Circle of Friends (16 page)

T
he body of Frank Hegarty was brought to the church in Dun Laoghaire.

Dr. Foley attended the prayers and the Removal service with his eldest son.

Also in the church was Mother Francis, who had found it necessary to spend a little longer in Dublin than she had hoped sorting things out with Mother Clare. Peggy had offered to collect her later. She knew there was some kind of trouble, but didn’t ask what it was. She had given her own kind of encouragement to Mother Francis.

“Whatever that one says to you Bunty, remember that her people were tinkers.”

“They weren’t.”

“Well, dealers, anyway. That should give you the upper hand dealing with her.”

It hadn’t, of course, any more than it should have. Mother Francis had a grim face as she waited in the big church for the funeral party to arrive. She didn’t know why she was there; it was as if she wanted to represent Eve.

Nan Mahon went out on the bus to Dun Laoghaire and stood among the group at the back of the church. She was instantly spotted by Jack Foley, who went to join her.

“That’s nice of you, to come all the way out,” he said.

“You did too.”

“I came with my father. But do you see that group there, those are fellows who worked with him in the summer. That’s Aidan Lynch—he was at school with me, and a whole lot more. They were all canning peas together.”

“How did they know?”

“His picture was in the paper, and there was some kind of announcement at the Engineering lectures today.”

“Where’s Benny? Did you see her today?”

“Yes, but she couldn’t come tonight. She had to go home, you see, every evening on this one bus.”

“That’s hard on her,” Jack said.

“It’s very foolish of her,” Nan said.

“What can she do about it?”

“She should make a stand at the outset.”

Jack looked at the attractive girl beside him. She would have made a stand, he knew that. He remembered the big soft-featured Benny.

“She stood up to that awful fellow with the white face who tried to take her off with him yesterday.”

“If you couldn’t stand up to
him
you shouldn’t be allowed out,” Nan said.

“This is Eve Malone,” Benny said as Nan sat on the end of the hospital bed.

She wanted Eve to like Nan, to recognize that Nan could have been anywhere but had chosen to come and see Benny’s friend. Benny had heard this fellow Aidan Lynch almost begging Nan to come and have lunch with him.

Nan had not brought flowers or grapes or a magazine; instead she had brought the one thing that Eve truly wanted, a College handbook. All the details of registration, late registration, degree courses, diplomas. She didn’t even greet the girl in the bed. Instead she spoke about the matter which was uppermost in Eve’s mind.

“I gather you’re trying to get into College. This might be of some use to you,” she said.

Eve seized it and let her thumb riffle through the pages. “This is just what I need, thank you very much indeed,” she said.

Then her brow darkened slightly.

“How did you think of bringing me this?” she asked suspiciously.

Nan shrugged. “It’s all in there,” she said.

“No, what made you think I’d need it?”

Benny wished Eve wouldn’t be so prickly. What did it matter that Nan Mahon knew her hopes? There was no need to be secretive.

“I asked, that’s all. I asked what you were doing and Benny said you hadn’t enrolled yet.”

Eve nodded. The tension was over. She fingered the book again with gratitude and Benny felt a pang of regret that
she
hadn’t thought of something so practical.

Little by little Eve was losing her look of wariness. And as Benny watched the girls talk easily she realized they were kindred spirits.

“Will you have it sorted out fairly soon do you think?” Nan was asking.

“I have to go and ask a man for money. It’s not easy but it won’t get any easier by delaying,” Eve said.

Benny was astounded. Eve never talked of her business to anyone and the matter of approaching the Westwards for money was one she had only barely acknowledged to Benny herself. Nan was unaware of this. “Will you play up the being injured bit?” she inquired.

Eve was on the same wavelength. “I might. I’ve been considering it, but he’s the kind of fellow that might regard that as weakness and sniveling. I’ll have to work out how to play it.”

“What’s it all about?” Nan asked with interest.

And as Eve began to tell her the story of the Westwards,
the story never spoken aloud to anyone, Benny realized with a shock that Nan was in fact pretending to Eve that she hadn’t heard any of this already. She had asked Nan to be discreet, and she certainly had followed the instructions to the letter. And judging by the way Eve was confiding, the instructions had been unnecessary.

