Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  Benny hated going into the Coffee Inn. The tables were always so small. She was afraid that her skirt or her shoulder bag would swoop someone’s frothy coffee off onto the floor.

  Jack’s face lit up when he saw her. He had been holding a seat with some difficulty.

  “These awful country thicks wanted to take your stool,” he hissed at her.

  “Less running down the country people,” Benny said. She glanced up and saw with a shock that the three students who had lost the battle for the seat were Kit Hegarty’s students, the boys who lived where Eve worked. And one of them, a big fellow with freckles, was wearing his lovely emerald-green sweater.

  Aidan Lynch asked Eve to come home and meet his parents.

  “I’ve met them,” Eve said ungraciously, handing him another dinner plate to dry.

  “Well, you could meet them again.”

  Eve didn’t want to meet them again; it was rushing things. It was saying things that weren’t ready to be said like that Eve was Aidan’s girl friend, which she wasn’t.

  “How is this relationship going to progress any further?” Aidan asked the ceiling. “She won’t get to know my family. She won’t let me near her body. She won’t go on a date with me unless I come out to Dun Laoghaire and do the washing up after all the culchies first.” He sounded very sorry for himself.

  Eve’s mind was on other things. Aidan could amuse himself for hours when he was in one of his rhetorical moods. She smiled at him absently.

  Kit was out. For the very first time since Eve had been in the house, what was more, there was no message.

  Kevin, the nice freckled vet student whose jumper had been purloined for Benny’s date, had said that Mrs. Hegarty had gone out with a man.

  “Everyone goes out with men,” Aidan had interrupted. “It’s the law of nature. Female canaries go out with male canaries. Sheep go out with rams. Women tortoises go out with men tortoises. Only Eve seems to have reservations.”

  Eve took no notice. She was also thinking about Benny. Almost every day for a week now Benny had met Jack Foley, either in the Annexe or the Coffee Inn or a bar. She said he was very easy to talk to. She hadn’t put a foot wrong yet. Benny’s face had looked as if someone had turned on a light inside when she talked about Jack Foley.

  “And of course this Eve that I have the misfortune to be besotted with … she won’t even stay in Dublin for the Christmas parties. She’s leaving me on my own for other women to have their way with, and do sinful things with my body.”

  “I have to go to Knockglen, you idiot,” she said.

  “Where there will be no parties, where people will go out and watch the grass grow and see the rain fall and moo cows will walk down the main street swishing their foul tails.”

  “You’ve got it so wrong,” Eve cried. “We’ll be having a great time in Knockglen, down in Mario’s every evening, and of course there’ll be parties there.”

  “Name me one,” Aidan countered.

  “Well, I’ll be having one for a start,” Eve said, stung.

  Then she stood motionless with a dinner plate in her hands.

  Oh God, she thought. Now I have to.

  Nan rang The Irish Times, and asked for the Sports Department. When she was put through she asked them to tell her what race meetings would be held before Christmas.

  Not many, she was told. Things slackened off coming up to the festive season. There’d be a meeting every Saturday, of course, Navan, Punchestown, run-of-the-mill things. But on St. Stephen’s Day it would all get going again. The day after Christmas there’d be Leopardstown and Limerick. She could take her pick of those. Nan asked them what did people who usually went racing do when the season slackened off. In a newspaper people are accustomed to being asked odd questions on the phone. They gave it some consideration. It depended on what kind of people. Some might be saving their pennies, some might be out hunting. It depended.

  Nan thanked them in the pleasant unaffected voice that had never tried to imitate the tones of another class she wanted to join. An elocution teacher at school had once told them that there was nothing more pathetic than people with perfectly good Irish accents trying to say “Fratefully naice.” Nothing would mark you out as a social climber as much as adopting that kind of accent.

  They sat in a cafe in Dun Laoghaire, Mr. and Mrs. Hegarty. Around them other people were doing ordinary things, like having a coffee before going to an evening class in typing, or waiting for the pictures to start.

  Ordinary people with ordinary lives and nothing bigger to discuss than whether the electric fire would eat up electricity or if they could have two chickens instead of a turkey for Christmas Day.

