Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  Benny thought that was sad. Imagine not going to where there was great fun, like the Coffee Inn, or the Inca or the Zanzibar. All the places she and Jack went to.

  “And do you like him?”

  “Yes, a lot.”

  “So why do you look so worried. He obviously likes you if he keeps asking you to all these places.”

  “Yes, but he wants to sleep with me.”

  Benny’s eyes were round. “You won’t, will you?”

  “I will, but how? That’s what I’m trying to work out. Where and how.”

  Simon as it turned out had decided where and how. He had decided that it was going to be in the back of a car parked up on the Dublin mountains. He said it was awfully silly to pretend that they both didn’t want it.

  Nan was ice cool. She said she had no intention of doing anything of the sort in a car.

  “But you do want me?” Simon said.

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “So?”

  “You have a perfectly good house where we can be comfortable.”

  “Not at Westlands,” Simon said.

  “And most definitely not in a car,” said Nan.

  Next day Simon was waiting at the corner of Earlsfort Terrace and Leeson Street as the students poured out at lunchtime, wheeling bicycles, or carrying books. They moved off to digs, flats and restaurants around the city.

  Nan had said no, when Eve and Benny asked her to come to the Singing Kettle. Chips for Eve and black coffee for strong-willed Benny.

  They didn’t see her eyes dart around as if she knew someone would be waiting for her.

  They didn’t notice as Simon stepped out and took her hand.

  “How amazingly crass I was last night,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s perfectly all right.”

  “I mean it. It was unpardonable. I wondered if you might come down to a pretty little hotel I know for dinner and we might stay overnight. If you’d like to.”

  “I’d like to, certainly,” Nan said. “But sadly I’m not free until next Tuesday.”

  “You’re making me wait.”

  “No, I assure you.”

  But she was indeed making him wait. Nan had worked out the safe period, and next Tuesday was the earliest she dared go to bed with Simon Westward.

  Clodagh was sitting in her back room sewing. She had a glass door and could see if there was a customer who needed personal attention. Otherwise her aunt and Rita, the new young girl they had taken on, could manage fine without her.

  Benny came in and sat beside her.

  “How’s Rita getting on?”

  “Fine. You’ve got to choose them, quick enough to be of some use. Not so quick that they’ll take all your ideas and set up on their own. It’s the whole nature of business.”

  Benny laughed dryly.

  “I wish someone had told that to my father ten years ago,” she said ruefully.

  Clodagh went on sewing. Benny had never brought up the subject of Sean Walsh before. Even though it had been a matter of a lot of speculation in the last weeks. Just after Christmas there had been talk of him becoming a partner. Those who drank in Healy’s Hotel said Mrs. Healy spoke of it very authoritatively. Clodagh, since the day she had been barred from Healy’s, made it her business to find out everything that went on there, and all subjects discussed at its bar.

  She waited to hear what Benny had to say.

  “Clodagh, what would happen if Rita was taking money from the till?”

  “Well, for a start I’d know it at the end of the day, or else the end of the week.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes, and then I’d suggest cutting off her hands at the wrist, and Aunt Peggy would say we should just sack her.”

  “And suppose you couldn’t prove it?”

  “Then I’d be very careful Benny, so careful you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “If she had put it in a bank someone would know?”

  “Oh yes. She wouldn’t have put it in a bank, not around these parts. It would have to be in cash somewhere.”

  “Like where?”

  “Lord, I’d have no idea, and I’d be careful I didn’t get caught looking.”

  “So you might have to let it go if you couldn’t prove it.”

  “Crucifying as it would be, I might.”

  Benny heard the warning in her voice. They both knew they were not talking about the blameless Rita out in the shop. They each realized that it would be dangerous to say any more.

  Jack Foley said he’d ring Benny when he got to Wales. They were staying in a guesthouse. He was going to share a room with Bill Dunne, who was going for the laugh and a beer.

  “You won’t need me at all,” Benny had said, laughing away her disappointment that she couldn’t be there.

  “Fine though Bill Dunne is and everything, I don’t think there’s much comparison. I wish you were coming with me.”

  “Well, ring me from the height of the fun,” Benny said.

  He didn’t ring. On night one, or night two, or night three. Benny sat at home. She didn’t take her mother up to Healy’s Hotel to try out one of their new evening dinners, at Mrs. Healy’s invitation.

  Instead she stayed at home and listened to the clock ticking and to Shep snoring and to Patsy whispering with Mossy while her mother looked at the pictures in the fire and Jack Foley made no phone call from the height of the fun.

  Nan packed her overnight bag carefully. A lacy nightie, a change of clothes for the next day, a very smart sponge bag from Brown Thomas, with talcum powder and a new toothbrush and toothpaste. She kissed her mother good-bye.

  “I’ll be staying with Eve in Dun Laoghaire,” she said.

  “That’s fine,” said Emily Mahon, who knew that wherever Nan was going to stay it was not with Eve in Dun Laoghaire.

  Bill Dunne ran into Benny in the Main Hall.

  “I’m meant to bump into you casually and see how the land lies,” he said.

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Is our friend in the doghouse or isn’t he?”

