Circle of Friends (65 page)

Nan slipped into the car easily and laid her overnight bag on the backseat.

“Change of plan,” he said. “Let’s have a drink and discuss it.”

It was always something that made Benny smile, that phrase. Nan didn’t know it.

“Why?”

“Because we can’t go down there. Eve’s going home.”

“Damn!” She seemed very annoyed.

“Isn’t it lucky we discovered.” He wanted to be congratulated on the amazing accident that made Aidan reveal this to him.

“Isn’t it unlucky that she chose tonight of all nights to go down there.”

Jack noticed that Nan never referred to Eve by name.

“Well, it
is
her house,” he said with a little laugh.

Nan didn’t seem amused.

“I really wanted to be there tonight,” she said. Even frowning she looked beautiful.

Then her face cleared. She suggested this lovely hotel in Wicklow. It was absolutely marvelous. Very quiet and people didn’t disturb you. It was exactly where they could go.

Jack knew the name. It was a place where his parents had dinner sometimes. It was much too expensive. He wouldn’t be able to afford it and he told her so.

“Do you have a checkbook?”

“Yes, but not enough money in the bank.”

“We’ll get the money tomorrow. Or I will. Let’s go there.”

“And stay the night. Nan we’re not married. We can’t.” He looked alarmed.

“They don’t ask for your wedding certificate.”

He looked at her. She changed her voice slightly.

“I’ve heard of people who’ve been there, and stayed the night. There was no problem.”

As they drove out south past Dun Laoghaire they saw the house where Eve lived with Kit Hegarty.

“Why on earth can’t she be there tonight,” Nan said.

Jack thought it would certainly be a lot cheaper for everyone if she were.

He dreaded the thought of writing a check that bounced in this hotel, and having to face his mother and father when it all came out.

He wished that Nan could just have faced the fact that this was one night they would have to put off. Benny would have been most agreeable and understanding.

He wished he didn’t keep thinking of Benny at times like this. It was as hypocritical as hell.

Benny and Eve met in the square next morning. They sat in the shelter and waited for Mikey to arrive with the bus.

“Why do we call this a square?” Eve asked. “It’s only a bit of waste ground really.”

“That’s until the young tigers get their hands on it. It might be a skating rink next week,” Benny laughed.

It was true that Clodagh and Fonsie were tireless in their efforts to change Knockglen. They had even frightened other people into improving their businesses.

Fonsie had gone to Flood’s and said that if ever he owned a fine frontage like that he’d have the lettering repainted in gold. Mr. Flood, terrified that somehow it would be taken from him unless he lived up to this young man’s expectations,
had the signwriters in next day. Clodagh had stood in Mrs. Carroll’s untidy grocery and chatted about the food inspectors who were closing shops down all over the place. It was amazing what a coat of paint and a spring clean did to fool them. All the time she pretended she was talking in the abstract: But she could have told Mossy Rooney that he would be called in next day, as indeed he was.

Clodagh told Mossy to put up a fitting for an awning without being asked. Dessie Burns was now stocking various colors of big canvas blinds. Clodagh and Fonsie were going to have their town looking like a rainbow before they finished.

“I suppose they’ll get married,” Eve said.

“Clodagh says never. There’s too many nuptials coming up, she says we’ll be sick of weddings. Mrs. Healy and Mr. Walsh, Patsy and Mossy, and Maire Carroll home from Dublin with a fiancé already I gather, unlike the two of us who were very slow off the mark.”

They were giggling as usual when they got on the bus. Nothing had changed since they were schoolgirls.

Rosemary was full of smiles. The hairdo had been highly successful, she said. Benny had lent her three shillings. It was counted meticulously back to her. Tom had been very impressed.

“It looks a bit flattened,” Benny said, examining the hairdo.

“Yes, I know,” Rosemary said delightedly. “I owe Jack a shilling. Will you give it to him for me.”

Benny said she would. She’d be seeing him in the Annexe anyway.

Sean and Carmel had a table. Benny joined them with Jack’s shilling clutched in her hand so that she wouldn’t forget to give it to him.

“Jack was looking for you everywhere this morning,” Sean said. Benny was pleased.

“He went and stood outside a Latin lecture, he thought it was yours, but it was Baby Latin.”

“Oh, I’m not Baby Latin,” Benny said proudly. She was just one step above it. Everyone in First Arts had to do some kind of Latin in their first year. Mother Francis would have killed her if she had gone into the easy option.

Bill Dunne joined them.

“Jack said if I saw you, to say that he’ll meet you at one o’clock in the Main Hall,” Bill said. “Though if you want my personal opinion you wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole. He hasn’t shaved. He’s like a bear with a sore head. He’s not worthy of you.”

Benny laughed. It made her feel as high as a kite when Bill Dunne said things like this in front of everyone. It confirmed somehow that she was Jack’s girl.

“He’s not coming here now then.” She had been looking at the door.

“Him come anywhere? I asked him about cars and all for the outing to Knockglen after Easter. He said not to talk to him about cars, outings or Knockglen or he’d knock my head off.”

Benny knew that Bill was dramatizing it all, so that he could cast himself in the role of the beautifully mannered nice person and Jack the villain.

