Circle of Friends (47 page)

“I’ll ring you tonight,” he promised. “About eight. Before I go out.”

“Great,” she said, eyes bright and clear.

He was going out. Out somewhere on the night of her father’s funeral.

Where could he be going on a Monday night in Dublin?

She waved at the car as it went around the corner. It didn’t matter, she told herself. She wouldn’t have been there anyway. Last Monday night when Father was alive and well, Benny Hogan would have been safely back in Knockglen by eight o’clock.

That’s the way things had always been, and would always be. She excused herself from the group of people downstairs, saying she was going to lie down for twenty minutes.

In the darkened room she lay on her bed and sobbed into her pillows.

Selfish tears, too, tears over a handsome boy who had gone back to Dublin smiling and waving with a group of friends. She cried for him as much as for her father, who lay under heaps of flowers up in the graveyard.

She didn’t hear Clodagh come in, and pull up a chair. Clodagh still wearing her ludicrous hat, who patted Benny’s shoulders and soothed her with exactly the words she wanted to hear.

“It’s all right, it’s all right. Everything will sort itself out. He’s mad about you. Anyone can tell. It’s in the way he looks at you. It’s better he went back. Hush now. He loves you, of course he does.”

There was an enormous amount to do.

Mother was very little help. She slept a lot of the time, and dozed off, even in a chair. Benny knew that this was because Dr. Johnson had prescribed tranquilizers. He had said she was a woman who had focused her whole life around her husband. Now that the center had gone she would take a while to readjust. Better let her get used to
things gradually, he advised, not make any sudden changes or press her for decisions.

And there were so many things to decide, from tiny things like thank-you letters, and taking Shep for a walk, and Patsy’s wages, to huge things like had Sean Walsh been made a partner yet, and could the business survive, and what were they going to do for the rest of their lives without Father?

Mr. Green, the solicitor, had come to the funeral, but said that there would be ample opportunity for them to discuss everything in the days that followed. Benny hadn’t asked him whether he meant Sean Walsh to be in on the discussions or not.

It was something she wished she had said at the time. Then it would have been a perfectly acceptable question as someone distressed and not sure of what was going on. Afterward it looked more deliberate, and as if there was bad feeling. Which there wasn’t—except on a personal level.

It was extraordinary how many of Nan’s sayings seemed to be precisely appropriate for so many situations. Nan always said that you should do the hardest thing first, whatever it was. Like the essay you didn’t want to write, or the tutor you didn’t want to confront with an unfinished project. Nan was always right about everything.

Benny put on her raincoat on the morning after the funeral and went to see Sean Walsh in the shop.

The first thing she had to do was to avoid old Mike, who started to shuffle up to her with every intention of finishing the conversation he had begun in her house. Briskly and loudly so that Sean could hear she said that she and her mother would be very happy to talk to Mike later, but for the moment he would have to excuse her, she had a few things she wanted to get settled with Sean.

“Well, this is nice and businesslike.” He rubbed his
hands together in that infuriating way, as if he had something between his palms that he was trying to grind to a powder.

“Thank you for everything, over the weekend.” Her voice was insincere. She tried to put some warmth into it. He
had
stood long hours greeting and thanking. It wasn’t relevant that she hadn’t wanted him there.

“It was the very least I could do,” he said.

“Anyway, I wanted you to know that Mother and I appreciated it.”

“How
is
Mrs. Hogan?” There was something off-key about his solicitude, like an actor not saying his lines right.

“Fairly sedated at the moment. But in a few days she will be herself again and able to participate in business matters.”

Benny wondered, did Sean have this effect on other people. Normally, she never used words like “participate.”

“That’s good, good.” He nodded his head sagely.

She drew a deep breath. It was something else Nan had read. That if you inhaled all the air down to your toes and let it out again it gave you confidence.

She told him that they would arrange a meeting with the solicitor at the end of the week. And until then perhaps he would be kind enough to keep the shop ticking over exactly as he had been doing so well over the years. And out of respect to her father she knew that there would be no changes made, no changes
at all;
her head inclined toward the back room where old Mike had gone fearfully.

Sean looked at her astounded.

“I don’t think you quite realize …” he began. But he didn’t get very far.

“You’re quite right. I
don’t
realize.” She beamed at him as if in agreement. “There are whole areas of the way this business has been run, and the changes in it that are planned and under way, that I know nothing about … that’s what I was saying to Mr. Green.”

“What was Mr. Green saying?”

“Well, nothing, obviously, on the day of a funeral,” she said reprovingly. “But after we have talked to him then we should all talk.”

She congratulated herself at her choice of words. However often he played the conversation over to himself again he wouldn’t be able to work out whether he was included in the conversation with the lawyer or not.

And he would not discover the huge gap in Benny’s own information.

She didn’t know whether in fact he was a partner in the business yet, or whether the deed of partnership might not have been signed.

She had a distinct feeling that her father had died before matters were completed, but another even stronger feeling, that there was a moral obligation to carry out what had been her father’s wishes.

But Benny knew that if she were to survive in the strange clouded waters that she was now entering, she must not let Sean Walsh know how honorably she would behave to him. Even though she disliked and almost despised him, she knew that Sean had earned the right to be her father’s successor in the firm.

Bill Dunne said to Johnny O’Brien that he half thought of asking Nan Mahon to the pictures.

“What’s stopping you?” Johnny asked.

What was really stopping him, of course, was the thought that she would say no. Why invite rejection. But she wasn’t going out with anyone else. They knew that. It was odd, considering how gorgeous she was. You’d think that half the men in College would want to take her out. But perhaps that was it. They
wanted
to, and yet did nothing about it.

