Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

"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-storey 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 at 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.

Jack Foley was just himself.

When told that a child was his he accepted that it was. And when it was born, it would be theirs. She could leave university. She had made a good impression on the Foley parents. She could see that.

There was a small mews at the end of their garden. In time it would be done up, in more time they would live in a house similar to his parents'. They would entertain, they would have dinner parties, she would keep in touch with her mother.

It would all be a great sense of peace compared to the never-ending contest. The game where the goalposts kept moving, and the rules changing.

Nan Mahon was going to marry Jack Foley, not just because she was pregnant, but because at the age of almost twenty she was tired.

Kit Hegarty had a lemon-coloured suit and a white blouse for her trip to Kerry.

"You need some colour to go with it. I keep forgetting we can't ask Nan."

"Have you spoken to her at all?" Kit asked. "Nope."