Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  “I think they thought I was all right,” she told Benny, with some relief.

  “Did you think they were all right?”

  “It isn’t up to me to be having opinions, you know that, Benny.”

  Not for the first time Benny wanted to find the orphanage where Patsy had grown up with no hope and no confidence and strangle everyone in it. Patsy wanted to know what time Sean Walsh had left, because she saw him walking around up on the quarry path at all hours. He had looked distraught, she reported, as if he had something on his mind.

  Benny wanted to know no more of this. She changed the topic. Were there lights on in Eve’s cottage, she wanted to know.

  “Yes, it looked lovely and cozy. She had a little Christmas crib in the window with a light in it. And there was a tree too, a small tree with lots of things hanging on it.”

  Eve had told Benny about the crib, a gift from the convent, and every single nun had made a decoration for the tree as well. Angels with pipe cleaners and colored wool. Stars made out of foil wrapping paper, little pom-pom balls, little figures cut out of Christmas cards and given a stiff cardboard backing. Hours of work had gone into those presents.

  The community was alternatively proud and sad that Eve had moved to her own house. But they had grown used to her being in Dublin. In those first weeks they had missed her running through the convent, and sitting up in the kitchen talking to them.

  And as Mother Francis said, it was only at the other end of the garden.

  Mother Francis never said that to Eve herself. She always stressed that the girl must come and go, using the ordinary path when she wished. It was her house and she must entertain whom she liked.

  When Eve asked about having a party, Mother Francis said she could have half the county if she pleased. Eve admitted ruefully that she seemed to be having half of Dublin. Because of her boasting they all thought Knockglen was the place to be.

  Mother Francis said that this was only the truth and wondered how Eve was going to cope. She wondered what Eve was going to do about food for half of Dublin.

  “I’ve brought a lot of stuff. Clodagh and Benny are going to come in on St. Stephen’s Day and help.”

  “That’s great. Don’t forget Sister Imelda would always love to be asked to make pastry.”

  “I don’t think I could …”

  “You know, I believe they eat sausage rolls all over the world, including Dublin. Sister Imelda would be honored.”

  Clodagh and Benny were up at the cottage early.

  “A soup, that’s what you want,” Clodagh said firmly.

  “I don’t have a big pot.”

  “I bet the convent does.”

  “Why did I take this on, Clodagh?”

  “As a housewarming. To warm your house.” Clodagh was busy counting plates, making lists and deciding where they would put coats. Benny and Eve watched her with admiration.

  “That one could rule the world if she was given a chance,” Eve said.

  “I’d certainly make a better stab at it than the eejits who are meant to be in charge,” said Clodagh cheerfully.

  The Hogans were surprised to see Sean Walsh come in through the gate of Lisbeg on St. Stephen’s Day.

  “We didn’t ask him again, today?” Annabel asked, alarmed.

  “I didn’t, certainly. Benny may have.” Eddie sounded doubtful.

  But nobody had invited Sean Walsh. He had come to have a discussion with Mr. Hogan about business. He had taken a long walk last night up around the quarry and he had sorted everything out in his head. Sean Walsh had a proposition to put to Mr. Hogan, that he should be taken on as a partner in the firm.

  He realized that there wasn’t sufficient cash flow to make him a more attractive salary offer. The only solution would be to invite him to be a full partner in the business.

  Mario looked on as Fonsie backed the station wagon up to the door and loaded the record player into the back.

  “We go back to the peace and the quiet?” he asked hopefully.

  Fonsie didn’t even bother to answer. He knew that nowadays anything Mario said was more in the nature of a ritual protest than a genuine complaint.

  The cafe was unrecognizable from the run-down place it was when Fonsie had arrived in town. Brightly painted, cheerful, it was attracting all kinds of clientele that would never have crossed its doorstep in the old days. Fonsie had seen that there was an opportunity for morning coffee for an older set, and he had gone all out to get it. This was the time of day when the younger set, the real customers, were tied up at school or working, so the place was almost empty.