  Joseph Hegarty fiddled with his spoon. She noticed that he didn’t take sugar in his coffee now. Perhaps the woman had put him off that. Perhaps his travels had taken him to places where there were no sugar bowls on the table. He had left one insurance company and gone to another. He had moved from that to working with a broker, to having a book himself, to working with another agent. Insurance wasn’t the same, he told her.

  She looked at him with eyes that were not hard, or cold. She saw him objectively. He was kindly and soft spoken as he had always been. In those first agonized months after he had left that was what she had missed above all.

  “You wouldn’t know anyone here anymore,” she said haltingly.

  “I’d get to know them again.”

  “It’d be harder to find insurance work here than there. Things are very tight in Ireland.”

  “I wouldn’t go back on that. I thought maybe I could help you … build up the business.”

  She thought about it, sitting very still and with her eyes down so that she wouldn’t meet the hope in his. She thought of the way he would preside over the table, make the place seem like it was run by a family. She could almost see him giving second helpings, making boys like Kevin Hickey laugh, being interested in their studies and their social lives.

  But why had he not done that for his own son? For Francis Hegarty who might still be alive this day if he had had a firm father who would brook no nonsense about a motorbike.

  “No, Joseph,” she said, without looking up. “It wouldn’t work.”

  He sat there very silent. He thought about his son, the son who had written to him all these years. The son who had come to see him during the summer, on a weekend from canning peas. Frank, the boy who had drunk three pints with his father and told him all about the home in Dun Laoghaire and how maybe his mother’s heart was softening. But he had never told his mother about the visit or the letters. Joseph Hegarty would keep faith with the dead boy. Frank must have had his reasons, his father would not betray him now or change his mother’s memory of him.

  “Very well, Kit,” he said. “It’s your decision. I just thought I’d ask.”

  The Westwards were in the telephone book. The phone was answered by an elderly woman.

  “It’s a personal call for Mr. Simon Westward from Sir Victor Cavendish.” Nan spoke in the impersonal voice of a secretary. She had taken the name from Social and Personal.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Westward isn’t here.”

  “Where can Sir Victor find him, please?”

  Mrs. Walsh responded immediately to the confident tone that expected an answer.

  “He’s going to have lunch in the Hibernian I believe,” she said. “Perhaps Sir Victor could telephone him there.”

  “Thank you so much,” Nan said, and hung up.

  “I want to give you your Christmas present today,” Nan said to Benny in the Main Hall.

  “Lord, Nan, I didn’t bring anything in for you.” Benny looked stricken.

  “No, mine is a treat. I’m taking you to lunch.”

  She would listen to no refusals. Everyone deserved to have lunch in the Hibernian at least once in their life. Nan and Benny were no exceptions. Benny wondered why Eve wasn’t being included.

  They met Bill Dunne and Johnny O’Brien as they were crossing St. Stephen�
��s Green.

  The boys suggested a Christmas drink. When that was turned down, they came up with chicken croquette and chips in Bewley’s with sticky almond buns to follow. Laughing, Benny said they were going to the Hibernian.

  “You must have a pair of sugar daddies then,” Bill Dunne said crossly to hide his disappointment.

  Benny wanted to tell them that it was Nan’s treat, but she didn’t like to. Perhaps Nan mightn’t want to admit that it was just the two of them. She looked hopefully at her friend for some signal. But Nan’s face gave no hints of anything. She looked so beautiful Benny thought, again with a pang. It must be amazing to wake up in the morning and know your features were going to look like that all day, and that everyone who saw your face would like it.

  Benny wished that Bill Dunne didn’t look so put out. On an ordinary day it would have been lovely to go to Bewley’s with him. Jack was up at the rugby club all afternoon. She would love to be with Bill and Johnny in many ways. They were Jack’s people. They were part of his life. She felt disloyal to Nan and her generous present. And wasn’t it marvelous to go inside the Hibernian for something better than walking through its coffee lounge to the ladies’ cloakroom at the back which was all she had ever done before.

