Circle of Friends

In front of all her friends.

They put more turf and logs on the fire, and when one of the oil lights flickered down, nobody bothered to replace it.

They sat around in groups or in twosomes, the evening drawing to close.

"Can anybody play that beautiful piano?" Nan asked. Amazingly Clodagh said that she could. Fonsie looked at her in open admiration. There was nothing that woman couldn't do, he told people proudly.

Clodagh settled herself at the keys. She had a repertoire that staggered them. Frank Sinatra numbers that they all joined in, ragtime solos, and she even got people to sing solos.

Bill Dunne startled them all by singing. "She Moved Through the Fair' very tunefully.

"That was a well-kept secret," Jack said to him as they clapped him to the echo.

"It's only when I'm out of Dublin and can't be sent up by all you lot that I'd have the courage, Bill said, red with pleasure from all the admiration.

Everyone said that Knockglen had not been properly praised up to this, and now that they knew where it was they'd be regular visitors. Fonsie told them to come earlier next time, when it was opening time in Mario's, soon to be Ireland's premier stylish cafe. Trends had to start somewhere and why not Knockglen?

Eve was sitting on the floor next to one of her two rather battered armchairs; on Clodagh's advice they had draped bedspreads over the shabby furniture. It looked exotic in the flickering light.

She thought she should get up and make more coffee for the departing guests, but she didn't want it to end, and the way Aidan had his arm around her and was stroking her, he didn't want to make any move to go either. Nan sat on a tiny three-legged stool, hugging her knees. "I met your grandfather today," she said suddenly to Eve. Eve felt a cold shock run through her. "You did?"

"Yes. He really is a charming old man, isn't he?" Benny felt she wanted to move away from Jack's arm and go over and support Eve physically. In some way she wanted to be a barrier between her and what Nan was saying.

Please may Eve not say anything brittle or hurtful. Let her just mumble for the moment. Let there not be a scene now to end the party on a sour note.

Eve might have read her mind.

"Yes. How did you meet him?" Although she knew. She knew only too well.

"Oh, I met Simon at the races yesterday and we got talking. He offered me a lift if I was going to this part of the world. So we got here a bit early.. and, well, he took me to Westlands."

If they had got here so bloody early, Eve thought, then Nan might have been on time rather than turning up when the supper was finished.

She didn't trust herself to say any more. But Nan had in no way finished with the subject. "You could really see what he must have been like before. You know, very upright and stern. It must be terrible for him to be like that in his chair. He was having his tea.

They serve it beautifully for him. Even though he's sometimes not able to manage it."

She had been there since tea time. Since five o'clock and and she hadn't even bothered to come next or near them until after nine in the evening. Eve felt the bile rise in her throat.

Nan must have sensed it. "I did keep asking Simon to drive me up here, but he insisted on showing me everything. Still, I suppose you've been over it dozens of times."

"You know I haven't." Eve's voice was dangerously calm. Only Benny and Aidan who knew her so well would have got the vibrations.

Aidan exchanged a glance with Benny. But there was nothing he could do.

"Well, you must, Eve. You must let him take you all through the place.

He's so proud of it. And he describes it well, not boasting or anything."

"Where's this?" Sheila always liked to hear of places that were splendid and people that were important.

"Eve's relations, up at the big house. About a mile over .. that way .. is it?" Nan pointed with her arm.

Eve said nothing. Benny said that it was more or less that way.

Benny also wondered did anyone want coffee, but they didn't. They wanted to sit dreamily with low music on the player and to chat.

And they wanted Nan to have the floor. There was something about the way her face was lit up by the fire and by the place she was talking about .. they wanted her to go on.

"He showed me all the family portraits. Your mother was very beautiful, wasn't she, Eve? Nan spoke in open admiration. There was nothing triumphalist about her having been there, about her having been taken on a tour and shown the picture that had not been shown to Eve on her one visit.

Nan had always said that Eve should bury her differences. Nan would have thought that Eve knew what her mother looked like.

"You must have had quite a tour." The words nearly choked her.

"Oh yes. The trouble was getting away."

"Still, you managed it," Aidan Lynch said. "Fonsie, if we're not going to be given cells in the convent for the night, which I was distinctly promised, I think we should have something to loosen up our limbs for the journey home. What would you suggest, man?"

Fonsie had long realised that Aidan was a fellow spirit. He leaped to his feet and flipped through a few record covers.

"I think it comes down to a straight contest between Lonnie Donegan "Putting on the Style" and Elvis being "All Shook Up" man," he said after some thought.

"Man, let's not insult either of those heroes. Let's have them both," Aidan said, and he went around the room clapping his hands at people to get them going.

Benny had followed Eve to the kitchen.

"She doesn't understand," Benny said. Eve clutched hard with both her hands at the sink. Of course she does. How often have we talked about it?"

"Not to her. Seriously not to her. With Nan we usually pretend things are fine. Otherwise she gets you to change them. Remember?"

"I'll never forgive her."

"Yes, of course you will. You'll forgive her this minute, otherwise it will change everything about the party. It was the most wonderful party in the world. Truly." it was." Eve softened. Inside she saw Aidan beckoning her.

Everyone was on the floor. Benny went back. Jack and Nan were dancing, laughing happily, neither of them knowing that anything was amiss.

CHAPTER 13

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hogan, Thank you very much for my lovely visit to Knockglen. You were both so hospitable to me I felt very welcome. As I said to you, I think your house is beautiful. You have no idea how lovely it is to come and stay in a real Georgian house. Benny is very lucky indeed.

You very kindly asked me if I would come back again some time.

Nothing would give me more pleasure. My regards to Patsy, also, and thank her for the lovely breakfast.

Yours sincerely, Nan Mahon

Eddie Hogan said to his wife that there were some people in life for whom it was a real pleasure to do the smallest, thing, and that Benny's friend Nan was one of them.

Annabel agreed completely. They had never met a more charming girl.

And such perfect manners too. She had given Patsy half a crown when she was leaving. She was a real lady.

Dear Kit, The more I think of it, the more I realise that it was ridiculous of me to assume that I could just walk in years later and take up as if nothing had happened. Considering the way I treated you and how little I gave you and Frank over the years you would have had every reason to throw me out on my ear.

But you were very calm and reasonable, and I'll always be grateful for that. I just wanted you to know that I have always had an insurance policy for you, in case anything happened to me, so that you and our son might have had something good to remember me by. I wish you all the luck and happiness that I didn't bring to you myself.

Love, Joe Kit Hegarty folded the letter from the man that everyone else had called Joe. She had never called him anything but Joseph. Meeting him had been so different to the way she thought it would have been. She had intended to hurl everything at him if she ever saw him again. But in fact he was like a distant friend who was down on his luck. He gave no address. She couldn't even acknowledge the letter.

Dear Mother Francis, My sincerest thanks for being invited to spend the holy Feast of Christmas with you and the Community of St. Mary's. Thank you also for arranging the lift back to Dublin with your friend Miss Pine.

An outspoken person, but no doubt a good Christian with a heavy cross to bear in that niece that she has.

I was very pleased to see that Eve Malone had settled down and begun to repay some of the work our Order has put into her education. It was gratifying to see that she studies so hard.

Your sister in Christ, Mother Mary Clare Mother Francis smiled grimly as she read the letter, particularly the part about how they had "invited' Mother Clare.

it was wonderful that she had been able to forewarn Eve of the surprise visit that Mother Clare had intended to pay. Mossy Rooney had come along quietly with his cart and removed all the bottles and boxes. The cottage was flung open to the winter air to clear the fumes of smoke and drink from the previous night.

Mother Clare, to her great rage, had discovered Eve sitting blamelessly studying instead of what she had hoped to find as the aftermath of a party, and would have found had it not been for Mother Francis.

Dear Sean, As you asked me to do I am confirming in writing that I intend to invite you to become a partner in Hogan's Gentleman's Outfitters.

I shall arrange with Mr. Gerald Green of Green and Mahers, Solicitors' to come to Knockglen and we will formalise the details early in the New Year.

I look forward to a successful partnership in 1958.

Yours sincerely, Edward James Hogan Mrs. Healy read the letter carefully, word by word, and then nodded approvingly at Sean Walsh. It was never any harm getting these things in writing, she told him, with the best will in the world people could always go back on what they said. And not a word against Eddie Hogan.

He was the nicest man you'd meet in a day's walk, but it was time someone realised Sean Walsh's worth, and acknowledged It.

Eddie Hogan died on a Saturday at lunch time. After he had finished his cup of tea and queen cake, he stood up to go back to the shop. "If Sean has his way, there'll be no closing for lunch.." he began, but he never finished the sentence. He sat down on the sofa with his hand to his chest. His face was pale and when he closed his eyes his breathing was strange. Patsy didn't need to be asked to run across the road for Dr. Johnson.

Dr. Johnson came in his shirt sleeves. He asked for a small glass of brandy.

"He never takes spirits, Maurice, you know that!" Annabel's hand was at her throat in fear. "What is it? Is it a kind of fit?"

Dr. Johnson sat Annabel Hogan down on the chair. He handed her the brandy.

"Sip it slowly, Annabel, that's the girl." He saw Patsy with her coat on as if to go for Father Ross.

"Just a little drop at a time. It was totally painless. He never knew a thing."

The doctor beckoned Patsy over. "Before you get the priest, Patsy, where's Benny?"

"She's in Dublin for the day, sir. She went up to meet Eve Malone.

They were going to a special lecture, I think she said."

"Get Eve Malone to bring her back," said Dr. Johnson. He had managed to take a rug and cover the figure of Eddie Hogan, who lay on the sofa looking for all the world as if he were taking a quick nap before he went back to the shop.

Annabel sat rocking to and fro, moaning in disbelief. Dr. Johnson went to the door after Patsy. "No need to tell that bag of bones in the shop yet."

"No sir."

Dr. Johnson had always disliked Sean Walsh. He could almost see him picking one of the best black ties from the rack and combing his thin lank hair. He could visualise him putting on the correct expression of grief before he came to offer his condolences to the widow, and her daughter.

Whenever they found her.

Benny and Jack walked hand in hand over Killiney Hill. It had been one of those cold, crisp winter afternoons, which was going to end soon.

Already they could see the lights of Dunlaoghaire twinkling far below them, and then the flat sweep of Dublin Bay.

They would meet Aidan and Eve later in Kit Hegarty's house. Kit had promised them all sausages and chips before they went into the town on the train to the L and H. Tonight the motion was going to be about Sport, and Jack half threatened to speak. He said he didn't know whether he needed huge encouragement and masses of support, or if it would be easier to speak one night on his own when there were no friends to hear him make a fool of himself.

Not since the great dance before Christmas had Benny been able to spend a night in Dublin. Jack had been increasingly impatient.

"What am I going to do with my girl always miles away? It's like having a penfriend," he had complained.

"We see each other in the day." But her throat had narrowed in fear.

He sounded cross.

"What's the use? It's at night I need you to go to things." She had wheedled this Saturday by pretending there was a lecture, and asking if she could tack the night on as well. And she had another worry. He was very insistent that she go for a weekend to Wales with him.

His team were going to play a friendly match. There would be lots of people going. He really wanted her to go.

"It's not normal," he had fumed. "Anyone else could go. Rosemary, Sheila, Nan, they all have families who'd realise that if they're old enough to have a university education they're old enough to be let out on a simple boat trip for two days.

She hated him saying her family weren't normal. She hated them for not being normal enough to let her go.

Soon it was more dark than it was day. They came down the springy turf together and walked along the Vico Road looking down at Killiney Bay, which people said was meant to be as beautiful as the Bay of Naples.

"I'd love to go to Naples," Benny said. "Maybe they'll let you when you're about ninety," Jack grumbled.

She laughed, though she didn't feel like it. "Race you down to the corner," she said, and laughing they ran down to the railway station where they caught a train to Dunlaoghaire.

As soon as Kevin Hickey opened the door to them Benny knew something was wrong.

"They're in the kitchen," he said, refusing to meet her eye.

Behind him she saw the tableau of Kit and Eve and Aidan waiting to give them some very bad news. It was as if everything had stopped. The sound of the traffic outside, the clocks ticking, the seagulls over the harbour.

Benny walked forward slowly to hear what they were going to tell her.

Shep seemed to be in everyone's way, all the time. He was looking for Eddie, and there seemed to be no sign of him. Almost everyone else in Knockglen seemed to be in and out of Lisbeg, but no sign of the master.

Eventually he went out and lay down beside the hen house; only the hens were behaving normally. Peggy Pine arranged two big trays of sandwiches. She also asked Fonsie to collect drink from Shea's. "I think your man is going to get some at Healy's."

"Well, your man will be too late then," Peggy said, taking ten pound notes from her till. "We'll have paid cash.

There's nothing he can do about that."

They smiled at each other. The one bright spot in a dark day being the thought of besting both Sean Walsh and Mrs. Healy at the same time.

By tea time everyone in the town knew. And everyone was shocked.

By no standards was Eddie an old man, they speculated happily.

Fifty-two at most, at the very most. Maybe not even fifty. The wife was older. They tried to work it out. And not a man for the drink, and not a day sick. Hadn't he and his wife taken to going on healthy walks recently? Didn't that show you that your hour was marked out for you and it didn't really matter what you did, you couldn't put it off once it came.

And such a gentleman. Never a harsh word out of him. Not a one to make a quick shilling here and there, he'd not hurry a farmer who hadn't paid a bill for a while. Not one to move with the times, the windows of Hogan's hadn't changed much in all the time he was there.

But such a gentleman. So interested in everyone who came in and their family and their news. All the time in the world for them. And he kept poor Mike on there too, long after he might have needed him.

The prayers that were added on to the family rosary that evening for the repose of Eddie Hogan's soul were prayers that were warm and genuine. And the prayers that people said were hardly needed.

A man like Eddie Hogan would have been in Heaven by two o'clock.

Eve had managed to ward off Sean Walsh's attempts to come to Dublin to collect Benny.

She had also managed to say that Benny was at a lecture where it was impossible to disturb her, because it was a kind of field trip. Nobody knew where they had gone. They would have to wait until she came home at six o'clock.

"They're never bringing her father to the church tonight?" Eve had said.

It was unthinkable that Benny would not be there when her father's body was brought to lie overnight in Knockglen parish church.

"They might have done, if they had known where to find Benny."

Sean sounded aggrieved.

Jack said he'd get his father's car.

"They might need it." Benny's face was wan and empty. "They might need it for something important.

"There's nothing more important than this," said Jack. "Will we go with them?" Aidan Lynch asked Eve. "No," Eve said. "We'll go down by bus tomorrow." She could hardly bear to look at Benny's face as she sat looking unseeingly in front of her.

From time to time she said "Dead' in a low voice, and shook her head.

She had spoken to her mother on the phone, her mother had sounded sleepy, she said. That too seemed hard to accept.

"They gave her a sedative, to calm her down. It makes her feel sleepy," Kit explained.

But none of it made any sense to Benny, no matter what tablet you took.

It couldn't make you feel sleepy. Not when Father had died.

Died. No matter how many times she said it, it wouldn't sink in.

Mr. Hayes next door drove them in to the Foleys' house. Jack's mother was at the door. Benny noticed that she wore a lovely woollen suit with a cream blouse underneath. She had earrings on, and she smelled of perfume.

She gave Benny a hug of sympathy.

"Doreen has packed you a flask of coffee and some sandwiches for the car journey," she said.

She made it sound as if Knockglen were at the other side of Europe.

"We're both very, very sorry," she said. "If there's anything at all we can do..

"I think I'd better get her on the road." Jack cut short the sympathies.

"Were they going out somewhere tonight?" Benny asked. "No. Why?"

He was negotiating the early Saturday evening traffic in Dublin, and trying to get out towards the Knockglen road.

"She looked all dressed up."

"No, she didn't."

"Is she like that all the time?"

"I think so." He was surprised, glancing over at her. She sat in silence for a while, staring ahead. She felt very cold and unreal.

She wished over and over the most futile wish. That it could be this morning. If only it were eight o'clock this morning.

Her father had said that it was going to be a nice bright day.

"Isn't it a pity you have this lecture now. You could have had a great day here in Knockglen, and maybe yourself and Shep would have come up and got me out of the shop early for a bit of a walk!"

If only she had the time again. There'd have been no lies about lectures that didn't exist. There'd have been no shame at accepting his praise for her eagerness to study.

She'd have cancelled everything, just to have been there, to have been with him when he began to leave his life. She didn't believe it was so instant that he didn't know. She would like to have been in the room.

And for her mother too. Mother, who never had to make a decision of her own.. being alone to handle everything. Benny's eyes were dry but her heart was full of shame that she hadn't been there.

Jack couldn't find any good words. Several times he almost had the right thing. But always he stopped.

He couldn't bear it any longer. He pulled into the side of the road.

Two lorries hooted at him angrily, but he was parked now up on a grass verge.

"Benny, darling," he said, and put his arms around her. "Benny, please cry. Please cry. It's awful to see you like this. I'm here. Benny cry, cry for your father."

And she clung to him and wept and wept until he thought that her body would never stop shaking with the sobs and the grief.

They were all like characters in a play, Benny thought. People moving off stage and on stage all evening. One moment she would look and there was Dekko Moore talking earnestly in the corner, the small tea cup and saucer looking ridiculous in his large hands. Then she would glance again and in that corner Father Ross was standing mopping his brow as he listened to the visions of poor Mr. Flood and wondered how best to cope with them.

In the scullery Mossy Rooney stood not wanting to form part of the main gathering that spread through the whole house, but ready when Patsy called him to help. On the stairs sat Maire Carroll whom Benny had so disliked at school. Tonight, however, she was sympathetic and full of praise for Benny's father. "A very nice man with a word for everyone.

Bennny wondered wildly what kind of a word her father would have been able to dredge up for the charmless Maire Carroll.

Her mother sat in the middle, accepting the sympathy, and she was the most unreal figure of all. She wore a black blouse that Benny had never seen before. She worked out that Peggy must have produced it from the shop. Mother's eyes were red, but she was calmer than Benny would have thought possible, considering.

The undertakers had told her that Father was lying upstairs. Jack went up with her to the spare room, where candles burned and everything seemed to have been miraculously tidied and covered.

It didn't look like the spare bedroom at all. It looked like a church.

Father didn't look like Father either. One of the nuns from St. Mary's was sitting there. It was something they did, go around to people's houses when someone died and sit there by the body.

Somehow it made people more calm and less frightened to see the figure of a nun keeping guard.

Jack held her hand tightly as they knelt and said three Hail Marys by the bed. Then they left the room.

"I don't know where you're going to sleep," Benny said. "What?"

"Tonight. I thought you could stay in the spare room. I forgot."

"Darling, I have to go back. You know that. I have to take the car back for one thing..

"Of course, I forgot.

She had thought that he would be there with her, standing beside her for everything.

He had been such a comfort in the car, when she had wept on his shoulder. She had begun to assume that he would always be there.

"I'll come back for the funeral. Obviously."

"The funeral. Yes."

"I should go soon."

She had no idea what time it was. Or how long they had been home.

Something inside her told her that she must pull herself together now.

This minute, and thank him properly for his kindness. She must not allow herself to be a drag. She walked him out to the car. It was a blowy night now, the dark clouds were scudding across the moon.

