by Maeve Binchy
“I didn’t know anything about this,” Eve said annoyed.
“I didn’t tell you in case you wouldn’t come.” Heather was so honest that it was hard to attack her.
“Well, if you have him …”
“I want you,” Heather said simply.
Simon arrived in the car.
“Think of me as the chauffeur,” he said. “You ladies are in charge.”
Almost immediately he gave them his own plan for the afternoon. A drive through County Wicklow and afternoon tea in a rather nice hotel he knew.
Eve and Heather had been planning to take the train to Bray, go on the bumpers and have ice creams with hot butterscotch sauce. Eve was pleased that Simon’s outing sounded so dull and tame compared to her own. She knew which Heather would have preferred.
But Heather was a dutiful sister, and she saw far too little of Simon already. She gave a mild show of enthusiasm. Eve after a deliberate pause did the same.
Simon looked from one to the other. He knew that this was second best. He was very cheery and answered all Heather’s questions about her pony, about Clara’s puppies, about Woffles the rabbit.
He explained that Mrs. Walsh was still as silent and as majestic on her bicycle as ever. That Bee Moore was upset over some young man she had wanted and who had turned his attentions to Another. Eve had to put her hand over her face when Heather’s questioning revealed the man to be Mossy Rooney and Another to be Patsy.
“How’s grandfather?” Heather asked.
“The same. Come on, we’re boring Eve.”
“But he’s Eve’s grandfather too.”
“Absolutely.”
The subject was closed. Eve knew he wanted something. She had no idea what it was.
At teatime he brought it up.
“That was a remarkably beautiful girl, your friend.”
“Which friend?”
“In the shop. At the dance. The blond girl.”
“Oh yes?”
“I was wondering who she is?”
“Were you?”
“Yes, I was.” He was short now.
For ages afterward Eve hugged herself with delight and congratulation that she had managed not to answer such a direct question with any kind of response that would please him. And yet she had remained perfectly polite. For the girl who used to speak so unguardedly, whose temper was a legend in St. Mary’s, it was a triumph.
“Who is she? Oh, she’s a student at UCD, doing First Arts, like about six hundred of us.”
Her smile had told Simon Westward that this was all he was going to get.
The veterinary student was a nice boy called Kevin Hickey. He was very polite and he thanked Mrs. Hegarty for having taken his new green sweater to sew a tape on the back of it in case he wanted to hang it up with a loop. He had thought you should fold them, or put them on a clothes hanger, but still, it was very nice of her. He might wear it tonight. It was a great color. When he picked it up he thought there was a faint smell of perfume, but he must have imagined it. Or else it was Mrs. Hegarty’s perfume. Kevin Hickey’s mother was dead. It was nice to live in a house where there was a kind woman looking after him. He had asked his father to send her a turkey for Christmas. It would come by train, wrapped in straw and tied well with string.
He smelled his green jumper again. There was definitely some cosmetic. Maybe if he hung it up in the fresh air by the window it would go away.
He heard the gate opening and drew back. He wouldn’t like Mrs. Hegarty to see him airing the jumper. But it wasn’t Mrs. Hegarty back from her shopping. It was a dark-haired man he hadn’t seen before.
The door bell rang and rang, so Kevin ran down to answer it. Mrs. Hegarty was out, he said. The man wanted to wait. He looked respectable. Kevin was at a loss.
“It really is all right.” The man smiled at him. “I’m an old friend.”
“And what’s your name?”
“It’s Hegarty also, as it happens.”
As Kevin went back upstairs he turned and saw the man who was sitting in the hall pick up the picture of Mrs. Hegarty’s son who had died. Possibly he was a relation.
Sheila noticed that Jack ran off immediately after his law lectures these days. No hanging around and chatting. No little jokes, just off like an arrow. Once or twice she asked him why he needed to run so fast.
“Training.” He had smiled at her with that boyish kind of laugh which meant he knew he would be forgiven anything.
Sheila decided that he must be seeing that Rosemary Ryan in First Arts.
She inquired from Carmel if that was true. It was easy to talk to Carmel because she wasn’t really playing in the same game, she was so preoccupied with Sean that other people were only a vague background to her.
“Rosemary and Jack? I don’t think so,” Carmel said, after a lot of thought. “No, I haven’t seen them together at all. I’ve seen Jack in the Annexe a couple of mornings, but only talking to Benny Hogan.”
“Ah, well, that’s all right, so,” said Sheila with some relief.
Benny and Patsy were friends again. It had taken the promised stockings plus a tin of French Moss talcum powder and an explanation that her nerves were overwrought because she was frightened of going to the dance. Once Patsy had come round she was as usual a strong champion of the daughter of the house.
“What did you have to be frightened of? Aren’t you a fine big girl who shows all the signs of being well fed and well looked after all her life?”
That was one of the things that Benny feared was only too obvious. But it was hard to explain to small, stooped Patsy who had been brought up without enough to eat in an orphanage.
“How’s your romance?” she asked instead.
“He’s not much with the words,” Patsy complained.
“But the words he does say? Are they nice?”
