The Way We Were by Marie Joseph

Author:Marie Joseph [Joseph, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Chick-Lit, Fiction, Love Stories, Man-Woman Relationships, Relationships, Romance, Women's Fiction
ISBN: 9781448107926
Google: QmtLJ0T_tMEC
Amazon: B007FUMQKK
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-03-29T23:00:00+00:00

The Solid Citizen

‘I SHALL GO for the interview’, said Barnie, ‘in a dark grey suit, with a whiter than white shirt, and my old boy’s tie. I’ve shaved off my beard.’

‘And you’ve had your hair cut,’ said Anna, which he had, but not, of course, short back and sides like her father. Even so she had to hold her stomach and tell him that the baby was laughing too.

‘A three months’ embryo can’t laugh,’ said Barnie, ‘and, anyway, I am bringing him up to have respect for his old dad. I will teach him to show me deference, right from the start.’

‘You showed my father deference,’ Anna reminded him sadly, ‘and that didn’t work, did it?’

They were walking from the station, along the quiet Sunday-afternoon avenues, to have tea with her parents, a ritual that was expected of them, and to which Barnie acquiesced, she knew, because he loved her.

Anna, a cherished and only child, knew, and the knowing made her at times deeply unhappy, that her parents only tolerated him because they realised that to ignore him would be to lose her also, but they still treated him with the same reserve they had shown from the first.

Perhaps the fact that at the time he had been wearing red flared trousers and a maxi-length fur-trimmed coat had influenced them, but she hadn’t been able to see why.

‘A person is what he is, not what he wears,’ she had told them, ‘and Barnie is the kindest boy I have ever known. He likes everyone – no, more than that, he loves everyone.’

She turned to her mother. ‘You always used to tell me that kindness was the one quality that really matters, and Barnie is kind. I am going to marry him.’

She saw the way her father’s face flushed with anger, and she felt her own temper rise.

‘I am going to marry Barnie, not because we think that marriage is necessary, but because he understands that you would be affronted if we just lived together. He is considerate of your feelings, in spite of the fact that you won’t even try to know him.’

‘I almost wish you weren’t marrying him,’ her mother had said, ‘because if you lived with him, you would get him out of your system and come to your senses.’

‘Tell me what you have against him,’ Anna would say, over and over again, and her father would begin to tell her, until he was nudged into silence by her mother, who would look away.

But because Anna loved her parents, she would persist: ‘Well? Just try and tell me why you dislike him so much.’

Her mother’s voice was carefully controlled. ‘He has a degree in engineering, which he spent three years at university to study for.’

‘Being subsidised by the taxpayer,’ her father added.

‘So why won’t he get a decent job? What was the point of all that time studying if he doesn’t use his qualifications? Why is he working on a building site, like a navvy, when he could be holding down a good job? We’ve tried to understand, but we can’t.

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