Circle of Friends (31 page)

Bill fixed his tie and smiled foolishly. Aidan looked put out. He spoke hastily to Jack, who was at his elbow.

“I don’t know whether this was such a good idea.”

“What?” Jack looked at the glass of beer in Aidan’s hand. “Is it flat?”

“No. I mean asking all the girls. We thought we’d have them under our control. Maybe we’ll lose them all.”

“Jack?” Aengus had arrived, looking anxious.

“Aha, Mr. Fixit is here,” Aidan said, looking malevolently
at the small boy he would never forgive for confusing him so at the outset of the evening.

“Jack, will I bring out the sausages yet? Mummy wants to know is everyone here.”

“Nan’s not here yet. Wait another few minutes.”

“Everyone else is here, are they?” Aidan looked round the room. He didn’t like the way Bill Dunne was making Eve laugh. He didn’t like the way everyone in the older set seemed to be making his parents laugh too loudly.

“I think so. Look, here’s Nan now.”

Standing at the door utterly naturally, as if she had entered crowded rooms like this every evening of her life, was Nan Mahon. She had a beautiful lemon dress, the skirt in flowing silk, the top a strapless bodice of thousands of tiny seed pearls on a lemon taffeta base. Her shoulders were graceful, rising from the dress, her hair, a mass of golden curls, was scooped up into a clasp, also decorated with tiny pearl ornaments. Her skin looked as if she had never known a spot or a blemish.

Jack went over to greet her, and take her to meet his parents.

“Is that Jack’s lover, do you think?” Aengus asked Aidan Lynch hopefully. Aidan was the kind of person that sometimes told you unexpected things.

He was disappointed this time.

“You are a remarkably foolish and unwise young man to talk about lovers to boys who have been through a Catholic education and know that such things must be confined to the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony.”

“I meant like in the pictures …” Aengus pleaded.

“You don’t know what you mean, your mind is a snake pit of confusion. Go and get the sausages while you still have a few brain cells left alive,” Aidan ordered him.

“They’re not all there.” Aengus was mutinous.

“Yes, they are.”

“No, there’s someone in the cloakroom. She’s been there since she came in.”

“She probably got out the window and left,” said Aidan. “Get the sausages or I’ll tear the face off you.”

Aengus knew it had all been going too well. The bow tie, the attention and people thanking him. Now Aidan Lynch was speaking to him just like he had at school.

He went gloomily out toward the kitchen in search of the party food.

In the hall a big girl was looking at herself in the mirror without very much pleasure.

“Hallo,” he said.

“Hallo,” she replied. “Am I the last?”

“I think so. Are you Nan?”

“No. She just went in, I heard her.”

“They said I couldn’t serve the sausages until Nan arrived. She was the only one missing.”

“Well, I expect they forgot me,” she said.

“They must have,” he said comfortingly.

“Are you Jack’s brother?”

“Yes, I’m Aengus Foley.”

“How do you do. I’m Benny Hogan.”

“Do you like sausages?”

“Yes, why?”

“I’m getting some now. I thought you could have a few before you went on, to stock up like.”

“Thanks, but I’d better not. I’m afraid of bursting out of my dress.”

“You’ve burst out of most of it already,” said Aengus, indicating her bosom.

“Oh God,” said Benny.

“So you might as well have the sausages anyway,” he said cheerfully.

“I’d better go in,” she said.

She straightened her shoulders and, trying not to look at the small boy who had thought her dress was ripped
open, she held back her shoulders as she had promised Clodagh Pine she would and moved into the drawing room feeling like an ocean liner.

Bill Dunne and John O’Brien saw her first.

“God, is that Big Ben? Doesn’t she look fantastic?” Bill said, behind his hand.

“Now, that’s what I call a pair of Killarneys,” John O’Brien said.

“Why Killarneys?” Bill was always interested in explanations of things.

“It’s an expression.” John O’Brien was still looking at Benny. “She’s not bad-looking at all is she?”

Benny saw none of them. Her eyes were roaming the room to see if in the middle of this happy and confident throng her parents were standing, awkward and ill at ease. Worse, would she find them holding forth on subjects of interest only in Knockglen? Worst of all, would they make a scene when they saw her dress?

But as far as she could see there was no sign of them. She peered and twisted, looking at the backs of people’s heads, trying to see if they were hidden in that group of older people, where a man with a very loud laugh stood holding court.

No, they definitely weren’t there.

She had seen a Morris Cowley pull away from the footpath just as they arrived. It was driven by one person. It was dark and hard to see either the face or the registration number. It
could
have been their car. That was what had unhinged her. She had fled straight into the cloakroom hissing at Eve to go in without her.

“I’ll wait for you,” Eve had said, thinking that she was just going to the lavatory.

“If you do, I’ll kill you, here and now in front of everyone. There’ll be so much blood your blouse will be the same color as your skirt.”

“You’ve made your point. I’ll go in without you,” Eve had said.

For fifteen minutes Benny had sat in the Foleys’ downstairs cloakroom.

Several times she felt the door handle rattle when a girl wanted to go in and check her appearance. But there was a mirror in the dining room and they made do with that.

Finally, she realized that there were no more sounds of people arriving and she emerged.

She felt foolish now, and a dull flush of anger with Sean Walsh for having tricked her into thinking that her night would be spoiled spread over her face. She felt a sense of rage with the unfortunate Patsy that she hadn’t found out where the master and mistress had gone on a rare evening out. But most of all she felt an overpowering sense of annoyance with herself.

Now that she was sure they were not in the room she could ask herself what would have been so very terrible if they had turned up.

Slowly normality came back and she realized she was the center of a lot of very interested attention.

“That’s a very classy-looking outfit.” Rosemary didn’t even bother to disguise her surprise.

