Circle of Friends Read online

  “A WONDERFULLY ABSORBING STORY ABOUT PEOPLE WORTH CARING ABOUT … [Maeve Binchy] recounts ordinary events … with extraordinary straightforwardness and insight.… [She] is a remarkably gifted writer … a wonderful student of human nature.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  Maeve Binchy

  Circle of Friends

  “A LOVELY TALE OF FRIENDS AND LOVE AND LIFE.… This emotional stew of relationships boils over, but Binchy’s sure hand brings it back to a simmer, one in which the lovely ingredients … marry so as to guarantee pleasure.”

  —New York Daily News

  “STORYTELLING AT ITS CONTEMPORARY BEST.… A SEDUCTIVE READABILITY … draws one through hundreds of pages as surely as a mackerel at the end of a hooked line.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A LOVE OF A BOOK.… Warm, chatty, deceptively undemanding, Maeve Binchy’s novels of contemporary Ireland are pure pleasure to read.”

  —The Anniston Star

  “AS CHARMING AND WELCOME AS A CHEERFUL PUB ON A DRIZZLY EVENING IN DONEGAL … SATISFYING AND ENJOYABLE.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “BINCHY’S AT HER IMPISH BEST playing telephone amongst the villagers, reporting the wildly disparate ways they process events.… [She] brings her habitat to life warmly, fully, and from [myriad] viewpoints.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “DARING, SUBVERSIVE, REMARKABLY INVENTIVE … AN ALMOST PERFECT HANDBOOK ON ‘HOW SHALL. I LIVE?’ ”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “THERE ARE NO GLITZY CHARACTERS, glamorous settings, improbable plots or impossible sexual feats, just engaging, compelling, well-written stories about likeable, complex people.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “THE IRISH ARE NOTED FOR THEIR SKILL IN SPINNING YARNS, the woven kind and the storytelling kind. Dubliner Maeve Binchy is a past master at the latter craft.… Circle of Friends is a charming, gossipy Upstairs, Downstairs story.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “A WONDERFUL NOVEL.… It is not difficult to believe that our first lady, Barbara Bush, is a great fan of Binchy’s work. They both have a quality of mature reflection, and, dare we say it, wisdom?”

  —Rave Reviews

  “A LONG BOOK, TO BE SURE, BUT IT IS FAST-PACED THROUGHOUT, AND WHEN IT IS OVER, THE READER IS SORRY TO SEE THE CHARACTERS GO.… More than any other of Binchy’s novels, this one begs for a sequel.”

  —San Diego Union

  “MS. BINCHY … IS A GENEROUS WRITER—generous in her pages, generous with incidents, generous with laughter, generous with tears.

  —The Dallas Morning News

  PRAISE FOR MAEVE BINCHY AND HER WONDERFUL HEART-WINNING NOVELS

  “LAUGHTER AND TEARS; IT’S WHAT BINCHY DOES BEST.… Silver Wedding [is] a great story told with gusto, humor and, most of all, sympathy.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

  “Maeve Binchy’s considerable gifts of storytelling and fine-tuned characterization are in full play in [Silver Wedding].”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “In the time it takes to read Firefly Summer, you’ve become a resident of Mountfern, and cannot bear to see it irrevocably changed.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Maeve Binchy is a grand storyteller in the finest Irish tradition of Frank O’Connor, Sean O’Faolain, and Edna O’Brien.… She writes from the heart.”

  —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

  “Light a Penny Candle is an Irish Thorn Birds … complete and rewarding.”

  —Newsday

  Books by Maeve Binchy

  WHITETHORN WOODS

  NIGHTS OF RAIN AND STARS

  QUENTINS

  SCARLET FEATHER

  TARA ROAD

  THE RETURN JOURNEY

  EVENING CLASS

  THIS YEAR IT WILL BE DIFFERENT

  ECHOES

  THE GLASS LAKE

  LONDON TRANSPORTS

  THE COPPER BEECH

  THE LILAC BUS

  CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

  SILVER WEDDING

  FIREFLY SUMMER

  LIGHT A PENNY CANDLE

  CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

  A Delta Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  First published in Great Britain by Century Hutchinson Ltd.

  Delacorte Press hardcover edition published December 1990

  Dell mass market edition published November 1991

  Delta Trade Paperback edition / June 2007

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 1990 by Maeve Binchy

  Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-33761-4

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  To dearest Gordon with all my love

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  ONE

  The kitchen was full of the smells of baking. Benny put down her school bag and went on a tour of inspection.

  “The cake hasn’t been iced yet,” Patsy explained. “The mistress will do that herself.”

  “What are you going to put on it?” Benny was eager.

  “I suppose Happy Birthday Benny.” Patsy was surprised.

  “Maybe she’ll put Benny Hogan, Ten.”

  “I never saw that on a cake.”

  “I think it is, when it’s a big birthday like being ten.”

