Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

After supper Eve sat in the warm kitchen. Sister Imelda had clucked around for a while getting her some warm milk with a little pepper shaken on top, which was known to cure any condition. The tea towels had been washed and laid out on the Aga. The smell was familiar, it was home; but Eve didn't feel the sense of comfort that the place usually brought her.

Moving quietly as she always did, Mother Francis came in and sat down opposite her. "Don't drink that if it's horrible.

We'll pour it away and rinse the mug."

Eve smiled. It had always been the two of them against the world.

"It's all right.. not something you'd choose, though, if you had a choice."

"You do have a choice, Eve, a series of them."

"It means going up to Westlands, doesn't it?"

"If your heart is set on it . .. then yes."

"And what will I say?"

"We can't write a script, Eve."

"I know, but we could try to work out what would be the best way to approach them." There was a silence. "I expect you have approached them for me already?" It was the first time Eve had ever mentioned this.

"Not for a long time, not since you were twelve, and I felt that we should ask them in case they might want to send you to a posher boarding school in Dublin."

"And no response?"

"That was different. That was six years ago and there was I, a nun wearing black, covered in beads and crucifixes .. that's the way they might see it."

"And was that the last time? You didn't ask them about university fees did you?"

Mother Francis looked down. "Not in person, no."

"But you wrote?"

The nun passed over the letter from Simon Westward. Eve read it, her face set in hard lines.

"That's fairly final, isn't it?"

"You could say that, or you could look at it differently. You could say that then was then and now is now. It's you, you can ask them for yourself."

"They might say I never went near them except to ask formoney.

"They'd be right." Eve looked up startled.

"That's not fair, Mother. You knew how I felt all these years. I wouldn't lower myself to go to them cap in hand when you had all done so much for me and they had done nothing. It would have been letting the convent down." She bristled at the injustice of the nun's remark.

Mother Francis was mild. "I know that. Obviously I do. I'm trying to look at it from their point of view. There's no point otherwise."

"I'm not going to say I'm sorry. I'm not going to pretend.."

"True, but is there any point in going at all if you go with that attitude?"

"What other attitude is there?"

"There are many, Eve, but none of them will work unless.."

"Unless..?"

"Unless you mean it. You don't have to cringe and pretend a love you don't feel, you don't have to go up there with a heart filled with hate either."

"What would your heart be full of, going up there?"

"I told you.

It's your visit."

"Help me, Mother."

"I haven't been much help to you so far. Do this one on your own.

"Have you lost interest in me? And what happens to me?" Eve's chin jutted up as it always did when she was warding off a hurt.

"If you believe that.." Mother Francis began.

"I don't. It's just that it's like a series of dead ends. Even if I do get the fees I'll have to find somewhere to live, some work."

"One step at a time," Mother Francis said. Eve looked at her. The nun's face had that look she used to have years ago when there was some surprise in store. "Do you have any ideas?" Eve asked eagerly. "My last idea wasn't very successful, now was it? Go to bed, Eve. You'll need all your strength to deal with the Westwards. Go up there in the late morning. They'll be going to church at eleven.

The avenue was full of pot holes, and there were clumps of weeds rising in the middle of what must once have been a well-kept drive. Eve wondered if her father had worked on this very road.

Mother Francis had always been vague about Jack Malone when pressed.

He had been a good man, a kind man and very loving of his little daughter. that was really the sum total of it And it was what you would tell a child, Eve realised.

And about her mother there was even less information. She had looked very beautiful when she was young. She had always been very gracious, Mother Francis had said. But what else could she say about a gardener and the disturbed daughter of the Big House?

Eve was determined that she would not lose her clear-sighted way of looking at her background. She had long realised that there was no mileage in romanticising her history. She squared her shoulders and approached the house. It was shabbier close up than it looked from the road. The paint on the conservatory was all peeling. The place looked untidy and uncared for. Croquet mallets and hoops were all thrown in a heap as if someone had played a game many months ago, but no one had ever bothered to tidy the set away or to have another game since.

There were wellington boots in the hall, old golf clubs splintering, with their bindings coming undone. Tennis racquets slightly warped stood in a big bronze container.

Through the glass doors Eve could see a hall tablb weighed down with catalogues and brochures and brown envelopes. It was all so different from the highly polished convent where she lived. A stray piece of paper would never find its way on to the hall table under the picture of Our Lady Queen of Peace. If it did it would soon be rescued and brought to the appropriate place. How extraordinary to live in a house where you could hardly see the hall table for all that was covering it.

She rang the bell, knowing that it would be answered by one of three people. Bee, the sister of Paccy Moore, the shoemaker. Bee was the housemaid in Westlands. Or possibly the cook might come to the door if it was Bee's Sunday off. Mrs. Walsh had been in the family for as long as anyone could remember. She hadn't come from Knockglen in the first place and didn't fraternise with the people of the town, even though she was a Catholic and seen at early Mass. She was a large woman who looked rather ominous on her bicycle. Or perhaps Simon Westward himself would come to the door. His father was in a wheelchair and reported to be increasingly frail, so he would not appear. Ever since she could remember Eve had played a game. It was like not stepping on the cracks in a footpath. It was what mother Francis would have called superstition probably. But she had always done it. "If the next bird to hop up on the window sill is a thrush then I'll get my exams, If it is a blackbird, I'll fail. If I have to wait until I count twenty-five at the door of the convent in Dublin, I'm going to hate it." For some reason she always felt like doing it at doors.

As she stood outside the unfamiliar door of the house that was once her mother's home, Eve Malone told herself firmly that if Bee Moore came to the door it would be a good omen, she would get the money. If Simon Westward himself came it would be bad. If it was Mrs. Walsh things could go either way. Her eyes were bright as she waited and heard the sound of running feet.

She saw the figure of a schoolgirl, about ten or eleven years old, running towards the door. She reached up to open it and stood looking at Eve with interest. She was wearing the very short tunic that girls in Protestant schools always wore. In the convent everything had to be a bit more droopy and modest. She had her hair tied in two bunches, one sticking out over each ear almost like handles, as if someone were going to pick her up and carry her by them. She wasn't fat, but she was square and stocky.

She had freckles on her nose and her eyes were the same dark blue as her school uniform.

"Hallo," she said to Eve. "Who are you?"

"Who are you?" Eve asked. She wasn't afraid of anyone in the Big House if they were this size. "I'm Heather," the child replied. "And I'm Eve."