by Maeve Binchy
Eve and Aidan came on Sunday.
They walked down from the bus down the main street.
“That’s Healy’s Hotel. Where I wanted you to stay.”
“Until I reminded you I am an impoverished student, who has never spent a night in a hotel in my life,” Aidan said.
“Yes, well …”
She showed him the Hogans’ shop with the black-rimmed notice in the window. She told him about how nice Birdie Mac in the sweetshop was, and how horrible Maire Carroll in the grocery was. From time to time Aidan turned and looked back up at the convent. He had wanted to be invited there first, but Eve had refused. They hadn’t come on a social call, she said, they had come to help Benny. There would be time later to meet Mother Francis and Sister Imelda and everyone.
They passed Mario’s cafe, which even when closed on a Sunday radiated cheer, and life and excitement.
They turned the corner at the end of the street and went to Benny’s house.
“It’s awful only going to people’s houses when they’re dead,” Aidan said suddenly. “I’d like to have come here when he was alive. Was he nice?”
“Very,” Eve said. She paused with her hand on the gate.
“He never saw any bad in anyone, and he never saw anyone grow up either. He always called me Little Eve. He always thought Benny was nine, and he saw no harm in that Sean Walsh, who’ll be lording it inside.”
“Will I deal with Sean Walsh, make verbal mincemeat of him?” Aidan asked eagerly.
“No, Aidan, thank you, but that wouldn’t be what’s required.”
It was an endless day, even with Eve and Aidan there. Benny had a headache that she thought would never leave her. There had been so many wearying encounters. Mrs. Healy, for example, wanting to know if there was any way she had offended the family.
No? Well, she was certainly glad to hear that, because she had been so ready and eager to supply the drink that would be needed and then was told that her participation would not be necessary. And then Benny had to cope with old Mike from the shop. There had been words said, words that Mr. Eddie had not meant the way that Mr. Walsh thought he had meant them.
Mr. Walsh? Yes, Mike had been told that it wasn’t fitting for a partner to be called Sean anymore, even though Mike had been head tailor when Sean Walsh had come in as a schoolboy.
Benny had been coping with Dessie Burns, who was in that perilous state of being off the jar but threatening to go back on it at any moment because if there was one thing a man should not be it was doctrinaire, and with Mario, who said that in Italy people would cry, cry and cry again over the death of a good man like Eddie Hogan, not just stand in his house talking and drinking.
And then the church bells began to toll. So often in Lisbeg they heard the bells and it just meant the Angelus, or time for mass, or someone else was being brought to the church. Benny put on her black lace mantilla and walked with her mother behind the coffin up the street, where people had come to their doors and to stand outside their businesses on the cold Sunday afternoon.
And as she walked past their shop her heart grew heavier. It would be Sean’s shop from now on. Or Mr. Walsh as he would want people to call him.
She wished she could talk to her father about old Mike and ask him what was going to happen. The procession paused momentarily outside Hogan’s. And then moved on. She could never talk to her father again about his shop or about anything. And he was powerless now to do anything about the shop he had loved so much.
Unless of course she were to do something herself to try and sort it out.
Aidan Lynch was introduced to Mother Francis.
“I have appointed myself guardian of Eve’s morals while she is at university,” he said solemnly.
“Thank you very much.” Mother Francis was formally grateful.
“I hear nothing but good of the way you brought her up. I wish I’d been left to a convent.” His smile was infectious.
“There might have been more problems with you,” the nun laughed.
Mother Francis had thought it was very sensible for Aidan Lynch to spend the night in Eve’s cottage, while Eve slept at the convent. Everyone liked the thought of Eve being back under their roof again, and her bedroom was going to be there forever. This had been a promise.
Eve showed Aidan how to rake the range.
“I think when we’re married we might have something more modern,” he grumbled.
“No, surely with the eight children we can have them stoking it, going up the chimney even.”
“You don’t take me seriously,” he said.
“I do. I just believe in child labor, that’s all.”
Back in the convent, having cocoa with Mother Francis in the kitchen, it was impossible to believe that she had ever left these walls.
“A very nice young man,” Mother Francis said.
“But basically a Beast of course, like you told us all men were, ravening beasts.”
“I never told you that.”
“You hinted at it.”
They were more like sisters these days than mother and daughter. They sat companionably in the warm kitchen and talked of life and death and the town and Mr. Flood’s visions and how hard everything was on poor Father Ross. Because if the vision in Fatima was true and everybody believed it, why could they not make the leap of imagination and believe it might all be true in Knockglen?
Possibly because Mr. Flood the butcher was such an unlikely person to be visited by a holy nun in a tree. Or even on the ground according to Mother Francis.
The funeral mass was at ten o’clock. Benny and her mother and Patsy went to the church in the black mourners’ car provided by the undertaker.
As she linked arms with her mother up the aisle to sit in the front row, Benny was aware of the people who had come to pay their respects. Farmers had come yesterday, in their Sunday suits, they would be out in their fields on a weekday morning. Today she saw men in suits, commercial travelers, suppliers, people from two parishes away. She saw her father’s cousins, and her mother’s brothers. She saw standing in a comforting crowd her own circle of friends.
