Circle of Friends (52 page)

Nan and Simon met three times without being able to do what they both wanted to do, which was to make love.

“What a pity you don’t have a little flat in town,” he said to her.

“What a pity you don’t,” she countered.

What they really needed was a small place where nobody would see them, somewhere they could steal in and out of.

It needn’t be in Dublin. It could be miles away. Petrol was no problem. Apparently Simon put it all down for the farm. It was complicated, but it was free.

He just needed to be back in Knockglen to fill up.

Nan remembered Eve’s cottage by the quarry.

She had seen where Eve put the key under a stone in the wall. Nobody went there. Except sometimes a nun to keep an eye on the place. But the nun wouldn’t be keeping an eye on the place at night.

There were only lights in one cottage. Nan remembered that this was the one where a silent man called Mossy lived. She had heard Benny and Eve talking about him once.

“That’s the man our Bee Moore wanted for herself, but some other took him away,” Simon said, smiling loftily at his local knowledge.

Nan had brought a pair of sheets, pillowcases and two towels. Plus her sponge bag, this time with soap as well. They must leave no trace of their visit.

Simon couldn’t understand why they didn’t just ask Eve. Nan said this was not even remotely possible. Eve would say no.

“Why? You’re her friend. I’m her cousin.”

“That’s why,” Nan said.

Simon had shrugged. They were here so what did it matter. They dared not light the fire or the range. They brought the bottle of champagne to bed immediately.

Next morning it was very chilly.

“I’ll have to bring my Primus stove if I can find it,” Simon said, shivering.

Nan folded the sheets and towels carefully and put them into the bag.

“Can’t we leave them here?” he asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Washed briskly in cold water, but as yet unshaved, Simon examined the cottage for the first time.

“She has some nice things here,” he commented. “That came from Westlands, definitely.” He nodded at the piano. “Does Eve play?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

He touched other things. This was definitely from the house, and that might have been. He seemed to know even though he was only a child when his aunt had begun the ill-advised marriage, and started to live in this cottage instead of a Big House similar to the one she grew up in.

He laughed at a statue in place of honor on the mantelpiece.

“Who’s he, when he’s at home,” he said, looking at a china figure of a man with a crown and a globe and a cross.

“The Infant of Prague,” Nan replied.

“Well, what’s he doing on display like this?”

“Probably one of the nuns gave it to her. They do come and clean the house. Why not leave it there to please them when you don’t have to look at it yourself,” Nan asked.

He looked at her admiringly.

“You’re a businesswoman as well as everything else, Nan Mahon.”

“Let’s go,” she said. “It would be terrible to be caught the first time.”

“You think there’ll be others?” he teased.

“Only if you get your Primus stove going,” she laughed.

On the first floor of Hogan’s the rooms were big and high-ceilinged. That was where the family that owned the shop formerly used to live. It was where Eddie Hogan and his bride lived for the first year of their marriage. They had bought Lisbeg just before Benny was born.

The rooms on that first floor were still filled with lumber. To the furniture which was already stacked there came extra lumber, old rails not used in the shop, bales empty now from material, boxes. It was not a pretty sight.

The rooms where Sean Walsh had his home for going on ten and a half years were on the floor above that.

A bedroom, another room which could be a sitting room, and a very old-fashioned bathroom with a geyser that looked like a dangerous missile.

Benny had not been up there since she was about eight or nine.

She remembered her father saying that he had asked Sean would he like a key to his own area. But Sean had been insistent that he did not.

If he had taken the money he would not have hidden it in his own rooms. Since that was the first place that would be searched if it ever were found out. It would be pointless for her to search. Pointless and dangerous. She had not forgotten Clodagh’s heavy warning.

Things would be quite bad enough if Sean Walsh were not made a partner. There would be an outrage in Knockglen if he were wrongfully accused of stealing from her father. Benny did not relish the thought of hunting in his private rooms for some evidence. But she felt so sure that there must be something, perhaps in the form of a post office book from some faraway branch.

In the beginning as she had plowed through her father’s
simplistic and even then not very thorough bookkeeping methods, she had only
suspected
that Sean must be taking away a sum of money each week. But now she knew it. She knew it because of one simple lie he had told.

When she had tried to ask him to explain the system of Drawings slips in front of Mr. Green, she had asked for an example. Sean Walsh had pointed to the outfit she wore and suggested that Benny’s own clothes might be something that her father drew money from the till to pay for. The thought had raised a lump in her throat.

Until she had looked at the checks that were returned with the bank statement. Her father had paid for every single garment he had bought for her. Clothes she had liked, clothes she had hated, each one paid for in Pine’s by check with his slanting writing.

