“Come in and we’ll have a cup of tea, Daddy,” she said, wanting a few moments bent over kettle, sink, tea caddy to right her eyes.
He was a shuffle behind her, anxiety and care in every step. Not wishing to be too inquisitive, not wanting, but plans changed meant bad news. He hated it.
“You’re not doing anything really, Daddy, on your holidays, are you?” she said eventually once she could fuss over tea things no longer. He was even more alarmed.
“Rose, my dear, do you have to go to hospital or anything? Rose, my dear, is something wrong? I’d much prefer if you told me.” Gentle eyes, his lower lip fastened in by his teeth in worry. Oh, what a strange father. Who else had never had a row with a father? Was there any other father in the world so willing to praise the good, rejoice in the cheerful, and to forget the bad and the painful?
“Nothing, Daddy, nothing. But I was thinking it’s silly my going to Paris on my own. Staying in a hotel and reading a book and you staying here reading a book or the paper. I was thinking wouldn’t it be nice if I left it until tomorrow and we both went. The same way…the way I go by train to Gatwick…or we could get the train to the coast and go by ferry.”
He looked at her, cup halfway to his mouth. He held it there. “But why, Rose dear? Why do you suggest this?” His face had rarely seemed more troubled. It was as if she had asked him to leave the planet.
“Daddy, you often talk about Paris, you tell me about it, I tell you about it. Why don’t we go together and tell each other about it when we come back” She looked at him…he was so bewildered she wanted to shout at him, she wanted to finish her sentences through a loudspeaker.
Why did he look so unwilling to join? He was being asked to play. Now, don’t let him hang back slow to accept like a shy schoolboy who can’t believe he has been picked for the team.
“Daddy, it would be nice. We could go out and have a meal and we could go up and walk to Montmartre by the same routes as you took in the Good Old Days. We could do the things you did when you were a wild teenager…”
He looked at her, frightened, trapped. He was so desperately kind, he saw the need in her. He didn’t know how he was going to fight her off. She knew that if she were to get him to come, she must stress that she really wanted it for her, more than for him.
“Daddy, I’m often very lonely when I go to Paris. Often at night particularly I remember that you used to tell me how all of you…”
She stopped. He looked like a hunted animal.
“Wouldn’t you like to come?” she said in a much calmer voice.
“My dear Rose. Sometime. I’d love to go to Paris, my dear, there’s nothing in the world I’d like to do more than to come to Paris…but I can’t go just like that I can’t drop everything and rush off to Paris, my dear. You know that”
“Why not, Daddy?” she begged. She knew she was doing something dangerous, she was spelling out her own flightiness, her own action of whim of doubling back from the station…she was defining herself as less than levelheaded.
She was challenging him, too. She was asking him to say why he couldn’t come for a few days of shared foreign things. If he had no explanation, then he was telling her that he was just someone who said he wanted something but didn’t reach for it. She could be changing the nature of his little dreams. How would he ever take out his pathetically detailed maps and scrapbooks to pore once more with her over routes and happenings if he had thrown away a chance to see them in three dimensions?
“You have nothing planned, Daddy. It’s ideal. We can pack for you. I’ll ask them next door to keep an eye on the house. We’ll stop the milk and the newspaper, and, Daddy, that’s it. Tomorrow evening in Paris, tomorrow afternoon we’ll be taking that route in together, the one we talked about for me this morning….”
Twice now he had talked about all the things here that he had to drop. There was nothing to drop. What he would drop was pottering about scratching his head about leaf curl. Oh, Daddy, don’t you see that’s all you’ll drop. But if you don’t see and I tell you…it means I’m telling you that your life is meaningless and futile and pottering. I will not tell you, who walked around the house cradling me when I was a crying baby, you who paid for elocution lessons so that I could speak well, you, Daddy, who paid for that wedding lunch that Gus thought was shabby, you, Daddy, who smiled and raised your champagne glass to me and said: “Your mother would have loved this day. A daughter’s wedding is a milestone.” I won’t tell you that your life is nothing.
The good-natured woman and her father were probably at Folkestone or Dover or Newhaven when Rose said to her father that of course he was right, and it had just been a mad idea, but naturally they would plan it for later. Yes, they really must, and when she came back this time they would talk about it seriously…and possibly next summer.
“Or even when I retire,” said Rose’s father, the color coming back into his cheeks. “When I retire I’ll have lots of time to think about these things and plan them.”
“That’s a good idea, Daddy,” said Rose. “I think that’s a very good idea. We should think of it for when you retire.”
He began to smile. Reprieve. Rescue. Hope.
“We won’t make any definite plans, but we’ll always have it there, as something we must talk about doing. Yes, much more sensible,” she said.
“Do you really mean that, Rose? I certainly think it’s a good idea,” he said, anxiously raking her face for approval.
“Oh, honestly, Daddy, I think it makes much more sense,” she said, wondering why so many loving things had to be lies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maeve Binchy was born and educated in Dublin. She is the bestselling author of The Return Journey, Evening Class, This Year It Will Be Different, The Glass Lake, The Copper Beech, The Lilac Bus, Circle of Friends, Silver Wedding, Firefly Summer, Echoes, Light a Penny Candle, London Transports, Scarlet Feather, Quentins, Nights of Rain and Stars, and Whitethorn Woods. She has written two plays and a teleplay that won three awards at the Prague Film Festival. She has been writing for The Irish Times since 1969 and lives with her husband, writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell, in Dublin.
BOOKS BY MAEVE BINCHY
Whitehorn Woods
Nights of Rain and Stars
Quentins
Scarlet Feather
Tara Road
Evening Class
This Year It Will Be Different
Echoes
The Glass Lake
London Transports
The Copper Beech
The Lilac Bus
Circle of Friends
Silver Wedding
Firefly Summer
Light a Penny Candle
THE RETURN JOURNEY
A Delta Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Delacorte Press hardcover edition published March 1998
Dell mass market edition published June 1999
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1998 by Maeve Binchy
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97052624
Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33767-6
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