  “Bill, you’re getting worse than Aidan. Talk English.”

  “In plain English, your erring boyfriend, Mr. Foley, wants to know if he dares approach you, he having not managed to telephone you.”

  “Oh, don’t be so silly,” Benny said, exasperated. “Jack knows I’m not that kind of girl going into sulks and moods. He knows I don’t mind something like that. If he couldn’t phone he couldn’t.”

  “Now I see why he likes you so much. And why he was so afraid that he’d upset you,” Bill Dunne said admiringly. “You’re a girl in a million, Benny.”

  Heather Westward didn’t really like the thought of Aidan coming on their outings, but that was before she got to know him. Soon Eve complained that she liked Aidan more than she liked Eve. His fantasy world was vastly more entertaining than her own.

  He told Heather that he and Eve were going to have eight children, with ten months between each child. They would marry in 1963 and keep having children until late 1970.

  “Is that because you’re Catholics?”

  “No, it’s because I want something to occupy Eve during my first hard years at the Bar. I shall be in the Law Library all day and night in order to make money for all the Knickerbocker Glories that these children will demand. I shall have to work at night in a newspaper as a sub-editor. I have it all worked out.”

  Heather giggled into her huge ice cream. She wasn’t absolutely sure if he was being serious. She looked to Eve for confirmation.

  “That’s what he thinks now, but actually what’s going to happen is that he’s going to meet some brainless little blonde who’ll flutter long lashes at him and giggle, and he’ll forget all about me and the long-term plan.”

  “Will you mind?” Heather spoke as if Aidan wasn’t there.

  “No, I’ll be quite relieved really. Eight children would be exhausting. Remember how Clara felt with all those puppies?”

  “But you wou
ldn’t have to have them all at the same time?” Heather took the matter seriously.

  “Though it would have its advantages.” Aidan was reflective. “We’d get free baby things, and you could come and help with the baby-sitting, Heather. You’d change four while Eve changed the other four.”

  Heather laughed happily.

  “I wouldn’t want a brainless little blonde, honestly,” Aidan said to Eve. “I’m no Jack Foley.”

  Eve looked at him astonished. “Jack?”

  “You know, the Wales outing. It’s all right. It’s all right, Benny’s forgiven him. Bill Dunne says.”

  “She’s forgiven him for not phoning her. She doesn’t know anything about a brainless blonde that should be forgiven.”

  “Oh … I don’t think it was anything really …” Aidan backtracked.

  Eve’s eyes glinted.

  “Well, only a ship that passed in the night, or the evening, a blonde, silly Welsh ship. I don’t know for God’s sake. I wasn’t there. I was only told.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you were told, and all the gory details.”

  “No, really. And Eve, I wouldn’t go and say anything to Benny.”

  “I’m her friend.”

  “Does that mean you will or you won’t?”

  “It means that you’ll never know.”

  Nan settled herself into Simon’s car.

  “You smell beautiful,” he said. “Always the most expensive of perfumes.”

  “Most men don’t recognize good perfume,” she complimented him. “You are very discerning.”

  They drove out of Dublin south through Dun Laoghaire, past Kit Hegarty’s and past Heather’s school.

  “That’s where my sister is.”

  Nan knew this. She knew that Eve went there on Sundays when Simon did not. She knew that Heather was unhappy there and would much prefer a day school within reach of her beloved pony and dog and the country life she loved so much, pottering around Westlands. But she didn’t let Simon know that she knew any of this.

  With Simon she was determined to play it cool and distant. To ask little and seem to know little of his family and home life, so that he would not feel justified in prying into hers. Later, when she had really captivated him, then it would be time for him to get answers to his questions.

  And by then he would know her well enough to realize that a drunken father and a messy family would form no part of the life that she led.

  She believed that she had flirted with him for long enough and that she was timing it right to go to this hotel with him tonight.

  She had looked the hotel up in a guidebook, and knew all about it. Nan Mahon would not arrive anywhere, even at a hotel to lose her virginity, unprepared and uninformed about the social background of the place.

  He smiled at her a crooked lopsided smile. He really was most attractive, Nan thought, even though he was smaller than she would have chosen. She didn’t wear her really good high-heeled shoes when she was out with him. He was very confident of her, as if he had known that this day would come sooner rather than later.

  In fact that thought must have been on his mind.

  “I was very glad when you agreed to come to dinner and let us spend a whole evening together instead of rushing away at a taxi rank,” he said.

  “Yes, it’s a lovely place, I believe. It has marvelous portraits and old hunting prints.”

  “Yes. How do you know that?”

  “I can’t remember. Someone told me.”

  “You haven’t been there with any of your previous boyfriends.”

  “I’ve never been to a hotel with anyone.”

  “Come on now.”

  “True.”

  He looked slightly alarmed. As if the thought of what lay ahead was now more arduous and complicated than he had supposed. But a girl like Nan would not go ahead with something like this unless she intended it.

  And when she said she had never been to a hotel with a chap, she might be speaking the literal truth. But a girl like this must have had some kind of experience, whether it was in a hotel bedroom or a sand dune. He would not face that problem until he had to.

  There were candles on the table, and they sat in a dark dining room with heavy oil paintings of the hotelier’s stern ancestors.