She wished it were all over. That Sean had been unmasked, and that he had left town. That her mother had recovered her spirit and gone in to run the business. And most of all that someone would tell her what exactly had happened in Wales.

Simon brought his Primus stove. Nan brought two pretty china candlesticks, and two pink candles.

Simon brought a bottle of champagne. Nan brought two eggs, and herbs, and bread and butter. She brought some instant coffee powder too. She made them a glorious omelet in the morning.

Simon said it made him feel so excited, they should go straight back to bed.

“We’ve just remade it with her things, silly,” Nan said. Nan never referred to Eve by name.

After a time Simon stopped calling her Eve as well.

“Where does that daughter of yours spend the nights?” Brian Mahon asked.

“You were very drunk a couple of times Brian. I think she was frightened. She goes out to her girl friend, Eve, in Dun Laoghaire. They all get on together, that Eve and Benny down in Knockglen. They’re her friends. We should be glad she had them.”

“What’s the point of rearing children and having them stay out at night?” he grumbled.

“Paul and Nasey often don’t come home. You never worry about them.”

“Nothing could happen to them,” he said.

“Nor Nan either,” Emily Mahon said, with a small silent prayer.

Nan was out three nights a week at least nowadays.

She did hope most fervently that nothing would happen to her beautiful golden daughter.

Mossy Rooney saw lights there one evening. He walked straight by.

Eve Malone must have come home quietly for a night, he thought to himself.

None of his business.

The very next day Mother Francis asked him if he would do a job on the guttering at the cottage. She came up to show him where it was falling away.

“Eve hasn’t been back for weeks, the bold child,” Mother Francis scolded. “If it wasn’t for yourself and myself, Mossy, the place would fall down around her ears.”

Mossy kept his peace.

Eve Malone might have wanted to come back to her house without letting the nuns know.

Sean Walsh walked the quarry road at night. It was a place you didn’t meet many people. It left him free to think of his plans, his hopes, his future. It was a space where he could consider Dorothy Healy and the interest she showed in him. She was several years older than him. There was no denying that. He had always thought in terms of marrying a much younger woman. A girl in fact.

But there were advantages in a union with an older woman. Eddie Hogan had done so after all. It had never hurt his prospects. He had been perfectly happy in his life, limited though it was. He had fathered a child.

Sean’s thoughts were in a turmoil as he passed the cottage. He wasn’t really aware of his surroundings.

He thought he heard music coming from inside. But he must have been imagining it.

After all, Eve wasn’t at home and who else would be in there at midnight playing the piano?

He shook his head and tried to work out what length of time Mr. Green the solicitor had in mind when he spoke about the regrettably snail-like process of the law.

Dr. Johnson pulled over his prescription pad across the desk. Mrs. Carroll had always been a difficult person. He felt that she needed the services of Father Ross more than himself, but was it fair to dump all the neurotic moaners onto the local priest and call the whole thing a religious crisis?

“I know I’m not going to be popular for saying so, Dr. Johnson, but I have to say what’s true. That cottage up in the quarry is haunted. That woman died roaring and her poor half-witted husband, God be good to him, may have taken his own life, God bless the mark afterward. No wonder a house like that is haunted.”

“Haunted?” Dr. Johnson was weary.

“No soul died at peace there. No wonder one of them comes back to play the piano in the night,” she said.

Heather rang Westlands. She was coming home next weekend. Bee Moore said that was grand, she’d tell Mr. Simon.

“I’ll be going to tea with Eve in her cottage,” Heather said proudly.

“I wouldn’t fancy that myself. People say it’s haunted,” said Bee Moore, who had heard that for a fact.

Heather and Eve sat making toast by the fire in the cottage. They had long toasting forks, which Benny had found for them.

She said there were amazing things on the first floor of Hogan’s shop, but she didn’t like to denude the place entirely in case bloody Sean
was
going to be a partner. So she had just brought something he could hardly sue for through every court in the land.

“Is it definite about the partnership?” Eve wanted to know.

“Sometime, when you have about thirty-five hours …”

“I have.”

“Not now.”

“Do you want me to go away? I could go out to the pony,” Heather said.

“No, Heather, it’s a long, long story, and it would depress me telling it and depress Eve listening to it. Stay where you are.”

“Right.” Heather put another of Sister Imelda’s wonderful tea cakes on the toasting fork.

“Anything new though?” Eve thought Benny looked troubled.

But Benny shook her head. There was a resigned sort of look on her face that Eve didn’t like. As if Benny wanted to get into a big fight over something and lacked the energy.

“I could help. Like the old days. The Wise Woman would let two people tackle it.”

“The Wiser Woman might give into the inevitable.”