Maeve Binchy: Circle of Friends

"Lord, who was that, I wonder?" Benny was amazed. Dekko was almost dead with relief at how lightly he had escaped.

"That was Mr. Simon Westward," Dekko said, mopping his brow.

"I thought it must be," Eve said grimly.

Sometimes they went into Hogan's Gentleman's Outfitters. Father always made a huge fuss of them. So did old Mike, and anyone else who happened to be in the shop. "Will you work here when you're old?" Eve had whispered.

"I don't think so. It'll `have to be a boy, won't it?"

"I don't see why," Eve had said.

"Well, measuring men, putting tape measures round their waists, and all."

They giggled.

"But you're the boss's daughter, you wouldn't be doing that.

You'd just be coming in shouting at people, like Mrs. Healy does over in the hotel."

"Um." Benny was doubtful. "Wouldn't I need to know what to shout about?"

"You could learn. Otherwise Droopy Drawers will take over.

That's what they called Sean Walsh, who seemed to have become paler thinner and harder of the eye since his arrival.

"No, he won't, surely?"

"You could marry him."

"Ugh. Ugh. Ugh."

"And have lots of children by putting your belly button beside his."

"Oh, Eve, I'd hate that. I think I'll be a nun. "I think I will too.

It would be much easier. You can go any day you like, lucky old thing.

I have to wait until I'm twenty-one." Eve was disconsolate.

"Maybe she'd let you enter with me, if she knew it was a true vocation." Benny was hopeful. Her father had run out of the shop and now he was back with two lollipops. He handed them one each proudly.

"We're honoured to have you ladies in our humble premises," he said, so that everyone could hear him.

Soon everyone in Knockglen thought of them as a pair. The big stocky figure of Benny Hogan in her strong shoes and tightly buttoned sensible coat, the waif-like Eve in the clothes that were always too long and streelish on her. Together they watched the setting up of the town's first fish and chip shop, they saw the decline of Mr. Healy in the hotel and stood side by side on the day that he was taken to the sanatorium.

Together they were unconquerable. There was never an ill-considered remark made about either of them.

When Birdie Mac in the sweet shop was unwise enough to say to Benny that those slabs of toffee were doing her no good at all, Eve's small face flashed in a fury.

"If you worry so much about things, Miss Mac, then why do you sell them at all?" she asked in tones that knew there could be no answer.

When Maire Carroll's mother said thoughtfully to Eve, "Do you know I always ask myself why a sensible woman like Mother Francis would let you out on the street looking like Little Orphan Annie," Benny's brow darkened.

"I'll tell Mother Francis you wanted to know," Benny had said quickly.

"Mother Francis says we should have enquiring minds, that everyone should ask."

Before Mrs. Carroll could stop her Benny had galloped out of the shop and up the road towards the convent.

"Oh, Mam, you've done it now," Maire Carroll moaned. "Mother Francis will be down on us like a ton of bricks."

And she was. The full fiery rage of the nun was something that Mrs. Carroll had not expected and never wanted to know again. None of these things upset either Eve or Benny in the slightest. It was easy to cope with Knockglen when you had a friend.

CHAPTER 2

1957

There hadn't been many teddy boys in Knockglen, in fact no one could ever remember having seen one except on visits to Dublin where there were groups of them hanging round corners. Benny and Eve were in the window of Healy's Hotel practising having cups of coffee so that they would look well accustomed to it when they got to the Dublin coffee houses.

They saw him pass by, jaunty and confident in his drainpipe trousers, his long jacket with velvet cuffs and collar. His legs looked like spider legs and his shoes seemed enormous. He seemed oblivious of the stares of the whole town. Only when he saw the two girls actually standing up to peer at him past the curtains of Healy's window did he show any reaction. He gave them a huge grin and blew them a kiss.

Confused and annoyed they sat down hastily. It was one thing to look, another to call attention to themselves. Making a show of yourself was high on the list of sins in Knockglen. Benny knew this very well.

Anyone could have been looking out the window seeing them being cheap with the teddy boy. Her father maybe, with the tape around his neck, awful sleeveen Sean Walsh, who never said a word without thinking carefully of the possible effect it might have. He could have been looking. Or old Mike, who had called her father Mr. Eddie for years, and saw no reason to change.

And indeed everyone in Knockglen knew Eve as well. It had long been the nuns' ambition that Eve Malone be thought of as a lady.

She had even joined in the game herself. Eve didn't want it to get back to the convent that she was trick acting in Healy's Hotel and ogling teddy boys out of the window. While other girls with real mothers resisted all the attempts to gentrify themselves, Eve and Mother Francis studied books on etiquette and looked at magazines to see how nice people dressed, and to pick up any hints on behaviour.

"I don't want you to put on an artificial accent," Mother Francis had warned, "nor do I want you sticking out your little finger when you're drinking tea."

"Who are we trying to impress?" Eve had asked once. "No, look at it the other way. It's who you're trying not to let down. We were told we were mad and we couldn't rear you. It's a bit of human, non-saintly desire to be able to say "I told you so" to the begrudgers." Eve had understood that immediately. And there was always hope that the Westward family would see her one day as an elegant lady and be sorry they hadn't kept in touch with the child who was after all their own flesh and blood.

Mrs. Healy approached them. A widow now, formidable as she had always been, she managed to exude disapproval at fifty yards. She could not find any reason why Benny Hogan from the shop across the road and Eve Malone from the convent up the town should not sit and drink coffee in her bay window, but somehow she would have preferred to keep the space for wealthier and more important matrons of Knockglen.

She sailed towards the window. "I'll adjust the curtains they seem to have got all rucked up," she said. Eve and Benny exchanged glances.

There was nothing wrong with the heavy net curtains of Healy's Hotel.

They were as they always were: thick enough to conceal those within while giving a perfect view out.

"Well, isn't that a terrible poor ibex!" exclaimed Mrs. Healy, having identified easily what the girls had been looking at.

"I suppose it's only his clothes really," Eve said in a sanctimonious tone. "Mother Francis always says it's a pity to judge people by the garments they wear."

"Very admirable of her," snapped Mrs. Healy, "but of course she makes sure that the garments of all you pupils are in order.

Mother Francis is always the first to judge you girls by the uniforms you wear.

"Not any more, Mrs. Healy," Benny said happily. "I dyed my grey school skirt dark red."

"And I dyed mine black, and my grey jumper purple," Eve said.

"Very colourful." Mrs. Healy moved away like a ship under full sail.

"She can't bear us being grown up," Eve hissed. "She wants to tell us to sit up straight and not to put our fingers on the nice furniture."

"She knows we don't feel grown up," Benny said gloom ily. "And if awful Mrs. Healy knows then everyone in Dublin will know."

It was a problem. Mr. Flood the butcher had looked at them very strangely as they walked up the street. His eyes seemed to burn through them in disapproval. If people like that could see their awkwardness, they were indeed in a bad way.