Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  Benny was in there doing a final examination of her face when she heard Jack’s voice. She must not run out and fling herself into his arms as she wanted to. It was more important than ever now that she let him make the first move. A man like Jack used to having girls throw themselves at him would not want that.

  She would wait, even if it killed her.

  The door of Eve’s bedroom opened. It was probably Carmel, coming in to dab her face and say something cozy about Sean.

  She looked in the mirror and over her shoulder she saw Jack. He closed the door behind him and came over to her, leaning his hands on her shoulders and looking at her reflection in the mirror.

  “Happy Christmas,” he said in a soft voice.

  She smiled a broad smile. But she was looking at his eyes not her own so she didn’t know how it looked. Not too broad and toothy she hoped.

  Clodagh had covered a strapless bra in royal blue velvet to look like one of those smart boned tops, and then put a binding of the same material down a white cardigan.

  Naturally Benny had worn a blouse under it when she left Lisbeg, but the blouse had been removed and was folded neatly to await the home journey.

  He sat on the edge of Eve’s bed, and held both her hands.

  “Oh, I really missed you,” he said.

  “What did you miss?” She didn’t sound flirtatious. She just wanted to know.

  “I missed telling you things, listening to you telling things. I missed your face, and kissing you.” He drew her toward him, and kissed her for a long time.

  The door opened and Clodagh came in. She was dressed from head to foot in black lace with a mantilla and a high comb in her hair. She looked like a Spanish dancer. Her face was powdered dead white and her lips were scarlet.

  “I was actually coming to see if you wanted any assistance with your dress Benny, but it appears you don’t,” Clodagh said, without seeming the slightest confused by the scene she had walked in on.

  “This is Clodagh,” mumbled Benny.

  Jack’s face lit up as it did when he was introduced to any woman. It wasn’t that he was eyeing them up and down. He didn’t even try to flirt with them. He liked women. Benny remembered suddenly that his father was like that too. At the big party in their house Dr. Foley had been pleased to greet each new girl who was presented to him. There was nothing but warmth and delight in his reaction. So it was with Jack. And tonight when all the others arrived he would be the same.

  It must be a wonderful thing to be so popular she thought, to be able to please people just by being there.

  Clodagh was explaining to Jack how she had got the lace in an old trunk upstairs in the Kennedys’ house. Mrs. Kennedy had told her she could go and rummage there and she had found marvelous things altogether. In return she had made Mrs. Kennedy four straight skirts with a pleat in the back. It was amazing with all the plumage available that some people still wanted to dress like dowdy sparrows.

  Jack put his arm around Benny’s shoulders.

  “I’ve hardly seen any sparrows in Knockglen. You’re all pretty exotic birds to me.”

  Together with his arm around her shoulder and followed by Clodagh in her startling black and white they came out of Eve’s room and in full view of Sheila and Rosemary, of Fonsie and Maire Carroll, of Bill Dunne and Johnny O’Brien, they joined the party.

  Without Benny Hogan having to maneuver it one little bit, they joined the party as a couple.

  There never had been a party like it. Everyone agreed on that. From Fonsie’s wonderful solo demonstrations to the whole place on its feet, from Guy Mitchell and “I never felt more like singing the Blues.” The soup had been a magnificent idea. Bowl after bowl of it disappeared, sandwiches, sausage rolls and more soup. Eve served it from the big convent cauldron, her face flushed and excited. This was her house. These were her friends. It couldn’t be better.

  Only during the supper did she remember that Nan hadn’t arrived.

  “Perhaps she didn’t get a lift after all.” Benny was on a cloud of her own.

  “Did we tell her how to find the house?”

  “Anyone in Knockglen would tell her where you live.” Benny squeezed Eve’s arm. “It’s going wonderfully isn’t it?”

  “Yes. He can’t take his eyes off you.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean the party.”

