Circle of Friends (15 page)

Through her tears Kit managed something like a real smile.

“I will come, Mother. The convent in Knockglen. But how will I know you? Who will I ask for?”

“I’m afraid you won’t have any difficulty in remembering the name. Like your son, I was called after St. Francis.”

Mario looked at Fonsie’s yellow tie with disapproval.

“You’re going to frighten them away.”

“Don’t be an eejit Mario. This is the way people dress nowadays.”

“You no call me eejit. I know what eejit means.”

“It’s about the only word of English you
do
know.”

“You no speak to your uncle that way.”

“Listen, Mario, pass me those biscuit tins. If we put the player on top of something tinny it’ll sound a bit more like real music.”

“Eeet soun horrible, Fonsie. Who will come to hear things so very, very loud?” Mario put his hands on his ears.

“The kids will.”

“The kids have no money.”

“The old ones wouldn’t come in here in a fit anyway.”

The door opened and Sean Walsh walked in.

“Now do you see!” Fonsie cried.

At the very same moment Mario said, “Now, what did I tell you!”

Sean looked from one to the other with distaste. It was a place he rarely went, and now he had been twice in twenty-four hours; last night with Benny, and tonight because he was so late and fussed getting back from his useless journey to Dublin. He had not been able to buy himself provisions, both grocery shops were closed. Normally Sean Walsh divided his custom. One day he might patronize Hickey’s, beside Mr. Flood; other days he would go to Carroll’s, immediately next door to Hogan’s. It was as if he were preparing for the day he would be a big man himself in this town and wanted everyone on his side, wanted them all to think of him as a customer. If he had been a drinking man he would have had a half pint in every establishment. It was the way to get on. But tonight there had been no time to get the cheese or sardines or cold ham that made his evening meal; Sean never liked to cook in his bed-sit above the premises of Hogan’s lest the smell of food linger and be deemed offensive. He had thought that he might slip in for a quick snack that would keep body and soul together before he went back to his room to brood about the situation that he had handled so badly.

Now it appeared that Mario and his half-wit nephew were making fun of him.

“He’s old and he’s come in here two times,” Mario was saying.

“He’s not old, and the word is twice, you gobdaw,” the unappealing Fonsie said.

Sean wished that he had gone down to Birdie Mac’s and knocked on the door for a bar of KitKat, anything rather than face these two.

“Are you serving me food, or am I interrupting some kind of talent contest?”

“How old are you, Sean?” Fonsie said. Sean looked at him in disbelief. The huge spongy soles making him four or
five inches taller than he really was, the hair slicked into waves with some filthy oil, his narrow tie and huge, mauve-colored jacket.

“Are you mad?”

“You tell how old you are.” Mario looked unexpectedly ferocious.

Sean felt the whole world had tilted. First Benny had turned her back on him in public and told him to go home without her after he had driven up especially to collect her. Now both men in the chipper. It was one of the rare occasions in his life when Sean Walsh spoke without calculation.

“I’m twenty-five,” he said. “Since September.”

“There!” Fonsie was triumphant.

“Now!” Mario was equally sure he was right.

“What
is
this?” Sean looked angrily from one to the other.

“Mario thinks the place is for old people. I say it’s for young fellows like yourself and myself,” Fonsie said.

“Sean is not a fellow, he is a businessman.”

“Oh, jaysus, does it matter? He’s not on two sticks like most people in the town. What do you want Sean? Rock salmon or cod?”

Patsy had gone for a walk with Mossy Rooney.

He had waited wordlessly in the kitchen until the daughter of the house had been soothed and put to bed. Mossy, a little like Sean Walsh, would have wished that the kitchen and living quarters of the Hogan household were more separate. Then he would have been able to sit down at the table, loosen his shirt collar, his shoelaces, and read the evening paper until Patsy was ready. But the Hogans lived on top of you when you went to that house. There was the master, a man of importance in the town that you’d think would want a house properly run for himself. And the mistress,
much older by all appearances than her husband, who fussed too much over that great big daughter.

There had been a great deal of fussing tonight. The doctor had come and given her two tablets to take, he had said there wasn’t a thing wrong with her that wouldn’t be wrong with any red-blooded girl who had seen a fatal accident. She was shocked and upset and what she needed most was to be allowed to rest, alone.

Mossy Rooney, a man who though he spoke little, noticed a lot, saw the look of relief pass over Benny Hogan’s face, as she was sent to bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of hot milk. He saw also the way the Hogans looked after her as she left the kitchen. He had seen that look on the faces of mother ducks when they took their little flocks down to the river for the first time.

If he had been walking out with any other girl in service in the town they could have stayed in on a wet night and talked by the kitchen range, but with the Hogans hovering around he had to bring Patsy out into the rain.

“Would you not like to take your ease indoors on a bad night like this?” Mrs. Hogan had said kindly.

“Not at all, mam, a nice fresh walk would be grand,” Patsy said with little enthusiasm.

For a long time Annabel and Eddie Hogan sat in silence.

“Maurice said that we’re not to worry about a thing,” Eddie said eventually.

Maurice Johnson obviously realized who were the real patients in the house. He had uttered more words of advice to them than to the girl he was meant to be treating.

“It’s easy for Maurice to say that. We don’t worry about his children,” Annabel said.

“True, but to be fair he and Grainne don’t worry much about them either.”

