Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

It wasn't like a prison cell, it was like a maid's room, Eve told herself firmly. And in a sense that was how they must view her, a difficult prickly maid up from the country. Worst of all, a maid with airs and graces.

Eve sat on her bed and looked around the room. She could hear the regretful, gentle voice of Mother Francis telling her that life was never meant to be easy and that her best course was to work very hard now and get out of this place in record time. Study her grammalogues in the shorthand, take a sharp interest in the book-keeping, flex her fingers for the typing, practising over and over. Listen and take notes on office procedure. In a year's time or less she would land herself a good job, and a place to live.

Never again would anyone offer her an iron bed in a dark poky little room.

The Wise Woman would grit her teeth and get on with it, Eve told herself. That was a phrase she and Benny used all the time. What would the Wise Woman do about Sean Walsh? The Wise Woman would pretend that he did not exist. The Wise Woman wouldn't buy another half pound of toffees in Birdie Mac's because she'd get spots. The Wise Woman would do her homework because Mother Francis was on the warpath.

After a week Eve realised that the Wise Woman would also need to be a canonised saint to adapt to the new surroundings.

Mother clare had suggested a regime of light housework, "to cover all your obligations, my dear'.

And Eve would admit that she did have obligations. She was getting a free residential course for which others paid handsomely. There was no history of association with this convent as there was with St. Mary's in Knockglen. She would have been eager to help from a sense of justice and also to do Mother Francis credit. But this was different.

Mother clare's idea of covering obligations centred around the kitchen.

She thought perhaps that Eve might like to serve the breakfast in the refectory and clear away, and that she should also leave classes ten minutes before lunch and be back in the refectory to serve soup to the other students when they came in.

In all her years in St. Mary's Eve Malone had never been seen by the other girls to perform one menial task. She had been asked to help behind the scenes as would any girl in her own home. But in front of the other pupils Mother Francis had made an iron-hard rule that Eve must never be seen to do anything which would give her a different status.

Mother clare had no such qualms. "But my dear girl, you don't know these other pupils," she had said when Eve had politely requested t isn't that the case, Eve? You are here on a different basis," she had said, smiling very sweetly all the while.

Eve knew the battle had to be fought and won there and then before the other students arrived.

"I am happy to cover my obligation. I'd like you to rethink your plans for me?"

Two spots of red appeared on Mother clare's cheeks. This was pure insolence. But Mother clare had fought many battles since she had taken her vows and she always realised when she was on poor ground.

Like now. Gommunity in Knockglen would defend Eve vociferously.

Even some of the Sisters here in Dublin might see that the girl had a point.

"I'll tell you tomorrow," she had said and turned to swish her long black skirts and veil down the polished corridor.

Eve had spent the day wandering around Dublin with a heavy heart.

She knew she had visited heavy housework upon herself because of her attitude.

She looked in shop windows and willed herself to think of the days when she would be able to afford clothes like she saw there.

Imagine if you could go in and buy maybe four of the pencil-slim skirts in different colours. They were only twelve shillings and eleven pence each. It didn't matter that they were not great quality, you could have all these colours. And there was cotton gingham at two shillings a yard, you'd have a smashing blouse out of that at six shillings, maybe four of them to go with each of the skirts.

Eve dismissed the swagger coats. She was too short, they were too sweeping, they'd envelop her, but she'd love six pairs of the fully fashioned very sheer nylons just under five shillings each.

And tapered slacks in wine or navy; she saw those everywhere.

They varied in price, but usually around a pound a pair.

If she had a wallet of money she'd go and buy them now. This minute.

But it wasn't money for clothes that she wanted. Eve knew that only too well. She wanted a different kind of life entirely. She wanted to study, to spend three, even five, years at university.

She was prepared to make sacrifices for it, but there seemed to be no way she could even begin.

There were stories of people putting themselves through college by working during the day and studying at night. But that would still mean the year with the terrible Mother clare to qualify herself for any kind of work. Eve noticed that almost without realising it her journey had taken her up through St. Stephen's Green towards the big grey buildings of University College. It was still empty and she wandered at will around the main hall, seeing only those involved in administration moving about.

The term would start next week. Lucky Benny would arrive as would hundreds of first-year students from all over Ireland.

Eve realised that there were thousands like herself who would never gety had brains and insights like she had. That's what made it so hard.

Eve knew that through these doors next week would come girls who only intended to use university as part of their social life.

There would be unwilling students, who didn't want to be here at all, who had other plans and other dreams, but came to satisfy the wishes of parents. There would be those who drifted in and would use the time to make up their minds. She felt a boiling rage about the Westwards, the family who cut off their own flesh and blood, who let her be raised by the charity of the nuns and never bothered themselves to think that she was now of university age.

There was no fairness on earth if someone who would appreciate it and work hard was kept out just because of a greedy, uncaring family who would prefer to forget the child of an unsuitable union rather than make a generous gesture and ensure that some right was done at the end of the day.

She looked in the glass-fronted noticeboards and read of the societies that would be re-forming when term started, and the new committees and the sports arrangements and the practice times, and the appeals for people to join this group and that club.

And she saw the big staircases leading up to the libraries and the lecture halls. She saw the red plush benches which would be filled with students next week, and she ached to be amongst them.

To spend her days reading and writing and finding out more and talking to people, and to spend no time at all trying to outwit awful people like Mother clare.

The Wise Woman would get on with her life and stop dreaming. Then she thought how tiring it was going to be for the rest of her life trying to be the Wise Woman all the time. It would be great to be the very Unwise Woman on occasions.

Benny took the bus to Dublin on the first day of term with more trepidation than she would ever have expected. At home they had behaved as if she were a toddler going to a first party in a party frock rather than a huge ungainly student eighteen years of age going to university dressed from head to toe in dark clothes.

she could still see the tableau this morning: her father with tears of pride in his eyes - she knew he would go to the business and bore everyone to death with tales about how his wonderful daughter was going to university. Benny could see her mother sitting there stretching her hand out full of what she had been full of for months now: the huge advantages of being able to come home every night by bus. Patsy, looking like the faithful old black mammy slave in a film except that she was white and she was only twenty-five. It had made Benny want to scream and scream.