“Thanks, Rosemary.”

“So, where did you get it?”

“Knockglen.” Benny’s answer was brief. She wanted to catch Eve’s eye and tell her that she was all right again. But Eve had her back turned.

Before she could get to her there were several more compliments. As far as she could see they were genuine. And mainly unflattering in their astonishment.

Still, it was heady stuff.

She touched Eve on the shoulder.

“I’m back,” she said, grinning.

Eve turned away from the group. “Am I allowed to
talk to you or do you still have some kind of plan to carve me up?”

“That’s over.”

“Well then.” Eve lowered her voice.

“What is it?”

“Every single person in this room is looking at the pair of us. We’re a Cinderella story come true.”

Benny didn’t dare to look.

“I mean it,” Eve said. “The glamorpusses like Rosemary and Sheila and even Nan are expected to look great at a dance. You and I are the surprise element. We’re going to be danced off our feet. Mark my words.”

“Eve, what would the Wise Woman do now?”

“In your case the Wise Woman would get a drink, and hold it in one hand and your evening bag in the other. That way you physically can’t start covering up your bosom.”

“Don’t call it bosom,” Benny begged.

“Sister Imelda used to call it the craw. You know, like in a bird. ‘Make sure you cover your craw Eve,’ she’d say. As if I had one to cover.”

“As if any of us took any notice of her.”

Nan came up and put her arm into each of theirs. It was no treat for Nan to be admired, and she seemed to see nothing staggering about her two friends having emerged from the chrysalis. She behaved as if she had expected them to look magnificent.

She spoke almost as a cat would purr.

“Now, haven’t we knocked those awful Rosemarys and Sheilas into a cocked hat.”

They all laughed happily, but Benny would have been happier if there had been any sign that Jack Foley, the handsome young host who was handing around plates with his little brother, had even by a flicker of his eye acknowledged that she was in the room, with most of her bosom bare, and if you were to judge by everyone else’s glances, looking very well indeed.

The last car door banged as the young people left. John and Lilly Foley stood on the top step and waved good-bye. Inside there was still a lively drinks party with their own friends, and Aidan Lynch’s parents. Lilly knew she looked well. It had taken a lot of time, but she had found exactly the right cocktail dress, glittery without being overdone, dressy without it looking as if she should be going to the dance with the youngsters. It had lilac drapes and she had earrings to match it. Her feet hurt in her new shoes, but no one would know that, certainly not the tall handsome man beside her.

“That was lovely, wasn’t it? You were a great host.” She smiled at her husband, full of congratulations as if it were he rather than she who had organized everything.

“You’re wonderful, Lilly,” he said, giving her a kiss on the forehead, and he put his arm round her as they closed the door and rejoined the guests.

All the work had been worth it, just for that.

The ladies’ cloakroom was full of excited girls combing and lacquering their hair and flattening their lips out into grotesque shapes in order to apply lipstick. Two women behind a counter took their coats and gave them pink cloakroom tickets which the girls tucked into their bags.

There was a smell of perfume and face powder and a little nervous sweat.

Nan was ready before anyone else, unaware of the slightly jealous glances from others in the room. Suddenly their own strapless dresses looked a bit like something from the metal industry. They became aware of how the firm supports cut into their flesh. How could Nan’s hair look so perfect without having to be licked into shape with cans of
hair spray? Why didn’t she need to dab at her chin and hide spots with tubes of covering paste?

“I’m just going to have a wander round until you’re ready,” she said to Benny and Eve. “Then I’ll take you into the shop to meet my mother.”

She left gracefully in a sea of other girls who were bouncing or bobbing or running up and down the carpeted stairs. She looked serene.

Nan walked in one side of the hotel bar smiling politely around her as if she were waiting to meet someone.

It was a place with dark oak paneling and red plush seats. By the bar a lot of men stood talking. Drinks here were very much more expensive than in an ordinary Dublin pub. This was a bar where the wealthy met.

You would find county people, up in Dublin for the bloodstock sales, or some kind of land business. There might be stockbrokers, bankers, visitors from England, people with titles. It was not the kind of bar where you could ever come in on your own.

But on the night of a dance in the hotel ballroom, a lone girl looking for her partner would be quite acceptable. Nan stood where the light fell on her and looked around her. It wasn’t long before everyone in the place saw her. She was aware without having to look at individual groups that everyone had seen her, and that they were admiring the cool young woman in the exquisite dress with the golden hair who stood confidently at the door.

Just when they had all had sufficient time to look at her, she turned around and with a wave of delight moved off to the foyer, where Eve and Nan were waiting.

“What were you up to?” Eve asked.

“Surveying the talent in the bar,” Nan replied.

“Won’t there be enough of it at the dance. My God, you’re insatiable, Nan Mahon.”

“Yes, well less of that to my mother.”

Nan led them into the hotel shop where an attractive,
rather tired-looking woman sat by the till. She had fair hair too, like her daughter, but it was faded. She had a nice smile, but it was wary. Nan must have got her really striking good looks from her father, Eve decided. Her father who was hardly ever mentioned at all in Nan’s conversation.

Nan did the introductions and they paraded their dresses for her. Emily Mahon said all the right things. She told Eve that the scarlet skirt looked much better on a dark person. It had drained the color from Nan’s face. She told Benny that anyone could see at ten miles that this was beautiful expensive brocade, and that the girl who had remodeled it for her must be a genius. She had never mentioned the huge cleavage, which cheered Benny greatly. If anyone else mentioned it she was going to dig out that modesty vest and reinstate it.

“And do any of you have any particular boyfriends tonight?” Emily asked eagerly.

“There’s a fellow called Aidan Lynch who fancies Eve a lot,” Benny said proudly, and then in order to define things properly for Mrs. Mahon she added, “And everyone fancies Nan.”