Circle of Friends

Patsy in her overalls scrubbing out the small room which had been filled with the results of a thousand cups of ill-made tea. Old Mike said that they took it in turns to make the tea and open the biscuits.

The place had all the signs of it. The Baby Belling had been brought down from Sean's quarters upstairs. From now on there would be proper tea, and even soup or toast made.

Hogan's was going to change.

And to help it change, Peggy Pine and Clodagh were there, as was Teddy Flood.

To none of them had any explanation been given apart from the fact that Sean Walsh had left, and they were in need of some advice. Clodagh said one business was the same as another. If you could run one you could run the lot, and she always hoped she might be seconded to get a steel works or a car plant on its feet.

Mike, who had never been the centre of such attention, was asked respectful questions. It was the general opinion that Mike must be addressed slowly, and his answers weighed with the same deliberation that he gave them.

To fuss Mike would be counter-productive. Let him think there was all the time in the world. Let him wander down no lanes of regret about Mr. Eddie and no tight-lipped mutterings about that Sean Walsh who wanted to be called Mister.

Slowly they pieced it together, the way the business was run. The people who had credit, and those who didn't. The way the bills had been sent out, the reminders. The salesmen who came with their books for orders. The mills, the factories.

Haltingly Mike told it all. They listened and worked out the system, such as it was.

A thousand times Annabel Hogan cursed herself for not taking an interest and forming a part of the company when her husband was alive.

Perhaps he would have liked it? It was only her own hidebound feelings that had kept her at home.

Benny wished that she had come to help her father. If only she could have had the time over again, then she would have spent Saturday afternoons here with him, learning about his life at work.

Would he have been proud of her and pleased that she was taking such an interest? Or would he have thought that she was a distraction in the all-male world of gentleman's outfitters? It was impossible to know.

And anyway she had avoided the shop a lot because of Sean Walsh.

As they toiled on, working out which bales of material were which, Benny let her mind wander. Could her parents seriously have expected her to marry Sean just because he had been helpful in the business?

And even worse, suppose she had gone along with their views? Promised herself to him, allowed his disgusting advances and been engaged to him now? Think then how impossible it would have been once they discovered his theft. The mean, grubbing, regular stealing from a kind employer who had wished him nothing but well.

Patsy had heated up the soup and served the sandwiches. They sat companionably and ate them.

"Is it wrong of us, do you think, to work on a Sunday?" Mike was fearful about the whole thing.

"Laborare est orare," Peggy Pine said suddenly.

"Could you translate for those of us without the classical education, Aunt?" Clodagh asked.

"It means that the Lord thinks working is a form of prayer," Peggy said, wiping away the crumbs and settling down to writing out proper sales tickets which Annabel could understand.

They had opened up the back door of the shop late on Saturday night so they could come and go by the lane at the rear of the premises. The sun shone on the disused back yard with its rubbish and clutter. "You could make a lovely conservatory here," Clodagh said admiringly.

"What for?" Benny asked. "To sit in, you clown."

"Customers wouldn't want to sit down, would they?"

"Your mother and you." Benny looked blank.

"Well, you are going to live here, aren't you?"

"Lord no. We'll be living in Lisbeg. We couldn't live over the shop."

"Some of us do, and manage fine," Clodagh said huffily. Benny could have bitten off her tongue. But there was no point in trying to take it back now.

Clodagh didn't seem a bit upset.

"Good for you if you can," she said. "I thought the object of all this was to try and turn this place round. You won't do that if you don't put some money into it. I assumed you were going to sell your house."

Benny wiped her forehead. Was there ever going to be any end to all this? When could she get back to living an ordinary life again?

Jack Foley telephoned Benny from nine in the morning until noon.

"She can't be at Mass all bloody morning," he grumbled. Benny telephoned Jack at home. She got his mother.

"Is that you, Sheila?" she asked. "No, Mrs. Foley. It's Benny Hogan."

She heard that Jack was out and not expected back until late. He had left quite early.

"I thought he was down in your neck of the woods, actually," Mrs. Foley said.

She made it sound like a swamp with alligators in it. Like the film Benny hadn't seen.

