Maeve Binchy - Circle of Friends

When Patsy had walked up the short avenue and looked at the square house with its creeper and its shabby garden it seemed to her like a house on the front of a calendar. Her small room looked out on the back yard, and she had a window box. Things didn't grow very well in it because it was in shadow and Patsy wasn't much of a gardener, but it was her own, and nobody ever touched it, any more than they ever went into her room.

Patsy was as excited as any of them about Benny going to university.

Every year on her annual holidays, Patsy paid a dutiful visit of one half day to the orphanage which had reared her, and then she went to stay with a friend who had married in Dublin. She had asked her friend to take her to see where Benny would be a student. She had stood outside the huge pillars of University College, Dublin, and looked at it all with satisfaction. Now she would know where Benny went and studied; she would know the look of the place. And indeed it was a big step for Benny, Annabel Hogan realised. No more safe trotting to and fro from the convent. It was life in the big city with several thousand other students from all kinds of places, with different ways and no one to force you to study like Mother Francis. It was not surprising that Benny had been as excited as a hen walking on hot coals all summer long, never able to keep still, always jumping up with some further excitement.

It was a relief to know that she was with Eve Malone for the morning, those two could talk until the cows came home. Annabel wished that there had been some way young Eve could have been sent to university too. It would have made things more fair somehow. But things rarely turned out nice and neatly in this life. Annabel had said as much to Father Ross the last time he had come to tea, and Father Ross had looked at her sternly over his glasses, saying that if we all understood the way the Universe was run what would there be left for God to tell us on the Last Day.

To herself Annabel thought that it wouldn't interfere with the running of the University if enough money could be found somewhere for the university fees and accommodation for Eve Malone, the child who had no home except the big bleak convent with the heavy iron gates.

Mother Francis had asked God very often for a way to send Eve Malone to university but so far God had not seen fit to show her one. Mother Francis knew it must be part of his divine plan, but at times she wondered had she prayed hard enough, had she examined every possibility. She had certainly been up every road as far as the Order was concerned. She had written to the Mother General, she had put Eve's case as persuasively as she could. The girl's father, Jack Malone, had worked all his life for the convent as handyman and gardener.

Jack had married the daughter of the Westward family, as unlikely a match as was ever known in the country, but necessary since a child was on the way. There had been no problem in having Eve brought up as a Catholic, since the Westwards had never wanted to know about her at all, and didn't care what faith she was raised in just as long as they never had to hear her name.

Mother General's view was that enough had been done for the child already. To provide a university education for her might mark her out as a favoured pupil. Would not others from needy backgrounds expect the same?

It had not stopped there. Mother Francis had taken the bus to their convent in Dublin and spoken to the very difficult Mother Clare who held sway there. With so many young nuns starting university education in the autumn and lodging in the Dublin convent was there not a chance that Eve might join them? The girl would be happy to do housework to earn her place among the students.

Mother Clare wouldn't even consider it. What an extraordinary suggestion, to put forward a girl - a charity child who was not a Sister, a novice, a postulant, nor anyone with the remotest intention of becoming a nun - and raise her up above the many Sisters in the Community who were all hoping and praying for a chance of higher education .. what would they feel if a girl who had already been pampered, it seemed, by the convent in Knockglen, were put in to study, over their heads? It would be an outrage.

And perhaps it was outrageous of her, Mother Francis thought sometimes.

It was just that she loved Eve as much as any mother could love a daughter. Mother Francis the celibate nun who had never thought she could know the joy of seeing a child grow up in her care had loved Eve in a way that might well have made her blind to the feelings and sensitivities of other people. Mother General and Mother Clare were indeed right, it would have been preferential treatment to have financed Eve's university education from the convent funds.

But when all was said and done, Mother Francis wished she could be sure that they would treat Eve well up in Mother Clare's convent. St. Mary's had always been a home to Eve; the fear was that she might find the sister house in Dublin more like an institution, and worse still she might find her own role there not that of an honoured daughter, but more that of a maid.

When Benny and Eve came out of Healy's Hotel, they saw Sean Walsh watching them from the doorway of Hogan's across the street.

"If you keep talking to me he might think we haven't seen him," Benny hissed out of the corner of her mouth. "Not a chance. Look at him standing there with his thumbs in behind his:braces, copying the way your father stands."

Eve knew only too well Sean Walsh's expectations: he had a long-term career plan, to marry the daughter of the house, the heir to Hogan's Gentleman's Outfitters, and inherit the lot.

They had never been able to like Sean Walsh, not since the very first day he had turned up at Benny's tenth birthday party. He had never smiled. Not once in all those years had they seen a real smile on his face. There were a lot of grimaces, and a little dry bark sometimes, but never a laugh. He didn't throw his head back like Peggy Pine did when she laughed, or giggle into his fist like Paccy Moore; he didn't make big gestures like Mario in the fish and chip shop, or even get wheezing and coughing fits like Dessie Burns often did. Sean Walsh seemed watchful the whole time. Only when he saw others smiling and laughing did he give the little barks.

They could never get him to tell anything about the life he had lived before he came to Knockglen. He didn't tell long stories like Patsy did, or wistful tales like Dekko Moore about the time he made harnesses for the Lords of the Soil somewhere down in Meath. Sean Walsh would not be drawn. "Oh, dear, you don't want to hear my stories," he would say when Benny and Eve plagued him for some information.

The years had not improved him: he was still secretive and insincerely anxious to please. Even his appearance annoyed Benny, although she knew this was unreasonable. He wore a suit that had seen a lot of pressing, and was obviously carefully looked after.

Benny and Eve used to tell each other in fits of laughter that he spent hours in his little room above the shop pressing all his ambitions into the suit with a damp cloth.

Benny didn't really believe Eve about Sean having ambitions to marry into the shop, but there was something deeply unsettled all right about the way he looked at her. She had so much wanted to be fancied, it seemed a cruel blow to think that if it ever happened it might only be by someone as awful as Sean Walsh.

"Good morning, ladies." He made an exaggerated bow. There was an insult in his voice, a sneer that he hadn't intended them to notice.

Other people had called them "ladies', even that very morning, and had done so without any offence. It was a way of acknowledging that they had left school and would shortly start a more grown-up life. When they had been in the chemist's buying shampoo, Mr. Kennedy had asked what he could do for the two young ladies and they had been pleased.