Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  I am perfectly happy to meet you and talk to you, but the correspondence must now cease.

  Cordially,

  Clodagh.

  Dear Mother Francis,

  I intend to spend Christmas at St. Mary’s in Knockglen for a variety of reasons. I hope this will not unduly disturb the community. I shall be in touch later with full details.

  Your Sister in Christ,

  Mother Clare.

  Lilly Foley was pleased about the party. John would enjoy it. He would like seeing their big house filled with lights and flowers and the rustle of evening dresses, beautiful girls.

  Her husband would enjoy playing host to a roomful of handsome young people. It would make him feel their age.

  She was determined it would be just right, and that she herself would look her very best. There was no way he could be allowed to look across at her and think she was drab and gray compared to all the glitter around them.

  She would think of her own outfit later. In the meantime she must plan it properly. She could not let Jack know how welcome the excuse was. She would let him and his father know what a wonderful wife and mother she was to cope with his demands.

  “Will they want sausages and savories, do you think?” Lilly Foley asked.

  “They’ll want whatever we give them.” Jack had no interest in the details.

  “Who’ll serve it? Doreen will need help.”

  Jack looked round the table. “Aengus,” he said.

  “Can I wear a napkin on my arms?” Aengus asked.

  “You’d probably better wear one on your bottom as well,” Ronan said.

  His mother frowned.

  “It’s for your friends, Jack. I wish you’d pay some attention.”

  “And for yours and Dad’s. Look, aren’t the pair of you delighted, you’ve got those new curtains you’ve been talking about and you had the gate painted.”

  “It’d be like you to tell everyone that.”

  “Of course I won’t. I keep telling you that I think it’s great all your friends are coming round.”

  “And all yours!”

  “Mine will only be here for an hour or two. Yours will stay all night and disgrace themselves. I’m as well off not to be a witness to it.”

  “And what about the oldies, as you call them? The parents of your friends.”

  “I asked Aidan Lynch’s parents. You know them already.”

  “I do.” Mrs Foley raised her eyes to heaven.

  “And Benny Hogan’s parents, the people from Knockglen. But they can’t come. They wrote to you remember? It’s only going to be people like Uncle Kevin and the neighbors, and all your own crowd. You’ll hardly notice my few.”

  “I wish I knew why you’ve inflicted this on us,” his mother asked.

  “Because I couldn’t decide which girl to ask, so I asked them all.” Jack beamed at her in total honesty.

  The weekend before the dance, Eve came home to Knockglen.

  “I’ve left it far too long,” she confessed to Benny on the bus on the Friday evening. “But it really was that I didn’t want to run out on Kit. Do you think Mother Francis knows that?”

  “Tell her,” Benny said.

  “I will. She said she had a favor to ask of me. What do you think it could be?”

  “Let’s guess. Help her set up a poteen still in the kitchen garden?”

  “I’d be good at that. Or maybe, based on my huge experience beating off the advances of Aidan Lynch, she wants me to give Sixth Year a course of lessons in sex education.”

  “Or take the older nuns to Belfast on a day excursion to see a banned film.”

  “Or bring Sean Walsh into the art room and drape a duster over his vital parts and have him for a life class.”

  They laughed so much that Mike the driver said they put him off concentrating.

  “The pair of you remind me of those cartoons of Mutt and Jeff, do you know the ones I mean?” Mikey shouted at them.

  They did. Mutt was the big one, Jeff was the tiny one. Mikey was always pretty subtle.

  “I can’t turn her away,” Mother Francis pleaded with Eve in the kitchen.

  “Yes you can, Mother, yes you bloody can.”

  “Eve! Please!”

  “No, honestly, you can do anything. You’ve always been able to do anything you wanted. Always.”

  “I don’t know where you got this idea.”

  “From living with you, from watching you. You can tell Mother Clare that it damn well won’t suit the community to have her here just because her own lot above in Dublin want to be shot of her for Christmas.”

  “It’s hardly a charitable thing to say, or do.”

  “Since when has that had anything to do with it?”

  “Well, we must have raised you under some misapprehension here. Charity is meant to have quite a lot to do with the religious life, actually.”

  They both laughed at that.

  “Mother, I couldn’t be in the same house as her.”

  “You don’t have to Eve. The rest of us do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have your own house, if you want to use it.”

  “Another of your ploys!”

  “On my word of honor. If you think that I went to all the trouble to arrange that Mother Clare came here just so that I could maneuver you into that cottage, then you really don’t understand anything at all.”

  “It would be going a bit far, certainly,” Eve agreed.

  “Well, then.”

  “No.”

  “Why? Just one good reason.”

  “I won’t take their charity. I won’t live in their bloody grace and favor home like some old groom who broke his back looking after horses for the Squires and gets some kind of bothan and tugs his remaining bit of hair out in gratitude for the rest of his life.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It is Mother, it is. She was thrown out, not good enough to walk through their doors, never let back in again. But they didn’t want her to die on the side of the road so they gave her that cottage that no one wanted because it was miles from anywhere and in addition, horror of horrors, beside the Roman Catholic convent.”

  “They liked it, Eve. It was where they wanted to live.”