  Benny did mean that of course as well. Jack had been at her side all night. He had had a few dances with the others as a matter of form, but for the most of the night he was with her, touching, laughing, dancing, holding, swaying, including her in every conversation.

  Rosemary Ryan watched them with some bewilderment for the first few dances.

  “I didn’t know anything about you and Jack,” she said, as she and Benny were having a glass of punch.

  “Well, I did tell you I met him from time to time in the Annexe.”

  “That’s right. You did.”

  Rosemary was quite fair-minded. Benny had said she was meeting Jack. If Rosemary read nothing into it then it was her own fault.

  “You do look very well,” she said grudgingly, but again struggled to be just. “Have you lost a lot of weight or put on more makeup or what?”

  Benny didn’t even react. She knew that whatever it was, Jack seemed to like it. And he didn’t care who else knew. Benny had thought that somehow it would have had to be a secret about them.

  Aidan asked Eve for a pound of sugar.

  “What do you want that for?”

  “I read that if you put it in the carburetor of a car, then the car won’t start.”

  “How about trying to find some discovery that would make it start. That seems to me to be the better invention,” Eve said.

  “You’re wrong. I want Jack’s father’s car never to start again. Then we can stay here in this magical place and never go away.”

  “Yeah, terrific. And I’ll have to put up Sean and Carmel for the night as well,” Eve said.

  “If I stayed, would you take me to meet the nuns tomorrow?” Aidan asked.

  Eve told him that there was no question of his staying, at any time, but least of all now when Mother Clare was below watching every move. Or indeed maybe outside in the fuchsia bushes with a torch, for all they knew. But she was glad that he liked the place. And when the weather got finer, he might come and spend a whole day. Aidan said they would probably be spending much of their adult life here. During the long vacations when he was called to the Bar. They would want to escape here with the children, away from the loud booming voices of his parents.

  “And what about my job?” Eve asked, entertained in spite of herself by the fantasy.

  “Your job will of course be to look after me, and our eight fine children, using your university education to give them a cultured home background.”

  “You’ll be lucky, Aidan Lynch.” She pealed with laughter.

  “I have been lucky. I met you Eve Malone,” he said, without a trace of his usual jokey manner.

  Bill Dunne was the first to see Nan when she came in the door. Her eyes were sparkling and she took in the scene around her with delight.

  “Isn’t it wonderful,” she said. “Eve never said it was anything like this.”

  She wore a white polo-neck jumper and a red tartan skirt, under a black coat. She carried a small leather case with her, and asked to be shown to Eve’s bedroom.

  Benny called to the kitchen to let Eve know that Nan was here.

  “Bloody hell, we’ve finished the soup,” Eve said to Aidan.

  “She won’t expect it, not at this hour,” he soothed her.

  It was a late hour to arrive. Eve had thought she heard a car pull away down the path a few moments ago, but she had told herself she was imagining it.

  Still someone must have left Nan at the door. It was raining outside and Nan looked immaculate. She could not have climbed up that path in this weather.

  Eve put some sausage rolls and sandwiches on a plate, and took them through the sittin
g room, skirting Fonsie and Clodagh, who were doing such a spirited rendering of the Spanish Gypsy Dance that everyone had formed a circle to clap and cheer. She knocked on the door of her own bedroom in case Nan was changing, but she was sitting down at the dressing table exactly as she was; Rosemary Ryan was sitting on the bed, telling the mystery-of-the-year story. Jack Foley and Benny Hogan, of all people, were inseparable.

  “Did you know?” Rosemary was asking insistingly.

  “Yes, sort of.” Nan didn’t sound as if it mattered very much. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere.

  Then she saw Eve. “Eve, it’s fabulous. It’s a jewel. You never told us it was like this.”

  “It’s not always like this.” Despite herself, Eve was pleased. Praise from Nan was high praise.

  “I brought you something to eat … in case you were changing,” she said.

  “No, I’m all right like this.” Nan hadn’t thought of changing.

