Silver Wedding by Maeve Binchy

heart by the kindness and generosity of spirit.
    Til go off into the town now, Vincent,' he said, taking his arm away. Til write a couple of letters maybe and maybe work pulling a few pints tonight.'
    'There's enough in the biscuit tin,' Vincent said gently.
    There is, I know. I know.'
    He went out into the yard and passed the lonely ewe still calling for her lost lamb and started up the old car to drive to the town. He would go back for their silver anniversary. It was only a little time out of this life. The life he wanted. He could give a little time to show them he was all right and that he was part of the family.
     
    Helen
    The old man looked at Helen hopefully. He saw a girl in her twenties with a grey jumper and skirt. Her hair was tied back in a black ribbon but it looked as if any moment it might all escape and fall wild and curly around her shoulders. She had dark blue restless eyes and freckles on her nose. She carried a black plastic shopping bag which she was swinging backwards and forwards.
    'Miss,' said the old drunk, 'can you do me a favour?'
    Helen stopped at once, as he had known she would. There were passers-by who went on passing by and those who stopped. Years of observation had taught him to tell one sort from the other.
    'Of course, what can I do?' she asked him.
    He almost stepped back. Her smile was too ready, too willing. Usually people muttered that they didn't have change or that they were in a hurry. Even if they did seem about to help a wino they didn't show such eagerness.
    'I don't want any money,' he said.
    'Of course not,' Helen said as if it was the last thing that a man with a coat tied with string and an empty ginger-wine bottle in his hand would want.
    'I just want you to go in there and get me another bottle.
    The bastards say they won't serve me. They say I'm not to come into the shop. Now if I were to give you two pounds into your hand, then you could go in and get it for me.'
    From his grizzled face with its wild hair above and its stubble below his small sharp eyes shone with the brilliance of the plan.
    Helen bit her lower lip and looked at him hard.
    He was from Ireland of course, they all were, or else Scodand. The Welsh drunks seemed to stay in their valleys, and the English didn't get drunk in such numbers or so publicly. It was a mystery.
    'I think you've had enough.'
    'How would you know whether I've had enough or not?
    That's not what we were debating. That, as it happens, was not the point at issue.'
    Helen was moved, he spoke so well, he had such phrases . . . the point at issue. How could a man who spoke like that have let himself go so far and turn into an outcast?'
    Immediately she felt guilty about the thought. That was the way Grandmother O'Hagan would talk. And Helen would immediately disagree with her. Here she was at twenty-one thinking almost the same thing.
    'It's not good for you,' she said, and added spiritedly, 'I said I'd do you a favour, it's not a favour giving you more alcohol, it's a downright disservice.'
    The drunk liked such niceties and definitions, he was ready to parry with her.
    'But there is no question of your giving me alcohol, my dear lady,' he said triumphantly. 'That was never part of our agreement. You are to act as my agent in purchasing the alcohol.' He beamed at his victory.
    'No, it's only going to kill you.'
    'I can easily get it elsewhere. I have two pounds and I will get it elsewhere. What we are now discussing is your word given and then broken. You said you would do me a favour, now you say you will not.'
    Helen stormed into the small grocery-cumoff-licence.
    'A bottle of cider,' she asked, eyes flashing.
    'What kind?'
    'I don't know. Any kind. That one.' She pointed to a fancy bottle . Outside, the drunk knocked on the window and shook his head of shaggy hair, trying to point to a different brand.
    'You're not buying it for that wino?' asked the young man.
    'No, it's for myself,' Helen said guiltily and obviously falsely.
    The drunk