Circle of Friends

He had seen that look on the faces of mother ducks when they took their little flock down to the river for the first time.

If he had been walking out with any other girl in service in the town they could have stayed in on a wet night and talked by the kitchen range, but with the Hogans hovering around he had to bring Patsy out into the rain.

"Would you not like to take your ease indoors on a bad night like this?" Mrs. Hogan had said kindly.

"Not at all, Mam, a nice fresh walk would be grand," Patsy said with little enthusiasm.

For a long time Annabel and Eddie Hogan sat in silence. "Maurice said that we're not to worry about a thing," Eddie said eventually.

Maurice Johnson obviously realised who were the real patients in the house. He had uttered more words of advice to them than to the girl he was meant to be treating. "It's easy for Maurice to say that. We don't worry about his children," Annabel said.

"True, but to be fair he and Grainne don't worry much about them either."

Kit Hegarty lay in her own narrow bed and heard the fog horn and the town hall clock, heard the occasional sound of a car going past. The sleeping tablets hadn't worked. Her eyes were wide open.

Everyone had been so kind. Nobody had counted the time or the trouble.

The boys in the house, ashen-faced at the shock, had offered to leave.

Their parents had telephoned from the country.

And that little Mrs. Hayes next door, who she hardly knew, had been a tower of strength, sending her sister in to cook and keep the place going. And the priests in Dunlaoghaire had been great, in and out all evening, three or maybe four of them saying nice things and talking to other people, making it seem somehow more normal, drinking cups of tea.

But she had so wanted to be left alone for a while.

The only thing that stuck out in a day that seemed to have been a hundred hours of confusion was that nun. The aunt, possibly, of a girl who had been injured in the accident. She had understood that Frank had to have the bike. Nobody else appreciated that.

Fancy a nun being able to realise it. And she had been insistent in her invitation. Kit thought that she would go and see her in that convent. Later, when she was able to think.

Judging from all the chatter, everyone in UCD must have got to know each other pretty quickly, Benny thought as she went up the steps the following morning. The main hall was thronged with people standing in groups, there were shouts of laughter and people greeting each other.

Everyone had a friend of some sort.

On another day it might have worried Benny, but not today.

She walked down a stone staircase to a basement where you could hang your coat. It smelled faintly carbolic, like school. Then up to the ground floor again and into the Ladies' Reading Room. This was not at all like school. For one thing nobody seemed to think that a reading room was a place where you were meant to read.

There were girls fixing their make-up at a mirror over the mantelpiece, or scanning notices on the board - items for sale, extra tuition offered, rooms to share, sodalities to join.

A very confident group laughed and reminisced about their summers abroad. They had been in Spain, or Italy, or France.. the only thing in common was how little of the language they had learned, how monstrous the children they had had to mind had been, and how late everyone ate their meals in the evening.

They were happy to be back.

Benny soaked it all up for Eve. She would visit her again at lunch time. This morning she had been pale, still, but cheerful as anything.

Mother Francis was going to sort it out. There would be no recriminations.

"I'm going to try to get to college, Benny," she had said, her face blazing with the intensity of it. "I'll only be a few weeks late.

I'll get a job, really I will. So you just watch out for everything for me, and take notice, so that I'll catch up.

"Are you going to ask the Westwards?"

"I'm not going to rule it out."

There were always a great many students who took English as a subject in First Arts. The lectures were held in a big hall, confusingly called the Physics Theatre. Benny streamed in with the others. It was so different to the classrooms at school. More like an amphitheatre, with rows of seats in semicircles high up at the back. There were some young student nuns already in place, they were in the front rows, eager and anxious to miss nothing.

Benny walked slowly up towards the high seats at the back where she thought she might be more inconspicuous.

From her vantage point she watched them come in: serious-looking lads in duffle coats, earnest women in glasses and hand-knitted cardigans, the clerical students from the religious seminaries in their black suits all looking remarkably cleaner and neater than the other males not bound for religious life. And the girls, the confident, laughing girls.

Could they really just be First Years, these troupers in brightly coloured skirts, flouncing their hair, aware of the impression they were creating? Perhaps they had spent a year abroad after they left school, Benny thought wistfully. Or even had a holiday job during the summer. Whatever it was, it didn't bear the hallmark of life in Knockglen.

Suddenly she saw Nan Mahon. Nan wore the smart navy coat she had worn yesterday, but this time over a pale yellow wool dress. Tied loosely around the strap of her shoulder bag was a navy and yellow scarf. Her curly hair was back from her face more than yesterday, and she had yellow earrings. As she walked in, flanked by a boy on each side, each competing for her attention, Nan was the object of all eyes. Her eyes roamed the banks of seats, deciding where to sit. Suddenly she saw Benny.

"Hallo, there you are!" she cried.

People turned round to see who she was waving at. Benny reddened at the stares, but Nan had left the two admirers and was bounding up to the back row. Benny was taken aback. She felt sure that Nan would know everyone in UCD in days. It was surprising to be singled out.

And so warmly.

"Well, how did it go?" she asked companionably. "What?"

"You know, you sent the young man packing and he more or less said you'd rue the day. I haven't seen anything so dramatic for years."

Benny was dismissive. "You couldn't get a message through to him.

Mercifully he didn't turn up at home. I thought he'd be there, with big cow's eyes.

"He's probably more madly in love with you than ever, now." Nan was cheerful, as if this was good news.

"I don't think he has a notion of what love is. He's like a fish. A fish with an eye to the main chance. A gold-digging goldfish."

They giggled at the thought.

"Eve's fine," Benny said. "I'm going to see her at lunch time."

"Can I come too?"

Benny paused. Eve was often so prickly even when she was in the whole of her health. Would she like seeing this golden college belle at her bedside?

"I don't know," she said at last.

"Well, we were all in it together. And I know all about her, and the business of Mother Clare and Mother Francis."

For a moment Benny wished she hadn't told the story in such detail.

Eve certainly wouldn't like her business being discussed as she lay unconscious.

"That got sorted out," Benny said. "I knew it would."

"Do you think you could come tomorrow instead?"

CHAPTER 6

The body of Frank Hegarty was brought to the church in Dunlaoghaire.

Dr. Foley attended the prayers and the Removal service with his eldest son.

Also in the church was Mother Francis, who had found it necessary to spend a little longer in Dublin than she had hoped, sorting things out with Mother Clare. Peggy had offered to collect her later. She knew there was some kind of trouble, but didn't ask what it was. She had given her own kind of encouragement to Mother Francis.

"Whatever that one says to you, Bunty, remember that her people were tinkers."

"They weren't."

"Well, dealers, anyway. That should give you the upper hand dealing with her.

It hadn't, of course, any more than it should have. Mother Francis had a grim face as she waited in the big church for the funeral party to arrive. She didn't know why she was there; it was as if she wanted to represent Eve.

Nan Mahon went out on the bus to Dunlaoghaire and stood among the group at the back of the church. She was instantly spotted by Jack Foley who went to join her.

"That's nice of you, to come all the way out," he said. "You did too.

"I came with my father. But do you see that group there, those are fellows who worked with him in the summer. That's Aidan Lynch - he was at school with me, and a whole lot more. They were all canning peas together."

"How did they know?"

"His picture was in the paper, and there was some kind of announcement at the engineering lectures today," he said.

"Where's Benny? Did you see her today?"

"Yes, but she couldn't come tonight. She has to go home, you see, every evening on this one bus."

"That's hard on her," Jack said. "It's very foolish of her," Nan said.

"What can she do about it?"

"She should make a stand at the outset." Jack looked at the attractive girl beside him. She would have made a stand, he knew that. He remembered the big soft-featured Benny.

"She stood up to that awful fellow with the white face who tried to take her off with him yesterday."

"If you couldn't stand up to him you shouldn't be allowed out," Nan said.

"This is Eve Malone," Benny said, as Nan sat on the end of the hospital bed.

She wanted Eve to like Nan, to recognise that Nan could have been anywhere but had chosen to come and see Benny's friend. Benny had heard this fellow Aidan Lynch almost begging Nan to come and have lunch with him.

Nan had not brought flowers or grapes or a magazine; instead she had brought the one thing that Eve truly wanted, a college handbook. All the details of registration, late registration, degree courses, diplomas. She didn't even greet the girl in the bed. Instead she spoke about the matter which was uppermost in Eve's mind.

"I gather you're trying to get into college. This might be of some use to you," she said. Eve seized it and let her thumb rifle through the pages. "This is just what I need, thank you very much indeed," she said.

Then her brow darkened slightly.

"How did you think of bringing me this?" she asked suspiciously.

Nan shrugged. "It's all in there," she said. "No, what made you think I'd need it?"

Benny wished Eve wouldn't be so prickly. What did it matter that Nan Mahon knew her hopes? There was no need to be secretive.

"I asked, that's all. I asked what you were doing and Benny said you hadn't enrolled yet."

Eve nodded. The tension was over. She fingered the book again with gratitude and Benny felt a pang of regret that she hadn't thought of something so practical. Little by little Eve was losing her look of wariness. And as Benny watched the girls talk easily she realised they were kindred spirits.

"Will you have it sorted out fairly soon do you think?" Nan was asking.

"I have to go and ask a man for money. It's not easy but won't get any easier by delaying," Eve said. Benny was astounded. Eve never talked of her business to anyone and the matter of approaching the Westwards for money was one she had only barely acknowledged to Benny herself.

Nan was unaware of this. "Will you play up the being injured bit?"

she enquired. Eve was on the same wavelength. "I might. I've been considering it, but he's the kind of fellow who might regard that as weakness and snivelling. I'll have to work out how to play it."

"What's it all about?" Nan asked with interest. And as Eve began to tell her the story of the Westwards, the story never spoken aloud to anyone, Benny realised with a shock that Nan was in fact pretending to Eve that she hadn't heard any of this already. She had asked Nan to be discreet, and she certainly had followed the instructions to the letter. And Judging by the way Eve was confiding, the instructions had been unnecessary. It had been harder to deel with Mother Clare than Mother Francis would ever have believed possible. Sometimes Mother Francis talked directly to Our Lady about it and asked for immediate and positive advice.

"I've said I was sorry, I've said that we will look after Eve from now on, but she goes on and on and says it's her duty to know what plans are being made for the girl. Why can't she just stay out of it? Why, Holy Mother, tel me?"

As it happened, Mother Francis got an answer which she presumed had come from the Mother of God, even though it was spoken by Peggy Pine.

"What that auld rip wants is to be able to prance around like the cock of the walk saying "I told you so, I told you so . She wants you to humble yourself, then she'll give up on it and start torturing someone else." Mother Francis agreed to use the tactics of humbling herself.

"You were right all along, Mother clare," she wrote in the most hypocritical letter she had ever penned. "We were wrong to ask you to take on someone like Eve who had been given a wholly exaggerated set of expectations by our small Community here. I can only say that I boa to your wisdom on this as in so many other matters and hope that the Sisters were not unduly inconvenienced by the experiment which you knew was destined to be full of pitfalls."

It had been the right approach. The regular bewildered and hurt interrogations from Mother clare ceased.

And just in time too. Eve was pronounced fit to leave hospital a week to the day after she had been admitted.

"I'll come on the bus, with Benny," Eve had said on the telephone.

"No, you won't, there's half a dozen people who'll go and collect you.

I don't like to ask Peggy again but Mrs. Healy will be going up."

"Please, Mother."

"All right, Sean Walsh? No, don't even tell me.. !"

"I've caused you enough trouble. I'll go with anyone you say, though I would rather go on the bus."

"Mario?"

"Marvellous. I love Mario."

"All right, we'll see you tomorrow. I'm so glad you're coming home, Eve. I missed you."

"And I missed you, Mother. We'll have to talk."

"Of course we will. Wrap up warmly, won't you." When Eve hung up Mother Francis sat for a moment. It was true they would have to talk.

Talk seriously. As she sat there the telephone rang again. "Mother Francis please?"

"Speaking."

There was a pause.

"Mother, in a fit of generosity you said to me.. I mean u wondered if I'd like.. and isn't it odd, in the middle of everything I kept remembering it. I wonder would you think it strange if I did come to see you.. ? The woman's voice stopped again hesitantly. A great smile lit up Mother Francis's face.

"Mrs. Hegarty, I'm delighted to hear from you. This weekend would be lovely. You tell me which bus and I'll walk over and meet you.

It's only a couple of minutes from the convent gate. I'm very pleased you're going to come and see us."

She wondered where she would put the woman to sleep. She had thought of her as staying in Eve's room. But there was the extra parlour that they had always been meaning to do up as a guest room. All it needed was curtains. She'd get some material from Peggy and ask Sister Imelda to ask the senior girls to run them up at domestic science class.

She'd get a bedside light from Dessie Burns and a nice cake of soap in Kennedy's chemist.

Eve's going home today," Benny reported when she met Nan for coffee in the Annexe as she did every morning. "I know. She told me last night."

"What?"

"Well, it's at night she really wants people to go in and see her, and you've long gone so I took a couple of fellows to cheer her up."

Benny felt a jolt. She knew that Nan and Eve got on well but taking fellows in to a hospital bed! "What fellows?" she asked lamely.

"Oh, you know, Aidan Lynch and some of that gang. Bill Dunne - do you know him?"

"No."

"He's very nice, does Commerce. I bet you know him to see, he's always outside the History Library with a group. "Did Eve like them coming in?"

"Yeah, she loved it. Did you think she wouldn't?"

"It's just that she's a bit edgy sometimes .. you know, on the defensive a bit."

"I never noticed that."

It was true. Eve had seemed much less chippy whenever Nan came in.

Nan had a gift of making things simple, everyone went alogg with her way Just then four boys approached the table. They were all looking at Nan.

"Would you girls like to come down Grafton Street and get some real coffee? Decent coffee for a change," said the spokesman, a thin boy in an Aran Island sweater.

Nan smiled up at them warmly.

"Thanks a lot, but no, we have a lecture at twelve. Thanks anyway."

"Come on, that's only a big lecture, no one'll miss you." He was encouraged by her smile to think it was only a matter of saying it often enough.

"No, honestly." Nan stopped suddenly as if she had been thoughtless.

"I mean I'm only speaking for myself. Benny, do you want to go?"

Benny reddened. She knew the boys didn't want her.

It was Nan who had attracted them. But they had nice faces and seemed a little bit lost, like everyone else.

"Why don't you sit down with us?" she suggested with a big smile.

That was exactly what they wanted to do. Chairs and benches were pulled up, names exchanged. School names given. Did they know this person or that? What were they studying? Where were they staying? It was much easier than Benny had thought to be in the middle of a group like this. She had completely forgotten that she was big and that they were boys. She asked eagerly about the societies and which ones were good, and where were the best dances.

Nan didn't make as much effort, but she was very pleased to hear all the information. Her smile was so bright that Benny could see the boys almost loosening their collars as she turned it towards them.

The boys said that the Debating Society on a Saturday night was great.

And then when it was over you could go to the Solicitor's Apprentice or down to the Four Courts. They looked from one girl to the other.

Benny said that unfortunately she had to stay in the country at weekends. As she said it she realised what a death knell it sounded, so she cheered up at once and said that this was only for this term.

Maybe things would change then. She looked around brightly and the boys seemed pleased with her. She knew they were all mad keen for Nan to go with them this Saturday, and Nan wasn't a bit flirtatious.

If she could, she would. She hadn't wanted to go because she didn't know anyone, she said.

"You know us," said the thin boy in the grubby white sweater.

"I do, of course." Nan's smile nearly broke his heart. Benny knew that it would be a great night. She could see it. Of course, she would be in Knockglen. But her smile was bright. After all, one of the things she had been afraid of was that she wouldn't know how to talk to fellows when she got to college. She didn't have much practice at home. But it seemed to be easy enough, like talking to ordinary people. That was what she must think about. The good side. Not always dwelling on the bad side like having to go home before the fun began.

When Mario collected Eve in his ice-cream van it was Fonsie who ran lightly up the steps of the hospital to escort the patient to her transport.

"You're to take it easy, you'll remember that." The Sister looked doubtfully at Fonsie as a companion.

"Nothing faster than slow jive." Fonsie leaned back and clicked his fingers slowly. Sister was not amused.

"And you are staying in a convent?"

"Don't be prejudiced now," Fonsie warned. "Just because I don't look like your idea of a nun doesn't mean.."

"Oh shut up, Fonsie, Mario's nearly having a fit down there in the van."

It was the first time she had seen the outside world for over a week.

Eve shuddered when she saw the corner where the crash had taken place.

They tucked her up in the van and drove back to Knockglen arguing all the while.

Some arguments she was able to take part in - like having brighter lights and music in the chip shop, like calling the chip shop a cafe, like having "Island in the Sun' so that you could hear it from the street and it would make you want to come in.

"Make you want to call the guards, more likely," Mario said.

There were other arguments she couldn't contribute to

- like whether Mario's brother had been mad to marry an Irish girl, Fonsie's mother, or whether Fonsie's mother had been mad to marry an Italian, Mario's brother. She drifted off to sleep during that particular saga which she felt would never be solved anyway.

Eve sat up in bed and drank her beef tea.

"Sister Imelda made it. Have a taste?" Benny sipped some from the cup.

"Patsy told me she heard her in Flood's talking about shin beef, and pointing to her ankle in case she wasn't making herself clear. Mr. Flood was saying, "I know where the shin is, Sister, God forgive me I may not know much but I know where the shin is."' "Is Patsy still going out with that dumbo, Mossy?"

"Yes, Mother's terrified she'll marry him."

"Is he that bad?"

"No, we just don't want Patsy to marry anyone, because she'll leave."

"A bit hard on Patsy," Eve said. "I feel like the prodigal son. I never had any time for him in the gospel, but still it's a nice feeling. The accident saved me, everyone's so sorry for me they forget I told all those lies and was so rude to awful Mother Clare. Listen, I meant to tell you, the most extraordinary thing.

The boy that got killed, Frank Hegarty .. Mother Francis met his mother that day. I don't remember it clearly, but anyway they got talking and she's coming here to stay for a few days. Here to Knockglen."

"Will she stay in Healy's?"

"No, here in the convent would you believe? They've done up one of the parlours as a bedroom."

"Go on!

"She's coming on the bus today. It's going to be very hard to know what to say to her."

"I know," Benny agreed. "I mean anything could be the wrong thing.

She mightn't want to talk about it at all, but then it could be considered callous to start up chats about other things."

"Nan would know what to say," Eve said suddenly. Benny felt a cold lurch in her heart. It was an unworthy thought, considering how kind Nan was to her and how she included her in everything.

But Benny did feel that Nan got too much credit for things. Was it right that she would know what to do in every circumstance?

A little wave of pure jealousy came over her. She said nothing.

She was afraid it might show in her voice.

Eve hadn't noticed. She was still musing what Nan would do or say.