  She was of course all right in whatever she wore. It wasn’t very dressy. All the others had put on the style. Parties weren’t so run-of-the-mill that you went in a jumper and skirt. But on Nan it looked beautiful.

  They all went into the room. Nan loved it. She was busy stroking everything, the polished oil lamps, the wonderful wood in those shelves, the piano. Imagine having a piano of your own. Could she see the little kitchen?

  Eve took her through and down the stone step. The place was covered with pots and pans and debris. There were boxes and bottles and glasses. But Nan saw only things she could praise. The dresser, it was wonderful. Where did it come from? Eve had never asked. And that lovely old bowl. It was the real thing, not like horrible modern ones.

  “I’m sure a lot of those things came from your mother’s home,” she said. “They have a look of quality about them.”

  “Yes, or maybe they bought them together.” Somehow Eve felt defensive about her father, and the thought that there could be no look of quality attached to him.

  Nan said she was too excited to eat. It was marvelous to be here. Her eyes were dancing. She looked feverish and restless. Everyone in the room was attracted to her, but she was aware of none of them. She refused any offer to dance, saying she had to take it all in. And she wandered around touching and admiring, and sighing over it all.

  She paused by the piano and opened it to look at the keys.

  “Weren’t we all very unlucky that we never learned to play?” she said to Benny. It was the first time Benny had ever noticed Nan Mahon sounding bitter.

  “Are you ever going to dance, or is this tour of inspection going to go on all night?” Jack Foley asked her.

  Suddenly Nan seemed to snap out of it. “I’m being appallingly rude, of course,” she said, looking straight at him.

  “Now, Johnny,” Jack said to Johnny O’Brien. “I knew that all you had to do was wake her out of the trance, and it would work. Johnny says he’s been asking you to dance for ten minutes and you can’t even hear him.”

  If Nan was disappointed that Jack had not been inviting her to dance there was no way that anyone would have known. She smiled such a smile at Johnny that it almost melted him into a little puddle on the floor.

  “Johnny, how lovely,” she said, and put her arms straight around his neck.

  They were playing “Unchained Melody,” a lovely slow smoochy number. Benny was so pleased that Jack hadn’t left her for Nan just as Fonsie had put that one on. It was one of her favorite songs. She had never dreamed that she would dance to it, here in Knockglen with the man she loved, who had his arms wrapped around her, and seemed to love her too. In front of all her friends.

  They put more turf and logs on the fire, and when one of the oil lights flickered down, nobody bothered to replace it.

  They sat around in groups or in twosomes, the evening drawing to a close.

  “Can anybody play that beautiful piano?” Nan asked.

  Amazingly Clodagh said that she could. Fonsie looked at her in open admiration. There was nothing that woman couldn’t do, he told people proudly.

  Clodagh settled herself at the keys. She had a repertoire that staggered them. Frank Sinatra numbers that they all joined in, ragtime solos, and she even got people to sing solos.

  Bill Dunne startled them all by singing “She Moved Through the Fair” very tunefully.

  “That was a well-kept secret,” Jack said to him as they clapped him to the echo.

  “It’s only when I’m out of Dublin and can’t be sent up by all you lot that I’d have the courage,” Bill said, red with pleasure from all the admiration.

  Everyone said that Knockglen had not been properly praised up to this, and now that they knew where it was they’d be regular visitors. Fonsie told them to come earlier next time, when it was opening time in Mario’s, soon to be Ireland’s premier stylish cafe. Trends had to start somewhere and why not Knockglen?

  Eve was sitting on the floor next to one of her two rather battered armchairs; on Clodagh’s advice they had draped bedspreads over the shabby furniture. It looked exotic in the flickering light.

  She thought she should get up and make more coffee for the departing guests, but she didn’t want it to end, and the way Aidan had his arm around her and was stroking her, he didn’t want to make any move to go either.

  Nan sat on a tiny three-legged stool, hugging her knees.

  “I met your grandfather today,” she said suddenly to Eve.

