Circle of Friends (27 page)

“I wouldn’t necessarily …” Eve began.

Heather looked up and their eyes met. “Oh, I wouldn’t tell him all about our conversation,” she said. And changing to something that interested her much more, she leaned across the table eagerly. “Tell me, is it true that nuns put on shrouds and sleep in their coffins at night like vampires?”

Eddie and Annabel Hogan were pleased that their daughter had been asked to the dance.

“It’s nice that it will be just a group of friends going to it, isn’t it?” Annabel sought reassurance. “It’s not as if she had a special boy yet that she was keen on or anything.”

“In my day the men took the women to dances, paid for them and went to their houses to pick them up,” Eddie complained.

“Yes, yes, yes, but who’s going to come the whole way down to Knockglen to the door and pick Benny up and then
deliver her back again. Don’t go saying that now, and making trouble where there isn’t any.”

“And you’re happy enough to let her stay in this boardinghouse in Dun Laoghaire?” Eddie looked at his wife anxiously.

“It’s not a boardinghouse. There you go again, getting it all wrong. You remember the woman who was down staying with Mother Francis in St. Mary’s, whose son was killed. That’s where Benny will stay. They’ll put another bed in Eve’s room.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy.” He patted her on the hand.

Shep sat between them at the fire, and looked up from one to the other as if pleased to see this touching.

Benny was out at the pictures with Sean Walsh.

“I’m happy enough about her going to the dance and staying with Eve, of course I am. I want her to have a great night, something she’ll always remember.”

“What are you not happy about then?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to her. Afterward.”

“You said she’d go back to this house that isn’t a real boardinghouse.” Eddie was bewildered.

“Not after the dance. After … after everything.”

“None of us knows what will happen in the future.”

“Maybe we’re wrong sending her up there. Maybe she should have done a bookkeeping course and gone into the shop with you. Forget all these notions of getting a degree.”

Annabel was chewing her lip now.

“Haven’t we been talking about this since she was born?”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a while. The wind whistled around Lisbeg, and even Shep moved closer to the grate. They told each other they were glad to be indoors on a night
like this, in and settled, not out in Knockglen where people were still sorting out their lives. Sean and Benny would be leaving the cinema shortly and going for a cup of coffee at Mario’s. Patsy was up with Mrs. Rooney being inspected as a suitable candidate for Mossy. Peggy Pine’s niece Clodagh was going through the order books with her aunt. People said that it was a fallacy nowadays that the young didn’t work. In fact, some young people couldn’t stop working. Look at Clodagh, and Fonsie and Sean Walsh. Between them they would change the face of Knockglen in the next ten years.

“I hope they’ll change it into a place we’ll like to live in,” Eddie said doubtfully.

“Yes, but we won’t have all that much longer to live in it. It’s Benny we should be thinking about.”

They nodded. It was nearly always Benny that they were thinking about anyway, and what the future had in store. They had lived their whole adult lives in a thirty-mile radius of this place. A huge city like Dublin on their doorstep had never affected them.

They simply couldn’t envisage a life for their daughter that didn’t revolve around Knockglen, and the main street business of Hogan’s Gentleman’s Outfitters. And, though they hardly dared speak of the matter to each other, they thought too that it might best revolve around Sean Walsh.

Benny looked across the table in Mario’s at Sean Walsh. In the very bright light his face looked thin and pale as always, but she could see the dark circles under his eyes.

“Is it hard work in the shop?” she asked him.

“Not hard, exactly, not in terms of physical work … or hours … just trying to know what’s best really.”

“How do you mean?”

For the first time ever, Benny was finding it easy to talk
to Sean. And it was all thanks to Nan Mahon. Nan, who knew what to do in every situation.

Nan said that Benny should always be perfectly pleasant to Sean. There was nothing to be gained by scoring points off him. She should let him know in a variety of ways that there was no question of ever sharing any kind of life or plans with him, but that he was highly thought of as her father’s employee. That way he couldn’t fault her, and it would also keep her parents happy.

“I’m sure I’ll do it wrong,” Benny had said. “You know me. I’ll think I’m being pleasant and distant, and I’ll end up walking up to Father Ross arranging for the banns to be read out.”