"I think it's because she doesn't dither, like we do. She always sounds as if she knows what she's doing, whether she does or not.

That's the secret."

"I suppose it is," Benny said, hoping the glum, mean note didn't sound in her voice.

"Nan could make anyone do anything," Eve said. "She got them to let us smoke in the ward!"

"But you don't smoke!" Benny was startled.

Eve giggled. "Oh, I did for the fun of it, the others all did. It was the principle of the thing."

"What will she do all day? Mrs. Hegarty?" Benny asked "I don't know.

Walk around. She's going to feel lonely and odd here."

"She would at home too, I suppose," Benny said. "Have you talked to Sean since?"

"Not really. He was on his high horse last weekend, you know, head turned the other way when he saw me at Mass; a fit of the sulks.

Unfortunately, that didn't last and he came round last night to discuss the pictures. I'm afraid I used you shamelessly.

I said I couldn't make any plans until I knew what you'd be doing.

"That didn't please him."

"Well, he said that from what he heard you'd most likely be in Mario's, clicking your fingers with Fonsie.. He was full of disapproval."

Eve pealed with laughter.

"I wonder what Fonsie said. He's very funny, really he is. He thinks he's going to be Mr. Big of Knockglen."

"Lord, that wouldn't be hard."

"I know, I told him. But he said I'd missed the point. I said that by becoming a Mr. Big he would make Knockglen big too, he would drag it up with him."

"It can't happen soon enough," Benny said gloomily. "God, you sound like a cross between Father Ross and Mrs. Healy with your dire voice," Eve warned her.

"Maybe that's who I am. Maybe my parents were given the wrong baby."

"Boy, would that be the wrong baby," Eve said and that started them off all over again.

Kit Hegarty said she never saw such a lovely room. It was exactly what she wanted. It was small and low-ceilinged and there were no shadows or corners in it to keep her awake at night. She knew she would sleep here as she had not slept since it happened. She would love to do something to help, she said. She hadn't many skills, but she was used to running a house.

Mother Francis was soothing. Not now, later maybe, now she must rest.

She showed her the chapel. It was quiet and dark. Two nuns knelt in front of the altar where Mother Francis explained that the Blessed Sacrament was exposed. There would be Compline later, if she liked to come and listen to the nuns singing their office.

"I'm not sure..

"Neither am I," Mother Francis said firmly. "It might make you too sad, on the other hand it might be just what you need, to sit in a church with people you don't know and weep for your son. And there are the glass houses. I'll show you those. They're not in very good condition. We don't have the money or the people to look after them.

Ah, if only you'd known them when Eve's father was alive.." She told the woman the story that was rarely told, the workman and the restless daughter of the big house, the unsuitable relationship, the pregnancy, the marriage and the birth of Eve and the two deaths. There were tears in Kit Hegarty's eyes. "Why are you telling me this?" she said. "I suppose it's a clumsy attempt to let you know other awful things happen in the world," said Mother Francis.

"Are you not going out tonight?" Annabel Hogan asked as Benny pulled up a chair with them in the breakfast room after supper.

"Out' meant out with Sean Walsh. Benny pretended not to realise this.

"No, Eve has to take it easy. She's up and everything and coming down for supper tonight with the nuns and Mrs. Hegarty." Her face was bland.

"I meant, nothing on at the pictures?" her mother asked equally innocently.

"Ah, of course there's something on, Mother. It's meant to be very exciting - about the sound barrier."

"And wouldn't you like to be at that?" her father asked. "I don't really like going by myself, Father. If we were all going now.." The Hogans hardly ever went to the cinema.

She knew that they liked to see her stepping out with Sean from time to time. Somewhere in their confused minds they must think it was company for her, entertainment, a date even. And from Sean's point of view, they knew he considered it an honour to take the daughter of the house out for all to see. Somehow it made things nice and orderly, Safe.

Sean wouldn't leave them, go to a better shop in a bigtown if he was happy, and this must be their view, however short term and foolish.

"You know we don't go to the pictures," her mother said. "We wondered were you going to go with Sean?"

"Sean! Sean Walsh?" asked Benny as if the town were full of Seans, all of them craving to take her to the cinema. "You know I mean Sean Walsh." Annabel's voice was sharp.

"Oh no, I don't think it's a good idea to go with him all the time."

"You don't go all the time."

"No, but with Eve not being here, there'd be a danger I could slip into the way of it."

"And what would be the harm of that?"

"Not a bit of harm, Mother, but you know."

"Did he not ask you? He told me he was going to ask you." Eddie Hogan looked puzzled. He didn't like things that weren't clear.

"I said no to Sean because I didn't want Sean to think and me to think, and the whole of Knockglen to think, we were a twosome.

It was the first time such a notion had ever been mentioned in their household.

Benny's parents looked at one another at a loss. "I wouldn't say going to the pictures occasionally was making you into a twosome," Annabel Hogan said.

Benny's face lit up. "That's exactly my point too. I think it's fine to go to the pictures with Sean occasionally, not every week.

Occasionally was the very word I said, I think."

Actually the words she had said were "Sometimes, perhaps, but not in the immediate future', and he had looked at her with his cold small eyes, and she had shivered. But there would be little point in trying to explain this to her parents. It was quite enough to have told them as much as she had already told them.

Jack Foley and Aidan Lynch decided to go to the debate on Saturday night. It was held in the big Physics Theatre, and was fairly rowdy, despite the dinner jackets worn by the Committee and the Visiting Speakers.

As they stood at the doorway watching from the sidelines Aidan saw the blonde head of Nan Mahon in the centre of a sea of male duflle coats.

She was laughing, her head thrown back and her eyes sparkling. She wore a white frilly blouse with a rose pinned to the top button, and a black skirt. She was the most attractive girl in the room.

"Look at the lovely Nan," Aidan said, whistling a low envious sound through his teeth. "I asked her to come with me to this and she said she'd rather be free."

"So, she'd rather be free," Jack said, looking at her closely.

"I thought she liked me." Aidan sounded mock desolate. "No, you didn't. You thought she liked Bill Dunne. In fact I thought she liked me," said Jack.

"There's enough of them liking you," Aidan grumbled. "No, I thought I was special with Nan. She took me to see her friend in hospital."

"You're a natural hospital visitor," Jack laughed. "Look at Nan over there. She likes everyone." He looked with a pang of regret at the girl in the centre of the crowd. "What was the friend like in hospital?" he asked Aidan in order to take their minds off lost opportunities with Nan.

"Okay," Aidan said unenthusiastically. "A bit skinny and ready to bite your head off about everything, but all right, I suppose."

Even as he said it, Aidan realised that it might not sound all that gallant. "Not that I'm exactly an Adonis myself," he added.

"But you are, you are!" Jack Foley said. "Listen, I've had enough of this caper looking at our girl in the middle of that crowd.

Will we go for a pint?"

"You're on," Aidan said.

Jack looked long and hard at Nan as they went out of the hall, but if she saw them come in and go out her eyes gave not a flicker of recognition. Jack could have sworn she was looking straight at them, but then perhaps there were so many in the crowd at the door she just didn't see them.

Eve was disappointed in the way that Mother Francis had invited Frank Hegarty's mother to stay. It would mean that their talk had to be put off for one thing, and she was restless and eager to know the nun's view on how she should approach the Westwards. She intended only to ask for her university fees. She would find a place to live where she could mind children. It must be possible.

Not every single student who went in the doors of University College could have parents with money to pay for everything. There had to be some of them working their way through a degree. Eve had refused to consider a daytime job and night studying. She had heard of course of those who had done it, but the atmosphere was different. The students were older and greyer. They scurried in for lectures and scurried out again. It wasn't just the letters after her name that Eve Malone wanted It was the life of a student. The life she could have had if things had been different. She hoped that the Hegarty woman wouldn't stay long in Knockglen, because Eve needed to act soon. She must not malinger in the convent and prove Mother Clare's point about how she was a liability. Also if she were going to aim to be enrolled in UCD this year then she must do so within the next few days. And if there were to be an unpleasant interview with Simon Westward, the sooner it was over the better. She wished she had Mother Francis's attention to herself.

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."

There was a pause while Heather tried to work something out.

"Who did you come to see?" she said, after some consideration.

Eve looked at her with admiration. The child was trying to ,iork out whether E&e was for the master or for the staff. She had phrased the question perfectly.

"I came to see Simon Westward," she said. "Oh, sure, well come in."

Eve walked behind the little figure through the hall, full of dark pictures, hunting prints maybe. It was impossible to see.

Heathen Heather? She didn't know of any Heather in the household, but then she didn't really keep up with who was who in this family. If people in Knockglen spoke of them she didn't join in the conversation.

Sometimes the nuns mentioned them, but Eve would toss her head and turn away. Once she came upon an article about them in the Social and Personal magazine and she had turned the pages on angrily in case she would find out any more about them and their goings-on. Benny had always said that if the Westwards had been her family she would have wanted to know everything about them and would probably have made a scrapbook as well. But that was Benny all over. She'd probably have been doing their errands for them by now, and thanking them for everything instead of guarding the cold indifference that Eve had nurtured for so long.

"Are you one of Simon's girlfriends?" the child asked conversationally.

"No, indeed," Eve said with no emotion. They had reached the drawing room. The Sunday papers were spread out on a low coffee table, a sherry decanter and glasses stood on a silver tray. Over by the window in his wheelchair sat Major Charles Westward, his shoulders sloped down, and it was obvious even from a distance that he was not really aware of his surroundings. A rug over his knees had partly slipped to the floor.

This man was Eve's grandfather. Most people hugged their grandfather, they called them Grandad, and sat on their knee.

Grandfathers gave you two-shilling pieces and took pictures of you on First Communion and Confirmation days. They were proud of you and introduced you to people. This man had never wanted to see Eve, and if he was in the whole of his sense he might have ordered her out of his house, as he had done her mother.

Once upon a time she had thought he might see her from his horse or his car and ask who was that lovely child. She had a look of the family about her. But that was long ago. She felt no sense of loss looking at him, no wish that things had been different. She was not embarrassed by his infirmity nor upset by looking at him closely after the years of rejection.

Heather looked at Eve curiously. "I'll go and find Simon for you now.

You'll be all right here?" she said.

The child's face was open. Eve found it hard to be stif with her.

"Thanks. Thanks a lot," she said gruffly. Heather smiled at her.

"You don't look like his girlfriend usually look."

"No?"

"No, you look more normal."

"Oh good." Despite herself Eve smiled. ÀThe child was still curious.

"Is it about the mare?"

"It's not about the mare. I wouldn't know a mare from a five-bar gate.

Heather laughed good-naturedly and headed for the door. Eve surprised herself by giving the information the child had been looking for.

"I'm not one of his girlfriends," she called. "I'm one of his cousins."

Heather seemed pleased. "Oh, then you're a cousin of mine too.

I'm Simon's sister."

Eve said nothing because of a slight lump in her throat. Whatever she had thought would happen when she went to Westlands it was not this.

She would never have believed that any Westward would have been pleased to see her.

Mother Francis told Kit Hegarty that there was no need for her to hurry back to Dublin. She could stay as long as she liked, a week maybe.

"Don't go back too soon. The peace of this place could wear off you if you went back to the city too quickly."

"Ah, that's country people for you. You think Dublin is all like O'Connell Street. We're out in County Dublin you see, by the seaside.

It's a grand place full of fresh air."

Mother Francis knew that the peace of Knockglen had nothing to do with it being in the country or the city. The advantage was, the place was far from the home where Frank Hegarty would return no more.

"Still, stay here a while and take our air."

"I'm in the way."

Kit had sensed Eve's eagerness to have Mother Francis to herself.

"On the contrary. You are very helpful in that Eve needs time to talk to other people before she commits herself to any plan.

There's no point in she and I going round in circles. Much as I hate it, I realise that she has to make up her own mind."

"You would have made a marvellous mother," Kit said. "I don't know.

It's easier one step removed."

"You're not removed. You just manage not to do what all the rest of us wish we didn't do.

You don't nag."

"I don't think you were a nagger either," Mother Francis smiled.

"Did you not want to marry and have children?" Kit asked.

"I wanted a wild unsuitable farmer's son that I couldn't have."

"Why couldn't you have him?"

"Because we hadn't a farm of land to go with me. Or so I thought. If he had really wanted me he'd have taken me, farm or no farm."

"What happened to him?"

"He married a girl who had legs much better than Bunty Brown, and who did have a farm to go with her. They had four children in five years, then he found another, as they say.

"And what did the wife do?"

"She made a fool of herself the length and breadth of the county.

That's not what Bunty Brown would have done. She would have thrown him out, started a guest house, and held her head high."

Kit Hegarty laughed. "Are you telling me you are Bunty Brown?"

"Not any longer. Not for a long time."

"He was a fool not to take you.

"Ah, that's what I said too. I said it for three years. They didn't want to take me in the convent at first. They thought I was just running away, trying to hide from the world."

"And do you regret it, not waiting for a different farmer's son?"

"No, not a bit."

Her eyes were far away.

"And you've had everything, in a way," Kit said. "You've had all the joy of children in a school."

"It's true," Mother Francis said. "Every year, new children, every year new young faces coming in." She still looked sad.

"It will work out for Eve."

"Of course it will. She's probably talking to him now."

"Who is she talking to?"

"Her cousin, Simon Westward. Asking him for fees. I hope she doesn't lose her temper. I hope she won't throwit all away!" eather had left the room as soon as her brother came in. Simon went over first to the figure in the wheelchair, picked up the rug, and knelt to tuck it in around the old man. He stood up and came back to the fireplace. He was small and dark, with a thin handsome face, dark-eyed, and his brown hair fell into his eyes.

He had had to shake it away so often it was now a mannerism. He wore riding breeches and a tweed jacket with leather cuffs and elbows.

"What can I do for you?" His voice was cold and polite.

"Do you know who I am?" Eve's voice was equally cold. He hesitated.

"Not really," he said.

Her eyes blazed. "Either you do or you don't," she said. "I think I do. I asked Mrs. Walsh. She said you were the daughter of my Aunt Sarah. Is that right?"

"But you know of me, surely?"

"Yes, of course. I didn't recognise you coming up the drive, so I asked."

"What else did Mrs. Walsh say?"

"I don't think that's relevant. Now can I ask you what this is about?"

He was so much in command of the situation that Eve wanted to cry. If only he could have looked ill at ease, gilty about his family's treatment of her, confused and wondering what lay ahead.

But Simon Westward would always know how to handle things like this.

She was silent as she looked at him. Unconsciously imitating his stance, hands behind her back, eyes unflinching, mouth set in a hard thin line. She had dressed carefully, deciding not to wear her best outfit in case he would think she had put it on specially, or had come from Mass. Instead she had worn a tartan skirt and grey cardigan. She had a blue scarf tied around her throat in what she had thought was a jaunty look.

Her glance didn't fall from his stare.

"Would you like a glass of sherry?" he asked, and she knew she had won the first round.

"Thank you."

"Sweet or dry?"

"I don't know the difference. I've never had either." She spoke proudly. There was going to be no aping the manners of her betters from Eve Malone. She thought she saw him raise his eyebrows in surprise that bordered on admiration.

"Then try the sweet. I'll have that too. He poured two glasses.

"Will you sit down?"

"I'd rather stand. It won't take long."

"Fine." He said nothing more, he just waited. "I would like to go to university this term," she began. "In Dublin?"

"Yes. And there are a few things standing in the way."

"Oh yes?"

"Like that I cannot afford it."

"How much does it cost in Trinity now?"

"It's not Trinity and you know that well. It's UCD."

"Sorry, I didn't know, actually."

"For years Trinity wouldn't let Catholics in, and now when it does, the Archbishop has said it's a sin to go so you know it's UCD." He put his hands out as if warding her off. "Peace, peace," he said. Eve continued. "And since you ask, the fees are sixty-five pounds a year for three years for a BA, and after that I would like to do a Diploma in Librarianship so that would be another sixty-five pounds. There would be books to buy. I am talking about one hundred pounds a year.

And?"

"And I was hoping you would give it to me," she said, "Give? Not lend?"

"No, give. Because I wouldn't be able to pay it back. It would be a lie to ask for a loan."

"And how will you live there? You'll have to pay for rooms and everything."

"I told you. It's not Trinity. There are no rooms. I'll get a job in a family, earn my keep. I'd be able to do that. It's just the fees I don't have."

"And you think we should pay them?"

"I'd be very glad if you did." Not grateful, Eve told herself firmly, she had sworn she would not use that word. No matter how much Mother Francis had warned her. Glad was the nearest she could get.

Simon was thinking. "A hundred pounds a year," he repeated.

"It would be for four years," Eve said. "I couldn't really start unless I knew I wouldn't have to come and beg for it every year.

"You're not begging for it now," said Simon. "That's right, I'm not," Eve said. She felt a great pounding in her head. She hadn't known it was going to be remotely like this.

He smiled at her, a genuine smile. "I never beg either, it must be a family trait."

Eve felt a hot flush of anger. Not only was he going to refuse her, he was going to make fun of her as well. She had known that she might be refused, she thought it would be with apologies cold and distant, closing the door firmly, and this time for ever. She had steeled herself against it. There would be no tears. No pleading. Neither would there be recriminations. She had heard enough in the gossip of the town to know that her father had sworn and cursed this family long years ago. She wasn't going to let history repeat itself. She had rehearsed staying calm. "So what do we do now?" she asked in a level voice. There was nothing arrogant or pleading about it.

"That seems perfectly reasonable," Simon said. "What?"

"What you ask for. I don't see any reason why not." His smile was very charming.

She felt that to smile back would put her in some kind of danger.

"Why now?" she asked. "Why not before?"

"You never asked me before," he said simply. "Not personally," she agreed.

"Yes. It's quite different to be asked indirectly, by a religious order who never made any other approach to me."

"What approach might they have made?"

"Oh, I don't know. Hard to say. I can't say I'd have liked them to ask me to tea or to pretend a friendship I didn't feel. But it was rather bald just to ask for money on your behalf as if you hadn't a mind or a voice of your own.

She considered it. It was true. Of course it was also true that she should never have had to ask him or any of the Westwards for what was rightfully hers. And Mother Francis had been sent away twice with a flea in her ear.

But these were not the subjects at issue. And the need was for calm, not for raking up the past.

"I see," she said.

Simon had almost lost interest in it. He was prepared to talk about other things.

"When does term start, or has it started?"

"Last week. But there's late registration."

"Why didn't you register in time?"

"I tried another kind of life. I couldn't bear it." He must have been used to short answers. It seemed to satisfy him.

"Well, I'm sure you won't have missed very much in a few days.

All I ever see in Dublin when I go there is students from both universities drinking coffee and talking about changing the world."

"They might, one day."

"Of course." He was courteous.