Kit Hegarty lay in her own narrow bed and heard the foghorn and the town hall clock, heard the occasional sound of a car going past. The sleeping tablets hadn’t worked. Her eyes were wide open.

Everyone had been so kind. Nobody had counted the time or the trouble. The boys in the house, ashen-faced at the shock, had offered to leave. Their parents had telephoned from the country. And that little Mrs. Hayes next door, whom she hardly knew, had been a tower of strength, sending her sister in to cook and keep the place going. And the priests in Dun Laoghaire had been great, in and out all evening three or maybe four of them saying nice things and talking to other people, making it seem somehow more normal, drinking cups of tea. But she had so wanted to be left alone for a while.

The only thing that stuck out in a day that seemed to have been a hundred hours of confusion was that nun. The aunt possibly of a girl who had been injured in the accident.
She
had understood that Frank had to have the bike. Nobody else appreciated that. Fancy a nun being able to realize it. And she had been insistent in her invitation. Kit thought that she would go and see her in that convent. Later, when she was able to think.

Judging from all the chatter, everyone in UCD must have got to know each other pretty quickly, Benny thought as she went up the steps the following morning. The main hall was thronged with people standing in groups, there were shouts of laughter and people greeting each other.

Everyone had a friend of some sort.

On another day it might have worried Benny, but not today.

She walked down a stone staircase to a basement where you could hang your coat. It smelled faintly carbolic, like school. Then up to the ground floor again and into the Ladies’
Reading Room. This was not at all like school. For one thing nobody seemed to think that a reading room was a place you were meant to read. There were girls fixing their makeup at a mirror over the mantelpiece, or scanning notices on the board—items for sale, extra tuition offered, rooms to share, sodalities to join.

A very confident group laughed and reminisced about their summers abroad. They had been in Spain, or Italy, or France … the only thing in common was how little of the language they had learned, how monstrous the children they had had to mind had been, and how late everyone ate their meals in the evening.

They were happy to be back.

Benny soaked it all up for Eve. She would visit her again at lunchtime. This morning she had been pale, still, but cheerful as anything. Mother Francis was going to sort it out. There would be no recriminations.

“I’m going to try to get to College, Benny,” she had said, her face blazing with the intensity of it. “I’ll only be a few weeks late. I’ll get a job, really I will. So you just watch out for everything for me, and take notice, so that I’ll catch up.”

“Are you going to ask the Westwards?”

“I’m not going to rule it out.”

There were always a great many students who took English as a subject in First Arts. The lectures were held in a big hall, confusingly called the Physics Theatre. Benny streamed in with the others. It was so different to the classrooms at school. More like an amphitheatre, with rows of seats in semicircles high up at the back. There were some young student nuns already in place, they were in the front rows, eager and anxious to miss nothing. Benny walked slowly up toward the high seats at the back where she thought she might be more inconspicuous.

From her vantage point she watched them come in: serious-looking lads in duffel coats, earnest women in glasses and hand-knitted cardigans, the clerical students from the religious seminaries in their black suits all looking remarkably cleaner and neater than the other males not bound for religious life. And the girls, the confident, laughing girls. Could they really just be First Years, these troupers in brightly colored skirts, flouncing their hair, aware of the impression they were creating. Perhaps they had spent a year abroad after they left school, Benny thought wistfully. Or even had a holiday job during the summer. Whatever it was, it didn’t bear the hallmark of life in Knockglen.

Suddenly she saw Nan Mahon. Nan wore the smart navy coat she had worn yesterday, but this time over a pale yellow wool dress. Tied loosely around the strap of her shoulder bag was a navy and yellow scarf. Her curly hair was back from her face more than yesterday, and she had yellow earrings. As she walked in, flanked by a boy on each side, each competing for her attention, Nan was the object of all eyes. Her eyes roamed the banks of seats, deciding where to sit. Suddenly she saw Benny.

“Hallo,
there
you are!” she cried.

People turned around to see whom she was waving at. Benny reddened at the stares, but Nan had left the two admirers and was bounding up to the back row. Benny was taken aback. She felt sure that Nan would know everyone in UCD in days. It was surprising to be singled out. And so warmly.

“Well, how did it go?” she asked companionably.

“What?”

“You know, you sent the young man packing and he more or less said you’d rue the day. I haven’t seen anything so dramatic for years.”

Benny was dismissive. “You couldn’t get a message through to him. Mercifully he didn’t turn up at home. I thought he’d be there, with big cows’ eyes.”

“He’s probably more madly in love with you than ever, now.” Nan was cheerful, as if this was good news.

“I don’t think he has a notion of what love is. He’s like a fish. A fish with an eye to the main chance. A gold-digging goldfish.”

They giggled at the thought.

“Eve’s fine,” Benny said. “I’m going to see her at lunchtime.”

“Can I come too?”

Benny paused. Eve was often so prickly even when she was in the whole of her health. Would she like seeing this golden College belle at her bedside?

“I don’t know,” she said at last.

“Well, we were all in it together. And I know all about her, and the business of Mother Clare and Mother Francis.”

For a moment Benny wished she hadn’t told the story in such detail. Eve certainly wouldn’t like her business being discussed as she lay unconscious.

“That got sorted out,” Benny said.

“I knew it would.”

“Do you think you could come tomorrow instead?”