Circle of Friends (44 page)

“Your job will of course be to look after me, and our eight fine children, using your university education to give them a cultured home background.”

“You’ll be lucky, Aidan Lynch.” She pealed with laughter.

“I have been lucky. I met you Eve Malone,” he said, without a trace of his usual jokey manner.

Bill Dunne was the first to see Nan when she came in the door. Her eyes were sparkling and she took in the scene around her with delight.

“Isn’t it wonderful,” she said. “Eve never said it was anything like this.”

She wore a white polo-neck jumper and a red tartan skirt, under a black coat. She carried a small leather case with her, and asked to be shown to Eve’s bedroom.

Benny called to the kitchen to let Eve know that Nan was here.

“Bloody hell, we’ve finished the soup,” Eve said to Aidan.

“She won’t expect it, not at this hour,” he soothed her.

It was a late hour to arrive. Eve had thought she heard a car pull away down the path a few moments ago, but she had told herself she was imagining it.

Still someone must have left Nan at the door. It was
raining outside and Nan looked immaculate. She could not have climbed up that path in this weather.

Eve put some sausage rolls and sandwiches on a plate, and took them through the sitting room, skirting Fonsie and Clodagh, who were doing such a spirited rendering of the Spanish Gypsy Dance that everyone had formed a circle to clap and cheer. She knocked on the door of her own bedroom in case Nan was changing, but she was sitting down at the dressing table exactly as she was; Rosemary Ryan was sitting on the bed, telling the mystery-of-the-year story. Jack Foley and Benny Hogan, of all people, were inseparable.

“Did you know?” Rosemary was asking insistingly.

“Yes, sort of.” Nan didn’t sound as if it mattered very much. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere.

Then she saw Eve. “Eve, it’s fabulous. It’s a jewel. You never told us it was like this.”

“It’s not always like this.” Despite herself, Eve was pleased. Praise from Nan was high praise.

“I brought you something to eat … in case you were changing,” she said.

“No, I’m all right like this.” Nan hadn’t thought of changing.

She was of course all right in whatever she wore. It wasn’t very dressy. All the others had put on the style. Parties weren’t so run-of-the-mill that you went in a jumper and skirt. But on Nan it looked beautiful.

They all went into the room. Nan loved it. She was busy stroking everything, the polished oil lamps, the wonderful wood in those shelves, the piano. Imagine having a piano of your own. Could she see the little kitchen?

Eve took her through and down the stone step. The place was covered with pots and pans and debris. There were boxes and bottles and glasses. But Nan saw only things she could praise. The dresser, it was wonderful. Where did it come from? Eve had never asked. And that lovely old bowl. It was the real thing, not like horrible modern ones.

“I’m sure a lot of those things came from your mother’s home,” she said. “They have a look of quality about them.”

“Yes, or maybe they bought them together.” Somehow Eve felt defensive about her father, and the thought that there could be no look of quality attached to him.

Nan said she was too excited to eat. It was marvelous to be here. Her eyes were dancing. She looked feverish and restless. Everyone in the room was attracted to her, but she was aware of none of them. She refused any offer to dance, saying she had to take it all in. And she wandered around touching and admiring, and sighing over it all.

She paused by the piano and opened it to look at the keys.

“Weren’t we all very unlucky that we never learned to play?” she said to Benny. It was the first time Benny had ever noticed Nan Mahon sounding bitter.

“Are you ever going to dance, or is this tour of inspection going to go on all night?” Jack Foley asked her.

Suddenly Nan seemed to snap out of it. “I’m being appallingly rude, of course,” she said, looking straight at him.

“Now, Johnny,” Jack said to Johnny O’Brien. “I knew that all you had to do was wake her out of the trance, and it would work. Johnny says he’s been asking you to dance for ten minutes and you can’t even hear him.”

If Nan was disappointed that Jack had not been inviting her to dance there was no way that anyone would have known. She smiled such a smile at Johnny that it almost melted him into a little puddle on the floor.

“Johnny, how lovely,” she said, and put her arms straight around his neck.

They were playing “Unchained Melody,” a lovely slow smoochy number. Benny was so pleased that Jack hadn’t left her for Nan just as Fonsie had put that one on. It was one of her favorite songs. She had never dreamed that she
would dance to it, here in Knockglen with the man she loved, who had his arms wrapped around her, and seemed to love her too. In front of all her friends.

They put more turf and logs on the fire, and when one of the oil lights flickered down, nobody bothered to replace it.

They sat around in groups or in twosomes, the evening drawing to a close.

“Can anybody play that beautiful piano?” Nan asked.

Amazingly Clodagh said that she could. Fonsie looked at her in open admiration. There was nothing that woman couldn’t do, he told people proudly.

Clodagh settled herself at the keys. She had a repertoire that staggered them. Frank Sinatra numbers that they all joined in, ragtime solos, and she even got people to sing solos.

Bill Dunne startled them all by singing “She Moved Through the Fair” very tunefully.

“That was a well-kept secret,” Jack said to him as they clapped him to the echo.

“It’s only when I’m out of Dublin and can’t be sent up by all you lot that I’d have the courage,” Bill said, red with pleasure from all the admiration.

