by Maeve Binchy
“Not at all, mam, a nice fresh walk would be grand,” Patsy said with little enthusiasm.
For a long time Annabel and Eddie Hogan sat in silence.
“Maurice said that we’re not to worry about a thing,” Eddie said eventually.
Maurice Johnson obviously realized who were the real patients in the house. He had uttered more words of advice to them than to the girl he was meant to be treating.
“It’s easy for Maurice to say that. We don’t worry about his children,” Annabel said.
“True, but to be fair he and Grainne don’t worry much about them either.”
Kit Hegarty lay in her own narrow bed and heard the foghorn and the town hall clock, heard the occasional sound of a car going past. The sleeping tablets hadn’t worked. Her eyes were wide open.
Everyone had been so kind. Nobody had counted the time or the trouble. The boys in the house, ashen-faced at the shock, had offered to leave. Their parents had telephoned from the country. And that little Mrs. Hayes next door, whom she hardly knew, had been a tower of strength, sending her sister in to cook and keep the place going. And the priests in Dun Laoghaire had been great, in and out all evening three or maybe four of them saying nice things and talking to other people, making it seem somehow more normal, drinking cups of tea. But she had so wanted to be left alone for a while.
The only thing that stuck out in a day that seemed to have been a hundred hours of confusion was that nun. The aunt possibly of a girl who had been injured in the accident. She had understood that Frank had to have the bike. Nobody else appreciated that. Fancy a nun being able to realize it. And she had been insistent in her invitation. Kit thought that she would go and see her in that convent. Later, when she was able to think.
Judging from all the chatter, everyone in UCD must have got to know each other pretty quickly, Benny thought as she went up the steps the following morning. The main hall was thronged with people standing in groups, there were shouts of laughter and people greeting each other.
Everyone had a friend of some sort.
On another day it might have worried Benny, but not today.
She walked down a stone staircase to a basement where you could hang your coat. It smelled faintly carbolic, like school. Then up to the ground floor again and into the Ladies’ Reading Room. This was not at all like school. For one thing nobody seemed to think that a reading room was a place you were meant to read. There were girls fixing their makeup at a mirror over the mantelpiece, or scanning notices on the board—items for sale, extra tuition offered, rooms to share, sodalities to join.
A very confident group laughed and reminisced about their summers abroad. They had been in Spain, or Italy, or France … the only thing in common was how little of the language they had learned, how monstrous the children they had had to mind had been, and how late everyone ate their meals in the evening.
They were happy to be back.
Benny soaked it all up for Eve. She would visit her again at lunchtime. This morning she had been pale, still, but cheerful as anything. Mother Francis was going to sort it out. There would be no recriminations.
“I’m going to try to get to College, Benny,” she had said, her face blazing with the intensity of it. “I’ll only be a few weeks late. I’ll get a job, really I will. So you just watch out for everything for me, and take notice, so that I’ll catch up.”
“Are you going to ask the Westwards?”
“I’m not going to rule it out.”
There were always a great many students who took English as a subject in First Arts. The lectures were held in a big hall, confusingly called the Physics Theatre. Benny streamed in with the others. It was so different to the classrooms at school. More like an amphitheatre, with rows of seats in semicircles high up at the back. There were some young student nuns already in place, they were in the front rows, eager and anxious to miss nothing. Benny walked slowly up toward the high seats at the back where she thought she might be more inconspicuous.
From her vantage point she watched them come in: serious-looking lads in duffel coats, earnest women in glasses and hand-knitted cardigans, the clerical students from the religious seminaries in their black suits all looking remarkably cleaner and neater than the other males not bound for religious life. And the girls, the confident, laughing girls. Could they really just be First Years, these troupers in brightly colored skirts, flouncing their hair, aware of the impression they were creating. Perhaps they had spent a year abroad after they left school, Benny thought wistfully. Or even had a holiday job during the summer. Whatever it was, it didn’t bear the hallmark of life in Knockglen.
Suddenly she saw Nan Mahon. Nan wore the smart navy coat she had worn yesterday, but this time over a pale yellow wool dress. Tied loosely around the strap of her shoulder bag was a navy and yellow scarf. Her curly hair was back from her face more than yesterday, and she had yellow earrings. As she walked in, flanked by a boy on each side, each competing for her attention, Nan was the object of all eyes. Her eyes roamed the banks of seats, deciding where to sit. Suddenly she saw Benny.
“Hallo, there you are!” she cried.
People turned around to see whom she was waving at. Benny reddened at the stares, but Nan had left the two admirers and was bounding up to the back row. Benny was taken aback. She felt sure that Nan would know everyone in UCD in days. It was surprising to be singled out. And so warmly.
“Well, how did it go?” she asked companionably.
“What?”
“You know, you sent the young man packing and he more or less said you’d rue the day. I haven’t seen anything so dramatic for years.”
Benny was dismissive. “You couldn’t get a message through to him. Mercifully he didn’t turn up at home. I thought he’d be there, with big cows’ eyes.”
“He’s probably more madly in love with you than ever, now.” Nan was cheerful, as if this was good news.