  Eve had no lectures in the afternoon. She couldn’t find either Benny or Nan. Aidan Lynch had invited her to join his parents, who liked to combine an hour of Christmas shopping and four hours of lunch several times in the weeks leading up to the festive season. She had declined, saying it sounded like a mine field.

  “When we’re married we’ll have to see them you know, invite them over for roast lamb and mint sauce,” he had said.

  “We’ll face that when we come to it in about twenty years time,” Eve had said to him grimly.

  You couldn’t put Aidan Lynch off. He was much too cheerful, and totally confident that she loved him. Which of course she didn’t. Eve didn’t love anybody, as she had tried to explain. Just very strong affections for Mother Francis and Benny and Kit. Nobody had ever shown her why love was such a great thing she told him. Look what it had done for her mother and father. Look how boring it made Sean and Carmel. Look at the way it had wrecked Kit Hegarty’s life.

  Thinking about Kit made her think that that was where she would go, home to Dun Laoghaire. Kit had looked very strange in the last couple of days. Eve hoped that she wasn’t sick, or that the man who had come back hadn’t been who Eve feared it had.

  She took the train out to Dun Laoghaire and let herself in. Kit was sitting in the kitchen with her head in her hands. Nothing had been touched since Eve had left that morning. Eve hung up her coat.

  “Sister Imelda had a great saying. She used to believe that there was no problem on the face of the earth that couldn’t be tackled better with a plate of potato cakes. And I must say I agree with her.”

  As she spoke she took the cold mashed potato from the bowl, opened a bag of flour and dropped a lump of butter on the frying pan.

  Kit still didn’t look up.

  “Not that it solved everything, mind you. Like I remember when nobody would tell me why my mother and father were buried in different churchyards. We had potato cakes then, Mother Francis and I. It didn’t really explain it, or make me feel better about it. But it made us feel great eating them.”

  Kit raised her head. The casual voice and the ritual actions of cooking had soothed her. Eve never paused in her movements as Kit Hegarty told her the story of the husband who had left and come back and been sent away again.

  Nan had spotted Simon Westward the moment that she and Benny were led into the dining room. The waiter had been intending to put two such young-looking female students away in a corner, but Nan asked could they have a more central table. She spoke like someone who had been there regularly. There wasn’t any reason why she shouldn’t get a better table.

  They studied the menu and Nan asked about the dishes they couldn’t understand.

  “Let’s have something we never had before,” she suggested.

  Benny had been heading for lamb because it looked nice and safe. But it was Nan’s treat.

  “Like what?” she asked fearfully.

  “Brains,” Nan said. “I never had those.”

  “Wouldn’t it be a bit of a waste. Suppose they were awful?”

  “They wouldn’t be awful in a place like this. Why don’t you have sweetbreads or guinea fowl or snipe.”

  “Snipe? What’s that?”

  “It’s with game. It must be a bird.”

  “It can’t be. I never heard of it. It’s a belt, taking a snipe at someone.”

  Nan laughed. “That’s taking a swipe you idiot.”

  Simon Westward looked up just then. Nan could see him from the corner of her eye. She had been aware that he was at a table with a couple, a very tweedy older man and a younger, horsey-looking woman.

  Nan knew that she had been seen. She settled back into her seat. All she had to do now was wait.

  Benny struggled with the things they didn’t know on the menu.

  “I could have scampi, I don’t know that.”

  “You know what it is. It’s a big prawn in batter.”

  “Yes, but I’ve never tasted it, so it would be new to me.”

  At least she had got out of brains and sweetbreads and other strange-sounding things.

  “Miss Hogan. Don’t you dine in the best places?” Simon Westward was standing beside her.

  “I hardly ever go anywhere posh, but anytime I do you’re there.” She smiled at him warmly.

  He didn’t even have to look inquiringly across the table before Benny introduced him. Very simply, very correctly.

  In Nan’s books of etiquette she would have broken no rule, not that she had ever read them.

  “Nan, this is Simon Westward. Simon, this is my friend Nan Mahon.”

  “Hallo, Nan,” said Simon, reaching for her hand.

