Circle of Friends (36 page)

Eventually they tired of the game. With exaggerated shrugs and put-on bewildered expressions, they left the bar. They both turned at the door with the sad, bloodhound faces of condemned criminals, but their laughter could be heard all the way down the corridor and out into the street.

The group in the corner looked at each other in some alarm. The main problem was Peggy, one of the town’s most respected citizens. How would she take to her niece being refused entrance to the hotel? The little group of people that Mrs. Healy cherished in her hotel looked down furtively.

Mrs. Healy spoke in a steady voice. “One has to draw the line somewhere,” she said.

Lilly Foley said that Aidan Lynch’s terrible parents never knew where to draw the line.

Jack asked why they hadn’t stopped serving drink, then the Lynches would have gone home. That apparently had been done early on. The bottles had been physically taken away from Aengus, but they had still stayed on and boomed.

“It irritated your father,” Lilly told Jack.

“Why didn’t he do something about it then, like saying ‘Good God, is that the time?’ ” Jack saw no problems in the tardy Lynch parents.

“It’s a woman’s place to organize these things. It was left to me. As things always are.” Lilly Foley seemed put out.

“But apart from that it was a great party. Thanks a lot.” Jack grinned at her.

It mollified her a bit. She noted that her son had been on the phone already asking some girl out to lunch. She couldn’t hear which one, but she assumed it was the glamorous Rosemary, who kept boasting of her relations in the Law, or the very beautiful girl, Nan, in the dress with all the little pearls on it. The girl who had said hardly anything, but was still the center of attention.

Lilly looked affectionately at her eldest son. His hair was tousled, he smelled of Knight’s Castille soap, he had eaten a huge breakfast and read the sporting pages of two newspapers. He had given Aengus half a crown for all his help at the party.

Lilly knew that like his father before him Jack Foley was a heartbreaker, and would be one until the day he died.

He had said the name of the restaurant as if everyone knew it. Carlo’s. Benny had heard of it. It was down near the quays, her old stamping ground getting on and off the bus from Knockglen. It was small and Italian, and she had once heard Nan say she had been there in the evening and they had candles in wine bottles like you saw in the pictures.

Much too early as usual, she went into a big store and examined the cosmetics. She found a green eye shadow and smeared some on each lid.

It was exactly the same color as the veterinary student’s enormous jumper that she was wearing. The shop assistant urged her to buy it, insisting that it was often hard to find exactly the right shade when you were looking for it and you should seize the hour.

Benny explained that it wasn’t her sweater. It was borrowed from a fellow. She wondered why she needed to tell so much to strangers.

“Maybe he’ll lend it to you again,” said the girl in the short pink nylon coat whose job was to sell cosmetics.

“I doubt it. I don’t even know who he is. His landlady pinched it for me.”

Benny knew she was sounding very peculiar but conversation of any kind made her feel less anxious. It filled that great empty echo chamber of anxiety she felt about the lunch that lay ahead.

It had been so easy when she smelled of Joy and when she was able to be in his arms. It would be quite different now, in a green sweater across a table. How would she smile and attract him, and hold him. There must have been something about her that appealed to him last night. It couldn’t have been all naked bosom, could it?

“Do you think I could have a spray of Joy perfume without buying any?” she begged the girl.

“We’re not meant to.”

“Please.”

She got a small splash. Enough to remind him of last night.

Carlo’s had a small door. That was a poor start. Benny hoped it wouldn’t have those awful benches, those kinds of church pew seats that were popular now. They were desperately hard to squeeze into. Even though it was bright out on the street, with a cold, wintry sun picking everything out sharply, it was dark and warm inside.

She gave her coat to the waiter.

“I’m to meet someone here,” she said.

“He is here already.”

That meant that Jack must be well known in this place, she thought with a wave of disappointment. Maybe he came every Saturday with a different girl.

“How do you know it’s the right person?” she asked the waiter anxiously. It would be humiliating to be led to the wrong table in front of everyone and for Jack to have to rescue her.

“There is only one person here,” the waiter said.

He stood up to greet her.

“Don’t you look lovely and well rested considering the night that was in it?” he said admiringly.

“That’s the good bracing air of Dun Laoghaire,” she said.

Why
had she said that? There were words like “bracing” you didn’t say. They reminded people of big, jolly girls on hikes. Like the word “strapping.”

But he hadn’t made any unfortunate word associations. He still seemed quite admiring.

“Whatever it is, it works. Our house is full of the-day-after feeling, glasses and ashtrays piled up in the kitchen.”

“It was a lovely party, thank you very much.”

“It was fine. Aengus sends you his regards. He was very taken with you.”

“I think he thought I was mad.”

“No. Why should he think that?”

It had been the wrong thing to say. Why had she said it? Bringing herself down, why couldn’t she have asked about Aengus?

The waiter came and fussed over them. He was a kindly man, like a thinner version of Mario. Benny wondered was he any relation. There couldn’t be that many Italians working in Ireland.

Benny decided to ask him.

“Do you have a relative working in Knockglen?”

He pronounced the name of her home town over and over, rolling it around, but his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Why do you think I have relations in Knocka Glenna?”

“There’s an Italian there, called Mario.”

Benny wished the purple and red sunburst carpet would open up at her feet and suck her into it, then close over her head.

