Circle of Friends (50 page)

“Ah no, he wouldn’t look at me,” Eve said, laughing.

“Besides, she has a young law student besotted about her,” Kit added.

“That must leave you lonely here, sometimes, Mrs. Hegarty,” he said. “When all the young folk go out of an evening.”

“I manage,” Kit said.

Eve realized that the man was revving up to ask Kit Hegarty out. She knew that Kit herself was quite unaware of this.

“You do manage,” Eve said. “Of course you do. And people want you everywhere, but I’d love you to go out and be silly, just once.”

“Well, talking of being silly,” said big Paddy Hickey. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance you’d accompany a poor lonely old Kerry widower out for a night on the town.”

“Well, isn’t that
great
,” cried Eve, “because we’re all going out tonight, every single one of us.”

Kit looked startled.

“Come back for her about seven o’clock, Mr. Hickey. I’ll have her ready for you,” Eve said.

When he was gone Kit turned on Eve in a fury.

“Why are you behaving like that? Cheap and pushy. It isn’t at all like you.”

“It’s not like me for me, but by God I’d need it for you.”

“I can’t go out with him. I’m a married woman.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes, I am. No matter what Joseph did in England I’m married anyway.”

“Oh, belt up Kit.”

“
Eve!”

“I mean it. I really do. Nobody’s asking you to commit adultery with Kevin’s father you great fool, just go out with him, tell him about your living encumbrance across the
channel if you want to. I wouldn’t personally, but you will. But don’t throw a decent man’s invitation back in his face.”

She looked so cross that Kit burst out laughing.

“What’ll I wear?”

“That’s more like it.” Eve gave her a big squeeze as they went upstairs to examine both of their wardrobes.

“I was wondering would you consider Wales a sort of break …” Jack asked Benny hopefully.

“No, it’s too soon.”

“I just thought it could be a change. They always say that’s a good thing.”

Benny knew what he meant. She longed to go to Wales with him. She longed to be his girl, on a boat sailing out from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead. She longed to be sitting beside him on a train, and meeting the others and being Benny Hogan, Jack Foley’s girl, with everything that that implied.

And she knew that a change could clear her head of the thoughts and the suspicions that buzzed around in it.

She had tried to get her mother to make a visit. To go to her brothers and their wives. They had been very solicitous at the funeral. But Annabel Hogan told Benny sadly that they had never approved of her marrying Eddie all those years ago, a man younger than she was with no stake in any business. They had thought she should have done better for herself. She didn’t want to go to stay in their homes, large country places, and tell them tales of a marriage which had worked for her but which they had never thought anything of.

No, she would stay in her home and try to get used to the way things were going to be from now on.

But Benny didn’t want to explain all this to Jack. Jack wasn’t a person to weigh down with problems. The great thing was that he seemed so glad to see her. He took no
notice of the admiring glances coming at him from every corner of the Annexe. He sat on his hard wooden chair and drank cup after cup of coffee. He had two fly cemeteries, but Benny said she had gone off them. In fact her whole being cried out for one, but she was eating no cakes, bread puddings, chips or biscuits. If she had not had Jack Foley to light up everything for her, it would have been a very dull life indeed.

Nan was delighted to see Benny back at lectures.

“I had no one to talk to. It’s great to see you again,” she said.

Despite herself, Benny was pleased.

“You had Eve. Lord, I envy the two of you being here all the time.”

“I don’t think Eve is too pleased with me,” Nan confided. “I’ve been going out with Simon you see, and she doesn’t approve.”

Benny knew that was true: Eve did not approve, but then it would have been the same with anyone who went out with Simon. She felt that he should have made some effort to make provisions for his cousin once he was old enough to understand the situation.

And she felt that Nan had been sneaky. Eve always claimed that Benny had been dragged to the Hibernian with the express purpose of making the introduction. Benny thought that was impossible, but there were some subjects on which Eve was adamant.

“And where does he take you?” Benny loved to hear Nan’s cool comments on the high life that Simon Westward was opening up.

She described the back bar in Jammets, the Red Bank, the Bailey and Davy Byrne’s.

“He’s so much older, you see,” Nan explained. “So most of his friends meet in bars and hotels.”