Knockglen looked very small and quiet compared with the bright lights of Dublin they had left.. some time ago. She didn't know how long ago.

He held her close to him, more a brotherly hug than any kind of kiss.

Perhaps he thought it was more suitable.

"I'll see you on Monday," he said softly. Monday.

It seemed so far away. Imagine her having thought he was going to stay for the weekend.

Eve and Aidan came on Sunday.

They walked from the bus down the main street. "That's Healy's Hotel.

Where I wanted you to stay."

"Until I reminded you I am an impoverished student, who has never spent a night in a hotel in my life," Aidan said.

"Yes, well.."

She showed him the Hogans' shop with the blackrimmed notice in the window. She told him about how nice Birdie Mac in the sweet shop was, and how horrible Maire Carroll in the grocery was. From time to time Aidan turned and looked back up at the convent. He had wanted to be invited there first, but Eve had refused. They hadn't come on a social call, she said, they had come to help Benny. There would be time later to meet Mother Francis and Sister Imelda and everyone.

They passed Mario's cafe, which even when closed on a Sunday radiated cheer, and life and excitement.

They turned the corner at the end of the street and went to Benny's house.

"It's awful only going to people's houses when they're dead," Aidan said suddenly. "I'd like to have come here when he was alive. Was he nice?"

"Very," Eve said. She paused with her hand on the gate. "He never saw any bad in anyone, and he never saw anyone grow up either. He always called me Little Eve. He always thought Benny was nine, and he saw no harm in that Sean Walsh, who'll be lording it inside."

"Will I deal with Sean Walsh, make verbal mincemeat of him?" Aidan asked eagerly.

"No, Aidan, thank you, but that wouldn't be what's required."

It was an endless day, even with Eve and Aidan there. Benny had a headache that she thought would never leave her. There had been so many wearying encounters. Mrs. Healy for example, wanting to know if there was any way she had offended the family.

No? Well, she was certainly glad to hear that, because she had been so ready and eager to supply the drink that would be needed and then was told that her participation would not be necessary.

And then Benny had to cope with old Mike from the shop. There had been words said, words that Mr. Eddie had not meant the way that Mr. Walsh thought he had meant them.

Mr. Walsh? Yes, Mike had been told that it wasn't fitting for a partner to be called Sean any more, even though Mike had been head tailor when Sean Walsh had come in as a schoolboy.

Benny had been coping with Dessie Burns who was in the perilous state of being off the jar but threatening to go back on to it at any moment because if there was one thing a man should not be it was doctrinaire, and with Mario who said that in Italy people would cry, cry and cry again over the death of a good man like Eddie Hogan, not stand in his house talking and drinking.

And then the church bells began to toll. So often in Lisbeg they heard the bells and it just meant the angelus or time for Mass, or someone else was being brought to the church. Benny put on her black lace mantilla and walked with her mother behind the coffin up the street where people come to their doors and to stand outside their businesses on the cold Sunday afternoon.

And as she walked past their shop her heart grew heavier. It would be Sean's shop from now on. Or Mr. Walsh, as he would want people to call him. She wished she could talk to her father about old Mike and ask him what was going to happen. The procession paused momentarily outside Hogan's. And then moved on. She could never talk to her father again about his shop or about anything.

And he was powerless now to do anything about the shop he had loved so much.

Unless of course she were to do something herself to try and sort it out.

Aidan Lynch was introduced to Mother Francis.

"I have appointed myself guardian of Eve's morals while she is at university," he said solemnly.

"Thank you very much." Mother Francis was formally grateful.

"I hear nothing but good of the way you brought her up. I wish I'd been left to a convent." His smile was infectious. "There might have been more problems with you," the nun laughed.

Mother Francis had thought it was very sensible for Aidan Lynch to spend the night in Eve's cottage, while she slept at the convent.

Everyone liked the thought of Eve being back under their roof again, and her bedroom was going to be there for ever. This had been a promise.

Eve showed Aidan how to rake the range. "I think when we're married we might have something more modern," he grumbled.

"No, surely with the eight children we can have them stoking it, going up the chimney even."

"You don't take me seriously," he said. "I do. I just believe in child labour, that's all."

Back in the convent, having cocoa with Mother Francis in the kitchen, it was impossible to believe that she had ever left these walls.

"A very nice young man," Mother Francis said. "But basically a beast of course, like you told us all men were, ravening beasts."

"I never told you that."

"You hinted at it."

They were more like sisters these days than mother and daughter.

They sat companionably in the warm kitchen and talked of life and death and the town and Mr. Flood's visions and how hard everything was on poor Father Ross. Because if the vision was as true as Fatima and everybody believed it, why could they not make the leap of imagination and believe it might all be true in Knockglen? Possibly because Mr. Flood the butcher was such an unlikely person to be visited by a holy nun in a tree. Or even on the ground according to Mother Francis.

The funeral Mass was at ten o'clock. Benny and her mother and Patsy went to the church in the mourners' car provided by the undertaker. As she led her mother up the aisle to sit in the front row, Benny was aware of the people who had come to pay their respects. Farmers had come yesterday, in their Sunday suits, they would be out in their fields on a weekday morning.

Today she saw men in suits, commercial travellers, suppliers, people from two parishes away. She saw father's cousins, and her mother's brothers. She saw standing in a comforting crowd her own circle of friends. There was Jack, so tall that everyone in the church must have seen him. He wore a black tie and he turned round to see them coming.

It was almost like being at a wedding, where people turn around to see the bride.. the thought came and went.

Bill Dunne had come too, which was very nice of him, and Rosemary Ryan.

They stood beside Eve and Aidan, their faces full of sympathy.

And Nan was there, in a black blazer and a pale grey skirt. She wore gloves and carried a small black bag. Her mantilla looked as if it had been made by a dress designer to sit in her blonde hair. Everyone else wore a mantilla that looked like a rag, or a headscarf. Clodagh wore a hat, though. A big black straw hat. It was her only concession to mourning colours. The rest of her outfit was a red and white striped coat dress, considerably shorter than Knockglen would have liked.

But then it was hard to please Knockglen since there was also disapproval for Fonsie's coat - a long one like de Valera would wear except it had a huge velvet collar and small finishings of fake leopard fur at the pockets, collars and cuffs.

Mother looked very old and sad. Benny glanced at her from time to time. Sometimes a tear fell on Mother's missal, and once or twice Benny leaned over and wiped it away. It was as if Mother hadn't noticed.

Mercifully, Sean Walsh had not presumed upon them too much.

Startled by the rebuff over obtaining supplies from Healy's Hotel, he had been more cautious in his overtures than Benny had dared to hope.

He had not sat anywhere near them now in the church, in the role of a chief mourner. She must keep her head and not let him take over. His style was so different to her father's, his humanity so little in comparison.

Benny wished she had someone who could talk it through with her, someone who really understood. Her glance fell on Jack Foley, whose face was stony in its sympathy. But she knew she wouldn't burden him with It.

The tedious in-fighting over a small shabby country shop. Nobody would bother Jack Foley with all that. Not even if she loved him, and he loved her.

Outside the church, the people of Knockglen talked to each other in low voices. They commented on the group of young people down from Dublin.

Must be friends of Benny, they deduced.

"Very handsome-looking couple that tall boy and the blonde girl.

They're like film stars," Birdie Mac said.

Eve was nearby.

"They're not a couple," she heard herself saying. "The tall boy is Jack Foley.. he's Benny's boyfriend. He and Benny are a couple."

She didn't know why she said it, or why Birdie Mac looked at her so oddly. Perhaps she had just spoken very loudly.

Or it didn't seem suitable to talk of Benny having a boyfriend at a time like this.

But in fact she thought Birdie didn't believe her.

As they walked to the open grave past the headstones Eve stopped and pointed out a small stone to Aidan.

"In loving memory of John Malone' it said. It was nicely kept, weeded and with a little rose tree. "Do you do this?" he asked.

"A bit, mainly Mother Francis, wouldn't you know it."

"And your mother?"

"Across the hill. Over in the Protestant graveyard. The posh one."

"We'll go and see hers too," he promised. She squeezed his hand; for one of the few times in her life she was without words.

They were very good to her, all Benny's friends. They gave her great support. They were courteous to the people of Knockglen and helpful back at the house after the funeral.

Sean Walsh thanked Jack for coming, as if Jack were there somehow as an act of respect to Hogan's Outfitters. Benny gritted her teeth in rage.

"Mr. Hogan would have been very honoured by your presence, Sean said.

"I liked him very much when I did meet him. I came to tea here with Benny months and months ago." He smiled at her warmly, remembering the day. "I see." Sean Walsh, to Benny's disappointment, now did see.

"You didn't stay overnight, did you?" Sean asked loftily. "No, I didn't. I came down this morning. Why?"

"I heard that one of Benny's friends did stay, up in the cottage on the quarry.

"Oh, that was Aidan." Jack was easy. If he was tired of Sean and this pointless conversation he didn't show it, but he managed to manoeuvre Benny away. "That's the creep, isn't it?" he whispered.

"That's who it is."

"And he had notions of you."

"Only notions of the business, which he more or less got without having to have me as well."

"Then he lost the best bit," Jack said.

She smiled dutifully. Jack was going to be off soon, she knew.

She had heard him tell Bill Dunne that they had to be out of Knockglen by two at the latest. He had asked Bill to make the move.

She made it easy for him. She said that he had been a tower of strength, and everyone had been wonderful to come all that distance.

She begged him to get on the road while there was still plenty of daylight.

They were all going to squeeze into Bill Dunne's car. There had been four coming down, but they were going to try and fit Eve and Aidan in as well.

Benny said that was terrific, rather than have them just hanging on waiting for a bus.

She smiled and thanked them without a quiver in her voice.

It was the right way to be, she could see Jack looking at her approvingly.

"I'll ring you tonight," he promised. "About eight. Before I go out."

"Great," she said, eyes bright and clear.

He was going out. Out somewhere on the night of her father's funeral.

Where could he be going on a Monday night in Dublin? She waved at the car as it went around the corner. It didn't matter, she told herself.

She wouldn't have been there anyway. Last Monday night when Father was alive and well, Benny Hogan would have been safely back in Knockglen by eight o'clock.

That's the way things had always been, and would always be. She excused herself from the group of people downstairs, saying she was going to lie down for twenty minutes.

In the darkened room she lay on her bed and sobbed into her pillows.

Selfish tears too, tears over a handsome boy who had gone back to Dublin smiling and waving with a group of friends. She cried for him as much as for her father, who lay under heaps of flowers up in the graveyard. She didn't hear Clodagh come in and pull up a chair.

Clodagh still wearing her ludicrous hat, who patted Benny's shoulders and soothed her with exactly the words she wanted to hear.

"It's all right, it's all right. Everything will sort itself out.

He's mad about you. Anyone can tell. It's in the way he looks at you.

It's better he went back. Hush now. He loves you, of course he does."

There was an enormous amount to do. Mother was very little help.

She slept a lot of the time, and dozed off, even in a chair.

Benny knew that this was because Dr. Johnson had prescribed tranquillisers. He had said she was a woman who had focused her whole life round her husband. Now that the centre had gone she would take a while to readjust. Better let her get used to things gradually, he advised, not make any sudden changes or press her for decisions.

And there were so many things to decide, from tiny things like thank-you letters, and taking Shep for a walk, and Patsy's wages, to huge things like had Sean Walsh been made a partner yet, and could the business survive, and what were they going to do for the rest of their lives without Father?

Mr. Green, the solicitor, had come to the funeral, but said that there would be ample opportunity for them to discuss everything in the days that followed. Benny hadn't asked him whether he meant Sean Walsh to be in on the discussions or not.

It was something she wished she had said at the time. Then it would have been a perfectly acceptable question as someone distressed and not sure of what was going on. Afterwards it looked more deliberate, and as if there was bad feeling. Which there wasn't - except on a personal level.

It was extraordinary how many of Nan's sayings seemed to be precisely appropriate for so many situations. Nan always said that you should do the hardest thing first, whatever it was.

Like the essay you didn't want to write, or the tutor you didn't want to confront with an unfinished project. Nan was always right about everything.

Benny put on her raincoat on the morning after the funeral and went to see Sean Walsh in the shop.

The first thing she had to do was to avoid old Mike, who started to shuffle up to her with every intention of finishing the conversation he had begun in her house. Briskly and loudly so that Sean could hear she said that she and her mother would be very happy to talk to Mike later, but for the moment he would have to excuse her, she had a few things she wanted to get settled with Sean.

"Well, this is nice and businesslike." hee rubbed his hands together in that infuriating way, as if he had something between his palms that he was trying to grind to a powder.

"Thank you for everything, over the weekend." Her voice was insincere.

She tried to put some warmth into it. He had stood long hours greeting and thanking. It wasn't relevant that she hadn't wanted him there.

"It was the very least I could do," he said.

"Anyway, I wanted you to know that Mother and I appreciated it."

"How is Mrs. Hogan?" There was something off-key about his solicitude, like an actor not saying his lines right. "Fairly sedated at the moment. But in a few days she will be herself again and able to participate in business matters." Benny wondered, did Sean have this effect on other people? Normally, she never used words like "participate'. "That's good, good." He nodded sagely. She drew a deep breath. It was something else Nan had read. That if you inhaled all the air down to your toes and it out again it gave you confidence.

She told him that they would arrange a meeting with the solicitor at the end of the week. And until then perhaps he would be kind enough to keep the shop ticking over exactly as he had been doing so well over the years. And out of respect to her father she knew that there would be no changes made, no changes at all; her head inclined towards the back room where old Mike had gone fearfully.

Sean looked at her astounded.

"I don't think you quite realise.." he began. But he didn't get very far.

"You're quite right. I don't realise." She beamed at him as if in agreement. "There are whole areas of the way this business has been run, and the changes in it that are planned and under way, that I know nothing about That's what I was saying to Mr. Green.

"What was Mr. Green saying?"

Well, nothing, obviously, on the day of a funeral," she said reprovingly. "But after we have talked to him then we should all talk."

She congratulated herself on her choice of words. Howoften he played the conversation over to himself again he wouldn't be able to work out whether he was included in the conversation with the lawyer or not.

and he would not discover the huge gap in Benny's own information.

She didn't know whether in fact he was a partner in the business yet, or whether the deed of partnership might not have been signed.

She had a distinct feeling that her father had died before matters were completed, but another even stronger feeling, that there was a moral obligation to carry out what had been her father's wishes.

But Benny knew that if she were to survive in the strange clouded waters that she was now entering, she must not let Sean Walsh know how honourably she would behave to him. Even though she disliked and almost despised him, she knew that Sean had earned the right to be her father's successor in the firm.

Bill Dunne said to Johnny O'Brien that he half thought of asking Nan Mahon to the pictures.

"What's stopping you?" Johnny asked. What was really stopping him, of course, was the thought that she would say no. Why invite rejection?

But she wasn't going out with anyone else. They knew that. It was odd, considering how gorgeous she was. You'd think half the men in college would want to take her out. But perhaps that was it. They wanted to, and yet did nothing about It.

Bill decided to invite her.

Nan said no, she didn't really like the cinema. She was regretful, and Bill didn't think she had closed the door.

"Is there anything you would like to go to? he asked, hoping he wasn't making himself too humble,. too pathetic.

"Well, there is .. but I don't know." Nan sounded doubtful.

"Yes? What?"

"There's a rather posh cocktail party at the Russell. It's a sort of pre-wedding do. I'd like to go to that."

"But we weren't invited." Bill was shocked. "I know." Nan's eyes danced with excitement.

"Bill Dunne and Nan are going to crash a party," Aidan said to Eve.

"Why?"

"Search me."

They thought about it for a while. Why go to a place where you might be unwelcome? There were so many places where Nan Mahon could just walk in and everyone would be delighted. She looked like Grace Kelly, people said, confident and beautiful without being flashy. It was a great art. "Maybe it's the excitement," Aidan suggested. It could be the fear of being caught, the danger element like gambling.

Why ever would you want to go to a wedding party with a whole lot of horsey people from the country, neighing and whinnying? Aidan asked.

Once Eve knew it was that kind of party she knew immediately why Nan Mahon wanted to go. And why she needed someone very respectable and solid like Bill Dunne to go with her.

Jack Foley thought it was a marvellous idea.

"That's only because you don't have to do it," Bill grumbled.

"Oh, go on. It's easy. Just keep smiling at everyone."

"That would be all right if we all had your matinee-idol looks.

Advertising toothpaste all over the place."

Jack just laughed at him.

"I wish she'd asked me to escort her. I think it's a great gas.

Bill was doubtful. He should have known there would be trouble involved once he had dared to ask out someone with looks like Nan Mahon. Nothing came easy in life.

And it was all so mysterious. Who on earth would want to go to a thing like that, where they'd know nobody and everyone else knew everyone?

Nan wouldn't explain. She just said that she had a new outfit and thought it would be a bit of fun.

Bill offered to pick her up at home, but she said no, they'd meet in the foyer of the hotel.

The new outfit was stunning. A pale pink sheath dress with pink lace sleeves. Nan carried a small silver handbag with a silk rose attached to it. She came in without a coat.

"Better in case we have to make a quick getaway," she giggled.

She looked high and excited, like she had looked when she came into Eve's party in Knockglen. As if she knew something nobody else did.

Bill Dunne was highly uneasy going up the stairs, loosening his collar with a nervous finger. His father would be furious if there was any trouble. There was no trouble. The bride's people thought they were friends of the groom, the groom's thought they were on the bride's side. They gave their real names. They smiled and waved and because Nan was undoubtedly the most glamorous girl in the room it wasn't long before she was surrounded by a group of men.

She didn't talk very much, Bill noticed. She laughed and smiled and agreed, and looked interested. Even when asked a direct question she managed to put it back to the questioner. Bill Dunne talked awkwardly to a dull girl in a tweed dress who looked over at Nan sadly.

"I didn't know it was meant to be dressy-uppy," she said. "Ah.

Yes, well." Bill was trying to imitate Nan's method of saying almost nothing. "We were told it was a bit low key," the tweed girl complained. "Because of everything, you know."

"Ah yes, everything," Bill mumbled desperately. "Well, it's obvious isn't it? Why else wouldn't they wait until spring?"

"Spring. Indeed."

He looked over her head. A small dark-haired man was talking to Nan.

They looked very animated, and they hardly seemed to notice that anyone else in the room existed.

Lilly Foley looked at herself in the mirror. It was hard to believe that the lines would not go away. Not ever. She had been used to little lines when she was tired or strained. But they always smoothed out after rest. In the old days.

In the old days, too, she didn't have to worry about the tops of her arms, whether they looked a little crepey and even a small bit flabby.

Lilly Foley had been careful about what she ate since the day her glance had first fallen on John Foley. She had been thoughtful, too, about what she wore, and even, if she were honest, about what she said.

You didn't win the prize and keep it unless you lived up to the role.

That's why it was heartbreaking to think that big overgrown puppy dog of a girl Benny Hogan should think that she had a chance with Jack.

Jack was so nice to her, he had his father's manners and charm. But obviously he couldn't have serious notions about a girl like that. He had driven her to Knockglen and gone to the funeral out of natural courtesy and concern. It would be sad if the child got ideas.