  “It’s not where I want to live.”

  “Not even look at it? I go to so much trouble minding it for you, always hoping, I thought you’d be delighted.”

  Mother Francis looked tired, weary almost.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was so sure you’d be so relieved to have a place to escape … but I suppose I got it wrong.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having a look Mother. To please you. Nothing to do with them.”

  “Tomorrow morning, then. We’ll go up, the pair of us.”

  “And my room here …”

  “Will be your room here until the day you die.”

  “What do you think?” Benny looked anxiously at Clodagh.

  “It’s a gorgeous bit of stuff. A pity to cut it up.”

  “You’ve seen people going to these places. Will it look all right?”

  “When I’m through with it and you it will be a sensation.”

  Benny looked doubtfully at Clodagh’s own outfit, which was a white smock over a mauve polo-neck jumper and what looked like mauve tights. It was very far ahead for anywhere, let alone Knockglen.

  “We’ll cut the bodice well … well down like this.”

  Benny stood in her slip. Eve sat companionably on a radiator smoking and giving her comments.

  Clodagh made a gesture with the black velvet top which implied a startlingly low neckline.

  “Cut it where?” Benny screamed. Clodagh gestured again.

  “That’s what I thought you said. I’d fall into my dinner for God’s sake.”

  “Presumably you’ll be wearing some kind of undergarment to prevent this.”

  “I’ll be wearing a bra made of surgical steel …”

  “Yes, and we
must push your bosom right up and in like this.”

  Clodagh made a grab at her and Benny gave a yell.

  “I haven’t had as much fun in years,” Eve said.

  “Tell her, Eve. Tell her my mother’s paying for this. She won’t let me out like the whore of Babylon.”

  “It’s a dance isn’t it?” asked Clodagh. “It’s not a function to put forward the cause for your canonization or anything is it.”

  “Clodagh, you’re off your head. I can’t. Even if I had the courage.”

  “Right. We’ll give you a modesty vest.”

  “A what?”

  “We’ll cut the thing the way it should be cut and mold you into it. Then I’ll make a bit of pleated linen or something and a couple of fasteners and we can tell your mother that this is what you’ll be wearing. You can take it out as soon as you are outside the city limits of Knockglen.”

  Clodagh fiddled and draped and pinned.

  “Put your shoulders back, Benny,” she ordered. “Stick your chest out.”

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I look like the prow of a ship,” said Benny in alarm.

  “I know. Isn’t it great.”

  “Fellows love the prows of ships,” Eve said. “They’re always saying it.”

  “Shut up, Eve Malone. I’ll stick the scissors in you.”

  “You will not. Those are my expensive pinking shears. Now isn’t that something.” Clodagh looked pleased.

  Even in its rough-and-ready state they could see what she had in mind for Benny. And it looked very good indeed.

  “The Wise Woman wouldn’t let her mother near the fittings for this dress,” Eve said sagely.

  “They’ll be climbing all over you in this,” Clodagh said happily as she began to unpin it.

  “Wouldn’t that be fantastic,” Benny said, smiling delightedly at her reflection in the mirror.

  TEN

  It’s great that you’ll be working late tonight,” Nan said to her mother. They poured another cup of coffee at the kitchen table. The dance was in the same hotel as Emily’s shop. Nan planned to bring her friends in to introduce them and parade their finery.

  “You don’t have to you know, I can always peep out and see you going into the ballroom.”

  “But you know that I’d love to Em. I want you to meet them and them to meet you.”

  Between them, unspoken, lay the certainty that Nan would never bring them home to Maple Gardens.

  “Only if it seems right at the time. There might be people there that you don’t want to bring into a shop … you know.”

  Nan laid her hand on her mother’s.

  “No, I don’t know, as it happens. What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’ve had such hopes for you … you and I, that you’ll get out of all this.” Emily looked round the small, awkward house. “You mightn’t want to be bringing grand people in on top of me in a shop.” She smiled apologetically.

  “It’s a gorgeous shop. And you run it like a dream. I’d be proud to have them see you there,” Nan said.

  She didn’t say that she was not relying on the Aidan Lynches, the Bill Dunnes or the Jack Foleys to take her out of Maple Gardens. She had set her sights much higher than that.

  “I wish you’d come in tonight for the drinks bit,” Eve said to Kit.

  “No, I’d be no good at a thing like that, all falling over my words. I was never any good at social occasions.”

  “Aidan Lynch’s parents are going to be there. You could talk about him!”

  “God, Eve, leave me alone. I’d a million times prefer to be here. Ann Hayes and I are going to the pictures. That’s much more our style than having cocktails with doctors in Ailesbury Road.”

  “It’s not Ailesbury Road,” Eve said defensively.

  “It’s not far off it.” Her face softened. “To be asked is enough. Have you the bed made up for Benny?”

  “I have. We won’t make a noise and wake you.”

  “It’s easy to wake me. I sleep very lightly. Maybe you’ll tell me about it. That outfit is gorgeous on you. I never saw anything like it.”

  They had a dress rehearsal the night before, with evening bag borrowed from Mrs. Hayes next door, and the good white lacy blouse from Kit’s wardrobe starched and pressed until it was like new. Now Kit’s surprise gift was produced. Scarlet earrings exactly the same color as the skirt.