She forced her voice to be light and casual. No message. Just to say that she had rung for a chat.

Mrs. Foley said that she'd write it down straight away. She managed to make it sound as if the name of Benny Hogan would be added to a long list of those who had already telephoned.

It was over, and she longed to celebrate. Everything she had wanted for the shop since the day Father had died had been achieved. They had had huge support from their friends in Knockglen. Sean had been rendered unimportant.

It was a night of triumph she wanted to tell Jack all about. The awful bits and the funny bits, the look on Sean's face, Patsy making more and more tea, and sandwiches. Old Mike getting surges of energy like Frankenstein's monster. Peggy Pine showing her mother how to ring up a sale. She wanted to tell him that from now on she wouldn't be needed so desperately at home. She would be free to spend several nights a week in Dublin.

She had a terrible foreboding that she had left it all too late.

That she had been away too long.

Chapter 16

Brian Mahon said that it was great to be spending all that money paying fees for a university student when she didn't get up for her bloody lectures.

Emily said he should hush. That was unfair. Nan worked very hard, and it was rare the girl had a lie-in.

"When she is in the house it would be nice to see her, just now and again," he said.

Nan told them that she stayed with Eve out in Dunlaoghaire, on the occasions when she didn't come home. Her father said it was a pity that woman in the guest house didn't pay her fees and buy her clothes for her.

But he had to meet a man who had come in on the boat to the North Wall.

He'd been down in a docker's pub. There was a deal about a consignment.

Emily sighed. There might be a deal about a consignment, but there would also be a day's drinking. When he had gone she went upstairs.

Nan was lying on her bed with her arms folded behind her head.

"Aren't you well?"

"I'm fine, Em. Honestly." Emily sat down on the stool opposite the dressing table. There was something troubled in Nan's face, some look she had never seen before. It was surprise mixed with indecision.

Nan had never known either, not since she was a little girl. "Is it.

. . Simon?"

Normally Emily never mentioned his name. It was almost like tempting fate.

Nan shook her head. She told her mother that Simon was most devoted and attentive. He was down in Knockglen. She'd be seeing him for dinner tomorrow night. Emily was not convinced. She shook her head as she went downstairs, tidied away the breakfast things, put on her smart blouse and set out for work.

As she stood at the bus stop she wondered what was wrong with her daughter.

Back in her bedroom Nan lay and looked ahead of her. She knew there was no need to have sent the specimen to Holles Street Maternity Hospital. Her period was seventeen days late. She was pregnant.

Eve and Kit were up early. They had builders arriving and they wanted to show them from the beginning that this was a house with rules, a house like they had never known before.

They had left bags of cement and sand in the back yard the night before. The name on the sacks was Mahon.

"You must tell Nan that we're putting a few shillings into her father's pocket," Kit said.

"No, Nan wouldn't like to hear that. She doesn't want to be reminded of her father and his trade." Kit was surprised.

Nan always seemed remarkably unpretentious for such an attractive girl.

You never caught her stealing a look at herself in the mirror, or blowing about the people she had been out with.

Eve had liked her so much at the beginning, but had been very resentful of Nan taking up with the Westwards.

"You're not still bearing a grudge against her because she went out with Simon Westward are you?"

"A grudge? Me?" said Eve, laughing. She knew that most of her life had been spent bearing grudges against the family that had disowned her.

And anyway Kit had used the wrong tense. Eve was still going out with Simon. Very much so.

Heather had been on the phone, squeaking with excitement about her life in the convent and how funny and mad and superstitious everyone was.

"I hope you don't say any of that," Eve said sternly. "No, only to you. And I have another secret. I think Simon's doing a line with Nan. She rings sometimes, and I know he goes off to meet her, because he packs a bag. And he doesn't come home at night."

Eve was sure that Nan and Simon were Going All The Way. Simon wouldn't be remotely interested in a girl unless she would. It wasn't a sin for him anyway, and he wouldn't take Nan out, no matter how gorgeous she looked, unless he was getting value for it.

Because Eve knew very well that Nan was not someone her cousin Simon was going to bring home to Westlands.

When she telephoned it was as she had known it would be. The pregnancy test was positive.

