Circle of Friends (20 page)

“Aw, shut up with that workers of the world crap will you? We all know there isn’t a reason in the world for you to be going out to work. Only because you took some figario. If you’d stayed at home and minded your business we wouldn’t have all this trouble now.”

“What trouble?” Emily was weary.

“Well might you ask what trouble. Sure you don’t know what’s going on in your own house.”

“Why are you picking on Em?” Nan asked. “She’s only in the door, she hasn’t her coat off, or her shopping-up down.”

Her father’s face was working. “Don’t call your mother by her Christian name, you young pup.”

“I’m not.” Nan was bored with this argument. “I’m calling her ‘M,’ short for Mother, Mama, Mater.”

“You’re dismantling that contraption you have upstairs, and coming back down here to where we have the house heated. You’ll study your books in this room like a normal human being.”

“Excuse me?” Nan asked. “Excuse my mentioning it, but what kind of study could anyone get in a room like this with people bellowing and shouting.”

“Listen to me you impertinent young rossie … you’ll feel the weight of my hand on you if there’s any more of this.”

“Ah, Dad, don’t hit her …” Nasey had stood up.

“Get out of my way …”

Nan didn’t move. Not an inch did she stir from where she stood, proud, young, confident in her fresh green and white blouse and her dark green skirt. She had her books under her arm, and she could have been a model picture for student fashion.

“Am I breaking my back for you to speak to me like that in front of the family? Am I working to make you into a bad-mannered tinker?”

“I haven’t said anything bad-mannered at all, Dad, only that I’m going up to work, to get a bit of peace. So that I’ll get my degree eventually, so that you’ll be prouder of me than ever.”

The words were inoffensive, but Brian Mahon found the tone of his daughter almost more than he could bear.

“Get up there out of my sight then, we don’t want to see hair nor hide of you this evening.”

Nan smiled. “If you want me to give you a hand Em, just call me,” she said, and they heard her light step going up the stairs.

The three students in Mrs. Hegarty’s digs were delighted to hear of Eve’s arrival. They had felt awkward and unsure of themselves in a place where the son of the house had been killed so tragically. Now at least an attempt at normality was being made.

They liked Eve too, when she appeared. Small, attractive in a wiry kind of way and prepared to put up with no nonsense from the very start.

“I’ll be getting your breakfast from now on. Mrs. Hegarty is feeding you like fighting cocks so you get bacon and egg and sausage every day and scrambled eggs on a Friday. But I have a nine o’clock lecture three days a week so I was wondering if you could help me clear and wash those days, and the other days I’ll run round after you like a slave … pouring you more cups of tea and buttering you more toast.”

They went along with her good-naturedly, and they did more than she asked. Big lads who wouldn’t have known where the Hoover was kept in their own homes were able to lift it out for Eve on a Tuesday before they went to catch the train to College. They wiped their feet carefully on the hall mat. They said they never again wanted to risk anything like the reception that they got when they had accidentally walked some mud in on top of a carpet that Eve had cleaned. They kept the bathroom far cleaner than they had ever done before Eve had come on the scene. Kit Hegarty told her privately that if she had known how much the presence of a girl would smarten the lads up, she might have had a female student years ago.

“Why didn’t you? They’d have been easier.”

“Don’t you believe it, always washing their hair, wanting the lavatory seat put down, drying their stockings over chairs, falling in love with no-hopers …” Kit had laughed.

“Aren’t you afraid of any of those thing happening with me?” Eve asked. They got on so well now, they could talk easily on any subject.

“Not a chance of it. You’ll never fall for a no-hoper. Hard-hearted little Hannah that you are.”

“I thought you said I was like you?” Eve was making bread as she spoke. Sister Imelda had taught her to make soda bread when she was six. She had no idea of the recipe, she just did it automatically.

“Ah, you
are
like me, and I didn’t fall for a no-hoper, there was lots of hope in Joseph Hegarty. It’s just that as time went on it didn’t seem to include me.” She sounded bitter and sad.

“Did you make any attempt to find him, you know to tell him about Frank?”

“He didn’t want to know about Frank when there was something to tell like when he learned to swim, or when he lost his first tooth, or when he passed his Inter. Why tell him anything now?”

Eve could see a lot of reasons, but she didn’t think it was the time or the place.

