Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

The first day of term in the Foley household meant that Jack would put on a college scarf and head into UGD for the first time. In the dining room of the big Donnybrook house there was a sense of excitement. Dr. John Foley sat at the head of the table, and looked at his five sons.

He had assumed they would all enter medicine as he had, so it had been a shock when Jack had chosen law. Perhaps the same thing would happen with the others. Dr. Foley looked at Kevin and Gerry. He had always seen them somewhere in the medical field as well as on a rugby pitch.

His eye fell on Ronan. Already he seemed to have the reassuring kind of manner one associated with being a doctor. That boy Ronan could convince even his own mother that the wounds he got in a playground were superficial, that the dirt on his clothes would easily wash out.

That was the personality you needed in a good family doctor. Then there was Aengus, the youngest: his owlish glasses made him look studious and he was the only Foley boy not to be chosen for some kind of team in the school. Dr. Foley had always seen his son Aengus as going into medical research when the time came. A bit too frail and woolly for the rough and tumble of ordinary practice.

But then he had been wrong about his eldest son. Jack said he had no wish to study physics and chemistry. The term ~e had spent at school trying to understand the first thing about physics had been wasted.

Nor did he want botany and zoology, he'd be no good at them.

In vain Dr. Foley had pleaded that the pre-med year was a necessary term of purgatory before you started the real business of medicine.

Jack had been adamant. He would prefer law. Not the Bar either, but being apprenticed as a solicitor. What hee would really and truly like was to do this new degree course for Bachelor of Civil Law. It was like doing a BA but all in law subjects. He had discussed it with his father seriously and with all the information to hand. He could be apprenticed to his mother's brother, surely. Uncle Kevin was in a big solicitors' practice: they'd find a place for him. He timed his request well. Jack knew that his father's head was buried as deeply in the world of rugby as the world of medicine. Jack was a shining schoolboy player. He was on the pitch for his school in the Senior Cup final. He scored two tries and converted one of them. His father was in no position to fight him. Anyway it would have been foolish to force someone into a life so demanding. Dr. Foley shrugged. There were plenty of other boys to follow him down the good physician's route to Fitzwilliam Square.

Jack's mother Lilly sat at the far end of the table opposite her husband. Jack could never remember a breakfast when she had not presided over the cups of tea, the bowls of cornflakes, the slices of grilled bacon and half tomato which was the start to the day every morning except Fridays and in Lent.

His mother always looked as if she had dressed up for the occasion, which indeed she had. She wore a smart Gor-Ray skirt, always with either a twinset or a wool blouse. Her hair was always perfectly done, and there was a dusting of powder on her face as well as a slight touch of lipstick. When Jack had spent the night in friends' houses after a match he realised that their mothers were not like this. Often women in dressing gowns with cigarettes put food on kitchen tables for them.

The formal breakfast at eight o'clock in a high-ceilinged dining room with heavy mahogany sideboards and floor-to-ceiling windows wasn't everyone else's way of life.

But the Foley boys weren't pampered either; their mother had seen to that. Each of them had a job to do in the mornings before they left for school. Jack had to fill the coal scuttles, Kevin to bring in the logs, Aengus had to roll yesterday's papers into sausage-like shapes which would be used for lighting the fires later, Gerry, who was meant to be the animal lover, had to take Oswald for a run in the park, and see that there was something on the bird table in the garden, and Ronan had to open the big heavy curtains in the front rooms, take the milk in from the steps and place it in the big fridge and brush whatever had to be brushed from the big granite steps leading up to the house. It could be cherry blossom petals or autumn leaves or slush and snow.

When breakfast was finished the Foley boys placed their plates and cutlery neatly on the hatch into the kitchen before going to the big room where all their coats, boots, shoes, school bags and often rugby gear had to be left.

People marvelled at the way Lilly Foley ran such an elegant home when she had five rugby-playing lads to deal with, and marvelled even more that she had kept the handsome John Foley at her side.

A man not thought to be easy to handle. Dr. Foley had a wandering eye as a young man. Lilly had not been more beautiful than the other women who sought him, just more clever. She realised that he would want an easy uncomplicated life where everything ran smoothly and he was not troubled with domestic difficulties.

She had found Doreen at an early stage, and paid her over the odds to keep the house running smoothly. Lilly Foley never missed her weekly hair-do and manicure.

She seemed to regard her life with the handsome doctor as a game with rules. She kept an elegant attractive home. She put on not an ounce of fat, and always appeared well groomed at golf club or restaurant, as well as at home. This way he didn't wander.

Today when the four younger boys left for school, Jack helped himself to another cup of tea.

"I'll know what you two talk about when you're alone now, he grinned.

He looked very handsome when he smiled, his mother thought fondly.

Despite reddish-brown hair which wouldn't stay flat, those freckles on his nose, he really was classically good looking, and when Jack Foley smiled he would break any heart.

Lilly Foley wondered would he fall in love easily, or did the rugby take so much time that he would just be satisfied with the distant adulation of the girls who watched and cheered the games.

She wondered would he be as hard to catch as his father had been.

What would some wily girl see in him that he would respond to?

She had captured his father by promising an elegant uncluttered lifestyle very different from the neglected unhappy home he had come from. But this would not be the way to lure away her Jack.

He was happy and well looked after in this home. He wouldn't want to flee the nest for a long time yet.

"Are you sure you won't take a lift?" Dr. John Foley would have been proud to drive his eldest son up to Earlsfort Terrace and wave him into his first day at university.

"No, Dad, I told a few of the lads.." His mother seemed to understand.

"It's not like school, it's sort of more gradual, isn't it? There's no bell saying you all have to be there at such a time."

"I know, I know. I've been there, remember." Dr. Foley was testy.

"It's just that I said.

"No, your mother is right, you want to be with your friends on a day like this, and the best of luck to you, son, may it turn out for you just as well as you ever hoped. Even if you're not doing medicine.

"Ah, go on, you're relieved. Think of all the malpractice suits."

"You can get those in law just as well as medicine. Anyway, there's no reason why they shouldn't pick a law student for the first fifteen."

"Give me a bit of time, Dad."

"After the way you played in the Schools Cup? They're not blind in there. You'll be playing in the Colours match in December.

"They never have Freshers for that."

"They'll have you, Jack."

Jack stood up. "I'll be on it next year. Will that do you?"

"All right, if you play for UGD in 1958 that'll do me. I'm a very reasonable, undemanding man," said Dr. Foley.

When Benny got off the bus on the Quays, she saw Eve waiting, with her raincoat collar turned up against the rain. She looked cold and pale.