Nan dressed carefully and left the empty house in Maple Gardens.

She took the bus to Knockglen.

She walked past the gates of St. Mary's Convent and looked up the long avenue. She could hear the sounds of children at play. How strange of Simon to let his sister stay there, amongst all the children of people who worked on the estate.

But from her own point of view it was good. It meant that he was tied more to Knockglen. She could come more frequently to the cottage. And there would be fewer crises about Heather being unhappy and running away from the school where she should be.

She couldn't remember clearly how far it was from the village to Westlands, but decided that it was too far to walk. Knockglen didn't have the air of a place that would have a taxi. She had heard so much bad about Healy's Hotel from Benny, Eve and Simon that she dared not risk asking them to arrange her a lift.

Nan would wait until a suitable car passed by. A middle-aged man in a green car came into view. She hailed him and as Nan had known he would, he stopped. Dr. Johnson asked her where she was heading.

"Westlands," she said simply. "Where else?" the man said.

They talked about the car. He explained it was a Morris Cowley, the cheapest end of the Ford range. He'd love a Zodiac or even a Zephyr, but you had to know when to draw the line.

"I don't think you do," said the beautiful blonde girl, whom Dr. Johnson remembered seeing somewhere before.

She had a slightly high, excited look about her. He asked no questions about her visit.

She said that a lot of people were too timid, they didn't reach for things. He should reach for a Zephyr or a Zodiac, not assume that they were beyond his grasp.

Maurice Johnson smiled and said he would discuss the notion of reaching with his wife and with his bank manager. He could see neither of them agreeing with this view, but he would certainly present it. He turned in the gates of Westlands.

"Were you going here anyway?" Nan asked, alarmed. She didn't want to clash with another visitor. "Not at all. But a gentleman, even in a Morris Cowley, always sees a lady right to the door."

She gave him a smile of such brightness, he thought to himself that men like Simon Westward who were knee high to a grasshopper had all the luck when it came to getting gorgeous women, just because they had the accent and the big house.

Nan looked up at the house. It wasn't going to be easy. But then nothing that was important had ever been easy. She took three deep breaths, and rang at the door.

Mrs. Walsh knew well who Nan Mahon was. She had heard the name on the telephone many times, and even though she discouraged Bee from gossiping, she knew that this girl, who had been in the house a couple of days after Christmas, was a friend of Eve Malone and Benny Hogan.

But just to keep things as they should be, she asked her name.

"Mahon," Nan said, in a clear, confident voice.

Simon was coming out of the morning room anyway. He had heard the car pull up and draw away.

"Was that Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Walsh? He seems to have driven off without seeing Grandfather.

He saw Nan. His voice changed. "Well, hallo," he said. "Hallo, Simon."

She stood, very beautiful in a cream-coloured suit with a red artificial flower pinned to the lapel. Her handbag and shoes were the same red. She looked as if she were dressed to go out.

"Come in and sit down," he said.

"Coffee, Mr. Simon?" Mrs. Walsh asked, but she knew she would not be needed. "No thanks, Mrs. Walsh." His voice was light and easy.

"No, I think we'll be all right for the moment."

He closed the door firmly behind them.

Aidan Lynch came up to Jack in the pub and said that Benny had taught him the Charleston.

It was really quite simple, once you learned to work the two legs separately.

"Yes," Jack Foley said.

And it looked very snazzy, Aiden said, and possibly Benny should give up her notion of becoming a librarian, and be a teacher.

After all anyone could check books in and out of a library, but not everyone could teach. Impart knowledge.

"True," Jack Foley agreed.

And so Aidan wondered, how much more was he going to have to go on making inane chat until they could get down to the point, the point being that he and Eve, who were so to speak Love's Young Dream of the university at the moment, leaving Sean and Carmel in the halfpenny place, wanted to know had there been a falling out between Benny and Jack.

"Ask her," Jack said.

"Eve has. And she says no, it's just that she can never find you."

"That's because she's always looking for me in Knockglen," Jack said.

"Have you been able to. . . you know," Aidan was the old confiding mate now.

"Mind your own business," Jack said.

"That means you haven't. Neither have I. Jesus, what do they teach them in these convents?"