“I don’t think he has a notion of what love is. He’s like a fish. A fish with an eye to the main chance. A gold-digging goldfish.”
They giggled at the thought.
“Eve’s fine,” Benny said. “I’m going to see her at lunchtime.”
“Can I come too?”
Benny paused. Eve was often so prickly even when she was in the whole of her health. Would she like seeing this golden College belle at her bedside?
“I don’t know,” she said at last.
“Well, we were all in it together. And I know all about her, and the business of Mother Clare and Mother Francis.”
For a moment Benny wished she hadn’t told the story in such detail. Eve certainly wouldn’t like her business being discussed as she lay unconscious.
“That got sorted out,” Benny said.
“I knew it would.”
“Do you think you could come tomorrow instead?”
SIX
The body of Frank Hegarty was brought to the church in Dun Laoghaire.
Dr. Foley attended the prayers and the Removal service with his eldest son.
Also in the church was Mother Francis, who had found it necessary to spend a little longer in Dublin than she had hoped sorting things out with Mother Clare. Peggy had offered to collect her later. She knew there was some kind of trouble, but didn’t ask what it was. She had given her own kind of encouragement to Mother Francis.
“Whatever that one says to you Bunty, remember that her people were tinkers.”
“They weren’t.”
“Well, dealers, anyway. That should give you the upper hand dealing with her.”
It hadn’t, of course, any more than it should have. Mother Francis had a grim face as she waited in the big church for the funeral party to arrive. She didn’t know why she was there; it was as if she wanted to represent Eve.
Nan Mahon went out on the bus to Dun Laoghaire and stood among the group at the back of the church. She was instantly spotted by Jack Foley, who went to join her.
“That’s nice of you, to come all the way out,” he s
aid.
“You did too.”
“I came with my father. But do you see that group there, those are fellows who worked with him in the summer. That’s Aidan Lynch—he was at school with me, and a whole lot more. They were all canning peas together.”
“How did they know?”
“His picture was in the paper, and there was some kind of announcement at the Engineering lectures today.”
“Where’s Benny? Did you see her today?”
“Yes, but she couldn’t come tonight. She had to go home, you see, every evening on this one bus.”
“That’s hard on her,” Jack said.
“It’s very foolish of her,” Nan said.
“What can she do about it?”
“She should make a stand at the outset.”
Jack looked at the attractive girl beside him. She would have made a stand, he knew that. He remembered the big soft-featured Benny.
“She stood up to that awful fellow with the white face who tried to take her off with him yesterday.”
“If you couldn’t stand up to him you shouldn’t be allowed out,” Nan said.
“This is Eve Malone,” Benny said as Nan sat on the end of the hospital bed.
She wanted Eve to like Nan, to recognize that Nan could have been anywhere but had chosen to come and see Benny’s friend. Benny had heard this fellow Aidan Lynch almost begging Nan to come and have lunch with him.
Nan had not brought flowers or grapes or a magazine; instead she had brought the one thing that Eve truly wanted, a College handbook. All the details of registration, late registration, degree courses, diplomas. She didn’t even greet the girl in the bed. Instead she spoke about the matter which was uppermost in Eve’s mind.
“I gather you’re trying to get into College. This might be of some use to you,” she said.
Eve seized it and let her thumb riffle through the pages. “This is just what I need, thank you very much indeed,” she said.
Then her brow darkened slightly.
“How did you think of bringing me this?” she asked suspiciously.
Nan shrugged. “It’s all in there,” she said.
“No, what made you think I’d need it?”
Benny wished Eve wouldn’t be so prickly. What did it matter that Nan Mahon knew her hopes? There was no need to be secretive.
“I asked, that’s all. I asked what you were doing and Benny said you hadn’t enrolled yet.”
Eve nodded. The tension was over. She fingered the book again with gratitude and Benny felt a pang of regret that she hadn’t thought of something so practical.
Little by little Eve was losing her look of wariness. And as Benny watched the girls talk easily she realized they were kindred spirits.
“Will you have it sorted out fairly soon do you think?” Nan was asking.
“I have to go and ask a man for money. It’s not easy but it won’t get any easier by delaying,” Eve said.
Benny was astounded. Eve never talked of her business to anyone and the matter of approaching the Westwards for money was one she had only barely acknowledged to Benny herself. Nan was unaware of this. “Will you play up the being injured bit?” she inquired.
Eve was on the same wavelength. “I might. I’ve been considering it, but he’s the kind of fellow that might regard that as weakness and sniveling. I’ll have to work out how to play it.”
“What’s it all about?” Nan asked with interest.
And as Eve began to tell her the story of the Westwards, the story never spoken aloud to anyone, Benny realized with a shock that Nan was in fact pretending to Eve that she hadn’t heard any of this already. She had asked Nan to be discreet, and she certainly had followed the instructions to the letter. And judging by the way Eve was confiding, the instructions had been unnecessary.
It had been harder to deal with Mother Clare than Mother Francis would ever have believed possible. Sometimes Mother Francis talked directly to Our Lady about it and asked for immediate and positive advice.
“I’ve said I was sorry, I’ve said that we will look after Eve from now on, but she goes on and on and says it’s her duty to know what plans are being made for the girl. Why can’t she just stay out of it? Why, Holy Mother, tell me?”
