Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

"Benny, I have to talk to you. Where can we go that's away from all these people?"

She laughed at him good-naturedly.

ú "Hey, you were the one who said the main hall at one o'clock. I didn't choose it. Did you think it would be deserted and just the two of us?"

The crowds swarmed past them in and out, and just standing around in groups talking, duffle coats over arms now, scarves loosely hanging.

The weather was getting too warm for them, but they were the badge of being a student. People didn't want to discard them entirely.

"Please," he said.

"Well would you like to go to Carlo's, you know that lovely place we went.

"No." He almost shouted it.

Everywhere else would be full of people they knew. Even if they were to sit in Stephen's Green, half the university would pass by on its way to stroll down Grafton Street at lunch time.

Benny was at a loss, and yet she knew she had to make the decision.

Jack looked all in.

"We could sit by the canal?" she suggested. "We could get apples for us and some stale bread in case we see the swans." She looked eager and anxious to please him. It seemed to distress him still further.

"Oh, Jesus, Benny," he said, and pulled her towards him. A flicker of fear came and went. She felt something was wrong, but then she was always feeling that and it never was.

There was a place near one of the locks where they often sat.

There was a bit of raised ground.

Benny took off her coat and laid it down for them to sit on. "No, no, we'll ruin it."

"It's only clay. It'll brush off. You're as bad as Nan," she teased him. "It's Nan," he said. "What is?"

"She's pregnant. She found out yesterday."

Benny felt a jolt of shock for her friend. At the same time she felt the sense of surprise that Nan of all people had been going all the way with Simon Westward. Nan. So cool and distant. How had she made love properly? Benny would have thought that she would have been the last person on earth to have found herself in this position.

"Poor Nan," she said. "Is she very upset?"

"She's out of her mind with worry," he said. They sat in silence.

Benny went over the whole awfulness of it in her mind. A university career in ruins, a baby by the age of twenty. And possibly from the look of sympathy on Jack's face a problem about Simon Westward. Eve would have been right about him.

He would never marry Nan Mahon from the North Side of Dublin, a builder's daughter. And beautiful though she was, the fact that she had given in to him would make him less respectful of her than ever.

"What's she going to do? I suppose she's not going to get married?"

She looked at Jack.

His face was working with emotion. He seemed to be struggling for words.

"She is getting married."

Benny looked at him alarmed. This wasn't normal speech. He took her hand, and held it to his face. There were tears on his face.

Jack Foley was crying.

"She's getting married. . . to me," he said. She looked at him in disbelief.

She said absolutely nothing. She knew her mouth was open and her face red with fright.

He was still holding her hand to his face. His body was shaking with sobs.

"We have to get married, Benny," he said. "It's my baby."

Chapter 18

Eve was in the Singing Kettle when she saw Benny at the door. At first she thought that Benny was going to join them and was about to pull up another chair.

Then she saw her face.

"See you later," she said hastily to the group.

"You haven't finished your chips." Aidan was amazed. Nothing could be that pressing. But Eve was out in Leeson Street.

She drew Benny away from the doorway where they were in the main path of almost everyone they knew.

Then, leaning against the iron railings of a house, Benny began to tell her the tale. Sometimes it was hard to hear the words, and sometimes she said the same words over, and over and over again.

Like that he said he loved her, he loved Benny. He really did and he wouldn't have had this happen for the world. But there was nothing else that could be done. The announcement would be in the Irish Times on Saturday.

Eve looked across the road and saw a taxi letting someone off at St. Vincent's Private Nursing Home. She dragged Benny through the traffic and pushed her into the back of it.

"Dunlaoghaire," she said briskly.

"Are you girls all right?" The taxi driver watched them in the mirror.

The big girl look particularly poorly, as if she might get sick all over his car.

"We have the fare," Eve said. "I didn't mean that," he began.

"You did a bit." They both grinned.

Eve said to Benny that she should rest. There'd be plenty of time to talk when they got home.

Kit was out. She was shopping for a new outfit for Easter when she was going to Kerry as a guest of Kevin Hickey and his father.

They had the kitchen to themselves. Benny sat at the table and through a blur saw Eve prepare a meal for them. She noticed her small thin hands cut deftly through the cold cooked potatoes and trim the rinds from rashers of bacon. She saw thin fingers of bread dipped in a beaten egg.

"I don't want any of this," Benny said.

"No, but I do. I left my whole lunch in the Kettle, remember?"

Eve took a bottle of sherry from inside a cornflake packet. "It's to hide it from the drinky students," she explained. "I'm not having any."

"Medicinal," Eve said, and poured out two huge tumblers for them as she placed the big white plates of comfort food in front of them.

"Now start at the very beginning and tell me slowly. Start from when you sat down on the coat by the canal, and don't tell me that he loves you or I'll get up and throw every single thing that's on this table on the floor and you'll have to clear it up."

"Eve, please. I know you mean to help."

"Oh, I mean to help all right," said Eve. Benny had never seen her face looking so grim. Not in all that long war she had waged with the Westwards, not in the fight with Mother Clare or in her hospital bed had she seen Eve Malone's face so hard and unforgiving.

They talked until the shadows got longer. Benny heard Kit let herself in. She looked around at the untidy kitchen and the half finished sherry bottle.

"It's all right," Eve said gently, "she'll understand. I'll do a quick clear-up."

"I should be going for my bus."

"You're staying here. Ring your mother. And Benny. . . she'll ask are you seeing Jack. Tell her you don't see Jack any more.

Prepare her for it being over."

"It needn't be over. He doesn't want it to be over. He says that we have to talk."

Kit came to the door and looked around her in surprise. Before she could make any protest Eve spoke.

"Benny's had a bit of a shock. We're coping with it the best we can, by eating most of tomorrow's breakfast. I'll go up to the huckster's shop and replace it later."

Kit knew a crisis when she saw one.

"I have to hang up my finery. See you in half an hour to prepare supper. That's if there's any of that left."

She nodded encouragingly and disappeared.

Annabel Hogan said that was fine. She had a lot of work to do in the shop. It would save them making a supper. She and Patsy would just get something from Mario's. Benny thought bitterly of all the nights she had left Jack Foley to his own devices in Dublin while she had trundled wearily home to keep her mother company.

Now she was less in the way staying in Dublin.

"Are you going out with Jack?" Mother asked. Despite Eve's warning, Benny couldn't do it. She couldn't tell her mother that it was over.

Even to say it meant it might be true.

"Not tonight," she said brightly. "No, tonight I'm just going out with Eve."

Benny lay on Eve's bed and bathed her eyes with cold water while Eve served the supper downstairs. The curtains were drawn and she could hear the clatter of plates and cutlery below. Kit had looked in briefly with a cup of tea. She had made no attempt to cheer her or sympathize. Benny could see why she must be such a restful person to live with.