Circle of Friends (38 page)

“Well, if you have him …”

“I want you,” Heather said simply.

Simon arrived in the car.

“Think of me as the chauffeur,” he said. “You ladies are in charge.”

Almost immediately he gave them his own plan for the afternoon. A drive through County Wicklow and afternoon tea in a rather nice hotel he knew.

Eve and Heather had been planning to take the train to Bray, go on the bumpers and have ice creams with hot butterscotch sauce. Eve was pleased that Simon’s outing sounded so dull and tame compared to her own. She knew which Heather would have preferred.

But Heather was a dutiful sister, and she saw far too
little of Simon already. She gave a mild show of enthusiasm. Eve after a deliberate pause did the same.

Simon looked from one to the other. He knew that this was second best. He was very cheery and answered all Heather’s questions about her pony, about Clara’s puppies, about Woffles the rabbit.

He explained that Mrs. Walsh was still as silent and as majestic on her bicycle as ever. That Bee Moore was upset over some young man she had wanted and who had turned his attentions to Another. Eve had to put her hand over her face when Heather’s questioning revealed the man to be Mossy Rooney and Another to be Patsy.

“How’s grandfather?” Heather asked.

“The same. Come on, we’re boring Eve.”

“But he’s Eve’s grandfather too.”

“Absolutely.”

The subject was closed. Eve knew he wanted something. She had no idea what it was.

At teatime he brought it up.

“That was a remarkably beautiful girl, your friend.”

“Which friend?”

“In the shop. At the dance. The blond girl.”

“Oh yes?”

“I was wondering who she is?”

“Were you?”

“Yes, I was.” He was short now.

For ages afterward Eve hugged herself with delight and congratulation that she had managed not to answer such a direct question with any kind of response that would please him. And yet she had remained perfectly polite. For the girl who used to speak so unguardedly, whose temper was a legend in St. Mary’s, it was a triumph.

“Who is she? Oh, she’s a student at UCD, doing First Arts, like about six hundred of us.”

Her smile had told Simon Westward that this was all he was going to get.

The veterinary student was a nice boy called Kevin Hickey. He was very polite and he thanked Mrs. Hegarty for having taken his new green sweater to sew a tape on the back of it in case he wanted to hang it up with a loop. He had thought you should fold them, or put them on a clothes hanger, but still, it was very nice of her. He might wear it tonight. It was a great color. When he picked it up he thought there was a faint smell of perfume, but he must have imagined it. Or else it was Mrs. Hegarty’s perfume. Kevin Hickey’s mother was dead. It was nice to live in a house where there was a kind woman looking after him. He had asked his father to send her a turkey for Christmas. It would come by train, wrapped in straw and tied well with string.

He smelled his green jumper again. There was definitely some cosmetic. Maybe if he hung it up in the fresh air by the window it would go away.

He heard the gate opening and drew back. He wouldn’t like Mrs. Hegarty to see him airing the jumper. But it wasn’t Mrs. Hegarty back from her shopping. It was a dark-haired man he hadn’t seen before.

The door bell rang and rang, so Kevin ran down to answer it. Mrs. Hegarty was out, he said. The man wanted to wait. He looked respectable. Kevin was at a loss.

“It really is all right.” The man smiled at him. “I’m an old friend.”

“And what’s your name?”

“It’s Hegarty also, as it happens.”

As Kevin went back upstairs he turned and saw the man who was sitting in the hall pick up the picture of Mrs. Hegarty’s son who had died. Possibly he was a relation.

Sheila noticed that Jack ran off immediately after his law lectures these days. No hanging around and chatting. No
little jokes, just off like an arrow. Once or twice she asked him why he needed to run so fast.

“Training.” He had smiled at her with that boyish kind of laugh which meant he knew he would be forgiven anything.

Sheila decided that he must be seeing that Rosemary Ryan in First Arts.

She inquired from Carmel if that was true. It was easy to talk to Carmel because she wasn’t really playing in the same game, she was so preoccupied with Sean that other people were only a vague background to her.

“Rosemary and Jack? I don’t think so,” Carmel said, after a lot of thought. “No, I haven’t seen them together at all. I’ve seen Jack in the Annexe a couple of mornings, but only talking to Benny Hogan.”

“Ah, well, that’s all right, so,” said Sheila with some relief.

Benny and Patsy were friends again. It had taken the promised stockings plus a tin of French Moss talcum powder and an explanation that her nerves were overwrought because she was frightened of going to the dance. Once Patsy had come round she was as usual a strong champion of the daughter of the house.

“What did you have to be frightened of? Aren’t you a fine big girl who shows all the signs of being well fed and well looked after all her life?”

That was one of the things that Benny feared was only too obvious. But it was hard to explain to small, stooped Patsy who had been brought up without enough to eat in an orphanage.

“How’s your romance?” she asked instead.

“He’s not much with the words,” Patsy complained.

“But the words he does say? Are they nice?”