Everyone said that Knockglen had not been properly praised up to this, and now that they knew where it was they’d be regular visitors. Fonsie told them to come earlier next time, when it was opening time in Mario’s, soon to be Ireland’s premier stylish cafe. Trends had to start somewhere and why not Knockglen?

Eve was sitting on the floor next to one of her two rather battered armchairs; on Clodagh’s advice they had draped bedspreads over the shabby furniture. It looked exotic in the flickering light.

She thought she should get up and make more coffee for the departing guests, but she didn’t want it to end, and
the way Aidan had his arm around her and was stroking her, he didn’t want to make any move to go either.

Nan sat on a tiny three-legged stool, hugging her knees.

“I met your grandfather today,” she said suddenly to Eve.

Eve felt a cold shock run through her. “You did?”

“Yes. He really is a charming old man, isn’t he?”

Benny felt she wanted to move away from Jack’s arm and go over and support Eve physically. In some way she wanted to be a barrier between her and what Nan was saying.

Please may Eve not say anything brittle or hurtful. Let her just mumble for the moment. Let there not be a scene now to end the party on a sour note.

Eve might have read her mind.

“Yes. How did you meet him?” Although she knew. She knew only too well.

“Oh, I met Simon at the races yesterday and we got talking. He offered me a lift if I was going to this part of the world. So we got here a bit early … and, well, he took me to Westlands.”

If they had got here so bloody early, Eve thought, then Nan might have been on time rather than turning up when the supper was finished.

She didn’t trust herself to say any more. But Nan had in no way finished with the subject.

“You could really see what he must have been like before. You know very upright and stern. It must be terrible for him to be like that in his chair. He was having his tea. They serve it beautifully for him. Even though he’s sometimes not able to manage it.”

She had been there since teatime. Since five o’clock and she hadn’t bothered to come next or near them until after nine in the evening. Eve felt the bile rise in her throat.

Nan must have sensed it. “I did keep asking Simon to
drive me up here, but he insisted on showing me everything. Well, I suppose you’ve been over it dozens of times.”

“You know I haven’t.” Eve’s voice was dangerously calm.

Only Benny and Aidan who knew her so well would have got the vibrations.

Aidan exchanged a glance with Benny. But there was nothing he could do.

“Well, you must Eve. You must let him take you all through the place. He’s so proud of it. And he describes it so well, not boasting or anything.”

“Where’s this?” Sheila always liked to hear of places that were splendid and people that were important.

“Eve’s relations, up at the big house. About a mile over … that way … is it?” Nan pointed with her arm.

Eve said nothing. Benny said that it was more or less that way. Benny also wondered did anyone want coffee, but they didn’t. They wanted to sit dreamily with low music on the player and to chat. And they wanted Nan to have the floor. There was something about the way her face was lit up by the fire and by the place she was talking about … they wanted her to go on.

“He showed me all the family portraits. Your mother was very beautiful, wasn’t she Eve?” Nan spoke in open admiration. There was nothing triumphalist about her having been there, about her having been taken on a tour and shown the picture that had not been shown to Eve on her one visit.

Nan had always said that Eve should bury her differences. Nan would have thought that Eve knew what her mother looked like.

“You must have had quite a tour.” The words nearly choked her.

“Oh yes. The trouble was getting away.”

“Still, you managed it,” Aidan Lynch said. “Fonsie, if we’re not going to be given cells in the convent for the night,
which I was distinctly promised, I think we should have something to loosen up our limbs for the journey home. What would you suggest, man?”

Fonsie had long realized that Aidan was a fellow spirit. He leapt to his feet and flipped through a few record covers.

“I think it comes down to a straight contest between Lonnie Donegan ‘Putting on the Style’ and Elvis being ‘All Shook Up’ man,” he said, after some thought.

“Man, let’s not insult either of those heroes. Let’s have them both,” Aidan said, and he went around the room clapping his hands at people to get them going.

Benny had followed Eve to the kitchen.

“She doesn’t understand,” Benny said.

Eve clutched hard with both her hands at the sink.

“Of course she does. How often have we talked about it?”

“Not to her. Seriously not to her. With Nan we usually pretend things are fine. Otherwise she gets you to change them. Remember?”

“I’ll never forgive her.”

“Yes, of course you will. You’ll forgive her this minute, otherwise it will change everything about the party. It was the most wonderful party in the world. Truly.”

“It was.” Eve softened. Inside she saw Aidan beckoning to her.

Everyone was on the floor. Benny went back. Jack and Nan were dancing, laughing happily, neither of them knowing that anything was amiss.

Eddie Hogan said to his wife that there were some people in life for whom it was a real pleasure to do the smallest thing, and that Benny’s friend Nan was one of them.

Annabel agreed completely. They had never met a more charming girl. And such perfect manners too. She had given Patsy half a crown when she was leaving. She was a perfect lady.

Kit Hegarty folded the letter from the man that everyone else had called Joe. She had never called him anything but Joseph. Meeting him had been so different to the way she thought it would have been. She had intended to hurl everything at him if she ever saw him again. But in fact he was just like a distant friend who was down on his luck. He gave no address. She couldn’t even acknowledge the letter.