  Fonsie played old-style music and watched with satisfaction while Dr. Johnson’s wife, and Mrs. Hogan, Mrs. Kennedy from the chemist and Birdie Mac all took to call in for a coffee that was cheaper than Healy’s Hotel in an atmosphere that was distinctly less formal.

  And as for the youngsters, he had plans for a magnificent jukebox which would pay for itself in six months. But there would be time enough to explain that to his uncle later. In the meantime he just said that he was lending the player they had to Eve Malone for her party.

  “That’s a better place to play it than here,” Mario grumbled. “Up on the quarry is good. It will only deafen the wild birds that fly around in the air.”

  “You won’t stay too late at this party now, will you?” Benny’s father was looking at her over his glasses.

  It made him look old and fussy. She hated him peering like that. Either look through them or take them off, she wanted to shout with a surge of impatience.

  She forced a reassuring smile onto her face.

  “It’s the only party there’s ever been in Knockglen, Father, you know that. I can’t come to any harm, just up at the back of the convent garden.”

  “That’s a slippy old path through the convent.”

  “I’ll come back by the road then, down through the square.”

  “It’ll be pitch-dark,” her mother added. “You might be better coming through the convent.”

  “I’ll have plenty of people to come back with me. Clodagh or Fonsie, Maire Carroll even.”

  “Maybe I could walk up that way myself about the time it would be ending. Shep, you’d like a nice late night walk wouldn’t you?”

  The dog’s ears pricked up at the thought of any kind of walk.

  Please let her find the right words. The words that would stop her father walking out in the dark out of kindness and peering through the window at Eve’s party, wrecking it for everyone, not only Benny.

  Please could she say the right thing that would stop him in this foolish well-meant wish to escort her safely home.

  Nan would know how to cope with this. What would Nan do? Nan always said stick as close to the truth as possible.

  “Father, I’d rather if you didn’t come up for me. It would make me look a bit babyish, you know, in front of all the people from Dublin. And it’s the only party that’s ever been given in Knockglen and maybe the only one that ever will be. Do you see how I don’t want to be taken there and collected as if I were a child?”

  He looked a bit hurt, as if a kind offer had been refused.

  “All right, love,” he said eventually. “I was only trying to be helpful.”

  “I know, Father, I know,” she said.

  This Christmas Nan’s father had been worse than usual. The festive season seemed to bring him no cheer. The boys were almost immune to him. Paul and Nasey spent very little time in Maple Gardens.

  Emily tried to excuse him. She spoke of him apologetically to Nan.

  “He doesn’t mean it. If you knew how full of remorse he is after.”

  “I do,” Nan said. “I have to listen to it.”

  “He’ll be so sorry he upset us. He’ll be like a lamb today.” Em pleaded for understanding.

  “Let him be like anything he likes, Em. I’m not going to be here to look at it. I’m going to the races.”

  She had rehearsed this outfit over and over. It seemed to
be just right. The cream camel-hair suit with the dark brown trimmings, the hat that fitted so perfectly into the blond curly hair. A small, good handbag and shoes that would not sink in the mud. She went to the races on the bus, along with other Dubliners going on a day out.

  But while they talked form and record and likely outsiders, Nan Mahon just sat and looked out of the window.

  She had very little interest in horses.

  It didn’t take her long to find him, and position herself in a place where she could be seen. She stood warming her hands at one of the many coal braziers placed around the enclosure. She appeared to concentrate very much on the heat as she saw him from the corner of her eye.

  “How lovely to meet you again, Nan Mahon,” he said. “Where is your supporting group of ladies?”

  “What do you mean?” Her smile was warm and friendly.

  “It’s only I never see you without a great regiment of women in tow.”

  “Not today. I came with my brothers. They’ve gone to the Tote.”

  “Good. Can I bear you off to have a drink?”

  “Yes. I’d love that, but just one. I must meet them after the third race.”

