Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  She did not want to go to this person and have something that was less important than tooth extraction. She did not want the sordidity of it, the shabby end of something that had been important. She didn’t think it was a speck, as Simon had said. But she didn’t believe it was a baby either.

  If it were done, then it would all be over, the slate would be clean, she could continue with her studies.

  She looked over at her desk. She didn’t enjoy them. They took up too much time. They ate into the hours she should have been grooming herself, and preparing for the places to go. She found no great joy sitting in those large musty chalk-smelling halls, or the cramped tutorial rooms. She wasn’t academic. Her tutor had told her more than once that she would not make the honors group. What was the point of struggling on doing a pass degree while the kudos was on the honors students?

  She could go to England and have the child. She could have it adopted. Take less than a year out of her life. But why have a child to give it away. Go through all that just to make some anonymous couple’s dream come true?

  If she lived in a remote country village in the west of Ireland, the community might have excused a beautiful girl falling for the Squire and bringing up his child, ashamed but still accepted.

  In parts of working-class Dublin, an unexpected child would have been welcomed in the family. The child would grow up believing its granny was its mother.

  But not in Maple Gardens. It was the beginnings of respectability for the Mahons and their neighbors. And for Nan and Em it would be the end of the dream.

  It looked as if a lot of the options weren’t really options after all.

  It was too early for morning sickness. But she didn’t take any breakfast.

  Em looked at her anxiously.

  “You’ll be seeing Simon this evening, is that right?” she asked, hoping to see Nan’s face light up.

  But she was disappointed.

  “I haven’t seen Simon for weeks and weeks, Em.”

  “But I thought you said …”

  “I’m saying now, and I want you to remember it, I haven’t been going out with Simon Westward since just after Christmas.”

  Emily Mahon looked at her daughter astonished.

  But there was something about the set of Nan’s jaw that made it seem very important.

  Emily nodded, as if she had taken the instruction to heart. It didn’t make it any easier to understand. Either Nan had been lying when she told her of the outings to smart places with Simon, or else she was lying now.

  Jack came into the Annexe. Benny waved eagerly from a table. She had been holding a chair against all comers, by draping her scarf and her books all over it.

  She looked so glad to see him and a lurch of guilt shook him.

  Nobody had reported his long hours dancing with Nan to her anyway, he was slightly afraid that Carmel might have seen it as her duty to make sure that Benny was informed.

  But Benny’s eyes were shining with pleasure to see him.

  “How was the party?”

  “Oh, you know, these things are always the same. Everyone was fine, very cheerful.” There had been two wins to celebrate, some fine playing and thanks to Sean they were in funds. He told her all those details and little about the night itself.

  “It was a pity you couldn’t have been in Dublin.”

  “But I was. Remember I said it would be early closing day and Mother was going to have a rest and an early night.”

  “I’d forgotten,” Jack admitted.

  There was a pause.

  “And of course you didn’t know about the party.”

  “Well, I did, because I ran into Carmel when she was shopping for it. And she told me.”

  She looked unsure. He felt a heel, not just for holding Nan so close last night, but because Benny had thought he mightn’t have asked her.

  “I’d have loved you to have been there. I just forgot. Honestly, I’m so used to your not being there. What did you do?”

  “I went to the pictures with Eve.”

  “You should have rung me.”

  “I did, but it was too late.”

  Jack hadn’t even looked at the message pad this morning. His mother would have written the names of anyone who called.

  “Ah, Benny, I’m very sorry. I’m stupid.” He banged his head as if it were wood.

  He seemed very sorry.

  “Well, no harm done,” she said.

  “I ran into Nan. And since she wasn’t doing anything I asked her to come instead. I think she quite enjoyed it.”

  Benny’s smile was broad. Everything was all right. He had genuinely forgotten. He wasn’t trying to tell her anything. He wasn’t wriggling out. He would have loved her to have been with him last night.

  Thank God he had met Nan and invited her.

  Now she had nothing to worry about.

  EIGHTEEN

  Jack woke suddenly with his heart pounding. He was in the middle of a very violent dream. It was so real it was hard to shake it off. Benny’s father, Mr. Hogan, was standing at the top of the quarry pushing the black Morris Minor belonging to Dr. Foley over the edge.

  Mr. Hogan had red burning coals where his eyes should be, laughing while the car bounced to the bottom of the quarry with a crash.

  It was the crash that had jerked Jack awake.

  He lay there, panting.

  Beside him lay Nan, sleeping innocently, her hands folded under her face, a little smile on her lips.

  They lay in Eve’s cottage, the place he had come for a party just after Christmas.

  They had needed somewhere to go, Nan said. This was a perfectly safe place. Nobody ever passed by. The key was in the stone wall.

  Nan had been wonderful. So cool and practical, saying they must bring a spirit lamp and perhaps their own sheets and towels.

  Jack would never have thought of that. She said they should keep the curtains very tightly drawn and leave the car hidden in the square lest anyone see it. There was a place behind the bus shelter where nobody would think to look.

  She was naturally observant.

  She had said that she never thought it was possible that she could desire someone so much.