There was Jack, so tall that everyone in the church must have seen him. He wore a black tie and he turned around to see them coming. It was almost like being at a wedding, where people turn around to see the bride … the thought came and went.
Bill Dunne had come, too, which was very nice of him, and Rosemary Ryan. They stood beside Eve and Aidan, their faces full of sympathy.
And Nan was there, in a black blazer and a pale gray skirt. She wore gloves and carried a small black bag. Her mantilla looked as if it had been made by a dress designer to sit in her blond hair. Everyone else wore a mantilla that looked like a rag, or a headscarf. Clodagh wore a hat, though. A big black straw hat. It was her only concession to mourning colors. The rest of her outfit was a red and white striped coat dress, considerably shorter than Knockglen would have liked.
But then it was hard to please Knockglen since there was also disapproval for Fonsie’s coat—a long one like De Valera would wear except it had a huge velvet collar and small finishings of fake leopard skin at the pockets, collars and cuffs.
Mother looked very old and sad. Benny glanced at her from time to time. Sometimes a tear fell on Mother’s missal, and once or twice Benny leaned over and wiped it away. It was as if Mother hadn’t noticed.
Mercifully, Sean Walsh had not presumed upon them too much. Startled by the rebuff over obtaining supplies from Healy’s Hotel, he had been more cautious in his overtures than Benny had dared to hope. He had not sat anywhere near them now in the church, in the role of a chief mourner. She must keep her head and not let him take over. His style was so different to her father’s, his humanity so little in comparison.
Benny wished she had someone who could talk it through with her, someone who really understood. Her glance fell on Jack Foley, whose face was stony in its sympathy. But she knew she wouldn’t burden him with it.
The t
edious in-fighting over a small shabby country shop. Nobody would bother Jack Foley with all that.
Not even if she loved him, and he loved her.
Outside the church, the people of Knockglen talked to each other in low voices. They commented on the group of young people down from Dublin. Must be friends of Benny, they deduced.
“Very handsome-looking couple that tall boy and the blond girl. They’re like film stars,” Birdie Mac said.
Eve was nearby.
“They’re not a couple,” she heard herself saying. “The tall boy is Jack Foley … he’s Benny’s boyfriend. He and Benny are a couple.”
She didn’t know why she said it, or why Birdie Mac looked at her so oddly. Perhaps she had just spoken very loudly.
Or it didn’t seem suitable to talk of Benny having a boyfriend at a time like this.
But in fact she thought Birdie didn’t believe her.
As they walked to the open grave past the headstones Eve stopped and pointed out a small stone to Aidan.
“In loving memory of John Malone,” it said.
It was nicely kept, weeded and with a little rose tree.
“Do you do this?” he asked.
“A bit, mainly Mother Francis, wouldn’t you know.”
“And your mother?”
“Across the hill. Over in the Protestant graveyard. The posh one.”
“We’ll go and see hers too,” he promised.
She squeezed his hand; for one of the few times in her life she was without words.
They were very good to her, all Benny’s friends. They gave her great support. They were courteous to the people of Knockglen and helpful back at the house after the funeral.
Sean Walsh thanked Jack for coming, as if Jack were there somehow as an act of respect to Hogan’s Outfitters. Benny gritted her teeth in rage.
“Mr. Hogan would have been very honored by your presence,” Sean said.
“I liked him very much when I did meet him. I came to tea here with Benny months and months ago.” He smiled at her warmly, remembering the day.
“I see.” Sean Walsh, to Benny’s disappointment, now did see.
“You didn’t stay overnight did you?” Sean asked loftily.
“No, I didn’t. I came down this morning. Why?”
“I heard that one of Benny’s friends did stay, up in the cottage on the quarry.”
“Oh, that was Aidan.” Jack was easy. If he tired of Sean and this pointless conversation he didn’t show it, but he managed to maneuver Benny away.
“That’s the creep, isn’t it?” he whispered.
“That’s how it is.”
“And he had notions of you.”
“Only notions of the business, which he more or less got without having to have me as well.”
“Then he lost the best bit,” Jack said.
She smiled dutifully. Jack was going to be off soon, she knew. She had heard him tell Bill Dunne that they had to be out of Knockglen by two at the latest. He had asked Bill to make the move.
She made it easy for him. She said that he had been a tower of strength, and everyone had been wonderful to come all that distance. She begged him to get on the road while there was still plenty of daylight.
They were all going to squeeze into Bill Dunne’s car. There had been four coming down, but they were going to try and fit Eve and Aidan in as well.
Benny said that was terrific, rather than have them just hanging on waiting for a bus.
She smiled and thanked them without a quiver in her voice.
It was the right way to be, she could see Jack looking at her approvingly.
“I’ll ring you tonight,” he promised. “About eight. Before I go out.”
“Great,” she said, eyes bright and clear.
He was going out. Out somewhere on the night of her father’s funeral.
Where could he be going on a Monday night in Dublin?
She waved at the car as it went around the corner. It didn’t matter, she told herself. She wouldn’t have been there anyway. Last Monday night when Father was alive and well, Benny Hogan would have been safely back in Knockglen by eight o’clock.
