Circle of Friends Read online

  “No point in raking over all that.”

  “She’s my friend. I want to know about her.”

  “She used not to be your friend. I had to plead with you to let her come to the party,” Mother said.

  “No, that’s not the way it was.” Benny couldn’t believe now that this was so.

  “I’m glad the child’s coming here to her dinner on Sunday,” Eddie Hogan said. “I wish we could persuade that young skinnymalinks above in the shop to come too, but he’s determined not to trespass, as he calls it.”

  Benny was pleased to hear that.

  “Is he working out well, Eddie?”

  “The best you ever saw, love. We’ll be blessed with him I tell you. He’s so eager to learn he almost quivers like Shep there, he repeats everything over and over again, as if he’s learning it off by heart.”

  “Does Mike like him?” Benny’s mother wanted to know.

  “Ah, you know Mike, he likes nobody.”

  “What does he object to?”

  “The way Sean keeps the books. God it’s simple to understand, a child could do it, but old Mike has to put up a resistance to everything. Mike says he knows everyone’s measurements, and what they paid and what they owed. He thinks it’s like a kind of insult to his powers to write things down.”

  “Couldn’t you keep the books, Mother?” Benny suggested suddenly.

  “No, no, I’d not be able to.”

  “But if it’s as simple as Father says …”

  “She’d well be able to but your mother has to be here, this is our home, she runs it for you and me, Benny.”

  “Patsy could run it. Then you wouldn’t have to pay Sean.”

  “Nonsense, Benny,” her father said.

  But she wasn’t to be stopped. “Why not? Mike would like Mother being in there. Mike loves Mother, and it would be something for Mother to do all day.”

  They both laughed.

  “Isn’t it great to be a child,” said her father.

  “To think that the day isn’t full already,” agreed her mother.

  Benny knew very well that her mother’s day was far from full. She thought that it might be nice for Mother to be involved in the shop, but obviously they weren’t going to listen to her.

  “How did Eve’s parents die?” she asked.

  “It’s not a thing to be talking about.”

  “Why? Were they murdered?”

  “Of course not.” Her mother sounded impatient.

  “Why then …?”

  “Lord, why, why, why,” her father sighed.

  “At school they’re always telling us to ask why. Mother Francis says that if you have a questioning mind you get to know all the answers.” Benny was triumphant.

  “Her mother died giving birth, when Eve was being born. And then a bit later, her poor father, may the Lord have mercy on him, went out one evening with his wits scattered and fell over the cliff into the quarry.”

  “Wasn’t that desperate!” Benny’s eyes were round with horror.

  “So, it’s a sad story, all over long ago, nearly ten years ago. We don’t start bringing it all up over and over.”

  “But there’s more to it isn’t there … there’s a kind of secret.”

  “Not really.” Her father’s eyes were honest. “Her mother was a very wealthy woman, and her father was a kind of handyman who helped out in the convent, and did a bit of work up at Westlands. That caused a bit of talk at the time.”

  “But it’s not a secret or a scandal or anything.” Annabel Hogan’s face was set in warning lines. “They were married and everything in the Catholic Church.”

  Benny could see the shutters coming down. She knew when to leave things.

  Later she asked Patsy.

  “Don’t ask me things behind your parents’ back.”

  “I’m not. I asked them, and this is what they told me. I just wanted to know did you know any more. That’s all.”

  “It was before I came here, but I heard a bit from Bee Moore … Paccy’s sister, she works in Westlands you see.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “That Eve’s father did a terrible act at the funeral, cursing and shouting …”

  “Up in the church, cursing and shouting … !”

  “Not our church, not the real church, in the Protestant church, but that was bad enough. You see Eve’s mother was from Westlands, from the big house beyond. She was one of the family and poor Jack, that was the father, he thought they’d all treated her badly …”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s all I know,” Patsy said. “And don’t be asking that poor child and upsetting her. People with no parents don’t like endless questions.”

  Benny took this as good advice not only about Eve, but about Patsy herself.

  Mother Francis was delighted to see the new friendship developing, but far too old a hand in dealing with children to say so.

  “Going down to the Hogans again are you?” she said, sounding slightly put out.

  “Do you mind?” Eve asked.

  “No, I don’t mind. I can’t say that I mind.” The nun tried hard to conceal her enthusiasm.

  “It’s not that I want to be away from here,” Eve said earnestly.

  Mother Francis felt an urge to take the child in her arms as she used to do when Eve was a baby given into their care by the accident of her birth.

  “No, no of course child, strange though this place is, it is your home.”

  “It’s always been a lovely home.”

  The nun’s eyes filled with tears. “Every convent should have a child. I don’t know how we’re going to arrange it,” she said lightly.

  “I wasn’t a nuisance when I arrived?”

  “You were a blessing, you know that. It’s been the best ten years St. Mary’s ever had … you being here.”

  Mother Francis stood at a window and watched little Eve go down the long avenue of the convent out to Sunday lunch on her own with the Hogans. She prayed that they would be kind to her, and that Benny wouldn’t change and find a new friend.

