Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

Benny found the summer term at University College was like six weeks in another city. It was so different to everything that had gone before.

The days were long and warm. They used to take their books to the gardens at the back of Newman House in St. Stephen's Green and study.

She always meant to ask about these gardens and who looked after them.

They belonged to the university, obviously. It was peaceful there and unfamiliar. Not like almost every other square inch of Dublin, which she associated with Jack.

Some nights she stayed with Eve in Dunlaoghaire, other nights they both went home on the bus together. There was a divan couch in Eve's cottage; sometimes she spent the night up there. Mother, absorbed with plans and redecoration, seemed pleased that Benny had Eve to talk to.

They called it studying, but in fact it was talking; as much as started to bud, as the old roses began to bloom, the friends sat and talked. They spoke very little about Nan and Jack and what had happened. It was too soon, too raw.

"I wonder where they went," Benny said once, out of the blue. "A couple of people said they saw them here in Knockglen, but where could they have stayed?"

"They stayed here," Eve said simply.

She didn't have to tell Benny that it was without her permission, and that it had broken her heart. She saw tears in Benny's eyes.

There was a long silence.

"She must have lost the baby," Benny said. "I expect so," Eve said.

She found herself thinking unexpectedly of the curse her father had laid on the Westwards.

And how so many of them had indeed had such bad luck. Could this have been more of it? A Westward not even to survive till birth?

Mr. Flood was referred to a new young psychiatrist, who was apparently a very kind young man. He listened to Mr. Flood endlessly, and then prescribed his medication. There were no more nuns in trees. In fact, Mr. Flood was embarrassed that he should ever have thought there were.

It was decided that it should be referred to as a trick of the light.

Something that could happen to anyone.

Dessie Burns said that what was wrong with the country was this obsession with drink. Everyone you met was either on the jar or off the jar. What was needed was an attitude of moderation. He himself was going to be a moderate drinker from now on, not all this going on tears or going off it totally. The management in Shea's said that it all depended on your interpretation of the word moderation, but at least Mr. Burns had cut out the lunch-time drinking and that could only be to everyone's advantage.

Knockglen was cheated of the wedding of Mrs. Dorothy Healy and Mr. Sean Walsh. It was decided, they told people, that since the nuptials would be second time around for Mrs. Healy and since Sean Walsh had no close family to speak of, they would marry in Rome.

It would be so special, and although they would not be married by the Holy Father they would share in a blessing for several hundred other newly married couples.

"They couldn't rustle up ten people between them who'd come to the wedding," Patsy told Mrs. Hogan.

Patsy was thrilled by the decision. It would mean that her own wedding would now have no competition.

Eve was surprised to get an invitation to Patsy's wedding. She had expected just to go to the church to cheer her on. She realized that of course she and Patsy would be neighbours, up on the quarry path.

She assumed that Mossy's mother had heard dire reports of the goings-on at the party, and would look on her as a shameless hussy who gave drunken parties. Eve didn't realize that Mossy told his mother as little as he told anyone else. She was getting increasingly deaf, and since she only knew about the world what he told her, she knew remarkably little.

She knew that Patsy was a good cook, and didn't have a family of her own to make demands, so Patsy would be free to look after Mossy's mother in her old age.

Mother Francis saw Dr. Johnson passing the school in his car. She was looking out of the window as she often did when the girls were doing a test and thinking about the town. How she would hate to leave Knockglen, and go to another convent within the Order.

Every year in summer the changes were announced. It was always a relief to know that she had another year where she was. Holy Obedience meant that you went without question where Mother General decided.

She hoped unworthily each year that Mother Clare would not be sent to join them. She didn't exactly pray that Mother Clare would be kept in Dublin, but God knew her views on that. Any day now they would know.

It was always an unsettling couple of weeks waiting for the news.

She wondered where Dr. Johnson was going, what a strange demanding life, always out to see someone being born or die or go through complicated bits in between.

Major Westward was dead when the doctor arrived. He closed the eyes, pulled a sheet over the head and sat down with Mrs. Walsh.

He would phone the undertakers and the Vicar, just to alert them, but first someone had better find Simon.

"I telephoned him this morning. He's on his way from England."

"Right then. Not much more that I can do." He stood up and reached for his coat.

"Not much loss," he said. "I beg your pardon, Dr. Johnson?"

He had looked at her levelly. She was a strange woman. She liked the feeling of being in the Big House, even though it was Big rather than Grand. She would probably stay if Simon brought home a bride, grow old here, feel that her own state had been ennobled by her contact with these people.

It wasn't fair of him to be snide about the dead man. He had never liked old Westward, he had thought the man arrogant and ungiving to the village that was on his doorstep. He had found the disinheriting of Eve Malone beyond his comprehension.

But he must not tread on the sensibilities of other people. His wife had told him that a thousand times.

He decided to change his epitaph.

"Sorry, Mrs. Walsh, what I said was, "What a loss, such a loss."

You'll pass on my condolences to Simon, won't you?"

"I'm sure Mr. Simon will telephone you, Doctor, when he gets back." Mrs. Walsh was tight-lipped. She had heard very well what he had said the first time.

Jack Foley's parents said that he was behaving most unreasonably.

What were they to think, or indeed to say? Was the wedding on or was it off? Obviously since the urgency had gone out of it and the three-week run-up time had been and gone, they could assume that she was no longer pregnant. Jack had snapped and said he couldn't possibly be expected to discuss all this with them at this early stage while Nan was still convalescing.

"I think we can be expected to know whether you now have reason to call off this rushed marriage." His father spoke sharply.

"She had a miscarriage," he said. "But nothing else is clear." He looked so wretched they left him alone. After all their main question had been answered, the way they hoped it would be.

Paddy Hickey proposed to Kit Hegarty at a window table in a big Dunlaoghaire hotel. His hands were trembling as he asked her to marry him. He used formal words, as if a proposal was some kind of magic ritual and wouldn't work unless he asked her to do him the honour of becoming his wife.

He said that all his children knew he was going to ask her, they would be waiting, hoping for a yes, like himself. He spoke so long and in such flowery tones that Kit could hardly find a gap in the speech to say yes.

"What did you say?" he asked at length.

"I said I'd love to and I think we'll make each other very happy." He got up from his side of the table and came round to her, in front of everyone in the restaurant dining room he took her in his arms and kissed her.

Somehow, even in the middle of the embrace he felt that people had laid down their cutlery and their glasses to look at them.