She was silent. She couldn't ask him to get the money now, she didn't want to launch into any thanks. The word grateful might slip out. She sipped her sherry thoughtfully.

Their eyes met. "I'll get a cheque book," he said, and went out to the hall. Eve heard him rooting around amongst the papers and documents stacked on the table. By the window the old man sat silently staring with unseeing eyes at the unkempt garden. Out on the lawn the sister who must have been nearly twenty years younger than her elder brother played with a couple of large dogs, throwing them sticks. It was like a foreign land to Eve.

She stood there like the visitor she was, until Simon came back in.

"You'll have to forgive me, I am not saying this in any way to be offensive, but I don't know if your name is Maloney or O'Malone, or what?"

"Eve Malone." She spoke without expression. "Thank you.

I didn't want to go out and check with Mrs. Walsh. It was one or the other, ask you or ask her." He smiled.

Eve did not return the smile. She nodded her head slightly. He wrote the cheque slowly and deliberately, then folded it in half and handed it to her.

Common politeness must make her thank him. The words stuck in her throat. What had she said before, what had been the word which had pleased her? Glad. She used it again. "I'm glad you were able to do this," she said.

"I'm glad too," he said.

They did not use each other's names, and they knew there was no more to say. Eve put the cheque in the pocket of her cardigan and stretched out her hand. "Goodbye," she said.

Simon Westward said exactly the same thing at the same time.

She waved cheerfully at the child who seemed disapppointed to see her go, and walked down the avenue of the house that had been her mother's home with her back straight, because she knew that she was being watched from the house. From the kitchens, from the garden where the dogs were playing, from the drawing room and from a wheelchair.

She didn't let the skip come into her step until she was outside.

In the convent Mother Francis and Kit Hegarty were having lunch in the window of the Community dining room, and a place had been set for Eve.

"We didn't wait for you," Mother Francis said, her eyes anxiously raking Eve's face for the answer.

Eve nodded twice. The nun's face lit up. "I'll go now. I have a lot of things to do. Eve, your meal's in the kitchen. Bring it out and sit here with Mrs. Hegarty like a good girl."

"Perhaps.." Kit looked uncertain. "Can't I go and let you two talk?"

"No, no, no you've not finished yet, I have. And this is Eve's home and mine. We have years to talk. You'll be going away soon."

Eve brought out the heaped plate of bacon and floury potatoes with a white sauce. She placed it on the table and saw the sad tired face of the older woman watching her.

"Sister Imelda's always trying to fatten me up, but it's no use.

When you've got my kind of way of going on it just burns up food."

Mrs. Hegarty, nodded.

"I expect you re the same," Eve said. She felt almost light headed with relief. She was only making small talk until the lunch was over, until she could run up the road to tell Benny the news, until she could talk to Mother Francis alone when this sad woman went away.

"Yes, I am the same," Kit Hegarty said. "I never rest, hardly ever sleep. I think about everything too much."

"You've had a lot to think about," Eve said sympath] etically.

"Not always. Frank used to say to me that I couldn't sit down, that my eyes were never still."

"People say that to me, too," Eve said, surprised. They looked at each other with a new interest, the twot who had been competing for Mother Francis's time and attention. They didn't think it odd that she hadn't come back to them. They didn't notice that Sister Imelda never came in to take away their plates. As the grey clouds that raced along behind the big banks of convent trees turned black, as the short winter afternoon turned into evening, they talked on.

Their stories fell into place, like pieces of a jigsaw. Eve Malone needed somewhere to live, a place where she could earn her keep. Kit Hegarty needed someone to help her with her guest house. She had no heart to stay in it all day now that Frank, the reason for all the work, had gone. They both could see the solution and yet were afraid to voice it.

It was Eve who spoke first. In the convent which had been her home, Eve softened her voice to ask. Eve, who could never ask for a favour, who hadn't been able to form words of thanks for the œ400 in her cardigan pocket, was able to ask Kit Hegarty could she come and live with her. And Kit Hegarty leaned across the table and took Eve's hands in hers.

"We'll make some kind of a life out of it," she promised. "We'll make a great life out of it," Eve assured her. Then they went to tell Mother Francis, who seemed very surprised and thought it must be the direct intervention of God.

CHAPTER 7

Brian Mahon had been drinking now for several days. Not a real batter, nothing that had involved any violence or brawl as it sometimes did, but steady drinking. Emily knew that things were shaping up for a fight. And this time it was going to be about Nan's bedroom.

Nan had decided that from now on she would study there in the evenings.

She had said it was not possible to study downstairs with the radio on and the family coming and going all the time.

Nasey had fixed her up a simple desk and Paul had put a plug on an electric fire. This was where she would work from now on.

Emily sighed. She knew that Brian would object as soon as it was brought to his notice. Why had he not been consulted? Who was going to pay for the electricity? Who did Nan think she was? The answer to the last part was that Nan thought she was a lot too good for Brian Mahon and Maple Gardens. Her mother had ensured that over the years.

As she brushed her daughter's golden hair, Emily had always made the girl believe that there would be a better and a different life. Nan had never doubted it. She felt no need to conform to the lifestyle of a house ruled by an often drunken father.

Nan Mahon was not afraid of her father because she knew with a certainty which her mother had helped to create that her future didn't lie in her father's kind of world. She knew without arrogance that her beauty would be her means of escape. Emily wished that there was some way that she could take Brian aside and talk to him in a way that he would listen. Really listen and understand. She could say to him that life was short and there was no point in crossing Nan. Let her work up in the bedroom if that's what she wanted. Be nice - be pleasant about it, then she'd come down and sit with them afterwards. But Brian didn't listen to Emily these days. If he had ever listened to her.

She sighed to herself as she opened up the new delivery of Belleek china, and put the packing neatly into a big container under the counter. She arranged the little jugs and plates on a shelf so that they would best catch the eye and began to write out price tags in her meticulous handwriting. Emily Mahon sighed again. It was so easy to run a hotel shop, and so hard to run a family.

People didn't realise how often she'd like to make her bed in the corner of this little world, amongst those nice car rugs and cushions with Celtic designs on them. It would be simpler by far than going back to Maple Gardens.

She had been quite right of course. The row had well begun when Emily Mahon let herself into the family home. "Do you know anything about all this?" Brian roared. Emily had decided to try and play it lightly. "Well, I must say that's a great greeting to one of the workers of the world," she said, looking from her husband's hot, red face to Nan's cool and unruffled expression.

"Aw, shut up with that workers of the world crap, will you? We all know there isn't a reason in the world for you to be going out to work.

Only because you took some figario. If you'd stayed at home and minded your business we wouldn't have all this trouble now. "What trouble?" Emily was weary.

"Well might you ask what trouble.,Sure you don't know what's going on in your own house.

"Why are you picking on Em?" Nan asked. "She's only in the door, she hasn't her coat off, or her shopping put down.

Her father's face was working. "Don't call your mother by her Christian name, you young pup."

"I'm not." Nan was bored with this argument. "I'm calling her M, short for Mother, Mama, Mater."

"You're dismantling that contraption you have upstairs, and coming back down here to where we have the house heated. You'll study your books in this room like a normal human being."

"Excuse me," Nan asked. "Excuse my mentioning it, but what kind of study could anyone get in a room like this with people bellowing and shouting."

"Listen to me, you impertinent young rossie .. you'll feel the weight of my hand on you if there's any more of this."

"Ah, Dad, don't hit her.." Nasey had stood up. "Get out of my way..

Nan didn't move. Not an inch did she stir from where she stood, proud, young, confident in her fresh green and white blouse and her dark green skirt. She had her books under her arm, and she could have been a model picture for student fashion.

"Am I breaking my back for you to speak to me like that in front of the family? Am I working to make you into a bad-mannered tinker?"

"I haven't said anything bad-mannered at all, Dad, only that I'm going up to work, to get a bit of peace. So that I'll get my degree eventually, so that you'll be prouder of me than ever.

The words were inoffensive, but Brian Mahon found the tone of his daughter almost more than he could bear.

"Get up there out of my sight then, we don't want to see hair or hide of you this evening."

Nan smiled. "If you want me to give you a hand, Em, just call me," she said, and they heard her light step going up the stairs.

The three students in Mrs. Hegarty's digs were delighted to hear of Eve's arrival. They had felt awkward and unsure of themselves in a place where the son of the house had been killed so tragically. Now at least an attempt was being made to return to normality.

They liked Eve too, when she appeared. Small, attractive in a wiry kind of way and prepared to put up with no nonsense from the very start.

"I'll be getting your breakfast from now on. Mrs. Hegarty is feeding you like fighting cocks so you get bacon and egg and sausage every day and scrambled eggs on a Friday. But I have a nine o'clock lecture three days a week so I was wondering if you could help me clear and wash those days, and the other days I'll run round after you like' a slave..

pouring you more cups of tea and buttering you more toast.

They went along with her good-naturedly, and they did more than she asked. Big lads who wouldn't have known where the hoover was kept in their own homes were able to lift it out for Eve on a Tuesday before they went to catch the train to college. They wiped their feet carefully on the hall mat. They said they never again wanted to risk anything like the reception that they got when they had accidentally walked some mud in on top of a carpet that Eve had cleaned. They kept the bathroom far cleaner than they had ever done before Eve had come on the scene. Kit Hegarty told her privately that if she had known how much the presence of a girl would smarten the lads up, she might have had a female student years ago.

"Why didn't you? They'd have been easier."

"Don't you believe it, always washing their hair, wanting the lavatory seat put down, drying their stockings over chairs, falling in love with no-hopers.." Kit had laughed.

"Aren't you afraid of any of those things happening with me?" Eve asked. They got on so well now they could talk easily on any subject.

"Not a chance of it. You'll never fall for a no-hoper.

Hard-hearted little hannah that you are."

"I thought you said I was like you?" Eve was making bread as she spoke. Sister Imelda had taught her to make soda bread when she was six. She had no idea of the recipe, she just did it automatically.

"Ah, you are like me, and I didn't fall for a no-hoper, there was lots of hope in Joseph Hegarty. It's just that as time went on it didn't seem to include me." She sounded bitter and sad.

"Did you make any attempt to find him, you know, to tell him about Frank?"

"He didn't want to know about Frank when there was something to tell like when he learned to swim, or when he lost his first tooth, or when he passed his Inter. Why tell him anything now?"

Eve could see a lot of reasons, but she didn't think it was the time or the place.

"Suppose he came back," Eve asked. "If Joe walked in the door one day.."

"Funny, I never called him Joe, always Joseph. I'm sure that tells us something about him or me. Suppose he came back? It would be like the man coming to read the meter. I gave up looking at that gate years ago. "And yet you loved him? Or else thought you did?"

"Oh, I did love him. There's no use denying it just because it wasn't returned and didn't last."

"You're very calm about it."

"You didn't know me years ago. Let me see. Around the time you were one or two, if you'd known me then you wouldn't have said I was calm!"

"I've never loved anybody," Eve said suddenly. "That's because you were afraid to."

"No, the nuns were much more liberal than people think They didn't fill me with terror of men."

"No, I meant afraid to let yourself go.."

"I think that's right.

I feel things very strongly, like resentment. I resent those bloody Westwards. I hate asking them for money. I can't tell you how much it took to make me walk up there that Sunday. And I feel very protective too. if anyone said a word against Mother Francis or Sister Imelda I'd kill them."

"You look very fierce with that knife. Put it down, for God's sake."

"Oh." Eve laughed, realising she was brandishing the carving knife which she had used to put a cross on the top of the soda bread. "I didn't notice. Anyway it wouldn't harm anyone. It's as blunt as anything. It wouldn't cut butter. Let's get one of those budding engineers inside there to take it into the lab and sharpen it up for us."

"You will love somebody one day," Kit Hegarty said. "I can't imagine who." Eve was thoughtful. "For one thing he'd have to be a saint to put up with my moods, for another I don't see many good examples, where love seems to have worked out well."

Have you anything planned on Sunday?" Dr. Foley asked his eldest son.

"What am I letting myself in for if I haven't?" Jack laughed.

"Just a simple answer. If you're busy I'll not bother you."

"But then I might miss something great. "Ah, that's what life is all about, taking risks."

"What is it, Dad?"

"You are free then."

"Come on, tell me."

"You know Joe Kennedy, he's a chemist in the country: He wants to see me. He's not well, I think. We go back a long way. He wondered if I'd come and call on him."

"Where does he live?"

"Knockglen."

"That's miles away. Don't they have doctors there?"

"They do, but he wants a friend more than a doctor."

"And you want me to come, is it?"

"I want you to drive me, Jack. I've lost my nerve a bit."

"You can't have."

"Not altogether, but just for a long wet drive, slippery roads. I'd be very grateful."

"All right," Jack said. "What'll I do while you're talking to him?"

"That's the problem. I wouldn't say there's all that much to do there, but maybe you could,go on a drive or sit in the car to read the Sunday papers.

Jack's face brightened. "I know. There's a girl that lives there.

I'll give her a ring."

"That's my boy. Only a couple of months at university and already there's a girl in every town."

"She's not a girl in that sense. She's just a nice girl," Jack explained. "Have you the phone book? There can't be that many Hogans in Knockglen."

Nan was very excited when Benny said that Jack Foley had rung her.

"Half the girls in college would give anything to have him coming to call on them, let me tell you. What'll you wear?"

"I don't think he's coming to call, not in that sense. I mean it's not something to get dressed up for. I won't wear anything," Benny said, flustered.

"That should be a nice surprise for him when you open the door," Nan said.

"You know what I mean."

"I still think you should get dressed up, wear that nice pink blouse, and the black skirt. It is a party when a fellow like Jack Foley comes to call. If he was coming out to Maple Gardens I'd dress up. I'll get you a length of pink ribbon and a black one and you can tie them both round your hair to hold it back.

It'll look great. You've got gorgeous hair."

"Nan, it won't look great on a rainy Sunday in Knockglen. Nothing looks great there. It'll just look pathetic."

Nan looked at her thoughtfully. "You know those big thick brown bags, the ones they sell sugar in. Why don't you put one of those over your head and cut two slits for eyes? That might look right."

Annabel Hogan and Patsy planned to make scones, and queen cakes and an apple tart. There would be bridge rolls first with chopped egg on one plate and sardines on the other.

"Maybe we shouldn't overdo it," Benny suggested. "There's nothing overdone about a perfectly straightforward afternoon tea for your friend." Benny's mother was affronted at the notion that this might not have been their normal Sunday afternoon fare.

They were going to light a fire each day in the drawing room to heat it up for the occasion and after tea had been leared away Benny's parents would withdraw to the breakfast room, leaving the young people the run of the good room on their own.

"There's not any question of having the run of the place," Benny had begged, but to no avail. "He's only coming here because he has to kill the time," she pleaded. They wouldn't hear of it, a nice young man telephoning courteously several days in advance to know if he could call. It wasn't a matter of killing time. There was a rake of things he could do in Knockglen. Personally Benny could think of very few.

Window shopping didn't bear thinking about. The cinema wasn't open in the afternoon. Healy's Hotel would pall after half an hour, and Jack Foley wasn't likely to put away an afternoon in Mario's, however entertaining Fonsie might be. The Hogans were the only game in town.

Still, it was nice that he remembered her. Benny rehearsed the pink and black ribbon. It looked well. She started wearing it on friday evening so that the household wouldn't think it was part of the dressing-up.

When Sean asked her to the pictures she said no, that since she was having a friend from Dublin she had to stay home on Saturday and get things ready. "A friend from Dublin!" Sean sniffed. "And might we know her name?"

"It's a him, not a her," Benny said mulishly. "Pardon me," Sean said.

"So that's why I can't go, you see," she added lamely.

"Naturally." Sean was lofty and knowing. For some reason that she couldn't explain Benny heard herself saying, "It's just a friend, not anything else."

Sean's smile was slow and cold. "I'm sure that's true, Benny. I wouldn't have expected anything less of you. But it's good of you to say it straight out."

He nodded like a self-satisfied bird. As if he were being generous and allowing her to have her own friends until the time came. And a pat on the head for defining that there was nothing but friendship involved.

"I hope it's a very pleasant visit. For all of you," Sean Walsh said, and bowed in what he must have thought was an elegant or a gracious manner. Something he had seen Errol Flynn or Montgomery Clift do, and stored up for a suitable occasion.

Jack Foley was the easiest guest they had ever known at the Hogans'.

He ate some of everything put in front of him. He praised it all. He had three cups of tea. He admired the teapot and asked was it Birmingham 1930s silver. It was. Wasn't that amazing? they said; no, Jack said, that's what his parents' silver was. He just wondered was it the same. He punched Benny playfully like a brother when they talked about university. He said how marvellous it was to have boys and girls in the same classes. He had felt so gauche when he had come there from a single-sex school. Benny saw her mother and father nodding sagely, agreeing with him. He spoke of his parents and his brothers, and the boy Aengus with the glasses, which were always getting broken at school.

He said that the debates were great on a Saturday night, you learned a lot from them as well as having fun. Had Benny been?

No, Benny hadn't. You see there was this problem about getting back to Knockglen, she said in a flat voice. Oh, that was a pity he thought, they really were part of college life. Perhaps Benny could stay with her friend Nan, he sometimes saw her there. They all nodded. Perhaps.

Some Saturday.

He was discreet about why his father wanted to meet Mr. Kennedy.

It could be anything, he said, rugby club business, or new drugs on the market, or old school reunions. You never knew with his father, he had so many irons in the fire.

Benny looked at him with admiration. Jack Foley didn't even look as if he were putting on an act.

The only other person she knew who could do that was Nan. In many ways they would be ideally suited.

"It's nice and fine. Do you think you could show me the town?" he asked Benny.

"We were just going to leave the two of you to .. er, chat," Benny's mother began.

"I've eaten so much .. I think I do need a walk."

"I'll get proper shoes." Benny had been wearing flat pumps, like party shoes.

"Get boots, Benny," he called after her. "We're really going to walk off this fabulous tea."

They walked companionably together. Benny in her winter coat, with the pink collar of her smart blouse showing over it. She had put on wellingtons, and she felt that the cold wind was making her cheeks red, but it didn't matter. Jack wore his purple and green Law Society scarf wound round his neck.

Several people were out walking in the wintry sunshine which would soon turn into a sunset.

"Where will we go?" he asked at the Hogans' gate. "Through the town, out the other side, and up to Westlands. That'll undo the harm of all the apple tart."

"Poor Mr. Kennedy's dying. He wanted to talk to my father about it. He doesn't get much joy out of the local man, apparently."

"That's very sad. He's not old," Benny said. "That's where the local man, as you call him, lives." She waved across the road to Dr. Johnson's house, where the children were throwing sticks for a dog.

"I didn't mention that to your parents.. ." Jack began. "Nor will I, don't worry," Benny said. They knew the story would travel the length of the onestreet town.