Jack rescued her. “It’s probably a bit like, do you know my uncle Mo in Chicago?” he said. “I’m always doing that.”

She couldn’t imagine him ever doing it. Was there any way at all of trying to get back some of the magic of last night.

They hadn’t even begun the lunch and already he must have regretted asking her. She had talked about the bracing air of Dun Laoghaire, reminding him of fat ladies on postcards. She had assumed that his younger brother must think she was mad. She had engaged the waiter in an endless and confused dialogue about whether he knew another Italian living miles away. What a great fun person she was. And there wasn’t even anybody in the restaurant to distract him, to make him feel that the outing had any excitement at all. Benny wished she were back in the Dolphin Hotel with half of Dublin there and all the Rosemarys and Sheilas and even Carmel and Sean picking at each other and feeding each other bread rolls.

Anything was better than this catastrophic setting.

“Isn’t it super to have it to ourselves,” Jack said at that moment. “I feel like a sultan, or some millionaire. They do—you know—ring up restaurants and say they want to book all the tables so that they won’t be disturbed.”

“They do?” Benny asked eagerly.

At least it was conversation and he seemed to be making the best of the place being empty.

“Well, I did it today of course! Carlo, we need the whole place to ourselves … a pianist possibly, no. Well, all right. Just a few violinists at the table later. Just don’t let any hoi polloi in, no awful Dubliners having their lunch or anything sordid like that.”

They laughed and laughed just like last night.

“And what did Carlo say?”

“He said, ‘For you Meester Foley anything you like, but only eef the Signorina ees lovely.’ ”

The words were bitten back. She was about to say, “Well, we fell down on that one, didn’t we?”

She was going to put herself down for fear of thinking that she might actually believe herself to be acceptable. But something warned her it wasn’t the right thing to do. She put her head on one side and smiled at him.

“And then you arrived and he saw you were very beautiful, so he has now put a House Full sign on the door,” Jack said.

“Is that Carlo who’s serving us do you think?” Benny asked.

“No idea,” Jack said. “He looks much more like a man who has a secret cousin in Knockglen, but didn’t want anyone to know.”

“I must remember every detail of this place to tell Mario about it,” Benny said, looking happily around.

“You’re lovely, Benny,” Jack said, and laid his hand on hers.

Clodagh told her aunt that she had been barred from Healy’s. It didn’t matter all that much because it wasn’t a place she planned on visiting much anyway, but she felt that Peggy should know from her before anyone else told her.

“What were you doing the pair of you?” Peggy asked.

“I’d tell you if we
were
doing anything you know that. But as it happened we just walked in. She decided she didn’t like the look of us.”

“She can’t do that under the Innkeepers Act.”

“I think she can. Management reserves the right and all that. We thought you ought to know, you and Mario, but honestly Fonsie and I don’t care. That’s the truth.”

The truth also was that Peggy and Mario did care. Very much. Neither of them liked the way that the young people dressed, in fact it was a source of great common grumbling between them. But to be refused service in the town’s only hotel. That was something else. That was war.

It wasn’t long before Mrs. Healy discovered how the lines were being drawn. Mr. Flood, who was having one of his clear spells where he neither saw nor mentioned the nun in the tree who had been visiting him with messages, said that it was time that someone had taken a stand. Those two were an abomination. He had read in the papers that there was an international movement to take over the civilized world, and that its members knew each other by these kinds of garish clothes. It was no accident that Fonsie and Clodagh had gravitated to each other, he said, nodding his head sagely. Mrs. Carroll was with Mrs. Healy too. The sooner this very undesirable influence in the town was stamped on the better. Neither of these two young people had parents to deal with them, relying only on a maiden aunt and a bachelor uncle. No wonder they had run wild.

Mrs. Carroll of the grocery said that her own daughter Maire, who was working in the shop and doing bookkeeping by correspondence course, had often been drawn to the bright lights in the cafe, and to the garish clothes in what had once been a respectable window. Mrs. Healy had been quite right to make her point.

Mrs. Kennedy on the other hand took a different view. She was heard to say that Mrs. Healy had a cheek. She hadn’t even been born in Knockglen. Who did she think she was, making rules and regulations for the people of the town? Mrs. Kennedy said that there were many unsavory people seen in the corner of Healy’s bar on a Fair Day and when commercial travelers had too much to drink and knew they could always get a drink in the hotel. Mrs. Kennedy, who had never liked the young widow and thought that her own husband used to spend too many evenings there, was outraged that she should think of refusing a drink to a niece of Peggy Pine, no matter how unwisely the poor girl garbed herself.

Birdie Mac wasn’t sure. She was a timid woman who had lived all her life looking after an aged mother. She had neither wanted to do this or not wanted to. It was just that Birdie was unable to make a decision. She had never made her own mind up about anything. Even though she was a friend of Peggy’s, she also listened to what Mrs. Carroll said. Even though Mario was a good customer and bought biscuits from her every day, she still agreed with poor Mr. Flood that Mario’s nephew was going too far altogether and how could it be stopped unless somebody shouted stop.

She didn’t like Mrs. Healy personally, but she admired her courage in running a business so well in a man’s world, instead of retreating humbly behind the counter of a sweetshop, which was all that Birdie had been able to do in terms of independent living.