“It’s very hard to know with men what they mean,” Patsy said sagely. “You’d need someone standing at your shoulder saying this means this, and this means the other.”
Benny agreed fervently. When Jack Foley said he had missed her at a party did he mean that he had looked around and thought it would be lovely if only Benny had been there? Had he thought it all evening, or only once? And if he missed her that much why had he gone to it? At the party in Jack’s house Aengus had asked Benny if she was one of the ones who was always phoning looking for Jack. She had decided that she would never be one of those. It had worked so well the way things were. Or had it? Patsy was right. With men it was impossible to know what they meant. Nan used to say they never meant anything, but that was too depressing to contemplate.
Mrs. Healy had been disappointed not to see Sean Walsh arriving full of support for her predicament. She knew his distaste for Fonsie and Clodagh and the kind of life-style they represented. But then Sean was not a customer in Healy’s Hotel. It had something to do with not presuming she imagined. Not putting himself forward, styling himself as Mr. Hogan’s equal when he was in fact a hired hand.
It was nice to see that kind of respect but sometimes Sean carried it too far. Like polishing the brasses, like living in a cramped room over the shop. He seemed to be biding his time and maybe he might bide it too long.
“You should invite young Sean Walsh in for a drink with you sometime,” she suggested to Eddie Hogan.
Eddie’s honest face told her what she already knew. “I’ve asked him a dozen times, but he won’t come in with me. I don’t think he’s a drinking man. Weren’t we blessed the day he arrived in Knockglen?”
Emily Mahon marveled at the way her daughter kept her clothes and her room. Every garment was sponged and hung up when it was taken off. Her coats and jackets always looked as if they had come straight from the dry cleaners.
The shoes had newspapers stuffed in the toes and stood on a small rack by the window. She polished her belts and handbags until they gleamed. On the wash handbasin in her room were samples of soaps that Emily had been able to get her through the hotel. There was a
book on How to Apply Makeup. Nan Mahon didn’t rely on weekly magazines or Sunday newspapers to teach her style. She did the thing thoroughly.
Emily smiled affectionately as she saw the books on etiquette that Nan studied as well as her university texts. She had once told her mother that anyone could talk to anyone if they knew the rules. It was a matter of learning them.
The book was open at a section telling you how introductions are made.
“Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts, Barons and their wives are introduced as Lord or Lady X, Honourables as plain Mr.” Imagine if Nan was in a world where such things would be of use to her. But then it wasn’t all that far beyond the possible. Look at the way she had looked at that dance. People who weren’t even part of the student crowd were admiring her. She might very well end up in twinset and pearls on the steps of a big house, with dogs beside her and servants to do her work.
It had always been Emily Mahon’s dream for her daughter. The only problem was what part would she play in it. And it didn’t bear thinking about how little a part Nan’s father might be expected to take in any such life-style.
If Nan were to get there it was easy to see that she would no longer be any part of Maple Gardens.
Rosemary Ryan wore far too much makeup for the daytime. Benny could see that quite clearly now. There was a ridge at the side of her jaw where it stopped.
She was also brighter than people gave her credit for. When she was with a crowd she always simpered and played the dumb blonde, but in tutorials she was sharp as a razor.
“What are you going to do when this is over?” she asked Benny.
“Go to the Annexe.” Benny was meeting Jack. She hoped Rosemary wouldn’t come too. “I have to meet a whole lot of different people,” she said hastily, to discourage her.
“No, I meant this. All of this.” Rosemary waved a vague hand around the University.
“Do a postgrad diploma and be a librarian, I think,” Benny said. “What about you?”
“I think I’ll be an air hostess,” Rosemary said.
“You don’t need a degree for that.”
“No, but it helps.” Rosemary had it worked out. “It’s a great way to get a husband.”
Benny didn’t know whether she meant doing a degree was a good way of being an air hostess. She didn’t like to ask. It was such a strange coincidence that Rosemary should say that, because only the day before Carmel had asked Nan would she think of joining Aer Lingus. She had the looks and the style. And she’d meet lots of men.
“Only businessmen,” Nan had said, as if that settled it.
Carmel’s eyes had narrowed. Her Sean was doing a B.Comm. and was aiming hard to be a businessman.
“Carmel says Nan doesn’t think it’s a good job.” Rosemary was probing. “Do you think Nan’s going out with Jack Foley?”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t been sighted much. I wondered was he holed up with someone mysterious.”
“I see him from time to time,” Benny said.
“Oh, that’s all right then.” Rosemary was pleased. “He’s around. He hasn’t been snatched away from under our noses. What a relief!”
Kit Hegarty let herself in and found her husband, Joseph, sitting in the kitchen.
She put her shopping on the floor and steadied herself with a hand on the kitchen chair.
“Who let you in?” she asked.
“A boy with freckles and a Kerry accent. Don’t say anything to him. He interrogated me and asked me to sit in the hall.”
“Which you didn’t.”
“I was cold.”
“Did you tell him who you were?”
“Just that my name happened to be Hegarty. Sit down, Kit. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“You’ll make me nothing in my kitchen,” she said.
But she did sit down and looked at him across the table. He was fifteen years older than he was the day he had taken the mail boat out of their lives.
