Circle of Friends (43 page)

When the piano tuner came to the school he was always
asked to do a further chore and had been led through the kitchen gardens up the path to the piano which he always told Mother Francis was twenty times better than anything they had in the music room of St. Mary’s.

“It’s not ours,” Mother Francis used to say.

“Then why am I tuning it?” he used to ask every year.

Eve sat down at the fire and hugged herself.

As in so many things, Mother Francis had been right. It was very nice to have a place of your own.

The Hogans had decided not to talk to Benny yet about Sean Walsh’s proposition. Or ultimatum.

It had been very courteously couched, but there was no question about it. If he were not invited to be a partner in the business he would leave, and it would be known why he left. Nobody in Knockglen would think that he had been fairly treated. Everyone knew what his input had been, and how great his loyalty.

Sean did not need to spell out what would be the future for the business if he were allowed to leave. As it was, he was the one holding it together. Mr. Hogan had no real business sense in terms of what today’s customers wanted. And old Mike in the shop wasn’t going to be any help to him in that regard.

They would talk to Benny about it, but not now. Not since she had put herself out to be polite and courteous to him during the Christmas meal. She might flare up again and they didn’t want to risk that.

“Has Sean been asked to the party above in Eve’s cottage?” Eddie asked, although he knew that there was no question of the boy’s having been invited.

“No, Father.”

To Benny’s relief the telephone rang. But it was startling to have someone call at nine o’clock in the evening. She hoped that it wasn’t Jack to say he wasn’t coming.

Benny answered it. Nan Mahon was on the line, pleading, begging that she could come to stay tomorrow night for the party. Nan had said that she didn’t think she would be able to come to Knockglen when the party was first mentioned. What had changed her mind? A lot of things, apparently. She would explain everything when she arrived. No, she wouldn’t need to be met on the bus. She’d be getting a lift. She’d explain all that later too. No, no idea what time. Could she say she’d see Benny at the party?

Next morning, on the day of the party, Benny went up early to Eve’s cottage to tell her the news.

Eve was furious.

“What does she think she’s doing, announcing her arrival like some bloody old king from the olden days.”

“You did ask her to the party,” Benny said mildly.

“Yes, and she said no.”

“I don’t know what
you’re
bellyaching about. It’s just one more for the party. I’m the one who was dragging beds all night with Patsy and checking that there’s no dust on the legs of the furniture in case Nan does a household inspection.”

Eve didn’t know why she was annoyed. It was, on the face of it, unreasonable. Nan was her friend. Nan had lent her that beautiful red skirt for the dance. Nan had advised Eve on everything from how to put on eyeliner to putting shoe trees in every shoe every night. The others would be delighted to see her. It would make the party go with an even bigger swing. It was strange that she felt so resentful.

They sat having coffee in the kitchen of Eve’s home, the two of them puzzling out who was giving Nan a lift. Benny said it couldn’t be Jack because he was coming in a car with Aidan and Carmel and Sean. They knew it wasn’t with Rosemary Ryan and Sheila, still deadly rivals and driving discontentedly with Bill Dunne and Johnny O’Brien.

Benny was thinking about Jack and how after tonight surely Rosemary and Sheila would have to give up their hopes of him, once they had seen how he and Benny felt about each other. To say straight out that he had missed her. To say it on the phone on Christmas Day. It was the most wonderful thing that could have happened.

Eve’s brow was furrowed. She wished she could think that Nan was just coming for the party. She felt sure that it was in order to wangle an invitation to Westlands. Which she would not get from Eve and that was for sure and for certain.

Heather came to call wearing her hacking jacket and little hard hat.

“You look as if you’ve just got off a horse,” Eve said.

“I have,” and Heather proudly showed her pony tied to the gate.