  Eve felt a cold shock run through her. “You did?”

  “Yes. He really is a charming old man, isn’t he?”

  Benny felt she wanted to move away from Jack’s arm and go over and support Eve physically. In some way she wanted to be a barrier between her and what Nan was saying.

  Please may Eve not say anything brittle or hurtful. Let her just mumble for the moment. Let there not be a scene now to end the party on a sour note.

  Eve might have read her mind.

  “Yes. How did you meet him?” Although she knew. She knew only too well.

  “Oh, I met Simon at the races yesterday and we got talking. He offered me a lift if I was going to this part of the world. So we got here a bit early … and, well, he took me to Westlands.”

  If they had got here so bloody early, Eve thought, then Nan might have been on time rather than turning up when the supper was finished.

  She didn’t trust herself to say any more. But Nan had in no way finished with the subject.

  “You could really see what he must have been like before. You know very upright and stern. It must be terrible for him to be like that in his chair. He was having his tea. They serve it beautifully for him. Even though he’s sometimes not able to manage it.”

  She had been there since teatime. Since five o’clock and she hadn’t bothered to come next or near them until after nine in the evening. Eve felt the bile rise in her throat.

  Nan must have sensed it. “I did keep asking Simon to drive me up here, but he insisted on showing me everything. Well, I suppose you’ve been over it dozens of times.”

  “You know I haven’t.” Eve’s voice was dangerously calm.

  Only Benny and Aidan who knew her so well would have got the vibrations.

  Aidan exchanged a glance with Benny. But there was nothing he could do.

  “Well, you must Eve. You must let him take you all through the place. He’s so proud of it. And he describes it so well, not boasting or anything.”

  “Where’s this?” Sheila always liked to hear of places that were splendid and people that were important.

  “Eve’s relations, up at the big house. About a mile over … that way … is it?” Nan pointed with her arm.

  Eve said nothing. Benny said that it was more or less that way. Benny also wondered did anyone want coffee, but they didn’t. They wanted to sit dreamily with low music on the player and to chat. And they wanted Nan to have the floor. There was something about the way her face was lit up by the fire and by the place she was talking about … they wanted her to go on.

&n
bsp; “He showed me all the family portraits. Your mother was very beautiful, wasn’t she Eve?” Nan spoke in open admiration. There was nothing triumphalist about her having been there, about her having been taken on a tour and shown the picture that had not been shown to Eve on her one visit.

  Nan had always said that Eve should bury her differences. Nan would have thought that Eve knew what her mother looked like.

  “You must have had quite a tour.” The words nearly choked her.

  “Oh yes. The trouble was getting away.”

  “Still, you managed it,” Aidan Lynch said. “Fonsie, if we’re not going to be given cells in the convent for the night, which I was distinctly promised, I think we should have something to loosen up our limbs for the journey home. What would you suggest, man?”

  Fonsie had long realized that Aidan was a fellow spirit. He leapt to his feet and flipped through a few record covers.

  “I think it comes down to a straight contest between Lonnie Donegan ‘Putting on the Style’ and Elvis being ‘All Shook Up’ man,” he said, after some thought.

  “Man, let’s not insult either of those heroes. Let’s have them both,” Aidan said, and he went around the room clapping his hands at people to get them going.

  Benny had followed Eve to the kitchen.

  “She doesn’t understand,” Benny said.

  Eve clutched hard with both her hands at the sink.

  “Of course she does. How often have we talked about it?”

  “Not to her. Seriously not to her. With Nan we usually pretend things are fine. Otherwise she gets you to change them. Remember?”

  “I’ll never forgive her.”

  “Yes, of course you will. You’ll forgive her this minute, otherwise it will change everything about the party. It was the most wonderful party in the world. Truly.”

  “It was.” Eve softened. Inside she saw Aidan beckoning to her.

  Everyone was on the floor. Benny went back. Jack and Nan were dancing, laughing happily, neither of them knowing that anything was amiss.