Circle of Friends

by Maeve Binchy

  “It is what you need, actually,” Nan said. “You’ve got the most handsome man in college panting after you. You can’t turn up looking like a mess.”

  “I’ll comb my hair then,” Benny said ungraciously.

  The most handsome man in College was not panting after her. He was looking like a guilty sheep, every time he met her he apologized for the whole Wales thing. Benny had said he must forget it, these things happened. And she wasn’t making an issue of it, so why should he:

  She had even arranged to stay in town this Friday, and suggested they have an evening together. She had asked Eve if she could stay in Dun Laoghaire. She had told Patsy that she would be gone and she had explained to her mother that she needed one night a week in Dublin. That everyone got over a loss in their own way, and her way had to be spending time with her friends.

  Her mother’s eyes, dull and listless, had clouded as if this was one further blow.

  Worst of all, Jack said that Friday wasn’t a good night for him. They had a meeting in the rugby club, and then they’d all go for a drink afterward.

  “Make it another night,” he said casually. Benny had wanted to smack him very hard. He was as thoughtless as any child.

  Why did he not realize how hard it was for her to arrange anything at all? Now she had to go and unpick everything she had arranged. Eve, Kit, Patsy, her mother. Bloody hell, she wouldn’t. She’d stay in Dublin anyway that night and maybe go to the pictures with Eve and Aidan. They had asked her often enough, and to have a curry afterward.

  They were still whistling the theme tune of Bridge on the River Kwai when they arrived at the Golden Orient in Leeson Street. They met Bill Dunne coming out of Hartigan’s, and he joined them for the meal.

  Aidan took them through the menu as an expert.

  Everyone was to order something different, then they could taste four dishes and become curry bores.

  “But we all like koftsa,” Eve complained.

  “Too bad. The mother of my children is not going to be a one-dish lady,” Aidan said.

  “Where’s Jack?” Bill Dunne inquired.

  “At a rugby club meeting.” Benny spoke casually.

  She thought she saw the boys exchange glances, but decided that she was imagining it. All that watching Sean Walsh made her see glances and looks where none existed.

  Jack Foley rang, very cross, on Saturday.

  “I believe there was a great outing last night. The only night of the week I couldn’t get away,” he said.

  “You never told me. You always said Fridays were marvelous nights in Dublin.” Benny was stung by the injustice of it all.

  “And so they were for some, Bill Dunne was telling me.”

  “What night are you free next week, Jack? I’ll arrange to stay in town.”

  “You’re sulking,” he said. “You’re sulking over the Wales thing.”

  “I told you, I understand that you didn’t have time to ring me. I am not sulking over a phone call.”

  “Not the phone call,” he said. “The other thing.”

  “What other thing?” asked Benny.

  Nan and Simon met three times without being able to do what they both wanted to do, which was to make love.

  “What a pity you don’t have a little flat in town,” he said to her.

  “What a pity you don’t,” she countered.

  What they really needed was a small place where nobody would see them, somewhere they could steal in and out of.

  It needn’t be in Dublin. It could be miles away. Petrol was no problem. Apparently Simon put it all down for the farm. It was complicated, but it was free.

  He just needed to be back in Knockglen to fill up.

  Nan remembered Eve’s cottage by the quarry.

  She had seen where Eve put the key under a stone in the wall. Nobody went there. Except sometimes a nun to keep an eye on the place. But the nun wouldn’t be keeping an eye on the place at night.

  There were only lights in one cottage. Nan remembered that this was the one where a silent man called Mossy lived. She had heard Benny and Eve talking about him once.

  “That’s the man our Bee Moore wanted for herself, but some other took him away,” Simon said, smiling loftily at his local knowledge.

  Nan had brought a pair of sheets, pillowcases and two towels. Plus her sponge bag, this time with soap as well. They must leave no trace of their visit.

  Simon couldn’t understand why they didn’t just ask Eve. Nan said this was not even remotely possible. Eve would say no.

  “Why? You’re her friend. I’m her cousin.”

  “That’s why,” Nan said.

  Simon had shrugged. They were here so what did it matter. They dared not light the fire or the range. They brought the bottle of champagne to bed immediately.

  Next morning it was very chilly.

  “I’ll have to bring my Primus stove if I can find it,” Simon said, shivering.

  Nan folded the sheets and towels carefully and put them into the bag.

  “Can’t we leave them here?” he asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Washed briskly in cold water, but as yet unshaved, Simon examined the cottage for the first time.

  “She has some nice things here,” he commented. “That came from Westlands, definitely.” He nodded at the piano. “Does Eve play?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  He touched other things. This was definitely from the house, and that might have been. He seemed to know even though he was only a child when his aunt had begun the ill-advised marriage, and started to live in this cottage instead of a Big House similar to the one she grew up in.

  He laughed at a statue in place of honor on the mantelpiece.

  “Who’s he, when he’s at home,” he said, looking at a china figure of a man with a crown and a globe and a cross.

  “The Infant of Prague,” Nan replied.

  “Well, what’s he doing on display like this?”

  “Probably one of the nuns gave it to her. They do come and clean the house. Why not leave it there to please them when you don’t have to look at it yourself,” Nan asked.

