Circle of Friends (68 page)

And anyway Jack wouldn’t be foolish enough …

He’d know, wouldn’t he? Men always did. That’s why you had to keep your virginity until you married, so that they’d know it was the first time.

No, it was just a mad, wild hope.

But suppose she believed it to be true. It would only lead to a huge confrontation, and almighty indignation if she were to suggest it to Jack. Imply that Nan was passing off someone else’s child on him.

The thought had better go back to where it came from.

Heather was still in the shop. She seemed to be hovering as if about to ask a favor.

“Is there anything else, Heather?”

“You know the Easter pageant. Eve and Aidan are going to come. It’s on Holy Thursday. I was wondering would you like to come too. As part of my group.”

“Yes, yes I will, thank you.” Her mind was still far away.

“I’d have forced Simon to come, but he’s in England. He mightn’t even be back for Easter.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“Oh, they think he’s going to ask this woman to marry him. She’s got pots and pots of money.”

“That would be nice.”

“We could get the drainage and the fencing done.”

“Would you mind, someone else coming in there?”

“No, I’d hardly notice.” Heather was practical.

“And this romance with the lady in England …” Benny inquired. “Has it been going on for a while or is it new?”

“For ages,” Heather said. “It’s about time they made some move.”

So that was that. The wild little hope that Simon could be drawn into the whole business seemed to have faded.

Benny looked distant and abstracted. Heather had been about to tell her that there had been some great row with Nan. That Nan had come to Westlands about four weeks ago all dressed up and there had been words in the morning room and she had driven Simon’s car to the bus and wouldn’t let him come with her.

Heather remembered the date, because it was when they were casting for the Easter pageant and she had been very nervous. If she had told Benny then, Benny would have realized that it was the very same day as the party in the rugby club. The one she hadn’t gone to, but Nan had. The very night it had all begun.

Nan went to Sunday lunch at the Foleys’ to meet the family. She was immaculately dressed, and Lilly thought that they would have no apologies or explanations to make for her on grounds of appearance. Her stomach was flat, and her manner was entirely unapologetic.

She came up the steps of the large Donnybrook house as of right, not as the working-class girl who had been taken advantage of by the son of the house. She spoke easily and without guile. She made no effort to ingratiate herself.

She paid more attention to Dr. Foley than to his wife, which would have been the appropriate attitude of any intelligent girl coming to the house.

She was pleasant, but not effusive, to Kevin, Gerry, Ronan and Aengus. She didn’t forget their names or mix them up, but neither did she seek their approval.

Lilly Foley watched her with dislike, this cunning, shrewd girl with no morals who had ensnared her eldest son. There were few ways she could fault the public performance. The girl’s table manners were perfect.

At coffee afterward in the drawing room, just the four of them, Nan spoke to them with such a clear and unaffected stance that both of Jack’s parents were taken aback.

“I realize what a disappointment all this must be to you, and how well you are covering this. I want to thank you very much.”

They murmured startled words denying any sense of disappointment.

“And I am sure that Jack has told you my family are all much simpler people than you are, less educated, and in many ways their hopes for me have been realized rather than crushed. If I am to marry into such a family as yours.”

She went on to explain to them the kind of ceremony that she would like to provide and for which her father would pay. A lunch for perhaps twenty or thirty people in one of the better hotels. Very possibly the one where her mother worked in the hotel shop.

There would be minimum speech-making because her father was not a natural orator, and she thought that she would wear an oyster satin coat and dress instead of a long white dress. She would hope that some of Jack’s and her friends would attend. On her side she would provide two parents, two brothers, two business associates of her father and one aunt.

When Jack took her away on their journey for afternoon
tea in Maple Gardens, John and Lilley Foley exchanged glances.

“Well?” she said.

“Well?” he answered.

He filled the silence by pouring them a small brandy each. It was never their custom to have a drink like this in the afternoon, but the circumstances seemed to call for it.

“She’s very presentable,” said Jack’s mother grudgingly.

“And very practical. She had the Holles Street report in her handbag, left open for us to see in case we were going to question it.”

“And very truthful about her own background.”

“But she never said one word about loving Jack,” Dr. Foley said, with a worried frown.

In Maple Gardens the table was set for tea. A plate of biscuits with sardines on them, another with an egg mayonnaise. There was a bought Swiss roll and a plate of Jacob’s USA assortment. Nasey and Paul were in navy suits and shirts. Brian Mahon wore his new brown suit. It hadn’t cost as much as it should have because he had been able to give the man in the shop a few cans of paint for his own house. Cans of paint that hadn’t cost anything in the first place.

“There’s no need to tell all that to Jack Foley when he arrives,” Emily had warned.

“Jesus Christ, will you stop nagging at me. I’ve agreed to stay away from the jar until after they’ve been and gone, which is a fine imposition to put on a man who’s going to lash out for a fancy society wedding. But still, give you lot an inch and you take a bloody mile …”

Jack Foley was a handsome young fellow. He sat beside Nan during afternoon tea. He tried a little of everything. He thanked Mr. Mahon for the generous plans for the wedding.
He thanked Mrs. Mahon for all her support. He hoped Paul and Nasey would be ushers in the church.

“You’d hardly need ushers for that size of a crowd,” said Nasey, who thought twenty people was the meanest he ever heard of.

“Who’s going to be your best man?” Paul asked.

Jack was vague. He hadn’t thought. One of his brothers possibly.

He felt awkward asking Aidan, what with the whole Eve and Nan friendship. And Bill Dunne or Johnny … it was all a bit awkward to be honest.

He turned to Nan. “Who’ll be the bridesmaid?” he asked.

“Secret,” Nan said.

