Circle of Friends (24 page)

“It was an honor, as I said, Mr. Westward,” he said foolishly. “And maybe now that you’ve been in our place you’ll come back again.”

“Oh, undoubtedly.” Simon held the door open for his sister and escaped.

“That was very clever of you, Mr. Hogan,” Sean Walsh said approvingly. “Putting him under a compliment to us.”

“I was only trying to think of a present for the little girl to give her grandfather,” Eddie Hogan said.

Thursday arrived. Benny looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She stared long and hard. There was a possibility that she had lost some weight around her shoulders. Only a possibility, and even if it were true what a useless place to lose it.

She had washed her hair the night before and it looked
nice and shiny. The skirt that Peggy Pine had said might crush, did indeed crush. It looked awful. But it was a lovely blue color, not like all the sensible navy and browns that she had worn like a school uniform. The kinds of colors that wouldn’t draw attention to you. The blouse looked a bit raggy too, not like the heavy ones she normally wore. But it was much more feminine. If she were sitting across a table from a gorgeous man like Jack Foley he would have nothing to look at except her top. She
had
to have something fancy, not look as if she was a governess or a school prefect.

Her heart soared and plummeted a dozen times as she dressed. He had been so easy and natural that day he was here in Knockglen. But in College it was different. You always heard people talking about him as if he were some kind of Greek god. Even real Holy Marys in her class who spoke of him. These were girls with straight hair, and glasses and shabby cardigans who worked harder than the nuns and seemed to have no time for fellows or a social life, even those kinds of girls knew of Jack Foley.

And he was asking her out today. She’d love to tell Rosemary. She would really adore to see her face. And lots of them, she’d love to go up to Carroll’s shop now and kick on the door and tell horrible Maire Carroll who used to call her names at school how well things were turning out. Maire who didn’t get called to the Training College like she had thought, and was sulking in her parents’ grocery shop, while Benny would be having lunch in the Dolphin with Jack Foley.

Benny folded the flimsy blouse up and put it in her big shoulder bag. She also put in a small tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, her mother’s Blue Grass talcum powder, which she would say she had borrowed by mistake if it were noticed. It was seven thirty-five. In six hours time she would be sitting opposite him. Please God may she not talk too much and say stupid things that she’d regret. And if she did
say stupid things let her remember not to give a great laugh after them.

She felt a flicker of guilt that she hadn’t told Eve about the outing. It was the first time she had kept anything from her friend. But there hadn’t been time, and she was afraid that Eve would tell Nan—there was no reason not to after all. And Nan would have been great and lent her a nice handbag or a pair of earrings to match her skirt. But she didn’t want it all planned and set up. She wanted to do it on her own, and be herself. Or sort of herself. Benny smiled wryly at her reflection. It wasn’t exactly her own ordinary self that would walk into the Dolphin in six hours time. It was a starved, overpolished shiny Benny who hadn’t given one minute’s thought to her books for the last ten days.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong with the porridge, Benny.” Patsy was on her own in the kitchen when Benny came down.

“Nothing Patsy, I swear.”

“It’s just that if ever I married I’d want to be able to put a decent pot of porridge for a man and his mother on the stove.”

“His mother?”

“Well, I’d have to marry in somewhere wouldn’t I? I’ve nowhere for anyone to marry into.”

“Do you fancy anyone, Patsy?”

“Divil a point in yourself or myself fancying anyone. I haven’t a penny to bless myself with, and you’d have to be sure he’d be a grand big ox of a fellow the size of yourself,” said Patsy cheerfully.

Somehow the morning passed. Benny skipped her twelve o’clock lecture. She didn’t want to have to run through the Green, down Grafton Street and round by the Bank of Ireland in order to be in the Dolphin at one-fifteen. She would be able to do it, but she didn’t want to arrive flushed and
panting. She would walk down slowly and take her ease. Then at the last moment she would change somewhere nearby in the ladies’ cloakroom of a pub or a coffee shop and put on more talcum powder and brush her teeth. She would look so relaxed and unfussed.

