Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  They ran hand in hand, almost scampered down the path that led to the square. He squinted after them. They both looked vaguely familiar. Or perhaps he was imagining it. They must be Dublin people who had rented or borrowed the cottage.

  But where were they going?

  It was much too early for a bus. There had been no cars in the square.

  It was a mystery, and that was something Sean Walsh didn’t like at all.

  Lilly Foley spoke to her husband about Jack.

  “Three nights last week, and three again this week John. You’ll have to say something.”

  “He’s a grown man.”

  “He’s twenty. That’s not a grown man.”

  “Well, it’s not a child. Leave him be. When he’s passed over for a team, or fails an exam, that’s the time to talk to him.”

  “But who could he be with? Is it the same girl, or a different one each time?”

  “It’s a fair distance on the old mileometer I notice, whoever it is.” Jack’s father laughed roguishly.

  He had found a receipt for petrol from Knockglen. It must be that big girl Benny Hogan. Which was a turnup for the books, and where on earth did they go? Her father had died, but her mother was strict. Surely she wouldn’t have been able to entertain Jack in her house?

  Heather rang Eve. “When are you coming home? I miss you.”

  Eve felt absurdly flattered.

  She said she’d come soon, next weekend or the weekend after.

  “It doesn’t have to be the weekend.”

  Eve realized that was true. It didn’t.

  She was free to leave any afternoon. She could travel on the bus with Benny. She’d have tea with Mother Francis and the nuns and then take Heather up to the cottage. She’d hear at first hand how the plans for the Easter pageant were going. She could go to see Benny’s mother and admire the changes in Hogan’s. She could call to Mario’s to end the evening. Knockglen was full of excitement these days. She might go tomorrow, but she had better check it wasn’t a night that Benny was coming to town. It would be silly to miss her.

  Benny said they’d skip a lecture and meet on the three o’clock bus. That way they’d have a bit of time. They had sandwiches in the place that the boys liked. The pub with the relaxed view about the Holy Hour.

  Aidan, Jack and Bill were there. Rosemary had called in to borrow ten shillings. She needed to have a hairdo in a very good place. Tom the medical student had been harder to pin down than she had hoped. It was time for heavy remedies now, like new hairstyles.

  Nobody felt like work, but Eve and Benny refused the offer of being taken to play some slot machines in an amusement arcade.

  “I’m getting the bus,” said Benny.

  “Good-bye Cinderella.” Jack blew her a kiss. His eyes were very warm. She must have been mad to worry about him.

  Benny and Eve left the pub.

  Aidan said that he felt sure those two would be up all night and maybe bopping till dawn in Mario’s.

  “What?” Jack spilled some of his drink.

  He hadn’t realized that Eve was going back to her cottage. He had arranged to meet Nan on the quays at six o’clock. They had been planning to go to the very same place.

  Nan Mahon walked briskly down toward the river. Her overnight bag contained the usual sheets, pillowcases, candlesticks, breakfast and supper materials. Jack just brought a Primus stove and something to drink.

  But this time Nan had packed a bottle of wine as well. They might need it. Tonight was the night she was going to tell him.

  Heather was overjoyed to see Eve. As she went through the school hall she called her over excitedly. There was a rehearsal in progress, and she was wearing a sheet. Heather Westward was playing Simon of Cyrene, the man who helped Jesus to carry his Cross.

  It was something that Knockglen would not have believed possible a few short weeks ago.

  “Are you coming to cheer me on when we do it for real?” Heather wanted to know.

  “I don’t think cheering you on is what Mother Francis had in mind …”

  “But I’m one of the good people. I help him. I step forward and lighten his burden,” Heather said.

  “Yes. I’ll certainly come and support you.”

  “You see, I won’t have any relations here like everyone else has.”

  Eve promised that she would be there when the pageant was performed. She might even bring Aidan so that Heather would have two people. Eve Malone knew very well what it was like to be the only girl in the school who had nobody to turn up with a cake for the sale of work or with applause for the pageants and the plays. That had been her lot all during her years in St. Mary’s.

