The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy

house. She wanted to be well away from those cottages. She had her eyes on great things,’ the teacher said.
    ‘Well, faith and she should have her eyes on being grateful the fellow married her and putting her mind to raising the child and being glad they have a roof over their heads.’ Father Gunn knew he sounded like a stern old parish priest from thirty years ago, but somehow the whole thing had him annoyed and he didn’t want to hear any fairy stories about people having their eyes set on great things.
    Maura decided to work until the day before the wedding. She looked Mrs Ryan straight in the eye and refused to accept any hints about the work being tiring in her condition. She said she needed every penny she could earn.
    Mrs Ryan was cross to be losing a hard-working maid, and at the same time having an attractive barman marry beneath him because of activities obviously carried out under her own roof. She began to look more sternly at her own daughters, Nessa and Catherine, lest anything untoward should happen in their lives.
    Nessa, the same age as Maura, had been all through Shancarrig school with her. ‘What should I give her as a present?’ she said to her mother.
    ‘Best present is to ignore it and the reason for it,’ Mrs Ryan snapped.
    This reaction ensured, of course, that Nessa would go to great trouble to find a nice present. She rang Leo Murphy up in The Glen. Maura, putting away mops and buckets in the room at the end of the corridor, heard Nessa on the phone.
    ‘Leo, she
was
in our class. We have to do something. Of course it’s shotgun. What else could it be? You choose something, anything at all. Poor Maura, she expects so little.’
    That’s not true, Maura thought as she put away the cleaning equipment. She didn’t expect so little, she expected a lot and mainly she got it. She had wanted to stay in Shancarrig rather than emigrating like the rest of her brothers and sisters, and here she had stayed. She had wanted the one handsome man that she ever fancied in her life, and he had wanted her. He was standing by her now and marrying her.
    She had got more than she expected. She certainly hadn’t thought that she would be having a baby and yet there was one on the way. The very thought of it made her pleased and excited. It took away the ache of sorrow about the place they would be living in.
    With Gerry and a baby it wouldn’t matter anyway.
*
    Leo Murphy and Nessa Ryan gave her a little glass-fronted cabinet.
    She couldn’t have liked it more. She stroked it over and over and said how lovely it would look on a wall when she got her own treasures to put in it.
    ‘Have you any treasures yet?’ Nessa asked.
    ‘Only a doll. A doll with a china face and china hands,’ Maura said.
    ‘That’ll be nice for the baby …’ Leo gulped. ‘If you ever have one, I mean,’ she said hastily.
    ‘Oh, I’m sure I will,’ Maura said. ‘But the baby won’t be let play with this doll. It’s a treasure, for the lovely cabinet.’
    She could see that the girls thought their money had been well spent, and she was touched by how much they must have given for it. As part of her continuing fantasy about a house, Maura used to look at furniture and price it. She knew well that this cabinet was not inexpensive.
    Maura hoped that Geraldine would come home from England. She even offered her the fare, but there was no reply. It would have been nice to have had her standing as a bridesmaid, but instead she had Eileen Dunne, who said she loved weddings and she’d be anyone’s bridesmaid for them. And with a great nudge that nearly knocked Maura over she said she’d do godmother as well, and laughed a lot.
    Gerry’s brother came to do the best man bit. His parents were old and didn’t travel, he said.
    Maura saw nothing sad or shabby about her wedding day.
    When she turned around in the church she saw Nessa Ryan, Leo Murphy, Niall Hayes and Eddie Barton sitting smiling at her. She was the first of their