"About people like us, I suppose."

They forgot about women and talked about the match and the way that some people couldn't kick a ball out of their way if it was laid down in front of them. Aidan hadn't any more information for Eve about Benny. But at least he could report that no new person had come on the scene.

"This is a surprise," Simon said. The small narrow frown that was just a half line between his eyes showed it wasn't entirely a welcome surprise.

Nan had rehearsed it. No point in small talk, and fencing. "I waited until I was certain. I'm afraid I'm pregnant," she said simply.

Simon's face was full of concern.

"Oh no," he said, moving towards her. "Oh no, Nan no, you poor darling. You poor, poor darling." He embraced her and held her close.

She said nothing. She felt his heart beat against hers. Then he drew her away, examining her face, looking to see how upset she was.

"How awful for you," he said tenderly. "It's not fair is it?"

"What isn't?"

"Everything." He waved his hands expansively. Then he went over to the window and ran his hands through his hair. "This is awful," he said. He seemed very upset.

They stood apart, Nan with her hand on the piano, Simon by the window, both of them looking out the long window at the paddock where Heather's pony stood and across at the fields where the grazing had been let and cattle moved slowly round.

Everything seemed like slow motion, Nan thought. Even the way Simon spoke.

"Will you know what to do?" he asked her. "Will you know where to go?"

"How do you mean?"

"Over all this." He waved a slow wave of his hand vaguely in the direction of her body.

"I came to you," she said.

"Yes, I know, and you were right. Utterly right." He was anxious she should know this.

"I never thought it could happen," Nan said.

"Nobody ever does." Simon was rueful, as if it happened all over the place, to everyone he knew.

Nan wanted to speak. She wanted desperately to say "What do we do now?"

But she must give him no chance to say anything hurtful or careless that she would have to respond to angrily. She must leave silences.

The expression was Pregnant Pauses, she thought with a little giggle that she fought back. Simon was about to speak.

"Nan, sweetheart," he said, "this is about as terrible as it can be.

But it will all be all right. I promise you."

"I know," she looked at him trustingly.

And then her ears began to sing a little as he told her of a friend who knew someone and it had all been amazingly simple, and the girl had said that it was much easier than going to a dentist.

And there had been no ill effects. Well, actually Nan had met the girl, but it wouldn't be fair to name names. But she was someone terribly bubbly and well-adjusted.

"But you don't mean. . . ?" She looked at him shocked. "Of course I'm not going to abandon you." He came towards her again and took her in his arms.

Relief flooded through her. But why had he talked about this silly bubbly woman who had been to have an abortion? Had he changed when he saw her stricken face?

Simon Westward stroked her hair.

"You didn't think I'd let you look after it all on your own, did you?"

he said.

Nan said nothing.

"Come on now, we both enjoyed ourselves. Of course I'll look after it."

He pulled away from her and took a cheque book out of a drawer.

"I don't know what this chap said, he did tell me a figure, but this should cover it. And I'll get the name and address of the place and everything. It's in England of course, but that's all for the best, isn't it?"

She looked at him unbelieving. "It's your child. You know that?"

"Nan, my angel, it's not a child at all. Not a speck yet."

"You do know that you were the first and there has been nobody else?"

"We're not going to upset ourselves over this, Nan. It can't be between us. You know that, I know it, we've known it since we went into our little fling."

"Why can't it be? You want to get married. You want an heir for this place. We get on well together. I fit in with your world."

Her voice was deliberately light.

But she was playing for everything in this plea. She never thought she would have had to beg like this. He had said he loved her. Every time they made love he called out how much he loved her. It was unthinkable that he was reaching for a cheque book to dismiss her.

He was gentle with her. He even took her hand. "You know that you and I are not going to marry Nan. You, of all people, so cool, so reasonable, so sensible. You know this. As do I."

"I know you said you loved me," she said. "And so I do, I love every little bit of you. I don't deny it."

"And this is love then? A cheque and an abortion?" His face looked troubled. He seemed surprised that she took this view.

"And it wouldn't have mattered, I suppose, if my father was a rich builder instead of a shabby builder."

"It has nothing to do with that."

