seven years they sat in silence. They willed the time to pass when Father Gunn would have found his letters and returned to the sitting room of the presbytery. The sitting-room door had been left open.
    The farewells were endless. Father Barry wanted no present, he insisted. He didn’t need any goodbye gift to remind him of Shancarrig, its great people and the wonderful years he had spent here. He said he would try to describe what the place was like, their namesake on the other side of the world.
    He cried when they came to see him off at the station. Maddy was in the back of the crowd. She wanted to be sure he was actually going. She wanted to see it with her own eyes. He waved with one hand and dabbed his eyes with the other. Maddy heard Dr Jims saying to Mr Hayes that he was always a very emotional and intense youngman. He hoped he would fare all right in that hot climate over there.
    And the time went by, but it was like a summer garden when the sun has gone, and although there’s daylight there’s no point in sitting out in it. More children came and went in Mixed Infants. They left Miss Ross and went up to Mrs Kelly. They still learned how to say
bonjour
and
buenos dias
in their own time. Maddy Ross had won that victory hard from Mrs Kelly – she was not going to give it up.
    The fund-raising continued, but Ireland was changing in the sixties. There was television for one thing … people heard about other parts of the world where there was famine and disaster. Suddenly Vieja Piedra was not the only place that called to them. Sometimes the collections were small that went in the money order to the Reverend Brian Barry at his post office in a hill town some sixty-seven miles from Vieja Piedra.
    Yet his letters were always grateful and warm, and there were stories of the church being built, a small building. It looked like a shed with a cross on top, but Father Barry was desperately proud of it. Pictures were sent of it, badly focused snapshots taken from different angles.
    And then there was the wonderful help of Viatores Christi, some lay Christians who were coming out to help. They were invaluable, as committed in every way as were the clergy.
    Maddy heard the letters read aloud, and wondered why could Brian Barry not have become a lay missionary. Then there would have been the same dream and the same hope but no terrible promise about celibacy.
    But she cheered herself up. If he had not been ordained as a priest he would never have come to Shancarrig, she would never have known him, never had her chance in life.
*
    There had been five years of walking alone in Barna Woods, five plays in Shancarrig Dramatic Society, five Christmas concerts, there had been five sales of work, whist drives, beetle drives, treasure hunts. There had been five years of raffles, bingo, house to house collections. And then, one day, Brian Barry telephoned Maddy Ross.
    ‘I thought you’d be home from school by now.’ He sounded as if he were down the road. He couldn’t be telephoning her from Peru!
    ‘I’m in Dublin,’ he said.
    Her heart gave an uncomfortable lurch. Something was happening. Why had the communication not been through Father Gunn?
    ‘I want to see you. Nobody knows I’m home.’
    ‘Brian.’ Her voice was only a whisper.
    ‘Don’t tell anyone at all. Just come tomorrow.’
    ‘But why? What’s happened?’
    ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
    ‘Tomorrow? All the way to Dublin, just like that?’
    ‘I’ve come all the way from Peru.’
    ‘Is anything wrong? Is there any trouble?’
    ‘No no. Oh Maddy, it’s good to talk to you.’
    ‘I haven’t talked to you for five years, Brian. You have to tell me why are you home? Are you going to leave the priesthood?’
    ‘Please, Maddy. Trust me. I want to tell you personally. That’s why I came the whole way back.