  “Hallo, Simon,” said Nan, with a smile.

  “You were out with a sugar daddy. I heard,” Jack accused her laughingly next day.

  “No, indeed I wasn’t. Nan took me to the Hibernian for lunch, as a treat. A Christmas present.”

  “Why did she do that?”

  “I told you. A Christmas present.”

  Jack shook his head. It didn’t add up.

  Benny bit her lip. She wished now that she hadn’t gone. In fact she wished at the time that she hadn’t gone. She had ordered potatoes with the scampi and hadn’t known that you were meant to have rice until she saw surprise on the waiter’s face. She had asked for a little of everything from the cheeseboard instead of just picking two cheeses, which is what other people did. She had asked for nice frothy cappuccino coffee and was told gravely that it wasn’t served in the dining room.

  And there was something about Simon and Nan that made her uneasy too. It was as if they were playing some game, a game that only they understood. Everyone else was outside.

  And now here was Jack implying that Nan must have had some kind of ulterior motive to take her to lunch.

  “What’s wrong?” He saw her looking distressed.

  “Nothing.” She put on her bright smile.

  There was something very vulnerable about it. Jack could see Benny as what she must have been like when she was about four or five pretending that everything was all right even when it wasn’t.

  He put his arm around her shoulder as they walked across at the traffic lights between Stephen’s Green and Grafton Street.

  All the shops were done up with Christmas decorations. There were lights strung across the street. A group of carol singers shivering in the cold were starting “Away in a Manger.” The collection boxes were rattling. Her face looked very innocent. He felt a need to protect her from all sorts of things. From Bill Dunne who said that a big girl like that with an enormous chest would turn out to be a great court. From drunks walking round with bottles in their hands wild-eyed and with wild hair. He wanted to keep her on the footpath so that the busy C
hristmas traffic wouldn’t touch her, and from the small children with dirty faces who would wheedle the last pennies of her pocket money from someone gentle like Benny Hogan. He didn’t want her to go back to Knockglen on the bus this afternoon, and to be there for nearly three weeks of the holidays.

  “Benny?” he said.

  She turned her face to him to know what he wanted. He held her face in both his hands and kissed her very softly on the lips. Then he drew away and looked to see the surprise in her eyes.

  He put his arms around her then, standing right at the top of the busiest street in Dublin and held her to him. He felt her arms go round him and they clung to each other as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  THIRTEEN

  Fonsie had a new black velvet jacket for Christmas. Clodagh had made him a set of lilac-colored button covers, and a huge flouncy handkerchief to put in his breast pocket.

  He startled most of Knockglen by moving very deliberately up the church to receive Communion in this outfit.

  “He has added blasphemy to the list of his other crimes,” Mrs. Healy hissed at the Hogans, who were sitting near her.

  “He must be in a State of Grace, otherwise he wouldn’t go,” Annabel said. She thought Mrs. Healy was making too much of this vendetta. She envied Peggy and Mario for having such lively young blood in their businesses. If only Benny and Sean had made a go of it, then perhaps the dead look of failure might not hang around the door of Hogan’s, while the other two establishments went from strength to strength. She looked at Eddie beside her. She wondered what he was praying about. He always seemed genuinely devout, as if he were talking to God when they were in the church, unlike herself. Annabel found that being at mass seemed to concentrate her anxieties about daily life rather than raise her nearer to God. Benny wasn’t praying. That was for sure. Nobody who was praying had such a strange faraway look on their face.

  Annabel Hogan was fairly sure that her daughter was in love.

  Clodagh Pine looked at her friend Fonsie with pleasure. He really did look smart. And he was a smart fellow. She had never thought she would meet anyone remotely like Fonsie when she was banished to Knockglen in a foolish effort to quieten her by sending her to a backwater. And her aunt had been very good to her also, much better than Clodagh had dared to hope. She had been generous with her praise for the developments, while at the same time resisting each new one that came along. Once she had accepted an idea Peggy Pine would get the bit between her teeth and run with it. Like the smart home knits which were now attracting people to come from Dublin.