Lilly had been startled to hear Aidan Lynch talking of Benny and Jack as if they were a couple. At least Benny had the sense not to keep telephoning like other girls did.

She must realise that there could be nothing in it.

Benny sat at the kitchen table and willed the phone to ring She was surrounded by papers and books. She intended to understand all about the business before talking to Sean and Mr. Green at the end of the week. She could ask no help and advice from old Mike in the shopand her mother was not likely to be any help either.

Benny bought a box of black-bordered writing paper. She listed the people who sent flowers, hoping that her mother would write a short personal note to each of them. She even addressed the envelopes. But Annabel's hand seemed to feel heavy and her heart listless. She never managed more than two letters a day. Benny did them herself eventually. She ordered the mortuary cards, with little pictures of her father, and prayers on them which people would keep in their missals to remind them to pray for his soul.

It was Benny, too, who had ordered the black-rimmed cards printed with a message of gratitude for the sympathies offered.

Benny paid the undertakers, and the gravediggers, and the priest, and the bill in Shea's. She paid everyone in cash as she had drawn a large sum from the bank in Ballylee. Fonsie had driven her there in his van.

"Wait till we get Knockglen on the map," Fonsie had said. "Then we'll have a bank of our own, not having to wait till the bank comes on Thursdays as if we were some onehorse wild west outpost.

The man in the bank in Ballylee had been most sympathetic, but also slightly uneasy about advancing the sum.

"I'm meeting Mr. Green the solicitor on Friday," Benny reassured him.

"Everything will be put on a proper footing then."

She hadn't imagined the look of relief on the banker's face.

She realised that she hadn't the first idea about how her father had run his business all these years, and she had only had a few days to find out.

As far as she could see it was a matter of two big books and a till full of pink slips.

There was the takings book. Every item was entered in that as it was received. Some of them were pitiably small. The sale of collar studs, sock braces, shoehorns, shoe polishing brushes.

And then there was the lodgement book, a big bron leather volume with a kind of window in the front of it. It was ruled in three columns: cheques, cash and other. Other could mean postal orders or in one case dollars from passing American.

Each Thursday her father had queued up with others when the bank came to town. The bank signature at the end of each week's lodgement was the receipt and acknowl-eddgement that the money had been put in the account. In the till there were always pink raffle tickets, books that had been sent on spec by Foreign Missions, ideal for tearing off to write out what had been taken out. Each time there was a sum listed and a reason. Ten shillings: petrol."

It was Wednesday, early-closing day. She had lifted both books from the shop and put them into a large carrier bag. Sean had remonstrated with her, saying that the books never left the premises.

Benny had said nonsense. Her father had often pored over the ledgers at home, and her mother wanted to see them. It seemed a small comfort at a time like this. Sean had been unable to refuse.

Benny didn't even know what she was looking for. She just wanted to work out why the business was doing badly. She knew that there would be seasonal highs and lows. After the harvest when the farmers got paid for the corn they all came and bought new suits.

She wasn't looking for discrepancies, or falsification. Which was why she was so surprised when she realised that the takings book and the lodgement book didn't match up.If they took so much a week, then that much should have been lodged, apart from the small pink tickets called drawings from the till, which were very insignificant. But as far as she could see by reading it and adding everything laboriously, there was a difference between what was taken and what was lodged, every single week. Sometimes a difference of as much as ten pounds. She sat looking at it with a feeling of shock and despair. Much as she disliked him and wished him a million miles away from Knockglen, she did not even want to think for a moment that Sean Walsh had been taking money from her father's business. It was so unlikely, for one thing.

He was such an over-respectable person. And for another, if he was to be made a partner why steal from his own business? And most important of all, if this had been going on for months and months, and maybe years, why was Sean Walsh living in threadbare suits in a cramped room two floors above the shop? She sat numbed by the discovery, and hardly heard the telephone ring.

Patsy answered it and said that a young man was looking for Benny.

"How are you?" Jack was concerned. "How's everything?"

"Fine.

We're fine." Her voice sounded far away. "Good. You didn't ring."

"I didn't want to be bothering you." It was still unreal. Her eyes were on the books.

"I'd like to come down." He sounded regretful, as if he were going to say he couldn't. She didn't want him here anyway. This was too huge.

"No, heavens no. Please." She was insistent, and he knew it. He seemed cheered. "And when will you come back to me?" She told him she should have things sorted out in some way by next week. Maybe they could meet for coffee in the Annexe on Monday.

Her lack of pursuit was rewarded. He really did seem sorry not to see her.

"That's a long time away. I miss you, you see," he explained.

"And I miss you. You were wonderful, all of you, to come to the funeral."

When he was gone from the phone he went from her mind too.

There was nobody she could ask about the books. She knew that Peggy, Clodagh, Fonsie and Mario would understand. As would Mrs. Kennedy, and many other business people in the town.

But she owed it to the memory of her father not to reveal him as an incompetent bungler, and she owed it to Sean Walsh not to mention a word of her suspicion until she knew it was true.

"Why won't you let me take you home?" Simon asked Nan after dinner.

It was the second time they had met that week after the extraordinary coincidence of their meeting at the cocktail party.

Nan looked at him and spoke truthfully. "I don't invite anyone home with me. I never did." She sounded neither apologetic nor defiant.

She was saying it as a fact.

"Might one ask why?"

She smiled at him mockingly. "One might, if one was rather pushing and curious."

"One is." He leaned across the table and patted her hand. "What you see is the way I am, the way I see myself. And how I feel and the way I am always going to be. Were you, or anyone to come home with me, it would be different." For Nan it was a long speech about herself. He looked at her with surprise and some admiration. He realised that she was from somewhere in North Dublin. He knew her father was in building. He had thought that perhaps they lived in a big nouveau-riche house somewhere. They must have money. Her clothes were impeccable. She was always at the best places. He felt quite protective about her wish to keep her home life to herself, and her honesty in saying that this was what she was doing. He told her gently that she was a silly. He didn't feel ashamed of his home, a falling-down, crumbling mansion in Knockglen, a place that had seen better days, where he lived with underpaid retainers, a senile grandfather and a pony-mad little sister. It was a pretty weird background to introduce anyone into. Yet he had invited her there after Christmas. He held his head on the side quizzically. Nan was not to be moved. It was not a pleasure for her to bring her friends home. If Simon felt uneasy about this, then perhaps they had better not see each other again. As she had known he would, he agreed to dismiss the matter from their conversation and their minds. In a way he was actually relieved. It was better by far than being paraded at a Sunday lunch and having expectations raised.

Heather was very bad at needlework at school. But after a conversation with Dekko Moore, the harness maker in Knockglen, she had decided that she should try to be good at it. He said that she might have a future for herself making hunting attire for ladies, and that they could be sold through Pine's or Hogan's.

It was Heather's project for the new term to learn to sew properly.

"It's awful, things like cross stitch, not real things like clothes," she grumbled to Eve. It was Heather's twelfth birthday and the school allowed her to spend the evening out with a relation just as long asúshe was back by eight.

They had a birthday cake in Kit's house and everyone clapped when she blew out the candles. The students liked Heather, and her overwhelming interest in food.

They discussed the teaching of sewing in schools and how unfair it was that boys never had to learn cross stitch.

"At least you don't have to make big green knickers with gussets in them like we did at school," Eve said cheerfully.

"Why did you have to make those?" Heather was fascinated by the tales of the convent.

Eve couldn't remember. She thought it might have had something to do with wearing them over their ordinary knickers and under their tunics when they were doing handstands. Or maybe she was only making that up.

She really didn't know. She was annoyed with Simon for not taking his sister out on her birthday and only sending her a feeble card with a picture of a crinoline lady on it. There were hundreds of nice horsey birthday cards around that he could have got. But more than that, she was worried about Benny. There was some problem, some worry about the business.

Benny had said she couldn't talk about it on the phone, but she'd tell all next week.

something she had said at the end that wouldn't go out of Eve's mind.

"If ,you ever say any prayers, Eve, prepare to say them now.

"What am I to pray for?"

"Oh, that things will turn out all right."

"But we've been praying for that for years," Eve said indignantly. She wasn't going to start praying for unspecified things, she told Benny.

"The Wise Woman would leave them unspecified for a bit," Benny had said.

Benny didn't sound very wise or very happy. "Simon's got a new girlfriend," Heather said chattily. She new Eve was always interested in such tales. "Really? What happened to the lady from Hampshire?"

"I think she's too far away. Anyway this one's in Dublin, Bee Moore told me.

Ah, Eve thought, that's going to be one in the eye for r friend Nan Mahon and her notions. Then the thought came to her suddenly.

Unless of course it is Nan Mahon.

CHAPTER 14

Benny returned the account books to the shop very early on the following morning. She took Shep with her for the outing. The dog looked around hopefully in case Eddie might come out of the back room beaming and clapping his hands, delighted to see his dear old dog arriving for a visit.

She heard a footstep on the stair and realised that she had not been early enough. Sean Walsh was up and dressed.

"Ah, Benny," he said.

"I should hope so too. We wouldn't want anyone else letting themselves in. Whereil I leave these for you, Sean?"

Was she imagining it or did he eye her very closely? He took both books and laid them in their places. It was a good three quarters of an hour before the shop opened.

The place smelled musty and heavy. There was nothing about it that would encourage you to spend. Nothing that would make a man feel puckish and buy a bright tie or a coloured shirt when he had always worn white. She looked at the dark interior and wondered why she had never taken the time to notice these things when her father was alive, less than a week ago, and talk to him about them.

But she knew why. Almost immediately she answered her own question.

Her father would have been so pleased to see her taking an interest, it would have raised his hope again. The whole subject of a union with Sean Walsh would have been aired once more.

Sean watched her looking around. "Was there anything in particular..?"

"Just looking, Sean."

"There'll have to be great changes.

"I know." She spoke solemnly and weightily. That was the only language he understood, heavy pontificating phrases. But she thought a look of alarm came into his eyes as if her words had been menacing.

"Did you find what you were looking for in the books?" His glance never left hers.

"I wasn't looking for anything, as I told you I just wanted to familiarise myself with the day-to-day workings before I met Mr. Green.

"I thought your mother wanted to see them." His lip curled a little.

"She did. She understands much more than any of us realised."

Benny didn't know why she had said this. Annabel Hogan knew nothing of the business that her dowry had helped to buy. She had deliberately stayed away from it, thinking it to be a man's world where the presence of a woman would be an intrusion. Men didn't buy suits and get measured in a place with a woman around it.

Suddenly Benny realised that this had been the tragedy of her parent's life. If only her mother had been able to get involved in the shop, how different things would have been. they would have shared so much more, their interest in Benny would not have been so obsessive. And her mother, in many ways a sharper, more practical person than Eddie Hogan, might have spotted this discrepancy, if such it was, and headed it off long ago. Long before it looked as serious as it looked now.

Emily Mahon knocked on the door of Nan's bedroom and came in carrying a cup of tea.

"Are you sure you don't want any milk in it?" Nan had taken to having a slice of lemon instead. It was puzzling for the rest of the family, who poured great quantities of milk in their tea which they drank noisily from large mugs.

"It is nice, Em. Try it," Nan urged.

"It's too late for me to change my ways, and no point in it either not like you." Emily knew that her daughter had found a special person at last. She knew from the amount of preparation that went on in the bedroom, from the new clothes, the wheedling money from her father and mainly from the sparkle in Nan's eyes.

On the bed lay a small petal hat. It matched exactly the wild silk dress and bolero in lilac trimmed with a darker purple. Nan was going to the races today. An ordinary working day for most people, a studying day for students, but a day at the races for Nan.

Emily was on late shift; they had the house to themselves.

"You'll be careful, love, won't you?"

"How do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. I don't ask you about him because I know you think it's bad luck, and we wouldn't want to be meeting him anyway, lowering your chances. But you will be careful?"

"I haven't slept with him, Em. I haven't a notion of it."

"I didn't mean only that." Emily had meant only that, but it seemed a bit bald to hear it all out in the open. "I meant, careful about not neglecting your college studies, and not going in fast cars."

"You meant sleeping, Em," Nan laughed affectionately at her mother.

"And I haven't, and I won't, so relax."

"Are you and I going to keep teasing each other for ever, or will we give in to ourselves and go to bed together soon?" Simon asked Nan as they drove to the race meeting.

"Are we teasing each other? I didn't notice." He looked at her admiringly. Nothing threw her. She was never at a disadvantage.

And she looked really beautiful today. Her photograph would probably be in the papers. Photographers always looked for somebody classy as well as the ladies with silly hats. His companion was exactly the girl they would seek out.

They got stuck with a lot of people as soon as they went into the Enclosure. At the parade ring Molly Black, a very bossy woman with a shooting stick, looked Nan up and down with some care. Her own daughter had once been a candidate for Simon Westward's interest. This was a very different type of girl for him to parade. Handsome certainly. A student by all accounts, living in Dublin, and giving nothing away whatsoever about herself or her background.

Mrs. Black moaned about the decree from Buckingham Palace abolishing the debutantes' presentation at Court.

"I mean, how will anyone know who anyone is once that goes?"

Molly Black said, staring at Nan with gimlet eyes.

Nan looked around for Simon, but he wasn't at hand. She resorted to her usual system, answering a question with another.

"Why are they abolishing it, really, do you think?"

"It's obvious. You have to be presented by someone who was herself presented. Some of these are on rather hard times, and they take a fee from really dreadful businessmen to present their ghastly daughters.

That's what caused it all."

"And did you have someone to be presented?" Nan's voice was cool and her manner courteous. She had hit home.

"Not my immediate family, no, obviously," said Mrs. Black, annoyed.

"But all one's friends, one's friends' children. It was so nice for them, such a good system. They met like-minded people until all this crept in. "But I suppose that it's easy to tell like-minded people, to recognise them, do you think?"

"Yes it is, quite easy." Molly Black was gruff. Simon was at her elbow again.

"Having a most interesting conversation about doing the season with your little friend here," Mrs. Black said to him. "Oh good."

Simon moved them away.

"What a battle-axe," he said. "Why do you bother with her then?"

"Have to." He shrugged. "She and Teddy are everywhere. Guarding their daughters from fortune hunters like myself."

"Are you a fortune hunter?" Her smile was light and encouraging.

"of course I am. You've seen the house," he said. "Come and let's have a very large drink and put a lot of money we can't afford on a horse. That's what living is all about."

He took her by the arm and led her across the grass through the crowds into the bar.

The meeting with Mr. Green was very low key. It was held in Lisbeg.

Benny had woken her mother up enough to attend by strong coffee and a stern talking-to.

Her mother must not ask that things be put off, or postponed until later. There was no later, Benny insisted. Hard as it was on all of them, they owed it to Father to make sure that things didn't end in a giant muddle.

Benny had begged her mother to recall any conversations about Sean's partnership. The letter existed, the letter saying that the intention was there. Had there been anything at all that made her think it had been formalised? Wearily, Annabel said that Father had kept saying there was no need to rush things, that they'd wait and see, that everything got done in time.

But had he said that about things in general, or about Sean's partnership?

She really couldn't remember. It was very difficult for her to remember, she complained. It seemed such a short time ago Eddie Hogan had been alive and well and running his own business. Today he was buried and they were meeting a solicitor to discuss business dealings that she knew nothing of. Could Benny not be more patient and understanding?

Patsy served coffee in the drawing room, aired and used now because of the stream of sympathizers who had filled the house.

There were just the three of them. Benny said they would telephone Sean Walsh and ask him to join them after a suitable period.

Mr. Green told them what they already knew, which was that the late Mr. Hogan, despite numerous reminders, suggestions and cautions, had made no will. He also told them what they didn't know, which was that the Deed of partnership had been drawn up and prepared ready for signature, but it had not been signed.

Mr. Green had been in Knockglen as was his wont on four Friday mornings in January, but on none of these occasions had Mr. Hogan approached him with a view to signing the document.

On the one occasion that Mr. Green had reminded him of it, the late Mr. Hogan had said that he still had something to think about. "Do you think he had discovered anything that made him change his mind? After all he did write that letter to Sean before Christmas?" Benny was persistent. "I know. I have a copy of the letter. It was sent to me in the post.

"By my father?"

"I rather think by Mr. Walsh."

"And there were no hints or feelings.. Did you get any ood that the thing was wrong, somehow?"

"Miss Hogan, you'll have to forgive me for sounding so formal, but I don't deal in the currency of feelings or moods. As a lawyer I have to deal in what is written down."

"And what is written down is an intent to make Sean Walsh a partner, isn't that right?"

"That is correct.

Benny had no proof, only an instinct. Possibly in the weeks before his death her father too had noticed that they semed to be lodging less than they took. But there had been no confrontation.

Had there been a face-to-face accusation he would have told his wife about it, and Mike in the workroom would have heard every word.

Perhaps her father had been waiting to find proof, so this is what she too must do.

Like her father she would ask to delay the partnership agreement, by saying that it was hard to know who should be the parties to it. Mr. Green, who was a cautious man, said that it was always wise to postpone any radical change until well after a bereavement. They agreed that now would be the time to have Sean Walsh to the house. Fresh coffee was brought in when Sean arrived. He explained that he had closed the shop. It was impossible to allow Mike to remain in control. He was a man who had given untold service in the past, no doubt, but as Mr. Hogan used to say, poor Mike wasn't able for a lot in today's world.

Her father used to say that, Benny remembered, but he had said it with affection and concern. He had not said it with the knell of dismissal echoing around it.

The arrangement was that for the moment everything would carry on as it was. Did Sean think they needed to employ somebody on a temporary basis? He said that all depended.

Depended on what? They wondered. On whether Miss Hogan was thinking of abandoning her university studies and coming to work in the shop with him. If that were to happen there would be no need to employ a casual.

Benny explained that nothing was further from her father's dreams. Her parents were both anxious that she should be a university graduate, but she would nonetheless take a huge and continuing interest in the shop.

She almost kicked her mother into wakefulness and a few alert statements that she would do the same thing.

Very casually and with no hint of anything being amiss, Benny asked if the very simple book-keeping system could be explained to them.

Laboriously Sean went through it. "So what's in the takings books should be more or less as what's in the lodging book each week." Her eyes were round and innocent.

"Yes. Give or take the drawings," he said. "Drawings?"

"Whatever your father took out of the till."

"Yes. And the little pink slips, they say what those were, is that right?"

"When he remembered." Sean's voice was sepulchral and he sounded as if he were trying not to speak ill of the dead.

"Your father was a wonderful man, as you know, but forgetful in the extreme.

"What might he have taken money out for?" Benny's heart was cold.

There would never be any proof, not if this was believed.

"Well, let me see." Sean looked at Benny. She was wearing her best outfit, the new skirt and bolero top that she had been given as a Christmas present.

"Well, maybe for something like your clothes, Benny. He might have taken money out to pay for an outfit without remembering to sign a drawing slip."

She knew now that she was defeated.

Kevin Hickey said that his father was coming up from Kerry and wondered could Mrs. Hegarty recommend a good hotel in Dunlaoghaire?

"God, Kevin, you pass a dozen of them yourself every day," Kit said.

