Circle of Friends (70 page)

Slowly the day took shape. The journey to Ballylee began. Never had the countryside looked lovelier. Benny turned round in the car twice to point things out to Jack.
She wondered would it take her long to remember he wasn’t there. And wouldn’t ever be there again.

Bill Dunne and Eve got separated from the others as they walked up to see an old folly. A summer house facing the wrong way that a family even more unused to the land than the Westwards were had built.

“Benny’s fine over all this Jack business, isn’t she?” Bill asked, looking for confirmation.

“Hasn’t she plenty of fellows looking for her attention. Of course she’s fine.” Eve was burningly loyal.

“Has she?” Bill seemed disappointed.

He told Eve that nothing had ever surprised him as much. Jack was inclined to talk, the way fellows do, the way girls did too amongst each other he supposed. He never mentioned a word about Nan. Oh, he used to complain that Benny was a convent girl through and through which presumably meant she wouldn’t go to bed with him, despite all his blandishments, and that she wasn’t in Dublin enough. But not till the night of the rugby club party did Jack even go out with Nan, he knew that for a fact.

“That was only a few weeks ago,” Eve said, surprised.

“Yes, didn’t the other business happen very quick.” Bill shivered in case talking about it might make him the putative father of someone’s child.

“Well, it only takes once, that’s what they always say.” Eve’s voice was light.

“That must have been all it was.” Bill was sympathetic.

Eve changed the subject. Bill’s line of thinking was dangerously near to her own. That the pregnancy had happened too suddenly.

She had not been able to pinpoint Jack and Nan’s first encounter until now, and that night was only a few weeks ago. It was the night she and Benny had gone to the pictures in Dun Laoghaire. Even with Benny’s poor mathematics,
that was surely too soon for anything to have happened and be confirmed. Surely they would know this. Surely Jack’s father, a doctor, would know?

And that meant something almost impossible to believe. It meant that Nan Mahon was pregnant with someone else’s child, and had taken Benny’s Jack to be its father.

Her mind was racing, but the race came to an abrupt end. The engagement was announced. The marriage date was fixed. This is what Nan and Jack were going to do. It wasn’t a melodrama of blood tests, and confrontations. It would go ahead, no matter what.

To cast any suspicions would only raise Benny’s hope again and break her heart further.

And then there was the possibility that she could be wrong. Eve had never been sure where Simon and Nan could have made love, and had been forced to dismiss the possibility that they ever had. Westlands was out, Maple Gardens was out, so was a car. Simon had no money for hotels. Nan had no friends. None at all except Benny and Eve. She was having great difficulty in finding anyone to be her bridesmaid.

Eve had been forced reluctantly to believe that they might not have been lovers at all. Which was disappointing, as it meant there was no chance of being able to blame the pregnancy on Simon.

But then if there had been any possibility of doing that surely Nan would have done it. She wouldn’t have let a chance like that pass by.

But there had been no tales of any rows with Simon. According to all accounts, or to Nan’s account, the friendship had ended amicably a long time ago.

“You’re muttering to yourself,” Bill Dunne criticized her.

“It’s my only unpleasant habit. Aidan says it’s a tiny
flaw in an otherwise perfect character. Come on, I’ll race you up to the folly.”

She wanted no more of these buzzings in her mind.

The cottage looked beautiful. It had been well worth it to have Mossy give the door a coat of paint. And the garden was a tribute to Heather’s and Eve’s hard work. Heather was inside in a white chef’s hat made for her by Clodagh and a butcher’s apron. It seemed excessive for passing plates of savories, but she felt important in it. The dusk was turning to darkness. The stars were coming out in the clear sky.

Figures came up the path to the party. Teddy Flood, Clodagh Pine, Maire Carroll and her new fiancé, Tom the medical student that Rosemary had such ferocious designs on. A few more from College who were just coming for the night rather than making a whole weekend out of it.

Aidan was explaining that tomorrow was called Low Sunday and that this was probably prophetic with the amount they had eaten, drunk and danced, low would be exactly how they would feel.

“Keep the drink moving will you,” Eve said. “I have to carve this beast.”

They had a huge joint of pork boned and rolled by Teddy Flood for them. He said you’d be able to cut it like butter. Honestly, it would be like carving a Swiss roll. But Eve didn’t want to make a mess of it. She closed the door behind her so that she could be on her own in the kitchen.

And as she prepared the place for herself, the huge carving dish, something that Benny had found in the shop, the plates that were heating in the bottom of the range, she was concentrating so hard that she didn’t hear the door open and two extra guests arrive.

Carrying bottles of wine and cans of beer, in came Jack and Nan.

Rosemary was the nearest to the door and therefore the first to see them. She let her arm drop from Tom’s shoulder where it had rested all evening to mark clearly lines of possession.

“My God,” she said.

Jack smiled his easy smile. “Not exactly. Just his deputy,” he said.

Carmel was nuzzling Sean on a bench close by. “You didn’t say they were coming,” she accused Sean in a whisper.

“I didn’t bloody know,” Sean snapped back.

Johnny O’Brien was doing a complicated tango step with Sheila.

“Hey, it’s the black sheep,” he called happily.

Sheila whirled around to see if she could see Benny. She was just in time to see Benny look up from where she and Bill Dunne were sorting the records. And to see the color go out of Benny’s face as she dropped three of the records straight from her hands.

“Thank God for the passing of the 78’s,” said Fonsie, whose record collection would have been the loser.

“There’s a surprise,” Bill said.

Even though the music of “Hernando’s Hideaway” was thumping and thudding itself all round them, Nan and Jack must have felt the silence and the chill.

Jack’s legendary smile came to his rescue.

