Silver Wedding by Maeve Binchy

uncle.
    ‘Good man, will you buy us a pint later?’
    ‘I might do that.’
    The card from his father was one with a funny cat on it. Quite unsuitable from an estranged father. The word ‘Father’ was written neatly. No love, no best wishes. Well, that was all right. He sent an automatic card to Father with just ‘Brendan’ on it each year too.
    Mother’s was more flowery, and said she could hardly believe she had such a grown-up son, and wondered whether he had any girlfriends and would they ever see him married.
    Helen’s card was full of peace and blessings. She wrote a note about the Sisters and the hostel they were going to open and the funds that were needed and how two of the Sisters were going to play the guitar busking at Piccadilly station and how the community was very divided about this and whether it was the right way to go. Helen always wrote with a cast of thousands assuming he knew all these people and remembered their names and cared about their doings. At the end she wrote, ‘Please take Anna’s letter seriously.’
    He had opened them in the right order. He opened Anna’s slowly. Perhaps it was going to tell him some bad news, Father had cancer, or Mother was going to have an operation? His face curled into a look of scorn when he saw all the business about the anniversary. Nothing had changed, simply nothing, they had got trapped in a time warp, stuck in a world of tinsel-covered cards, meaningless rituals. He felt even more annoyed about the whole thing because of Sister Helen’s pious instruction to take Anna’s letter seriously. Talk about passing the buck.
    He felt edgy and restless as he always did when drawn into family affairs. He got up and went outside. He would walk up the hills a bit. There was a wall he wanted to look at. It might need a bit more work than just rearranging the stones like they did so often.
    He came across Vincent with a sheep that had got stuck in the gate. The animal was frightened and kicking and pulling so that it was almost impossible to release her.
    ‘You came at a good time,’ Vincent said, and together they eased the anxious sheep out. She bleated frantically and looked at them with her silly face.
    ‘What’s wrong with her at all, is she hurt?’ Brendan asked.
    ‘No. Not a scratch on her.’
    ‘Then what’s all that caterwauling out of her?’
    Vincent looked long at the distressed sheep. ‘That’s the one that lay on its lamb. Crushed the little thing to death,’ he said.
    ‘Stupid thicko sheep,’ Brendan said. ‘Sits on her own perfectly good lamb, then gets stuck in a gate, that’s what gives sheep a bad name.’
    The ewe looked at him trustingly and gave a great baaa into the air.
    ‘She doesn’t know I’m insulting her,’ Brendan said.
    ‘Divil a bit she’d care. She’s looking for the lamb.’
    ‘Doesn’t she know she suffocated it?’
    ‘Not at all. How would she know that?’ Vincent said.
    Companionably the two men walked back towards the house to make their lunch.
    Vincent’s eyes fell on the envelopes and cards.
    ‘Well now, it’s your birthday,’ he said. ‘Imagine that.’
    ‘Yes.’ Brendan sounded grumpy.
    His uncle looked at him for a while.
    ‘It’s good of them to remember you, it would be scant remembering you’d get if you had to rely on me.’
    ‘I don’t worry about remembering … not that sort.’ He was still bad-tempered as he washed the potatoes at the sink and put them into the big saucepan of water.
    ‘Will I put them up on the mantelpiece for you?’
    Vincent had never said anything like that.
    ‘No, no. I wouldn’t like that.’
    ‘All right so.’ His uncle collected them neatly and left them in a little pile. He saw Anna’s long typed letter but made no comment. During the meal he waited for the boy to speak.
    ‘Anna has this notion I should go over to England and play games for some silver wedding celebrations.
Silver
,’ he scoffed at the word.
    ‘That’s how many?’ Vincent