Since this was different to the way things were, everyone knew it was a joke. She smiled at Bill affectionately. She knew Jack was longing for the great weekend in Knockglen. It would be even better than Christmas.

Everyone had been planning for it for ages. Sean had been collecting money from people, a shilling now and a shilling then. The fund was building up.

There would be a gathering in Eve’s, in Clodagh’s, and very possibly something upstairs in Hogan’s. The rooms were so big and with high ceilings they positively called out to have a party. Benny had been sounding her mother out. And the signs looked good.

She was pleased that Jack was looking for her.

For the past few weeks he had never wanted to see her on her own.

Benny hoped that he might want them to go off to lunch together, like that time ages ago when they had gone to Carlo’s.

Maybe she should take
him
there for a treat. But she’d wait and see his mood. She didn’t want to be too pushy.

Bill was right. He
did
look very bad. Pale and tired as if he hadn’t slept all night. He still looked just as handsome, maybe even more so. There was less of the conventional College Hero and more of the lead player in some film or theatre piece.

Yes, Jack Foley looked as if he were in a play.

And he spoke as if he were in one too.

“Benny, I have to talk to you. Where can we go that’s away from all these people?”

She laughed at him good-naturedly.

“Hey, you were the one who said the Main Hall at one o’clock. I didn’t choose it. Did you think it would be deserted and just the two of us?”

The crowds swarmed past them in and out, and just standing around in groups talking, duffel coats over arms now, scarves loosely hanging. The weather was getting too warm for them, but they were the badge of being a student. People didn’t want to discard them entirely.

“Please,” he said.

“Well, would you like to go to Carlo’s, you know that lovely place we went …”

“
No
.” He almost shouted it.

Everywhere else would be full of people they knew. Even if they were to sit in Stephen’s Green, half the University would pass by on its way to stroll down Grafton Street at lunchtime.

Benny was at a loss, and yet she knew she had to make the decision.

Jack looked all in.

“We could sit by the canal,” she suggested. “We could get apples for us and some stale bread in case we see the swans.”

She looked eager and anxious to please him.

It seemed to distress him still further.

“Oh, Jesus, Benny,” he said, and pulled her toward him. A flicker of fear came and went. She felt something was wrong, but then she was always feeling that and it never was.

There was a place near one of the locks where they often sat. There was a bit of raised ground.

Benny took off her coat and laid it down for them to sit on.

“No, no we’ll ruin it.”

“It’s only clay. It’ll brush off. You’re as bad as Nan,” she teased him.

“It’s Nan,” he said.

“What is?”

“She’s pregnant. She found out yesterday.”

Benny felt a jolt of shock for her friend. At the same time she felt the sense of surprise that Nan of all people had been going all the way with Simon Westward. Nan. So cool and distant. How had she made love properly? Benny would have thought that she would have been the last person on earth to have found herself in this position.

“Poor Nan,” she said. “Is she very upset?”

“She’s out of her mind with worry,” he said.

They sat in silence.

Benny went over the whole awfulness of it in her mind. A university career in ruins, a baby by the age of twenty. And possibly from the look of sympathy on Jack’s face a problem about Simon Westward.

Eve would have been right about him.

He would never marry Nan Mahon from the north side of Dublin, a builder’s daughter. And beautiful though she was, the fact that she had given in to him would make him less respectful of her than ever.

“What’s she going to do? I suppose she’s not going to get married?”

She looked at Jack.

His face was working with emotion. He seemed to be struggling for words.

“She
is
getting married.”

Benny looked at him alarmed. This wasn’t normal speech.

He took her hand, and held it to his face. There were tears on his face. Jack Foley was crying.

“She’s getting married … to me,” he said.

She looked at him in disbelief.

She said absolutely nothing. She knew her mouth was open and her face red with fright.

He was still holding her hand to his face.

His body was shaking with sobs.

“We have to get married, Benny,” he said. “It’s my baby.”

E
ve was in the Singing Kettle when she saw Benny at the door. At first she thought that Benny was going to join them and was about to pull up another chair.

Then she saw her face.

“See you later,” she said hastily to the group.

“You haven’t finished your chips.” Aidan was amazed. Nothing could be that pressing.

But Eve was out in Leeson Street.

She drew Benny away from the doorway where they were in the main path of almost everyone they knew.

Then, leaning against the iron railings of a house, Benny began to tell her the tale. Sometimes it was hard to hear the words, and sometimes she said the same words over, and over and over again.

Like that he said he loved her, he loved Benny. He really did and he wouldn’t have had this happen for the world. But there was nothing else that could be done. The announcement would be in
The Irish Times
on Saturday.

Eve looked across the road and saw a taxi letting someone off at St. Vincent’s Private Nursing Home. She dragged Benny through the traffic and pushed her into the back of it.

“Dun Laoghaire,” she said briskly.

“Are you girls all right?” The taxi driver watched them
in the mirror. The big girl look particularly poorly, as if she might get sick all over his car.

“We have the fare,” Eve said.

“I didn’t mean that,” he began.

“You did a bit.” They both grinned.

Eve said to Benny that she should rest. There’d be plenty of time to talk when they got home.

Kit was out. She was shopping for a new outfit for Easter when she was going to Kerry as a guest of Kevin Hickey and his father.