It was eating some of the bushes within its reach. Eve leapt up in panic. Those were her only decoration, she said, and now this terrible horse was hoovering it all up. Heather laughed, and said nonsense, her beautiful pony was only nuzzling. He wouldn’t dream of eating anything between meals. Benny and Eve went out and stroked the gray horse, Malcolm, the light of young Heather’s life. They kept away from the mouth with the big yellow teeth and marveled at how fearless Heather seemed to be. Heather had come to help. She thought she would be useful in setting up the games and was very perplexed when there seemed to be no games to set up. No ducking for apples like at Halloween. Heather was at a party where they had advertisements all cut out of papers, just the word. The thing that was being advertised was cut out. Everyone had a pencil and paper and the one who got most of them right won.

In desperation they suggested she blow up balloons. That pleased her. She had plenty of breath, she said proudly.
As she sat in an ever-increasing heap of green, red and yellow balloons Heather asked casually if Simon had been invited to the party.

“No, it’s not really his kind of party,” Eve said. “And besides, he’d be very old for it.”

She wondered why she was making excuses for not inviting this man for whom she had felt nothing but dislike all her life. But then who could ever have foreseen the way things would turn out. That she would be very fond of his younger sister, and that she would have been settled in this house where she had vowed never to live. The day might well come when her cousin Simon Westward could cross this door, but not for a long time yet.

Jack Foley was recognized as the expert on Knockglen. He had been there before after all. He knew Benny’s house. He had been given clear instructions on how to get to the quarry road. You came in like the bus to the square and took a hilly path that had no signpost on it, but looked as if it were leading to a farmhouse.

There was another way through the convent, but you couldn’t take the car and Eve had been adamant that there was to be no horseplay anywhere near her nuns.

Aidan wanted them to go and have a look at the convent first. He stared out of the passenger seat at the high walls and the big wrought-iron gate.

“Imagine being brought up in a place like that. Isn’t it a miracle that she’s normal,” he said.

“But
is
she normal?” Jack wanted to know. “She does appear to fancy you, which doesn’t augur well for her state of mind.”

They wound their way up the perilous path. The curtains were pulled back in the cottage and they could see firelight, and oil lamps, a Christmas tree and balloons.

“Isn’t it gorgeous,” breathed Carmel, whose plans for
the future when Sean was an established businessman now widened to include a small country cottage for weekends.

Jack liked it too.

“It’s away from everywhere. You could be here and nobody know a thing about it.”

“Unless of course the sounds of ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’ were coming out of every window,” Aidan Lynch said happily, leaping from the car and running in to find Eve.

Clodagh had brought a clothes rail and hangers up from the shop. It meant that Eve’s bed wouldn’t be swamped with people’s garments and there would be room for the girls to sit at the little dressing table to titivate themselves.

Benny was in there doing a final examination of her face when she heard Jack’s voice. She must not run out and fling herself into his arms as she wanted to. It was more important than ever now that she let him make the first move. A man like Jack used to having girls throw themselves at him would not want that.

She would wait, even if it killed her.

The door of Eve’s bedroom opened. It was probably Carmel, coming in to dab her face and say something cozy about Sean.

She looked in the mirror and over her shoulder she saw Jack. He closed the door behind him and came over to her, leaning his hands on her shoulders and looking at her reflection in the mirror.

“Happy Christmas,” he said in a soft voice.

She smiled a broad smile. But she was looking at his eyes not her own so she didn’t know how it looked. Not too broad and toothy she hoped.

Clodagh had covered a strapless bra in royal blue velvet to look like one of those smart boned tops, and then put a binding of the same material down a white cardigan.

Naturally Benny had worn a blouse under it when she left Lisbeg, but the blouse had been removed and was folded neatly to await the home journey.

He sat on the edge of Eve’s bed, and held both her hands.

“Oh, I really missed you,” he said.

“What did you miss?” She didn’t sound flirtatious. She just wanted to know.

“I missed telling you things, listening to you telling things. I missed your face, and kissing you.” He drew her toward him, and kissed her for a long time.

The door opened and Clodagh came in. She was dressed from head to foot in black lace with a mantilla and a high comb in her hair. She looked like a Spanish dancer. Her face was powdered dead white and her lips were scarlet.

“I was actually coming to see if you wanted any assistance with your dress Benny, but it appears you don’t,” Clodagh said, without seeming the slightest confused by the scene she had walked in on.

