Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

Benny realized that Eve was probably right in this harsh face-saving exercise. Bad as it was now, it would be worse if she had said nothing and her mother had found out through someone else. Like today in college, it was over now, the shock and the pity and the whispering.

They couldn't continue indefinitely if Benny seemed to be in the whole of her senses. What was very hard was this pretence that she and Jack had been just one more casual romance, with no hearts broken at the end of it.

"Benny, I'm so sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am."

"That's all right, Mother. You were always the one to say that college romances come and go . . ." The words were fine, but the tone was shaky.

"I suppose she s.

"She's very excited, certainly, and. . . and. . . everything." If her mother said the wrong thing now she would lose the little control she still held on to. Please let Mother not embrace her or say something about the fickleness of men.

Being in business for a few weeks must have taught Annabel a great deal about life.

There were just a few headshakes at the modern generation, and then a suggestion that they go home for tea before Patsy sent a search party out to look for them.

After supper she called on Clodagh. She moved restlessly around, picking things up and putting them down again as they talked.

Clodagh sat and stitched, watching her carefully.

"Are you pregnant?" Clodagh asked eventually. "I'm not the one who is, unfortunately," Benny said. She told the tale.

Clodagh never put down her needle. She nodded, and agreed, and disagreed and asked questions. At no time did she say that Jack Foley was a bastard, and that Nan Mahon was worse to betray her friend. She accepted it as one of the things that happen in life.

Benny grew stronger as she spoke. The prickling of her nose and eyes, the urge to weep, had faded a little.

"I still believe that it's me he loves," she said timidly at the end of the saga.

"It might well be," Clodagh was matter of fact. "But that's not important now. It's what people do is important, not what they say or feel."

She sounded so like Eve, so determined, so sure. In the most matterof-fact way she said that Jack and Nan would probably make no better or no worse a fist of getting married and having a child than most people did. But that's what they would be. A couple with a child And then another and another.

Whether Jack still loved Benny Hogan was irrelevant. He had made his choice. He had done what was called the decent thing.

"It was the right thing," Benny said, against her will. Clodagh shrugged. It might have been, or it might not, but whatever it was it was the thing he had done. "You'll survive, Benny," she said comfortingly. "And to give him his due, which I don't want to do at this moment, he wants you to survive. He wants the best for you. He thinks that's love."

Late that night at the kitchen table Patsy said that all men were pigs and that handsome men were out and out pigs. She said he had been well received and made welcome in this house, and that he was such a prize pig he didn't know a lady when he saw one. That Nan wasn't a lady for all her fine talk. He'd discover that when it was too late. "I don't think it was a lady he wanted," Benny explained. "I think it was more a lover. And I wasn't any use to him there."

"Nor should you have been," Patsy said. "Isn't it bad enough that we're going to have to do it over and over when we're married, and have a roof over our heads. What's the point in letting them have it for nothing before?"

It seemed to shed a gloomy light on the future that lay ahead for Patsy and Mossy. It was almost impossible to imagine other people having sex, but depressing to think that Patsy was dreading it so much.

Patsy poured them more drinking chocolate and said that she wished Nan not a day of luck for the rest of her life. She hoped that her baby would be born with a deformed back and a cast in its eye.

The engagement is announced between Ann Elizabeth (Nan), only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Brian Mahon, Maple Gardens, Dublin and John Anthony (Jack), eldest son of Dr. and Mrs. John Foley, Donnybrook, Dublin.

"I saw the Irish Times this morning." Sean Walsh had made it his business to exercise the two Jack Russells up and down the street until he met Benny. "Oh yes?"

"That's a bit of a surprise, isn't it?"

"About Princess Soraya?" she asked innocently. The Shah of Persia was about to divorce his wife. There had been a lot about it in the press.

Sean was disappointed. He had hoped for a better reaction, a hanging of the head. An embarrassment even.

"I meant your friend getting married?"

"Nan Mahon? That's right. You saw it in the paper. We didn't know when they'd be making it official."

"But the man . . . she's marrying your friend." Sean was totally confused now.

"Jack? Of course." Benny was bland and innocent. "I thought you and he. . ." Sean was lost for words. Benny helped him. They had indeed been friends, even walking out as people might put it. But college life was renowned for all the first-year friendships, people moved around like musical chairs.

Sean looked at her long and hard. He would not be cheated of his moment of victory.

"Well, well, well. I'm glad to see that you take it so well, Benny. I must say that when I saw them here, around Knockglen, I thought it was a. . . well, a little insensitive, you know. But I didn't say anything to you. I didn't want to upset anybody."

"I'm sure you didn't, Sean. But they weren't here. Not here around Knockglen. So you were mistaken."

"I don't think so," said Sean Walsh.

She thought about the way he said it. She thought about Clodagh having seen Jack at Dessie Burns" petrol pump. She thought about Johnny O'Brien wondering where they did it. But it was beyond belief.

Where could they have gone? And if Jack loved her, how could he have come back to her home town to make love to someone else?

Somehow the weekend passed. It was hard to remember that when the phone rang it wouldn't be Jack. It was hard when Fonsie talked about the party to realize that nobody would come to it. It was hard to believe that he wouldn't be waiting in the Annexe with eyes dancing, waving her over, delighted to see her.

The hardest thing was to forget that he had said on the banks of the canal that he still loved her.

It was easy for Eve and Clodagh to dismiss that. But Benny knew Jack wouldn't have said it unless he meant it. And if he did still love her none of the other business made sense.

She didn't even allow herself to think about meeting Nan. The day would come, probably next week, when she would have to see her.

There had been conflicting stories. Nan was going to continue and finish her degree, while her mother did the babysitting. Or that Nan was going to leave immediately. That she was out already flat hunting.

Benny had kept the cutting from the newspaper. She read it over and over to make it have some meaning.

John Anthony. She had known that. And even more, like that the name he took at Confirmation was Michael, so his initials were JAM Foley.

She hadn't known that Nan would have been baptized Ann Elizabeth.

Probably Nan had been a pet name when she was a beautiful little baby.

A baby who could get what she wanted. All the time.

Perhaps she hadn't been able to get Simon Westward, and so she had taken Jack instead. How unfair of Simon not to want Nan.

That's what must have happened. Benny raged at him, and his snobbery.

Nan was exactly the kind of person who would have livened up Westlands.

If only that romance had continued then none of this would have happened.

Benny stood behind the counter in the shop, in order to free her mother and Mike for earnest discussions on new cloth. Heather Westward came in in her St. Mary's uniform.