Benny thought that was sad. Imagine not going to where there was great fun, like the Coffee Inn, or the Inca or the Zanzibar. All the places she and Jack went to.

“And do you like him?”

“Yes, a lot.”

“So why do you look so worried. He obviously likes you if he keeps asking you to all these places.”

“Yes, but he wants to sleep with me.”

Benny’s eyes were round. “You won’t, will you?”

“I will, but how? That’s what I’m trying to work out. Where and how.”

Simon as it turned out had decided where and how. He had decided that it was going to be in the back of a car parked up on the Dublin mountains. He said it was awfully silly to pretend that they both didn’t want it.

Nan was ice cool. She said she had no intention of doing anything of the sort in a car.

“But you do want me?” Simon said.

“Yes, of course I do.”

“So?”

“You have a perfectly good house where we can be comfortable.”

“Not at Westlands,” Simon said.

“And most definitely not in a car,” said Nan.

Next day Simon was waiting at the corner of Earlsfort Terrace and Leeson Street as the students poured out at lunchtime, wheeling bicycles, or carrying books. They moved off to digs, flats and restaurants around the city.

Nan had said no, when Eve and Benny asked her to come to the Singing Kettle. Chips for Eve and black coffee for strong-willed Benny.

They didn’t see her eyes dart around as if she knew someone would be waiting for her.

They didn’t notice as Simon stepped out and took her hand.

“How amazingly crass I was last night,” he said.

“Oh, that’s perfectly all right.”

“I mean it. It was unpardonable. I wondered if you might come down to a pretty little hotel I know for dinner and we might stay overnight. If you’d like to.”

“I’d like to, certainly,” Nan said. “But sadly I’m not free until next Tuesday.”

“You’re making me wait.”

“No, I assure you.”

But she was indeed making him wait. Nan had worked out the safe period, and next Tuesday was the earliest she dared go to bed with Simon Westward.

Clodagh was sitting in her back room sewing. She had a glass door and could see if there was a customer who needed personal attention. Otherwise her aunt and Rita, the new young girl they had taken on, could manage fine without her.

Benny came in and sat beside her.

“How’s Rita getting on?”

“Fine. You’ve got to choose them, quick enough to be of some use. Not so quick that they’ll take all your ideas and set up on their own. It’s the whole nature of business.”

Benny laughed dryly.

“I wish someone had told that to my father ten years ago,” she said ruefully.

Clodagh went on sewing. Benny had never brought up the subject of Sean Walsh before. Even though it had been a matter of a lot of speculation in the last weeks. Just after Christmas there had been talk of him becoming a partner. Those who drank in Healy’s Hotel said Mrs. Healy spoke of
it very authoritatively. Clodagh, since the day she had been barred from Healy’s, made it her business to find out everything that went on there, and all subjects discussed at its bar.

She waited to hear what Benny had to say.

“Clodagh, what would happen if Rita was taking money from the till?”

“Well, for a start I’d know it at the end of the day, or else the end of the week.”

“You would?”

“Yes, and then I’d suggest cutting off her hands at the wrist, and Aunt Peggy would say we should just sack her.”

“And suppose you couldn’t prove it?”

“Then I’d be very careful Benny, so careful you wouldn’t believe it.”

“If she had put it in a bank someone would know?”

“Oh yes. She wouldn’t have put it in a bank, not around these parts. It would have to be in cash somewhere.”

“Like where?”

“Lord, I’d have no idea, and I’d be careful I didn’t get caught looking.”

“So you might have to let it go if you couldn’t prove it.”

“Crucifying as it would be, I might.”

Benny heard the warning in her voice. They both knew they were not talking about the blameless Rita out in the shop. They each realized that it would be dangerous to say any more.

Jack Foley said he’d ring Benny when he got to Wales. They were staying in a guesthouse. He was going to share a room with Bill Dunne, who was going for the laugh and a beer.

“You won’t need me at all,” Benny had said, laughing away her disappointment that she couldn’t be there.

“Fine though Bill Dunne is and everything, I don’t
think there’s much comparison. I wish you were coming with me.”

“Well, ring me from the height of the fun,” Benny said.

He didn’t ring. On night one, or night two, or night three. Benny sat at home. She didn’t take her mother up to Healy’s Hotel to try out one of their new evening dinners, at Mrs. Healy’s invitation.

