Maeve Binchy: Circle of Friends

"Mass on a weekday?"

"Every day. At seven. "No?"

"It's quite nice. The nuns sing beautifully, it's nice and peaceful.

Really I don't mind it. Father Ross comes in specially and he gets a lovely breakfast in the parlour. He says the other priests envy him."

"I didn't know that .. every day."

"You won't tell anyone will you?"

"No. Is it a secret?"

"Not a bit, it's just that I don't tell anything, you see, and the Community likes that, they feel I'm part of them. I didn't have a friend before. There wasn't anyone to tell." Benny smiled from ear to ear. "What night will you come? Wednesday night?"

"I don't know Eve You don't have any smart pyjamas or anything to be going to stay with people. You don't have a good sponge bag, things that people who go visiting need."

"My pyjamas are fine, Mother."

"You could iron them, certainly, and you have a dressing gown."

She seemed to be faltering. "A sponge bag though?"

"Could Sister Imelda make one for me? I'll do extra clearing up for her."

"And what time will you come back?"

"I'll be at my prie-dieu in time for Mass, Mother."

"You won't want to get up that early if you're visiting people."

Mother Francis's face was soft.

"That's what I'd want, Mother."

It was a great evening. They played rummy with Patsy in the kitchen for a long time because Mother and Father went across the road to Dr. and Mrs. Johnson's house. It was a supper to celebrate the christening of their new baby.

Eve asked Patsy all about the orphanage, and Patsy told more details than she had ever told Benny. She explained how they used to steal food, and how hard it was when she came to the Hogans, her first job, to realise she didn't have to take any stray biscuit or a fistful of sugar and put it into her apron. In bed that night Benny said in wonder, "I don't know why Patsy told us all that. Only the other day she was saying to me that people with no parents didn't like being asked questions."

"Ah, it's different with me," Eve said. "I'm in the same boat."

"No you're not?" Benny was indignant. "Patsy had nothing. She had to work in that awful place and get nits and steal and be beaten for wetting the bed. She had to leave there at fifteen and come here.

It's not a bit like you.

"No. We are the same, she has no family, I don't. She didn't have a home like you do."

"Is that why you told her more than you told me?" Benny had been even more astounded at the questions Patsy felt free to ask. Did Eve hate the Westwards who were so rich for not taking her into the big house?

Eve didn't, they couldn't, they were Protestants, she explained. Lots more things Benny wouldn't have dared to ask.

"You don't ask things like that," Eve said simply. "I'd be afraid of upsetting you," Benny said. "You couldn't upset a friend," Eve said.

Benny and Eve, who had lived all their lives in the same village, were each amazed at the things the other didn't know about Knockglen.

Benny didn't know that the three priests who lived in the presbytery had been given the game of Scrabble, which they played every night, and sometimes rang the convent to ask Mother Francis questions like how you spelt "quixotic' because Father O'Brien was going to get a triple word score.

Eve hadn't known that Mr. Burns in the hardware shop was inclined to take to the drink or that Dr. Johnson had a very bad temper and was heard shouting about God never putting a mouth into the world that he didn't feed. Dr. Johnson was of the view that there were a lot of mouths, especially in the families with thirteen children, that God had forgotten to feed.

Benny didn't know that Peggy Pine was an old friend of Mother Francis, that they had been girls years ago and that when she came to the convent she called Mother Francis Bunty.

Eve hadn't known that Birdie Mac who ran the sweet shop had a man from Ballylee who had been calling for fifteen years, but she wouldn't leave her old mother and the man from Ballylee wouldn't come to Knockglen.

It made the town far more interesting to both of them to have such insights. Particularly because they knew these were dark secrets not to be shared with anyone. They pooled their knowledge on how children were born, and hadn't any new enlightenments to offer. They both knew that they came out like kittens, they didn't know how they got in.

"It's got something to do with lying down one beside the other, when you're married," Eve said. "It couldn't happen if you weren't married.

Suppose you fell down beside someone like Dessie Burns." Benny was worried.

"No, you have to be married." Eve knew that for certain. "And how would it get in?" It was a mystery. "It could be your Little Mary," Benny said thoughtfully. "What's your Little Mary?"

"The bit in the middle of your tummy."

"Oh, your tummy button is what Mother Francis calls it."

"That must be it," Benny cried triumphantly. "If they all have different names for it, that must be the secret.

They practised hard at being reliable. If either said she would be home at six o'clock then five minutes before the hour struck and the angelus rang she would be back in place. As Eve had anticipated, it did win them much more freedom. They didn't allow their hysterical laughing fits to be seen in public. They pressed their noses against the window of Healy's Hotel. They didn't like Mrs. Healy. She was very superior. She walked as if she were a queen. She always seemed to look down on children.

Benny heard from Patsy that the Healys had been up to Dublin to look for a child to adopt but they hadn't got one because Mr. Healy had a weak chest.

"Just as well," Eve had said unsympathetically. "They'd be terrible for anyone as a mother and father." She spoke in innocence of the fact that Knockglen had once thought that she herself might be the ideal child for them.

Mr. Healy was much older than his wife. It was whispered, Patsy said, that he couldn't cut the mustard. Eve and Benny spent long hours trying to work out what this could mean. Mustard came in a small tin and you mixed it with water. How did you cut it? Why should you cut it: Mrs. Healy looked a hundred but apparently she was twenty-seven.

She had married at seventeen and was busy throwing all her efforts into the hotel since there were no children.

Together they explored places where they had never gone alone. To Flood's, the butchers, hoping they might see the animals being killed.

"We don't really want to see them being killed do we?" Benny asked fearfully.

"No, but we'd like to be there at the beginning so that we could if we want to, then run away," Eve explained. Mr. Flood wouldn't let them near his yard so the matter didn't arise.

They stood and watched the Italian from Italy come and start up his fish and chip shop.

"Weel you leetle girls come here every day and buy my feesh?" he asked hopefully of the two earnest children, one big, one small, who stood watching his every move. "No, I don't think we'll be allowed," Eve said sadly. "Why is that?"

"It would be called throwing away good money," Benny said.

"And talking to foreign men," Eve explained to clinch matters.

"My seester is married to a Dublin man," Mario explained.

"We'll let people know," Eve said solemnly.

Sometimes they went to the harness maker. A very handsome man on a horse came one day to enquire about a bridle that should have been ready, but wasn't. Dekko Moore was a cousin of Paccy Moore's in the shoe shop. He was very apologetic, and looked as if he might be taken away and hanged for the delay. The man turned his horse swiftly. "All right. Will you bring it up to the house tomorrow, instead?" he shouted. "Indeed I will sir, thank you sir. I'm very sorry sir.

Indeed Sir." Dekko Moore sounded like a villain who had been unmasked in a pantomime.