  She remembered the fights she had to keep Eve in the first place, when so many other solutions were being offered. There was a cousin of the Westwards in England who would take the child, someone who would arrange Roman Catholic instruction once a week. The young Healys who had come to start the hotel were reported to be having difficulty in starting a family. They would be happy to have Eve in their home, even after their own children came along, if they did. But Mother Francis had fought like a tiger for that small bundle that she had rescued from the cottage, on the day she was born. The child they had reared until some solution could be found. Nobody had seen that Jack Malone’s solution would involve throwing himself over the quarry one dark night. After that there had been no one with better claim to Eve than the nuns who had reared her.

  It was the first of many Sunday dinners in Lisbeg for Eve. She loved coming to the house. Every week she brought something which she arranged in a vase. Mother Francis had shown her how to go up the long windy path behind the convent and pick catkins and wild flowers. At the start she would rehearse arranging them with the nun so that she would do it well when she got to the Hogans, but as the weeks went by she grew in confidence. She could bring armfuls of autumn colors and make a beautiful display on the hall table. It became a ritual. Patsy would have the vases ready to see what Eve would bring today.

  “Don’t you have a lovely house!” she would say wistfully and Annabel Hogan would smile, pleased, and congratulate herself on having brought these two together.

  “How did you meet Mrs. Hogan?” she would ask Benny’s father. And “Did you always want to run a business?” The kinds of questions Benny never thought to ask but was always interested in the answers.

  She had never known that her parents met at a tennis party in a county far away. She had never heard that Father had been apprenticed to another business in the town of Ballylee. Or that Mother had gone to Belgium for a year afte
r she left school to teach English in a convent.

  “You make my parents say very interesting things,” she said to Eve one afternoon as they sat in Benny’s bedroom, and Eve marveled over being allowed to use an electric fire all for themselves.

  “Well, they’ve got great stories like olden times.”

  “Yes …” Benny was doubtful.

  “You see the nuns don’t have.”

  “They must have. Surely. They can’t have forgotten,” Benny said.

  “But they’re not meant to think about the past, you know, and life before Entering, they really start from when they became Brides of Christ. They don’t have stories of olden days like your mother and father do.”

  “Would they like you to be a nun too?” Benny asked.

  “No, Mother Francis said that they wouldn’t take me, even if I did want to be a nun, until I was over twenty-one.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She says it’s the only life I know, and I might want to join just because of that. She says when I leave school I have to go out and get a job for at least three years before I even think of Entering.”

  “Wasn’t it lucky you met up with them,” Benny said.

  “Yes. Yes, it was.”

  “I don’t mean lucky that your mother and father died, but if they had to wasn’t it great you didn’t go somewhere awful.”

  “Like in stories with wicked stepmothers,” Eve agreed.

  “I wonder why they got you. Nuns usually don’t get children unless it’s an orphanage.”

  “My father worked for them. They sent him up to Westlands to earn some money because they couldn’t pay him much. That’s where he met my mother. They feel responsible I think.”

  Benny was dying to know more. But she remembered Patsy’s advice.

  “Well, it all turned out fine, they’re mad about you up there.”

  “Your parents are mad about you too.”

  “It’s a bit hard sometimes, like if you want to wander off.”

  “It is for me too,” Eve said. “Not much wandering off above in the convent.”

  “It’ll be different when we’re older.”

  “It mightn’t be,” Eve said sagely.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we have to show them we’re terribly trustworthy or something, show them that if we are allowed to wander off, we’ll wander back in good time.”

  “How could we show them?” Benny was eager.

  “I don’t know. Something simple at the start. Could you ask me to stay the night here, for one thing?”

  “Of course I could.”

  “Then I could show Mother Francis that I’d be back up in the convent in time for mass in the chapel, and she’d get to know I was to be relied on.”

  “Mass on a weekday?”

  “Every day. At seven.”

  “No!”

  “It’s quite nice. The nuns sing beautifully, it’s nice and peaceful. Really I don’t mind it. Father Ross comes in specially and he gets a lovely breakfast in the parlor. He says the other priests envy him.”

  “I didn’t know that … every day.”

  “You won’t tell anyone will you?”

  “No. Is it a secret?”

  “Not a bit, it’s just that I don’t tell anything you see, and the community likes that, they feel I’m part of them. I didn’t have a friend before. There wasn’t anyone to tell.”

  Benny smiled from ear to ear. “What night will you come? Wednesday night?”

  “I don’t know, Eve. You don’t have any smart pajamas or anything to be going to stay with people. You don’t have a good sponge bag, things that people who go visiting need.”

  “My pajamas are fine, Mother.”

  “You could iron them, certainly, and you have a dressing gown.” She seemed to be faltering. “A sponge bag though?”

  “Could Sister Imelda make one for me? I’ll do extra clearing up for her.”

  “And what time will you come back?”

  “I’ll be at my prie dieu in time for mass, Mother.”

  “You won’t want to get up that early if you’re visiting people.” Mother Francis’s face was soft.

  “That’s what I’d want, Mother.”

  It was a great evening. They played rummy with Patsy in the kitchen for a long time because Mother and Father went across the road to Dr. and Mrs. Johnson’s house. It was a supper to celebrate the christening of their new baby.

