Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  They were playing “This is my island in the sun.” Johnny looked with open admiration at Benny.

  “I never knew you had such a nice …”

  He stopped.

  “Nice what?” Benny asked him directly.

  Johnny O’Brien chickened out. “Nice perfume,” he said.

  It was nice, too, the perfume. It was heady, like a cloud around her. Of course he hadn’t meant perfume at all, but he was right. That was nice also.

  Aidan was dancing with Eve.

  “This is the first time I’ve been able to hold you in my arms without your beating at me with your bony little fists,” he said.

  “Make the most of it,” Eve said. “The bony little fists will be out again if you start trying to dance with me in your father’s car.”

  “Were you talking to my father?” Aidan asked.

  “You know I was. You introduced me to him three times.”

  “He’s all right really. So’s my mother—a bit loud but basically all right.”

  “They’re no louder than you are,” Eve said.

  “Oh they are. They boom. I just talk forcefully.”

  “They talk more directly, normally. Sentences and everything,” Eve said, thinking about them.

  “You’re very beautiful.”

  “Thank you Aidan. And you look great in a dinner jacket.”

  “When are you going to stop fighting this hopeless physical passion you have for me and succumb. Allow yourself to have your way with me.”

  “Wouldn’t you drop dead if I said I would?”

  “I’d recover pretty quickly, I tell you.”

  “Well, it mightn’t happen for a while. The succumbing bit I mean. A good while.”

  “That’s the trouble about being brought up by nuns. I might have to wait forever.”

  “They weren’t nearly as bad as everyone says.”

  “When are you going to take me to meet them?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Why not? I took you to meet my family.”

  “You didn’t. They just happened to be there.”

  “You didn’t arrange for your nuns to rent motorbikes and roar up to the party. I think that was socially rather inept of you,” Aidan said.

  “They couldn’t make it,” Eve explained. “Friday’s their poker night and they just won’t change for anyone.”

  Sean and Carmel danced entwined. The music played “Brown skin girl stay home and mind bay-bee.”

  “Imagine, that won’t be long now,” Carmel said.

  “Another four years,” Sean said happily.

  “And we’ve been together four years already if you count the year before Intermediate Cert.”

  “Oh, I do count that. I couldn’t get you out of my mind that year.”

  “Aren’t we lucky?” Carmel said, holding him tighter.

  “Very lucky. Everyone in the room envies us,” said Sean.

  “Wouldn’t Sean and Carmel sicken you?” Eve said to Benny as they all went back up the stairs.

  “Not much value out of asking them anywhere certainly,” Benny agreed.

  “They remind me of those animals in the zoo that keep picking at each other, looking for fleas,” Eve said.

  “Don’t Eve,” Benny laughed. “Someone will hear.”

  “No, you know monkeys obsessed with each other. Social grooming I think it’s called.”

  Back at the table Jack Foley and Sheila were sitting. Jack had elected to watch the jug of gin for the first watch. Sheila was pleased to have been chosen to sit with him, but she would have preferred to be on the dance floor.

  Nan came back to the table with Patrick Shea, an architectural student, a friend of Jack and Aidan’s from school. Patrick Shea was hot and sweating. Nan looked as if she had been dancing on an ice rink in a cool breeze. There wasn’t a sign of exertion on her face.

  Benny looked across the table at her admiringly. She was so much in command of every situation and yet her mother was quite shy, and not a confident person at all. Perhaps Nan got it all from her father. Whom she never mentioned.

  Benny wondered why Eve hadn’t introduced her to Simon. It was rather gauche not to. If it had been anyone else Benny would have made the introduction herself, but Eve was always so chippy about those Westwards.

  Still Nan had said nothing and knowing Nan, if she had wanted an introduction she would have asked for one.

  Johnny O’Brien was offering her a glass of orange. Benny took a great gulp of it thankfully and it was only when she had swallowed it she remembered it was full of gin.

  She choked it back and saw Johnny O’Brien looking at her admiringly.

  “You’re certainly a woman who can hold her drink,” he said.

  It wasn’t the characteristic she would most like to be praised for, but at least it was better than having gagged or got sick.

  Rosemary had been looking at her.

  “I envy you being able to do that,” she said. “I get dizzy after even a little drink.”

  She looked around her knowing that there would be silent praise and admiration for this feminine trait.

  “I’m sure,” Benny said gloomily.

  “It must be coming from the country,” Rosemary said, still with the look of mock admiration. “I expect they drink a lot there don’t they?”

  “Oh, they do,” Benny said. “But differently. I mean when I drink gin in the country it’s usually by the neck out of a bottle. It’s a rare treat to get it in a glass and mixed with Club Orange.”

  They laughed as she had known they would.

  It was never hard to make them laugh. It was very hard to make them look at you with different eyes though.

  Benny looked at Jack, relaxed and happy, leaning back in his chair surveying the scene both around him and down on the tables near the dance floor. He would be the perfect host. He would ask every girl at the table to dance.

  She felt an extraordinary urge to reach across and stroke his face, just touch his cheek gently. She wondered was she going mad? She had never known an urge like that before.

