Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

All he had to do now was to let Mr. Hogan know how distressed Mrs. Hogan was and how he had saved the day.

Dr. Foley said he'd just go in and see how that child was in casualty before he left. "They've cancelled my appointments for this morning.

.. Maybe you'd walk me down to the Shelbourne for a taxi?" he asked jack.

"I could get one here, and come home with you."

"No, no, you know I don't want that. Stay here in the waiting room, will you, jack?" jack moved into the over-bright room with the yellow walls. Two girls sat at a table. One of them was a spectacularly pretty blonde; the other, a big girl with long chestnut hair tied back in a bow, had a bandage on her foot. He realised they must have been in the accident.

"Was it terrible?" he asked, looking questioningly at the empty chair, as if asking their permission to sit down. They pulled the chair forward and told him about it. They told him they had heard that the doctor had managed to avoid them all by driving into the lamp post.

Only Eve, who had been hit by the moving car, was seriously hurt and even Eve would be out of hospital in a week.

They talked easily. Benny stumbled from time to time and became tongue-tied when she looked at the handsome boy sitting beside them.

Never before had she held a conversation with anyone like this, and she would begin a sentence and not know how to finish it.

jack Foley's eyes rarely left Nan's face, but she seemed to be unaware of this and talked as if all three of them were equal partners in the conversation. jack explained that it had been his father driving the car. Nan said tat both she and Benny were busy trying to play down their bruises and scratches because it would cause such almighty upheavals in both their homes.

"I don't feel like going to college now. Do you?" She looked from one to the other. It was as if she knew a solution would be proposed.

"Why don't I take the pair of you for a plate of chips?" Jack asked.

Benny clapped her hands like a child. "I didn't know that's what my soul cried out for, well possibly not my soul, but there was a cry there definitely," she said. They both smiled at her.

"I'll just see my father to a taxi and come back for you." He was looking straight into Nan's eyes. "Where would we go? It's the best offer we've had all day," Nan said.

"He's very nice," Benny said, when jack had gone. "He's the college hero before he even gets there," said Nan.

"How do you know?"

"I saw him play in the Schools Cup."

"Play what?"

"He was on the wing." Nan saw Benny's mystification and explained.

"Rugby. He really is very good."

"How did you go to a rugby match?"

"Everyone does. It's a kind of social event." Benny realised that there were going to be a great many areas where she would be at a loss.

Rugby matches would only be a very small part of them, and none of these gaps in her knowledge would be helped by continuing to live in Knockglen all her life.

She wished suddenly that she were someone totally different, that she were much smaller and had a small face and tiny feet like Nan had.

That she could look up at men rather than over or down at them. She wished her parents lived in the Aran Islands and that there could be no question of her having to go home every night.

She felt a sudden desire to dye her hair blonde and keep dyeing it every day so that the roots would never show. There was nothing she could do about her size. Even if she were thinner she would still have huge shoulders and great big feet. No operation had been invented to give you small feet.

She looked at them with distaste in their sensible shoes and thick bandage. Her mother had normal feet, her father had, why did Benny's have to be the way they were? At school they had once heard of some animal which had become extinct because of its huge flat feet. Benny hadn't known whether to envy it or be sorry for it.

"Is it hurting much?" Nan had seen Benny studying her foot and thought it must be paining her.

Jack came back at that moment. "Well," he said to Nan.

She stood up. "I think Benny's foot is hurting her."

"Oh, I'm sorry." He looked at her briefly with a sympath etic smile.

"No, it's fine," she said.

"If you're sure?" He was polite. Perhaps he wanted to go off with Nan on his own. She didn't know. But it would always be like this anyway so there was no point in getting upset about it.

"You were looking at it and frowning," Nan said. "No, I was only thinking about all those prayers we said for the conversion of China.

Do you put three Hail Marys on to the Rosary for it?"

"I think it was the conversion of Russia in ours," Jack said. "But I'm not sure. Just shows you how well I'm able to escape it."

"Well, I can't think why we should be praying for them. Benny said with mock indignation. "They have lovely habits out there.

They bind everyone's feet."

"What?"

"Oh yes, as soon as they're born, so there's no problem about people falling over them. Everyone has tiny feet and nice squashed-up bones.

So elegant-looking." Jack seemed to realise she was there for the first time. "And now chips," he said, looking straight at her. "Four plates, one plate each and one to pick off. And lashings of tomato ketchup."

Then she heard the nurse tell someone that Miss Hogan was out in the waiting room, and there was Sean Walsh coming towards them.

Her face fell. "I've come to drive you home, Benny," he said. "I told Father I was coming home on the bus," she said coldly.

"But he gave me the car.."

Jack looked politely from the thin-faced boy to the big girl with the red-brown hair. No introductions were made.

Benny spoke with an authority she didn't know that anyone could have, let alone herself.

"Well, I hope you had some other work to do in Dublin, Sean. That you didn't come up specially, because I have to leave now. And I will be home on the bus as arranged."

"What do you have to do?

You're to come home. Now. with me." Sean sounded petulant.

"She has to go for some more treatment," Jack Foley said. I'm just taking her there. You wouldn't want her to miss that.

CHAPTER 5

Benny knew they would come to meet her off the bus. But she hadn't expected all three of them, not Patsy as well, and not the car. Sean must have driven home with dire tales to have brought such a gathering to the bus stop. Before Mikey had swung the bus around and brought it to a stop she had seen their pale faces in the wet night, the two umbrellas. She felt the familiar surge of irritation mixed with guilt.

No one on earth had such a loving family no one on earth felt so cooped up and smothered. She walked with a heavy heart to the front of the bus. "Goodnight, Mikey."

"Good girl, Benny. Something wrong with your foot?"

"I hurt it," she said, realising his wife would probably have the tale already.

"It's all this drunken life as a student. That's what it is," he said, roaring with laughter at his wit. "That's what it is."

She repeated it in a dull, polite way. "There she is!" cried her father, as if there had ever been any doubt about her arrival.

"Oh, Benny, are you all right?" Her mother's eyes were wide with anxiety.

"Mother, I told Father on the phone. I'm fine, Fine."

"Then why did you have to go back for treatment?" Annabel Hogan had the face of someone who thought that very bad news was being kept from her. "We were very alarmed when Sean told us that they needed to look at you again, and you didn't ring a second time ..

so we were afraid..

Her father's face had lines of worry.

"Sean had no business coming up there for me, interfering and giving orders and upsetting everyone here and there." Benny's voice was calm, but a little louder than normal.