  He had been worried about everything, of course, but she said that it would be all right. The alternative was just to go on being a tease. She wanted to love him completely and honestly. It had been so wonderful, compared to that girl in Wales, which had all been just rushed and quick and awkward. Nan’s beautiful body was magical in his arms. She seemed to love everything as much as he did.

  It must have been awful for her the first time, but she had made no complaint. What excited him most was her calm exterior when they met in College. The cool Nan Mahon looking fresh and immaculate was the same girl who wrapped herself around him and gave him an ecstasy that he had not known could exist.

  This was their third visit to the cottage.

  He had still not spoken to Benny.

  It was just that he didn’t know what to say.

  There was going to be an Easter pageant at the school. Heather wanted to take part.

  “We told your brother that you wouldn’t be involved in religious instruction,” Mother Francis explained.

  “But this isn’t religion. It’s drama. It’s only a play,” Heather pleaded.

  It had been an exercise in spirituality intended to give the children some feeling of the message of Easter by reenacting the Passion of Our Lord. Mother Francis sighed.

  “Well, who’ll explain it to your brother. Will you, or will I?”

  “I don’t think we’ll bother him about it. He’s like a weasel. Could I be Hitler, please, Mother, please!”

  “Could you be who?”

  “Um … Pontius Pilate. I got confused …”

  “We’ll have to see. But first I will have to discuss it with Mr. Westward.”

  “It’s too late,” said Heather triumphantly. “He’s gone to England today. To Hampshire. To look for a wife.”

 
Mossy Rooney cleared out the back of Hogan’s shop, and made the derelict yard look as if it had always intended to be a garden. Benny and her mother decided they must put flowers and even shrubs in it.

  Mossy said that they could even have a bit of a garden seat. The place was nice and sheltered.

  Patsy had told him that if the mistress had an ounce of sense she’d sell Lisbeg and move into the shop good and proper.

  There was plenty of room in it, and what did she want to be rattling around like a tin can in a big empty house?

  If they were in the shop it would be easier for Patsy to come and do a bit of daily work. It wouldn’t be as heavy and constant as looking after a big house where nobody lived. Annabel Hogan had not admitted it to herself yet, but as she stood beside Benny watering in the fuchsias they had taken at Eve’s request from the cottage, she began to think that it might be the wisest course.

  In a way it would be nice just to walk upstairs and be home. Or be able to stretch out your feet on the sofa.

  But time enough to think of that later. There was more than enough to sort out already.

  Benny had been careful not to make the first floor, the lumber room where they had found the money in the sewing machine, a place they didn’t visit. Bit by bit she managed to get rid of what had to go. Very gradually she started to ferry things up from Lisbeg. Little by little she and Patsy were transforming that big room into a place where it would be quite possible to sit and spend an evening. They took a wireless, some chairs that did not have the springs protruding. They polished a shabby old table and put place mats on it. Soon they were having their meals up here. Shep spent more time nosing around the lane, prowling the small garden which he regarded as his own exercise yard, and sitting proprietorially in the shop, than he did lording it over an empty Lisbeg.

  Soon the shop was beginning to feel like home.

  Soon Benny would be able to feel more free.

  Dekko Moore asked Dr. Johnson was there a chance that Mrs. Hogan might part with Lisbeg.

  Very often customers came in to him, people from big places, loaded down with money, and they often inquired were there any houses of a certain style going to come up on the market.

  “Give them a few months, yet,” Dr. Johnson said.

  “I imagine they’ll be moved up above by the end of the summer, but you wouldn’t want to rush them.”

  Dekko said it was extraordinary the way things had gone already. He had gone into the shop to buy a pair of socks the other day, and he had spent a fortune.

  Nan and Jack ran down the path from the quarry walk to the square. The Morris Minor was hidden behind the bus shelter. For the third time they were lucky nobody was about. It was only six-thirty in the morning. The car started and they were on the road to Dublin.

  “One morning it won’t start. And then we’re for it,” Jack said, squeezing her hand.

  “We’re very careful. We won’t be caught,” she said. She looked out of the window as they sped past the fields and farms on their way to Dublin.

  He sighed, thinking of the nights and early mornings they had spent in Eve Malone’s small bed.

  But a part of him felt almost sick at the risk they were taking. Eve would kill them if she knew they were using her house like this. Knockglen was a village. Someone must see them sooner or later. Knockglen was much more than a village. It was Benny’s hometown.

  Benny.

  He tried to put her out of his mind. He had managed to see her only with other people for the last two weeks, since this amazing explosive thing with Nan had begun. He didn’t think that Benny noticed. He made sure that Bill or Aidan or Johnny were there, or else he called over people to join them.

  They never went to the pictures alone; on the hard-fought nights that Benny was able to stay in Dublin he made sure they went out in a group. He tried not to include Nan with them, though sometimes Benny brought her along.

  Nan told him that she accepted exactly what he said, that whatever happened between them had nothing to do with Jack and Benny. They were two different worlds.