  He would ask her to dance soon. Maybe now, perhaps the very next dance, he would lean across the table and smile. He would put out his hand toward her and smile with a slight questioning look. She could see it happening so clearly, she almost believed it had happened already.

  “Benny?” he might say, just like that, and she’d get up and walk down the stairs with him, hands touching lightly. And then they would just move toward each other.

  The bandleader had said that their vocalist would knock strips off Tab Hunter in any singing contest and he would now sing “Young Love” to prove it.

  Benny willed Jack to catch her eye and dance three soft slow numbers with her, beginning with “Young Love.”

  But Rosemary caught his eye first. Benny didn’t know how she did it, it might have been something to do with some awful beating of her eyelashes, but she managed to drag his glance over to her.

  “Rosemary?” he said in that voice which he should have used to say “Benny?”

  Her heart was like a lump of lead.

  “Will you risk it Benny?” Aidan Lynch was at her elbow.

  “Lovely, Aidan, thank you.”

  She stood up and went downstairs to the floor where Jack Foley and Rosemary were dancing and Rosemary had put both her arms around Jack’s neck and was leaning back a bit away from him as if to study him better.

  The dance was a success every year. This year the organizers seemed to think it was better than ever. They measured these things by enthusiasm. The spot prizes went very well.

  “First gentleman up with a hole in his sock.”

  Aidan Lynch won that easily. He pointed out that the part you put your foot in was a hole. They had to give it to him. He got a huge cheer.

  “How did you know that?” Benny was impressed.

  “A friend of mine was a waiter here once. He told me all the spots.”

  “What are the other que
stions?” Benny asked.

  “There’s one which says ‘The first lady up with a picture of a rabbit.’ That’s easy too.”

  “It is? Who’d have a picture of a rabbit?”

  “Anyone with a threepence. There’s a rabbit on the thruppeny piece.”

  “So there is. Aren’t you a genius Aidan?”

  “I am Benny, I am, but not everyone apart from yourself and myself recognizes this.”

  They were welcomed as heroes back to the table and the wine they had won was opened.

  “More drink. Aren’t you marvelous, Benny,” Rosemary said. She had somehow managed to nestle her body into Jack’s by leaning against him. Benny wanted to get up and smack her face hard. But fortunately Jack had moved away and the need that she felt to separate them passed.

  Some waltzes were announced. Benny didn’t want to dance this set with Jack. Waltzes were too twirly, too active. No time to lean against him, to touch his face even accidentally.

  The others were starting to go downstairs as the music soared up at them. “Che sarà, sarà, whatever will be, will be.”

  A tall, handsome boy came over to the table and asked courteously, “May I ask Nan for just one dance please, you have her all evening … is that all right? Nan, will you?”

  Nan looked up, everyone else seemed to be occupied.

  “Of course,” she said, and went smiling to the dance floor.

  Benny remembered at school when you were picked for teams the awful bit about being the last one to be chosen. Or worse when there was an uneven number and Mother Francis would say “All right Benny you go with that team” at the very end. She remembered the musical chairs and being the first one out. She had an uneasy feeling that it was all going to happen again.

  Jack was with Rosemary again! She saw Bill Dunne and another boy, Nick Hayes, talking at the end of the table, miles from where she was. If they had noticed her and come to sit with her or asked her to join them that would have been all right.

  Benny sat with a fixed smile on her face, fiddling with the menu which said they would have melon soup, chicken and trifle. She wondered absently had they forgotten it was a Friday. She poured out a fizzy orange drink into her glass and drank it. From the corner of her eye she saw a waiter approaching with a large metal jug about to refill the water jugs on the table.

  Benny stood up. “No,” she said. “No, they don’t want any.”

  The waiter looked an old man. He looked tired. He had seen too many of these student dances, and danced at none of them.

  “Excuse me, miss, let me fill it.”

  “No.” Benny was adamant.

  “Even if you don’t want any, the ones that did get to dance might want it when they come back,” he said.

  There was something in the mixed pity and scorn of his speech that brought a sharp sting of tears to her eyes. “They said they didn’t like any more water. Before they went off to dance. Truly.”

  She must not make him suspicious either. Suppose he reported something odd about their table.

  A great weariness came over her. “Listen,” she said to him. “I don’t give a damn. They told me they didn’t want any more but I don’t care. Fill it up if you’re set on it. What the hell.”

  He looked at her uneasily. He obviously thought she was slightly mad, and that it was kind of somebody to have given her an outing.

  “I’ll go on to the next table,” he said hastily.

  “Great,” Benny said.

  She felt awkward sitting on her own. She would go to the ladies’. There was no one to excuse herself to. Nick and Bill were having an animated discussion at the far end of the table; they didn’t see her go.

  In the lavatory she sat and planned. The next dance would probably be rock and roll. That wasn’t what she wanted for her dance with Jack either. She wouldn’t catch his eye for this one. She’d wait until it was something lovely and slow again. Maybe they’d have “Unchained Melody.” She loved that. Or “Stranger in Paradise.” That was nice too. “Softly, Softly” was a bit too sentimental. But it would do.