But Nan had said it was easy. “Ask him all about himself, sound interested but don’t get involved. Tell him things about yourself that you’d like him to know and never answer any question directly, that’s the secret.”

So far it seemed to be working quite well. Sean sat there in Mario’s and, raising his voice to compete with Guy Mitchell on the new record player, he told a tale of how the clothing industry was changing and how men were going to Dublin and buying ready-made suits off the peg, and how the bus from Knockglen stopped so near McBirney’s on the quays in Dublin it was as bad as if McBirney’s had opened a branch next to Mr. Flood’s.

Sean said that it was sometimes hard to convince Mr. Hogan of the need for change. And perhaps not his place to do so.

Benny listened sympathetically with her face and about a quarter of her mind. The rest of her thoughts were on the dance and what she should wear. She was back on her diet again, drinking bitter black coffee instead of the frothy, sugary cups that everyone else in the cafe was having. She moved the chocolate biscuits on the plate around, making patterns of them with the yellow ones underneath and the
green ones on top. She willed her hands not to rip one open and stuff it into her mouth.

There were no dresses big enough for her, in any of the shops in Dublin. Well, there
were
, but not the kinds of shops she’d go to. Only places that catered for rich older women. Dresses with black jet beading on them, or dove gray with crossover fronts. Suitable for someone in their sixties at a state banquet. Not for Benny’s first dance.

Still, there was plenty of time, and there were dressmakers, and there were friends to help. Nan could probably come up with a solution for this as well as everything else. Benny had asked Nan if she could stay the night in her house after the dance.

Nan hadn’t said yes or no. She asked why Benny didn’t stay with Eve.

“I don’t know. It
is
the place she’s working, after all.”

“Nonsense. It’s her home. You two are old friends, you’d enjoy staying there.”

Perhaps this is what Nan meant by not answering any question directly. Certainly Benny hadn’t felt even slightly offended. It would be wonderful to know how to deal with people like Nan did.

Sean was still droning on about the need to have a sale. And the dangers of having a sale. Mr. Hogan felt that if a place like Hogan’s had a sale it might look to customers as if they were getting rid of shoddy goods. Also what would people who had paid the full price for similar items a few weeks previously think if they saw them reduced now?

Sean saw the reason in this, but he also wondered how you could attract local people to buy their socks and shoes in Hogan’s instead of going up to O’Connell Street in Dublin on a day trip and coming home sliding past the door trying to hide the name Clerys on the package?

Benny looked at him and wondered who would marry
him and listen to this for the rest of her life. She hoped that this new policy of being polite but uninvolved would work.

“What about next week?” Sean said as he walked her down the town and round the bend of the road to Lisbeg.

“What about it, Sean?” she asked courteously.

“
Jamaica Inn
,” he said triumphantly, having read the posters.

The old Benny would have made a joke and said that Jamaica was a bit far to go on an outing. The new Benny smiled at him.

“Oh, Charles Laughton, isn’t it, and Maureen O’Hara?”

“Yes,” Sean said, a trifle impatiently. “You haven’t seen it, I don’t remember it being here before.”

Never answer a question directly. “I loved the book. But I think I preferred
Rebecca
. Did you read
Rebecca
?”

“No, I don’t do much reading. The light’s not very good up there.”

“You should have a lamp,” Benny said eagerly. “I’m sure there’s one in the spare room we never use. I’ll mention it to Father.”

She beamed such enthusiasm for this helpful idea, and put out her hand so firmly to shake his, that he couldn’t press her for a yes or a no about the pictures next week. Nor could he press his cold, thin lips on hers with any dignity at all.

Mother Francis moved around the small cottage. She had been very heartened by Kit Hegarty’s report on the meeting between Eve and Heather. Perhaps the way to a reconciliation was opening up after all. The agreement to pay the fees had done nothing to soften Eve’s heart to the cold distant family who had treated her mother, her father and herself so shabbily.

In some ways it had almost strengthened her resolve not to give in to them in any way.