It had been harder to deal with Mother Clare than Mother Francis would ever have believed possible. Sometimes Mother Francis talked directly to Our Lady about it and asked for immediate and positive advice.

“I’ve
said
I was sorry, I’ve
said
that we will look after Eve from now on, but she goes on and on and says it’s her duty to know what plans are being made for the girl. Why can’t she just stay out of it? Why, Holy Mother, tell me?”

As it happened, Mother Francis got an answer which she presumed had come from the Mother of God, even though it was spoken by Peggy Pine.

“What that auld rip wants is to be able to prance around like the cock of the walk saying I told you so, I told you so. She wants you to humble yourself, then she’ll give up on it and start torturing someone else.”

Mother Francis agreed to use the tactics of humbling herself. “You were right all along, Mother Clare,” she wrote in the most hypocritical letter she had ever penned. “We were wrong to ask you to take on someone like Eve who had been given a wholly exaggerated set of expectations by our small community here. I can only say that I bow to your wisdom on this as in so many other matters and hope that the Sisters were not unduly inconvenienced by the experiment which you knew was destined to be full of pitfalls.”

It had been the right approach. The regular bewildered and hurt interrogations from Mother Clare ceased.

And just in time too. Eve was pronounced fit to leave hospital a week to the day after she had been admitted.

“I’ll come on the bus, with Benny,” Eve had said on the telephone.

“No, you won’t, there’s half a dozen people who’ll go and collect you. I don’t like to ask Peggy again but Mrs. Healy will be going up.”

“
Please
, Mother.”

“All right, Sean Walsh? No, don’t even tell me … !”

“I’ve caused you enough trouble. I’ll go with anyone you say though I
would
rather go on the bus.”

“Mario?”

“Marvelous. I love Mario.”

“All right, we’ll see you tomorrow. I’m so glad you’re coming home Eve. I missed you.”

“And I missed you, Mother. We’ll have to talk.”

“Of course we will. Wrap up warmly won’t you.”

When Eve hung up Mother Francis sat for a moment. It was true they would have to talk. Talk seriously.

As she sat there the telephone rang again.

“Mother Francis please?”

“Speaking.”

There was a pause.

“Mother, in a fit of generosity you said to me … I mean you wondered if I’d like … and isn’t it odd, in the middle of everything I kept remembering it. I wonder would you think it strange if I
did
come to see you …?”

The woman’s voice stopped again hesitantly.

A great smile lit up Mother Francis’s face.

“Mrs. Hegarty, I’m delighted to hear from you. This weekend would be lovely. You tell me which bus and I’ll walk over and meet you. It’s only a couple of minutes from the convent gate. I’m very pleased you’re going to come and see us.”

She wondered where she would put the woman to sleep. She had thought of her as staying in Eve’s room. But there was the extra parlor that they had always been meaning to do up as a guest room. All it needed was curtains.
She’d get some material from Peggy and ask Sister Imelda to ask the senior girls to run them up at Domestic Science class. She’d get a bedside light from Dessie Burns and a nice cake of soap in Kennedy’s chemist.

“Eve’s going home today,” Benny reported when she met Nan for coffee in the Annexe as she did every morning.

“I know. She told me last night.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s at night she really wants people to go in and see her, and you’ve long gone, so I took a couple of fellows in to cheer her up.”

Benny felt a jolt. She knew that Nan and Eve got on well … but taking fellows into a hospital bed!

“What fellows?” she asked lamely.

“Oh, you know, Aidan Lynch and some of that gang. Bill Dunne—do you know him?”

“No.”

“He’s very nice, does Commerce. I bet you know him to see, he’s always outside the History Library with a group.”

“Did Eve like them coming in?”

“Yeah, she loved it. Did you think she wouldn’t?”

“It’s just that she’s a bit edgy sometimes … you know, on the defensive a bit.”

“I never noticed that.”

It was true. Eve had seemed much less chippy whenever Nan came in. Nan had a gift of making things simple, everyone went along with her way. Just then four boys approached the table. They were all looking at Nan.