  The waiter spoke respectfully like an old retainer, and they seemed to recognize Simon, and treat him with respect.

  At the next table sat a couple. The waiter addressed the man as “Sir Michael.” Nan closed her eyes for an instant. In many ways being here was better than being in Westlands. He had been right.

  It was like a stately home, and they were being treated like the aristocracy. Not bad for the daughter of Brian Mahon, builders’ provider and drunk.

  Nan had not been telling him any lies, Simon realized with surprise and some mild guilt. He was indeed the first man she had gone to a hotel with in any sense of the word. She lay there with the moonlight coming through the curtains and catching her perfect sleeping face. She really was a very beautiful girl, and she seemed to like him a lot. He drew her toward him again.

  Benny knew that Sean Walsh’s partnership could not be postponed forever. If only she could get her mother to take an interest in the matter. Annabel woke heavy and leaden from a sleep that had been gained through tablets. It took her several hours to shake off the feeling of torpor.

  And when she did the loneliness of her position came back to her. Her husband dead before his time, her daughter gone all day in Dublin and her maid about to announce an engagement to Mossy Rooney, and only holding up the actual date out of deference to the bereavement in the family.

  Dr. Johnson told Benny that these things took time. Sometimes a lot of time, but eventually, like Mrs. Kennedy in the chemist’s, if the wife could be persuaded to take an interest in the business they would recover.

  Dr. Johnson looked as if he were about to say something and thought better of it.

  He had always hated Sean Walsh. Benny wondered could it have been about him.

  “The problem is Sean, you see,” she began tentatively.

  “When was it not?” Dr. Johnson asked.

  “If only Mother was in the shop and properly there, taking notice …”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Do you think she’ll ever be able to do that? Or am I just running after a pipe dream.”

  He looked affectionately at the girl with the chestnut hair, the girl that he had watched grow from the chubby toddler into the big awkward schoolgirl and now fined down a bit he thought, but still by anyone’s standards a big woman. Benny Hogan may have had more comforts than some of the other children in Knockglen whose tonsillitis and chicken pox and measles he had cured, but she had never had as much freedom.

  Now it looked as if the chains that bound her to home were growing even stronger.

  “You have your own life to live,” he said gruffly.

  “That’s not much help, Dr. Johnson.”

  To his own surprise he heard himself agreeing with her.

  “You’re right. It isn’t much help. And it wasn’t much help saying to your mother stop grieving and try living. She won’t listen to me. And it was no help at all, all those years ago, telling Birdie Mac to put her mother into a home, or telling Dessie Burns to go to the monk in Mount Mellary who gets people off the jar. But you have to keep saying these things. Just to stay sane.”

  As long as she had known him Benny had never known Dr. Johnson to make such a speech. She stared at him openmouthed.

  He pulled himself together. “If I thought it would get that long drink of water Sean Walsh out of your business and miles from here, I’d give Annabel some kind of stimulant to keep her working in there twelve hours a day.”

  “My father had an undertaking to make Sean a partner. We’ll have to honor it.”

  “I suppose so.” Dr. Johnson knew that this was so.

  “Unless there was any reason my father didn’t sign the deed.” She looked at him beseechingly. It was the s
mallest hope in the world that Eddie Hogan might have confided his suspicions to his old friend Maurice Johnson. But no. With a heavy heart she heard Dr. Johnson say gloomily that he didn’t know any reason.

  “It’s not as if he was the kind of fellow who’d ever be caught with his hand in the till. He hasn’t spent tuppence on himself since the day he arrived.”

  Sean Walsh was having his morning coffee in Healy’s. From the window he could see if anyone entered Hogan’s.

  Mike could cope with an easy sale, or measuring a regular customer. Anything more difficult would have to be monitored.

  Mrs. Healy sat beside him. “Any word of the partnership?”

  “They’re going to honor it. They said so in front of the solicitor.”

  “So they might. It should be done already. Your name should be above the shop, for all to see.”

  “You’re very good to have such a high opinion of me … um … Dorothy.” He still thought of her as Mrs. Healy.

  “Nothing of the sort Sean. You deserve to make more of yourself. And be seen to be what you are.”

  “I will. One day people will see. I move slowly. That’s my way.”

  “Just as long as you’re moving, not standing still.”

  “I’m not standing still,” Sean Walsh assured her.

  “When can I see you again?” Simon said as he dropped Nan off outside University College. “What do you suggest?”

  “Well, I’d suggest tonight, but where could we go?”

  “We could go for a drink anywhere.”

  “But afterward?”

  “I’m sure you know some other lovely hotels.” She smiled at him.

  He did, but he couldn’t afford them. And he couldn’t take her to Buffy and Frank’s place where he stayed when he was in Dublin. And she wasn’t going to take him to her home. A car seemed out of the question, and Westlands was off-limits as far as he was concerned.

  “We’ll think of something,” he promised.

  “Good-bye,” Nan said.

  He looked after her with admiration. He hadn’t met a girl like this in a long time.

  “Benny, you look awful. You haven’t even combed your hair,” Nan said.

  “Thanks a bundle, that’s all I need.”