She pitied the people she saw as she walked slowly through the Dublin streets. They looked gray and harassed. They had their heads down against the wind that blew instead of holding themselves high and facing it as Benny did. They were all going to have dull ordinary things at lunch. Either they would go home on a bus to a house where the radio would be on and children were crying, or they would queue up for a meal in a city restaurant where it would be crowded and the smell of other people’s dinners would be unattractive.

She checked herself finally, and decided she was as good as she could be. She should of course have started the diet much earlier. Like maybe three years ago. But there was no point in crying over that.

She had been big and fat when he had met her in Knockglen only a couple of weeks ago. It hadn’t stopped him asking her out to a place like this. She looked up at the Dolphin unbelievingly. He hadn’t said which part. She knew his letter off by heart. But he must mean the hall.

There were three men in the entrance. None of them was Jack. They were much older. They were wealthy-looking, possibly people who went racing.

She saw with the shock that comes with recognition that one of them was Simon Westward.

“Oh, hallo,” said Benny, forgetting she didn’t actually know him, just all about him from Eve.

“Hallo.” He was polite but mystified.

“Oh, Benny Hogan, from the shop in Knockglen.”

She spoke naturally, with no resentment at not being recognized. Simon’s smile was warm now.

“I was in your father’s shop yesterday.”

“He told me. With your little sister.”

“Yes, he’s a very courteous man, your father. And his assistant …?”

“Oh, yes.” Benny wasn’t enthusiastic.

“Not the same type of person?”

“Not at all, but you couldn’t tell my father that. He thinks he’s fine.”

“No boys in the family to help him run it?”

“No, only me.”

“And do you live in Dublin?”

“Oh, I wish I did. No, I go up and down every day.”

“It must be exhausting. Do you drive?”

Simon lived in a different world Benny decided.

“Only on the bus,” she said.

“Still it makes it a bit better if you can have nice lunches in a place like this …” He looked around him approvingly.

“This is the first time I’ve been here. I said I’d meet someone. Do you think I should wait in the hall?”

“The bar, I think,” he said, pointing.

Benny thanked him and went in. It was crowded but she saw him immediately over in a corner … he was waving.

“There she is!” Jack cried. “Now we’re all complete.”

He was standing up smiling at her, from the middle of a group of seven people. It wasn’t a date. It was a party. There were to be eight people. And one of them was Rosemary Ryan.

Benny didn’t really remember much about the part before they went into the dining room. She felt dizzy, partly with the shock and partly with the lack of food over the past few days. She looked wildly to see what the others were drinking. Some of them had glasses of Club Orange, but it could have been gin and orange. The boys had glasses of beer.

“I’d like one of those.” She pointed weakly to a beer glass.

“Good old Benny, one of the lads,” said Bill Dunne, a boy she had always liked before. Now she would have liked to pick up the heavy glass ashtray and beat him over the head with it until she was perfectly sure he was dead.

They were all chatting easily and happily. Benny’s eyes raked the other girls. Rosemary was as usual looking as if she had come out from under the hair dryer and hours of ministration in the poshest place in Dublin. Her makeup was perfect. She smiled at everyone admiringly. Carmel was small and pretty. She had been going out with her boyfriend Sean since they were sixteen or maybe even fifteen. They were known as the College’s Perfect Romance. Sean looked at Carmel with adoration and she listened to every word he said as if it were a pronouncement. Carmel was no threat. She would have eyes for nobody, not even Jack Foley.

Aidan Lynch, the long, lanky fellow who had taken Eve to the pictures, was there too. Benny breathed a prayer of relief that she had told nobody about what she had thought was her date. How foolish she would have felt had the story got around. But of course Aidan would tell Eve that Benny was there, and Eve might very reasonably wonder why nothing had been mentioned. She felt cross and hurt and confused.

The other girl was called Sheila. She was a law student. A pale sort of girl, Benny thought, looking at her savagely; pale and rather dull-featured. But she was small. God, she was small. She had to look up at Jack Foley, not over at him like Benny did. She remembered Patsy talking about her needing a big ox of a man. She willed the tears back into her eyes.

None of them had ever been there before. It was all Jack’s great plan they said … a scheme that would make them well-known, highly respected personages here by the time they qualified. Lots of lawyers and a lot of racing people
met there. The thing to do was to establish yourself as a regular.