Benny pointed out places, and gave a little commentary. Bee Moore called out from the doorway of Paccy Moore's cobbler's shop that there were lovely new skirts arrived into Peggy Pine's.

"They're just right for you, Benny," Bee said, and added, with no sense Of offence, "they'd fit an elephant, and there's a great stretch in them."

"Beautiful!" Jack commented, with a grin. "Ah, she doesn't mean any harm," Benny said. In Mario's, both Fonsie and his uncle blew extravagant kisses out to Benny. And in Dessie Burns's hardware shop they wondered who could have written "Useful Gift' over a saw. They passed Kennedy's chemist swiftly without saying anything about the man inside talking to Jack's father. Benny took him across to point out some of the finer points of Hogan's gentleman's Outfitters. Jack admired the shop courteously, and said it was very discreet. You'd never know from the outside what it was like on the inside. Benny wondered was that a good thing, but decided it probably was. Country people were different. They didn't like anyone knowing their business.

She asked Jack to keep staring in the window and to notice the reflection of Mrs. Healy across the road watching them beadily from her hotel. Jack heard about Mrs. Healy's corsets, and what amazing structural feats they were. There was a rumour that Mrs. Healy was quite a plump, - person, but nobody except the late Mr. Healy would have had any proof of this. New and ever more taxing underpinnings were bought every time she went to Dublin, and there was a rumour that she had once gone to London on a corset-buying spree, but this might only be a rumour. When she had gone back into her hotel Benny felt it safe to move on. She showed Jack the clean white slabs of Mr. Flood's the butcher's.

She said that Teddy Flood, his son, didn't really want to work there, but what else could he do? It was hard to be born into the business if you were a boy. Mr. Flood was becoming very odd these days.

Jack said he could see that without being told. It was surely highly questionable to have so many cows and pigs and lambs around the wall in a highly coloured gambolling state. It must make people feel sensitive about buying them in their very dead condition, and eating them. Benny said that this was nothing. Mr. Flood had always had piteouslooking animals peeping at you from the walls. The real thing was that he now had a fairly permanent vision of something up a tree. A saint possibly, but definitely a nun. It was a source of worry to the family and a cause of great fits of giggling among the customers when he would suddenly pause in sawing or chopping and go out of doors for a brief consultation upwards.

They passed the church and paused to study the details of the Men's Mission, which would be coming to the church shortly. Benny said that during the two weeks of the missions little wooden stalls selling prayer books and beads and holy objects and Catholic Truth Society pamphlets did huge business outside the church. Was it the same in Dublin? Jack was apologetic. He didn't really know. He had gone to the mission of course, but like everyone he and Aidan had always wanted to try and find out which hadd the lecture on sex. That was the one that was usually packed out, but the missioners were becoming more and more cunning. They sort of hinted each night that the big sex sermon would be tomorrow and they had crowds coming in every night, in case they missed it. Benny said that men were much more honest than women, really. Girls felt exactly the same but didn't admit it. . She showed him the square where the bus came in. Mikey was just drawing up.

"How's Benny?" he called out.

"Great altogether," Benny said, with her big smile. They paused in front of the gates of St. Mary's and she pointed out the landmarks to him. The big long lawns, the camogie field, the glasshouse, the windy path through the kitchen gardens that went uphill to the quarry path, where Eve had her cottage.

She knew everything and everyone, he told her, and there was a story attached to whatever they saw.

This pleased her. At least he wasn't bored. Neither of them saw Sean Walsh looking at them from inside Birdie Mac's sweet shop.

Birdie often made tea and toast of a Sunday afternoon and Sean Walsh had taken to dropping in. His eyes were cold as he watched Benny Hogan and the arrogant young pup that she had gone off with that very first day, trick acting and showing off right outside the convent gates in full view of the town. It didn't please him one little bit.

They stood on the five-bar gate that had a good view down over the Westwards' land. Benny pointed out places to him. The graveyard where all the Westwards lay. The small war memorial in it that had wreaths of poppies in November, because so many of them had died in wars.

"Wasn't it odd to think of them all fighting in those wars when they lived here?" she said.

"But that would be their whole culture and tradition and everything," Jack said.

"I know, but when the others would be talking about homeland and fatherland and king or queen and country, .. they'd only be talking about Knockglen."

"Don't knock Knockglen," he said, laughing. "Don't let Fonsie in the chipper bar hear you say that he'll be trying to turn it into a hit single. Move over Bill Hayley .. that's Fonsie.."

"Where did he get the name?"

"Alphonsus."

"God."

"I know. Didn't you escape lightly, Jack Foley, with your nice normal name?"

"And what about you .. Benedicta was it?"

"No, nothing as exotic.

Mary Bernadette, I'm afraid."

"Benny's nice. It suits you."

It was dark as they walked back. The lights were on up in the convent.

Benny told Jack of Eve's life there, and the lovely bedroom where you could sit and look down the town.

"Now I have you home safely in good time," she said, delivering him to the door of Kennedy's chemist.

"Will you come in?"

"No, he might be upset."

"Thanks, Benny. It was a lovely visit."

"I enjoyed your being here. Wasn't it lovely for me too?"

"Will you come out one night in Dublin?" He spoke suddenly, almost surprising himself.

"Not at night. I'm Cinderella, remember. But I'll see you around."

"Maybe a lunch?"

"Wouldn't that be grand?" she said, and walked off down the dark street.

"Poor Joe," his father said after a long silence in the car "Has he got cancer?"

"Riddled with it. He's only a couple of months, I'd say, from the sound of things.

"What did you tell him?"

"He wanted me to listen."

"Has he no one here who'll do that?"

"No. According to him there's an arrogant, badtempered GP, a wife who thinks it's all safe and in the hands of the Little Flower or the Infant of Prague, or some such helpful authority, and won't brook any discussion on the matter.. However, enough's enough.

How was your friend? Joe said she was a nice girl, big horse of a girl he called her."

"Isn't it a pity he couldn't have found a better way to describe people?"

"Let me get this straight again," Nan said, her eyes wide with disbelief. "He asked you out. I mean he said the words "I would like you to come out with me one night", and you said no?"

"No, I didn't say no, and he didn't ask me out like that."

Nan looked to Eve for guidance. They were all three together waiting for the lecturer to arrive. They sat away from the main body of the students in order to get this matter sorted.

"Well, did he or didn't he?" Eve asked. "It was like you'd ask a friend. Casual. It wasn't like a date."

"It certainly wasn't if you said no," Eve said dryly. "Don't go on like that." Benny looked from one to the other. "I swear, if he does ask me out I'll go. Now are you satisfied?"

"And where will you stay the night in Dublin?" Eve asked. "I could stay with you, couldn't I, Nan?"

"Oh yes, sure." The reply was half a second late. Benny looked to Eve. "Or if there was any problem with that I could stay with you, Eve, out in Dunlaoghaire."

<'Easily." That was said quickly, but of course Mother and Father would never let her stay in a guest house full of boys with a woman they didn't know, even if Eve did live there in a semi-work capacity.

Benny was philosophical. It wouldn't happen anyway.

What were all the plans for?

In the Ladies' Reading Room stuck into the crisscross tapes on the noticeboard was a folded piece of paper. "Benny Hogan, First Arts."

She opened it casually. It must be from that pale-faced clerical student who had missed the history lecture and she had promised to give him the notes. Benny had remembered to take carbon paper with her. He could keep the copy for himself. She didn't know his name. He was a worried young man, definitely not strong, his white face made even whiter by the black clothes. She got an odd feeling when she saw that the letter was from Jack Foley. It was like the sudden jolt you get if you touch something too hot or too cold.

Dear Benny,

I remember you said evenings were difficult at the moment, so what do you say to lunch in the Dolphin?

Would a Thursday be good? I remember you saying you didn't have a tutorial or anything on Thursdays. I'll probably see you before then, but if you can't make it or don't want to, can you leave a note in the porter's office? I hope I won't hear from you because that means I'll see you in the Dolphin at one fifteen on Thursday week.

And thank you for the lovely afternoon in Knockglen. Love, Jack

Love, Jack. Love, Jack. she said it to herself over and over. She closed her eyes and said it again. It was possible, wasn't it?

Just possible that he did like her. He didn't need to ask her out, or to remember that she had a free afternoon on Thursdays, or be so kind as to think of lunch. He could have sent a postcard if he wanted to be mannerly, as her father would call it. Jack Foley didn't need to ask her to lunch in a big posh hotel where the high of the land went. He must have done it because he liked being with her, and that he liked her.

She didn't dare to believe it.

Benny heard Nan's infectious laugh in the corridor outside.

Hastily she pushed the note deep into her shoulder bag. It seemed a bit shabby considering how enthusiastic Nan and Eve always were on her behalf, but she couldn't bear them giving her advice on what to wear and what to say. And worst of all she couldn't bear them to think that Jack Foley might in fact fancy her, when she so desperately hoped it was true.

CHAPTER 8

Benny decided she would be thin on Thursday week. She would have hollows in her cheeks and a long narrow neck. It would, of course, involve eating nothing. Not easy to do at home where Patsy would put a bowl of porridge, a jug of cream and the silver sugar basin in front of her to start the day. Then there was the brown bread and marmalade.

And on either side of her, a parent determined she should have a good start to the day.

Benny realised that you'd need great ingenuity if you were to lose an ounce of weight as a resident of Lisbeg in Knockglen. So she first pretended that she had gone off porridge. In fact she loved it, swimming in cream and dusted with brown sugar. Then she would leave her departure until as late as possible and cry "Is that the time?

I'll take my bread and butter with me." When no one was looking she would tip it into Dr. Johnson's hen run or drop it into the bin outside Carroll's or Shea's. Then there was lunch time. She found it beyond human endurance to go into the cafes where the smell of sausage and chips in one kind of place or almond buns in another would drive her taste buds wild.

She told Nan and Eve that she had to work and stayed resolutely in the library all the time.

The stuffiness of the library and no food made her feel headachy and weak all afternoon. It was another test of will to pass the sweet shops when she knew a packet of Rollos would give her the energy to struggle down to the Quays and get the bus. Then back in Knockglen she had to cope with the meat tea as well.

"I had a huge feed-up in town today," she'd say apologetically.

"What did you do that for when there's good food waiting for you here?"

her mother would reply, puzzled. Or else she'd try the angle that she didn't feel like it because she was tired. They didn't like that either. Should they have a word with Dr. Johnson about her? What could be making a normal healthy girl tired?

Benny knew that it would be useless to tell them the truth, that she wanted to lose some weight. They would tell her she was fine.

They would worry and discuss it endlessly. Meals would become a battleground. It was quite hard enough already to resist slices of Patsy's treacle tart, and to toy with one piece of potato cake when she craved half a dozen. Benny knew that the road to beauty was not meant to be an easy one, but she wondered grimly whether it was such hard going for everyone else.

She wondered should she wear a corset like Mrs. Healy, or better still not like Mrs. Healy's very obvious whalebone. There was the one she had seen advertised. "Nu Back corset expands as you bend, stoop or twist .. returns to position easily and cannot ride up when sitting." It cost 19/ 11d, almost a pound, and it did seem to promise everything you could dream of. Except of course it didn't hold out any hope for the cheeks and the neck.

Benny sighed a lot. Wouldn't it have been great going to lunch in a smart Dublin place if she were small and neat like Eve was? Or better still if she looked like Nan. If she looked so gorgeous that everyone would look and Jack Foley would be so proud and pleased that he had asked her.

Because Benny was never available for lunch any more, Nan and Eve often found themselves walking together to one of the cafes near the university. Eve watched with a wry amusement as the boys came to join them wherever they went.

Nan put on an amazing performance, Eve thought to herself. She had a practised charm, but no gush whatsoever. Eve had never known anyone play such a role. But then she asked herself, was it a performance?

She seemed totally natural and was invariably warm and pleasant to those who approached. Almost regal, Eve thought.

It was as if she knew that there would be admiration everywhere and was quite accustomed to coping with it.

Eve was always included in the conversations and, as she told Kit Hegarty in their easy companionship out in Dunlaoghaire, it was the best introduction you could have to every single male in UGD.

"Of course they do see me as a pale shadow," Eve said sagely.

"Like the moon not having any light of its own, it reflects the light of the sun."

"Nonsense," Kit said loyally. "That's not a bit like you to be so humble."

"I'm being practical," Eve said. "I don't mind it at all. There's only one Nan in every generation."

"Is she the sort of College Belle?"

"I suppose so, though she doesn't act it. Not like that Rosemary, who thinks she's at a party all day every day. Rosemary has a foot of make-up on, and she has eyelashes about ten inches long, you wouldn't believe it. She keeps looking up and down so that no one will miss them. I wonder that doesn't make herself dizzy or blind herself." Eve sounded very ferocious.

"But Nan's not like that?" Kit Hegarty had yet to. meet this paragon.

"No, and she's just as nice to awful fellows as she is to real hunks.

She spends ages talking to ones that are covered in pimples and can hardly string two words together. Which drives the hunks out of their minds."

"And does she not have her eye on anyone for herself?" Kit asked.

She thought that Eve was seeing far too much of the dazzling Nan and not nearly enough of her old friend Benny Hogan.

"Apparently not." Eve was surprised too. "Because she could have anyone she liked, even Jack Foley, but she doesn't seem to want them.

It's as if there's something else out there that we don't know about."

"Martians?" Kit suggested. "Nothing would surprise me."

"How's Benny, by the way?" Kit's voice was deliberately casual.

"Funny you should ask. I haven't seen her all week, except at lectures, and then only to wave across to."

Kit Hegarty knew better than to probe or criticise, but her heart went out to that big untidy girl with the bright smile, the girl who had been Eve's friend through thick and thin and now seemed to be left out in the cold. It was tough on ordinary moths and insects when a gorgeous butterfly like Nan came on to the scene.

"Eve, are you going to the Annexe?" Aidan Lynch seemed to be everywhere. He had a fawn duffle coat which had seen much better days, long curly hair which fell into his eyes, and dark horn-rimmed spectacles that he always said were plain glass but made him look highly intellectual.

"I wasn't thinking of it, no."

"Could the thought of my company there and back and the distinct possibility that I would buy you a coffee and a fly cemetery make you change your mind?"

"I'd love a fly cemetery," Eve said, referring to the pastries with the black, squashy filling. "I cook breakfast for huge greedy men and I forgot to have any myself today."

"Huge greedy men?" Aidan was interested. "Do you live in a male harem?"

"No, a digs. I help with the housework to earn my keep."

She spoke without self-pity or bravado. For once the joky Aidan was without words. But not for long.

"Then it's my duty, not just my pleasure, to feed you up," he said.

"Nan won't be there. She has a tutorial." A flicker of annoyance passed over his face. "I didn't want Nan to be there. I wanted you."

"Well recovered, Mr. Lynch." She smiled at him. "Is there anything more harsh in this life than to be misjudged, and have one's motives entirely misunderstood?" he asked. "I don't know. Is there?" Eve liked the lanky law student. She had always thought of him as part of Jack Foley's gang. Full of nonsense of course and all that lofty talk.

But basically all right.

They walked companionably down the corridor towards the stone stairs that led to the Annexe, the college coffee shop. They passed the Ladies' Reading Room on the way. Through the door Eve aught a glimpse of Benny sitting in a chair on her own. "Aidan, just a minute. I'll ask Benny to come with us."

"No! I asked you," he said petulantly. "Well, God Almighty, the Annexe is open to everyone in the whole place. It's not as if you'd asked me to candlelit dinner for two," Eve blazed at him.

"I would have, but I don't know where they serve them at this time of the morning," he said. "Don't be a clown. Wait here a second."

Benny's mind seemed far away. Eve touched her shoulder.

"Oh, haIlo," she said, looking up.

"Good, you admit you know me. Let me introduce myself. My name is Eve Malone. We met some years ago in .. where was it ..

Knockglen.. yes that's where it was!"

"Don't, Eve."

"What is it? Why don't you play with me any more?"

"I can't tell you."

"You can tell me anything," Eve said, kneeling down beside the chair.

Out in the corridor Aidan Lynch cleared his throat. "No, go on, there's a fellow waiting for you."

"Tell me.

"I'm on a diet," Benny whispered.

Eve threw back her head and pealed with laughter.

Everyone in the room looked over at them. Benny's face got red.

"Now look what you've done," she hissed furiously. Eve looked into her friend's eyes. "I'm only laughing with relief, you great fool. Is that all? Well, I don't think there's any point in it.

You're grand as you are, but if you want to, be on one, but don't run away from everybody. I thought I'd done something awful to you. "Of course not."

"Well, come on, come and have a coffee with Aidan and myself."

"No, I can't bear the smell of food," Benny said piteously. "My only hope is to keep away from where it is."

"Will we have a walk in the Green at lunch then? There's no food there," Eve suggested. "We might see someone feeding the ducks and I could snatch the bread and run off stuffing it down my throat," Benny said with a hint of a smile.

"That's better. I'll pick you up in the main hall at one."

"Don't tell anyone."

"Oh, Benny, honestly!"

"What was all that about?" Aidan said, pleased to see that Eve had returned alone.

"I was letting Benny know where I was going and explaining that if I wasn't back by a stated time she was to ring the guards," Eve said to him. "Aren't you very droll."

"Well, you re not a great one at taking life too seriously yourself," she said with spirit.

"I knew we were suited, I knew from the very first minute I saw you.

In bed."

Eve just raised her eyes, not to encourage him. But Aidan was warming to the theme.

"It will be a nice thing to tell our grandchildren in years to come.

"What?"

Aidan spoke in a child's voice. ""Tell me, Grandad, how did you and Grandma meet?" and then I'll say, "Ho, ho, ho, little boy, we met when she was in bed. I was introduced to her in bed. It was like that way back in the fifties, It was a racy time, ho, ho, ho."' "You are an idiot," Eve laughed at him. "I know. I said we were well suited," he said, tucking her arm into his as they joined the crowds on the stairs down to coffee.

Benny took out a small mirror from her handbag. She put it inside a copy of Tudor England and examined her face carefully. Five days with no food to speak of and her face was still round, her jaw was still solid and there was no sign of a long swan-like neck. It would almost make you give up believing in God.

"Are there women after you in college?" Aengus asked Jack Foley.

"I never looked." Jack wasn't concentrating. "You'd know. They'd be breathing heavily," Aengus explained.

Jack looked up from his notes. "They would?"

"So I hear."

"Where do you hear this?"

"Well, mainly from Ronan. He was doing a very funny imitation of people in a car, huffing and puffing. He says that girls get like that when they're passionate."

"And where did he see all this that he could be imitating it?"

Jack asked, a trifle anxiously.

Aengus was innocent. "I don't know. You know Ronan." Jack did know his brother Ronan, and had an uneasy feeling that there had been someone in the vicinity when he was saying goodbye to Shirley the other night. Shirley was quite unlike most of the other girls in UGD. She had been in America for a year, which made her very experienced. She had offered Jack a lift home from the Solicitors' Apprentice Dance last Saturday night at the Four Courts. She had her own car and her own code. She had parked right outside his house under a street light.

