Circle of Friends (57 page)

Benny went back to Knockglen on the bus in high good humor. Jack was cheerful again. He did say he wanted her, he couldn’t have been more explicit. And now she didn’t even have to worry about him being left high and dry. Nan had gone to the silly film with him.

All Benny had to do now was keep Peggy Pine entertained while unmentionable things went on in her shop. She knew that Fonsie, Dekko Moore, Teddy Flood and Rita were all poised. Peggy must be kept off the scene until at least five o’clock.

When she got into Lisbeg Benny was pleased to see that Patsy had made a good soup, and there were plain scones to be served with it. Mr. Flood had sent down a small leg of lamb, there was the smell of mint sauce made in a nice china sauce boat.

Mother wore a pale gray twinset with her black skirt, and even a small brooch at the neck. She looked more cheerful. Probably she needed company, Benny realized. She certainly seemed a lot less listless than on other days.

Peggy drank three thimblefuls of sherry enthusiastically, and so did Mother. Benny had never known Clodagh’s aunt in better form. She told Mother that business was the best way to live your life, and that if she had her time, and her chances, all over again she would still think so.

She confided to them, something that they already knew which was that she had been Disappointed earlier in life. But that she bore the gentleman in question no ill will. He had done her a service in fact. The Lady he had chosen did not have the look of a contented person. Peggy Pine had seen her from time to time over the years. While she in her little shop was as happy as anything.

Mother listened interested, and Benny began to have the stirrings of hope that Peggy might be able to achieve for Mother what she had not been able to do. Peggy might
make Annabel Hogan rediscover some kind of reason for living.

“The young people are the hope you know,” Peggy said.

Benny prayed that the transformation taking place in the shop at this moment would not be of such massive proportions as to make Peggy withdraw this view.

“Ah, yes, we’ve been blessed with Sean Walsh,” Annabel said.

“Well, yes, as long as you’ll be in there to keep the upper hand,” Peggy warned.

“I couldn’t be going in interfering. He did fine in poor Eddie’s time.”

“Eddie was there to be a balance to him.”

“Not much of a balance I’d be,” Annabel Hogan said.

“I don’t know the first thing about it.”

“You’ll learn.”

Benny saw the dangerous trembling of her mother’s lip. She hastened to come in and explain to Peggy, that things were a little bit up in the air at the moment. There had been a question of Sean being made a partner and that should be cleared up before Mother went into the shop.

“Much wiser to go in before the deed is signed,” Peggy said.

To her surprise Benny saw her mother nodding in agreement. Yes, it did make sense to go in and be shown the ropes. It didn’t look as if she was only going in afterward to make sure they got an equal share.

And after all they might need more hands around the shop, so Sean if he was going to be a partner would prefer an unpaid one to someone who would need a wage. She told an astonished Benny and Patsy that she might go in on Monday for a few hours to see how the daily routine worked.

Peggy looked pleased, but not very surprised.

Benny guessed that she might have planned the whole thing. She was a very clever woman.

Nan and Jack came out of the cinema.

“It was terrible,” Nan said.

“But great terrible,” Jack pleaded.

“Lucky Benny. She’s back in Knockglen.”

“I wish she didn’t spend so much time there.”

They had a cup of coffee in the cinema cafe and he told her how hard it was to have a girl friend miles away.

What would Nan do if she had a chap down in Knockglen, at the far end of civilization.

“Well, I do,” Nan said.

Of course
, the guy in the cavalry twill and the plummy accent.

But Jack had lost interest. He wanted to talk about Benny and how on earth they could persuade her mother to let her live in Dublin.

He wondered was there any hope that she could have a room in Nan’s house. Nan said there was none at all.

They said good-bye at the bus stop outside the cinema. Jack ran for a bus going south.

Simon stepped out of a doorway.

“I wondered if you were free for dinner?” he said to Nan.

“Did you wait for me?” She was pleased.

“I knew you wouldn’t see
Swamp Women
round a second time. What about that nice little hotel we went to in Wicklow. We might stay the night.”

“How lovely,” Nan said, in a voice that was like a cat purring.

It was a marvelous night in Knockglen.

Peggy Pine absolutely loved the changes in the shop. The new lighting, the fitting rooms, and the low music in the background.

Annabel Hogan had called on Sean Walsh and said that she hoped to come and join him in the shop on Monday and that he would be patient with her and explain things simply. She mistook his protestations as expressions of courtesy and insisted that she turn up at 9:00
A.M
. on the first day of the week.

Mossy Rooney said that his mother thought that Patsy was a fine person and would be very happy for them to go to Father Ross and fix a day.

And best of all Nan Mahon telephoned Benny and said that
Swamp Women
was the worst film she had ever seen, but that Jack Foley obviously adored Benny and wanted nothing but to talk about her.

Tears of gratitude sprang to Benny’s eyes.

“You’re so good, Nan. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“What else are friends for?” asked Nan as she packed her little overnight bag and prepared to meet Simon for their visit to Wicklow.

Sean Walsh was in Healy’s Hotel. “What am I going to do?”

“Let her come in. She’ll tire of it in a week.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“You’ll have someone to help you do the errands. It makes it harder for her to refuse you the partnership. She can’t be avoiding your eye and the issue if she’s working beside you.”