Instead she stayed at home and listened to the clock ticking and to Shep snoring and to Patsy whispering with Mossy while her mother looked at the pictures in the fire and Jack Foley made no phone call from the height of the fun.

Nan packed her overnight bag carefully. A lacy nightie, a change of clothes for the next day, a very smart sponge bag from Brown Thomas, with talcum powder and a new toothbrush and toothpaste. She kissed her mother good-bye.

“I’ll be staying with Eve in Dun Laoghaire,” she said.

“That’s fine,” said Emily Mahon, who knew that wherever Nan was going to stay it was not with Eve in Dun Laoghaire.

Bill Dunne ran into Benny in the Main Hall.

“I’m meant to bump into you casually and see how the land lies,” he said.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Is our friend in the doghouse or isn’t he?”

“Bill, you’re getting worse than Aidan. Talk English.”

“In plain English, your erring boyfriend, Mr. Foley, wants to know if he dares approach you, he having not managed to telephone you.”

“Oh, don’t be so silly,” Benny said, exasperated. “Jack knows I’m not that kind of girl going into sulks and moods.
He knows I don’t mind something like that. If he couldn’t phone he couldn’t.”

“Now I see why he likes you so much. And why he was so afraid that he’d upset you,” Bill Dunne said admiringly. “You’re a girl in a million, Benny.”

Heather Westward didn’t really like the thought of Aidan coming on their outings, but that was before she got to know him. Soon Eve complained that she liked Aidan more than she liked Eve. His fantasy world was vastly more entertaining than her own.

He told Heather that he and Eve were going to have eight children, with ten months between each child. They would marry in 1963 and keep having children until late 1970.

“Is that because you’re Catholics?”

“No, it’s because I want something to occupy Eve during my first hard years at the Bar. I shall be in the Law Library all day and night in order to make money for all the Knickerbocker Glories that these children will demand. I shall have to work at night in a newspaper as a sub-editor. I have it all worked out.”

Heather giggled into her huge ice cream. She wasn’t absolutely sure if he was being serious. She looked to Eve for confirmation.

“That’s what he thinks now, but actually what’s going to happen is that he’s going to meet some brainless little blonde who’ll flutter long lashes at him and giggle, and he’ll forget all about me and the long-term plan.”

“Will you mind?” Heather spoke as if Aidan wasn’t there.

“No, I’ll be quite relieved really. Eight children would be exhausting. Remember how Clara felt with all those puppies?”

“But you wouldn’t have to have them all at the same time?” Heather took the matter seriously.

“Though it would have its advantages.” Aidan was reflective. “We’d get free baby things, and you could come and help with the baby-sitting, Heather. You’d change four while Eve changed the other four.”

Heather laughed happily.

“I wouldn’t want a brainless little blonde, honestly,” Aidan said to Eve. “I’m no Jack Foley.”

Eve looked at him astonished. “Jack?”

“You know, the Wales outing. It’s all right. It’s all right, Benny’s forgiven him. Bill Dunne says.”

“She’s forgiven him for not phoning her. She doesn’t know anything about a brainless blonde that should be forgiven.”

“Oh … I don’t think it was anything really …” Aidan backtracked.

Eve’s eyes glinted.

“Well, only a ship that passed in the night, or the evening, a blonde, silly Welsh ship. I don’t know for God’s sake. I wasn’t there. I was only told.”

“Oh, I’m sure you were told, and all the gory details.”

“No, really. And Eve, I wouldn’t go and say anything to Benny.”

“I’m her friend.”

“Does that mean you will or you won’t?”

“It means that you’ll never know.”

Nan settled herself into Simon’s car.

“You smell beautiful,” he said. “Always the most expensive of perfumes.”

“Most men don’t recognize good perfume,” she complimented him. “You are very discerning.”

They drove out of Dublin south through Dun Laoghaire, past Kit Hegarty’s and past Heather’s school.

“That’s where my sister is.”

Nan knew this. She knew that Eve went there on Sundays when Simon did not. She knew that Heather was unhappy there and would much prefer a day school within reach of her beloved pony and dog and the country life she loved so much, pottering around Westlands. But she didn’t let Simon know that she knew any of this.