How long had she cried herself to sleep at night wanting him to return. How often had she played the scene where he would come back and she would forgive him. But always in that version Francis would be young and would run toward them both, arms outstretched, crying out that he had a Daddy and a real home again.
He was still handsome. His hair had only little bits of gray, but he looked shabbier than she remembered, as if he were down on his luck. His shoes weren’t well polished. They needed to be taken to a cobbler’s. His cuffs were not frayed exactly, but thin.
“Did you hear about Francis?” she said.
“Yes.”
The silence hung long between them.
“I came to tell you how sorry I was,” he said.
“Not sorry enough to see him ever, to care to be involved in his life when he had a life.”
She looked at him without hate, the man who had abandoned them. She had been told that he had gone to live with a barmaid. At the time somehow that had made it worse, more humiliating that the woman was a barmaid. It was such an obvious kind of thing to do. Now she wondered why the woman’s job had been remotely important.
She thought of all the questions she had parried and eventually answered while her son grew up asking about his father, and wondering why he didn’t have what everyone else at the Christian Brothers’ school had in their homes.
She thought of the day Francis had got his Leaving Certificate and run home with the results, and how she had an urge to find her long-lost husband that day—only a few months ago—and tell him that the child they had produced together would go to university.
In those long nights when she had not been able to find any sleep and thoughts had run scampering around in her head, she remembered with relief that she hadn’t raised the hopes of this philandering husband and led him to believe that he had fathered a university student.
She thought of all this as she looked at him sitting in her kitchen.
“I’ll make you tea,” she said.
“Whatever you think.”
“Did she throw you out?” Kit asked. She asked because he hadn’t the look of a man who was cared for by a woman, not even a woman who had been brassy and taken him, even though she must have known he had a wife and child in Ireland.
“Oh, that all ended a long time ago. Years and years ago.”
It had ended. But he had not come back. Once gone he was truly gone. Somehow that was sadder than the other. For years she had seen him in some kind of domesticity with this woman. But in fact he might have been living alone, or in digs or bed-sitters.
That was worse than leaving her for a grand passion, however ill-advised. She looked at him with a look of great sadness.
“I was wondering …” he said. She looked at him, kettle in one hand and teapot in the other.
He was going to ask, could he come back.
Nan wanted to know if Eve had taken Heather out at the weekend. She often inquired about Heather, Eve noticed, rarely about the digs and Kit or the convent and Mother Francis.
She said they went to Wicklow and it had been wet and misty, and they went to a hotel where tea and sandwiches cost twice what real food like ice cream and butterscotch sauce would cost.
“You must have gone in a car to a place like that,” Nan said.
“Yes.” Eve looked at her.
“Did Aidan drive you?”
“Lord, I couldn’t let Aidan near her. He’s quite frightening enough for our age. He’d give a child nightmares.”
Nan left the subject of Aidan Lynch.
“So who did?”
Eve knew it was ridiculous not to tell her. She’d get to know someday. It was like being an eight-year-old, having secrets at school. Anyway it was making too much of it all.
“Her brother Simon drove us,” she said.
“The one we saw in my mother’s shop at the dance, and you didn’t introduce me.”
“The very one.”
Nan pealed with laughter. “You’re m
arvelous, Eve,” she said. “I’m so glad I’m your friend. I’d really hate to be your enemy.”
Most of the cottages on the road up by the quarry behind the convent were fairly dilapidated. It was never a place that anyone would really seek out to live. It had been different when the quarry was operating, in those days there had been plenty of people wanting to live there. Now there were very few lights burning in windows. Mossy Rooney lived in a small house there with his mother. There had been rumors that Mossy had been seen with building materials and a consequent speculation that he might intend building an extra room at the back. Could this mean that he had plans to marry?
Mossy was not a man to do things in a hurry. People said that Patsy shouldn’t count her chickens too soon.
Sean Walsh sometimes went for a walk up that way on a Sunday. Mother Francis would nod to him gravely and he always returned the greeting very formally.
If he ever wondered what the nun was doing pushing her way past the dark green leaves of the wild fuchsia and rolling up her sleeves to polish and clean he never gave any sign of his curiosity. Neither did she pause to think why he walked there. He was a lonely young man, not very attractive to speak to. She knew that Eve had always disliked him. But that might just have been a childish thing, a loyalty to Benny Hogan, who had some kind of antipathy toward her father’s assistant.
She was surprised when he addressed her. With a long preamble of apology he asked if she knew who owned the cottages and whether they might perhaps belong to the convent. Mother Francis explained that they had once belonged to the Westlands estate, and had devolved somehow to various quarry workers and others. Politely with her head on one side in her inquiring manner she wondered why he wanted to know.
Equally courteously Sean told her that it had been an idle inquiry but the nature of small towns being what it was, perhaps an inquiry that might remain confidential between the two of them.
Mother Francis sighed. She supposed the poor fellow who had scant hope of making much of a living in Hogan’s might be looking to the day when he could buy a house for himself and start a family, and that he was realistic enough to start looking up on this wild craggy road where nobody would really live by choice.