“Suppose he came back,” Eve asked. “If Joe walked in the door one day …”

“Funny I never called him Joe, always Joseph. I’m sure that tells us something about him or me. Suppose he came back? It would be like the man coming to read the meter. I gave up looking at that gate years ago.”

“And yet you loved him? Or else thought you did?”

“Oh, I did love him. There’s no use denying it just because it wasn’t returned and didn’t last.”

“You’re very calm about it.”

“You didn’t know me years ago. Let me see. Around the time you were one or two, if you’d known me then you wouldn’t have said I was calm!”

“I’ve never loved anybody,” Eve said suddenly.

“That’s because you were afraid to.”

“No, the nuns were much more liberal than people think. They didn’t fill me with terror of men.”

“No, I meant afraid to let yourself go …”

“I think that’s right. I feel things very strongly like resentment. I resent those bloody Westwards. I hate asking them for money. I can’t tell you how much it took to make me walk up there that Sunday. And I feel very protective too, if anyone said a word against Mother Francis or Sister Imelda I’d kill them.”

“You look very fierce with that knife. Put it down for God’s sake.”

“Oh.” Eve laughed, realizing she was brandishing the carving knife, which she had used to put a cross on the top of the soda cake. “I didn’t notice. Anyway it wouldn’t harm anyone. It’s as blunt as anything. It wouldn’t cut butter. Let’s get one of those budding engineers inside there to take it into a lab and sharpen it up for us.”

“You
will
love somebody one day,” Kit Hegarty said.

“I can’t imagine who.” Eve was thoughtful. “For one thing he’d have to be a saint to put up with my moods, for another I don’t see many good examples, where love seems to have worked out well.”

“Have you anything planned on Sunday?” Dr. Foley asked his eldest son.

“What am I letting myself in for if I haven’t?” Jack laughed.

“Just a simple answer. If you’re busy I’ll not bother you.”

“But then I might miss something great.”

“Ah, that’s what life is all about, taking risks.”

“What is it Dad?”

“You
are
free then.”

“Come on, tell me.”

“You know Joe Kennedy, he’s a chemist in the country. He wants to see me. He’s not well I think. We go back a long way. He wondered if I’d come and call on him.”

“Where does he live?”

“Knockglen.”

“That’s miles away. Don’t they have doctors there?”

“They do, but he wants a friend more than a doctor.”

“And you want me to come is it?”

“I want you to drive me, Jack. I’ve lost my nerve a bit.”

“You can’t have.”

“Not altogether, but just for a long wet drive, slippy roads. I’d be very grateful.”

“All right,” Jack said. “What’ll I do while you’re talking to him?”

“That’s the problem. I wouldn’t say there’s all that much
to
do there, but maybe you could go on a drive or sit in the car to read the Sunday papers.”

Jack’s face brightened. “I know. There’s a girl that lives there. I’ll give her a ring.”

“That’s my boy. Only a couple of months at University and already there’s a girl in every town.”

“She’s not a girl in that sense. She’s just a nice girl,” Jack explained. “Have you the phone book? There can’t be that many Hogans in Knockglen.”

Nan was very excited when Benny said that Jack Foley had rung her.

“Half the girls in College would give anything to have
him
coming to call on them, let me tell you. What’ll you wear?”

“I don’t think he’s coming to call, not in that sense. I
mean it’s not something to get dressed up for. I won’t wear anything,” Benny said, flustered.

“That should be a nice surprise for him when you open the door,” Nan said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I still think you should get dressed up, wear that nice pink blouse, and the black skirt. It is a party when a fellow like Jack Foley comes to call. If he was coming out to Maple Gardens I’d dress up. I’ll get you a length of pink ribbon and a black one and you can tie them both round your hair to hold it back. It’ll look great. You’ve got gorgeous hair.”

“Nan, it won’t look great on a rainy Sunday in Knockglen. Nothing looks great there. It’ll just look pathetic.”

Nan looked at her thoughtfully. “You know those big thick brown bags, the ones they sell sugar in. Why don’t you put one of those over your head and cut two slits for eyes. That might look right.”

Annabel Hogan and Patsy planned to make scones, and queen cakes and an apple tart. There would be bridge rolls first with chopped egg on one plate and sardines on the other.