The words of the menu swam in front of Benny. She was going to eat real food for the first time in ten days. She knew it would choke her.

She was sitting between Aidan Lynch and the wordless Sean when the final seating arrangements had been made. Jack Foley was between Rosemary and Sheila across the table from her. He looked boyish and pleased, delighted with his notion of getting the four boys to pay for a smart lunch in a place like this.

The others were pleased with him too.

“I must say you went out and plucked the best of the bunch for us to be seen with,” Aidan Lynch said extravagantly.

Faithless pig, Benny thought to herself, remembering that he had sworn such undying devotion to Eve Malone earlier in the week.

“Only the best is good enough.” Jack’s smile was warm and included everyone.

Benny’s hand was reaching for the butter, but she pulled back. To her fury, Bill Dunne saw her.

“Ah, go on, Benny, hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” he said, pushing the butter dish toward her.

“You should see the marvelous teas that go on the table in Benny’s house,” Jack said, trying to praise her. “I was down there not long ago and you never saw the style. Scones and savories and tarts and cakes, and that was just an ordinary day.”

“That’s the country for you. They like to feed them up down there. Not like us poor starved Town Mice,” Aidan said.

Benny looked around them. The thin blouse with the frills had been no good, nor had the blue skirt. The waft of Blue Grass that she could feel coming from under her arms and down the front of her bra. She wasn’t the kind of girl
that people would admire and want to protect like they felt about Rosemary Ryan and the little loving Carmel and the pale but interesting Sheila from the Law Faculty. Benny had been brought along only as a jokey person. Someone that they’d all talk to about big feeds and being hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb.

She smiled a brave smile.

“That’s it, Aidan. You come down to Knockglen and we’ll fatten you all right. You’d be like one of those geese that they stuff so that they’ll have nice livers.”

“Benny, please.” Rosemary fluttered her lashes and looked as if she were going to come over all faint.

But Bill Dunne was now interested. “Yeah, we could be seeing Lynch’s Liver on menus.”

Jack was entering into it too. “A Knockglen speciality. Fattened fifty miles from Dublin,” he said.

“I’d have to go into hiding. They’d want me dead, not alive. God, Benny, what have you got planned out for me.”

“But think of what a delicacy you’d be,” said Benny. Her cheeks were glowing. Fattened fifty miles from Dublin. Had Jack really said that? Had he meant it as a joke about her? The most important thing was not to seem hurt.

“It’s a high price to pay.” Aidan was looking thoughtful, as if he were considering it as a serious possibility.

“I think it’s all rather awful to joke about raising poor defenseless animals to eat them,” Rosemary said, looking fragile.

Benny wished she could remember what Rosemary had ordered. But she didn’t need to. Jack did.

“Come on, that’s hypocritical,” he said. “You’ve ordered veal chops … the calves didn’t exactly enjoy getting ready to become that, now did they?”

He smiled at her across the table. The Knight who had come to her rescue.

Rosemary sulked and pouted a little, but when nobody took any notice she recovered.

Rosemary and Sheila competed all during the meal for Jack’s attention. Carmel only cared what her Sean thought of this or that item on the menu; they ate little pieces from each other’s plates. Benny entertained Bill Dunne and Aidan Lynch as if she had been a hired cabaret. She worked at it until she could feel beads of sweat in her forehead. She was rewarded with their attention and their laughter. She could see Jack straining to join in at times, but he seemed pinioned by the warring women on each side.

The less she tried to seek his attention, the more he tried to engage her in chat. It was obvious that he liked her company, but only as someone who was a load of fun. With a smile that nearly cracked her face Benny knew inside that Jack Foley liked to be where there was laughter, and good times. He wouldn’t in a million years have thought of asking someone like Benny out alone.

Simon Westward passed the table.

“See you back in Knockglen sometime,” he said to Benny.

“Who’s he? He’s rather splendid,” Rosemary asked. She seemed to be losing slightly on points to Sheila who had the advantage of being able to compare notes about lecturers with Jack. Rosemary must have decided on the making-him-jealous route.