When he had murmured that they might have more shade, Shirley had said, "I like to see what I'm kissing." Now it looked as if his brother had also seen whatever kissing had been going on.

Jack Foley made a note to leave Shirley alone. Next time it would be Rosemary or even the ice-cool Nan Mahon. No more crazy ladies, thank you very much.

Benny ate an apple walking around St. Stephen's Green at lunch time and felt a little bit better. Eve never spoke of the diet again. Benny knew she didn't even need to warn her not to tell Nan. It wasn't that Nan wouldn't be helpful, she'd be very helpful. It was just that Nan didn't ever need to try. She just was perfect already, and it put her in a different world.

Instead they talked about Aidan Lynch and how he was going to come out to Dunlaoghaire tonight and take Eve to the pictures. He understood that she had to wash up after supper. He'd come out on the train.

"I've missed you a lot, Eve," Benny said suddenly. "Me too. Why can't you stay in town some evening?"

"You know."

Eve did know. The arguments about the evenings drawing in, the dark nights, it would be such hard work they decided they should wait until Benny had a real date, a real reason to stay in town.

It almost seemed like frittering it away to use a night off just for the two of them to be together like the old days.

"I'd love it if you'd come home to Knockglen," Benny said. "And not that I'm twisting your arm, but I know Mother Francis would too."

"I will," Eve promised. "It's just that I've got obligations too.

It's then that I'm the most help to Kit. I get the Saturday tea over so quickly it would make your head swim. I keep telling the lads they have to be on the six thirty train to town to see the action. They don't know what I mean but it gets a bit of urgency into them.

Otherwise they'd be dawdling there all night."

Benny giggled. "You're a terrible tyrant."

"Nonsense. I was raised by an army general in St. Mary's that's all.

Mother Francis would get her way over anything. Then on Sundays we have this rule. They get a big Sunday lunch, and there's a plate of salad left under a tea towel for each of them in the evening, no serving or anything."

"I'm sure she's delighted with you," Benny said. "I'm a bit of company. That's all."

"Does she ever talk about her son?"

"Not much. But she cries over him at night. I know that."

"Isn't it extraordinary that people can love their children so much that they kind of live for them?"

"Your parents do. That's part of the problem. Still, it's nice to know they do," Eve said.

"Yours would have, if they'd stayed around long enough."

"And if they'd been sane," Eve said dryly.

Benny sat beside Rosemary at the history lecture. She had never really spoken to her before. She wanted to look at Rosemary's make-up and wondered was there anything she could learn.

As they waited for the lecturer to arrive they talked idly.

"Knockglen?" Rosemary said. "That's the second time I've heard of that today. Where is it?"

Benny told her, and added glumly that it was too far to be accessible and too near to let you live in Dublin. "Who was talking about it?"

Rosemary puckered up her face, trying to think. She often applied a little Vaseline to her eyelashes in the privacy of the lecture hall.

It was meant to make them grow. She did so openly in front of Benny, who was no rival that must be kept out of beauty secrets.

Benny watched with interest. Then Rosemary remembered.

"I know. It was Jack. Jack Foley. He was saying that a friend of his fancies someone from Knockglen. It's not you, by any chance?"

"No, I don't think so." Benny's heart was like lead. Rosemary was on such close terms with Jack, and Jack was making a joke out of Knockglen.

"His friend Aidan. You know, goofy Aidan Lynch. He's quite witty actually, it sort of makes up for everything else."

Benny felt her cheeks burning. Is this the way people talked?

People like Jack and Rosemary and maybe even Nan, for all she knew.

Did handsome people have different rules?

"And did Jack approve of whoever Aidan fancied?" She wanted to keep Jack's name in the conversation, however painful it was.

"Oh yes. He said it was a great place. He's been there."

"Really." Benny remembered every moment of the day that Jack Foley had been in her town in her house in her company. She could probably give a transcript like they did in court cases of every word that had been said.

"He's really out of this world," Rosemary confided. "You know, not only is he a rugby star, but he's bright. He got six honours in his Leaving, and he's nice."

So Rosemary had prised out of Jack how well he had done in his exams leaving school, just like she had.

"Are you going out with him?" Benny asked. "Not yet, but I will be, that's my project," Rosemary said. All during the lecture on Ireland under the Tudors Benny sneaked little looks at her neighbour. It was so monstrously unfair that a girl like Rosemary should have a bar of KitKat in her bag and have no spots and no double chin.

And when had she had all these conversations with Jack Foley? In the evenings probably. Or even the early evenings, when poor Benny Hogan was sitting like a big piece of freight on the bus back to Knockglen.

Benny wished she hadn't eaten the apple.

Perhaps what her system had wanted was a complete shock. No food at all after eighteen years of too much food. Maybe the apple had delayed the process.

She looked at Rosemary and wondered was there any hope that she would fail in her project.

"How's work, Nan?" Bill Dunne prided himself on getting on well with women. He thought that Aidan Lynch's reputation was quite unjustified.

That was fine at school when everyone was joky. But in university, women were there because they were studious. Or because they wanted people to think they were studious. You couldn't go on trick acting and making schoolboy jokes to university women. You pretended to take their studies seriously.

Nan Mahon smiled one of her glorious smiles. "I suppose it's like it is for everyone else," she said. "When you like the lectures, when you enjoy the subject, it's fine. When you don't, it's hell, and there's going to be hell to pay at the end."

The words themselves were meaningless, but Bill liked the tone.

It was warm and almost affectionate.

"I wonder could I take you to dinner one night?" he asked.

He had thought this out carefully. A girl like Nan must get asked to hops, and to pubs and to parties and to cinemas. He wanted to move it one grade up the ladder.

"Thank you, Bill." The smile was still warm. "I don't go out very much. I'm a real dull stick. I study a bit during the week, you see.

In order to keep up."

He was surprised and disappointed. He had thought dinner would work.

"Perhaps we could dine at a weekend, then. When you're not so tied up."

"Saturdays, I usually go to the debate, and then down to the Four Courts. It's become a bit of a ritual." She smiled apologetically.

Bill Dunne wasn't going to beg. He knew that would get him nowhere.

"I'll catch you at one of those rendezvous then," he said loftily, refusing to let his pique be seen. Nan's room became her living quarters. She had an electric kettle there and two mugs.

She took her tea with lemon, so there was no need for milk and sugar.

Sometimes her mother came in and sat with her. "It's peaceful in here," Emily said. "That's why I wanted it this way."

"He's still annoyed." Nan's mother sounded as if she were about to plead.

"He has no reason to be, Em, I am perfectly polite always. He's the one who uses the language and loses control of himself."

"Ah, if only you understood."

"I do. I understand that he can be two different people.

I don't have to be dependent on his moods. So I won't be. I won't sit down there wondering when he'll come home and what condition he'll be in."

There was a silence.

"Neither should you, Em," Nan said at last. "It's easy for you.

You're young and beautiful. You've the world ahead of you."

"Em, you're only forty-two. You've a lot of the world ahead of you.

"Not as a runaway wife, I wouldn't."

"And anyway you don't want to run away," Nan said. "I want you to be away from it."

"I will be, Em."

"You don't go out with any young men. You never go out on dates."

"I'm waiting."

"What for?"

"For the Prince, the white knight, the Lord, or whatever it was you said would come." Emily looked at her daughter, alarmed. "You know what I meant. Something much better than here.

Something far above Maple Gardens. You meet people amongst your friends, these law students, these young engineers .. these boys with fathers who have big positions."

"That's only the same as Maple Gardens except a bit more garden and a downstairs cloakroom."

"What do you mean?"

"I haven't held on to this dream just to end up in another Maple Gardens, Em, with another nice fellow who'd turn out to be a drinker like Dad."

"Hush, don't say that."

"You asked me. I told you."

"Yes, I know. But what do you hope to get?"

"What you told me I'd get, anything I wanted." She looked so proud and confident there at her desk, the mug of tea in her hand, her blonde hair back from her brow, her face unruffled by the kind of conversation they were having.

"You could too." Emily felt the belief she had always held in her heart soar back again. "So there's no point in going out with the people I don't want to live amongst. It's only a waste of time."

Emily shivered. "There could be some very, very nice people in all that number."

"There could, but not what you and I want."

Emily's glance fell on the desk and amongst Nan's books and files were magazines, The Social and Personal, The Tatler, Harpers and Queen.

There were even books of ettiquette borrowed from the library. Nan Mahon was studying a great deal more than First Arts.

Mrs. Healy looked through the thick net curtains and saw Simon Westward getting out of his car. He had his small stocky sister with him.

Perhaps he was going to take her into the hotel for a lemonade. Mrs. Healy had long admired the young Squire, as she called him. Indeed she had half harboured some little notions about him. He was a man of around thirty, within a few years of her own age.

She was a fine substantial widow in the town, a person of impeccable reputation. Not exactly his social class of course, and not the right religion. But Mrs. Healy was a practical woman.

She knew that when people were as broke as the Westwards would appear to be a lot of the old standards might not be as firm as they used to be.

She knew that Simon Westward owed Shea's since last Christmas for the drink he had bought to cover the Hunt and what they called the Boxing Day party. Many a traveller came and had a drink in Healy's Hotel and spoke indiscreetly because he would have thought that the lofty and distant landlady had not the remotest interest in the tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood.

In most cases they would have been correct, but in terms of the Westwards, Mrs. Healy had always been interested. She had grown up in England where the Big house had always been much more a part of the town. It had never ceased to amaze her, back home again in her native land, that nobody seemed to know or care about the doings up at Westlands.

To her disappointment the Westwards went into Hogan's Gentleman's Outfitters across the road. What could they want there? Surely they would deal in Callaghan's up in Dublin, or Elvery's. But perhaps credit had run out in those places. Maybe they were going to try locally where a man as nice as Eddie Hogan would never ask to see the colour of their money before lifting the bale of material down from the shelf and starting to write the measurements into his book.

From the inside of his dark shop, peering through his dark window with its bales of materials and its shutters that never fully opened, Eddie Hogan saw with delight that Simon Westward and his small sister were coming into the premises. He wished he had time to smarten the place up.

"You'll never guess.." He began to whisper at Sean. "I know," Sean Walsh hissed back.

"It's very dark," Heather complained, screwing up her eyes to get used to the change from the bright winter sunshine outside.

"Shush." Her brother didn't want her to seem rude. "This is an honour," Eddie Hogan said. "Ah good morning, Mr. .. Hogan, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," Heather said. "It's written outside."

Simon looked annoyed; Heather immediately became repentant.

"Sorry," she muttered, looking at the ground. "It is indeed Edward Hogan at your service and this is my assistant, Sean Walsh."

"How do you do, Mr. Walsh."

"Mr. Westward." Sean bowed slightly.

"I'm afraid after all that, it's only something rather small.

Heather wants to buy a present for my grandfather. It's his birthday.

Just a token."

"Ah yes. Might I suggest some linen handkerchiefs." Eddie Hogan began to produce boxes of them, and opened a drawer where they were stocked singly. "He's got more hankies then he knows what to do with," Heather explained. "And he's not great at blowing his nosE anyway.

"A scarf, maybe?" Eddie Hogan was desperate to please "He doesn't go out, you see. He's very, very old."

"It's a puzzler all right." Eddie scratched his head. "I thought you might have some sort of gewgaws," Simon said, smiling from one man to the other.

"It doesn't really matter what. Grandfather isn't really in a position to appreciate anything.. but.. you know." With a flick of his head he indicated Heather, who was prowling earnestly around the shop.

Eddie Hogan had now ventured into the whole problem. "Might I suggest, Miss Westward, if it's something just to give your grandfather a feeling of pleasure that you remembered him and marked his birthday, you might think in terms of sweets, rather than clothing. "Yes."

Heather was doubtful.

"I know I may appear to be turning business away, but we want to think of what's best for everyone. A little box of jellies possibly. Birdie Mac would wrap it up nicely and you could get a card."

Simon looked at him with interest. "Yes, that's probably much more sensible. Silly of us not to see it. Thanks."

He must have seen the look of naked disappointment on Eddie Hogan's face. "Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Hogan, wasting your time and everything.

Eddie eagerly looked back at the small dark confident young man.

"It was an honour, as I said, Mr. Westward," he said foolishly.

"And maybe now that you've been in our place you'll come back again."

"Oh, undoubtedly." Simon held the door open for his sister and escaped.

"That was very clever of you, Mr. Hogan," Sean Walsh said approvingly.

"Putting him under an obligation to us."

"I was only trying to think of a present for the little girl to give her grandfather," Eddie Hogan said.

Thursday arrived. Benny looked at herself in the bathroom mirror.

She stared long and hard. There was a possibility that she had lost some weight around her shoulders. Only a possibility, and even if it were true what a useless place to lose it. She had washed her hair the night before and it looked nice and shiny.

The skirt that Peggy Pine had said might crush did indeed crush.

It looked awful. But it was a lovely blue colour, not like all the sensible navy and brown that she had worn like a school uniform. The kind of colours that wouldn't draw attention to you.

The blouse looked a bit raggy too, not like the heavy ones she normally wore. But it was much more feminine. If she were sitting across a table from a gorgeous man like Jack Foley he would have nothing to look at except her top. She had to have something fancy, not look as if she were a governess or a school prefect.

Her heart soared and plummeted a dozen times as she dressed. He had been so easy and natural that day he was here in Knockglen.

But in college it was different. You always heard people talking about him as if he were some kind of Greek god. Even real Holy Marys in her class spoke of him. These were girls with straight hair and glasses and shabby cardigans, who worked harder than the nuns and seemed to have no time for fellows or a social life; even those kind of girls knew of Jack Foley.

And he was asking her out today. She'd love to tell Rosemary. She would really adore to see her face. And lots of them, she'd love to go up to Carroll's shop now and kick on the door and tell horrible Maire Carroll who used to call her names at school how well things were turning out. Maire who didn't get called to the Training college like she had thought, and was sulking in her parents grocery shop, while Benny would be having lunch in the Dolphin with Jack Foley.

Benny folded the flimsy blouse up and put it in her big shoulder bag.

She also put in a small tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, her mother's Blue Grass talcum powder, which she would say she had borrowed by mistake if it were noticed. It was seven thirty-five. In six hours' time she would be sitting opposite him. Please God may she not talk too much and say stupid things that she'd regret. And if she did say stupid things let her remember not to give a great laugh after them.

She felt a flicker of guilt that she hadn't told Eve about the outing.

It was the first time she had kept anything from her friend. But there hadn't been time, and she was afraid that Eve would tell Nan - there was no reason not to after all. And Nan would have been great and lent her a nice handbag or a pair of earrings to match her skirt. But she didn't want it all planned and set up. She wanted to do it on her own, and be herself. Or sort of herself. Benny smiled wryly at her reflection. It wasn't exactly her own ordinary self that would walk into the Dolphin in six hours' time. It was a starved over-polished shiny Benny who hadn't given one minute's thought to her books for the last ten days.

"I wish you'd tell me what's wrong with the porridge, Benny."

Patsy was on her own in the kitchen when Benny came down.

"Nothing, Patsy, I swear."

"It's just that if ever I married I'd want to be able to put a decent pot of porridge for a man and his mother on the stove.

"His mother?"

"Well, I'd have to marry in somewhere, wouldn't I? I've nowhere for anyone to marry into.

"Do you fancy anyone, Patsy?"

"Divil a point in yourself or myself fancying anyone. I haven't a penny to bless myself with, and you'd have to be sure he'd be a grand big ox of a fellow the size of yourself," said Patsy cheerfully.

Somehow the morning passed. Benny skipped her twelve o'clock lecture.

She didn't want to have to run through the Green, down Grafton Street and round by the Bank of Ireland in order to be in the Dolphin at one fifteen. She would be able to do it, but she didn't want to arrive flushed and panting. She would walk down slowly and take her ease.

Then at the last moment she would change somewhere nearby in the ladies' cloakroom of a pub or a coffee shop and put on more talcum powder and brush her teeth.

She would look so relaxed and unfussed.

She pitied the people she saw as she walked slowly through the Dublin streets. They looked grey and harassed. They had their heads down against the wind that blew instead of holding themselves high and facing it as Benny did. They were all going to have dull ordinary things at lunch. Either they would go home on a bus to a house where the radio would be on and children were crying, or they would queue up for a meal in a city restaurant where it would be crowded and the smell of other people's dinners would be unattractive.

She checked herself finally, and decided she was as good as she could be. She should of course have started the diet much earlier. Like maybe three years ago. But there was no point in crying over that.

She had been big and fat when he had met her in Knockglen only a couple of weeks ago. It hadn't stopped him asking her out in a place like this. She looked up at the Dolphin unbelievingly. He hadn't said which part. She knew his letter off by heart. But he must mean the hall.

There were three men in the entrance. None of them was Jack. They were much older. They were wealthy-looking. possibly people who went racing.

She saw with the shock that comes with recognition that one of them was Simon Westward.

"Oh, hallo," said Benny, forgetting she didn't actually know him, just all about him from Eve.

"Hallo." He was polite but mystified. "Oh, Benny Hogan, from the shop in Knockglen." She spoke naturally, with no resentment at not being recognised. Simon's smile was warm now.

"I was in your father's shop yesterday."

"He told me. With your little sister."

"Yes, he's a very courteous man, your father. And his assistant.

. . ?"

"Oh, yes." Benny wasn't enthusiastic. "Not the same type of person?"

"Not at all, but you couldn't tell my father that. He thinks he's fine."

"No boys in the family to help him run it?"

"No, only me."

"And do you live in Dublin?"

"Oh, I wish I did. No, I go up and down every day."

"It must be exhausting. Do you drive?" Simon lived in a different world, Benny decided. "Only on the bus," she said.

"Still it makes it a bit better if you can have nice lunches in a place like this.. ." He looked around him approvingly. "This is the first time I've been here. I said I'd meet someone. Do you think I should wait in the hall?"

"The bar, I think," he said, pointing.

Benny thanked him and went in. It was crowded but she saw him immediately over in a corner.. He was waving.

"There she is!" Jack cried. "Now we're all complete." He was standing up smiling at her, from the middle of a group of seven people.

It wasn't a date. It was a party. There were to be eight people.

And one of them was Rosemary Ryan.

Benny didn't really remember much about the party before they went into the dining room. She felt dizzy, partly with the shock and partly with the lack of food over the past few days. She looked wildly to see what the others were drinking. Some of them had glasses of club orange, but it could have been gin and orange. The boys had glasses of beer. "I'd like one of those."

She pointed weakly to a beer glass. "Good old Benny, one of the lads," said Bill Dunne, a boy she had always liked before. Now she would have liked to pick up the heavy glass ashtray and beat him over the head with it until she was perfectly sure he was dead.