  He looked at her admiringly.

  “You’re a businesswoman as well as everything else, Nan Mahon.”

  “Let’s go,” she said. “It would be terrible to be caught the first time.”

  “You think there’ll be others?” he teased.

  “Only if you get your Primus stove going,” she laughed.

  On the first floor of Hogan’s the rooms were big and high-ceilinged. That was where the family that owned the shop formerly used to live. It was where Eddie Hogan and his bride lived for the first year of their marriage. They had bought Lisbeg just before Benny was born.

  The rooms on that first floor were still filled with lumber. To the furniture which was already stacked there came extra lumber, old rails not used in the shop, bales empty now from material, boxes. It was not a pretty sight.

  The rooms where Sean Walsh had his home for going on ten and a half years were on the floor above that.

  A bedroom, another room which could be a sitting room, and a very old-fashioned bathroom with a geyser that looked like a dangerous missile.

  Benny had not been up there since she was about eight or nine.

  She remembered her father saying that he had asked Sean would he like a key to his own area. But Sean had been insistent that he did not.

  If he had taken the money he would not have hidden it in his own rooms. Since that was the first place that would be searched if it ever were found out. It would be pointless for her to search. Pointless and dangerous. She had not forgotten Clodagh’s heavy warning.

  Things would be quite bad enough if Sean Walsh were not made a partner. There would be an outrage in Knockglen if he were wrongfully accused of stealing from her father. Benny did not relish the thought of hunting in his private rooms for some evidence. But she felt so sure that there must be something, perhaps in the for
m of a post office book from some faraway branch.

  In the beginning as she had plowed through her father’s simplistic and even then not very thorough bookkeeping methods, she had only suspected that Sean must be taking away a sum of money each week. But now she knew it. She knew it because of one simple lie he had told.

  When she had tried to ask him to explain the system of Drawings slips in front of Mr. Green, she had asked for an example. Sean Walsh had pointed to the outfit she wore and suggested that Benny’s own clothes might be something that her father drew money from the till to pay for. The thought had raised a lump in her throat.

  Until she had looked at the checks that were returned with the bank statement. Her father had paid for every single garment he had bought for her. Clothes she had liked, clothes she had hated, each one paid for in Pine’s by check with his slanting writing.

  She wished it were all over. That Sean had been unmasked, and that he had left town. That her mother had recovered her spirit and gone in to run the business. And most of all that someone would tell her what exactly had happened in Wales.

  Simon brought his Primus stove. Nan brought two pretty china candlesticks, and two pink candles.

  Simon brought a bottle of champagne. Nan brought two eggs, and herbs, and bread and butter. She brought some instant coffee powder too. She made them a glorious omelet in the morning.

  Simon said it made him feel so excited, they should go straight back to bed.

  “We’ve just remade it with her things, silly,” Nan said. Nan never referred to Eve by name.

  After a time Simon stopped calling her Eve as well.

  “Where does that daughter of yours spend the nights?” Brian Mahon asked.

  “You were very drunk a couple of times Brian. I think she was frightened. She goes out to her girl friend, Eve, in Dun Laoghaire. They all get on together, that Eve and Benny down in Knockglen. They’re her friends. We should be glad she had them.”

  “What’s the point of rearing children and having them stay out at night?” he grumbled.

  “Paul and Nasey often don’t come home. You never worry about them.”

  “Nothing could happen to them,” he said.

  “Nor Nan either,” Emily Mahon said, with a small silent prayer.

  Nan was out three nights a week at least nowadays.

  She did hope most fervently that nothing would happen to her beautiful golden daughter.

  Mossy Rooney saw lights there one evening. He walked straight by.

  Eve Malone must have come home quietly for a night, he thought to himself.

  None of his business.

  The very next day Mother Francis asked him if he would do a job on the guttering at the cottage. She came up to show him where it was falling away.

  “Eve hasn’t been back for weeks, the bold child,” Mother Francis scolded. “If it wasn’t for yourself and myself, Mossy, the place would fall down around her ears.”

  Mossy kept his peace.

  Eve Malone might have wanted to come back to her house without letting the nuns know.

  Sean Walsh walked the quarry road at night. It was a place you didn’t meet many people. It left him free to think of his plans, his hopes, his future. It was a space where he could consider Dorothy Healy and the interest she showed in him. She was several years older than him. There was no denying that. He had always thought in terms of marrying a much younger woman. A girl in fact.

  But there were advantages in a union with an older woman. Eddie Hogan had done so after all. It had never hurt his prospects. He had been perfectly happy in his life, limited though it was. He had fathered a child.

  Sean’s thoughts were in a turmoil as he passed the cottage. He wasn’t really aware of his surroundings.

  He thought he heard music coming from inside. But he must have been imagining it.

  After all, Eve wasn’t at home and who else would be in there at midnight playing the piano?

  He shook his head and tried to work out what length of time Mr. Green the solicitor had in mind when he spoke about the regrettably snail-like process of the law.