"Well, it certainly has nothing to do with religion. It's 1958 and neither of us believes in God." He opened her hand and pressed the folded cheque into it. She looked at him in disbelief. "I'm sorry," he said.

She was still silent. Finally she said, "I'm going back now."

"How will you get home?" he asked.

"I was stupid enough to think I was coming home." She looked around her, at the portraits on the wall, the piano, the view from the window.

Something about her face touched him. She was always so very, very beautiful.

"I wish. . ." he began, but couldn't finish the sentence. "Do you know someone who would drive me back to Dublin?"

"I will, of course."

"No. It would be too artificial. Someone else."

"I don't really know anyone else. . . anyone that I could ask . .

"No. You do keep yourself to yourself. But I know what we'll do.

I'll take your car just down to the square," she said. "There'll be a bus soon. You can collect it later in the day."

"Let me at least . He moved towards her.

"No, please stay away from me. Don't touch me." He handed her the car keys. "It needs a lot of choke," he said. "I know. I've been in it a great many times."

Nan walked down the steps of Westlands. He watched from the window while she got into his car and drove away.

He knew that from the kitchen window Bee Moore and Mrs. Walsh were watching and speculating.

He looked at her with admiration as she started his car and drove down the long avenue without looking back.

She left the keys in the car. Nobody would dare to steal the car of Mr. Simon Westward in this feudal backwater. They'd all be afraid of crossing anyone at the Big House.

Mike was turning the bus. He'd be going back to Dublin in five minutes, he told her. She paid her fare.

"You could have got a return, it would have been cheaper." Mike was always anxious to give people a bargain.

"I didn't know I'd be going back," Nan said.

"Life's full of surprises," said Mike, looking at this blonde girl in the cream and red outfit, who looked much too smart for this part of the world anyway.

Bill Dunne saw Benny come into the Annexe. She was looking around, hunting for Jack, but there was no sign of him. She stood in the line with the other students. If Jack had been there he would have kept a table, and she could have gone straight to join him.

Bill waved and said he had an extra coffee. In fact he hadn't begun his own, but it seemed a way of calling her over. She looked very well today, in a chestnut-coloured sweater, the exact colour of her hair, and a pale yellow blouse underneath.

Bill and Benny talked easily. If she was glancing around for Jack she never mentioned it. And he never showed that he noticed Benny was so easy to talk to. They discussed banning the bomb and if it would ever work. Benny said she was afraid it was like asking boxers to tie one hand behind their backs, or like saying we should go back to bows and arrows once they had invented gunpowder. They wondered would Elvis really join the US Army or was it just a publicity stunt? They talked of Jack Kerouac. Would every single person that he met On the Road have been interesting? Surely some of them must have been deadly bores.

The time flew, and they had to go back to lectures. If Benny was disappointed that Jack Foley hadn't turned up she showed no sign of it.

But then women were known to be very good at hiding their feelings.

Most people didn't know what they were up to half the time.

Rosemary saw everything and noted it all. She watched Bill and Benny chatting animatedly. They seemed like great friends.

Perhaps he was consoling her about Jack. Rosemary had often thought that the feeling was unworthy, but she felt that Jack was too handsome for Benny. She thought it was like a mixed marriage.

A Black and a White, a Catholic and a non-Catholic. You heard of those that did work. But the usual rule was that they didn't. It wasn't a view that anyone would agree with so she didn't express it. Anyway people might think she was after Jack Foley for herself. Which oddly enough was not true. She had met a very nice medical student called Tom. He wouldn't be qualified for years, which would give Rosemary time to be an air hostess or something with a bit of glamour in the meantime.

Sean Walsh stood on the Quays waiting for the bus back to Knockglen.

He had stayed in a men's hostel in Dublin for five days to think things out. During the daytime he had walked through the menswear shops in Dublin trying to see himself working in any of them.

The prospect began to look less and less likely. He would not come armed with a reference. He would be unlikely to be taken on anywhere.

Little by little he began to realize how his horizons had narrowed.

