Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

"God, you're a tough girl. I'd hate to make you my enemy." The Hayes next door had come in to wish Kit well. Ann Hayes said what she needed was a big copper-coloured brooch and she had the very thing at home.

Mr. Hayes looked at Kit admiringly. "Lord bless us, Kit, but you're like a bride," he said.

"Stop putting so much hope in this. It's only an outing."

"Your Joseph would have been glad for you to meet another fellow. He often said."

Kit looked at him startled. Joseph Hegarty would have said little to the Hayes, he hardly knew them.

She thanked him, but said as much.

"You're wrong, Kit. He did know us. He sent us letters for his son."

Eve's heart chilled. Why did this man have to tell Kit now?

"He wanted to keep in touch with his boy. He wrote every month, giving his address as he moved on from place to place."

"And Francis read these?"

"Frank read them all. He went to see him last summer when he was canning peas in England."

"Why did he never say, why did neither of them ever say?"

"They didn't want to hurt you. The time wasn't right to tell you."

"And why is the time right now?"

"Because Joe Hegarty wrote to me before he died. He wrote to say that if you met a good man I was to explain that you must never worry about having deprived your son of his father. Because you didn't."

"Did he know he was going to die?"

"Sure, we're all going to die," said Mr. Hayes, as his wife came back in and pinned the brooch on Kit Hegarty's lapel.

Kit smiled, unable to speak. It was something she had been worrying a lot about lately. When she saw how close Paddy Hickey was to his sons, she wondered had she done wrong letting Francis grow up without knowing a father?

She was glad that it had been explained in front of Eve. It showed how much Eve was part of the family.

The Hayes were going to keep an eye on the house for two weeks.

The outing was going to be much longer than Kit had first thought when it had been described as a weekend. And Eve would be down in Knockglen. Kit was delighted they had decided to go ahead with their party. It would be a further betrayal to admit that there could be no party now. That the stars had gone.

When Carmel's Sean had been organizing the finances, he had given some money to Jack as an advance. Jack was the one with most access to a car. Jack could get them a reduction through a wine merchant. He had been the one who was going to bring the drink.

But obviously everything had changed now. And no one liked to remind Jack that he was already in possession of eleven pounds of the communal money.

Carmel's Sean suggested they should forget it. The other boys agreed.

Jack had quite enough on his plate without reminding him that he owed the kitty eleven pounds.

Heather was wonderful in the pageant.

Aidan, Eve and Benny were enormously proud of her. She was a stockier, more solid, Simon of Cyrene than was normally shown by artists, but then surely they would have pulled from the crowd someone strong to help in the journey up the hill of Calvary.

Mother Francis had always urged the children to make up their own words.

Heather had been adept at this.

"Let me help you with that cross, Jesus, dear," she said to Fiona Carroll, who was playing Our Lord with a sanctimonious face.

"It's a difficult thing to carry going uphill," Heather added.

"It would be much easier on the flat, but then they wouldn't see the Crucifixion so well, you see."

There was tea and biscuits in the school hall afterwards and Heather was greatly congratulated.

"It's the best Easter ever," she said, with her eyes shining.

"And Eve says I can be a waitress at her party, next week, so long as I go home before the necking starts."

Eve looked at Mother Francis sadly. A grown-up look of collusion, of admitting how children would hang you. Heather was unaware of anything amiss.

"Will your friend be here again?" she asked Benny. "Which one?"

"The man that took to fancying Welsh girls for a bit, but came back."

"He went off again," Benny said.

"Better leave him to go then," Heather advised. "He sounds a bit unreliable."

Standing there in her sheet, in the middle of the party, Heather had no idea why Eve, Aidan and Benny got such a fit of hysterial laughter, and had to wipe the tears out of their eyes. She wished she knew what she had said that was so funny, but she was glad anyway that it had pleased them all so much.

Everyone was delighted to be going to Knockglen. Not for just a party, but for a series of outings.

They would arrive on the Friday after six o'clock, when there would be drinks in Hogan's, and then they would all adjourn to Mario's for the evening. There were bunk beds and sofas and sleeping bags for the boys in Hogan's shop; the girls were going to stay in Eve's and Benny's houses. Then there would be a great trek to Ballylee for lunch and a walk in the woods on Saturday and back for the main event, the proper party in Eve's cottage.

They all said that the one at Christmas would take some beating.

Eve said it would be better than ever now. An April moon, and the blossom out on the hedges and grass instead of mud around. There would be wild flowers all over the disused quarry, it would look less like a bomb site than it had done in winter. No one would slip on the mucky paths this time. They wouldn't need to huddle by the fire.

Sister Imelda was as usual aching to be asked to help with the cooking.

"It's no fun for you, Sister, if you can't see them enjoying it," Eve pleaded.

"It's probably just as well I don't see all that goes on up there.

It's enough for me to be told they like it."

"If Simon and the woman from Hampshire come home that weekend, are you going to ask them?" Heather asked.

"No," said Eve.

"I thought you only hated Grandfather. I thought you and Simon got on well enough."

"We do. Eve was dry.

"If he had married Nan, would you have come to the wedding?"

"You ask an awful lot of questions."

"Mother Francis says we should have enquiring minds," Heather said primly.

Eve laughed heartily. That was true. Mother Francis had always said It.

"I might have, if I'd been asked. But I don't think your brother would ever have married Nan."

Heather said it would all depend whether Nan had money or not.

Simon couldn't marry anyone poor because of the drainage and the fencing.

He had thought that Nan's father was a wealthy builder in the beginning. She heard a lot of this from Bee Moore, but Bee always had to stop when Mrs. Walsh came in because Mrs. Walsh didn't like gossip.

Heather was helping to tidy up the cottage garden. They had a big sack, which they were filling with weeds. Mossy would take it away later.

They worked easily, the unlikely friends and cousins, side by side.

Eve said that maybe they shouldn't talk too much about Nan over the weekend. She was going to marry Jack Foley shortly. Neither of them would be here. There was nothing hush hush, just better not to bring the subject up.

"Why?" Heather asked.

Eve was a respecter of the enquiring mind. As they dug the dandelions and slashed back the nettles, she told an edited version of the story.

Heather listened gravely.

"I think you're taking it worse than Benny," she said eventually.

"I think I am," Eve agreed. "Benny fought all my battles for me at school. And now there's nothing I can do for her. If I had my way, I'd kill Nan Mahon. I'd kill her with my bare hands."

The night before they were all due to arrive, Benny lay in bed and couldn't sleep.

She would close her eyes and think that a lot of time had passed, but when she saw the luminous hands of the little pink clock she realized that it had only been ten minutes.