  Dr. Johnson pulled over his prescription pad across the desk. Mrs. Carroll had always been a difficult person. He felt that she needed the services of Father Ross more than himself, but was it fair to dump all the neurotic moaners onto the local priest and call the whole thing a religious crisis?

  “I know I’m not going to be popular for saying so, Dr. Johnson, but I have to say what’s true. That cottage up in the quarry is haunted. That woman died roaring and her poor half-witted husband, God be good to him, may have taken his own life, God bless the mark afterward. No wonder a house like that is haunted.”

  “Haunted?” Dr. Johnson was weary.

  “No soul died at peace there. No wonder one of them comes back to play the piano in the night,” she said.

  Heather rang Westlands. She was coming home next weekend. Bee Moore said that was grand, she’d tell Mr. Simon.

  “I’ll be going to tea with Eve in her cottage,” Heather said proudly.

  “I wouldn’t fancy that myself. People say it’s haunted,” said Bee Moore, who had heard that for a fact.

  Heather and Eve sat making toast by the fire in the cottage. They had long toasting forks, which Benny had found for them.

  She said there were amazing things on the first floor of Hogan’s shop, but she didn’t like to denude the place entirely in case bloody Sean was going to be a partner. So she had just brought something he could hardly sue for through every court in the land.

  “Is it definite about the partnership?” Eve wanted to know.

  “Sometime, when you have about thirty-five hours …”

  “I have.”

  “Not now.”

  “Do you want me to go away? I could go out to the pony,” Heather said.

  “No, Heather, it’s a long, long story, and it would depress me telling it and depress Eve listening to it. Stay where you are.”

  “Right.” Heather put another of Sister Imelda’s wonderful tea cakes on the toasting fork.

  “Anything new though?” Eve thought Benny looked troubled.

  But Benny shook her head. There was a resigned sort of look on her face that Eve didn’t like. As if Benny wanted to get into a big fight over something and lacked the energy.

  “I could help. Like the old days. The Wise Woman would let two people tackle it.”

  “The Wiser Woman might give into the inevitable.”

  “What does your mother say?”

  “Very little.”

  “Benny, will you have a toasted cake?” Heather’s solution for nearly every crisis.

  “No. I’m fooling myself that if I don’t eat, this fellow will like me more and stop going off with Welsh floozies.”

  Eve sighed heavily. So someone had told her.

  They cycled along cheerfully, Eve saluting almost everyone they passed. Heather knew no one. But she knew fields that would have donkeys at the gate, and a gap in the hedge where you could see a mare and two foals. She told Eve about the trees and their leaves and how her Nature Scrap-book was the only thing she was any good at. She wouldn’t mind schoolwork if it was all to do with pressing flowers and leaves and drawing the various stages of a beech tree.

  Eve thought how odd it was that two first cousins, with only seven years between them, living only a mile and a half apart, never having met, and one knowing every person who walked the road and the other every animal in every farm.

  It was strange to ride up the ill-kept ridge-filled drive of Westlands, with the young woman of the house.

  Even though she was no outsider, coming to ask for a handout, Eve still felt odd and out of place.

  “We’ll go in through the kitchen.” Heather had thrown her bicycle up against the wall.

  “I don’t know …” Eve began. Her voice was an almost exact copy of Heather’s when lunch at the convent was suggested.

  “Come on,” Heather said.

  M
rs. Walsh and Bee Moore were surprised to see her, and not altogether pleased.

  “You should have come in at the front when you had a guest,” Mrs. Walsh said reprovingly.

  “It’s only Eve. We had lunch in the kitchen of the convent.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Walsh’s face expressed very clearly that Eve had been unwise to receive the daughter of the Big House so poorly. The very least that might have been arranged was lunch in the parlor.

  “I told her you made great shortbread,” Heather said hopefully.

  “We must make up a nice little box of it sometime.” Mrs. Walsh was polite, but cold.

  She definitely didn’t want Eve Malone on her patch.

  From inside the house, Eve heard someone playing a piano.

  “Oh, good,” Heather said, pleased. “Simon’s home.”

  Simon Westward was charming. He came forward with both his hands out to Eve.

  “Lovely to see you here again.”

  “I didn’t really intend …” She wanted terribly to tell him that she had no intention of being a casual visitor to his house. She must make him understand that she was doing it to please a child, a lonely child who wanted to share the place with her. But those words were hard to find.

  Simon probably had no idea of what she was trying to say.

  “It’s great you are here now, it’s been far too long!” he said.

  She looked around her. This was not the drawing room she had been in on her first visit. It was another, south-facing room, with faded chintz and old furniture, a small desk stuffed with papers stood in the corner, a large piano near the window. Imagine one family having so many rooms and enough furniture to fill them.

  Enough pictures for their walls.

  Her eyes roamed around the portraits hoping to find the one of her mother.

  The one she had not known existed.

  Simon had been watching her. “It’s on the stairs,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I know Nan told you. Come, and I’ll show it to you.”

  Eve felt her face burn. “It isn’t important.”

  “Oh, but it is. A painting of your mother. I didn’t show it to you that first day because, it was all a bit strained. I was hoping you’d come again. But you didn’t, and Nan did, so I showed it to her. I hope you’re not upset.”