They talked about places to live, and flats. Brian Mahon said that he’d be able to give them the name of builders who did good conversion jobs if they found an old place and wanted to do it up.

Jack said that he would be working in his uncle’s office, first as a clerk, and then as an apprentice. He was going to take lessons in bookkeeping almost at once, in order to be of some use in there.

Several times he felt Nan’s mother’s eyes on him, with a look of regret.

Obviously she was upset about her daughter being pregnant, but he felt it was something more than that.

As Nan talked on cheerfully of basements in South Circular Road, or top-story landings in Rathmines, Emily Mahon’s eyes filled with tears. She tried to brush them away unseen, but Jack felt that there was some terrible sorrow there, as if she had wanted something very different for her beautiful daughter.

When they had gone Brian Mahon loosened his collar.

“You can’t say too much against him.”

“I never said anything against him,” Emily said.

“He had his fun and he’s paying for it. At least that’s to his credit.” Brian was grudging.

Emily Mahon took off her good blouse and put on her old one automatically. She tied an apron around her waist and began to clear the table. She could puzzle for a thousand years and never understand why Nan was settling for this.

Nan and she had never wanted cheap bed-sitters, student flats, cobwebby conversion jobs. For years they had turned the pages of the magazines and looked at the places where Nan might live. There was never a moment when they planned a shotgun marriage to a student.

And Nan was adamant about saying that her relationship with Simon Westward was long over. And had never been serious. She was almost too adamant when she was telling her mother how long it had been over.

Brian changed into his normal clothes for going to the pub.

“Come on, lads, we’ll get a pint and talk normally for a while.”

Emily filled the sink with hot water and did the washing up. She was very worried indeed.

Jack and Nan sat in his father’s car.

“That’s the worst over,” she said.

“It’ll be fine,” he assured her.

She didn’t believe the worst was over, and he didn’t believe everything would be fine.

But they couldn’t admit it.

After all, it was there in black and white in the paper. And the chaplain would be able to give them a date very shortly.

Aidan Lynch said that Sundays weren’t the same without Heather.

Eve said that he had been invited to watch Heather in a sheet helping Our Lord to carry his burden. Next week, on Holy Thursday, could he bear to come? Aidan said he’d love it, it would count as his Easter duty. Would they bring a First Night present for Heather?

Eve said that he was worse than Heather. The thing was meant to be some kind of religious outpouring, not a song-and-dance act. Still it was great that he’d come down, and he could even stay the night in the cottage.

“It’ll make up for us not having the party,” Eve said.

“Why won’t we have the party?” Aidan asked.

Rosemary was sitting in the Annexe with Bill and Johnny. She was telling them that Tom, her medical boyfriend, had very healing hands. She refused to listen to ribald jokes on the subject. She said that she had an unmerciful headache and he had massaged it right away.

“I’m very sorry that there’ll be no party now, down in Knockglen,” she said. “I was looking forward to Tom coming and meeting you all properly.”

“Why won’t there be a party?” asked Bill Dunne.

“I never heard anything about it being off,” said Johnny O’Brien.

Jack was not at his lectures now. He hadn’t officially given up, but he was in his uncle’s office all day. Learning the ropes. Aidan was going to meet him at six o’clock.

“He has time to go out and drink pints, has he?” Eve said disapprovingly.

“Listen, he hasn’t been sent to Coventry. He’s not in disgrace. He’s just getting married. That’s not the end of the earth,” Aidan said.

Eve shrugged.

“And what’s more, I’m going to be his best man, if he asks me.”

“You’re not!” She was aghast.

“He’s my friend. He can rely on me. Anyone can rely on a friend.”

Nan made an appearance in College. She went to a ten o’clock lecture and then joined the crowds streaming down the stairs to the Annexe.

There was a rustle as they saw her coming to join the queue.

“Well, I’m off now,” Rosemary said under her breath to Carmel. “If there’s one thing I can’t bear, it’s the sight of bloodshed.”

“Benny won’t say anything,” Carmel whispered back.

“Yes, but have you seen Eve’s face.”

Benny was trying to calm Eve down. It was ridiculous to say that Nan didn’t have a right to show her face in College. Benny begged Eve not to make a scene. What had been the point of urging her to get over everything publicly if Eve was going to ruin it all now.

“That’s quite right,” Eve said suddenly. “It was just a surge of bad temper.”

“Well, why don’t you go now, in case it surges again.”

“I can’t Benny. I’d be afraid you’d be so bloody nice and ask her all about the wedding dress and offer to knit bootees.”

Benny squeezed her friend’s hand.

“Go on, Eve, please. I’m better on my own. I won’t do any of that. And anyway she won’t join us.”

Nan went to another table. She drank her coffee with a group she knew from another class.

She looked across at Benny, who looked back.

Neither of them made a gesture or mouthed a word. Nan looked away first.

Nan lay on her bed. Jack was going out with Aidan, which surprised her. She thought that there would be a heavy boycott from Eve’s side of things.

But men were easier, more generous at forgiving. Men were more generous in everything. She lay with her feet raised on two cushions.

If Em had been a different kind of mother, she would have pursued the question she had been skirting around. Emily Mahon knew that her daughter was carrying Simon Westward’s child. What she didn’t know was why she, the Princess, was going to let this one mistake spoil a lifetime of planning. Emily would suggest going to England, having the child adopted, and starting all over again.

The pursuit, the quest, the path to a better life. But Em didn’t know that Nan was tired. Tired and weary of pretending. And that for once she had met someone, a good and honest person, who didn’t have a life plan … a system of passing black as white. That’s what she had been doing. Like Simon had been passing as rich.