"I think he wanted your choice rather than mine." Kit suggested the Marine, and she booked it for him. She supposed that Kevin's father would like to see the house where his son lived all through the academic year, and urged the boy to bring him round for a cup of tea during his visit.

Paddy Hickey was a big, pleasant man. He explained that he was in machinery in the country. He had a small bit of land, but there wasn't the streak of a farmer in any of them. His brothers had all gone to America, his sons had all done degrees in something, but none of them in agriculture.

Like all Kerry men he said he put a great emphasis on education.

Kit and Eve liked him. He talked easily about the boy of the house who had died, and asked to see a picture of him.

"May he rest in peace, poor young lad who never got a chance to know what it was like down here," he said.

It was awkward but affecting. Neither Kit nor Eve felt able to say anything in reply.

He thanked them for giving his son such a good home, and encouraging him to study.

"No hope he's getting anywhere with a fine-looking young girl like yourself?" he asked Eve.

"Ah no, he wouldn't look at me," Eve said, laughing. "Besides, she has a young law student besotted about her," Kit added.

"That must leave you lonely here sometimes, Mrs. Hegarty," he said.

"When all the young folk go out of an evening."

"I manage," Kit said.

Eve realised that the man was revving up to ask Kit Hegarty out.

She knew that Kit herself was quite unaware of this. "You do manage," Eve said. "Of course you do. And people want you everywhere, but I'd love you to go out and be silly, just once.

"Well, talking of being silly," said big Paddy Hickey, "I don't suppose there's a chance you'd accompany a poor lonely old Kerry widower out for a night on the town."

"Well, isn't that great," cried Eve, "because we're all going out tonight, every single one of us."

Kit looked startled.

"Come back for her about seven o'clock, Mr. Hickey. I'll have her ready for you," Eve said.

When he was gone Kit turned on Eve in a fury. "Why are you behaving like that? Cheap and pushy. It isn't at all like you."

"It's not like me for me, but by God I'd need it for you."

"I can't go out with him. I'm a married woman. "Oh yes?"

"Yes, I am. No matter what Joseph did in England I'm married anyway.

"Oh, belt up, Kit."

"Eve!"

"I mean it. I really do. Nobody's asking you to commit adultery with Kevin's father, you great fool, just go out with him, tell him about your living encumbrance across the channel if you want to. I wouldn't personally, but you will. But don't throw a decent man's invitation back in his face.

She looked so cross that Kit burst out laughing. "What'll I wear?"

"That's more like it." Eve gave her a big squeeze as they went upstairs to examine both their wardrobes.

I was wondering would you consider Wales a sort of break.. ."

Jack asked Benny hopefully. "No, it's too soon.

"I just thought it could be a change. They always say that's a good thing."

Benny knew what he meant. She longed to go to Wales with him. She longed to be his girl, on a boat sailing out from Dunlaoghaire to Holyhead. She longed to be sitting beside him on a train, and meeting the others and being Benny Hogan, Jack Foley's girl, with everything that that implied.

And she knew that a change could clear her head of the thoughts and the suspicions that buzzed around in it. She had tried to get her mother to make a visit. To go to her brothers and their wives. They had been very solicitous at the funeral. But Annabel Hogan told Benny sadly that they had never approved of her marrying Eddie all those years ago, a man younger than she was with no stake in any business. They had thought she should have done better for herself. She didn't want to go to stay in their homes, large country places, and tell them tales of a marriage which had worked for her but which they had never thought anything of.

No, she would stay in her home and try to get used to the way things were going to be from now on.

But Benny didn't want to explain all this to Jack. Jac wasn't a person to weigh down with problems. The great thing was that he seemed so glad to see her. He took no notice of the admiring glances coming at him from every corner of the Annexe. He sat on his hard wooden chair and drank cup after cup of coffee. He had two fly cemeteries, but Benny said she had gone off them. In fact her whole being cried out for one, but she was eating no cakes, bread puddings, chips or biscuits. If she had not had Jack Foley to light up everything for her, it would have been a very dull life indeed.

Nan was delighted to see Benny back at lectures.

"I had no one to talk to. It's great to see you again," she said.

Despite herself, Benny was pleased.

"You had Eve. Lord, I envy the two of you being here all the time."

"I don't think Eve is too pleased with me," Nan confided "I've been, going out with Simon, you see, and she doesn't approve.

Benny knew that was true: Eve did not approve, but it would have been the same with anyone who wentout with Simon. She felt that he should have made some effort to make provisions for his cousin once he was old enough to understand the situation.

And she felt that Nan had been sneaky. Eve always claimed that Benny had been dragged to the Hibernian with the express purpose of making the introduction. Benny thought that was impossible, but there were some subjects on which Eve was adamant.

"And where does he take you?" Benny loved to hear Nan's cool comments on the high life that Simon Westward was opening up.

She described the back bar in Jammet's, the Red Bank, the Baily and Davey Byrne's.

"He's so much older, you see," Nan explained. "So most of his friends meet in bars and hotels."

Benny thought that was sad. Imagine not going to where there was great fun, like the Coffee Inn, or the Inca or the Zanzibar. All the places she and Jack went to.

"And do you like him?"

"Yes, a lot."

"So why do you look so worried? He obviously likes you if he keeps asking you to all these places."

"Yes, but he wants to sleep with me." Benny's eyes were round. "You won't, will you?"

"I will, but how? That's what I'm trying to work out. Where and how."

Simon as it turned out had decided where and how. He had decided that it was going to be in the back of a car parked up the Dublin mountains.

He said it was awfully silly to pretend they both didn't want it.

Nan was ice cool. She said she had no intention of doing anything of the sort in a car.

"But you do want me?" Simon said. "Yes, of course I do."

"So?"

"You have a perfectly good house where we can be comfortable."

"Not at Westlands," Simon said. "And most definitely not in a car," said Nan.

Next day Simon was waiting at the corner of Earlsfort Terrace and Leeson Street as the students poured out at lunch time, wheeling bicycles or carrying books. They moved off to digs, flats and restaurants around the city.

Nan had said no, when Eve and Benny asked her to come to the Singing Kettle. Chips for Eve and black coffee for strong-willed Benny.

They didn't see her eyes dart around as if she knew someone would be waiting for her.

They didn't notice as Simon stepped out and took her hand.

"How amazingly crass I was last night," he said.

"Oh, that's perfectly all right."

"I mean it. It was unpardonable. I wondered if you might come down to a pretty little hotel I know for dinner and we might stay overnight.

If you'd like to."

"I'd like to, certainly," Nan said. "But sadly I'm not free until next Tuesday.

"You're making me wait."

"No, I assure you.

But she was indeed making him wait. Nan had worked out the safe period, and next Tuesday was the earliest she dared go to bed with Simon Westward.

Clodagh was sitting in her back room sewing. She had a glass door and could see if there was a customer who needed personal attention.

Otherwise her aunt and Rita, the new young girl they had taken on, could manage fine without her.

Benny came in and sat beside her. "How's Rita getting on?"

"Fine. You've got to choose them - quick enough to be of some use.

Not so quick that they'll take all your ideas and set up on their own.

It's the whole nature of business."

Benny laughed dryly. "I wish someone had told that to my father ten years ago," she said ruefully.

Clodagh went on sewing. Benny had never brought up the subject of Sean Walsh before. Even though it had been a matter of a lot of speculation in the last weeks. Just after Christmas there had been talk of him becoming a partner. Those who drank in Healy's Hotel said Mrs. Healy spoke of it very authoritatively. Clodagh, since the day she had been barred from Healy's, made it her business to find out everything that went on there, and all subjects discussed at its bar. She waited to hear what Benny had to say. "Clodagh, what would happen if Rita was taking money from the till?"

"Well, for a start I'd know it at the end of the day, or else the end of the week."

"You would?"

"Yes, and then I'd suggest cutting off her hands at the wrists, and Aunt Peggy would say we should just sack her."

"And suppose you couldn't prove it?"

"Then I'd be very careful, Benny, so careful you wouldn't believe it."

"If she had put it in a bank someone would know?"

"Oh yes. She wouldn't have put it in a bank, not around these parts.

It would have to be in cash somewhere."

"Like where?"

"Lord, I'd have no idea, and I'd be careful I didn't get caught looking."

"So you might have to let it go if you couldn't prove it."

"Crucifying as it would be, I might."

Benny heard the warning in her voice. They both knew they were not talking about the blameless Rita out in the shop. They each realised that it would be dangerous to say any more.

Jack Foley said he'd ring Benny when he got to Wales. They were staying in a guest house. He was going to share a room with Bill Dunne, who was going for the laugh and a beer. "You won't need me at all," Benny had said, laughing away her disappointment that she couldn't be there.

"Fine though Bill Dunne is and everything, I don't think there's much comparison. I wish you were coming with me."

"Well, ring me from the height of the fun," Benny said. He didn't ring. On night one, or night two, or night three. Benny sat at home.

She didn't take her mother up to Healy's Hotel to try out one of their new evening dinners, at Mrs. Healy's invitation.

Instead she stayed at home and listened to the clock ticking and to Shep snoring and to Patsy whispering with Mossy while her mother looked at the pictures in the fire and Jack Foley made no phone call from the height of the fun.

Nan packed her overnight bag carefully. A lacy nighty, a change of clothes for the next day, a very smart sponge bag from Brown Thomas, with talcum powder and a new toothbrush and toothpaste.

She kissed her mother goodbye.

"I'll be staying with Eve in Dunlaoghaire," she said. "That's fine," said Emily Mahon, who knew that wherever Nan was going to stay it was not with Eve in Dunlaoghaire.

Bill Dunne ran into Benny in the main hall.

"I'm meant to bump into you casually and see how the land lies," he said.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Is our friend in the doghouse or isn't he?"

"Bill, you're getting worse than Aidan. Talk English."

"In plain English, your erring boyfriend, Mr. Foley, wants to know if he dares approach you, he having not managed to telephone you."

"Oh, don't be so silly," Benny said, exasperated. "Jack knows I'm not that kind of girl, going into sulks and moods. He knows I don't mind something like that. If he couldn't phone he couldn't."

"Now I see why he likes you so much. And why he was so afraid that he'd upset you," Bill Dunne said admiringly. "You're a girl in a million, Benny.

Heather Westward didn't really like the thought of Aidan coming on their outings, but that was before she got to know him. Soon Eve complained that she liked Aidan more than she liked Eve. His fantasy world was vastly more entertaining than her own.

He told Heather that he and Eve were going to have eight children, with ten months between each child. They would marry in 1963 and keep having children until late 1970.

"Is that because you're Catholics?"

"No, it's because I want something to occupy Eve during my first hard years at the Bar. I shall be in the Law Library all day and night in order to make money for all the Knickerbocker Glories that these children will demand. I shall have to work at night in a newspaper as a sub-editor. I have it all worked out. Heather giggled into her huge ice cream. She wasn't absolutely sure if he was being serious. She looked to Eve for confirmation.

"That's what he thinks now, but actually what's going to happen is that he's going to meet some brainless little blonde who'll flutter long lashes at him and giggle, and he'll forget all about me and the long-term plan."

"Will you mind?" Heather spoke as if Aidan weren't there.

"No, I'll be quite relieved really. Eight children would be exhausting. Remember how Clara felt with all those puppies?"

"But you wouldn't have to have them all at the same time?"

Heather took the matter seriously.

"Though it would have its advantages," Aidan was reflective.

"We'd get free baby things, and you could come and help with the babysitting, Heather. You'd change four while Eve changed the other four."

Heather laughed happily.

"I wouldn't want a brainless little blonde, honestly," Aidan said to Eve. "I'm no Jack Foley."

Eve looked at him, astonished. "Jack?"

"You know, the Wales outing. It's all right. It's all right, Benny's forgiven him.

Bill Dunne says.

"She's forgiven him for not phoning her. She doesn't know anything about a brainless blonde that should be forgiven."

"Oh .. I don't think it was anything really.." Aidan backtracked.

Eve's eyes glinted.

"Well, only a ship that passed in the night, or the evening, a blonde, silly Welsh ship. I don't know, for God's sake. I wasn't there. I was only told."

"Oh, I'm sure you were told, and all the gory details."

"No, really. And Eve, I wouldn't go and say anything to Benny."

"I'm her friend."

"Does that mean you will or you won't?"

"It means that you'll never know.

Nan settled herself into Simon's car.

"You smell beautiful," he said. "Always the most expensive of perfumes."

"Most men don't recognise good perfume," she complimented him.

"You're very discerning."

They drove out of Dublin south through Dunlaoghaire, past Kit Hegarty's and past Heather's school.

"That's where my sister is."

Nan knew this. She knew that Eve went there on Sundays when Simon did not. She knew Heather was unhappy there and would much prefer a day school within reach of her beloved pony and dog and the country life she loved so much, pottering around Westlands. But she didn't let Simon know that she knew any of this.

With Simon she was determined to play it cool and distant. To ask little and seem to know little of his family and home life, so that he would not feel justified in prying into hers. Later, when she had really captivated him, then it would be time for him to get answers to his questions.

And by then he would know her well enough to realise that a drunken father and a messy family would form no part of the life that she led.

She believed that she had flirted with him for long enough and that she was timing it right to go to this hotel with him tonight.

She had looked the hotel up in a guide book, and knew all about it.

Nan Mahon would not arrive anywhere, even at a hotel to lose her virginity, unprepared and uninformed about the social background of the place.

He smiled at her, a crooked lopsided smile. He really was most attractive, Nan thought, even though he was smaller than she would have chosen. She didn't wear her really good high-heeled shoes when she was out with him. He was very confident of her, as if he had known that this day would come sooner rather than later. In fact that thought must have been on his mind. "I was very glad when you agreed to come to dinner and let us spend a whole evening together instead of rushing away at a taxi rank," he said.

"Yes, it's a lovely place, I believe. It has marvellous portraits and old hunting prints."

"Yes. How do you know that?"

"I can't remember. Someone told me."

"You haven't been here with any of your previous boyfriends?"

"I've never been to a hotel with anyone."

"Come on now. "True."

He looked slightly alarmed. As if the thought of what lay ahead was now more arduous and complicated than he had supposed. But a girl like Nan would not go ahead with something like this unless she intended it.

And when she said she had never been to a hotel with a chap, she might be speaking the literal truth. But a girl like this must have had some kind of experience, whether it was in a hotel bedroom or a sand dune.

He would not face that problem until he had to.

There were candles on the table, and they sat in a dark dining room with heavy oil paintings of the hotelier's stern ancestors.

The waiter spoke respectfully like an old retainer, and they seemed to recognise Simon, and treat him with respect. At the next table sat a couple. The waiter addressed the man as "Sir Michael'. Nan closed her eyes for an instant.In many ways being here was better than being in Westlands. He had been right.

It was like a stately home, and they were being treated like the aristocracy. Not bad for the daughter of Brian Mahon, builders' provider and drunk.

Nan had not been telling him any lies, Simon realised with surprise and some mild guilt. He was indeed the first man she had gone to a hotel with in any sense of the word. She lay there with the moonlight coming through the curtains and catching her perfect sleeping face. She really was a very beautiful girl, and she seemed to like him a lot. He drew her towards him again.

Benny knew that Sean Walsh's partnership could not be postponed for ever. If only she could get her mother to take an interest in the matter. Annabel woke heavy and leaden from a sleep that had been gained through tablets. It took her several hours to shake off the feeling of torpor. And when she did the loneliness of her position came back to her. Her husband dead before his time, her daughter gone all day to Dublin and her maid about to announce an engagement to Mossy Rooney, and only holding up the actual date out of deference to the bereavement in the family.

Dr. Johnson told Benny that these things took time. Sometimes a lot of time, but eventually, like Mrs. Kennedy in the chemist's, if the wife could be persuaded to take an interest in the business they would recover.

Dr. Johnson looked as if he were about to say something and thought better of it.

He had always hated Sean Walsh. Benny wondered could it have been about him?

"The problem is Sean, you see," she began tentatively. "When was it not?" Dr. Johnson asked. "If only Mother was in the shop and properly there, taking notice.."

"Yes, I know."

"Do you think she'll ever be able to do that? Or am I just running after a pipe dream?"

He looked affectionately at the girl with the chestnut hair, the girl he had watched grow from the chubby toddler into the big awkward schoolgirl and now fined down a bit he thought, but still by anyone's standards a big woman.

Benny Hogan may have had more comforts than some of the other children in Knockglen whose tonsillitis and chicken pox and measles he had cured, but she never had as much freedom. Now it looked as if the chains that bound her to home were growing even stronger.

"You have your own life to live," he said gruffly. "That's not much help, Dr. Johnson.

To his own surprise he heard himself agreeing with her. "You're right.

It isn't much help. And it wasn't much help saying to your mother, "Stop grieving and try living". She won't listen to me.

And it was no help at all, all those years ago, telling Birdie Mac to put her mother into a home, or telling Dessie Burns to go to the monk in Mount Mellary who gets people off the jar. But you have to keep saying these things. Just to stay sane.

As long as she had known him Benny had never known Dr. Johnson make such a speech. She stared at him open-mouthed.

He pulled himself together. "If I thought it would get that long drink of water, Sean Walsh, out of your business and miles from here, I'd give Annabel some kind of stimulant to keep her working in there twelve hours a day."

"My father had an undertaking to make Sean a partner. We'll have to honour it."

"I suppose so." Dr. Johnson knew that this was so. "Unless there was any reason my father didn't sign the deed." She looked at him beseechingly. It was the smallest hope in the world that Eddie Hogan might have confided his suspicions to his old friend Maurice Johnson.

But no. With a heavy heart she heard Dr. Johnson say gloomily that he didn't know any reason.

"It's not as if he was the kind of fellow who'd ever be caught with his hands in the till. He hasn't spent tuppence on himself since the day he arrived."

Sean Walsh was having his morning coffee in Healy's. From the window he could see if anyone entered Hogan's.

Mike could cope with an easy sale, or measuring a regular customer.

Anything more difficult would have to be monitored.

Mrs. Healy sat beside him. "Any word of the partnership?"

"They're going to honour it. They said so in front of the solicitor."

"So they might. It should be done already. Your name should be above the shop, for all to see.

"You're very good to have such a high opinion of me.. um..

Dorothy." He still thought of her as Mrs. Healy.

"Nothing of the sort, Sean. You deserve to make more of yourself.

And be seen to be what you are."

"I will; One day people will see. I move slowly. That's my way.

"Just as long as you're moving, not standing still."

"I'm not standing still," Sean Walsh assured her.

"When can I see you again?" Simon said as he dropped Nan off outside University College.

"What do you suggest?"

"Well, I'd suggest tonight, but where could we go?"

"We could go for a drink anywhere."

"But afterwards?"

"I'm sure you know some other lovely hotels." She smiled at him.

He did, but he couldn't afford them. And he couldn't take her to Buffy and Frank's place where he stayed when he was in Dublin.

And she wasn't going to take him to her home. A car seemed out of the question, and Westlands was off limits as far as he was concerned.

"We'll think of something," he promised. "Goodbye," Nan said.

He looked after her with admiration. He hadn't met a girl like this in a long time.

"Benny, you look awful. You haven't even combed your hair," Nan said.

"Thanks a bundle, that's all I need."

"It is what you need, actually," Nan said. "You've got the most handsome man in college panting after you. You can't turn up looking like a mess.