Bill decided to invite her.

Nan said no, she didn’t really like the cinema. She was regretful, and Bill didn’t think she had closed the door.

“Is there anything you would like to go to?” he asked, hoping he wasn’t making himself too humble, too pathetic.

“Well, there is … but I don’t know.” Nan sounded doubtful.

“Yes? What?”

“There’s a rather posh cocktail party at the Russell. It’s a sort of pre-wedding do. I’d like to go to that.”

“But we weren’t invited.” Bill was shocked.

“I know.” Nan’s eyes danced with excitement.

“Bill Dunne and Nan are going to crash a party,” Aidan said to Eve.

“Why?”

“Search me.”

They thought about it for a while. Why go to a place where you might be unwelcome? There were so many places where Nan Mahon could just walk in and everyone would be delighted. She looked like Grace Kelly, people said, confident and beautiful without being flashy. It was a great art.

“Maybe it’s the excitement,” Aidan suggested.

It could be the fear of being caught, the danger element like gambling.

Why else would you want to go to a wedding party with a whole lot of horsey people from the country, neighing and whinnying, Aidan asked.

Once Eve knew it was that kind of party she knew immediately why Nan Mahon wanted to go. And why she needed someone very respectable and solid like Bill Dunne to go with her.

Jack Foley thought it was a marvelous idea.

“That’s only because you don’t have to do it,” Bill grumbled.

“Oh, go on. It’s easy. Just keep smiling at everyone.”

“That would be all right if we all had your matinee idol looks. Advertising toothpaste all over the place.”

Jack just laughed at him.

“I wish she’d asked me to escort her. I think it’s a great gas.”

Bill was doubtful. He should have known there would be trouble involved once he had dared to ask out someone with looks like Nan Mahon’s. Nothing came easy in life.

And it was all so mysterious. Who on earth would want to go to a thing like that, where they’d know nobody and everyone else knew everyone.

Nan wouldn’t explain. She just said that she had a new outfit and thought it would be a bit of fun.

Bill offered to pick her up at home, but she said no, they’d meet in the foyer of the hotel.

The new outfit was stunning. A pale pink sheath dress with pink lace sleeves. Nan carried a small silver handbag with a silk pink rose attached to it.

She came in without a coat.

“Better in case we have to make a quick getaway,” she giggled.

She looked high and excited, like she had looked when she came into Eve’s party in Knockglen. As if she knew something nobody else did.

Bill Dunne was highly uneasy going up the stairs loosening his collar with a nervous finger. His father would be furious if there was any trouble.

There was no trouble. The bride’s people thought they were friends of the groom’s, the groom’s thought they were on the bride’s side. They gave their real names. They smiled
and waved, and because Nan was undoubtedly the most glamorous girl in the room it wasn’t long before she was surrounded by a group of men.

She didn’t talk very much, Bill noticed. She laughed and smiled and agreed, and looked interested. Even when asked a direct question she managed to put it back to the questioner. Bill Dunne talked awkwardly to a dull girl in a tweed dress who looked over at Nan sadly.

“I didn’t know it was meant to be dressy-uppy,” she said.

“Ah. Yes, well.” Bill was trying to imitate Nan’s method of saying almost nothing.

“We were told it was a bit low-key,” the tweed girl complained. “Because of everything, you know.”

“Ah yes, everything,” Bill mumbled desperately.

“Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? Why else wouldn’t they wait until spring?”

“Spring. Indeed.”

He looked over her head. A small dark-haired man was talking to Nan. They looked very animated, and they hardly seemed to notice that anyone else in the room existed.

Lilly Foley looked at herself in the mirror. It was hard to believe that those lines would not go away. Not ever.

She had been used to little lines when she was tired, or strained. But they always smoothed out after a rest. In the old days.

In the old days, too, she didn’t have to worry about the tops of her arms, whether they looked a little crepey and even a small bit flabby.

Lilly Foley had been careful about what she ate since the day her glance had first fallen on John Foley. She had been thoughtful, too, about what she wore, and even, if she were honest, about what she said.

You didn’t win the prize and keep it unless you lived up to the role.

That’s why it was heartbreaking to think that that big overgrown puppy dog of a girl Benny Hogan should think that she had a chance with Jack. Jack was so nice to her, he had his father’s manners and charm. But obviously he couldn’t have serious notions about a girl like that.

He had driven her down to Knockglen and gone to the funeral out of natural courtesy and concern. It would be sad if the child got ideas.

Lilly had been startled to hear Aidan Lynch talking of Benny and Jack as if they were a couple.

At least Benny had the sense not to keep telephoning him like other girls did.

She
must
realize that there could be nothing in it.

Benny sat at the kitchen table and willed the phone to ring. She was surrounded by papers and books.

She intended to understand all about the business before talking to Sean and Mr. Green at the end of the week. She could ask no help and advice from old Mike in the shop and her mother was not likely to be any help either. Benny had bought a box of black-bordered writing paper. She had listed the people who sent flowers, hoping that her mother would write a short personal note to each of them. She had even addressed the envelopes.

But Annabel’s hand seemed to feel heavy and her heart listless. She never managed more than two letters a day. Benny did them herself eventually. She ordered the Mortuary Cards, with little pictures of her father, and prayers on them which people would keep in their missals to remind them to pray for his soul. It was Benny, too, who had ordered the black-rimmed cards printed with a message of gratitude for the sympathies offered.