They were all chatting easily and happily. Benny's eyes raked the other girls. Rosemary was as usual looking as if she had come out from under the hair dryer and hours of ministration in the poshest place in Dublin. Her make-up was perfect. She smiled at everyone admiringly.

Carmel was small and pretty. She had been going out with her boyfriend Sean since they were sixteen or maybe even fifteen. They were known as the college's Perfect Romance. Sean looked at Carmel with adoration and he listened to every word she said as if it were pronouncement.

Carmel was no threat. She would have eyes for nobody, not even Jack Foley.

Aidan Lynch, the long lanky fellow who had taken Eve to the pictures, was there too. Benny breathed a prayer of relief that she had told nobody about what she had thought was her date. How foolish she would have felt had the story got around. But of course Aidan would tell Eve that Benny was there, and Eve might very reasonably wonder why nothing had been mentioned. Benny felt cross and hurt and confused.

The other girl was called Sheila. She was a law student. A pale sort of girl, Benny thought, looking at her savagely; pale and rather dull-featured. But she was small. God, she was small. She had to look up at Jack Foley, not over at him like Benny did. She remembered Patsy talking about her needing a big ox of a man. She willed the tears back into her eyes.

None of them had ever been there before. It was all Jack's great plan they said.. a scheme that would make them well-known, highly respected personages here by the time they qualified. Lots of lawyers and a lot of racing people met here. The thing to do was to establish yourself as a regular. The words of the menu swam in front of Benny. She was going to eat real food for the first time in ten days. She knew it would choke her.

She was sitting between Aidan Lynch and the wordless Sean when the final seating arrangements had been made. Jack Foley was between Rosemary and Sheila across the table from her. He looked boyish and pleased, delighted with his notion of getting the four boys to pay for a smart lunch like this.

The others were pleased with him too. "I must say you went out and plucked the best of the bunch for us to be seen with," Aidan Lynch said extravagantly.

Faithless pig, Benny thought to herself, remembering that he had sworn such undying devotion to Eve Malone earlier in the week.

"Only the best is good enough." Jack's smile was warm and included everyone.

Benny's hand was reaching for the butter, but she pulled back. To her fury, Bill Dunne saw her.

"Ah, go on, Benny, hanged for a sheep as a lamb," he said, pushing the butter dish towards her.

"You should see the marvellous teas that go on the table in Benny's house," Jack said, trying to praise her. "I was down there not long ago and you never saw the style. Scones and savouries and tarts and cakes, and that was just an ordinary day."

"That's the country for you. They like to feed them up down there.

Not like us poor starved Town Mice," Aidan said.

Benny looked around them. The thin blouse with the frills had been no good, nor had the blue skirt. She could feel the waft of Blue Grass coming from under her arms and down the front of her bra. She wasn't the kind of girl that people would admire and want to protect like they felt about Rosemary Ryan and the little loving Carmel and the pale but interesting Sheila from the Law Faculty. Benny had been brought along only as a joky person.

Someone that they'd all talk to about big feeds and being hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb. She smiled a brave smile.

"That's it, Aidan. You come down to Knockglen and we'll fatten you all right. You'd be like one of those geese that they stuff so that they'll have nice livers.

"Benny, please." Rosemary fluttered her lashes and looked as if she were going to come over all faint. But Bill Dunne was now interested.

"Yeah, we could be seeing Lynch's Liver on menus."

Jack was entering into it, too. "A Knockglen speciality. Fattened fifty miles from Dublin," he said. "I'd have to go into hiding.

They'd want me dead, not alive. God, Benny, what have you got planned out for me?"

"But think of what a delicacy you'd be," said Benny. Her cheeks were glowing. Fattened fifty miles from Dublin. Had Jack really said that?

Had he meant it as a joke about her? The most important thing was not to seem hurt. "It's a high price to pay."

Aidan was looking thoughtful as if he were considering it as a serious possibility. "I think it's all rather awful to joke about raising poor defenceless animals to eat them," Rosemary said, looking fragile.

Benny wished she could remember what Rosemary had ordered. But she didn't need to. Jack did. "Come on, that's hypocritical," he said.

"You've ordered veal chops.. the calves didn't exactly enjoy getting ready to become that, now did they?" He smiled at her across the table. The knight who had come to her rescue.

Rosemary sulked and pouted a little, but when nobody took any notice she recovered.

Rosemary and Sheila competed all during the meal for Jack's attention.

Carmel only cared what her Sean thought of this or that item on the menu; they ate little pieces from each other's plates. Benny entertained Bill Dunne and Aidan Lynch as if she had been a hired cabaret. She worked at it until she could feel beads of sweat on her forehead. She was rewarded with their attention and their laughter.

She could see Jack straining to join in at times, but seemed pinioned by the warring women on each side.

The less she tried to seek his attention, the more he tried to engage her in chat. It was obvious that he liked her. company, but only as someone who was a load of fun. With a smile that nearly cracked her face Benny knew inside that Jack Foley liked to be where there was laughter and good times. He wouldn't in a million years have thought of asking someone like Benny out alone.

Simon Westward passed the table.

"See you back in Knockglen some time," he said to Benny. "Who's he?

He's rather splendid?" Rosemary asked. She seemed to be losing slightly on points to Sheila who had the advantage of being able to compare notes about lecturers with Jack. Rosemary must have decided on the making-him-jealous routine.

"He's one of the ones we didn't manage to fatten up properly in Knockglen," she said.

The others all laughed at this, but Jack didn't. "Don't knock Knockglen," he said softly. He had said that before to her. This time he seemed to be saying something else.

Mossy Rooney worked on the roof of the cottage over the quarry.

There had been a high wind and eleven slates had been lifted right off.

They probably lay in smithereens now at the foot of the quarry. He had been asked by Mother Francis to come urgently and repair the damage.

The nun came up and watched anxiously as he worked out what needed to be done.

"It won't be very dear, will it, Mossy?"

"Not to you, Mother Francis." His face was expressionless as always.

"But you must be paid for your work." She looked worried.

"It won't bankrupt you and the Order," he said. Never once did he hint that it was odd of the convent to maintain a small house up here that nobody used. By nothing in his tone was there any trace of surprise that a place which had seen two deaths nearly two decades ago was still kept as a kind of shrine for a young rossie who was above in Dublin getting a university education, if you don't mind, and never came next or near the place.

Mossy wasn't a person to speculate about things like that. And even if he were, his mind was too busy. He had another thought in it.

He might ask Patsy to meet his mother. He was collecting information about her first. He didn't want to get into anything he might have to extricate himself from later..

"Simon, will you come and see me at school?"

"What?" He was studying a ledger.

"You heard. You only say "What" to give yourself time to think," Heather said. "I can't, Heather. I have far too much to do here."

"You haven't," she grumbled. "You're always going to Dublin. Even to England. Why can't you stop for a day and come and see me? It's awful. You've no idea. It's like a prison."

"No it's not, it's perfectly all right. All school is boring.

It gets better when you get older."

"Did yours?"

"What?" He laughed. "Yes, it did. Look, the holidays come quickly.

You're having a lovely half-term now, and then you'll be back for Christmas before you know it." His smile was very broad.

"Haven't we any other relations? They only let relations come.

"Not here, you know that."

They had cousins in England and in Northern Ireland. But Simon, Heather and their old grandfather were the only surviving members of the Westward family to live on the big estate in Westlands.

Nobody ever said it, but the crazed crying out of Jack Malone praying that none of the family should die in their beds seemed to have been heeded. There were very few Westwards about.

"I saw your friend Benny yesterday, I expect she told you," Aidan Lynch said to Eve as he sat patiently in Kit Hegarty's kitchen waiting for the washing-up to be finished so that they could go out.

"Take a tea towel, Einstein, and we'll be finished quicker," Eve said.

"She didn't tell you, then?"

"Amazingly no. You may find this hard to believe but a day passed by in the forest without a record of your movements being sent by the tomtoms.

I thought she might have dropped it, after all it isn't every day one goes to the Dolphin."

"Benny was in the Dolphin?"

"And I was, I was there, don't forget about me."

"It's not easy," Eve admitted. "Perhaps she was covering up for me."

Eve had lost interest in Aidan's ramblings, she was much more curious as to what Benny had been doing in the Dolphin.

"Was she eating anything?" she enquired. "Like a horse. She ate everything before her," he said.

I didn't know you knew Jack Foley," Rosemary said next day to Benny.

"Not very well."

"Well enough for him to go to tea with you in Knockglen.

"Oh, he was just passing through. His father had to see someone.

Rosemary wasn't satisfied. "Are they family friends then?"

"No. It was a nice lunch, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was. Aidan Lynch is an awful eejit, isn't he?"

"I think he's rather nice. He takes a friend of mine to the pictures now and then. She says he's great fun. Rosemary Ryan did not look convinced. "Sean and Carmel would make you sick, wouldn't they, all that gooey stuff."

"They seem very well settled certainly." Benny's eyes were dancing with mischief.

She knew the next attack would be on Sheila. "Did you know that one, Sheila, from the BCL course before?"

"No." Benny's face was innocent. "She seemed to be very well up in all her studies. I thought they all seemed very fond of her."

Rosemary returned to her notes in disgust. Benny noticed that she had a bar of Fruit and Nut and nibbled at it from time to time.

Comfort eating is what that was. Benny knewit well.

rian Mahon was very drunk on Friday night. Nan heard only some of it.

She locked her door and turned on her radio so that she couldn't hear what was being said. She knew her mother wasn't a whore, and so did Paul and so did Nasey. So did her father when he was sober. But when he was drunk he seemed to want to say at the top of his voice that not only was she a whore but a frigid one and that the sooner people realised this the better. Nan also knew that her mother would never leave the home where such humiliations were forced on her with ever greater frequency.

"It's for you, Eve." One of Kit's students answered the phone on Saturday morning.

"Oh, good." Eve hoped it was Benny. Maybe she would go down to Knockglen on the lunch-time bus. Kit had said that she was free to go whenever she wanted.

But it wasn't Benny. It was Nan. "Can I tempt you out for a walk today?"

"Yes, that would be nice. Will I come in your way, and learn a bit of that side of town? I could pick you up.

"No." Nan spoke sharply. Then her voice softened. "Anyway it's much nicer out your side. We could go down the pier. I'll pick you up.

"Sure."

Eve felt a vague sense of disappointment. She would have preferred it to be Benny saying she'd meet her off the bus.

Five minutes later Benny rang. But it was too late now. "Can't you ring Nan and tell her you're coming home?"

"I can't. I don't have her number. Do you?"

"No." Benny too had hoped that Eve would come back. "You never told me you were at the Dolphin," Eve challenged.

"I was going to tell you all about it."

"Not only that, but threatening to pickle Aidan's liver."

"I had to say something."

"Why?"

"They expected me to.

"They sure as hell didn't expect you to say that," Eve said. "But they seemed to enjoy it. And are you back on your food again?"

"Oh yes. Patsy's making currant bread here. You should smell it."

Nan wore a white pleated skirt and a dark green jacket. The boys who were in the digs looked up with great interest when she came in.

Kit Hegarty too looked at her with interest. She was indeed a striking young woman. Most of all because she seemed so much in control of herself. She spoke in a low clear voice as if she expected that others would listen without her having to make any effort.

She went to Eve's bedroom with her and Kit could hear her exclaiming with admiration.

"A sea view as well. Lord, you are lucky, Eve." With the familiar feeling of loss she always felt, Kit heard Eve explain, "It used to be Frank Hegarty's room. I wanted to keep some of his things around it, but Kit said no."

"What are you going to wear?" Nan asked. "Why? It's only a walk on the pier!" Eve protested.

"Everywhere's only a walk somewhere. So that you look nice.

That's why."

Kit Hegarty heard Eve sigh, and the door close as she changed into the red blazer and red tartan skirt which really did look nice on her, and went well with her dark colouring.

But Kit in her heart agreed with Eve. It was only a walk on the pier.

Nan was making it seem like a public appearance.

Maybe that's what she did everywhere.

They walked companionably along with the crowds from Dublin, among people who had come out from Dublin City to walk off the effects of lunch or who were trying to keep children and mothers-in-law entertained.

"Look at those kids," Nan said suddenly, pointing out a crocodile of small schoolgirls walking purposefully with two well-wrapped-up women teachers.

"What about them?" Eve asked. "Look, one of them's waving at you."

Eve looked over. It was true, one of the small blue-clad figures was making great signs.

"Eve, hallo, Eve," she called behind her hand so as not to alert the teachers.

"Who is she?" Nan asked.

"No idea." Eve looked bewildered. The child was wearing a school beret and had a round face, snub nose and freckles. Then Eve saw the two bunches of hair, one on each side of the little head like two jug handles.

It was Heather Westward. Simon's little sister. "Oh hallo," Eve said lamely, and without much enthusiasm.

"Do you live near here?" the girl hissed at her. "Why?" Eve was wary.

"I was wondering would you come and take me out some time? Just for a bit?"

Eve looked at her dumbstruck. "Take you out? Where? What for?"

"Anywhere. I'd be no trouble."

"Why me?"

"We can only go out with relations. You're my cousin, Please?"

"I can't. It's not possible."

"Yes, it is. If you phoned the school and said you're my cousin."

"But your brother?"

"He never comes up. He's too busy at home. Trying to organise things."

"Your other relations?"

"I don't have any.

The crocodile which had been pausing to look at the big mail boat moored at the jetty was now moving on. The teachers were shepherding them for the off.

"Please," called Heather Westward. Eve stood there wordlessly looking after them. "Well?" Nan asked her. "I suppose I'll have to," Eve said. "Of course you will."

"She's only a child. You can't disappoint a child," Eve said crossly.

"And it would be foolish. Look at all the housepoints you'd get.

"Housepoints?"

"Well, they'll have to ask you to the Big House if you're a friend of Heather's. And they'll owe you. Don't forget that. You won't be going cap in hand any more. "I won't go there, anyway, cap or no cap."

"Yes you will," said Nan Mahon firmly. "And what's more you will take me with you."

CHAPTER 9

Peggy Pine regarded the arrival of her niece Clodagh as something of a mixed blessing. The girl wore very, very short skirts; she was loud and flamboyant. She had worked for two years in shops in Dublin and spent a summer in London. According to her aunt she felt herself a world authority on dress and the buying habits of the female population.

There was much about her aunt's shop she was going to change.

"She might be a nice friend for you," Annabel Hogan told Benny, weighing it up. "But we should wait and see. She might be altogether too flighty for Knockglen, from what Peggy says, and indeed from first impressions."

"Oh, Sean up in the shop is full of disapproval of her," Eddie Hogan observed.

"Then I like her already," Benny chimed in. "You need a friend now that you don't see Eve any more," Annabel said.

Benny's eyes flashed. "What do you mean, Mother? Don't I see Eve three or four times a week in college?"

"But it's not the same," her mother said. "She never comes home here any more, and she has her own friends out in Dunlaoghaire in that house she works in. And there's this Nan. You never say Eve any more, it's always Eve and Nan."

Benny was silent.

"It was only to be expected," her mother consoled. "And you'll make lots of new contacts, where you need them, Round here."

"Who have you asked to the dance?" Bill Dunne asked Jack as they walked out of their lecture together. One of the big College dress dances was coming up in a few weeks' time. "I knew your mind wasn't on constitutional law," Jack said.

"We have a written Constitution here. No need to upset ourselves about it," Bill said.

"All the more reason, it would appear. I haven't done anything yet.

What about you?"

"I was waiting to see who you were going to ask so that I could pick up the crumbs from the rich man's table."

"You're a pain.

You're beginning to talk as obscurely as Aidan."

"I think he's all right. He's going to ask Eve Malone, I think, when he gets up enough courage. She's inclined to bite off his head. I'm more interested in knowing what you're going to do."

"I wish I knew.

"Well ask somebody," Bill begged, "and leave the field clear for the rest of us."

That was the problem. Who should he ask? Jack had been vague any time Shirley phoned. He had been busy disentangling himself there, and Sheila who sat beside him at lectures had dropped fairly heavy hints.

But the gorgeous Rosemary Ryan had rung him only last week saying she had two free tickets to a show which meant of course that she had gone out and bought two tickets for a show, but didn't want him to know that.

And Nan Mahon had smiled a lot at him across the annexe and the main hall and places where she had been and he had been. He would like to ask her in many ways. She was so lovely and yet so unattainable.

Suddenly he had an inspiration.

"I know what we'll do," he said to Bill Dunne, banging him on the arm enthusiastically. "We'll ask them all. All the girls we fancy. Tell them to pay for themselves, and then we'll have our pick."

"We couldn't do that!" Bill gasped at the audaciousness of the plan.

"It would be very mean. They wouldn't say yes. They'd go with fellows who'd pay for them."

"We could have a little party first." Jack was thinking on his feet.

"Where? You're not going to get girls in evening dress to go into Dwyer's or Hartigan's."

"No, in a house."

"Whose house?"

"Mine, I suppose," Jack said.

"Why can't you just take a girl to a dance like every normal boy?

Jack's father grumbled.

"I don't know who to take," Jack said simply and truthfully.

"It's not committing you for life, there won't be a breach of promise action if you take the wrong girl to a dance in your first term.

"I thought that you both might like to use the opportunity.. ?" Jack looked hopefully from his mother to his father. "Use it for what, might one ask?" Lilly Foley asked.

"Well, you know, the way you're always saying that you mean to have people in for drinks.."

"Yes..?"

"And you know the way you're always grousing that you never meet any of my friends ..

"Yes..?"

"I thought you could have a sherry party on the night of the dance, and sort of kill two birds.. ?"

Jack's smile was very powerful. In minutes it was all agreed.

Rosemary Ryan offered Benny a peppermint. She must be about to divulge some information or do some detective work. Benny wondered which it was. It turned out to be both.

"Jack Foley's asked me to the big dance," she said. "Oh, that's nice."

Benny's heart was like lead.

"Yes, well I did tell you earlier in the term I was sort of making him my project."

"You did indeed."

"I think it's a large party.

"Well, they usually are, I hear," Benny said. She had heard little else in conversations in the Ladies' Reading Room and overheard in the cloakrooms and the cafes. People went to the dress dances in parties of ten or twelve. The boys decided on the groupings and the girls were their guests. The tickets were about twenty-one shillings, and there was dinner, and everyone danced with everyone else apparently, but with their own special date most of all and at the end. She had a vain hope that Aidan Lynch might get up a party for it and include her. But then he couldn't really unless she had been asked by some other fellow.

Those were the rules.

Rosemary was chewing her pencil as well as the peppermint.

"It's a bit odd, though. It's like a big group, and we're all meeting at Jack's house first. I was wondering were you going?"

"Not as far as I know." Benny was cheery. "You weren't asked?"