"I'll comb my hair then," Benny said ungraciously. The most handsome man in college was not panting after her. He was looking like a guilty sheep, every time he met her he apologised for the whole Wales thing.

Benny had said he must forget it, these things happened. And she wasn't making an issue of it, so why should he?

She had even arranged to stay in town this Friday, and suggested they have an evening together. She had asked Eve if they could stay in Dunlaoghaire. She had told Patsy that she would be gone and she had explained to her mother that she needed one night a week in Dublin.

That everyone got over a loss in their own way, and her way had to be spending time with her friends. Her mother's eyes, dull and listless, had clouded as if this was one further blow.

Worst of all Jack said that Friday wasn't a good night for him.

They had a meeting in the rugby club, and then they'd all go for a drink afterwards.

"Make it another night," he said casually. Benny had wanted to smack him very hard. He was as thoughtless as any child.

Why did he not realise how hard it was for her to arrange anything at all? Now she had to go and unpick everything she had arranged. Eve, Kit, Patsy, her mother. Bloody hell, she wouldn't.

She'd stay in Dublin anyway that night and maybe go to the pictures with Eve and Aidan. They had asked her often enough, and to have a curry afterwards.

They were still whistling the theme tune of Bridge on the River Kwai when they arrived at the Golden Orient in Leeson Street.

They met Bill Dunne coming out of Hartigan's, and he joined them for the meal. Aidan took them through the menu as an expert.

Everyone was to order something different, then they could taste four dishes and become curry bores.

"But we all like kofta," Eve complained. "Too bad. The mother of my children is not going to be a one-dish lady," Aidan said.

"Where's Jack?" Bill Dunne enquired. "At a rugby club meeting."

Benny spoke casually. She thought she saw the boys exchange glances, but decided that she was imagining it. All that watching of Sean Walsh made her see glances and looks where none existed.

Jack Foley rang, very cross, on Saturday.

"I believe there was a great outing last night. The only night of the week I couldn't get away," he said.

"You never told me. You always said Fridays were marvellous nights in Dublin." Benny was stung by the injustice of it all.

"And so they were for some, Bill Dunne was telling me."

"What night are you free next week, Jack? I'll arrange to stay in town.

"You're sulking," he said."

"You're sulking over the Wales thing."

"I told you, I understand that you didn't have time to ring me. I am not sulking over a phone call."

"Not the phone call," he said. "The other thing."

"What other thing?" asked Benny.

Nan and Simon met three times without being able to do what they both wanted to do, which was to make love.

"What a pity you don't have a little flat in town," he said to her.

"What a pity you don't," she countered. What they really needed was a small place where nobody would see them, somewhere they could steal in and out of.

It needn't be in Dublin. It could be miles away. Petrol was no problem. Apparently Simon put it all down for the farm. It was complicated, but it was free.

He just needed to be back in Knockglen to fill up. Nan remembered Eve's cottage by the quarry. She had seen where Eve put the key under a stone in the wall. Nobody went there. Except sometimes a nun to keep an eye on the place. But the nun wouldn't be keeping an eye on the place at night.

There were only lights in one cottage. Nan remembered that this was the one where a silent man called Mossy lived. She had heard Benny and Eve talking about him once.

"That's the man our Bee Moore wanted for herself, but some other took him away," Simon said, smiling loftily at his local knowledge.

Nan had brought a pair of sheets, pillowcases and two towels.

Plus her sponge bag, this time with soap as well. They must leave no trace of their visit.

Simon couldn't understand why they didn't just ask Eve. Nan said this was not even remotely possible. Eve would say no.

"Why? You're her friend. I'm her cousin."

"That's why," Nan said.

Simon had shrugged. They were here, so what did it matter? They dared not light the fire or the range. They brought the bottle of champagne to bed immediately.

Next morning it was very chilly.

"I'll have to bring my primus stove if I can find it," Simon said shivering.

Nan folded the sheets and towels carefully and put them into the bag.

"Can't we leave them here?" he asked. "Don't be ridiculous."

Washed briskly in cold water, but as yet unshaven, Simon examined the cottage for the first time. "She has some nice things here," he commented. "That came from Westlands, definitely." He nodded at the piano. Does Eve play?"

"No, I don't think so."

He touched other things. This was definitely from the house, and that might have been. He seemed to know even though he was only a child when his aunt had begun the ill-advised marriage, and started to live in this cottage instead of a Big House similar to the one she grew up in.

He laughed at a statue in place of honour on the mantlepiece.

"Who's he, when he's at home?" he said looking at a china figure of a man with a crown and a globe and a cross.

"The Infant of Prague," Nan replied. "Well, what's he doing on display like this?"

"Probably one of the nuns gave it to her.

They do come and clean the house. Why not leave it there to please them when you don't have to look at it yourself?" Nan asked.

He looked at her admiringly. "You're a businesswoman as well as everything else, Nan Mahon."

"Let's go," she said. "It would be terrible to be caught first time."

"You think there'll be others?" he teased. "Only if you get your primus stove going," she laughed. On the first floor of Hogan's the rooms were big and highceilinged. That was where the family that owned the shop formerly used to live. It was where Eddie Hogan and his bride lived for the first year of their marriage.

They had bought Lisbeg just before Benny was born.

The rooms on that first floor were still filled with lumber. To the furniture which was already stacked there came extra lumber, old rails not used in the shop, bales empty now of material, boxes. It was not a pretty sight.

The rooms where Sean Walsh had had his home for going on ten and a half years were on the floor above that.

A bedroom, another room which could be a sitting room, and a very old-fashioned bathroom with a geyser that looked like a dangerous missile.

Benny had not been up there since she was about eight or nine.

She remembered her father saying that he had asked Sean would he like a key to his own area. But Sean had been insistent that he did not.

If he had taken the money he would not have hidden it in his own rooms, since that was the first place that would be searched if it ever were found out. It would be pointless for her to search.

Pointless and dangerous. She had not forgotten Clodagh's heavy warning.

Things would be quite bad enough if Sean Walsh were not made a partner.

There would be an outrage in Knockglen if he were wrongfully accused of stealing from her father. Benny did not relish the thought of hunting in his private rooms for some evidence. But she felt so sure that there must be something, perhaps in the form of a post office book from some faraway branch.

In the beginning as she had ploughed through her father's simplistic and even then not very thorough bookkeeping methods, she had only suspected that Sean must be taking away a sum of money each week. But now she knew it. She knew it because of one simple lie he had told.

When she had tried to ask him to explain the system of drawing slips in front of Mr. Green, she had asked for an example. Sean Hogan had pointed to the outfit she wore and suggested that Benny's own clothes might be something that her father drew money from the till to pay for.

The thought had raised a lump in her throat. Until she had looked at the cheques that were returned with the bank statement. Her father had paid for every single garment he had bought for her. Clothes she had liked, clothes she had hated, each one paid for in Pine's by cheque with his slanting writing.

She wished it were all over. That Sean had been unmasked, and that he had left town. That her mother had recovered her spirit and gone in to run the business. And most of all that someone would tell her exactly what had happened in Wales.

Simon brought his primus stove. Nan brought two pretty china candlesticks, and two pink candles.

Simon brought a bottle of champagne. Nan brought two eggs, and herbs, and bread and butter. She brought some instant coffee powder too. She made them a glorious omelette in the morning.

Simon said it made him feel so excited they should go straight back to bed.

"We've just remade it with all her things, silly," Nan said. Nan never referred to Eve by name.

After a time Simon stopped calling her Eve as well.

"Where does that daughter of yours spend the nights?" Brian Mahon asked.

"You were very drunk a couple of times, Brian. I think she was frightened. She goes out to her girlfriend, Eve, in Dunlaoghaire.

They all get on together, that Eve and Benny down in Knockglen.

They're her friends. We should be glad she has them."

"What's the point of rearing children and having them stay out at night?" he grumbled.

"Paul and Nasey often don't come home. You never worry about them."

"Nothing could happen to them," he said. "Nor Nan either," Emily Mahon said, with a small silent prayer.

Nan was out three nights a week at least nowadays. She did hope most fervently that nothing would happen to her beautiful golden daughter.

Mossy Rooney saw lights there one evening. He walked straight by.

Eve Malone must have come home quietly for a night, he thought to himself. None of his business.

The very next day Mother Francis asked him if he would do a job on the guttering at the cottage. She came up to show him where it was falling away.

"Eve hasn't been back for weeks, the bold child," Mother Francis scolded. "If it wasn't for yourself and myself, Mossy, the place would fall down around her ears."

Mossy kept his peace.

Eve Malone might have wanted to come back to her house without letting the nuns know.

Sean Walsh walked the quarry road at night. It was a place you didn't meet many people. It left him free to think of his plans his hopes.

his future. It was a space where he could consider Dorothy Healy and the interest she showed in him. She was several years older than him.

There was no denying that. He had always thought in terms of marrying a much younger woman. A girl in fact.

But there were advantages in a union with an older woman. Eddie Hogan had done so after all. It had never hurt his prospects. He had been perfectly happy in his life, limited though it was. He had fathered a child.

Sean's thoughts were in a turmoil as he passed the cottage. He wasn't really aware of his surroundings.

He thought he heard music coming from inside. But he must have been imagining it.

After all, Eve wasn't at home and who else would be in there at midnight playing the piano?

He shook his head and tried to work out what length of time Mr. Green the solicitor had in mind when he spoke about the regrettably snail-like process of the law.

Dr. Johnson pulled his prescription pad across the desk. Mrs. Carroll had always been a difficult person. He felt that she needed the services of Father Ross more than himself, but was it fair to dump all the neurotic moaners on to the local priest and call the whole thing a religious crisis?

"I know I'm not going to be popular for saying so, Dr. Johnson, but I have to say what's true. That cottage up in the quarry is haunted.

That woman died roaring and her poor halfwitted husband, God be good to him, may have taken his own life, God bless the mark afterwards. No wonder a house like that is haunted."

"Haunted?" Dr. Johnson was weary.

"No soul died at peace there. No wonder one of them comes back to play the piano at night," she said.

Heather rang Westlands. She was coming home next weekend. Bee Moore said that was grand, she'd tell Mr. Simon.

"I'll be going to tea with Eve in her cottage," Heather said proudly.

"I wouldn't fancy that myself. People say it's haunted," said Bee Moore, who had heard that for a fact.

Heather and Eve sat making toast by the fire in the cottage. They had long toasting forks that Benny had found for them.

She said there were amazing things on the first floor of Hogan's shop, but she didn't like to denude the place entirely in case bloody Sean was going to be a partner. So she had just brought something he could hardly sue for through every court in the land.

"Is it definite about the partnership?" Eve wanted to know.

"Some time, when you have about thirty-five hours.."

"I have."

"Not now.

"Do you want me to go away? I could go out to the pony," Heather said.

"No, Heather, it's a long, long story, and it would depress me telling it and depress Eve listening to it. Stay where you are.

"Right." Heather put another of Sister Imelda's wonderful tea cakes on the toasting fork.

"Anything new though?" Eve thought Benny looked troubled.

But Benny shook her head. There was a resigned sort of look on her face that Eve didn't like. As if Benny wanted to get into a big fight over something and lacked the energy.

"I could help. Like the old days. The wise woman would let two people tackle it."

"The Wiser Woman might give in to the inevitable."

"What does your mother say?"

"Very little."

"Benny, will you have a toasted cake?" Heather's solution for nearly every crisis.

"No. I'm fooling myself that if I don't eat, this fellow will like me more and stop going off with Welsh floozies." Eve sighed heavily. So someone had told her.

They cycled along cheerfully, Eve saluting almost everyone they passed.

Heather knew no one. But she knew fields that would have donkeys at the gate, and a gap in the hedge where you could see a mare and two foals. She told Eve about the trees and their leaves and how her nature scrapbook was the only thing she was any good at. She wouldn't mind school work if it was all to do with pressing flowers and leaves and drawing the various stages of a beech tree. Eve thought how odd it was about two first cousins, with only seven years between them, living only a mile and a half apart, never having met, and one knowing every person who walked the road and the other every animal in every farm.

It was strange to ride up the ill-kept ridge-filled drive of Westlands with the young woman of the house. Even though she was no outsider, coming to ask for a handout, Eve still felt odd and out of place.

"We'll go in through the kitchen." Heather had thrownher bicycle up against the wall.

"I don't know.." Eve began. Her voice was an almost exact copy of Heather's when lunch at the convent was suggested.

"Come on," Heather said.

Mrs. Walsh and Bee Moore were surprised to see her, and not altogether pleased.

"You should have come in at the front when you had a guest," Mrs. Walsh said reprovingly.

"It's only Eve. We had lunch in the kitchen of the convent."

"Really?" Mrs. Walsh's face expressed very clearly that Eve had been unwise to receive the daughter of the Big House so poorly.

The very least that might have been arranged was lunch in the parlour.

"I told her you made great shortbread,' Heather said hopefully.

"We must make up a nice little box of it some time." Mrs. Walsh was polite, but cold. She definitely didn't want Eve Malone on her patch.

From inside the house, Eve heard someone playing a piano. "Oh, good,' Heather said, pleased. "Simon's home."

Simon Westward was charming. He came forward with both his hands out to Eve.

"Lovely to see you here again."

"I didn't really intend.. ." She wanted terribly to tell him that she had no intention of being a casual visitor to his house. She must make him understand that she was doing it to please a child, a lonely child, a lonely child who wanted to share the place with her. But those words were hard to find.

Simon probably had no idea of what she was trying to say.

"It's great you're here now, it's been far too long!" he said.

She looked around her. This was not the drawing room she had been in on her first visit. It was another, southfacing room, with faded chintz and old furniture. A small desk stuffed with papers stood in the corner, a large piano near the window. Imagine one family having so many rooms and enough furniture to fill them.

Enough pictures for their walls.

Her eyes roamed around the portraits, hoping to find the one of her mother. The one she had not known existed.

Simon had been watching her. "It's on the stairs,' he said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I know Nan told you. Come, and I'll show it to you." Eve felt her face burn. "It isn't important."

"Oh, but it is. A painting of your mother. I didn't show it to you that first day because it was all a bit strained. I was hoping you'd come again. But you didn't, and Nan did, so I showed it to her. I hope you're not upset. "Why should I be?" Her fists were clenched.

"I don't know, but Nan seemed to think you were." How dare they talk about her!

How dare they, and whether or not she was upset.

With tears stinging at the back of her eyes, Eve walked like a robot to the foot of the stairs where hung a picture of a small dark woman, with eyes and mouth so like her own she felt she was looking in a mirror.

She must have so little of her father about her, if there was so much of Sarah Westward there already. Sarah had her hand on the back of a chair, but she didn't look relaxed and at peace. She looked as if she were dying for it all to be over so that she could get away.

Somewhere, anywhere.

She had small hands and big eyes. Her dark hair was cut short, as the thirties fashion would have dictated. But looking at her you got the feeling that she might have preferred it shoulder length and pushed behind her ears. like Eve's.

Was she beautiful? It was impossible to know. Nan had only said that she was in order to let Eve know that she had seen the picture.

Nan. Nan had walked around this house, as a guest. "Has Nan been back here since then?" she asked. "Why do you say that?"

"I just wondered."

"No. That was the only day she was at Westlands," he said.

There was something slightly hesitant about the way he said it, but yet she knew it was the truth. Out in the kitchen they were getting a grudging afternoon tea ready. Eve thought that the food they were eating this day would never end, but Heather was loving it and it would be a pity to spoil it for her now.

Eve admired the pony and the way Heather had cleaned its tack.

She admired Clara's puppies and refused the offer of one as guard dog.

"It would be good to look after your property," Heather tried to persuade her.

"I'm not there often enough."

"That's all the more reason. Tell her, Simon. "It's up to Eve."

"I'm hardly ever there,. Only the odd weekend. A dog would die of loneliness.

"But whoever is there could walk him." Heather held an adorable little male puppy up for inspection. It was seven-eighths labrador, she explained, all the best, but with a little of the silliness taken out.

"No one but me, and Mother Francis from time to time."

"Does she sleep there?" Heather asked. "Heavens no. So you see, no need for a guard dog." She didn't think to ask why Heather supposed the nun might sleep in her little cottage. She just assumed it was part of Heather's continuing ignorance of convent life. And she didn't notice any change of expression in Simon's face.

Mrs. Walsh came to tell them that tea was served in the drawing room.

Eve walked in to meet her grandfather for the second time in her life.

The grandfather that Nan Mahon had told everyone was so charming and such a wonderful old man. She felt herself pushing her shoulders back, and taking those deep breaths that Nan said were so helpful if you had to do something that was a bit stressful.

As if Nan would know!

He looked about the same. Possibly a bit more alert than on the previous occasion. She had heard that he had been taken ill on Christmas Day, and that Dr. Johnson had been summoned, but that it had all passed.

It was touching to see Heather, the child who had grown up with him and who loved him as part of the only life she knew, sit beside him, nestling in to him and helping him with his cup.

"No need to cut up the sandwiches for you today, Grandfather.

They're absolutely tiny. It must be to impress Eve." The old man looked across at where Eve sat awkwardly on a hard-backed and uncomfortable chair. He looked at her long and hard.

"You remember Eve, don't you?" Heather tried. There was no reply.

"You do, of course, Grandfather. I was telling you how good she's been to Heather, taking her out of school.."

"Yes, yes indeed."

He was cuttingly distant. It was as if someone told him that a beggar on the street had once been a fine hard worker.

She could have just smiled and let it pass. But there was something about the way he spoke which went straight to Eve's heart. The temper that Mother Francis had always said would be her undoing bubbled to the surface. "Do you know who I am, Grandfather?" she said in a loud, clear voice. There was a note of challenge in her voice that made them all look at her, startled, Heather, Simon and the old man. Nobody helped him out.

He would have to answer now or mumble. "Yes. You are the daughter of Sarah and some man."

"The daughter of Sarah and her husband Jack Malone."

"Yes, possibly."

Eve's eyes blazed. "Not possibly. Definitely. That was his name.

You may not have received him here, but he was Jack Malone. They were married in the parish church." He raised his eyes. They were the same dark almondshaped eyes that they all had, except that Major Westward's were smaller and narrower. He looked hard at Eve. "I never doubted that she married the handyman Jack Malone.

I was saying that it is possible he was your father. Possible, but not at all as definite as you believe She was numb with shock, the words filled with hate seemed to make no sense. His face, slightly lopsided, was working with the effort of speaking clearly and making himself understood.

"You see, Sarah was a whore," he said. Eve could hear the clock ticking.

"She was a whore with an itch, an itch that many handymen around the place found it easy to satisfy. We lost so many good grooms, I remember."

Simon was on his feet in horror. Heather sat where she had been, on the little footstool, the one with beaded trimming at her grandfather's feet. Her face was white.

He had not finished speaking.

"But let us not think back over unpleasant times. You may indeed be the child of the handyman Jack Malone. If you wish to believe that, then .. that is what you must believe.."

He reached for his tea. The effort of speaking had exhausted him.

His cup shook and rattled against the saucer.

Eve's voice was low, and because of that all the more menacing.