  Eve asked Patsy all about the orphanage, and Patsy told more details than she had ever told Benny. She explained how they used to steal food, and how hard it was when she came to the Hogans, her first job, to realize she didn’t have to take any stray biscuit or a fistful of sugar and put it into her apron.

  In bed that night Benny said in wonder, “I don’t know why Patsy told us all that. Only the other day she was saying to me that people with no parents didn’t like being asked questions.”

  “Ah, it’s different with me,” Eve said. “I’m in the same boat.”

  “No you’re not!” Benny was indignant. “Patsy had nothing. She had to work in that awful place and get nits and steal and be beaten for wetting the bed. She had to leave there at fifteen and come here. It’s not a bit like you.”

  “No. We are the same, she has no family, I don’t. She didn’t have a home like you do.”

  “Is that why you told her more than you told me?” Benny had been even more astounded at the questions Patsy felt free to ask. Did Eve hate the Westwards who were so rich for not taking her into the big house? Eve didn’t, they couldn’t, they were Protestants, she explained. Lots more, things Benny wouldn’t have dared to ask.

  “You don’t ask things like that,” Eve said simply.

  “I’d be afraid of upsetting you,” Benny said.

  “You couldn’t upset a friend,” Eve said.

  Benny and Eve, who had lived all their lives in the same village, were each amazed at the things the other didn’t know about Knockglen.

  Benny didn’t know that the three priests who lived in the presbytery had been given the game of Scrabble, which they played every night, and sometimes rang the convent to ask Mother Francis questions like how you spelled “quixotic” because Father O’Brien was going to get a triple word score.

  Eve hadn’t known that Mr. Burns in the hardware shop was inclined to take to the drink or that Dr. Johnson had a very bad temper and was heard shouting about God never putting a mouth into the world that he didn’t feed. Dr. Johnson was of the view that there were a lot of mouths, especially in the families with thirteen children, that God had forgotten to feed.

  Benny didn’t know that Peggy Pine was an old friend of Mother Francis, that they had been girls years ago and that when she came to the convent she called Mother Francis Bunty.

  Eve hadn’t known that Birdie Mac who ran the sweetshop had a man from Ballylee who had been calling for fifteen years, but she wouldn’t leave her old mother and the man from Ballylee wouldn’t come to Knockglen.

  It made the town far more interesting to both of them to have such insights. Particularly because they knew these were dark secrets not to be shared with anyone. They pooled their knowledge on how children were born, and hadn’t any new enlightenments to offer. They both knew that they came out like kittens, they didn’t know how they got in.

  “It’s got something to do with lying down one beside the other, when you’re married,” Eve said.

  “It couldn’t happen if you weren’t married. Suppose you fell down beside someone like Dessie Burns.” Benny was worried.

  “No, you have to be married.” Eve knew that for certain.

  “And how would it get in?” It was a mystery.

  “It could be your Little Mary,” Benny said thoughtfully.

  “What’s your Little Mary?”

  “The bit in the middle of your tummy.”

  “Oh, your tummy button is what Mother Francis calls it.”

  “That must be it,” Benny cried t
riumphantly. “If they all have different names for it, that must be the secret.”

  They practiced hard at being reliable. If either said she would be home at six o’clock then five minutes before the hour struck and the Angelus rang she would be back in place. As Eve had anticipated, it did win them much more freedom. They were thought to be a good influence on each other. They didn’t allow their hysterical laughing fits to be seen in public.

  They pressed their noses against the window of Healy’s Hotel. They didn’t like Mrs. Healy. She was very superior. She walked as if she were a queen. She always seemed to look down on children.

  Benny heard from Patsy that the Healys had been up to Dublin to look for a child to adopt but they hadn’t got one because Mr. Healy had a weak chest.

  “Just as well,” Eve had said unsympathetically. “They’d be terrible for anyone as a mother and father.” She spoke in innocence of the fact that Knockglen had once thought that she herself might be the ideal child for them.

  Mr. Healy was much older than his wife. It was whispered, Patsy said, that he couldn’t cut the mustard. Eve and Benny spent long hours trying to work out what this could mean. Mustard came in a small tin and you mixed it with water. How did you cut it? Why should you cut it?

  Mrs. Healy looked a hundred but apparently she was twenty-seven. She had married at seventeen and was busy throwing all her efforts into the hotel since there were no children.

  Together they explored places where they had never gone alone. To Flood’s, the butchers, hoping they might see the animals being killed.

  “We don’t really want to see them being killed do we?” Benny asked fearfully.

  “No, but we’d like to be there at the beginning so that we could if we want to, then run away,” Eve explained. Mr. Flood wouldn’t let them near his yard so the matter didn’t arise.

  They stood and watched the Italian from Italy come and start up his fish-and-chip shop.

  “Weel you leetle girls come here every day and buy my feesh?” he said hopefully to the two earnest children, one big, one small, who stood watching his every move.

  “No, I don’t think we’ll be allowed,” Eve said sadly.

  “Why is that?”

  “It would be called throwing away good money,” Benny said.