“Maybe we shouldn’t overdo it,” Benny suggested.

“There’s nothing overdone about a perfectly straightforward afternoon tea for your friend.” Benny’s mother was affronted at the notion that this might not have been their normal Sunday afternoon fare.

They were going to light a fire each day in the drawing room to heat it up for the occasion and after tea had been cleared away Benny’s parents would withdraw to the breakfast room, leaving the young people the run of the good room on their own.

“There’s not any question of having the run of the place,” Benny had begged, but to no avail. “He’s only coming here because he has to kill the time,” she pleaded. They
wouldn’t hear of it, a nice young man telephoning courteously several days in advance to know if he could call. It wasn’t a matter of killing time. There were a rake of things he could do in Knockglen.

Personally Benny could think of very few. Window-shopping didn’t bear thinking about. The cinema wasn’t open in the afternoon. Healy’s Hotel would pall after half an hour, and Jack Foley wasn’t likely to put away an afternoon in Mario’s, however entertaining Fonsie might be. The Hogans were the only game in town. Still, it was nice that he remembered her. Benny rehearsed the pink and black ribbon. It looked well. She started wearing it on Friday evening so that the household wouldn’t think it was part of the dressing up.

When Sean asked her to the pictures she said no, that since she was having a friend from Dublin she had to stay at home on Saturday and get things ready.

“A friend from Dublin!” Sean sniffed. “And might we know her name?”

“It’s a him, not a her,” Benny said mulishly.

“Pardon me,” Sean said.

“So that’s why I can’t go you see,” she added lamely.

“Naturally.” Sean was lofty and knowing.

For some reason that she couldn’t explain Benny heard herself saying, “It’s just a friend, not anything else.”

Sean’s smile was slow and cold. “I’m sure that’s true Benny. I wouldn’t have expected anything less of you. But it’s good of you to say it straight out.”

He nodded like a self-satisfied bird. As if he were being generous and allowing her to have her own friends until the time came. And a pat on the head for defining that there was nothing but friendship involved.

“I hope it’s a very pleasant visit. For all of you,” Sean Walsh said, and bowed in what he must have thought was an elegant or a gracious manner. Something he had seen
Errol Flynn or Montgomery Clift do, and stored up for a suitable occasion.

Jack Foley was the easiest guest they had ever known in Hogans. He ate some of everything put in front of him. He praised it all. He had three cups of tea. He admired the teapot and asked was it Birmingham 1930s silver. It was. Wasn’t that amazing, they said; no, Jack said, that’s what his parents’ silver was. He just wondered was it the same. He punched Benny playfully like a brother when they talked about University. He said how marvelous it was to have boys and girls in the same classes. He had felt so gauche when he had come there from a single-sex school. Benny saw her mother and father nodding sagely, agreeing with him. He spoke of his parents and his brothers, and the boy Aengus with the glasses, which were always getting broken at school.

He said that the debates were great on a Saturday night, you learned a lot from them as well as having fun. Had Benny been. No Benny hadn’t. You see there was this problem about getting back to Knockglen, she said in a flat voice. Oh that was a pity he thought, they really were part of College life. Perhaps Benny could stay with her friend Nan, he sometimes saw her there. They all nodded. Perhaps. Some Saturday.

He was discreet about why his father wanted to meet Mr. Kennedy. It could be anything he said, rugby club business, or new drugs on the market, or old school reunions. You never knew with his father, he had so many irons in the fire.

Benny looked at him with admiration. Jack Foley didn’t even look as if he were putting on an act.

The only other person she knew who could do that was Nan. In many ways they would be ideally suited.

“It’s nice and fine. Do you think you could show me the town?” he asked Benny.

“We were just going to leave the two of you to … er, chat,” Benny’s mother began.

“I’ve eaten so much … I think I do need a walk.”

“I’ll get proper shoes.” Benny had been wearing flat pumps, like party shoes.

“Get boots, Benny,” he called after her. “We’re really going to walk off this fabulous tea.”

They walked companionably together. Benny in her winter coat, with the pink collar of her smart blouse showing over it. She had put on Wellingtons, and she felt that the cold wind was making her cheeks red, but it didn’t matter. Jack wore his purple and green Law Society scarf wound round his neck.