"In all my life there has only been one thing I was ashamed of. I was ashamed that my father used a religious occasion, the funeral of my mother, to call down a curse on you. I wished he had more respect for the people who had come down to mourn. I even thought that God might have been angry with him for it. But now I know he didn't curse you hard enough, and his wish wasn't answered. You have lived on full of hate and bile. I will never look on your face again. And I will never forgive you for the things you said today."

She didn't pause to see how the others took her departure. She walked straight out of the door, and through the big hall into the kitchen.

Without speaking to Mrs. Walsh or to Bee Moore she let herself out of the back door. She got on her bicycle and without a backward glance cycled down the rutted avenue that led from her grandfather's house.

At the window of the drawing room Heather stood, tears pouring down her face.

When Simon came to comfort her she pummelled him with her fists.

"You let her go. You let her go. You didn't stop him. Now she'll never be my friend again."

Dearest Benny, dearest, dearest Benny, Do you remember those shaking tempers I used to get at school? I thought they had passed over like spots do, but no.

I was so desperately and hurtfully insulted by that devil in a wheelchair out in Westlands that I am not normal to speak to, and I'm going back to Dublin. I haven't told Mother Francis about the row, and I won't tell Kit, or Aidan. But I will tell you when I'm able. Please forgive me for running off, and not meeting you tonight. I've asked Mossy to take this note in to you, but honestly it's the best thing.

See you on Monday.

Love from a very distraught Eve When Mossy handed her the note Benny first thought it was from Sean Walsh, that it was some kind of threat or instruction to back off her investigations.

She was deeply upset to hear of a row bad enough to send Eve away in one of her very black moods. Sorry, too, because that nice child would be caught in the middle of it. And selfishly she was sorry, because she had hoped to spend the evening telling Eve all about her ever-growing belief that Sean Walsh had been salting away money and to ask her advice about where they should look for it.

When Eve let herself into the house, Kevin Hickey was in the kitchen.

"Not out, wowing the girls on a Saturday night, Kevin?" she said.

She had promised herself that she would be a professional. This was her job, this house her place of work. She would not allow her personal anger to rub off on the guests.

Kevin said, "I did have a sort of a plan, but I thought I'd hang around." He nodded with his head, indicating upstairs towards Kit's room.

"She's had some bad news, apparently. Her old man died in England. I know she hated him, but it's a shock all the same.

Eve came into the dark room with two cups of tea and sat beside the bed. She knew Kit would not be asleep.

Kit lay, head propped up by pillows and cushions, smoking.

Through the window the lights of Dunlaoghaire harbour were glinting and shining.

"How did you know I needed you?"

"I'm psychic. What happened?"

"I'm not sure. An operation. It didn't work."

"I'm very sorry, Eve said.

"She said it was very unexpected, the operation, that he had no idea that there was anything wrong with him. That if ever he were to die she was to ring me and say he had no idea there was anything wrong.

"Who said all this?"

"Some landlady. He had given her fifty pounds in an envelope and said it was for her.

Eve was silent. It was all curious and complicated and messy, like everything Joseph Hegarty seemed to have touched in his life.

"What's worrying you, Kit?"

"He must have known he was dying. That's why he came back. He must have wanted to spend the last few weeks here. And I didn't let him."

"No, didn't he make a big point about that? He didn't know."

"He said that because of the insurance."

"The what?"

"Insurance policy. He's done what he never did in his life, he's made sure I'm provided for."

Eve felt a big lump in her throat.

"They're going to bury him in England next weekend. They're extraordinary over there. Funerals aren't the next day. It's at a weekend so people could get there. Will you come with me, Eve? We could go on the boat.

"Of course I will."

Dear Heather, I have to go to a funeral in England. Kit's ex-husband died. She needs me to go with her. That's why I won't be there on Sunday.

Nothing to do with other things. See you the weekend after. Maybe Aidan will come as well.

Just so that you know it's urgent, otherwise I'd come.

Love, Eve Heather read the letter silently at breakfast. Miss Thompson, who was the only nice teacher in Heather's opinion, looked at her.

"Everything all right?"

"Yes."

Miss Thompson shrugged and left her alone. You couldn't push adolescent girls for confidences they didn't want to give.

She's never coming again, Heather said to herself over and over.

She said it during morning prayers, during mathematics and during geography. Soon it became like the refrain of a song you can't get out of your mind. "She's never coming again."

Miss Thompson didn't remember about the letter, but she did say that she had noticed Heather was extremely quiet and withdrawn during the week. And she went back over it all, as they all had to on Friday night when Heather Westward didn't turn up for supper, and couldn't be found anywhere on the school premises.

And she had not turned up at home. It had to be admitted by all those who didn't want to believe it, that Heather had run away from school.

Chapter 15

As soon as Simon heard that Eve Malone had gone to England he said that was where they would find Heather.

Eve had not acknowledged his note of apology and explanation that his grandfather's hardening of the arteries made him unstable and unreliable and therefore someone whose opinions and views were best ignored.

Simon wondered had the note been too formal? He had told Nan about it, and to his surprise she had been critical of him.

Normally she had been so cool, unruffled and giving so little of herself and her views.

"Why was it such an awful letter?" he asked anxiously. "Because it sounds icy, like your grandfather."

"It wasn't meant to be. It was meant to be low key, to try and bring down the temperature."

"It did that all right," Nan agreed.

On Friday when the school had been in touch he rang Nan. "You know what you were saying about the letter. . . do you think that's why she took Heather?"

"Of course she didn't take Heather." Nan was dismissive. "So where is Heather then?"

"She ran away because you were all so awful."

"Why don't you run away then?" He sounded petulant. "I like awful people. Didn't you know?"

The schoolgirls were frightened. Nothing like this had ever happened before. They were all being asked extraordinary questions. Had they seen anyone come in to the school, had they seen Heather leave with anyone else?

Her school coat was gone, her hated school beret left on the bed.

Her pyjamas and sponge bag, her book of pressed flowers, her snaps of the pony and Clara and her puppies had disappeared. They were normally on display beside her bed where other girls had pictures of their families.

Heather's classmates were asked had she been upset? They hadn't noticed.

"She's very quiet really," said one of them. "She doesn't like it here," said another.

"She's not much fun. We don't take much notice of her," said the class bully.

Miss Thompson's heart was heavy.

There had been no sign of Heather on the bus. Mikey said he knew her well. A big thick lump of a child as square as a half door.

Of course he'd have noticed her.

She would have had eleven shillings at the most, and possibly a lot less. Heather was known to spend a few pennies on sweets.

By the time Simon arrived at the school they had called the guards.

"Is it really necessary to have the police?" he said. The headmistress was surprised. "Since she hasn't gone home and you could throw no light on anywhere she might be. .

Miss Thompson looked at Simon with some dislike.

"And we have assumed that there was nothing for her to run home to apart from her pony and her dog, and she didn't go there anyway, so we thought you would have wanted us to call in the guards. It would be the normal thing for anyone to do, the normal thing to do."

Simon looked at her miserably. Until now he hadn't realized how far from normal poor Heather's life had been.

He would make it up to her, when they got her back from England, which was undoubtedly where Eve had taken her.

At the guest house in Dunlaoghaire, the guards and Simon found three students holding the fort. Mrs. Hegarty had gone to England to a funeral. Eve Malone had gone with her. Yes, of course they had left an emergency number where they could be contacted.

Mrs. Hegarty had said she would ring anyway next morning to see if they had managed their breakfasts.

It was now eleven o" clock on a Friday night. The mail boat would not yet have arrived at Holyhead. Mrs. Hegarty would not be in London until seven in the morning. She and Eve would take the mail train to Euston.

There was a discussion about telephoning the police in Wales to look for Heather.

There was some doubt on the part of the two guards who were busy taking down details.

"You're absolutely sure this is where your sister is, sir?" they asked again.

"There's nowhere else she could be." He was sure of that. "Did anyone see Mrs. Hegarty and Miss Malone off at the boat?" one guard asked.

"I did." The boy who said he was Kevin Hickey, veterinary student, was spokesman.

"And were they accompanied by a twelve-year-old girl?"

"You mean Heather?"

Simon and the Guards had not explained the purpose of their enquiries.

"Was she with them?" Simon asked.

"Of course not. That's the problem. Eve was worried because she was going to this funeral. She was afraid Heather wouldn't understand that she simply had to go away."

Eve had left a box of chocolates which she had instructed Kevin to deliver to the school on Sunday, with a note from Eve.

"Could you give them to her, if you're connected?" he asked Simon.

They asked to see the note.

It was simple and to the point: "Just to show I haven't forgotten you.

Next week, you choose where we go. Love, Eve."

Simon read it and for the first time since his sister's disappearance had been discovered tears came to his eyes.

On Saturday morning there could hardly have been anyone in Knockglen who didn't know about it. Bee Moore had done her fair share of telling, and Mr. Flood, who had been one of the early recipients of the news, had been out consulting with the nuns in the tree, but finding to his disappointment that there was no heavenly message about Heather.

"I had hoped she might have been in Heaven. Well, her kind of Heaven," he said, remembering that he mustn't lose sight of the fact that the Westwards were Protestants.

Dessie Burns said there'd be a fine reward for anyone who found her, and mark his words she was kidnapped, and what's more kidnapped by someone in the know.

Paccy Moore said that the chances of being kidnapped by anyone in the know were slim. If you knew anything about the Westwards you'd know they could hardly pay their bills. If the poor child had been kidnapped it was by some gombeen Dubliner who thought that she was wealthy because she had a posh accent and came from a big house.

Mrs. Healy said to Sean Walsh that they'd be singing a different song up at Westlands now. They had always been so distant and different, and things that happened to ordinary people never happened to them.

Sean wondered why she had turned against them And Mrs. Healy said it wasn't a matter of that so much as being slightly peeved. Mr. Simon Westward had implied that he would be having the most important of people to stay at the hotel in the near future, if they had evening dinners. Mrs. Healy had put on those dinners, but Mr. Westward had never partaken.

"But other people have," Sean Walsh said. "You've made your profit on them, that's all that matters." Mrs. Healy agreed, but you didn't like to be hopping and jumping like people in a gate cottage just for the whims of the aristocracy.

She said as much to Mrs. Kennedy from the chemist who looked at her thoughtfully, and said that it was a sad thing to have a hard heart when there was a child's life at stake, and Mrs. Healy changed her tune drastically.

Clodagh told the news to Peggy Pine. Clodagh thought that a man in a raincoat had offered poor Heather a whole box of chocolates in Dunlaoghaire harbour.

Mario said that all the men of Knockglen should go out and beat the hedges with sticks looking for her.

"You see too many bad films," Fonsie complained. "Well, where do you think she is, Mister Smartie Pants?" Mario enquired.

"I see too many bad films too. I think she went for that bloody horse of hers, and rode off into the sunset."

But it was one of the many theories that didn't hold up because the pony was still up in Westlands.

Peggy Pine went up to the convent to talk to Mother Francis. "Eve was on the phone from London," Mother Francis said. "I could hear her grinding her teeth from there. Apparently they thought she had taken Heather with her. I dread to think what she'll do when she gets back."

"But Eve would never had done that."

"I know, but there was some kind of row up in Westlands last week.

Needless to say Miss Malone didn't tell me anything about it. . .

Lord, Peggy, where would that child be?"

"When you think about running away you think about running to somewhere you were happy." Peggy Pine was thoughtful. It didn't get them much further.

Heather had never seemed to be all that happy anywhere. Sister Imelda had started the thirty days prayer. She said it had never been known to fail.

"The poor child. I never met a girl who was as appreciative. You should have heard her telling me how much she enjoyed toasting my tea cakes up in Eve's cottage."

Suddenly Mother Francis knew where Heather was.

She reached into the gap in the wall and as she suspected the key wasn't there.

Mother Francis moved softly to the front door of Eve's cottage.

It was closed. She peeped in the window and saw a large box on the table. There was something moving inside it, a cat she thought first, a black cat. Then she saw it was a bird.

A wing of black feathers came at an awkward angle out of the box.

Heather had found a wounded bird and had decided to cure it. Not very successfully, by all appearances. There were feathers and bits of torn-up newspaper everywhere.

Heather, flushed and frightened-looking, was trying to get a fire going. She seemed to be using only sticks and bits of cardboard.

It would flare for a moment, and then die down.

Mother Francis knocked on the window. "I'm not letting you in."

"All right," Mother Francis said unexpectedly.

"So there's no point in staying. Seriously."

"I brought your lunch."

"No, you didn't. It's a plot. You're going to rush me as soon as I open the door. You have people out behind the wall."

"What kind of people? Nuns?"

"The Guards. Well, maybe nuns as well, my brother. People from school."

Mother Francis sighed. "No, they all think you're in London.

That's where they're looking for you as it happens."

Heather stood on a stool and looked out of the window. There did not seem to be anyone else. "You could leave the lunch on the step.

"I could. But it would get cold, and I'll need the dish for sister Imelda, and it means I don't get any."

"I'm not coming home or anything."

Mother Francis came in. She left a covered dish and the big buttered slices of bread on the sideboard.

She looked first at the bird. "Poor fellow. Where did you find him?"

"On the path."

Gently Mother Francis lifted the bird. She kept up a steady stream of conversation. It was only a young crow. The young often fell from the high trees. Some of them were quite clumsy. It was a myth to believe that all birds were graceful and could soar up in the air at will.

The wing wasn't broken, she told Heather. That was why the poor thing had been trying so hard to escape. It had just been stunned by the fall.

Together they felt the bird and smiled at the beating of the little heart and the anxious bird eyes not knowing what fate was in store for it.

Mother Francis gave it some bread crumbs, and then together they took it to the door.

After a few unsteady hops it took off in a low lopsided flight, just clearing the stone wall.

"Right, that's the wildlife dealt with. You get rid of all those feathers and newspapers and put back this box in the scullery.

I'll see to lunch."

"I'm still not going back, even if you did help me with the bird."

"Did I say a thing about going back?"

"No, but you will."

"I won't. I might ask you to let them know you're safe, but that's all." Mother Francis got the fire going. She explained to Heather about the dry turf, that stood leaning against the wall.

She showed her how to make a little nest of twigs and get that going with a nice crackling light before putting on the turf.

Together they ate Sister Imelda's lamb stew, and big floury potatoes, and dipped their bread and butter into the rich sauce.

There was an apple each and a piece of cheese for afterwards.

Mother Francis explained that she couldn't carry much more, because the path was quite slippery and anyway she didn't want to arouse suspicion about where she was going.

"Why did you come for me?" Heather asked.

"I'm a teacher, you see. I imagine I know all about children.

It's a little weakness we have."

"There's nothing you can do."

"Ah now, we never know that till we've examined all the possibilities."

Eve rang Benny from England. She said she had spent more time making cross-channel phone calls than she had spent being any help to Kit.

The whole thing was so infuriating she was going to tear off Simon Westward's affected little cravat and tie it round his thin useless neck and pull it hard until he was blue in the face and only when she saw his tongue and eyeballs protruding would she stop pulling.

"You're wasting time, "Benny said. "I am. I suppose there's no news, is there?"

"Not that we've heard."

"I've just had an idea where she might be. It's only an idea," said Eve. "Right. Who will I tell. Simon?"

"No, go on your own. Just go up as if you happened to be passing, and if the key isn't there you'll know she's inside. And Benny, you know how comforting you can be. She'll need that. Tell her I'll sort it out when I get back."

On her way up the town Benny thought that she might buy some sweets.

It would break the ice if Heather was there and needed to be talked out of the place. She had no money, but she knew that her credit would be good in Birdie Mac's.

As she passed the door of Hogan's she suddenly thought of the drawing slips. She could sign a pink piece of paper and write " miscellaneous goods" on it. Why should she, from one business premises in the town, ask credit from Birdie in another.

Sean watched carefully.

"There, I think that's in order, isn't it?" she smiled brightly.

"You've taken a great interest in the mechanics of the business," he said.

She knew he had something to hide. She knew it. But she must be careful. She continued in her same cheery tone.

"Oh well, one way or another I'll have to be much more involved from now on," she said.

He repeated the phrase with an air of wonder. "One way or another?"

She shouldn't have said that. It implied that there might be doubt over his partnership. She had told herself so often to be careful.

Best now to play the role of someone who was not the full shilling.

"Oh, you know what I mean, Sean."

"Do I?"

"Of course you do."

She almost ran from the shop. In and out of Birdie's and up to the square. She had better not go through the convent, even though it was quicker. The nuns would see her and ask her what she was up to.

Eve wanted this done on the quiet.

They had been over a lot of ground, Mother Francis and Heather Westward. The school in Dublin and the games and the other girls having lots of family coming to see them and houses to go to at weekends. And how much Heather loved Westlands and how horrible Grandfather had been to Eve, and the fear that Eve might not come again.

And how nice it would be if there was a school that she could cycle to everyday.

"There is," Mother Francis said.

There were some areas that had to be argued through. Mother Francis said that there wouldn't be any effort made to convert Heather to Catholicism because the main problem these days was keeping those that were already in the flock up to the mark.

And there would be no idols of the Virgin Mary to bow down to and worship. There would however be statues of the same Virgin Mary around the school to remind anyone who wished to be so reminded of the Mother of God.

And there would be no need for Heather to attend religious doctrine classes, and she need have no fear that history would be taught with an emphasis on the Pope being always right and everyone else being wrong.

"What was it all about, the split?" Heather asked. "The Reformation do you mean?"

"Yes. Was it about your side worshipping idols?"

I think it was more about the Real Presence at Mass. You know, whether Communion is truly the Body and Blood of Jesus, or just a symbol."

"Is that all it was about?" Heather asked, amazed. "It started that way. But it developed, you know the way things do."

"I don't think there should be all that much fuss then." Heather seemed greatly relieved that the doctrinal differences of three hundred years appeared to be so slight. They were just shaking hands on it when there was a knock on the door.

"You said you didn't tell anyone." Heather leapt up in dismay.

"Nor did I." Mother Francis went to the door. Benny stood there with her speech ready. Her jaw dropped when she saw the nun and the angry little figure inside.

"Eve rang. She wondered whether Heather might have been here. She asked me to come and. . . and well. .

"Did you tell anyone?" Heather snapped out the question. "No, Eve particularly said not to." The face relaxed.

Mother Francis said she had to be going now before the Community assumed that she too was a missing person and started broadcasting appeals for her on the wireless.

"Are they doing that for me?"

"Not yet. But a lot of people are very worried and afraid that something bad might have happened to you."

"I'd better tell them . . . I suppose."

"I could if you like."

"What would you say?"

"I could say that you'll be back later this afternoon, that you'll be calling in to the convent to borrow a bicycle."

She was gone.

Benny looked at Heather. She pushed the box of sweets over to her.

"Come on, let's finish it. We'll tear through it, both layers."

"What about the man who fancies Welsh women, the one you're getting thin for?"

"I think it's too late."

Happily they ate the chocolates. Heather asked about the school and who were the hard teachers and who were the easy ones.

Benny asked about her grandfather and whether he knew all the awful things he had said.

"Did she tell everyone?" Heather looked ashamed. "Only me. I'm her great friend."

"I don't have any great friends."

"Yes, you do. You have Eve."

"Not any more."