As it happened, Mother Francis got an answer which she presumed had come from the Mother of God, even though it was spoken by Peggy Pine.
“What that auld rip wants is to be able to prance around like the cock of the walk saying I told you so, I told you so. She wants you to humble yourself, then she’ll give up on it and start torturing someone else.”
Mother Francis agreed to use the tactics of humbling herself. “You were right all along, Mother Clare,” she wrote in the most hypocritical letter she had ever penned. “We were wrong to ask you to take on someone like Eve who had been given a wholly exaggerated set of expectations by our small community here. I can only say that I bow to your wisdom on this as in so many other matters and hope that the Sisters were not unduly inconvenienced by the experiment which you knew was destined to be full of pitfalls.”
It had been the right approach. The regular bewildered and hurt interrogations from Mother Clare ceased.
And just in time too. Eve was pronounced fit to leave hospital a week to the day after she had been admitted.
“I’ll come on the bus, with Benny,” Eve had said on the telephone.
“No, you won’t, there’s half a dozen people who’ll go and collect you. I don’t like to ask Peggy again but Mrs. Healy will be going up.”
“Please, Mother.”
“All right, Sean Walsh? No, don’t even tell me … !”
“I’ve caused you enough trouble. I’ll go with anyone you say though I would rather go on the bus.”
“Mario?”
“Marvelous. I love Mario.”
“All right, we’ll see you tomorrow. I’m so glad you’re coming home Eve. I missed you.”
“And I missed you, Mother. We’ll have to talk.”
“Of course we will. Wrap up warmly won’t you.”
When Eve hung up Mother Francis sat for a moment. It was true they would have to talk. Talk seriously.
As she sat there the telephone rang again.
“Mother Francis please?”
“Speaking.”
There was a pause.
“Mother, in a fit of generosity you said to me … I mean you wondered if I’d like … and isn’t it odd, in the middle of everything I kept remembering it. I wonder would you think it strange if I did come to see you …?”
The woman’s voice stopped again hesitantly.
A great smile lit up Mother Francis’s face.
“Mrs. Hegarty, I’m delighted to hear from you. This weekend would be lovely. You tell me which bus and I’ll walk over and meet you. It’s only a couple of minutes from the convent gate. I’m very pleased you’re going to come and see us.”
She wondered where she would put the woman to sleep. She had thought of her as staying in Eve’s room. But there was the extra parlor that they had always been meaning to do up as a guest room. All it needed was curtains. She’d get some material from Peggy and ask Sister Imelda to ask the senior girls to run them up at Domestic Science class. She’d get a bedside light from Dessie Burns and a nice cake of soap in Kennedy’s chemist.
“Eve’s going home today,” Benny reported when she met Nan for coffee in the Annexe as she did every morning.
“I know. She told me last night.”
“What?”
“Well, it’s at night she really wants people to go in and see her, and you’ve long gone, so I took a couple of fellows in to cheer her up.”
Benny felt a jolt. She knew that Nan and Eve got on well … but taking fellows into a hospital bed!
“What fellows?” she asked lamely.
“Oh, you know, Aidan Lynch and some of that gang. Bill Dunne—do you know him?”
“No.”
“He’s very nice, does Commerce. I bet you know him
to see, he’s always outside the History Library with a group.”
“Did Eve like them coming in?”
“Yeah, she loved it. Did you think she wouldn’t?”
“It’s just that she’s a bit edgy sometimes … you know, on the defensive a bit.”
“I never noticed that.”
It was true. Eve had seemed much less chippy whenever Nan came in. Nan had a gift of making things simple, everyone went along with her way. Just then four boys approached the table. They were all looking at Nan.
“Would you girls like to come down Grafton Street and get some real coffee? Decent coffee for a change,” said the spokesman, a thin boy in an Aran Island sweater.
Nan smiled up at them warmly.
“Thanks a lot, but no, we have a lecture at twelve. Thanks anyway.”
“Come on, that’s only a big lecture, no one’ll miss you.” He was encouraged by her smile to think it was only a matter of saying it often enough.
“No, honestly.” Nan stopped suddenly as if she had been thoughtless. “I mean I’m only speaking for myself. Benny, do you want to go?”
Benny reddened. She knew the boys didn’t want her. It was Nan that had attracted them. But they had nice faces and seemed a little bit lost, like everyone else.
“Why don’t you sit down with us?” she suggested with a big smile.
That was exactly what they wanted to do. Chairs and benches were pulled up, names exchanged. School names given. Did they know this person or that? What were they studying? Where were they staying? It was much easier than Benny had thought to be in the middle of a group like this. She had completely forgotten that she was big and that they were boys. She asked eagerly about the societies, and which ones were good, and where were the best dances.
Nan didn’t make as much effort, but she was very pleased to hear all the information. Her smile was so bright that Benny could see the boys almost loosening their collars as she turned it toward them.
The boys said that the Debating Society on a Saturday night was great. And then when it was over you could go to the Solicitor’s Apprentice or down at the Four Courts. They looked from one girl to the other.