One Winter Weekend

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

I n the room next door, things were only slightly less frosty. “I simply don’t know what more to say to him,” Patricia told her husband.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t say anything,” he counselled her. “Ben’s a grown man. He needs to make his own choices, questionable though we may think them.”

“But James,” she whined insistently, “the O’Briens are… so…”

“Oh, they’re all right, Patricia,” he scolded her. “Paddy is a decent sort, and Helen is quite charming.”

“But they’re so… so…”

“Ordinary?”

“Yes!” Patricia exclaimed. “How can Ben settle for that when he can do so much better?”

“Do you even know your son?” James asked her. “He’s far more comfortable with them than he ever was with us. He skipped out on Cambridge for Dublin, for God’s sake. Let’s let him make his own decisions. And I won’t have any more of these hostilities. You will go and apologise to Molly and her parents.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m serious,” he said sternly. “This wedding is going to happen whether we want it to or not, Patricia, and I would prefer that we make the best of it, wouldn’t you?”

Patricia sighed. “You’re right, of course,” she said resignedly. “All right. Tomorrow, over breakfast… I will… apologise.”

“You know why I adore you, my dear?”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you have more sense than any woman I’ve ever known.”

“Tell that to your son,” Patricia muttered.

“I plan to,” James said, grinning and taking her into his arms.