Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

In the kitchen Eve was white-faced. "I don't believe you," she said to Aidan.

"Put those things down." He looked at the carving knife and fork in her hand.

"Well, they're getting out. They're getting straight out of my house, let me tell you."

"No, they're not, Eve." Aidan was unexpectedly firm. "Jack is my friend, and he is not going to be ordered out.

It was always planned that he'd come here. . . he brought the drink."

"Oh, don't be a fool," Eve blazed. "Nobody wanted the bloody drink.

If he was that worried about it couldn't he have sent it. . .

they're not welcome here."

"They're our friends, Eve."

"Not any more. Not now."

"You can't keep up these things for ever. We've got to get back to normal. I think they were absolutely right to come."

"And what are they doing inside? Lording it over everyone?"

"Eve, please. These people are your guests, our guests in a way since you and I are a couple. Please don't make a scene. It would ruin the party for everyone. They're all behaving fine in there."

Eve went over and put her arms around Aidan. "You're very generous, much nicer than I am. I don't think we'll work as a couple."

"No, you're probably right. But could we sort that one at another time, not just when they're going to have their supper?"

Bill Dunne came through the kitchen to go to the bathroom.

"Sorry," he said, as he saw Aidan and Eve in each other's arms.

"You wouldn't know where to put yourself these days."

"All right," Eve conceded, "just so long as I don't have to talk to her."

Benny was dancing with Teddy Flood when Eve went into the room.

Jack was talking to Johnny and Sean. He was as handsome and assured as ever. He looked delighted to see her. "Eve!"

"Hallo, Jack." Unenthusiastic, but not rude. She had made a promise to Aidan. Hospitality must never be abused. "We brought you a vase, a sort of glass jug. It would be nice for all the daffodils and everything," he said.

It was a nice jug. How did someone like Jack Foley do the right thing so often? How did he know she had daffodils, he hadn't been here since Christmas, when there was nothing but holly in bloom.

"Thanks. That's lovely," she said. She moved around the room, emptying ashtrays, making spaces where the plates could be put down.

Nan stood on her own on the edge of a group. Eve couldn't bring herself to say any words of greeting. She opened her mouth, but she couldn't find anything to say. She went back to the kitchen and stood at the table leaning on both hands. The rage she felt was a real thing, you could almost take it out of her and see it, like a red mist.

She remembered how Mother Francis, and Kit Hegarty, and many a time Benny, had warned her that this temper wasn't natural. It would only hurt her in the end.

The door opened, and Nan came in. She stood there in her fresh flowery print, the breeze from the window slightly lifting her blonde hair.

"Listen, Eve. .

"I won't, if you don't mind. I have a meal to prepare."

"I don't want you to hate me."

"You flatter yourself. Nobody hates you. We despise you. That's different altogether."

Nan's eyes flashed now. She hadn't expected this. "That's a bit petty of you, isn't it? A bit provincial? Life goes on. Aidan and Jack are friends She looked proud and confident. She knew she held all the winning cards. She had broken all the rules and yet she had won. Not only was she able to take away her only friend's boyfriend, find somewhere, the Lord knew where, to sleep with him, and then get him to agree to marry her, she was also expecting everything to remain the same as it had been in their social life. Eve said nothing. She looked at her dumbfounded. "Well, say something, Eve," Nan was impatient. "You must be thinking something. Say it."

"I was thinking that Benny was probably your only friend. That of every one of us she was the only one who just liked you for being you, not just for being glamorous."

Eve knew that this was pointless. Nan would shrug. If she physically didn't shrug her shoulders, she would mentally. She would say that these things happened.

Nan would take, she would take everything she saw. She was like a child crawling towards a shining object. She took just by instinct.

"Benny's better off. She'd have had a lifetime of watching him, of wondering."

"And you won't?"

"I'll cope."

"I'm sure you will, you've coped with everything." Eve realized she was shaking. Her hands were trembling as she filled the jug with water and started to arrange a bunch of flowers that someone else had brought.

"I chose that for you," Nan said. "What?"

"The vase. You don't have one."

Suddenly Eve knew where Jack and Nan had spent their nights together.

Here in this house, in her bed.

They had driven to Knockglen, come up the track, taken her key and let themselves in. They had made love in her bed. She looked at Nan aghast. That was why she had had the feeling that someone had been in the house. The strange undefined sense of someone else's presence.

"It was here, wasn't it?"

Nan shrugged. That awful dismissive shrug. "Yes, sometimes. What does it matter, now; "It matters to me.

"We left the place perfect. No one would ever know."

"You came to my house, to my bed, to take Benny's Jack in my bed.

In Benny's town. Jesus Christ, Nan. . Now Nan lost her temper, utterly.

"By God, I'm sick of this. I am sick of it. This Holy Joe attitude, all of you desperate to do it, playing around the edges, not having the guts or the courage, confessing it, titillating everyone still further .

Her face was red and angry.

"And don't talk to me about this cottage. . . don't talk as if it was the Palace of Versailles. It's a damp, falling down shack. .

. that's what it is. It hasn't electricity. It has a Stanley Range that we couldn't light for fear you'd find the traces. It has leaks and draughts, and it's no wonder they say the place is haunted. It feels haunted. It smells haunted."

"Nobody says my house is haunted." There were tears of rage in Eve's eyes.

Then she stopped. People had said that they heard someone playing the piano here at night.

But that was ages ago. Jack didn't play the piano. It must have been before Jack.

"You brought Simon here too, didn't you?" she said. The memory of Simon playing the piano at Westlands came back to her. That day she had gone up there with Heather, the day the old man had cursed at her and called her mother a whore. Nan said nothing.

"You brought Simon Westward to my bed, in my house. You knew I'd never have let him over the doorstep. And you brought him in here. And then, when he wouldn't marry you, you tricked Jack Foley. .

Nan was suddenly pale. She looked around her at the door to the room where the others were dancing.

The music of Tab Hunter was on the record player. "Young love, first love. "Take it easy. . ." Nan began.

Eve had picked up the carving knife. She started to move towards her, the words came tumbling out. She couldn't control them if she tried.

"I will not take it easy. What you have done, by Christ, I won't take it easy."

Nan wasn't near enough to reach the handle of the door to the sitting room. She backed away, but Eve was still moving towards her, eyes flashing and the knife in her hand.

"Eve, stop!" she cried, moving as fast as she could out of range.

She lurched against the bathroom door so hard that the glass broke.

Nan fell, sliding down on the ground, and the broken glass ripped her arm. Blood spurted everywhere, even on to her face.

The dress with mauve and white print became crimson in a second.

Eve dropped the knife on the floor. Her own screams were as loud as Nan's as she stood there in her kitchen amid the broken glass, the blood and the meal ready to be served, and the sound of everyone joining in the song in the room next door.