  “Maybe.” Patsy was doubtful.

  “And are the jellies made?”

  “They’re in the pantry. Don’t go in poking at them, you’ll leave the mark of your finger and we’ll all be killed.”

  “I can’t believe I’m going to be ten,” Benny said, delighted with herself.

  “Ah, it’s a big day all right.” Patsy spoke absently as she greased the trays for the queen cakes with a scrap of butter paper.

  “What did you do when you were ten?”

  “Don’t you know with me every day was the same,” Patsy said cheerfully. “There was no day different in the orphanage until I came out of it and came here.”

  Benny loved to hear stories of the orphanage. She thought it was better than anything they read in books. There was the room with the twelve iron beds in it, the nice girls, the terrible girls, the time they all got nits in their hair and had their heads shaved.

  “They must have had birthdays,” Benny insisted.

  “I don’t remember them.” Patsy sighed. “There was a nice nun who said to me that I was Wednesday’s child, full of woe.”

  “That wasn’t nice.”

  “Well, at least she knew I was born on a Wednesday … Here’s y
our mother, now let me get on with the work.”

  Annabel Hogan came in carrying three big bags. She was surprised to see her daughter sitting swinging her legs in the kitchen.

  “Aren’t you home nice and early? Let me put these things upstairs.”

  Benny ran over to Patsy when her mother’s heavy tread was heard on the stairs.

  “Do you think she got it?”

  “Don’t ask me Benny, I know nothing.”

  “You’re saying that because you do know.”

  “I don’t Really.”

  “Was she in Dublin? Did she go up on the bus?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “But she must have.” Benny seemed very disappointed.

  “No, she’s not long gone at all.… She was only up the town.”

  Benny licked the spoon thoughtfully. “It’s nicer raw,” she said.

  “You always thought that.” Patsy looked at her fondly.

  “When I’m eighteen and can do what I like, I’ll eat all my cakes uncooked,” Benny pronounced.

  “No you won’t, when you’re eighteen you’ll be so busy getting thin you won’t eat cakes at all.”

  “I’ll always want cakes.”

  “You say that now. Wait till you want some fellow to fancy you.”

  “Do you want a fellow to fancy you?”

  “Of course I do, what else is there?”

  “What fellow? I don’t want you to go anyway.”

  “I won’t get a fellow, I’m from nowhere, a decent fellow wouldn’t be able to talk about me and where I came from. I have no background, no life before, you see.”

  “But you had a great life,” Benny cried. “You’d make them all interested in you.”

  There was no time to discuss it further. Benny’s mother was back in the kitchen, her coat off and down to business with the icing sugar.

  “Were you in Dublin at all today, Mother?”

  “No child, I had enough to do getting things ready for the party.”

  “It’s just I was wondering …”

  “Parties don’t run themselves you know.” The words sounded sharp but the tone was kindly. Benny knew her mother was looking forward to it all too.

  “And will Father be home for the cake bit?”

  “Yes, he will. We’ve asked the people for half-past three, they’ll all be here by four, so we needn’t sit down to the tea until half-past five, and we wouldn’t have got to the cake until your father has the business closed, and is back here.”

  Benny’s father ran Hogan’s Outfitters, the big menswear shop in the middle of Knockglen. The shop was often at its busiest on a Saturday, when the farmers came in, or the men who had a half day themselves were marched in by wives to have themselves fitted out by Mr. Hogan, or Mike the old assistant, the tailor who had been there since time immemorial. Since the days when young Mr. Hogan had bought the business.

  Benny was glad that her father would be there for the cake, because that was when she might be given her present. Father had said it was going to be a wonderful surprise. Benny knew that they must have got her the velvet dress with the lacy collar and the pumps to go with it. She had wanted it since last Christmas when they went to the pantomime in Dublin and she had seen the girls on the stage dancing in pink velvet dresses like this.

  They had heard that they sold them in Clerys, and that was only a few minutes from where the bus stopped when it went to Dublin.

  Benny was large and square, but she wouldn’t look like that in the pink velvet dress. She would be just like the fairy dancers they had seen on the stage, and her feet wouldn’t look big and flat in those shoes because they had lovely pointy toes, and little pom-poms on them.

  The invitations to the party had been sent out ten days ago. There would be seven girls from school, farmers’ daughters mainly from outside Knockglen. And Maire Carroll, whose mother and father owned the grocery. The Kennedys from the chemist’s were all boys so they wouldn’t be there, and Dr. Johnson’s children were all too young so they couldn’t come either. Peggy Pine who ran the smart clothes shop said that she might have her young niece staying with her. Benny said she didn’t want anyone they didn’t know, and it was with some relief that they heard the niece Clodagh didn’t want to go amongst strangers either.

