Circle of Friends (28 page)

“No, I probably don’t.”

“Well, you will,” she said.

There were just the two of them standing in the shop. Old Mike was at his tailoring and Mr. Hogan was out of earshot.

“I’ll hardly miss you, that’s for sure.”

“You’d be wise not to.” She deliberately misunderstood him. “We can be rivals or friends. It’s probably more sensible to be friends.”

“I’d say everyone’s your friend, Clodagh.” He laughed a scornful little laugh.

“You’d be wrong there. A lot of people aren’t my friends at all. However my aunt is. I’m doing a major reorganization of her window. Every notice saying ‘A Fashion Snip’ has already been burned. Wait till you see the new display.”

“On Monday, is it?” He was still superior.

“No, genius. This afternoon, early closing day, the only day anyone really looks in your window. And tomorrow we’ll let it rip.”

“I should congratulate you.”

“Yes, you should. It’s harder for me coming in than it is for you. I haven’t any plans to marry my aunt.”

Sean looked nervously at the back storeroom where Eddie Hogan had found some hat stands and was returning with them triumphantly.

“I’m sure your new windows will be a great success,” he said hastily.

“Yes, they’ll be fabulous,” she said. She gave the surprised Eddie Hogan a kiss on the forehead, and was gone in a flash of color, like a bird of paradise.

“I’m not spending hard-earned money on a dress,” Eve said with a ferocious scowl when Nan started talking about what they would wear.

She expected Nan to tell her that you are how you look,
and that you must expect people to take you or leave you on the way you present yourself. It was one of Nan’s theories.

“You’re right,” Nan said unexpectedly. “Whatever you buy it shouldn’t be an evening dress.”

“So?” Eve was wrong-footed now. She had expected an argument.

“So what will you do?” Nan asked.

“Kit said I can look through her things, just in case. She’s taller than I am, but then so’s everyone. I could take the hem up, if I found something.”

“Or you could have my red wool skirt,” Nan said.

“I don’t think so …” Eve began, the prickles beginning to show.

“Well, nobody’s seen it in college. Red looks great on you. You could get a fancy blouse or maybe Mrs. Hegarty has one. Why not?”

“I know it sounds ungrateful, but I suppose it’s because I don’t want to wear your castoffs,” Eve said straight out.

“But you wouldn’t mind wearing Mrs. Hegarty’s, is that it?” Nan was quick as a flash.

“She offers them because … because she knows I wouldn’t mind taking them.”

“And what about me? Haven’t I got the same motive?”

“I don’t know, to be honest.” Eve fiddled with her coffee spoon.

Nan didn’t plead with her, and she didn’t shrug. Very simply she said, “It’s there, it’s nice, it would look well on you.”

“Why are you lending it to me, I mean what’s in your mind?” Eve knew she sounded like a five-year-old but she wanted to know.

“Because we’re a group of friends going to this dance. I want us to look knockout. I want us to wipe the eyes of people like that stupid Rosemary and that dull Sheila. That’s why!”

“I’d love it,” Eve said, with a grin.

“Mother, would it be awful if I was to ask you for a loan of money, like to get some material for a dress?”

“We’ll buy you a dress Benny. Your first big dance. Every girl should have a new dress from a shop.”

“There isn’t one to fit me in the shops.”

“Don’t be full of misery like that. I’m sure there is. You haven’t looked.”

“I’m not even remotely full of miseries. People don’t come in my size until they’re old. I don’t mind now that I
know
. I used to think people were born with big bones and large frames, but apparently these grow when you’re about sixty-eight. You’d better watch it, Mother, it could happen to you.”

“And where did you develop this nonsensical theory may I ask?”

“After slogging round every shop in Dublin. Lunch-times, Mother, I didn’t miss my lectures!”

She looked not remotely put out about it, Annabel was relieved to see. Or perhaps she was inside. With Benny it was hard to tell.

There was nothing to be gained by probing. Benny’s mother decided to be practical.

“What material had you in mind?”

“I don’t know. Something rich … I don’t know if this is ridiculous, but I saw something in a magazine. She was a biggish woman and it was like tapestry …”

Benny’s smile was broad, but not totally sure.

“Tapestry?” Her mother sounded doubtful.

