Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy Page B

after school because Mother and Father were so uneasy until she got back. It was often simpler to stay home. She could invite people in, but then it always seemed odd that she couldn’t accept their hospitality, so she didn’t encourage friendship; it gave her more time to study, of course, but it was all a bit lonely. Not so much fun getting high marks if you didn’t have a great friend to giggle with in between, and to rejoice or sympathize with over all the adventures of the world.
    But when she got to grammar school, it was different, and Libby met another marvelous teacher, as nice as Miss Jenkins; it was a Mrs. Wilson. She watched out for Libby, ensured that she became part of the debating team, that she was allowed to go to sports events.
    “What do they think will happen to you?” Mrs. Wilson snapped once, in exasperation. “You are fifteen.”
    Libby hung her head.
    “It’s their way of showing me how fond of me they are, I think,” she said in a low voice.
    “The greatest way to show people how fond you are of them is to give them some freedom,” said Mrs. Wilson.
    Libby said nothing; the teacher was immediately ashamed.
    “Don’t mind me—maybe I’m jealous; no one cared enough for me to watch out on the road until I came home,” she said.
    But Libby knew that wasn’t true: Mrs. Wilson thought her parents were gaolers, and foolishly repressive. At times Libbythought that too, but she hated other people thinking that about them. They were her parents; she could see how much they loved her, and worried about her. She knew all the things they did for her. How her father painted her grazed knee with iodine, how her mother brought her cocoa in bed, how they listened when she told them tales about school. How her father worked long hours as a clerk in a solicitor’s office, how her mother took in typing and bookkeeping work to help with the expenses. And she, Libby, caused a lot of the expenses: shoes were always wearing out, and there were school trips to places, and pocket money. She was as protective of them as they were of her, and she loved them.
    There was a half-term camp. All the other sixteen-year-olds were going, but Libby’s parents said no, truly, they couldn’t spend a whole weekend wondering was she all right, had she fallen into a swirling river, had one of the rough boys forced himself on her, had their bus driver got drunk, had their teachers been careless.
    Libby gave in without very much of a struggle, and that night, as she was looking sadly out of the garden shed towards the west, where the others had all gone, singing on their bus tour, only a few tears of self-pity came down her face. As she wiped them away she saw a struggling pigeon trying unsuccessfully to launch itself. It had a broken wing, and its round eyes looked anxious, its cooing sound had no confidence. Libby put it in her cardigan and took it indoors. She watched the scene almost as if she were outside. The three of them calmed the pigeon and put it in a box of shavings. Her father made a delicate splint for the wing and her mother helped him, so they could support the broken wing. They got bread and milk for the bird, and a few cornflakes. They put a lid on the box and cut holes in it. Its muffled, rhythmic cooing sounded much less agitated, Libby thought, and she saw her mother reach for a purse.
    “Go and get it some birdseed, Libby. We know it would like that.”
    How could you not love people so good and generous as this just because they wouldn’t let you go on the school outing?
    For days she stroked the pigeon’s head and admired its feathers. She had never really looked at a pigeon close up before. A wonderful white line on the bend of each wing, a bill that was nearly orange, its big chest, which trembled less as the days went on, was purple-brown with underparts of creamy gray.
    “Lovely little Columba,” she said to it over and over.
    “Why do you call it that?” her father wanted to