“It’s very hard to know with men what they mean,”
Patsy said sagely. “You’d need someone standing at your shoulder saying this means this, and this means the other.”

Benny agreed fervently. When Jack Foley said he had missed her at a party did he mean that he had looked around and thought it would be lovely if only Benny had been there? Had he thought it all evening, or only once? And if he missed her that much why had he gone to it? At the party in Jack’s house Aengus had asked Benny if she was one of the ones who was always phoning looking for Jack. She had decided that she would never be one of those. It had worked so well the way things were. Or had it? Patsy was right. With men it was impossible to know what they meant. Nan used to say they never meant anything, but that was too depressing to contemplate.

Mrs. Healy had been disappointed not to see Sean Walsh arriving full of support for her predicament. She knew his distaste for Fonsie and Clodagh and the kind of life-style they represented. But then Sean was not a customer in Healy’s Hotel. It had something to do with not presuming she imagined. Not putting himself forward, styling himself as Mr. Hogan’s equal when he was in fact a hired hand.

It was nice to see that kind of respect but sometimes Sean carried it too far. Like polishing the brasses, like living in a cramped room over the shop. He seemed to be biding his time and maybe he might bide it too long.

“You should invite young Sean Walsh in for a drink with you sometime,” she suggested to Eddie Hogan.

Eddie’s honest face told her what she already knew. “I’ve asked him a dozen times, but he won’t come in with me. I don’t think he’s a drinking man. Weren’t we blessed the day he arrived in Knockglen?”

Emily Mahon marveled at the way her daughter kept her clothes and her room. Every garment was sponged and hung up when it was taken off. Her coats and jackets always looked as if they had come straight from the dry cleaners.

The shoes had newspapers stuffed in the toes and stood on a small rack by the window. She polished her belts and handbags until they gleamed. On the wash handbasin in her room were samples of soaps that Emily had been able to get her through the hotel. There was a book on How to Apply Makeup. Nan Mahon didn’t rely on weekly magazines or Sunday newspapers to teach her style. She did the thing thoroughly.

Emily smiled affectionately as she saw the books on etiquette that Nan studied as well as her university texts. She had once told her mother that anyone could talk to anyone if they knew the rules. It was a matter of learning them.

The book was open at a section telling you how introductions are made.

“Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts, Barons and their wives are introduced as Lord or Lady X, Honourables as plain Mr.” Imagine if Nan was in a world where such things would be of use to her. But then it wasn’t all that far beyond the possible. Look at the way she had looked at that dance. People who weren’t even part of the student crowd were admiring her. She might very well end up in twinset and pearls on the steps of a big house, with dogs beside her and servants to do her work.

It had always been Emily Mahon’s dream for her daughter. The only problem was what part would she play in it. And it didn’t bear thinking about how little a part Nan’s father might be expected to take in any such life-style.

If Nan were to get there it was easy to see that she would no longer be any part of Maple Gardens.

Rosemary Ryan wore far too much makeup for the daytime. Benny could see that quite clearly now. There was a ridge at the side of her jaw where it stopped.

She was also brighter than people gave her credit for. When she was with a crowd she always simpered and played the dumb blonde, but in tutorials she was sharp as a razor.

“What are you going to do when this is over?” she asked Benny.

“Go to the Annexe.” Benny was meeting Jack. She hoped Rosemary wouldn’t come too. “I have to meet a whole lot of different people,” she said hastily, to discourage her.

“No, I meant this. All of this.” Rosemary waved a vague hand around the University.

“Do a postgrad diploma and be a librarian, I think,” Benny said. “What about you?”

“I think I’ll be an air hostess,” Rosemary said.

“You don’t need a degree for that.”

“No, but it helps.” Rosemary had it worked out. “It’s a great way to get a husband.”

Benny didn’t know whether she meant doing a degree was a good way of being an air hostess. She didn’t like to ask. It was such a strange coincidence that Rosemary should say that, because only the day before Carmel had asked Nan would she think of joining Aer Lingus. She had the looks and the style. And she’d meet lots of men.

“Only businessmen,” Nan had said, as if that settled it.

Carmel’s eyes had narrowed. Her Sean was doing a B.Comm. and was aiming hard to be a businessman.

“Carmel says Nan doesn’t think it’s a good job.” Rosemary was probing. “Do you think Nan’s going out with Jack Foley?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t been sighted much. I wondered was he holed up with someone mysterious.”

“
I
see him from time to time,” Benny said.

“Oh, that’s all right then.” Rosemary was pleased. “He’s around. He hasn’t been snatched away from under our noses. What a relief!”

Kit Hegarty let herself in and found her husband, Joseph, sitting in the kitchen.

She put her shopping on the floor and steadied herself with a hand on the kitchen chair.

“Who let you in?” she asked.

“A boy with freckles and a Kerry accent. Don’t say anything to him. He interrogated me and asked me to sit in the hall.”