  She let Heather get back to rehearsal and said she’d see her later in the cottage. It was time to talk to Mother Francis.

  Eve said she had to go down to Healy’s Hotel to have a cup of coffee so that she could get a close up look at Love’s Young Dream, Dorothy and Sean, Great Lovers of Our Time. Mother Francis said she wasn’t to be making a jeer out of them. Everyone was being very restrained, and Eve must be the same.

  Hadn’t it turned out better than anyone dared to hope, Mother Francis said sternly, and Eve realized that she must have known or suspected something of the secret Benny had told her, the missing money and the terror of the confrontation.

  But if she did, it would never be discussed.

  Up in her own cottage, waiting for Heather to come pounding up the convent path, Eve looked around.

  There was something different. Not just the way things were placed. Mother Francis came here often. She polished and she dusted. Sometimes she rearranged things. But this was different.

  Eve couldn’t think what it was. It was just a feeling that someone else had been there. Staying there, cooking even. Sleeping in her bed. She ran her hand across the range. Nobody had used it. Her bed was made with the neat corners she had learned at school.

  Eve shivered. She was becoming fanciful. All those stories about the place being haunted must have got to her. But on a bright April evening this was ridiculous.

  She shook herself firmly and started getting the fire going. Heather would need toast within minutes of her arrival.

  Later, down in Healy’s Hotel, Eve saw Sean. In his dark manager’s suit.

  “Might I be the first to congratulate you?” she said.

  “That’s uncommonly gracious of you, Eve.”

  Eve inquired politely about when they intended to marry. Was courteously interested in the expansionist plans for the hotel, the honeymoon that would include the Holy City and the Italian lakes, and inquired whether Mrs. Healy was around so that she could express her congratulations and pleasure personally.

  “Dorothy is having a rest. She does that in the early evenings,” Sean said, as if he were describing the habits of some long-extinct animal in a museum.

  Eve stuffed her hand into her mouth to stop any sound coming out.

  “I see you’ve decided to capitalize on your property,” Sean said.

  Eve looked at him blankly.

  “Let your cottage out to people.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  She thought he was maneuvering the conversation around to a point where he would ask her to rent it to him or to let it to someone he knew.

  A feeling of revulsion rose in her throat. She decided that this must be nipped in the bud. Sean Walsh must be left under no illusion that her home could be let to anyone, not to anyone for money.

  “No, I’m sorry for speaking so sharply Sean. It’s just that I never intend to. I’m keeping it for myself and my friends.”

  “Your friends. Yes,” he said.

  Suddenly he realized who he had seen coming out of Eve’s cottage. It was that blond girl he had seen several times before, most recently getting off the Knockglen bus, on the quays in Dublin.

  And the man. Of course he remembered who he was. He was Benny’s boyfriend. The doctor’s son.

/>   So that little romance hadn’t lasted long. And there had been precious little said about its being over.

  He smiled a slow smile. There was something about it that made Eve feel very uneasy. That was twice this afternoon she had got goose bumps. She must be getting very jumpy. Aidan was right. Eve Malone was a deeply neurotic woman. She felt an overwhelming urge to be away from Sean Walsh and out of his presence.

  She jumped up and started to hasten out of the hotel.

  “You’ll pass on my good wishes to Mrs. Healy.” She tried to say Dorothy, but somehow the word wouldn’t form in her mouth.

  The traffic was bad on the quays. Jack saw Nan but he couldn’t attract her attention. She was leaning against the wall, and looking down into the Liffey. She seemed many miles away.

  Eventually by hooting and shouting he managed to make her hear him. She walked threading her way confidently between the parked cars in the traffic jam. He thought again how beautiful she was, and how hard it was to resist these nights with her. However, he would have to resist it tonight. His heart nearly stopped when he realized how near they had been to discovery. In future they would have to check and double-check that Eve was not going home mid-week.