“Would you girls like to come down Grafton Street and get some real coffee? Decent coffee for a change,” said the spokesman, a thin boy in an Aran Island sweater.

Nan smiled up at them warmly.

“Thanks a lot, but no, we have a lecture at twelve. Thanks anyway.”

“Come on, that’s only a big lecture, no one’ll miss you.” He was encouraged by her smile to think it was only a matter of saying it often enough.

“No, honestly.” Nan stopped suddenly as if she had been thoughtless. “I mean I’m only speaking for myself. Benny, do you want to go?”

Benny reddened. She knew the boys didn’t want her. It was Nan that had attracted them. But they had nice faces and seemed a little bit lost, like everyone else.

“Why don’t you sit down with us?” she suggested with a big smile.

That was exactly what they wanted to do. Chairs and benches were pulled up, names exchanged. School names given. Did they know this person or that? What were they studying? Where were they staying? It was much easier than Benny had thought to be in the middle of a group like this. She had completely forgotten that she was big and that they were boys. She asked eagerly about the societies, and which ones were good, and where were the best dances.

Nan didn’t make as much effort, but she was very pleased to hear all the information. Her smile was so bright that Benny could see the boys almost loosening their collars as she turned it toward them.

The boys said that the Debating Society on a Saturday night was great. And then when it was over you could go to the Solicitor’s Apprentice or down at the Four Courts. They looked from one girl to the other.

Benny said that unfortunately she had to stay in the country at weekends. As she said it she realized what a death knell it sounded, so she cheered up at once and said that this was only for this term. Maybe things would change then. She looked brightly at the boys and they seemed pleased with her. She knew they were all mad keen for Nan
to go with them this Saturday, and Nan wasn’t a bit flirtatious.

If she could, she would. She hadn’t wanted to go because she didn’t know anyone, she said.

“You know us,” said the thin boy in the grubby white sweater.

“I do, of course.” Nan’s smile nearly broke his heart.

Benny knew that it would be a great night. She could see it. Of course, she would be in Knockglen. But her smile was bright. After all, one of the things she had been afraid of was that she wouldn’t know how to talk to fellows when she got to College. She didn’t have much practice at home. But it seemed to be easy enough, like talking to ordinary people. That was what she must think about. The good side. Not always dwelling on the bad side like having to go home on the bus before the fun began.

When Mario collected Eve in his ice-cream van it was Fonsie who ran lightly up the steps of the hospital to escort the patient to her transport.

“You’re to take it easy, you’ll remember that.” The Sister looked doubtfully at Fonsie as a companion.

“Nothing faster than slow jive.” Fonsie leaned back and clicked his fingers slowly. Sister was not amused.

“And you
are
staying in a convent?”

“Don’t be prejudiced now,” Fonsie warned. “Just because I don’t look like your idea of a nun doesn’t mean …”

“Oh shut up, Fonsie, Mario’s nearly having a fit down there in the van.”

It was the first time she had seen the outside world for over a week. Eve shuddered when she saw the corner where the crash had taken place. They tucked her up in the van and drove back to Knockglen arguing all the while.

Some arguments she was able to take part in—like having
brighter lights and music in the chip shop, like calling the chip shop a “cafe,” like having “Island in the Sun” so that you could hear it from the street and it would make you want to come in.

“Make you want to call the Guards more likely,” Mario said.

There were other arguments she couldn’t contribute to—like whether Mario’s brother had been mad to marry an Irish girl, Fonsie’s mother, or whether Fonsie’s mother had been mad to marry an Italian, Mario’s brother. She drifted off to sleep during that particular saga, which she felt would never be solved anyway.

Eve sat up in bed and drank her beef tea.

“Sister Imelda made it. Have a taste?”

Benny sipped some from the cup.

“Patsy told me she heard her in Flood’s talking about shin beef, and pointing to her ankle in case she wasn’t making herself clear. Mr. Flood was saying ‘I know where the shin is, Sister, God forgive me I may not know much but I know where the shin is.’ ”

“Is Patsy still going out with that dumbo, Mossy?”

“Yes, Mother’s terrified she’ll marry him.”

“Is he that bad?”

“No, we just don’t want Patsy to marry anyone, because she’ll leave.”