  They went into the crowded bar, his hand under her elbow guiding her slightly.

  There were smiles here and there and people calling to him. She felt confident that she was their equal. There were no pitying looks. Not one of those people would ever know the kind of house she had left this morning to get here on the bus. A house where drink had been spilled, where a lamp had been broken, where half the Christmas pudding had been thrown against the wall in a drunken rage. These people accepted Nan as an equal.

  Eve looked around her little house with pleasure.

  The oil lamps were lit and they gave a warm glow. The fire burned in the grate.

  Mother Francis had left what she called a few old bits and pieces around the place. They were exactly the kind of thing that Eve wanted. A big blue vase in which she could put the wild catkins she had gathered. A handful of books to fill a corner shelf. Two slightly cracked china candlesticks for the mantelpiece, an old coal scuttle polished and burnished.

  In the kitchen on the old range there were saucepans which must have come from the convent. Nothing much useful had been left from her parents’ time.

  Only the piano. Sarah Westward’s piano. Eve ran her fingers over it and wished yet again that she had paid attention and tried to learn when Mother Bernard had been giving her lessons. Mother Francis had wanted so much for Eve to share what must have been a great love of music. Her mother had a piano stool stuffed with sheet music, and books and scores in a cupboard. They had been neatly tidied and kept free of damp by Mother Francis over the years.

  When the piano tuner came to the school he was always asked to do a further chore and had been led through the kitchen gardens up the path to the piano which he always told Mother Francis was twenty times better than anything they had in the music room of St. Mary’s.

  “It’s not ours,” Mother Francis used to say.

  “Then why am I tuning it?” he used to ask every year.

  Eve sat down at the fire and hugged herself.

  As in so many things, Mother Francis had been right. It was very nice to have a place of your own.

  The Hogans had decided not to talk to Benny yet about Sean Walsh’s proposition. Or ultimatum.

  It had been very courteously couched, but there was no question about it. If he were not invited to be a partner in the business he would leave, and it would be known why he left. Nobody in Knockglen would think that he had been fairly treated. Everyone knew what his input had been, and how great his loyalty.

  Sean did not need to spell out what would be the future for the business if he were allowed to leave. As it was, he was the one holding it together. Mr. Hogan had no real business sense in terms of what today’s customers wanted. And old Mike in the shop wasn’t going to be any help to him in that regard.

  They would talk to Benny about it, but not now. Not since she had put herself out to be polite and courteous to him during the Christmas meal. She might flare up again and they didn’t want to risk that.

  “Has Sean been asked to the party above in Eve’s cottage?” Eddie asked, although he knew that there was no question of the boy’s having been invited.

  “No, Father.”

  To Benny’s relief the telephone rang. But it was startling to have someone call at nine o’clock in the evening. She hoped that it wasn’t Jack to say he wasn’t coming.

  Benny answered it. Nan Mahon was on the line, pleading, begging that she could come to stay tomorrow night for the party. Nan had said that she didn’t think she would be able to come to Knockglen when the party was first mentioned. What had changed her mind? A lot of things, apparently. She would explain everything when she arrived. No, she wouldn’t need to be met on the bus. She’d be getting a lift. She’d explain all that later too. No, no idea what time. Could she say she’d see Benny at the party?

  Next morning, on the day of the party, Benny went up early to Eve’s cottage to tell her the news.

  Eve was furious.

  “What does she think she’s doing, announcing her arrival like some bloody old king from the olden days.”

  “You did ask her to the party,” Benny said mildly.

  “Yes, and she said no.”

  “I don’t know what you’re bellyaching about. It’s just one more for the party. I’m the one who was dragging beds all night with Patsy and checking that there’s no dust on the legs of the furniture in case Nan does a household inspection.”

  Eve didn’t know why she was annoyed. It was, on the face of it, unreasonable. Nan was her friend. Nan had lent her that beautiful red skirt for the dance. Nan had advised Eve on everything from how to put on eyeliner to putting shoe trees in every shoe every night. The others would be delighted to see her. It would make the party go with an even bigger swing. It was strange that she felt so resentful.

