Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

She saw Mrs. Kennedy from the chemist turn and look at her. That would be a subject for discussion in their house tonight, a scene, no less, at the bus stop with the Hogan family of all people. Well, well, well.

Hadn't it been a mistake to let that Benny go to Dublin on her own after all?

"He went to set our minds at ease," Benny's father said. "We were very worried."

"No, Father, you weren't. You were quite happy for me to come home on the bus. I talked to you and you were grand, and you said Mother would be grand and then suddenly Sean manages to spoil everything.

"The boy drove the whole way to Dublin on his half day to bring you home and then drove straight back and said you had to see another doctor. Do you blame us for being worried?" Eddie Hogan's face was working with distress: beside him Annabel raked her face for more information. Even Patsy didn't seem convinced that all was well.

"I didn't want him to come for me. You never said he was coming.

There was nothing wrong with me, for God's sake. You must see that. I was perfectly all right, but a boy was killed. He was killed in front of my eyes. He was alive one minute and then he was dead with his neck broken. And Eve's in a hospital ward with broken ribs and concussion and all kinds of things. And all Sean Walsh can do is stand like a stuffed dummy in that hospital and talk about me!"

To her horror Benny realised that there were tears pouring down her face, and that a small circle of people were watching her in concern.

Two schoolgirls from the convent who had been in Dublin to buy books with one of the young nuns turned to see what was happening. It would be all around the convent before bed time.

Benny's father decided to act. "I'll get her into the car, he said.

"Patsy, will you run down to Dr. Johnson's like a good girl and ask him to come over as soon as he can. Now, Benny, it's all right. It's all right. It's natural, just shock."

Benny wondered was there a condition which might be known as Rage.

Because that was definitely what she felt her condition to be.

Helpless rage.

Everyone in Knockglen heard about it in record time, but what they heard bore little relation to the facts. Mrs. Healy said that she heard the girls were running and laughing like they had done in Knockglen and they were hit by a car. As a precaution they had both been admitted to hospital, but Sean Walsh had driven up and got Benny discharged. It was a lesson on how to conduct yourself in huge menacing Dublin traffic if you came from a small place like Knockglen.

Mr. Flood was silent and blessed himself a great deal when he heard the news. He said that it was obviously meant as some kind of warning.

What kind of a warning he couldn't say, but his family noticed with alarm that he had gone out to consult the tree again. They had hoped that this little habit had died down.

Mrs. Carroll said it was a waste of good money sending girls to university. Not if the grocery was three times the size of Findlater's in Dublin would they send Maire and her sisters there. You might as well take money and shovel it down the drain.

What did they do on the very first day except walk under the first vehicle they saw? Maire Carroll, serving in the shop and hating it, felt a firm and vicious sense of satisfaction over the fate of Eve and Benny, but of course she pretended great care and concern.

Bee Moore, who worked in Westlands and was a sister of Paccy Moore the shoemaker, had heard that Eve was dead from horrible injuries and that Benny was in such shock she couldn't be told.

The nuns would all be going up to Dublin to collect her body shortly.

Birdie Mac in the sweet shop told people that it took a great amount of faith these days to realise that God was fair-minded.

Wasn't it hard enough on that poor child to know no parents, to be totally disowned by her relations up in Westlands, to be brought up an orphan in the convent in second-hand clothes, and sent to a secretarial course when she had her heart set on going to university without being mown down by a car on her first week.

Birdie sometimes questioned the fairness of life, having spent overlong looking after an ailing mother and missing her chances with a very suitable man from Ballylee who married another, who wasn't bound to an ailing parent

Dessie Burns said that there was a lot of truth in the theory that if you fell down drunk, you never hurt yourself, a theory he had tested only too often. It was a girl like Eve Malone, a little pikasheen who wouldn't have had a drink in her at all, that would end up in hospital.

Father Ross said that Mother Francis would take it badly. She felt as much for that girl as if she had been her own flesh and blood. No mother could ever have done more for the girl. He hoped Mother Francis wouldn't get too great a shock.

Mother Francis had acted swiftly when she heard about Eve. She had gone straight to Peggy Pine and waited demurely until the shop was free of customers.

"Do me a great favour, Peg."

"Whatever you want."

"Could you close the shop and drive me to Dublin?"

"When?"

"As soon as you can, really, Peg."

Peggy pulled down the orange sheets of plastic intended to keep the glare off her goods in the window, both in summer when there might have been sunshine and in winter when it was unnecessary.

"Off we go," she said.

"But the business?"

"One thing about you, Bunty, you have the good sense to ask a favour at the right time. You decide to leap over the convent wall and hightail it to England to a new life and you have the wit to do it on early closing day." She picked up her handbag, rooted for her keys and then put on her tweed coat and closed the door behind her. There were advantages about the single state.

You didn't need to tell anyone what you were doing. Or why.

You didn't even need to ask why.

"Mother Francis!" Eve's voice was weak.

"You're going to be fine."

"What happened to me? Please, Mother. The other people just say "Hush" and "Rest"."

"Not much point in saying either of those words to you." The nun was holding Eve's thin hand. "Broken ribs, but they'll knit together. A wrist that's going to be painful for a while, but it will heal. A few stitches. Truly I never lied to you in my life.

You're going to be fine."

"Oh, Mother, I'm so sorry. "Child, you couldn't have stopped it."

"No. About you. Having to find out about me this way.

"I know you were going to ring me. Benny told me that. She said you were about to phone."

"I never lied to you, either, Mother. I wasn't going to phone."

"Not immediately, perhaps, but you would have some time."

"Do you still think any question must be answered?"

"Of course."

"What'll I do, Mother, what on earth will I do when I get out of here?"

"You'll come home to get well and then we'll think of something else for you."

"And Mother Clare?"

"Leave her to me."

Jack came in the side door and found Aengus sitting in the cloakroom studying his glasses.

"Oh, Jesus, not again.

"It's not my fault, Jack, I don't do anything, I swear I don't. I just went past these fellows and one of them shouted, "Hey, speccy four-eyes," and I ignored them like you told me and then they came and took them off and stamped on them."

"So, it's my fault." Jack looked at the glasses; they were beyond repair. Sometimes he had been able to fit the frames back and push in the lenses; not this time.

"Listen, Aengus, don't make a big thing out of it. They've had enough here today.

"Well, what will I say?" Aengus looked naked and defenceless without his spectacles. "I mean I can't say I stamped on them myself."

"No, I know. Listen, I'll go in tomorrow and kick the shit out of the fellows who did it."