  “No, no. You can’t be buying me things,” Eve stammered.

  Something in Kit’s face reminded Eve that Frank Hegarty might have been dressing up in a dinner jacket this night to go to the dance if things had been different.

  “Thank you very, very much,” she said.

  “You really are very beautiful. Very striking.”

  “I think I look a bit like a bird,” Eve said seriously. “A sort of crazed blackbird with its head on the side before it goes picking for things.”

  Kit pealed with laughter. “I mean it. I really do,” she said. “You are very attractive, mad as a brush of course, but with any luck people might not notice that.”

  Benny’s outfit had been packed in a box in tissue paper. It had been much admired at home. There had been a dangerous moment when Patsy had giggled and said she hoped nobody would snatch Benny’s modesty vest away. The Hogans looked at each other, alarmed.

  “Why would a thing like that happen?”

  Benny had glared at Patsy, who went back to the range in confusion.

  “I’d love to see you all dressed up setting out tonight,” Benny’s mother said. “You and Eve and all your friends.”

  “Yes, well you could have come up of course to Dr. Foley’s. You were invited.”

  Benny felt hypocritical. She would have hated them to be there.

  “Yes, it was very civil of them certainly,” Eddie Hogan said. “Repaying the hospitality we gave to that boy.”

  Benny felt herself wince with embarrassment. How provincial and old-fashioned they were compared to people in Dublin. Then a wave of guilt came over her and she felt protective about them. Why should they have the same style and way of going on as people who went to cocktail parties.

  “And you’ll be home on the morning bus?” her mother said hopefully.

  “Maybe the later one. It would be nice to get value out of the visit, and meet the girls for coffee … or lunch.”

  “But you’ll ring?” her father asked.

  “Of course I will.” She was dying to be gone. “Tomorrow morning.”

  “You’ll be fine, up in Dublin,” her father said, sounding as doubtful as if she were going to the far side of the moon.

  “Don’t I go there every day, Father?”

  “But not every night.”

  “Still I’m safe with Mrs. Hegarty, you know that.” Oh, please let them let her go.

  “And enjoy every minute of it,” her mother said.

  “I’d better go for the bus, Mother. I don’t want to be rushing, not carrying this parcel.”

  They stood at the door of Lisbeg, Mother, Father, Patsy and Shep. If Shep had known he would have raised his paw to wave. He would have.

  “Enjoy the dance, Benny,” Dr. Johnson called to her.

  Clodagh, already rearranging her now much-talked-of windows in Pine’s shop, made marvelous gestures, miming Benny ripping off a modesty vest and exposing enormous amounts of bosom.

  Fonsie watched this from across the street with interest.

  “Fabulous bird, isn’t she,” he said.

  “There’s great talent here in Knockglen,” Benny agreed.

  “Keep on rocking,” Fonsie encouraged her.

  Outside Hogan’s Sean Walsh was polishing the brasses.

  “Tonight’s the big night,” he said with a slow smile.

  Remember Nan’s advice. It doesn’t hurt to be nice. It often helps.

  Benny smiled back. “That’s it, Sean,” she said.

  “I was trying to persuade your father to let me drive them up to that reception he was invited to.”

  “It
wasn’t a reception. It was more a few drinks in Dr. Foley’s house.”

  “The very thing. He showed me the letter inviting them. I said it would be a matter of nothing for me to drive them.”

  “But they refused.” She knew her voice was high-pitched now.

  “Ah, sure what would that be except to lift the phone and say they were able to come after all? I told them they owed it to themselves to go out once in a while.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. And I said when better than on the night of Benny’s big dance?”

  “What a pity they weren’t able to take you up on it.”

  “The day’s young yet,” Sean Walsh said, and went back into the shop.

  He was only saying it to annoy her. He must have known how much she would hate her parents to be at something like this. She felt slightly faint and leaned against the wall of Birdie Mac’s.

  Birdie knocked on the window, mouthing at her.

  God, Benny thought, this is all I need. She’s going to give me some broken chocolate or something now to build me up.

  “Hallo, Miss Mac.” She tried to make her voice steady. She must try to be sane. Her parents had just said good-bye to her. They had no intention of coming to Dublin. There would have been preparations for a week.

  Birdie was at the door. “Benny, I just had a phone call from your mother. She wants me to give her a home perm this morning. I forgot to ask her, does she have a hair dryer at home?”

  Birdie Mac looked at Benny anxiously.

  “Are you all right child? You’re very pale.”

  “A home perm you say.”

  “Yes. It’s easy for me, I can run down now and wind it on, and then come back later and do the neutralizing. It’s the dryer I was wondering about …”

  “There is a dryer.” Benny spoke like a robot.

  She moved up to the square without realizing it. She was startled by the hooting of the bus.

  “Well, Benny, are you going to get on? Do you need a special invitation?”

  “Sorry, Mikey. Are you leaving? I didn’t notice.”

  “No, not at all. We’ve all day, and all night. Leisure is the keynote in our bus service, never hurry a passenger, that’s our motto.”