  Yes, he had said that in the heat of the moment, but when he saw Benny’s trusting face, and laughed at her funny remarks … when she turned out on a cold afternoon to watch him at a practice match, when she offered to help Carmel with the sandwiches, when he realized that he actually wanted to be with her alone and to touch her the way he touched Nan, then he felt confused.

  It was easy to say that your world was compartmentalized. But in real life it wasn’t easy.

  Nan must be much more mature than all of them if she could accept that what Jack felt for her was a huge and almost overpowering passion. It had everything to do with desire and very little to do with sharing a life. They didn’t talk much in the car, while with Benny they would both find the words stumbling over each other.

  Jack felt a great sense of anxiety as the traffic began to build up a little on the road and they approached Dublin. Nan told him nothing of her home and family.

  “How do they let you stay out all night?” he had asked.

  “How do yours let you stay out all night?” she had replied.

  The answer was simple. That he was a boy. Nothing terrible could happen to him, like getting pregnant.

  But he didn’t say it. He didn’t dare to say it out of politeness, and out of superstition.

  Nan watched fields turn into first factory premises and then housing estates. They would soon be home. She would ask him to leave her at the corner of Maple Gardens. As soon as his car had disappeared, Nan would go to the bus stop.

  She would come into College early and get herself ready for lectures.

  Not that her heart was in them. But she couldn’t go home. Her father thought she was staying with Eve Malone in Dun Laoghaire, instead of sneaking into Eve’s cottage in Knockglen.

  It would confuse and worry her mother. Let Jack go home to his house with hot water and clean shirts, and a mildly perplexed mother and a maid putting bacon and egg on the table. He had nothing to worry about, a lover and a patient, loving girl friend. From what you read in books it was what all men wanted.

  Nan bit her lip as they drove along in silence. She would have to tell him very soon. She could see no other way out.

  That night when she lay on her bed she examined the options. This was the only one that looked as if it might possibly work.

  She was not going to think about Benny. Jack had said that was his business. It had nothing to do with what was between them. Nan didn’t really believe that. But he had said that it was up to him to cope with. She had enough to worry about.

  She could not confide in one single person because there was nobody alive who would condone what she was about to do. For the second time in a month she was going to have to tell a man that she was pregnant. And with the unfairness of life, the second one who had no duty or responsibility would probably be the one to do the right thing.

  Mossy’s mother said that May was nice for a wedding. Paccy Moore said they could have the reception in the room behind his shop. After all, his sister Bee was being the bridesmaid, and Patsy didn’t have a home of her own.

  It wasn’t what Patsy had hoped. The guests coming through the cobbler’s shop. But it was either that or let it be known she was coming in with nothing to her mother-in-law’s house and have the gathering there.

  What she would really have liked was to be able to use Lisbeg, and have the reception in the Hogans’ house, but it didn’t look likely. The master would only be four months gone. The mistress and Benny spent that much time above in the shop they would have little time and energy to spare for Patsy. She was getting a dress at Pine’s. She had been paying for it slowly since Christmas.

  Clodagh told Benny about Patsy’s hopes. “It may be impossible, I’m not suggesting you do it, it’s just that you’d hate to hear afterward and not have realized.”

  Benny was very grateful to be told. It was bad of them not to have thought of it in the first place. They had
assumed that all the running would be made by Mossy’s side and didn’t even think of suggesting a venue.

  Patsy’s joy knew no bounds. It was one in the eye for Mossy’s mother. She began to get the wedding invitations printed.

  “And how’s your own romance?” Clodagh inquired. “I believe he was down here the other night.”

  “God, I wish he had been. I think it’s going all right. He’s always coming looking for me and suggesting this and that, but there’s a cast of thousands as well.”

  “Ah well, that’s all to the good. He wants to show you to his friends. And he has friends. That lunatic across the road there has no friends except people who sell pinball machines and jukeboxes. I could have sworn I saw him at Dessie Burns’ getting petrol.”

  “Who? Fonsie?”

  “No, your fellow. Oh well, I suppose there’s dozens of handsome blokes in college scarves getting petrol in Morris Minors.”

  “It’s not only Mr. Flood who’s seeing visions,” Benny said to Jack next day. “Clodagh thought she saw you getting petrol in Knockglen the other night.”

  “Would I have come to Knockglen and not gone to see you?” he asked.

  It was a ridiculous question. It didn’t even need an answer. She had only brought it up to show him that he was a person there, that he had an identity.

  He breathed slowly through his teeth and remembered the shock that he and Nan had got when he realized the petrol gauge was showing empty. They had to fill up there and then. There would be nowhere open when they made their dawn escape.

  Another very near miss. He wouldn’t tell Nan about it. He hoped Benny wouldn’t.

  Sean Walsh was taking his early morning walk. These days he was accompanied by the two unattractive Jack Russell terriers with whom he would be sharing his home. They were less yappy and unpleasant if they were wearied by this harsh morning exercise.

  He had ceased to look at the houses with the resentment and longing that he had once felt.

  Things had turned out very much better than he would have dared to hope.

  Dorothy was a woman in a million.

  From Eve Malone’s cottage he saw two figures emerge. The early sunlight was in his eyes and he couldn’t see who they were.