That’s the way things had always been, and would always be. She excused herself from the group of people downstairs, saying she was going to lie down for twenty minutes.
In the darkened room she lay on her bed and sobbed into her pillows.
Selfish tears, too, tears over a handsome boy who had gone back to Dublin smiling and waving with a group of friends. She cried for him as much as for her father, who lay under heaps of flowers up in the graveyard.
She didn’t hear Clodagh come in, and pull up a chair. Clodagh still wearing her ludicrous hat, who patted Benny’s shoulders and soothed her with exactly the words she wanted to hear.
“It’s all right, it’s all right. Everything will sort itself out. He’s mad about you. Anyone can tell. It’s in the way he looks at you. It’s better he went back. Hush now. He loves you, of course he does.”
There was an enormous amount to do.
Mother was very little help. She slept a lot of the time, and dozed off, even in a chair. Benny knew that this was because Dr. Johnson had prescribed tranquilizers. He had said she was a woman who had focused her whole life around her husband. Now that the center had gone she would take a while to readjust. Better let her get used to things gradually, he advised, not make any sudden changes or press her for decisions.
And there were so many things to decide, from tiny things like thank-you letters, and taking Shep for a walk, and Patsy’s wages, to huge things like had Sean Walsh been made a partner yet, and could the business survive, and what were they going to do for the rest of their lives without Father?
Mr. Green, the solicitor, had come to the funeral, but said that there would be ample opportunity for them to discuss everything in the days that followed. Benny hadn’t asked him whether he meant Sean Walsh to be in on the discussions or not.
It was something she wished she had said at the time. Then it would have been a perfectly acceptable question as someone distressed and not sure of what was going on. Afterward it looked more deliberate, and as if there was bad feeling. Which there wasn’t—except on a personal level.
It was extraordinary how many of Nan’s sayings seemed to be precisely appropriate for so many situations. Nan always said that you should do the hardest thing first, whatever it was. Like the essay you didn’t want to write, or the tutor you didn’t want to confront with an unfinished project. Nan was always right about everything.
Benny put on her raincoat on the morning after the funeral and went to see Sean Walsh in the shop.
The first thing she had to do was to avoid old Mike, who started to shuffle up to her with every intention of finishing the conversation he had begun in her house. Briskly and loudly so that Sean could hear she said that she and her mother would be very happy to talk to Mike later, but for the moment he would have to excuse her, she had a few things she wanted to get settled with Sean.
“Well, this is nice and businesslike.” He rubbed his hands together in that infuriating way, as if he had something between his palms that he was trying to grind to a powder.
“Thank you for everything, over the weekend.” Her voice was insincere. She tried to put some warmth into it. He had stood long hours greeting and thanking. It wasn’t relevant that she hadn’t wanted him there.
“It was the very least I could do,” he said.
“Anyway, I wanted you to know that Mother and I appreciated it.”
“How is Mrs. Hogan?” There was something off-key about his solicitude, like an actor not saying his lines right.
“Fairly sedated at the moment. But in a few days she will be herself again and able to participate in business matters.”
Benny wondered, did Sean have this effect on other people. Normally, she never used words like “participate.”
“That’s good, good.” He nodded his head sagely.
She drew
a deep breath. It was something else Nan had read. That if you inhaled all the air down to your toes and let it out again it gave you confidence.
She told him that they would arrange a meeting with the solicitor at the end of the week. And until then perhaps he would be kind enough to keep the shop ticking over exactly as he had been doing so well over the years. And out of respect to her father she knew that there would be no changes made, no changes at all; her head inclined toward the back room where old Mike had gone fearfully.
Sean looked at her astounded.
“I don’t think you quite realize …” he began. But he didn’t get very far.
“You’re quite right. I don’t realize.” She beamed at him as if in agreement. “There are whole areas of the way this business has been run, and the changes in it that are planned and under way, that I know nothing about … that’s what I was saying to Mr. Green.”
“What was Mr. Green saying?”
“Well, nothing, obviously, on the day of a funeral,” she said reprovingly. “But after we have talked to him then we should all talk.”
She congratulated herself at her choice of words. However often he played the conversation over to himself again he wouldn’t be able to work out whether he was included in the conversation with the lawyer or not.
And he would not discover the huge gap in Benny’s own information.
She didn’t know whether in fact he was a partner in the business yet, or whether the deed of partnership might not have been signed.
She had a distinct feeling that her father had died before matters were completed, but another even stronger feeling, that there was a moral obligation to carry out what had been her father’s wishes.
But Benny knew that if she were to survive in the strange clouded waters that she was now entering, she must not let Sean Walsh know how honorably she would behave to him. Even though she disliked and almost despised him, she knew that Sean had earned the right to be her father’s successor in the firm.
Bill Dunne said to Johnny O’Brien that he half thought of asking Nan Mahon to the pictures.
“What’s stopping you?” Johnny asked.
What was really stopping him, of course, was the thought that she would say no. Why invite rejection. But she wasn’t going out with anyone else. They knew that. It was odd, considering how gorgeous she was. You’d think that half the men in College would want to take her out. But perhaps that was it. They wanted to, and yet did nothing about it.