“You’re very intelligent … um … Dorothy,” he said.

Rosemary Ryan knew what was going on everywhere. Eve said she was like those people during the war who had a
map of where their troops were and their submarines and they kept moving them about like pieces on a board.

Rosemary knew Jack had been to the pictures with Nan. She was checking that Benny knew.

“Aren’t you the silly-billy to go off and leave your young man wandering around unescorted,” Rosemary said.

“He wasn’t unescorted for long. I sent him to the pictures with Nan.”

“Oh, you did. That’s all right.” Rosemary seemed genuinely relieved.

“Yes, I had to go back to Knockglen and he had declared an afternoon off for himself.”

“You spend too long down there.” Rosemary was trying to warn her about something.

“Yes, well, I’m staying in town tonight. We’re all going to the dance at the Palmerston rugby club. Are you coming?”

“I might. I have ferocious designs on a medical student. I’ll send out a few inquiries to know whether he’ll be there or not.”

What could Rosemary be warning her about? Not Nan, that was clear. Everyone knew that Nan was besotted with Simon Westward. Sheila had given up on him. There was nobody else. Perhaps it was just that he was getting used to being on his own at social occasions. Perhaps by staying so long in Knockglen Benny was letting Jack think that he was free to ramble, and there might have been a bit of rambling, possibly the Welsh type of rambling … that she didn’t know about. Benny dragged her mind back to Tudor policy in Ireland. The lecturer said that it was often complicated and hard to pin down since it seemed to change according to the mood of the time. What else is new, Benny wondered. Jack, who had been so loving about her when talking to Nan, was annoyed again now.

He had thought she was going to stay in town for the weekend apparently and had made plans for Saturday and
Sunday too. But Benny had to go back to prepare her mother for work on Monday. If he couldn’t understand that, what kind of friend was he? Eve would say he wasn’t meant to be a friend. He was meant to be a big handsome hunk who happened to fancy Benny. But there had to be more to it than that.

Eve and Kit discussed plans.

They would put a handbasin in each bedroom, and build an extra lavatory and shower. That would stop the congestion on the landings in the morning.

They would have a woman to come in and wash on Mondays. They would have the house rewired, some of those electrical installations didn’t bear thinking about.

They would be able to charge a little more if the facilities were that much better. But the real benefit would be they needn’t keep students they didn’t like. The boy who never opened his bedroom window, who had Guinness bottles under the bed and who had left three cigarette burns in the furniture would be given notice to mend his ways or leave. Nice fellows like Kevin Hickey could stay forever.

For the first time in her life Kit Hegarty would have some freedom.

“Where does that leave me?” Eve asked lightly. “You won’t need me now.”

But she knew Kit did need her. So she spoke from a position of safety.

They had decided after reflection that the money would not be cast back on the drawing room floor of Westlands. It would be put for Eve in a post office account. Ready to be taken out and thrown, the moment Eve wanted to.

They danced at the rugby club and Benny realized there were people who came here every Friday night and that all of them knew Jack.

“I love you,” he said suddenly as they sat sipping Club Oranges from bottles with straws. He pushed a damp piece of hair out of her eyes.

“Why?” she asked.

“Lord, I don’t know. It would be much easier to love someone who didn’t keep disappearing.”

“I love you too,” she said. “You delight me.”

“That’s a lovely thing to say.”

“It’s true. I love everything about you. I often think about you and I get a great warm feeling all over me.”

“Talking about great feelings all over us, I have my father’s car.”

Her heart sank. Once in the car it was going to be very, very hard to say no. Everything they had been told at school, and at the Mission, and in all those sermons on Purity, made it seem like a simple choice. Between Sin and Virtue. You were told that Virtue was rewarded, that Sin was punished, not only hereafter, but in this life. That boys had no respect for the girls who gave in to their demands.

But nobody had ever told anybody about how nice it felt, and how easy it would be to go on, and how cheap you felt stopping.

And about how you feared greatly that if you didn’t go ahead with what you both wanted to do, then there would be plenty more who would.

People of the temperament and lack of scruples up to now only discovered in Wales.

“I hope we didn’t drag you away from each other too early.” Eve spoke dryly as they settled down to sleep in Kit Hegarty’s.

“No, just in time I think,” Benny said.

It had been the opportune demands of Aidan and Eve to let them into the car before they froze to death out of discretion.

“Why can’t you stay the weekend?” Eve, too, seemed to be warning her about something. It was like a message that she was getting from everyone. She should stay around.

But there was no way that she could stay, no matter how great the danger. Things were at a crossroads in Knockglen.

“Have you a cigarette?” she asked Eve.

“But you don’t smoke.”

“No, but you do. And I want you to listen while I tell you about Sean Walsh.”

They turned on the light again, and Eve sat horrified as the tale of the money and the suspicions and the partnership was unfolded.

The hopes that Benny’s mother might find a life of her own in the shop, the support that would be needed. Eve listened and understood. She said that it didn’t matter how much temptation was thrown into Jack Foley’s path, some things were more important than others, and Benny had to nail Sean Walsh, no matter what.