“This is Clodagh,” mumbled Benny.

Jack’s face lit up as it did when he was introduced to any woman. It wasn’t that he was eyeing them up and down. He didn’t even try to flirt with them. He liked women. Benny remembered suddenly that his father was like that too. At the big party in their house Dr. Foley had been pleased to greet each new girl who was presented to him. There was nothing but warmth and delight in his reaction. So it was with Jack. And tonight when all the others arrived he would be the same.

It must be a wonderful thing to be so popular she thought, to be able to please people just by being there.

Clodagh was explaining to Jack how she had got the lace in an old trunk upstairs in the Kennedys’ house. Mrs. Kennedy had told her she could go and rummage there and she had found marvelous things altogether. In return she had made Mrs. Kennedy four straight skirts with a pleat in
the back. It was amazing with all the plumage available that some people still wanted to dress like dowdy sparrows.

Jack put his arm around Benny’s shoulders.

“I’ve hardly seen any sparrows in Knockglen. You’re all pretty exotic birds to me.”

Together with his arm around her shoulder and followed by Clodagh in her startling black and white they came out of Eve’s room and in full view of Sheila and Rosemary, of Fonsie and Maire Carroll, of Bill Dunne and Johnny O’Brien, they joined the party.

Without Benny Hogan having to maneuver it one little bit, they joined the party as a couple.

There never had been a party like it. Everyone agreed on that. From Fonsie’s wonderful solo demonstrations to the whole place on its feet, from Guy Mitchell and “I never felt more like singing the Blues.” The soup had been a magnificent idea. Bowl after bowl of it disappeared, sandwiches, sausage rolls and more soup. Eve served it from the big convent cauldron, her face flushed and excited. This was her house. These were her friends. It couldn’t be better.

Only during the supper did she remember that Nan hadn’t arrived.

“Perhaps she didn’t get a lift after all.” Benny was on a cloud of her own.

“Did we tell her how to find the house?”

“Anyone in Knockglen would tell her where you live.” Benny squeezed Eve’s arm. “It’s going wonderfully isn’t it?”

“Yes. He can’t take his eyes off you.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean the party.”

Benny did mean that of course as well. Jack had been at her side all night. He had had a few dances with the others as a matter of form, but for the most of the night he was with her, touching, laughing, dancing, holding, swaying, including her in every conversation.

Rosemary Ryan watched them with some bewilderment for the first few dances.

“I didn’t know anything about you and Jack,” she said, as she and Benny were having a glass of punch.

“Well, I did tell you I met him from time to time in the Annexe.”

“That’s right. You did.”

Rosemary was quite fair-minded. Benny had said she was meeting Jack. If Rosemary read nothing into it then it was her own fault.

“You do look very well,” she said grudgingly, but again struggled to be just. “Have you lost a lot of weight or put on more makeup or what?”

Benny didn’t even react. She knew that whatever it was, Jack seemed to like it. And he didn’t care who else knew. Benny had thought that somehow it would have had to be a secret about them.

Aidan asked Eve for a pound of sugar.

“What do you want that for?”

“I read that if you put it in the carburetor of a car, then the car won’t start.”

“How about trying to find some discovery that would make it start. That seems to me to be the better invention,” Eve said.

“You’re wrong. I want Jack’s father’s car never to start again. Then we can stay here in this magical place and never go away.”

“Yeah, terrific. And I’ll have to put up Sean and Carmel for the night as well,” Eve said.

“If I stayed, would you take me to meet the nuns tomorrow?” Aidan asked.

Eve told him that there was no question of his staying, at any time, but least of all now when Mother Clare was below watching every move. Or indeed maybe outside in the
fuchsia bushes with a torch, for all they knew. But she was glad that he liked the place. And when the weather got finer, he might come and spend a whole day. Aidan said they would probably be spending much of their adult life here. During the long vacations when he was called to the Bar. They would want to escape here with the children, away from the loud booming voices of his parents.

“And what about my job?” Eve asked, entertained in spite of herself by the fantasy.