  It was terrifying enough that time they had seen the man with the dogs, the tall thin fellow that Benny hated so much, the one there had been all the fuss over about getting him to leave.

  Nan slipped into the car easily and laid her overnight bag on the backseat.

  “Change of plan,” he said. “Let’s have a drink and discuss it.”

  It was always something that made Benny smile, that phrase. Nan didn’t know it.

  “Why?”

  “Because we can’t go down there. Eve’s going home.”

  “Damn!” She seemed very annoyed.

  “Isn’t it lucky we discovered.” He wanted to be congratulated on the amazing accident that made Aidan reveal this to him.

  “Isn’t it unlucky that she chose tonight of all nights to go down there.”

  Jack noticed that Nan never referred to Eve by name.

  “Well, it is her house,” he said with a little laugh.

  Nan didn’t seem amused.

  “I really wanted to be there tonight,” she said. Even frowning she looked beautiful.

  Then her face cleared. She suggested this lovely hotel in Wicklow. It was absolutely marvelous. Very quiet and people didn’t disturb you. It was exactly where they could go.

  Jack knew the name. It was a place where his parents had dinner sometimes. It was much too expensive. He wouldn’t be able to afford it and he told her so.

  “Do you have a checkbook?”

  “Yes, but not enough money in the bank.”

  “We’ll get the money tomorrow. Or I will. Let’s go there.”

  “And stay the night. Nan we’re not married. We can’t.” He looked alarmed.

  “They don’t ask for your wedding certificate.”

  He looked at her. She changed her voice slightly.

  “I’ve heard of people who’ve been there, and stayed the night. There was no problem.”

  As they drove out south past Dun Laoghaire they saw the house where Eve lived with Kit Hegarty.

  “Why on earth can’t she be there tonight,” Nan said.

  Jack thought it would certainly be a lot cheaper for everyone if she were.

  He dreaded the thought of writing a check that bounced in this hotel, and having to face his mother and father when it all came out.

  He wished that Nan could just have faced the fact that this was one night they would have to put off. Benny would have been most agreeable and understanding.

  He wished he didn’t keep thinking of Benny at times like this. It was as hypocritical as hell.

  Benny and Eve met in the square next morning. They sat in the shelter and waited for Mikey to arrive with the bus.

  “Why do we call this a square?” Eve asked. “It’s only a bit of waste ground really.”

  “That’s until the young tigers get their hands on it. It might be a skating rink next week,” Benny laughed.

  It was true that Clodagh and Fonsie were tireless in their efforts to change Knockglen. They had even frightened other people into improving their businesses.

  Fonsie had gone to Flood’s and said that if ever he owned a fine frontage like that he’d have the lettering repainted in gold. Mr. Flood, terrified that somehow it would be taken from him unless he lived up to this young man’s expectations, had the signwriters in next day. Clodagh had stood in Mrs. Carroll’s untidy grocery and chatted about the food inspectors who were closing shops down all over the place. It was amazing what a coat of paint and a spring clean did to fool them. All the time she pretended she was talking in the abstract: But she could have told Mossy Rooney that he would be called in next day, as indeed he was.

  Clodagh told Mossy to put up a fitting for an awning without being asked. Dessie Burns was now stocking various colors of big canvas blinds. Clodagh and Fonsie were going to have their town looking like a rainbow before they finished.

  “I suppose they’ll get married,” Eve said.

  “Clodagh says never. There’s too many nuptials coming up, she says we’ll be sick of weddings. Mrs. Healy and Mr. Walsh, Patsy and Mossy, and Maire Carroll home from Dublin with a fiancé already I gather, unlike the two of us who were very slow off the mark.”

  They were giggling as usual when they got on the bus. Nothing had changed since they were schoolgirls.

  Rosemary was full of smiles. The hairdo had been highly successful, she said. Benny had lent her three shillings. It was counted meticulously back to her. Tom had been very impressed.