  Her mother had insisted she invite Eve Malone and that was bad enough. Eve was the girl who lived in the convent and knew all the nuns’ secrets. Some people at school said look how Mother Francis never gives out to Eve, she’s the real pet; others said the nuns had to keep her for charity and didn’t like her as much as they liked the other girls whose families all contributed something to the upkeep of St. Mary’s.

  Eve was small and dark. She looked like a pixie sometimes, her eyes darting here and there, forever watchful. Benny neither liked Eve nor disliked her. She envied her being so fleet and lithe and able to climb walls. She knew that Eve had her own room in the convent, behind the curtain where no other girl was allowed to step. The girls said it was the room with the round window that faced down the town and that Eve could sit at the window and watch everyone and where they went and who they were with. She never went on holidays anywhere, she stayed with the nuns all the time. Sometimes Mother Francis and Mrs. Pine from the dress shop would take her on an outing to Dublin, but she had never stayed away a night.

  Once, when they had gone on a nature walk, Eve had pointed to a small cottage and said that it was her house. It stood in a group of small houses, each separate and surrounded by a little stone wall. When she was older she would live in it all on her own and there would be no milk allowed in the door, and no clothes hangers. She would put all her things on the floor because it was hers to do what she liked with.

  Some of them were half afraid of Eve, so nobody denied the story, but nobody really believed it either. Eve was so strange, she could make up tales and then, when everyone had got interested, she would say, “Fooled you.”

  Benny didn’t really want her to come to the party, but for once Mother had been insistent.

  “That child has no home. She must come to this one when there’s a celebration.”

  “She has a home, Mother, she’s got the run of the whole convent.”

  “That’s not the same. She’s to come here, Benny, that’s my last word.”

  Eve had written a very neat correct letter saying that she accepted the invitation with pleasure.

  “They taught her to write nicely,” Benny’s father had said approvingly.

  “They’re determined to make a lady out of her,” Mother had said. No one would explain why it seemed so important.

  “When it’s her birthday she only gets holy pictures and holy water fonts,” Benny reported. “That’s all the nuns have, you see.”

  “God, that would turn a few of them over in their graves up there under the yew trees,” Benny’s father had said, but again there was no explanation of why.

  “Poor Eve, what a start for her,” Benny’s mother sighed.

  “I wonder was she born on a Wednesday like Patsy.” Benny was struck by something.

  “Why would that matter?”

  “She’d be miserable. Wednesday’s child is full of woe,” Benny parroted.

  “Nonsense.” Her father was dismissive.

  “What day was I born on?”

  “A Monday, Monday September eighteenth, 1939,” her mother said. “At six o’clock in the evening.”

  Her parents exchanged glances, looks that seemed to remember a long wait for a first and, as it turned out, an only child.

  “Monday’s child is fair of face,” Benny said, grimacing.

  “Well, that’s true certainly!” her mother said.

  “You couldn’t have a fairer face than Mary Bernadette Hogan, spinster of this parish, almost ten years of age,” said her father.

  “It’s not really fair, I mean I don’t have fair hair.” Benny struggled to fit in with the saying accurately.

  “You have the most beautiful hair I have
ever seen.” Her mother stroked Benny’s long chestnut locks.

  “Do I really look nice?” she asked.

  They reassured her that she looked beautiful, and she knew they had bought the dress for her. She had been worried for a bit but now she was certain.

  At school next day, even the girls who hadn’t been asked to the party wished her a happy birthday.

  “What are you getting?”

  “I don’t know, it’s a surprise.”

  “Is it a dress?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Ah, go on, tell us.”

  “I don’t know yet, really. I won’t have it till the party.”

  “Was it got in Dublin?”

  “I think so.”

  Eve spoke suddenly. “It might have been got here, there’s lots of things in Mrs. Pine’s.”

  “I don’t think so.” Benny tossed her head.

  Eve shrugged. “Okay.”

  The others had gone away.

  Benny turned on Eve. “Why did you say it was got in Mrs. Pine’s? You don’t know, you don’t know anything.”

  “I said okay.”

  “Have you got a frock?”

  “Yes, Mother Francis got one at Mrs. Pine’s. I don’t think it’s new. I think someone gave it back because there was something wrong with it.”

  Eve wasn’t apologetic. Her eyes flashed, she was ready with the explanation before anyone else could make the accusation.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No, but I think it. Mother Francis wouldn’t have the money to buy me a new frock.”

  Benny looked at her with admiration. She softened in her own attack.

  “Well, I don’t know either. I think they got me this lovely velvet one. But they mightn’t.”

  “They got you something new anyway.”

  “Yes, but I’d really look great in this,” Benny said. “It would make anyone look great.”

  “Don’t think about it too much,” Eve warned.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “It’s nice of you to ask me. I didn’t think you liked me,” Eve said.

  “Oh, I do.” Poor Benny was flustered.

  “Good. Just as long as you weren’t told to, or anything.”