Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy Page A

said about his play. There was a picture of Grace and a little story about it being her first play. Grace looked a hundred. She could be Norman’s mother, or his grandmother. For no reason at all, Joyce found herself smiling, and went to bed quite happily.

Everyone assumed that Libby Green had been born and christened “Elizabeth.” What else could “Libby” be short for? And when she was growing up, everyone read the Crawfie diaries, about the little princesses who were called Lilibet and Margaret Rose. Princess Margaret had not been able to pronounce her elder sister’s name. It was very endearing, and people thought it must be the same with Libby. Couldn’t get her tongue around a big word like “Elizabeth.” Wasn’t it sweet.
    After a while Libby never bothered trying to explain. It was too complicated to say that she had been called Liberty. It sounded like the name of a shop, or one of those funny little bodices you wore to keep your chest warm and flatten it at the same time. Or the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. All in all, it was much easier to say it was short for “Elizabeth.”
    And it was not a matter of being unfaithful to her parents’ dreams for her; they talked about little else but freedom and liberty in their house when Libby was growing up. The American Declaration of Independence was framed in the dining room, the words of the French national anthem had been stuck on a piece of cardboard on the back of Libby’s door for as long as she couldremember. All over the house the walls were hung with extracts from Paine’s
Rights of Man
and the Magna Carta.
    In other families during the war, children remembered talking about the Blitz, the blackout, the Morrison shelters, digging for victory and careless talk costing lives. In Libby’s house on Chestnut Street they talked about equality and freedom and the Spanish Civil War, and the conscientious objector.
    One of her grannies said that the most important thing in the world was having an aired vest and never sleeping in a damp bed. The other granny said that having clean socks and being regular were life’s two priorities. Libby knew that this couldn’t be right, because Mother and Father thought it was all to do with meetings and posters and standing up for people’s rights.
    There were always refugees staying during the war, and even after it. People were coming from different lands where they weren’t free. Libby knew that this must be the most important thing. Specially since the bathroom was always full of nonfree people, and sometimes she had to share her bedroom with girls or women who came from faraway places where things weren’t run properly.
    Libby was very bright and hardworking. Miss Jenkins told Mother and Father that she would certainly get a place in the grammar school. They were pleased for her but worried because it was rather faraway; it would mean two bus trips each way, each day.
    “Lots of people do that,” Libby said, afraid that she might be going to lose an education because they were afraid to let her take two buses.
    “It is her key to a whole new world,” Miss Jenkins said, astounded that so many parents raised objections when their children were offered the chance of a lifetime. There was always something, like the cost of the school uniform or the fear of their moving into a different class system. She was surprised at the Greens; they were usually such forward-looking people. Howstrange that they should feel so mother hen–ish about letting their daughter travel what was not a great distance. Surely they, of all people, would realize the freedom that a child would get from a good education. And they should be able to give a bright twelve-year-old the freedom to take a bus, for heaven’s sake.
    But then Miss Jenkins didn’t know what Libby’s life was like at home and, out of loyalty to Mother and Father, Libby didn’t tell her.
    It would be hard to explain that she didn’t go out to her friends’ houses