If only Mother Francis could get her to stay a night in this cottage, to sleep here, to feel the place was her own. If Eve Malone were to wake in this place and look out over the quarry she might feel she belonged somewhere rather than perching here and there which was what she felt now. Mother Francis had high hopes that she might be able to install Eve by Christmas. But it was work of high sensitivity.

It would be no use pretending that she needed Eve’s room in the convent. That would be the worst thing to do. The girl would feel she had been evicted from the only home she knew. Perhaps Mother Francis could say that the older members of the community would like a little outing and that since they couldn’t leave the convent grounds perhaps Eve might arrange a tea party for them in her cottage. But Eve would see through that at once.

When Mother Francis and Peggy Pine were young together, Peggy used to say, “It will all come clear in the end.”

Mainly it had. This cottage was an area where it had taken a long time for things to come clear.

She was always careful to lock the door with the big key, and put it under the third stone in the little wall near the iron gate. There was a big padlock that Mossy had suggested she put on the gate as well, but it looked ugly and forbidding. Mother Francis decided to risk doing without it.

Nobody came up this way unless they had business here. Either you came through the briar- and bramble-covered paths of the convent or else a steep, unmade track up from the town. If anyone wanted a view of the big stone escarpments they chose a much better and broader way which went up at a gradual incline from the square where the bus turned every day.

To her shock, when she turned around she saw a figure standing only a few feet away.

It was Simon Westward. He had his back to her and was looking out over the dark, misty view. She rattled the gate so that he would hear her and not be startled.

“Oh … um, good afternoon,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Westward.”

In religious life a part of the day was known as The Great Silence. It meant that nuns did not feel uneasy when there was no conversation. Mother Francis waited easily for the small dark man to speak again.

“Rotten weather,” he said.

“Never very good, November.” She could have been at a garden party instead of on top of a quarry in the mist and rain with a man she had crossed swords with several times.

“Mrs. Walsh said you come up here a lot,” he said. “I told her I didn’t feel I’d be quite in place in the convent. I wondered where I might run into you casually, as it were.”

“You’d be very welcome in the convent, Mr. Westward, you always would have been.”

“I know. Yes, I know.”

“But anyway you’ve found me now.”

It would have been more sensible for them to go back into the cottage, but there was no way that she would take him over Eve’s doorstep. It would have been the final betrayal. He looked at the house expectantly. She said nothing.

“It’s about Eve,” he said eventually.

“Oh yes.”

“It’s just that she very kindly went and took my sister out from school. I’m afraid Heather very probably asked her to do so, in fact I know she did. But anyway Eve took her on a nice day out and is going to again …”

“Yes.” Mother Francis had cold eyes and a heavy heart. Was he going to ask Eve to stay clear of the family? If so, she would have a heart as hard as Eve’s.

“I was wondering if you could tell her …”

The nun’s gaze didn’t waver.

“If you could tell her how grateful I am. I mean truly.”

“Why don’t you tell her yourself?” Mother Francis felt the words come out of her mouth in a quick breath of relief.

“Well, I would, of course. But I don’t know where she lives.”

“Let me write it down for you.” She began to seek deep in the pockets of her long black skirt.

“Let me. Farmers always have backs of envelopes to scribble things on.”

She smiled at him. “No, let
me
. Nuns always have little notebooks and silver-topped pencils.”

She produced both from the depths of her pockets and wrote with a shaking hand what she thought might be the outline plans for an olive branch.

Clodagh Pine came into Hogan’s shop.

“How are you, Mr. Hogan? Do you have a loan of a couple of hat stands?”

“Of course, of course.” Eddie Hogan went fussing off to the back of the shop to look for them.

“Opening a millinery section are we?” Sean Walsh said to her in a lofty tone.

“Watch your tone with me, Sean. You don’t know what you’re dealing with here,” she said, with a loud laugh.

Sean looked at her without pleasure. She was pretty, certainly, in a flashy sort of way. But she had her long legs exposed for all to view, in a ridiculously short skirt. She wore a lime-green dress with a black jacket over it, a pink scarf, and her earrings, which were long and dangly, were precisely the same green as her dress, and her very obviously tinted blond hair was held up with two black combs.