“Now, come on, did you think I’d forgotten I said I’d get the drink?” He laughed. He had put it down on the floor, his hands were wide apart, being held out helplessly in the little gesture Benny knew and loved.

It
must
have been a dream. All of it, and now that he was back it was over.

She felt herself smiling at him.

And he saw the smile. All the way across the room.

“Hallo, Benny,” he said.

Now everyone could feel the silence. Everyone except the Johnson Brothers, who were singing “Hernando’s Hideaway.” Clodagh had dressed Benny in black and white for the party. A big black corduroy skirt, a white blouse with a black velvet trim. She looked flushed and happy at the moment that Jack saw her.

He was walking over to her.

“How’s your mother and the shop?”

“Fine, going great. We had a party there last night.” She spoke too quickly. She looked over his shoulder. Aidan Lynch had taken the bottles of wine from Nan and laid them on the table. Clodagh was trying to explain to Fonsie out of the corner of her mouth.

Johnny O’Brien, who could always be relied on to say something, if not the right thing, came over and punched Jack warmly on the arm.

“It’s great to see you. I thought you were barred,” he said.

Aidan poured Jack a drink. “Jack the lad!” he said. “Like old times.”

“I thought it would be silly to act as if there was a feud or something.” Jack looked only mildly anxious that he had done the right thing.

“What feud would there be?” Aidan asked, looking nervously over at where Nan stood beside the door, hardly having moved since she came in.

“Well, that’s what I thought. Anyway I couldn’t make off with all the money for the jar.”

They both knew it had nothing to do with the drink.

“How are things?” Aidan asked him.

“Fine. A bit unreal.”

“I know,” said Aidan, who didn’t know and couldn’t possibly imagine it. He thought it safer to move to different waters.

“And your uncle’s office?”

“Crazy. They’re all so petty, you wouldn’t believe …” Jack had his arm upon a tall chest of drawers and was talking easily. Benny had moved slightly away. She felt very hot and then very cold. She hoped she wasn’t going to faint. Perhaps she could get some air.

Then she realized that Eve didn’t know they were here. She must go into the kitchen and tell her.

Aidan had realized this at the same time. He had moved Fonsie in to talk to Jack and headed Benny off at the kitchen door.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “Come in to rescue me if I’m not out in an hour and there’s no sign of supper.”

She gave a watery smile.

“Are you all right?” he asked, concerned.

“I’m okay.” For Benny that was like saying she was terrible. Aidan looked around him and caught Clodagh’s eye. She moved over to join them.

As Aidan went into the kitchen, Clodagh said, “She can stand there at the bloody door all night. She’s got some nerve coming here, I tell you. She got short shrift from me.”

“What?”

“She said ‘Hallo, Clodagh,’ nice as pie. I looked through her. She said it again. ‘Do I know you?’ is what I said.” Clodagh was pleased with her repartee.

“People will have to speak to her.”

“Let them. I’m not going to.”

And indeed Nan did seem curiously isolated, while Jack was the center of his mates.

Benny looked across the room. Nan’s face, serene and beautiful as ever, looked around her in that interested, slightly questioning way. She gave no sign that she might feel unwelcome, ungreeted. She looked perfectly at ease standing just where she had come in, when Aidan had removed the wine bottles from her arms.

She looked at Nan as she had done so often admiringly. Nan knew what to say, how to behave, what to wear. Tonight
she was in yet another new outfit, a very flowery print, all mauve and white. It looked so fresh, you’d think it had come straight off a shop rail five minutes ago, not from a long car drive.

Benny swallowed. For the rest of her life, Nan would drive in a car with Jack, sit beside him sharing all the things that
she
had once shared. Tears of disappointment came into her eyes. Why had she not done as he asked, taken off her clothes and lain down beside him, loved him generously and warmly, responded to him, instead of buttoning herself up and moving away and saying they should be going home.

If it were Benny that was pregnant, surely he would have been pleased and proud.

He would have explained to his parents, and to her mother as he had done for Nan. Big tears welled up in her eyes at her own foolishness.

Nan saw and came toward her.

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” Nan said.

“No.”

“I was going to write to you, but then we never wrote each other letters so that would be artificial.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s hard to know what to say.”

“You always know what to say.” Benny looked at her. “And you always know what to do.”

“It was never intended to be like this. I assure you.” There was something in Nan’s voice that sounded phony. Benny realized with a shock that Nan was lying. Perhaps it was intended to be like this. That this was exactly the way Nan had planned it.

In the kitchen Eve was white-faced.

“I don’t believe you,” she said to Aidan.

“Put those things down.” He looked at the carving knife and fork in her hand.

“Well, they’re getting out. They’re getting straight out of my house, let me tell you.”

“No, they’re not, Eve.” Aidan was unexpectedly firm. “Jack is my friend, and he is not going to be ordered out. It was always planned that he’d come here … he brought the drink.”

“Oh, don’t be a fool,” Eve blazed. “Nobody wanted the bloody drink. If he was that worried about it couldn’t he have sent it … they’re not welcome here.”

“They’re our friends, Eve.”

“Not anymore. Not now.”

“You can’t keep up these things forever. We’ve got to get back to normal. I think they were absolutely right to come.”

“And what are they doing inside? Lording it over everyone?”

“Eve, please. These people are your guests, our guests in a way since you and I are a couple. Please don’t make a scene. It would ruin the party for everyone. They’re all behaving fine in there.”

Eve went over and put her arms around Aidan.

“You’re very generous, much nicer than I am. I don’t think we’ll work as a couple.”

“No, you’re probably right. But could we sort that one at another time, not just when they’re going to have their supper.”

Bill Dunne came through the kitchen to go to the bathroom.

“Sorry,” he said as he saw Aidan and Eve in each other’s arms. “You wouldn’t know where to put yourself these days.”