  “It looks a bit flattened,” Benny said, examining the hairdo.

  “Yes, I know,” Rosemary said delightedly. “I owe Jack a shilling. Will you give it to him for me.”

  Benny said she would. She’d be seeing him in the Annexe anyway.

  Sean and Carmel had a table. Benny joined them with Jack’s shilling clutched in her hand so that she wouldn’t forget to give it to him.

  “Jack was looking for you everywhere this morning,” Sean said. Benny was pleased.

  “He went and stood outside a Latin lecture, he thought it was yours, but it was Baby Latin.”

  “Oh, I’m not Baby Latin,” Benny said proudly. She was just one step above it. Everyone in First Arts had to do some kind of Latin in their first year. Mother Francis would have killed her if she had gone into the easy option.

  Bill Dunne joined them.

  “Jack said if I saw you, to say that he’ll meet you at one o’clock in the Main Hall,” Bill said. “Though if you want my personal opinion you wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole. He hasn’t shaved. He’s like a bear with a sore head. He’s not worthy of you.”

  Benny laughed. It made her feel as high as a kite when Bill Dunne said things like this in front of everyone. It confirmed somehow that she was Jack’s girl.

  “He’s not coming here now then.” She had been looking at the door.

  “Him come anywhere? I asked him about cars and all for the outing to Knockglen after Easter. He said not to talk to him about cars, outings or Knockglen or he’d knock my head off.”

  Benny knew that Bill was dramatizing it all, so that he could cast himself in the role of the beautifully mannered nice person and Jack the villain.

  Since this was different to the way things were, everyone knew it was a joke. She smiled at Bill affectionately. She knew Jack was longing for the great weekend in Knockglen. It would be even better than Christmas.

  Everyone had been planning for it for ages. Sean had been collecting money from people, a shilling now and a shilling then. The fund was building up.

  There would be a gathering in Eve’s, in Clodagh’s, and very possibly something upstairs in Hogan’s. The rooms were so big and with high ceilings they positively called out to have a party. Benny had been sounding her mother out. And the signs looked good.

  She was pleas
ed that Jack was looking for her.

  For the past few weeks he had never wanted to see her on her own.

  Benny hoped that he might want them to go off to lunch together, like that time ages ago when they had gone to Carlo’s.

  Maybe she should take him there for a treat. But she’d wait and see his mood. She didn’t want to be too pushy.

  Bill was right. He did look very bad. Pale and tired as if he hadn’t slept all night. He still looked just as handsome, maybe even more so. There was less of the conventional College Hero and more of the lead player in some film or theatre piece.

  Yes, Jack Foley looked as if he were in a play.

  And he spoke as if he were in one too.

  “Benny, I have to talk to you. Where can we go that’s away from all these people?”

  She laughed at him good-naturedly.

  “Hey, you were the one who said the Main Hall at one o’clock. I didn’t choose it. Did you think it would be deserted and just the two of us?”

  The crowds swarmed past them in and out, and just standing around in groups talking, duffel coats over arms now, scarves loosely hanging. The weather was getting too warm for them, but they were the badge of being a student. People didn’t want to discard them entirely.

  “Please,” he said.

  “Well, would you like to go to Carlo’s, you know that lovely place we went …”

  “No.” He almost shouted it.

  Everywhere else would be full of people they knew. Even if they were to sit in Stephen’s Green, half the University would pass by on its way to stroll down Grafton Street at lunchtime.

  Benny was at a loss, and yet she knew she had to make the decision.

  Jack looked all in.

  “We could sit by the canal,” she suggested. “We could get apples for us and some stale bread in case we see the swans.”

  She looked eager and anxious to please him.

  It seemed to distress him still further.

  “Oh, Jesus, Benny,” he said, and pulled her toward him. A flicker of fear came and went. She felt something was wrong, but then she was always feeling that and it never was.

  There was a place near one of the locks where they often sat. There was a bit of raised ground.