"No, not as yet. When were you asked?"

"About an hour ago," Rosemary admitted grumpily. "Oh well, then, there's every hope."

Benny wondered did your face break by putting these false smiles on?

After the lecture she met Jack Foley in the main hall by chance.

"Just the girl I was looking for. Will you join our group? It's a sort of Dutch party for the big dance."

"Lovely," Benny said. "Will we dress in clogs?"

"No, I meant like we all sort of get our own tickets." Jack looked embarrassed.

"That makes much more sense, then we can all be free as birds," she said. He looked at her, surprised. "Birds?"

"Different kinds of birds. Sparrows, emus, but free," she said, wondering was she actually going mad to be having this stupid conversation.

"You'll come then?"

"I'd love to.

"And we'll have drinks in my house. I'll write down the address.

My parents are having friends of their own age in. Would your parents like to come, do you think?"

"No." Her voice was like a machine gun. "No, what I mean is thank you, but they hardly ever come up to Dublin.

"This might be the excuse they need." He was politely courteous.

He had no idea how much she would hate them there.

"It's very kind of you, but I think not. However, I certainly would love it.

"That's great," he said, pleased. "We need someone to cheer us up in these dim and dismal days."

"Ah, I'm the one for that," Benny said. "Never short of a word, that's me."

The wind lifted his hair, and his shirt collar stood high around his neck over his navy sweater, coming out over his navy jacket.

He looked so handsome she wanted to reach out and stroke him.

His smile seemed as if he had never smiled for anyone else in the world.

"I'm really glad you're going to be there," he said.

"Stop looking as if you're going to your execution," Kit said to Eve.

"She's only a child."

"In a big posh Protestant school," Eve grumbled. "Not at all. It's shabbier than our own, I can tell you. "Still, full of airs and graces."

"She can't have that many airs and graces. She wouldn't have begged an old misery boot like you to come and see her."

Eve grinned. "That's true. It's just we won't have anything to say to each other."

"Why don't you bring a friend? It might be easier."

"Oh God, Kit, who could I bring on an outing like this?"

"Aidan Lynch?"

"No, he'd frighten the wits out of her."

"Nan?"

"Not Nan," Eve said. Kit looked up sharply.

There was something about Eve's tone that meant the matter was closed.

Mother Francis had warned Kit about this. She said that Eve had areas where nobody followed her.

Eve was now miles away from the conversation. She was thinking about what Nan had said, using the child to get accepted into the life at Westlands.

It wasn't a joke either. She had meant it. She had said that she would go down to Knockglen and stay with Benny if there was a chance of meeting the Westward family socially.

"But they're a senile old man, a kid and Simon, an uppity fellow with an accent you could cut, who wears riding breeches," Eve had exclaimed.

"They're a start," Nan had said perfectly seriously. It had made Eve shiver to think that someone could be so determined and so cool. Also so graceful in defeat. When Eve had said that Nan would never visit Westlands through her introduction, Nan shrugged.

"Someone else, somewhere else then," she had said, with her easy smile.

Heather had her coat and beret on when Eve arrived at the school.

She was received by the headmistress, a woman with hair cut so short it might have been shaved at the back of her head. How could she have thought this looked attractive? Eve wondered. It was such an old style, so like pictures in school stories of the way schoolmistresses looked in the twenties and thirties.

"Miss Malone. How good of you to arrive so promptly. Heather has been ready since she got up, I do believe."

"Good. Well, we said two o'clock." Eve looked around the parlour.

It was so strange to be in a school without pictures of saints everywhere on the walls. No statues, no little Sacred Heart lamps. It didn't feel like a school at all.

"And Heather must return for supper at six, so we like the girls to be back at five forty-five."

"Of course." Eve's heart sank. How could she entertain this child for nearly four hours?

"As you suggested, we telephoned Mr. Simon Westward, but he wasn't at home. We spoke to Mrs. Walsh, the housekeeper, who confirmed that you are indeed a cousin."

"I just wanted to make sure that they agreed. I haven't been in close contact with the family for a long time."

"I see," said the headmistress, who saw only too well. A slightly shabby girl with the surname Malone, that was indeed likely to be a relation not in close contact. Still, the housekeeper had said it was all in order.

"Enjoy yourself, Heather, and don't be too much trouble for Miss Malone."

"Yes, Miss Martin. No, Miss Martin," Heather said. Together they walked down the avenue. There were no words and yet the silence didn't seem uncompanionable.

Eve said, "I don't know what you'd like to do. What do you normally do when you go out?"

"I've never been out," Heather said simply. "So what do you think you'd like to do?"

"I don't mind. Honestly. Anything. Just to be out, to be away from it all is smashing.

She looked back at the school as an escaped prisoner might.

"Is it awful?"

"It's lonely."

"Where would you rather be?"

"At home. At home in Knockglen."

"Isn't that lonely too?"

"No, it's lovely. There's my pony Malcolm, and Clara the dog, and Mrs. Walsh and Bee and of course Grandfather." She sounded enthusiastic when she talked about them all. That big empty house was home. The school full of chattering children her own age and class was prison.

"Would you like an ice cream in a glass?" Eve said suddenly.

"I'd love it. At the end of the afternoon if that would be all right.

We have it to look forward to .. as the crown of the day."

Eve smiled a big wide smile. "Right, the crown of the day it will be.

In the meantime we'll have a good walk down to the sea to get up an appetite."

"Can we go near it and feel the spray?"

"Yes, that's the best bit."

Their legs were tired when they reached the Roman Cafe. "They always stop us from going near the spray when we're out on school walks," Heather said. "I'll have to tidy you up a bit so that they'll not discover."

"Are you going to have a Knickerbocker Glory?" Heather asked, studying the menu. "No, I think I'll just have a coffee."

"Is Knickerbocker Glory too dear?" Heather asked.

Eve took the menu. "It's on the dear side, but it is the crown of the day so that's all right."

"You're not just having coffee because of the cost?" Heather was anxious.

"No, truly. I want a cigarette. It goes better with coffee than ice cream.

They sat contentedly. Heather chatted about the games at school, lacrosse and hockey. "Which did you play?" she asked Eve.

"Neither. We played camogie."

"What's that?"

"Well might you ask! It's a sort of gaelicised version of hockey in a way, or a feminine version of hurley." Heather digested this with some interest. "Why didn't we know you before, Simon and I?" she asked.

"I'M SURE YOU MUST have ASKED SIMON THAT, the day I came to your house."

"I did," Heather said, truthfully. "But he said it was a long story."

"He's right."

"But it's not a mystery or a crime or anything is it?"

"No," Eve said thoughtfully. "No. It's not either of those things.

My mother was called Sarah Westward, and I think she may have been wild or a bit odd or something, but whatever caused it she fell in love with a man called Jack Malone. He was the gardener in the convent, and they were mad about each other."

"Why was that odd?"

"Because she was a Westward and he was a gardener. And anyway they got married, and I was born. And when I was being born my mother died. My father carried me down from the cottage to the convent. The nuns went rushing up to the cottage, but it was too late. They sent for Dr. Johnson and there was a terrible commotion."

"And what happened then?"

"Well, apparently there was some kind of row and a lot of shouting at my mother's funeral."

"Who shouted?"

"My father, I believe."

"What did he shout?"

"Oh, a lot of old rameis.. rubbishy stuff about some of the Westwards dying in their beds .. because they hadn't behaved better to Sarah."

"And where was the funeral?"

"In the Protestant church. Your church. She's buried in your family grave. Under the name Westward, not Malone.

"And what happened to the cottage?"

"It's still there. It's mine, I suppose. I never use it though."

"Oh, I know I wouldn't either."

"And was Sarah my aunt?" Heather asked. "Yes .. your father was her older brother .. there were five in the family, I believe.

"And they're all dead now," Heather said factually. "Whatever your father was shouting at that funeral seems to have worked."

"What happened to your parents?"

"They were killed in India, in a car accident. I don't remember them.

Simon does of course, because he's so old."

"How old is he?"

"He's nearly thirty. I wonder. Did he know all about the shouting and everything at your mother's funeral? I suppose he was there."

"He might have been. He'd have been about eleven."

"I'm sure he was." Heather was scraping the bottom of her glass.

"I wouldn't necessarily.." Eve began. Heather looked up and their eyes met. Oh, I wouldn't tell him all about our conversation," she said. And changing to something that interested her much more, she leaned across the table eagerly. "Tell me, is it true that nuns put on shrouds and sleep in their coffins at night like vampires?"

Eddie and Annabel Hogan were pleased that their daughter had been asked to a dance.

"It's nice that it will be just a group of friends going to it, isn't it?" Annabel sought reassurance. "It's not as if she had a special boy yet that she was keen on or anything."

"In my day the men took the women to dances, paid for them and went to their houses to pick them up," Eddie complained.

"Yes, yes, yes, but who's going to come the whole way down to Knockglen o the door and pick Benny up and then deliver her back again? Don't go saying that now, and making trouble where there isn't any."

"And you're happy enough to let her stay in this boarding house in Dunlaoghaire?" Eddie looked at his wife anxiously.

"It's not a boarding house. There you go again, getting it all wrong.

You remember the woman who was down staying with Mother Francis in St. Mary's, whose son was killed. That's where Benny will stay. They'll put another bed in Eve's room.

"Well, as long as you're happy." He patted her on the hand.

Shep sat between them at the fire, and looked up from one to the other as if pleased to see this touching.

Benny was out at the pictures with Sean Walsh. "I'm happy enough about her going to the dance and staying with Eve, of course I am. I want her to have a great night, something she'll always remember."

"What are you not happy about then?"

"I don't know what's going to happen to her. Afterwards."

"You said she'd go back to this house that isn't a real boarding house." Eddie was bewildered.

"Not after the dance. After . . . after everything."

"None of us knows what will happen in the future."

"Maybe we're wrong sending her up there. Maybe she should have done a book-keeping course and gone into the shop with you. Forget all these notions of getting a degree."

Annabel was chewing her lip now.

"Haven't we been talking about this since she was born?"

"I know."

They sat in silence for a while. The wind whistled around Lisbeg, and even Shep moved closer to the grate. They told each other they were glad to be indoors on a night like this, in and settled, not out in Knockglen where people were still sorting out their lives. Sean and Benny would be leaving the cinema shortly and going for a cup of coffee at Mario's. Patsy was up with Mrs. Rooney being inspected as a suitable candidate for Mossy. Peggy Pine's niece Clodagh was going through the order books with her aunt. People said that it was a fallacy nowadays that the young didn't work. In fact, some young people couldn't stop working. Look at Clodagh, and Fonsie and Sean Walsh. Between them they would change the face of Knockglen in the next ten years.

"I hope they'll change it into a place we'll like to live in," Eddie said doubtfully.

"Yes, but we won't have all that much longer to live in it. It's Benny we should be thinking about." They nodded. It was nearly always Benny that they were thinking about anyway, and what the future had in store.

They had lived their whole adult lives in a thirty-mile radius of this place. A huge city like Dublin on their doorstep had never affected them.

They simply couldn't envisage a life for their daughter that didn't revolve around Knockglen, and the main street business of Hogan's Gentleman's Outfitters. And, though they hardly dared speak of the matter to each other, they thought too that it might best revolve around Sean Walsh.

Benny looked across the table in Mario's at Sean Walsh. In the very bright light his face looked thin and pale as always, but she could see the dark circles under his eyes.

"Is it hard work in the shop?" she asked him. "Not hard, exactly, not in terms of physical work.. or hours .. just trying to know what's best, really."

"How do you mean?"

For the first time ever, Benny was finding it easy to talk to Sean.

And it was all thanks to Nan Mahon. Nan, who knew what to do in every situation.

Nan said that Benny should always be perfectly pleasant to Sean. There was nothing to be gained by scoring points off him. She should let him know in a variety of ways that there was no question of ever sharing any kind of life or plans with him, but that he was highly thought of as her father's employee. That way he couldn't fault her, and it would also keep her parents happy.

"I'm sure I'll do it wrong," Benny had said. "You know me. I'll think I'm being pleasant and distant, and I'll end up walking up to Father Ross arranging for the banns to be read out. But Nan had said it was easy. "Ask him all about himself, sound interested but don't get involved. Tell him things about yourself that you'd like him to know and never answer any question directly, that's the secret.

So far it seemed to be working quite well. Sean sat there in Mario's and, raising his voice to compete with Guy Mitchell on the new record player, he told a tale of how the clothing industry was changing and how men were going to Dublin and buying ready-made suits off the peg, and how the bus from Knockglen stopped so near McBirney's on the Quays in Dublin it was as bad as if McBirney's had opened a branch next to Mr. Flood's.

Sean said that it was sometimes hard to convince Mr. Hogan of the need for change. And perhaps not his place to do so. Benny listened sympathetically with her face and about a quarter of her mind. The rest of her thoughts were on the dance and what she should wear. She was back on her diet again, drinking bitter black coffee instead of the frothy, sugary cups that everyone else in the cafe was having. She moved the chocolate biscuits on the plate around, making patterns of them with the yellow ones underneath and the green ones on top. She willed her hands not to rip one open and stuff it into her mouth.

There were no dresses big enough for her, in any of the shops in Dublin. Well, there were, but not the kind of shops she'd go to.

Only places that catered for rich, older women. Dresses with black jet beading on them, or dove grey with cross-over fronts.

Suitable for someone in their sixties at a state banquet. Not for Benny's first dance.

Still, there was plenty of time, and there were dressmakers, and there were friends to help. Nan could probably come up with a solution for this as well as everything else. Benny had asked Nan if she could stay the night in her house after the dance.

Nan hadn't said yes or no. She asked why Benny didn't stay with Eve.

"I don't know. It is the place she's working, after all."

"Nonsense. It's her home. You two are old friends, you'd enjoy staying there."

Perhaps this is what Nan meant by not answering any question directly.

Certainly Benny hadn't felt even slightly offended. It would be wonderful to know how to deal with people like Nan did.

Sean was still droning on about the need to have a sale. and the dangers of having a sale. Mr. Hogan felt that if a place like Hogan's had a sale it might look to customers as if they were getting rid of shoddy goods. Also what would people who had paid the full price for similar items a few weeks previously think if they saw them reduced now?

Sean saw the reason in this, but he also wondered how you could attract local people to buy their socks and shoes at Hogan's instead of going up to O'Connel Street in Dublin on a daytrip and coming home sliding past the door trying to hide the name Clery's on the package? Benny looked at him and wondered who would marry him and listen for the rest of her life. She hoped that this new policy of being polite but uninvolved would work. "What about next week?" Sean said, as he walked her down the town and round the bend of the road to Lisbeg.

"What about it, Sean?" she asked courteously. "Jamaica Inn," he said triumphantly, having read the posters.

The old Benny would have made a joke and said that Jamaica was a bit far to go on an outing. The new Benny smiled at him.

"Oh, Charles Laughton, isn't it, and Maureen O'Hara?"

"Yes," Sean said, a trifle impatiently. "You haven't seen it. I don't remember it being here before." Never answer a question directly.

"I loved the book. But think I preferred Rebecca. Did you read Rebecca?"

"No, I don't do much reading. The light's not very good up there."

"You should have a lamp," Benny said eagerly. "I'm sure there's one in the spare room we never use. I'll mention it to Father."

She beamed such enthusiasm for this helpful idea, and put out her hand so firmly to shake his, that he couldn't press her for a yes or a no about the pictures next week, Nor could he press his cold, thin lips on hers with any dignity at all.

Mother Francis moved around the small cottage. She had been very heartened by Kit Hegarty's report on the meetin between Eve and Heather. Perhaps the way to a reconcil liation was opening up after all. The agreement to pay the fees had done nothing to soften Eve's heart to the cold distant family who had treated her mother, her father and herself so shabbily.

In some ways it had almost strengthened her resolve not to give in to them in any way. If only Mother Francis could get her to stay a night in this cottage, to sleep here, to feel the place was her own. If Eve Malone were to wake in this place and look out over the quarry she might feel she belonged somewhere rather than perching here and there, which was what she felt now. Mother Francis had high hopes that she might be able to install Eve by Christmas. But it was work of high sensitivity.

It would be no use pretending that she needed Eve's room in the convent. That would be the worst thing to do. The girl would feel she had been evicted from the only home she knew. Perhaps Mother Francis could say that the older members of the Community would like a little outing, and that since they couldn't leave the convent ground perhaps Eve might arrange a tea party for them in the cottage. But Eve would see through that at once.

When Mother Francis and Peggy Pine were young together, Peggy used to say, "It will all come clear in the end."

Mainly it had. This cottage was an area where it had taken a long time for things to come clear.

She was always careful to lock the door with the big key and put it under the third stone in the little wall near the iron gate.

There was a big padlock that Mossy had suggested she put on the gate as well, but it looked ugly and forbidding. Mother Francis decided to risk doing without It.

Not many came up this way unless they had business here. Either you came through the briar- and bramblecovered paths of the convent or else if anyone wanted a view of the big stone escarpments they chose a much better and broader way which went up at a gradual incline from the square where the bus turned every day.

To her shock, when she turned around she saw a figure standing only a few feet away.

It was Simon Westward. He had his back to her and was looking out over the dark, misty view. She rattled the gate so that he would hear her and not be startled. "Oh .. um, good afternoon," he said. "Good afternoon, Mr. Westward."

In religious life a part of the day was known as the Great Silence. It meant that nuns did not feel uneasy when there was no conversation.

Mother Francis waited easily for the small dark man to speak again.

"Rotten weather," he said.

"Never very good, November." She could have been at a garden party instead of on top of a quarry in the mist and rain with a man she had crossed swords with several times.

"Mrs. Walsh said you come up here a lot," he said. "I told her I didn't feel I'd be quite in place in the convent. I wondered where I might run into you casually, as it were.

"You'd be very welcome in the convent, Mr. Westward, you always would have been.

"I know. Yes, I know.

"But anyway you've found me now."

It would have been more sensible for them to go back into the cottage but there was no way that she would take him over Eve's doorstep. It would have been the final betrayal. He looked at the house expectantly. She said nothing.

"It's about Eve," he said eventually.

"Oh yes."

"It's just that she very kindly went and took my sister out from school. I'm afraid Heather very probably asked her to do so, in fact I know she did. But anyway Eve took her on a nice day out and is going to again..

"Yes." Mother Francis had cold eyes and a heavy heart. Was he going to ask Eve to stay clear of the family? If so, she would have a heart as hard as Eve's.

"I was wondering if you could tell her.." The nun's glance didn't waver.

"If you could tell her how grateful I am. I mean truly."

"Why don't you tell her yourself? Mother Francis felt the words come out of her mouth in a quick breath of relief.

"Well, I would, of course. But I don't know where she lives."

"Let me write it down for you." She began to seek deep in the pockets of her long black skirt. "Let me. Farmers always have backs of envelopes to scribble things on."