"Of course you do. You don't understand Eve if you'd think a thing like that mattered. She didn't want to like you in the first place because she had all the bad memories about that old business years ago.

But she did, and she always will."

Heather looked doubtful.

"Yes, and you can have me, too, if you want me, and Eve's Aidan as a sort of circle of friends. I know we're way too old for you, but until you make your own."

"And what about the man who goes off with thin Welsh people? Is he in the circle?"

"On the edges," Benny said.

In a way that was more true than she meant it to be. She had met Jack twice during the week, and he had been rushing. There was a lot of training, and hardly any time to speak alone.

He had been very contrite about some still unspecified incident during the friendly match played in Wales. Some girls had come to the club, and it had all been a bit of fun, a laugh, nothing to it. Tales had been greatly exaggerated. In vain Benny tried to tell him that she had heard no tales so nothing could be made better or worse because there had been no stories to exaggerate.

Jack had said that everyone was entitled to a bit of fun, and he never minded her jiving away in Mario's when he wasn't around. It had been highly unsatisfactory.

There was an uneven number of sweets, so they halved the last one, a coffee cream.

They tidied up Eve's house and damped the embers of the fire.

Together they left and replaced the key in the wall.

Mossy nodded to them gravely as he passed by. "Who was that?"

Heather whispered. "Mossy Rooney."

"He's broken Bee Moore's heart," Heather said disapprovingly.

"Not permanently. She's going to be Patsy's bridesmaid when the time comes."

"I suppose people get over these things," Heather said. Mother Francis handed Heather Eve's bicycle. "Off you go. Your brother will be waiting for you. I said he should let you go home on your own pedals."

The nun produced Heather's small bag of possessions, her nature book, her pyjamas, the photographs of the horse and dog and the small sponge bag. She had wrapped them neatly in brown paper and twine and clipped them on to the back of the bicycle.

Benny and Mother Francis watched her cycle off. "You guessed! Eve always said you had second sight."

"If I have then I'd say you have some big worry on your mind." Benny was silent. "I'm not prying," "No, of course not." Benny's murmur was automatic politeness.

"It's just being what people laughingly call out of the real world..

. I hear a great deal about what goes on amongst those who are in it."

Benny's glance was enquiring.

"And Peggy Pine and I were school friends years ago, like you and Eve.."

Benny waited. Mother Francis said that if it was of any use to Benny she should know that Sean Walsh had enough money, from whatever source, to think himself able to buy one of the small cottages up in the quarry road. Cash deposit.

Benny's mother said that Jack Foley had rung. No, he hadn't left a message. Benny thought harsh things about Heather Westward for having taken her out of the house when the call came. And she wished that she had not run so readily to do Eve's bidding.

But then Eve would have done the same for her. And if he loved her and wanted to talk to her, he would ring again.

If he loved her.

Nan's mother came to say that there was a Simon Westward on the phone.

Nan's tone was cold.

"Did I give you my phone number?" she asked. "No, but that's irrelevant. Heather's home."

"Oh, I am glad. Where was she?" Nan was still wondering how he knew where to telephone. She had been adamant about not telling anyone how to contact her.

"She was in Eve's cottage, as it happens."

It had been a distinct possibility that Nan and Simon might have been there also. The thought silenced them both for a moment.

"Is she all right?"

"She's fine, but I can't leave. I have to sort her out." Nan had been ironing her dress for the last hour. It had complicated pleats in the linen. Her hair was freshly washed and she had painted her toenails a pearly pink.

"Yes, of course you must stay," she said. "Oh good. I thought you'd be annoyed."

"The main thing is that she's safe."

There was no hint of the rage that Nan was feeling. His tone was so casual.

Simon said that apparently Heather had been very unhappy at the school in Dublin. Nan sighed. Eve had been saying this for months. Heather had probably been saying it for years, but Simon had not listened.

There were just a few schools that were suitable for his sister and she would jolly well have to learn to like the one she was in. That had been his attitude.

"So maybe tomorrow?" He was confident and sure. "Sorry?"

"Tomorrow, Sunday night. Things will have sorted themselves out here.."

"And?"

"And I was hoping you might come down. . . for the night?"

"Well, I'd love to." Nan smiled. At last he had invited her. It had taken some time, but he was inviting her to Westlands. She would be given a guest room. She was going there as Mr. Simon's young lady.

"That's marvellous." He sounded relieved. "You get the last bus.

I'll go to the cottage and set things up for us."

"The cottage?" she said.

"Well, we know Eve's in England." There was a silence. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Suppose Heather decides to call again?"

"No, by heavens, she'll get a strict talking to about respecting other people's property."

He saw no irony in this at all. "I think not," she said. "Nan?"

She had hung up on him.

Joseph Hegarty had made a few, but not many, friends during his years in England. They had gathered to speak well of him after his funeral.

In the back room of a bar they sat, an ill-assorted group. A landlady who had been fond of him; whenever he didn't have the rent, he always did so many repairs around the house, it was twenty times better than having a lodger, she confided. Eve could see the pain in Kit's face.

That Joseph Hegarty should be without the rent was bad enough, but that he should do plumbing and carpentry for a strange woman in England rather than in his own house in Dunlaoghaire was even worse.

If the barmaid was amongst the group she did not declare herself.

The whole thing had such an unreal atmosphere about it, Eve felt that they were taking part in some play. Any moment the curtain would fall and they would all start talking normally again.

The only clue to why Joseph Hegarty might have stayed so long in this twilight world where he touched so little on people around him came from Fergus, a Mayo man, who said he was a friend.

Fergus had left a long time ago. There had been no row, no one thing that drove him out of his smallholding in the West of Ireland. He just felt one day that he wanted to be free and he had taken a train to Dublin, and then the boat.

His wife was now dead, his family grown. None of them wanted anything to do with him, and in many ways it was for the best. If he had gone back, he would have had to explain.

"At least Joe saw his son last summer. That was the great thing," he said.

Kit looked up, startled.

"No, he didn't. Francis never saw him since he was a child."

"But didn't he write to him and all?"

"No." Kit's voice was clipped.

Eve went to stand beside Fergus the Mayo man at the bar later.

"So he did keep in touch with his son then?"

"Yes, I think I was out of order. The wife is very bitter. I shouldn't have said. . . I didn't know."

"In time she'll be glad. In time I'll tell her properly. And maybe she'll want to talk to you." She took out a diary and a pen. "Where would you be. . . if we wanted to get in touch?"

"Ah, now, that's hard to say." The look in the eyes of Fergus became wary. He wasn't a man who liked to plan too far ahead.

There was a discussion with the man from the insurance, and some documents to sign. Eve and Kit went to Euston and took the train to Holyhead.

For a long time Kit Hegarty looked out of the window at the land where her husband had lived for so long.

"What are you thinking about?" Eve asked.

"About you. You were very good to come with me. Several people thought you were my daughter."

"I seem to have been on the phone most of the time." Eve was apologetic.

"Thank God it turned out all right."

"We don't know that yet. They're a weird bunch. They could send her back there. I hate being beholden to them, I really do."

"You don't have to be," said Kit. "The first thing I'm going to do when I get the insurance money is to give you a sum. You can walk back up that avenue, and throw it back. Throw it on the floor."

Patsy said that with all their talk about teaching them to work in a house, the orphanage had been very bad at teaching them to sew.

Mossy had said that his mother was expecting Patsy to have made a lot of things for her hope chest, like pillowcases, and hemmed them herself.

She was struggling away in the kitchen. The trouble was that often she pricked her fingers and the nice piece of linen got stained with blood.

"He's mad. Can't you buy grand pillowcases for half nothing up in Mcbirney's in Dublin?" Benny said indignantly.

But this wasn't the point. Apparently Mrs. Rooney expected a suitable bride for Mossy to be able to turn a hem properly and sew dainty stitches. Patsy had to try harder and put up with all this nonsense because she had nothing else to bring to the marriage. No family, no bit of land, not even her father's name.

"Does it have to be hand done? Couldn't it be on a machine?"

Benny was worse than useless, her own stitching was in big loops, irregular and impatient.

"What's the difference? We haven't a machine that works."

"We'll ask Paccy to mend it. Let's look on it as a challenge," Benny said.

Paccy Moore said that a horse with heavy hooves must have been using the sewing machine, and that if you had a fleet of highly paid engineers they wouldn't be able to put it back in working order. Tell the lady of the house to throw it out, was his advice. And surely they must have had an old one years ago, one of those nice firm ones that people like Benny and Patsy couldn't break.

They went sadly back to Lisbeg. There wasn't much point in telling the lady of the house anything. The listless manner hadn't changed. They did have an old sewing machine somewhere with a treadle underneath.

Benny remembered seeing it once, even playing at it. But it was useless to talk to Mother. She would try to remember and then say that her headache was coming back.

But Benny hated to see Patsy, who had started life with so little, continue in this struggle to please.

"You see, I can't have bought ones, Benny. The old rip gives me the material herself, just to make sure."

"I'll ask Clodagh to do them for you. She loves a challenge too," said Benny.

Clodagh said they should both be shot for not knowing how to do a simple seam. She showed them on the machine.

"Go on, do it yourselves," she urged.

"There isn't time for that. You do it and we'll do something in return for you. Tell us what you want us to do."

"Ask my aunt to lunch and keep her there all afternoon. I want to rearrange everything in the shop: if I knew someone was looking after Peg I could get a gang in to help me. When she comes back it'll be too late to change it."

"When?"

"Thursday, early closing day."

"And you'll do all these pillowcases and some sheets and two bolster cases?"

"It's a deal."

Jack Foley said he was going to skip lectures on Thursday and they'd go to the pictures. "Not Thursday. Any other day."

"Bloody hell. Isn't that the day you don't have lectures?"

"Yes, but I have to go back to Knockglen. There's this great scheme.

"Oh, there's always some great scheme in Knockglen," he said.

"Friday. I can stay the night in Dublin."

"All right."

Benny knew she would have to do something to try and smooth down Jack's ruffled feelings. She was very much afraid it might involve doing something more adventurous in the car than they had done already.

As Patsy said, at least three times a day, men were the divil.

Nan had taken a risk in hanging up on Simon. She had also left the phone slightly off the hook in case he called again. She went angrily up to her room and lay on her bed. The freshly ironed dress hung on its hanger, her pink nails twinkled at her, she really should go out somewhere and get value from all this primping and preening.

But Nan Mahon didn't want to arrange a meeting with Bill Dunne, or Johnny O' Brien, or anyone. Not even the handsome Jack Foley, who had been prowling discontentedly since Benny was never around.

Benny. Simon must have got her telephone number from Benny. He had probably pleaded with her and said it was urgent. Benny was very foolish, Nan thought. A handsome man like Jack Foley should not be left on his own in Dublin. All very well to say that the Rosemary Ryans and Sheilas knew he was spoken for. But when it came to it people often forgot loyalties. In Dublin things were more immediate than that.

"You're very cross," Heather said.

"Of course I am. Why couldn't you have told us how awful it was?"

Heather had, many times, but nobody had listened. Her grandfather had looked away dreamily, and Simon had said everyone hated school. You just had to grin and bear it. Mrs. Walsh had said that in her position Heather had to have a suitable education, meeting the people she would be meeting socially later on, not the daughters of every poor fellow down on his luck which is what you'd meet in a village school.

She hadn't expected Simon to be so annoyed. He had been on the phone to someone and had come back in a great temper.

"She hung up on me," he had said, several times. At first Heather had been pleased to see him distracted, but she realized that it wasn't making their conversation about her future any easier.

"Mother Francis will talk to you about the school," she began.

"That's all that bloody woman wants. First they got Eve, and now they want you."

"That's not true. They took Eve because nobody else wanted her."

"Oh, they have you well indoctrinated, I can see that."

"But who did want her, Simon? Tell me."

"That's not the point. The point is that we have planned an expensive education for you."

"It'll be much cheaper here, much. I asked. It's hardly anything."

"No. You don't understand. It's not possible."

"You don't understand," Heather said, twelve years of age and confronting him with her fists clenched. As she told him that she would run away every single time she was sent back to that school, her eyes flashed and she reminded him suddenly of the way Eve had looked that day she came to Westlands.

Jack seemed to have got over his bad temper. On Thursday morning he took Benny to coffee in the Annexe. She ate a corner of one of his fly cemeteries in order to prevent him from over-dosing on them, and being pronounced unfit to play in the next match.

He put his hand over hers.

"I am a bad-tempered boorish bear, or bearish boor, which ever you like," he apologized.

"It won't be long now. I'll have everything sorted out, I swear," Benny said.

"Days, weeks, months, decades?" he asked, but he was smiling at her.

He was the old Jack.

"Weeks. A very few weeks."

"And then you'll be able to romp shamelessly around Dublin with me, giving in to my every base wish and physical lust."

"Something like that," she laughed.

"I'll believe it when I see it," he said, looking straight at her.

"You do know how much I want you, don't you?"

She swallowed, not able to find the right words. As it happened, she didn't need to. Nan had approached.

"Is this a Sean-Carmel impersonation, or can I join you for coffee?"

Benny was relieved. Jack went back to the counter to collect it. "I'm not interrupting anything am I, seriously?" Nan was marvellous. You could actually ask her to take her coffee off and join another group.

Nan wouldn't mind. She was a great apostle of the solidarity between girls. But in fact it was much better not to walk any further down the path of discussing sex.

"I wanted Benny to come to Swamp Women but she's stood me up," Jack said, in a mock mournful voice.

"Why d'ya not go to Swamp Women with the nice gentlman', honey?"

Nan asked. "I sho would in yore place."

"Then come with me," Jack suggested. Nan looked at Benny, who nodded eagerly.

"Oh, please do, Nan. He's been talking about Swamp Women for days."

"I'll go and keep him from harm," Nan promised.

On their way to the cinema they met Simon Westward.

"Have you been avoiding me?" he asked curtly. Nan smiled. She introduced the two men. Anyone passing by would have thought they made an extraordinarily handsome tableau standing there, two of them in college scarves, the third small, and very county.

"We're going to Swamp Women. It's about escaped women prisoners and alligators."

"Would you like to join us?" Jack suggested. Simon looked up at Jack, a long glance. "No, thanks all the same."

"Why did you ask him to come with us? Because you knew he wouldn't?" Nan asked.

"Nope. Because I could see how much he fancied you."

"Only mildly, I think."

"No, seriously, I think," Jack said.

Because Nan knew that Simon would have turned to look after them, she took Jack's arm companionably.

Benny went back to Knockglen on the bus in high good humour. Jack was cheerful again. He did say he wanted her, he couldn't have been more explicit. And now she didn't even have to worry about him being left high and dry. Nan had gone to the silly film with him.

All Benny had to do now was keep Peggy Pine entertained while unmentionable things went on in her shop. She knew that Fonsie, Dekko Moore, Teddy Flood and Rita were all poised. Peggy must be kept off the scene until at least five o'clock.

When she got into Lisbeg Benny was pleased to see that Patsy had made a good soup, and there were plain scones to be served with it. Mr. Flood had sent down a small leg of lamb, there was the smell of mint sauce made in a nice china sauce boat.

Mother wore a pale grey twinset with her black skirt, and even a small brooch at the neck. She looked more cheerful. Probably she needed company, Benny realized. She certainly seemed a lot less listless than on other days.

Peggy drank three thimblefuls of sherry enthusiastically, and so did Mother. Benny had never known Clodagh's aunt in better form.

She told Mother that business was the best way to live your life, and that if she had her time, and her chances, all over again she would still think so.

She confided to them, something that they already knew, which was that she had been Disappointed earlier in life. But that she bore the gentleman in question no ill will. He had done her a service in fact.

The lady he had chosen did not have the look of a contented person.

Peggy Pine had seen her from time to time over the years. While she in her little shop was as happy as anything.

Mother listened interested, and Benny began to have the stirrings of hope that Peggy might be able to achieve for Mother what she had not been able to do. Peggy might make Annabel Hogan rediscover some kind of reason for living.

"The young people are the hope, you know," Peggy said. Benny prayed that the transformation taking place in the shop at this moment would not be of such massive proportions as to make Peggy withdraw this view.

"Ah, yes, we've been blessed with Sean Walsh," Annabel said.

"Well, yes, as long as you'll be in there to keep the upper hand," Peggy warned.

"I couldn't be going in interfering. He did fine in poor Eddie's time."

"Eddie was there to be a balance to him."

"Not much of a balance I'd be," Annabel Hogan said. "I don't know the first thing about it."

"You'll learn.

Benny saw the dangerous trembling of her mother's lip. She hastened to come in and explain to Peggy, that things were a little bit up in the air at the moment. There had been a question of Sean being made a partner and that should be cleared up before Mother went into the shop;

"Much wiser to go in before the deed is signed," Peggy said. To her surprise Benny saw her mother nodding in agreement. Yes, it did make sense to go in and be shown the ropes. It wouldn't look as if she were only going in afterwards to make sure they got an equal share.

And after all they might need more hands around the shop, so Sean if he was going to be a partner would prefer an unpaid one than someone who would need a wage. She told an astonished Benny and Patsy that she might go in on Monday for a few hours to see how the daily routine worked.

Peggy looked pleased, but not very surprised. Benny guessed that she might have planned the whole thing. She was a very clever woman.

Nan and Jack came out of the cinema.

"It was terrible," Nan said. "But great terrible," Jack pleaded.

"Lucky Benny. She's back in Knockglen."

"I wish she didn't spend so much time there." They had a cup of coffee in the cinema cafe" and he told her how hard it was to have a girlfriend miles away. What would Nan do if she had a chap down in Knockglen, at the far end of civilization?

"Well, I do," Nan said.

"Of course, the guy in the cavalry twill and the plummy accent."

But Jack had lost interest. He wanted to talk about Benny and how on earth they could persuade her mother to let her live in Dublin.

He wondered was there any hope that she could have a room in Nan's house? Nan said there was none at all.

They said goodbye at the bus stop outside the cinema. Jack ran for a bus going south.

Simon stepped out of a doorway.

"I wondered if you were free for dinner?" he said to Nan. "Did you wait for me?" She was pleased.

"I knew you wouldn't see Swamp Women round a second time. What about that nice little hotel we went to in Wicklow? We might stay the night."

"How lovely," Nan said, in a voice that was like a cat purring.

It was a marvellous night in Knockglen. Peggy Pine absolutely loved the changes in the shop. The new lighting, the fitting rooms, and the low music in the background.

Annabel Hogan had called on Sean Walsh and said that she hoped to come and join him in the shop on Monday and that he would be patient with her and explain things simply. She mistook his protestations as expressions of courtesy and insisted that she turn up at nine a. m. on the first day of the week.

Mossy Rooney said that his mother thought that Patsy was a fine person and would be very happy for them to go to Father Ross and fix a day.

And best of all Nan Mahon telephoned Benny and said that Swamp Women was the worst film she had ever seen, but that Jack Foley obviously adored Benny and wanted nothing but to talk about her.

Tears of gratitude sprang to Benny's eyes.

"You're so good, Nan. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart."

"What else are friends for?" asked Nan as she packed her little overnight bag and prepared to meet Simon for their visit to Wicklow.

Sean Walsh was in Healy's Hotel.

"What am I going to do?"

"Let her come in. She'll tire of it in a week."

"And if she doesn't?"