  They sat having coffee in the kitchen of Eve’s home, the two of them puzzling out who was giving Nan a lift. Benny said it couldn’t be Jack because he was coming in a car with Aidan and Carmel and Sean. They knew it wasn’t with Rosemary Ryan and Sheila, still deadly rivals and driving discontentedly with Bill Dunne and Johnny O’Brien.

  Benny was thinking about Jack and how after tonight surely Rosemary and Sheila would have to give up their hopes of him, once they had seen how he and Benny felt about each other. To say straight out that he had missed her. To say it on the phone on Christmas Day. It was the most wonderful thing that could have happened.

  Eve’s brow was furrowed. She wished she could think that Nan was just coming for the party. She felt sure that it was in order to wangle an invitation to Westlands. Which she would not get from Eve and that was for sure and for certain.

  Heather came to call wearing her hacking jacket and little hard hat.

  “You look as if you’ve just got off a horse,” Eve said.

  “I have,” and Heather proudly showed her pony tied to the gate.

  It was eating some of the bushes within its reach. Eve leapt up in panic. Those were her only decoration, she said, and now this terrible horse was hoovering it all up. Heather laughed, and said nonsense, her beautiful pony was only nuzzling. He wouldn’t dream of eating anything between meals. Benny and Eve went out and stroked the gray horse, Malcolm, the light of young Heather’s life. They kept away from the mouth with the big yellow teeth and marveled at how fearless Heather seemed to be. Heather had come to help. She thought she would be useful in setting up the games and was very perplexed when there seemed to be no games to set up. No ducking for apples like at Halloween. Heather was at a party where they had advertisements all cut out of papers, just the word. The thing that was being advertised was cut out. Everyone had a pencil and paper and the one who got most of them right won.

  In desperation they suggested she blow up balloons. That pleased her. She had plenty of breath, she said proudly. As sh
e sat in an ever-increasing heap of green, red and yellow balloons Heather asked casually if Simon had been invited to the party.

  “No, it’s not really his kind of party,” Eve said. “And besides, he’d be very old for it.”

  She wondered why she was making excuses for not inviting this man for whom she had felt nothing but dislike all her life. But then who could ever have foreseen the way things would turn out. That she would be very fond of his younger sister, and that she would have been settled in this house where she had vowed never to live. The day might well come when her cousin Simon Westward could cross this door, but not for a long time yet.

  Jack Foley was recognized as the expert on Knockglen. He had been there before after all. He knew Benny’s house. He had been given clear instructions on how to get to the quarry road. You came in like the bus to the square and took a hilly path that had no signpost on it, but looked as if it were leading to a farmhouse.

  There was another way through the convent, but you couldn’t take the car and Eve had been adamant that there was to be no horseplay anywhere near her nuns.

  Aidan wanted them to go and have a look at the convent first. He stared out of the passenger seat at the high walls and the big wrought-iron gate.

  “Imagine being brought up in a place like that. Isn’t it a miracle that she’s normal,” he said.

  “But is she normal?” Jack wanted to know. “She does appear to fancy you, which doesn’t augur well for her state of mind.”

  They wound their way up the perilous path. The curtains were pulled back in the cottage and they could see firelight, and oil lamps, a Christmas tree and balloons.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous,” breathed Carmel, whose plans for the future when Sean was an established businessman now widened to include a small country cottage for weekends.

  Jack liked it too.

  “It’s away from everywhere. You could be here and nobody know a thing about it.”

  “Unless of course the sounds of ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’ were coming out of every window,” Aidan Lynch said happily, leaping from the car and running in to find Eve.

  Clodagh had brought a clothes rail and hangers up from the shop. It meant that Eve’s bed wouldn’t be swamped with people’s garments and there would be room for the girls to sit at the little dressing table to titivate themselves.