  To her surprise she heard Rosemary’s voice at the handbasins outside.

  The waltzes couldn’t be over yet surely. They normally had three of them.

  “He is utterly gorgeous isn’t he?” Rosemary was saying to someone. “And he’s nice too, not full of himself like a lot of those sporty fellows are if they’re any way good-looking.”

  Benny didn’t recognize the other girl’s voice. Whoever she was she thought that Jack and Rosemary were together.

  “Have you been going with him long?” she asked wistfully.

  “No, I’m not going out with him at all. Yet, that is,” she added menacingly.

  “He looked pretty keen out there.”

  Benny’s heart lurched.

  “He’s a good dancer as well as everything else. The waltz isn’t my strong point. I pretended I had turned my ankle. I just wanted to come in here for a rest.”

  “That was clever.”

  “Well, you have to use every trick in the book. I said to him that I’d grab him for another dance later because we didn’t finish this one.”

  “You’ve got no competition.”

  “I don’t like the look of Nan Mahon. Did you see her dress?”

  “It’s out of this world. But you look just as good.”

  “Thanks.” Rosemary was pleased.

  “Where is he now?”

  “He said he’d finish off the waltzes with Benny.”

  Benny’s face burned. He had known she was a wallflower. He had bloody known. He hadn’t deigned to ask her for a full dance, but when ravishing Rosemary walked out on him, he’d get good old Benny for the rest of it.

  “Who’s Benny?”

  “She’s that huge girl—from way down the country. He knows her through her family or something. She’s always turning up at these things.”

  “No competition there then?”

  Rosemary laughed. “No, I don’t think so. Whoever she is, her people must have money. They know the Foleys somehow and she’s wearing a very expensive dress. I don’t know where she got it, but it’s fabulous, brocade and beautifully cut. It takes stones off her. She says she got it in Knockflash or wherever she lives.”

  “Knockflash?”

  “Somewhere, real hick town. She no more got it there than she got it in the Bog of Allen.”

  Their voices faded. They had freshened themselves up, resprayed their hair, put on more perfume. They were ready to go out again, full of confidence, and face it all.

  Benny sat on the lavatory. Ice cold. She was huge. She was no competition for anyone. She was the kind of person someone would come and finish off a dance with but not choose in the first place.

  She looked at the small wristwatch her mother and father had given her for her seventeenth birthday. It was five to ten.

  More than anywhere in the world she wanted to be sitting by the fire in Lisbeg. Her mother in one chair, her father in another and Shep looking at pictures in the flames and wondering what it was all about.

  She would like to be hearing the kitchen door latch go and Patsy come in from her walk with Mossy and make them all a cup of drinking chocolate. She didn’t want to be in a place where people said she was huge and no competition and must have lots of money and be a family friend of the Foleys to be invited anywhere. She didn’t want to be fighting to save jugs of gin on tables for people who wouldn’t dance with her.

  But wishing wouldn’t get her home out of this humiliating place. Benny decided that she would take the good out of what she had overheard. It was good that her dress looked expensive and well cut. It was good though sad that it was necessary to hear that it took stones off her. It was good that Rosemary wasn’t any way sure of Jack. And it was good that he hadn’t found her sitting at the table, lonely and abandoned, and now he couldn’t feel he had fulfilled his obligation to dance with her. There were lots of good things, Benny Hogan told herself as she took the little piec
e of cotton wool that Nan’s mother had soaked in Joy perfume for them and rubbed it behind her ears.

  She would go back and Rosemary would never know that her cruel dismissive remarks had only served to make Benny feel more positive and confident than ever.

  They were making an announcement from the stage that the meal would be served shortly, and thanks to a special dispensation from the Archbishop’s House the Friday abstinence need not be observed. There was a huge cheer.

  “How did they get that?” Eve asked.

  “The Archbishop knows we’ve all been so good he wants to reward us,” Jack suggested.

  “No, it’s just that chicken’s the easiest to serve. You know everyone gets a wing. They breed special chickens for functions, with ten wings,” Aidan said.

  “But why would the Archbishop want us to have chicken seriously?” Benny asked.

  “It’s a deal,” Aidan explained. “The dance organizers promise not to have dances on Saturday night that might run into the Sabbath day and the Church lets them eat chicken on Fridays.”

  “You ran away on me.” Jack leaned over to Benny just as the soup was being served.

  “I what?”

  “You ran off. I was looking for you to waltz with me.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Benny said smiling. “That was Rosemary that ran off on you. She hurt her ankle. I expect you mix us all up, we all look the same to you.”

  The people around laughed. Rosemary didn’t. She looked at Benny suspiciously. How did she know about the ankle.

  Jack used the chance to make a flowery compliment. “You don’t all look the same. But you all look marvelous. I mean it.” And he was looking straight at Benny when he said it. She smiled back and managed not to make a joke or a smart remark.

  There was a raffle during the meal, and the organizers came around to invite Rosemary and Nan to go and sell tickets.

  “Why us?” Rosemary said. She didn’t want to leave her post. The committee didn’t want to explain that it was easier to force people to buy tickets if beautiful women were doing the asking. Nan had stood up already.