"You'll have someone to help you do the errands. It makes it harder for her to refuse you the partnership. She can't be avoiding your eye and the issue if she's working beside you."

"You're very intelligent. . . um. . . Dorothy," he said.

Rosemary Ryan knew what was going on everywhere. Eve said she was like those people during the war who had a map of where their troops were and their submarines and they kept moving them about like pieces on a board.

Rosemary knew Jack had been to the pictures with Nan. She was checking that Benny knew.

"Aren't you the silly-billy to go off and leave your young man wandering around unescorted," Rosemary said.

"He wasn't unescorted for long. I sent him to the pictures with Nan."

"Oh, you did. That's all right." Rosemary seemed genuinely relieved.

"Yes, I had to go back to Knockglen and he had declared an afternoon off for himself."

"You spend too long down there." Rosemary was trying to warn her about something.

"Yes, well, I'm staying in town tonight. We're all going to Palmerston. Are you coming?"

"I might. I have ferocious designs on a medical student. I'll send out a few enquiries to know whether he'll be there or not."

What could Rosemary be warning her about? Not Nan, that was clear.

Everyone knew that Nan was besotted with Simon Westward.

Sheila had given up on him. There was nobody else. Perhaps it was just that he was getting used to being on his own at social occasions.

Perhaps by staying so long in Knockglen Benny was letting Jack think that he was free to ramble, and there might have been a bit of rambling, possibly the Welsh type of rambling.

. . that she didn't know about. Benny dragged her mind back to Tudor Policy in Ireland. The lecturer said that it was often complicated and hard to pin down since it seemed to change according to the mood of the time. What else is new, Benny wondered? Jack, who had been so loving about her when talking to Nan, was annoyed again now.

He had thought she was going to stay in town for the weekend apparently and had made plans for Saturday and Sunday too. But Benny had to go back to prepare her mother for work on Monday. If he couldn't understand that what kind of friend was he? Eve would say he wasn't meant to be a friend. He was meant to be a big handsome hunk who happened to fancy Benny. But there had to be more to it than that.

Eve and Kit discussed plans.

They would put a hand basin in each bedroom, and build an extra lavatory and shower. That would stop the congestion on the landings in the morning.

They would have a woman to come in and wash on Mondays. They would have the house rewired, some of those electrical installations didn't bear thinking about.

They would be able to charge a little more if the facilities were that much better. But the real benefit would be they needn't keep students they didn't like. The boy who never opened his bedroom window, who had Guinness bottles under the bed and who had left three cigarette burns on the furniture would be given notice to mend his ways or leave. Nice fellows like Kevin Hickey could stay for ever.

For the first time in her life Kit Hegarty would have some freedom.

"Where does that leave me?" Eve asked lightly. "You won't need me now."

But she knew Kit did need her. So she spoke from a position of safety.

They had decided after reflection that the money would not be cast back on the drawing room floor of Westlands. It would be put for Eve in a post office account. Ready to be taken out and thrown, the moment Eve wanted to.

They danced at the rugby club and Benny realized there were people who came here every Friday night and that all of them knew Jack.

"I love you," he said suddenly as they sat sipping club oranges from bottles with straws. He pushed a damp piece of hair out of her eyes.

"Why?" she asked.

"Lord, I don't know. It would be much easier to love someone who didn't keep disappearing."

"I love you too," she said. "You delight me."

"That's a lovely thing to say."

"It's true. I love everything about you. I often think about you and I get a great warm feeling all over me."

"Talking about great feelings all over us, I have my father's car."

Her heart sank. Once in the car it was going to be very, very hard to say no. Everything they had been told at school, and at the mission, and in all those sermons on purity, made it seem like a simple choice.

Between sin and virtue. You were told that virtue was rewarded, that sin was punished, not only hereafter, but in this life. That boys had no respect for the girls who gave in to their demands.

But nobody had ever told anybody about how nice it felt, and how easy it would be to go on, and how cheap you felt stopping.

And about how you feared greatly that if you didn't go ahead with what you both wanted to do then there would be plenty more who would.

People of the temperament and lack of scruples up to now only discovered in Wales.

"I hope we didn't drag you away from each other too early." Eve spoke dryly as they settled down to sleep in Kit Hegarty's.

"No, just in time, I think," Benny said.

It had been the opportune demands of Aidan and Eve to let them into the car before they froze to death out of discretion.

"Why can't you stay the weekend?" Eve too seemed to be warning her about something. It was like a message that she was getting from everyone. She should stay around.

But there was no way that she could stay, no matter how great the danger. Things were at a crossroads in Knockglen.

"Have you a cigarette?" she asked Eve. "But you don't smoke."

"No, but you do. And I want you to listen while I tell you about Sean Walsh."

They turned on the light again, and Eve sat horrified as the tale of the money and the suspicions and the partnership was unfolded.

The hopes that Benny's mother might find a life of her own in the shop, the support that would be needed. Eve listened and understood. She said that it didn't matter how much temptation was thrown into Jack Foley's path, some things were more important than others, and Benny had to nail Sean Walsh, no matter what.

Eve said she'd come down herself and help to search for the money.

"But we can't go into his rooms. And if we were to get the guards he'd hide it."

"And he's such a fox," Eve added. "You'll have to be very, very careful."

There was now a Saturday lunch-time trade at Mario's, toasted cheese slices and a fudge cake with cream. The place was almost full as Benny walked past.

She went in to admire Clodagh's drastic changes. There were half a dozen people examining the rails and maybe four more in the fitting rooms.

Between them Clodagh and Fonsie had brought all the business in the town to their doorstep. There were even people who might well have gone to Dublin on a shopping trip browsing happily.

"Your mother's in great form altogether. She's talking of shortening her skirts, and smartening herself up."

"Mother of God, who'll shorten her skirts for her? You're too busy."

"You must be able to take up a simple hem. Didn't you say you had a sewing machine somewhere?"

"Yes, but I don't know where it is in the lumber and rubble up in the shop."

"Up in the Honourable Sean Walsh's territory?"

"No, he's right upstairs. The first floor."

"Ah, get it out, Benny. Get someone to drag it down to your house.

I'll come round for ten minutes and start you off."

"It mightn't be working," Benny said hopefully. "Then your mother'll have to look streelish, won't she?"

Benny decided she'd go back to the shop and see if the machine really was there and looked in workable condition before she asked Teddy Flood or Dekko Moore or someone with a handcart to help her home with it.

Sean wasn't in sight in the shop. Only old Mike saw her go upstairs.

She saw the sewing machine behind an old sofa with the springs falling out. It couldn't have been used for nearly twenty years.

It looked like a little table. The machine part was down in it.

Benny pulled, and up it came, shiny and new looking as well it might be, considering how little use it had had. It was quite well made, she thought, with those little drawers on each side, probably for spools of thread and buttons and all the things that sewing people filled their lives with.

She opened one of the little drawers. It was stuffed with small brown envelopes, pushed up one against the other. It seemed an extraordinary way to keep buttons and thread. She opened one idly and saw the green pound notes, and the pink ten-shilling notes squeezed together. There were dozens and dozens of envelopes, old ones addressed to the shop, originally with invoices, each with its post mark. With a feeling of ice water going right through her body, Benny realized that she had found the money Sean Walsh had been stealing from her father for years.

She didn't remember walking home. She must have passed Carroll's and Dessie Burn's and the cinema as well as Pine's and Paccy's and Mario's.

Maybe she even saluted people. She didn't know.

In the kitchen Patsy was grumbling.

"Your mother thought you must have missed the bus," she said.

Benny saw her preparing to put the meal on the table.

"Could you wait a few minutes, Patsy? I want to talk to Mother about something."

"Can't you talk and eat?"

"No."

Patsy shrugged. "She's above in the bedroom trying on clothes that stink of mothballs. She'll run them out of the shop with the smell of camphor." Benny grabbed the sherry bottle and two glasses and went upstairs. Patsy looked up in alarm.

In all her years in this house she had never been excluded from a conversation with the mistress and Benny. And never would she have believed that there was any subject that needed a drink being brought to the bedroom.

She said three quick Hail Marys that Benny wasn't pregnant. It was just the kind of thing that would happen to a nice big soft girl like Benny. Fall for a baby from a fellow who wouldn't marry her.

Annabel listened white-faced.

"It would have killed your father."

Benny sat on the side of the bed. She chewed her lip as she did when she was worried. Nan had said she must try to get out of the habit.

It would make her mouth crooked eventually. She thought about Nan for a quick few seconds. Nan wouldn't pause to care about her father's business. Not if it was being robbed blind by everyone in it. It was both terrible and wonderful to be so free.

"I wonder if Father knew," Benny said.

It was quite possible that he had his suspicions, but that being Eddie Hogan he had put them away. He wouldn't have opened his mouth unless he had positive proof. But it was odd that he had delayed the partnership deal. Mr. Green had said he was surprised that it had not been signed. Could Father have had second thoughts about going into partnership with a man who had his hand in the till over the years?

"Your father would not have been able to bear the disgrace of it all.

The guards coming in, a prosecution, the talk."

"I know," Benny agreed. "He'd never have stood for that." They talked as equals sitting in the bedroom that was strewn with the clothes Annabel had been trying on to wear on her first day in the shop. Benny didn't urge her to make decisions and Annabel didn't hang back.

Because they were equals they gave each other strength. "We could tell him we know," Annabel said. "He'd deny it."

They couldn't call the guards, they knew that. There was no way that they could ask Mr. Green to come in, climb the stairs to the first floor and inspect the contents of the sewing machine. Mr. Green wasn't the kind of lawyer you saw in movies who did this sort of thing. He was the most quiet and respectable of country solicitors.

"We could ask someone else to witness it. To come and see it."

"What good would that do?" Annabel asked.

"I don't know," Benny admitted. "But it would prove it was there in case Sean were to shift it and hide it somewhere else. You know, when we speak to him."

"When we speak to him? "We have to, Mother. When you go in there on Monday morning, he has to be gone." Annabel looked at her for a long time. She said nothing. But Benny felt there was some courage there, a new spirit. She believed that her mother would face what lay ahead.

Benny must find the right words to encourage her.

"If Father can see us, it's what he'd want. He'd want no scandal, no prosecution. But he wouldn't want you to stand beside Sean Walsh as a partner knowing what we know now."

-We'll ask Dr. Johnson to witness the find," Annabel Hogan said with a voice steadier than Benny would ever have believed.

Patsy said to Bee Moore that evening that you'd want to have the patience of a saint to work in Lisbeg these days. There was that much coming and going, and doors closed, and secrets, and bottles of sherry and no food being eaten and then food being called for at cracked times.

If this is what it was going to be like when the Mistress went up into the shop then maybe it was just as well she was going to marry Mossy Rooney and his battle-axe of a mother and be out of it.

Patsy remembered Bee's former interest in Mossy and altered her remarks slightly. She said she knew she was very lucky to have been chosen by Mossy and was honoured to be a part of his family.

Bee Moore sniffed, wondering again how she had lost him to Patsy.

She said that things were equally confusing in her house.

Everyone in Westlands seemed to have gone mad. Heather had started in St. Mary's and was bringing what Mrs. Walsh called every ragtag and bobtail of Knockglen back up to the house to ride her pony. The old man had taken to his bed, and Mr. Simon was not to be seen, though it was reliably reported that he had been in Knockglen at least two nights without coming home. Where on earth could he have stayed in Knockglen if he hadn't come home to his own bed in Westlands? It was a mystery.

Maurice Johnson said that he was a man whom nothing would surprise.

But the visit of Annabel Hogan and her daughter, and its reason, caught him on the hop.

He listened to their request. "Why me?" he asked.

"It's you or Father Ross. We don't want to bring the Church into it.

It's involving sin and punishment. All we need is someone reliable."

"Let's not delay," he said. "Let's go this minute."

There were two customers in the shop when they went in. Sean looked up from the boxes of V-necked jumpers that he had opened on the counter.

There was something about the deputation that alarmed him. His eyes followed them as they went to the back of the shop towards the stairs.

"Is there anything. . . ?" he began.

Benny paused on the stairs and looked at him. She had disliked him ever since she had first met him, and yet at this moment she felt a surge of pity for him. She took in his thin greasy hair and his long white narrow face.

He had not enjoyed his life or enriched it with the money he had taken.

But she must not falter now.

"We're just going to the first floor," she said. "Mother and I want Dr. Johnson to see something."

She saw the fear in his eyes.

"To witness something," she added, so that he would know.

Dr. Johnson went down the stairs quietly. He walked through the shop, his eyes firmly on the floor. He didn't return Mike's greeting. Nor did he acknowledge the figure of Sean standing there immobile with a box in his hands. He had said to the Hogans that he would confirm that in his presence they had removed upwards of two hundred envelopes each containing sums of money varying from five to ten pounds.

There had been no gloating in the downfall of a man he had never liked.

He looked at the little hoard in tightly screwed-up envelopes. The man was buying himself some kind of life, he supposed. Had he thought of wine, or women, or song when he had stashed Eddie Hogan's money away? It was impossible to know. He didn't envy the two women and their confrontation, but he admired them for agreeing to do it at once.

They sat in the room and waited. They knew he would come upstairs.

And both of them were weak with the shock of their discovery and the shame that they would have to face when Sean came up to meet them.

Neither of them feared that he would bluster or attempt to deny that it was he who had put the money there. There was no way now for him to say they had made it up. Dr. Johnson's word would be believed. They heard his step on the stair. "Did you close the shop?" Annabel Hogan asked. "Mike will manage."

"He'll have to a lot of the time from now on," she said. "Have you something to say? Is there some kind of accusation?" he began.

"Let's make it easy," Annabel began.

"I can explain," Sean said.

They could hear the Saturday afternoon noises of Knockglen, people tooting their car horns, children laughing and running by, free from school since lunch time. There was a dog barking excitedly, and somewhere a horse drawing a cart had been frightened. They sat, the three of them, and heard him whinnying until someone calmed him down.

Then Sean began to explain. It was a method of saving, and Mr. Hogan had understood, not exactly agreed, but acknowledged. The wages had not been great. It was known that Sean did the lion's share of the work. It had always been expected that he should build a little nest egg for himself.

Annabel sat in the high-backed chair, a wooden one they had never thought of bringing to Lisbeg. Benny sat on the broken sofa, the one she had pulled out to find the sewing machine. They hadn't rehearsed it, but they acted as a team, neither of them said a word. There were no interruptions or denials. No nods of agreement or shaking of the head in disbelief. They sat there and let him form the noose around his neck. Eventually his voice grew slower, his hand movements less exaggerated. His arms fell to his sides, and soon his head began to hang as if it were a great weight.

Then he stopped altogether. Benny waited for her mother to speak.

"You can go tonight, Sean."

It was more decisive even than Benny would have been. She looked at her mother in admiration. There was no hate, no revenge, in her tone.

Just a simple statement of the position. It startled Sean Walsh just as much.

"There's no question of that, Mrs. Hogan," he said. His face was white, but he was not now going to ask for mercy, or understanding, or a second chance.

They waited, to hear what he had to say.

"It's not what your husband would have wanted. He said in writing that he wanted me to become a partner. You have agreed that with Mr. Green."

Annabel's glance fell on the table full of envelopes. "And there is no one to confirm or deny that this was an agreement." Benny spoke then.

"Father would not have liked the police, Sean. I know you would agree with that. So mother and I are going along with what we are sure would be his wishes. We have discussed this for a long time. We think he would have liked you to leave this evening. And that he would like us to speak to no person of what has happened here today. Dr. Johnson, as you need hardly say, is silent as the grave. We only asked him here to give substance to our request that you leave, without any fuss."

"And what'll happen to your fine business when I leave?" His face had become crooked now. "What's to become of Hogan's, laughing stock of the outfitting business? Will it have its big closing down sale in June or in October? That's the only question."

Agitated and with his features in the form of a smile he walked around rubbing his hands.

"You have no idea how hopeless this place is. How its days are numbered. What do you think you'll do without me? Have old Mike, who hasn't two brains to rub together, talking to the customers and God blessing them, and God saving them, like Barry Fitzgerald in a film?

Have you, Mrs. Hogan, who don't know one end of a bale of material from another? Have some greenhorn of an eejit serving his time from some other one-horse town? Is this what you want for your great family business? Is it? Tell me, is it?"

His tone was becoming hysterical.

"What did we ever do to you that makes you turn on us like this?"

Annabel Hogan asked, her voice calm.

"You think you were good to me. Is that what you think?"

"Yes. In a word."

Sean's face was working. Benny realized she had never remotely suspected that he could feel so much.

He told a tale of being banished upstairs to servant's quarters, being patronized and invited to break bread from time to time with the air of being summoned to a palace. He said that he had run the business single-handed for a pittance of a wage and a regular pat on the head.

The cry that they would be lost without Sean Walsh, said often enough to render it meaningless. He said that his genuine and respectful admiration for Benny, the daughter of the house, was a matter of mockery, and had been thrown back in his face. He had been honourable and would have been proud to escort her to places even when she was not a physically beautiful specimen.

Neither Annabel nor Benny allowed a muscle to move in the face of the insults.

He had not intruded, imposed or in any way traded on his position. He had been discreet and loyal. And this was the thanks he was getting for it.

Benny felt a great sadness sweep over her. There was some sincerity in the way Sean spoke. If this was his version of his life, then this was his life.

"Will you stay in Knockglen?" she asked unexpectedly. "What?"

"After you leave here?"

Something clicked then. Sean knew they meant it. He looked at them, as if he had never seen either of them before.

"I might," he said. "It's the only place I've really known, you see.

They saw.

They knew there would be talk. A lot of talk. But on Monday the shop would open with Annabel in charge. They had only thirty-six hours to learn the business.

Mrs. Healy agreed to see Sean in her office. Even given his usual pallor, she thought he looked badly as if he had just had a shock.

"May I arrange to have a room here for a week?"

"Of course. But might I ask why?"

He told her that he would be leaving Hogan's. As of now. That he would therefore be leaving his accommodation there. He was vague in the extreme. He parried questions about the partnership, denied that there had been any fight or unpleasantness. He said that he would like to transfer his belongings across the road at a time when half the town wouldn't be watching, like when they were gone home to their tea.

Fonsie saw him of course, saw him carrying one by one the four cardboard boxes that made up his possessions.

"Good evening, Sean," Fonsie said gravely. Sean ignored him.

Fonsie went straight back to tell Clodagh. "I think I see a love nest starting. Sean Walsh was bringing twigs and leaves and starting to build it across in Healy's."

"Was he moving across, really?" Clodagh didn't seem as surprised as she should be.

"In stealth and with lust written all over him for Dorothy," Fonsie said.

"Well done, Benny," said Clodagh, closing her eyes and smiling.

Maire Carroll had come up to the convent to ask for a reference.

She was going to apply for a job in a shop in Dublin. As Mother Francis struggled to think of something to say about Maire Carroll that was both truthful and flattering, Maire revealed that Sean Walsh had been seen taking all his belongings and going to live in the hotel.

"Thank God, Benny," Mother Francis breathed to herself.

Sunday was the longest day that any of them had worked. It had an air of unreality because the shutters were closed so that nobody should know they were there.

They would have looked a very strange crew to anyone who saw them.