“Maybe not. It might make me look like a couch or an armchair.”

Annabel wanted to take her daughter in her arms, but she knew she must do nothing of the sort.

“Do you mean brocade?” she asked.

“The very thing.”

“I have a lovely brocade skirt.”

“It wouldn’t fit me, Mother.”

“We could get a bit of black velvet let into it, maybe, as panels, and then a top of black velvet and some of the brocade to trim it. What do you think?”

“We couldn’t cut up your good skirt.”

“When will I ever wear it again. I’d love you to be the belle of the ball.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of
course
I am. And it’s better than anything you’d buy in the shops.”

It was. Benny knew that. Her heart sank though at the thought of what her mother might envisage as a design.

A sudden picture of her tenth birthday flashed before Benny. The day she thought she was going to get a party dress and had been given that sensible navy blue outfit. The pain of it was as real now as then. But there seemed few alternatives.

“Who’d make it, do you think?”

“Peggy’s niece is a great hand with the needle we hear.”

Benny brightened. Clodagh Pine looked anything but frumpish. The project might not be doomed after all.

Lilly Foley was pleased about the party. John would enjoy it. He would like seeing their big house filled with lights and flowers and the rustle of evening dresses, beautiful girls.

Her husband would enjoy playing host to a roomful of handsome young people. It would make him feel their age.

She was determined it would be just right, and that she
herself would look her very best. There was no way he could be allowed to look across at her and think she was drab and gray compared to all the glitter around them.

She would think of her own outfit later. In the meantime she must plan it properly. She could not let Jack know how welcome the excuse was. She would let him and his father know what a wonderful wife and mother she was to cope with his demands.

“Will they want sausages and savories, do you think?” Lilly Foley asked.

“They’ll want whatever we give them.” Jack had no interest in the details.

“Who’ll serve it? Doreen will need help.”

Jack looked round the table. “Aengus,” he said.

“Can I wear a napkin on my arms?” Aengus asked.

“You’d probably better wear one on your bottom as well,” Ronan said.

His mother frowned.

“It’s for
your
friends, Jack. I wish you’d pay some attention.”

“And for yours and Dad’s. Look, aren’t the pair of you delighted, you’ve got those new curtains you’ve been talking about and you had the gate painted.”

“It’d be like you to tell everyone that.”

“Of course I won’t. I keep telling you that I think it’s great all your friends are coming round.”

“And all yours!”

“Mine will only be here for an hour or two. Yours will stay all night and disgrace themselves. I’m as well off not to be a witness to it.”

“And what about the oldies, as you call them? The parents of your friends.”

“I asked Aidan Lynch’s parents. You know them already.”

“I do.” Mrs Foley raised her eyes to heaven.

“And Benny Hogan’s parents, the people from Knockglen.
But they can’t come. They wrote to you remember? It’s only going to be people like Uncle Kevin and the neighbors, and all your own crowd. You’ll hardly notice my few.”

“I wish I knew why you’ve inflicted this on us,” his mother asked.

“Because I couldn’t decide which girl to ask, so I asked them all.” Jack beamed at her in total honesty.

The weekend before the dance, Eve came home to Knockglen.

“I’ve left it far too long,” she confessed to Benny on the bus on the Friday evening. “But it really was that I didn’t want to run out on Kit. Do you think Mother Francis knows that?”

“Tell her,” Benny said.

“I will. She said she had a favor to ask of me. What do you think it could be?”

“Let’s guess. Help her set up a poteen still in the kitchen garden?”

“I’d be good at that. Or maybe, based on my huge experience beating off the advances of Aidan Lynch, she wants me to give Sixth Year a course of lessons in sex education.”

“Or take the older nuns to Belfast on a day excursion to see a banned film.”

“Or bring Sean Walsh into the art room and drape a duster over his vital parts and have him for a life class.”

They laughed so much that Mike the driver said they put him off concentrating.

“The pair of you remind me of those cartoons of Mutt and Jeff, do you know the ones I mean?” Mikey shouted at them.

They did. Mutt was the big one, Jeff was the tiny one. Mikey was always pretty subtle.

“I can’t turn her away,” Mother Francis pleaded with Eve in the kitchen.