She smiled at him. "No, let me. Nuns always have little notebooks and silver-topped pencils."

She produced both from the depths of her pockets and wrote with a shaking hand what she thought might be the outline plans for an olive branch.

Clodagh Pine came into Hogan's shop.

"How are you, Mr. Hogan? Do you have a loan of a couple of hat stands?"

"Of course, of course." Eddie Hogan went fussing off to the back of the shop to look for them.

"Opening a millinery section are we?" Sean Walsh said to her in a lofty tone. "Watch your tone with me, Sean. You don't know what you're dealing with here," she said, with a loud laugh.

Sean looked at her without pleasure. She was pretty, certainly, in a flashy sort of way. But she had her long legs exposed for all to view, in a ridiculously short skirt. She wore a lime-green dress with a black jacket over it, a pink scarf, and her earrings, which were long and dangly, were precisely the same green as her dress, and her very obviously tinted blonde hair was held up with two black combs.

"No, I probably don't."

"Well, you will," she said.

There were just the two of them standing in the shop. Old Mike was at his tailoring and Mr. Hogan was out of earshot.

"I'll hardly miss you, that's for sure."

"You'd be wise not to." She deliberately misunderstood him. "We can be rivals or friends. It's probably more sensible to be friends."

"I'd say everyone's your friend, Clodagh." He laughed a scornful little laugh.

"You'd be wrong there. A lot of people aren't my friends at all.

However, my aunt is. I'm doing a major reorganisation of her window.

Every notice saying "A Fashion Snip" has already been burned. Wait till you see the new display."

"On Monday, is it?" He was still superior. "No, genius. This afternoon, early closing day, the only day anyone really looks in your window. And tomorrow we'll let it rip."

"I should congratulate you."

"Yes, you should. It's harder for me coming in than it is for you. I haven't any plans to marry my aunt.

Sean looked nervously at the back storeroom where Eddie Hogan had found some hat stands and was returning with them triumphantly.

"I'm sure your new windows will be a great success," he said hastily.

"Yes, they'll be fabulous," she said. She gave the surprised Eddie Hogan a kiss on the forehead, and was gone in a flash of colour, like a bird of paradise.

"I'm not spending hard-earned money on a dress," Eve said with a ferocious scowl when Nan started talking about what they should wear.

She expected Nan to tell her that you are how you look, and that you must expect people to take you or leave you on the way you present yourself. It was one of Nan's theories.

"You're right," Nan said unexpectedly. "Whatever you buy it shouldn't be an evening dress."

"So?" Eve was wrong-footed now. She had expected an argument.

"So what will you do?" Nan asked.

"Kit said I can look through her things, just in case. She's taller than I am, but then so's everyone. I could take the hem up, if I found something."

"Or you could have my red wool skirt," Nan said. "I don't think so.."

Eve began, the prickles beginning to show. "Well, nobody's seen it in college. Red looks great on you. You could get a fancy blouse or maybe Kit Hegarty has one.

Why not?"

"I know it sounds ungrateful, but I suppose it's because I don't want to wear your cast-off>," Eve said straight out.

"But you wouldn't mind wearing Kit Hegarty's, is that it?" Nan was quick as a flash.

"She offers them because .. because she knows I wouldn't mind taking them."

"And what about me? Haven't I got the same motive?"

"I don't know, to be honest." Eve fiddled with her coffee spoon.

Nan didn't plead with her, and she didn't shrug. Very simply she said, "It's there, it's nice, it would look well on you.

"Why are you lending it to me, I mean what's in your mind?" Eve knew she sounded like a five-year-old but she wanted to know.

"Because we're a group of friends going to this dance. I want us to look knock-out. I want us to wipe the eyes of people like that stupid Rosemary and that dull Sheila. That's why!"

"I'd love it," Eve said, with a grin.

Mother, would it be awful if I was to ask you for a loan of money, like to get some material for a dress?"

"We'll buy you a dress, Benny. Your first big dance. Every girl should have a new dress from a shop."

"There isn't one to fit me in the shops."

"Don't be full of misery like that. I'm sure there is. You haven't looked."

"I'm not even remotely full of misery. People don't come in my size until they're old. I don't mind now that I know. I used to think people were born with big bones and large frames, but apparently these grow when you're about sixty-eight. You'd better watch it, Mother, it could happen to you. "And where did you develop this nonsensical theory, may I ask?"

"After slogging round every shop in Dublin. Lunch times, Mother, I didn't miss my lectures!"

She looked not remotely put out about it, Annabel was relieved to see.

Or perhaps she was, inside. With Benny it was hard to tell.

There was nothing to be gained by probing. Benny's mother decided to be practical. "What material had you in mind?"

"I don't know. Something rich .. I don't know if this is ridiculous, but I saw something in a magazine. She was a biggish woman and it was like tapestry.." Benny's smile was broad, but not totally sure.

"Tapestry?" Her mother sounded doubtful. "Maybe not. It might make me look like a couch or an armchair."

Annabel wanted to take her daughter in her arms, but she knew she must do nothing of the sort. "Do you mean brocade?" she asked.

"The very thing."

"I have a lovely brocade skirt."

"It wouldn't fit me, Mother."

"We could get a bit of black velvet let into it, maybe, as panels, and then a top of black velvet and some of the brocade to trim it. What do you think?"

"We couldn't cut up your good skirt."

"When will I ever wear it again? I'd love you to be the belle of the ball."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I am. And it's better than anything you'd buy in the shops." It was. Benny knew that. Her heart sank though at the thought of what her mother might envisage as a design.

A sudden picture of her tenth birthday flashed before

Benny. The day she thought she was going to get a party dress and had been given that sensible navy-blue outfit. The pain of it was as real now as then. But there seemed few alternatives.

"Who'd make it, do you think?"

"Peggy's niece is a great hand with the needle, we hear." Benny brightened. Clodagh Pine looked anything but frumpish. The project might not be doomed after all.

Dear Eve,

Just a very brief note to thank you most sincerely for your visit to my sister at her boarding school. Heather has written glowingly of your kindness. I wanted to express my appreciation, but to tell you not to feel in any way obligated to this in consideration of any assistance with fees that this family may have given you. I need hardly add that you are very welcome to call at Westlands during the Christmas vacation should you wish to do so.

Yours in gratitude, Simon Westward

Dear Simon, I visit Heather because I want to and she wants me to. It has nothing to do with considerations, as you call them. During the Christmas vacation I shall be in residence at St. Mary's Convent, Knockglen. You are very welcome to call there, should you wish to do so.

Yours in explanation,

Eve Malone

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hogan, As Benny may have told you, a group of us are going to the end of term dress dance next Friday week. My parents are having a small sherry party in our house in Donnybrook, where we will all gather before setting off for the dance. They asked me to suggest to some of the parents that they might like to drop in for the drinks party should they be in the area. I realise it is rather far away, but just in case there was a chance, I thought I would mention it.

Thank you again for that wonderful afternoon at your home weeks ago during my visit to Knockglen.

Kind regards,

Jack Foley

Dear Fonsie, I'm going to have to ask you very firmly to cease writing these notes to me. My aunt thinks there is only one Miss Pine in the world and that she is it. She has read aloud to me your letters about being groovy, and inviting me to where the action is. She has begun to ask me what "turning someone on is about, and why do people say "It's been real'.

I have a healthy respect for my aunt. I have come here to help her modernise her shop and improve her business. I do not intend to spend every morning listening to her reading "See you later Alligator' at me.

I am perfectly happy to meet you and talk to you, but the correspondence must now cease.

Cordially, Clodagh

Dear Mother Francis, I intend to spend Christmas at St. Mary's in Knockglen for a variety of reasons. I hope this will not duly disturb the Community. I shall be in touch later with full details.

Your Sister In Christ,

Mother Clare

Lilly Foley was pleased about the party. John would enjoy it. He would like seeing their big house filled with lights and flowers and the rustle of evening dresses, beautiful girls.

Her husband would enjoy playing host to a roomful of handsome young people. It would make him feel their age.

She was determined it would be just right, and that she herself would look her very best. There was no way he could be allowed to look across at her and think she was drab and grey compared to all the glitter around them.

She would think of her own outfit later. In the meantime she must plan it properly. She could not let Jack know how welcome the excuse was.

She would let him and his father know what a wonderful wife and mother she was to cope with his demands.

"Will they want sausages and savouries, do you think?" Lilly asked.

"They'll want whatever we give them." Jack had no interest in details.

"Who'll serve it? Doreen will need help." Jack looked round the table. "Aengus," he said. "Can I wear a napkin on my arm?" Aengus asked. "You'd probably better wear one on your bottom as well," Ronan said.

His mother frowned.

"It's for your friends, Jack. I wish you'd pay some attention."

"And for yours and Dad's. Look, aren't the pair of you delighted?

You've got those new curtains you've been talking about and you had the gate painted."

"It'd be like you to tell everyone that."

"Of course I won't. I keep telling you that I think it's great all your friends are coming round."

"And all yours!"

"Mine will only be here for an hour or two. Yours will stay all night and disgrace themselves. I'm as well off not to be a witness to it."

"And what about the oldies, as you call them? The parents of your friends."

"I asked Aidan Lynch's parents. You know them already."

"I do." Mrs. Foley raised her eyes to heaven. "And Benny Hogan's parents, the people from knockglen. But they can't come. They wrote to you, remember? It's only going to be people like Uncle Kevin and the neighbours, and all your own crowd. You'll hardly notice my few."

"I wish I knew why you've inflicted this on us," his mother said.

"Because I couldn't decide which girl to ask, so I asked them all."

Jack beamed at her in total honesty.

The weekend before the dance, Eve came home to knockglen.

"I've left it far too long," she confessed to Benny on the bus on the Friday evening. "But it really was that I didn't want to run out on Kit. Do you think Mother Francis knows that?"

"Tell her," Benny said.

"I will. She said she had a favour to ask of me. What do u think it could be?"

"Let's guess. Help her set up a poteen still in the kitchen garden?"

"I'd be good at that. Or maybe, based on my huge experience beating off the advances of Aidan Lynch, she wants me to give Sixth Year a course of lessons in sex education.

"Or take the older nuns to Belfast on a day excursion to see a banned film."

"Or bring Sean Walsh into the art room and drape a duster over his vital parts and have him for a life class."

They laughed so much that Mikey the driver said they put him off concentrating.

"The pair of you remind me of those cartoons of Mutt and Jeff, do you know the ones I mean?" Mikey shouted at them.

They did. Mutt was the big one, Jeff was the tiny one. Mikey was always pretty subtle.

"I can't turn her away," Mother Francis pleaded with eve in the kitchen. "Yes you can, Mother, yes you bloody can."

"Eve!

Please!"

"No, honestly, you can do anything. You've always been able to do anything you wanted. Always.

"I don't know where you got this idea."

"From living with you, from watching you. You can tell Mother Clare that it damn well won't suit the Community to have her here just because her own lot above in Dublin want to be shot of her for Christmas."

"It's hardly a charitable thing to say, or do."

"Since when has that had anything to do with it?"

"Well, we must have raised you under some misapprehension here.

Charity is meant to have quite a lot to do with the religious life, actually."

They both laughed at that.

"Mother, I couldn't be in the same house as her."

"You don't have to, Eve. The rest of us do."

"What do you mean?"

"You have your own house, if you want to use it."

"Another of your ploys!"

"On my word of honour. If you think that I went to all that trouble to arrange that Mother Clare came here just so I could manoeuvre you into that cottage, then you really don't understand anything at all."

"It would be going a bit far, certainly," Eve agreed. "Well, then."

"No."

"Why? Just one good reason."

"I won't take their charity. I won't live in their bloody grace and favour home like some old groom who broke his back looking after horses for the squires and gets some kind of bothan and tugs his remaining bit of hair out in gratitude for the rest of his life."

"It's not like that."

"It is, Mother, it is. She was thrown out, not good enough to walk through their doors, never let back in again. But they didn't want her to die on the side of the road so they gave her that cottage that no one wanted because it was miles from anywhere and in addition, horror of horrors, beside the Roman Catholic convent."

"They liked it, Eve. It was where they wanted to live."

"It's not where I want to live."

"Not even look at it? I go to so much trouble minding it for you, always hoping, I thought you'd be delighted." Mother Francis looked tired, weary almost. "I'm sorry."

"I was so sure you'd be so relieved to have a place to go.. but I suppose I got it wrong. "I wouldn't mind having a look, Mother.

To please you. Nothing to do with them."

"Tomorrow morning, then. We'll go up, the pair of us."

"And my room here?."

"It will be your room here until the day you die."

"What do you think?" Benny looked anxiously at Clodagh. a gorgeous bit of stuff. A pity to cut it up.

"You've seen people going to these places. Will it look right?"

"When I'm through with it and you, it will be a sensation."

Benny looked doubtfully at Clodagh's own outfit, which was a white smock over a mauve polo-necked jumper and what looked like mauve tights. It was very far ahead for anywhere, let alone Knockglen.

"We'll cut the bodice well .. well down like this." Benny stood in her slip. Eve sat companionably on the radiator smoking and giving her comments.

Clodagh made a gesture with the black velvet top which implied a startingly low neckline.

"Cut it where?" Benny screamed. Clodagh gestured again. "That's what I thought you said. I'd fall into my dinner, for God's sake.

"Presumably you'll be wearing some kind of undergarment to prevent this."

"I'll be wearing a bra made of surgical steel.."

"Yes, and we must push your bosom right up and in like this."

Clodagh made a grab at her and Benny gave a yell. "I haven't had as much fun in years," Eve said. "Tell her, Eve. Tell her my mother's paying for this. She won't let me out like the whore of Babylon."

"It's a dance, isn't it?" asked Clodagh. "It's not a function to put forward the cause of your canonisation or anything?" is it?"

"Clodagh, you're off your head. I can't. Even if I had the courage."

"Right. We'll give you a modesty vest. "A what?"

"We'll cut the thing the way it should be cut and mould you into it.

Then I'll make a bit of pleated linen or something and a couple of fasteners and we can tell your mother that this is what you'll be wearing. You can take it out as soon as you are outside the city limits of Knockglen."

Clodagh fiddled and draped and pinned. "Put your shoulders back, Benny," she ordered. "Stic your chest out."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I look like the prow of a ship," said Benny in alarm.

"I know. Isn't it great?"

"Fellows love the prows of ships," Eve said. "They're always saying it."

"Shut up, Eve Malone. I'll stick the scissors in you."

"You will not. Those are my expensive pinking shears. Now isn't that something?" Clodagh looked pleased.

Even in its rough and ready state they could see what she had in mind for Benny. And it looked very good indeed.

"The Wise Woman wouldn't let her mother near the fittings for this dress," Eve said sagely.

"They'll be climbing all over you in this," Clodagh said happily as she began to unpin it.

"Wouldn't that be fantastic?" Benny said, smiling delightedly at her reflection in the mirror.

"It's great that you'll be working late tonight," Nan said to her mother. They poured another cup of coffee at the kitchen table.

The dance was in the same hotel as Emily's shop. Nan planned to bring her friends in to introduce them and parade their finery.

"You don't have to, you know, I can always peep out and see you going into the ballroom.

"But you know that I'd love to, Em. I want you to meet them and them to meet you.

Between them, unspoken, lay the certainty that Nan would never bring them home to Maple Gardens.

"Only if it seems right at the time. There might be people there that you don't want to bring into a shop .. you know."

Nan laid her hand on her mother's.

"No, I don't know, as it happens. What do you mean?"

"Well, we've had such hopes for you .. you and I, that you'll get out of all this." Emily looked round the small, awkward house. "You mightn't want to be bringing grand people in on top of me in a shop."

She smiled apologetically.

"It's a gorgeous shop. And you run it like a dream. I'd be proud to have them see you there," Nan said. She didn't say that she was not relying on the Aidan Lynches, the Bill Dunnes or the Jack Foleys to take her out of Maple Gardens. She had set her sights much higher than that.

"I wish you'd come in tonight for the drinks bit," Eve said to Kit.

"No, I'd be no good at a thing like that, all falling over my words. I was never any good at social occasions."

"Aidan Lynch's parents are going to be there. You could talk about him' "God, Eve, leave me alone. I'd a million times prefer to be here.

Ann Hayes and I are going to the pictures. That's much more our style than having cocktails with doctors in Ailesbury Road."

"It's not Ailesbury Road," Eve said defensively. "It's not far off it." Her face softened. "To be asked is enough. Have you the bed made up for Benny?"

"I have. We won't make a noise and wake you. "It's easy to wake me.

I sleep very lightly. Maybe you'll tell me about it. That outfit is gorgeous on you. I never saw anything like it."

They had a dress rehearsal the night before, with an evening bag borrowed from Mrs. Hayes next door, and the good white lacy blouse from Kit's wardrobe starched and pressed until it was like new.

Now Kit's surprise gift was produced. Scarlet earrings exactly the same colour as the skirt.

"No, no. You can't be buying me things," Eve stammered. Something in Kit's face reminded Eve that Frank Hegarty might have been dressing up in a dinner jacket this night to go to the dance if things had been different. "Thank you very, very much," she said.

"You really are very beautiful. Very striking."

"I think I look a bit like a bird," Eve said seriously. "A sort of crazed blackbird with its head on the side before it goes picking for things."

Kit pealed with laughter. "I mean it. I really do," she said.

"You are very attractive, mad as a brush of course, but with any luck people might not notice that."

Benny's outfit had been packed in a box in tissue paper. It had been much admired at home. There had been a dangerous moment when Patsy had giggled and said she hoped nobody would snatch Benny's modesty vest away. The Hogans looked at each other, alarmed.

"Why would a thing like that happen?" Benny had glared at Patsy, who went back to the range in confusion. "I'd love to see you all dressed up setting out tonight," Benny's mother said. "You and Eve and all your friends."

"Yes, well you could have come up of course to Dr. Foley's. You were invited."

Benny felt hypocritical. She would have hated them to have been there.

"Yes, it was very civil of them certainly," Eddie Hogan said.

"Repaying the hospitality we gave to that boy.

Benny felt herself wince with embarrassment. How provincial and old-fashioned they were compared with people in Dublin. Then a wave of guilt came over her and she felt protective about them.

Why should they have the same style and way of going on as people who went to cocktail parties?

"And you'll be home on the morning bus?" her mother said hopefully.

"Maybe the later one. It would be nice to get value out of the visit, and meet the girls for coffee . . . or lunch."

"But you'll ring?" her father asked.

"Of course I will." She was dying to be gone. "Tomorrow morning."

"You'll be fine, up in Dublin," her father said, sounding as doubtful as if she were going to the far side of the moon.

"Don't I go there every day, Father?"

"But not every night."

"Still I'm safe with Mrs. Hegarty, you know that." Oh, please let them let her go.