The idea of buying his own place, renovating a cottage up over the quarry, was now only a fantasy. The notion of standing at the door of his own business and watching the town walk by was not one he could hold any more in his dreams. His name would be over no premises in Knockglen, the town where he had lived for ten years, and which, when all was said and done, he thought of as home. He was going to go back now with a proposition. He saw a very good-looking girl get off the bus, a blonde girl in a cream suit with red trimmings. He recognized her as the friend of Eve and Benny. The girl who had been at Mr. Hogan's funeral, and had been up at Westlands around Christmas time.

She didn't acknowledge him. She looked as if her mind were set on something else entirely.

Sean got on to the bus and looked without pleasure at Mikey, a man who was over-familiar and with an unfortunate habit of referring to people's physical appearance.

"There you are Sean, with a face as long as a wet week. Is it the return of the Prodigal we see?"

"I wish I understood what you meant, Mikey."

"It's a reference to a story Our Lord told in the New Testament, Sean.

A man like yourself nearly eating the altar in the church should know that."

"I am well aware of the parable of the Prodigal Son, but since he was a man who spent his life in wrong-doing, I'm afraid I can't see the similarity."

Mikey looked at Sean shrewdly. His wife had given him some highly coloured speculation about what might or might not have happened in Hogan's Outfitters. But obviously Sean Walsh had not run away.

"I was only wondering where the fatted calf was going to be killed, Sean," Mickey said. "Maybe they're basting it already down in Healy's Hotel."

Nan let herself into the house that she had left that morning.

She took off her cream suit and hung it carefully on a padded hanger.

She sponged it lightly with lemon juice and water. She put shoe trees in her red shoes, and she rubbed her red leather bag with some furniture cream, before wrapping it carefully in tissue paper and placing it beside her other four handbags in a drawer. She put on her best college clothes, combed her hair and went out to stand for a second time at the bus stop across the road.

Mrs. Healy had tidied up her office. She placed a big jug of daffodils on the window and two small hyacinths in plastic bowls on the filing cabinet.

She had been to Ballylee to have her hair done. The new corset was very well fitting. It managed to distribute the flesh very well. So well, in fact, that a tight skirt looked remarkably fine. She wore her high-necked blouse and cameo brooch. The ones reserved for special occasions.

And after all it would be a special occasion this afternoon. She knew that Sean Walsh was coming back today. And that he was going to make a proposal of marriage.

It was lunch time in the convent, and Mother Francis had her turn on dinner duty. That meant she walked up and down keeping order as the girls had their sandwiches. Then she supervised the tidying up of the hall, the careful cleaning and refolding of the greaseproof paper for tomorrow's packed lunch, the airing of the room and the quick exercise in the yard. She saw a group of the girls explaining to Heather Westward the nature of rosary beads.

"Why do you call them a pair, there's only one?" Heather looked at the necklace of beads.

"They're always called a pair." Fiona Carroll, the youngest of the badly behaved Carroll children from the grocery, was scornful.

"What does it mean "Irish Horn"?" Heather was interested. "That's just what they're made from," Siobhan Flood, the butcher's granddaughter, dismissed it.

"So what does it do?" Heather demanded, looking fearfully at the rosary beads.

ú She was not at all convinced that it did nothing, that you did things with it, you used it to pray with, that was all. That the spacings on the beads meant that you said ten Hail Marys and then stopped and said a Glory Be and then an Our Father.

"Like the Lord's Prayer?" Heather asked.

"Yes, but the proper way," Fiona Carroll said, in case there should be any doubt about it.

They explained that the whole point was not to say one Hail Mary more than was needed. That was why they were made.

Mother Francis had an art of listening to one set of conversations while being thought to be in the middle of others.

Her heart was heavy when she heard the explanations being given to the unfortunate Heather.

After all her teaching, this is what they thought. They thought the point of this beautiful prayer to Our Lady was never to let yourself say one more Hail Mary than was necessary.

Wouldn't a teacher be very foolish to think that anything ever got into their heads? Perhaps the Mother of God would be touched and pleased by the innocence of children. Mother Francis would, at this particular lunch time, have liked to take them out individually and murder them one by one.

Kit answered the phone at lunch time. It was Eve wanting to know if Benny could stay the night. She knew the answer would be yes, but between them there had always been courtesies like this.

Kit was pleased. She wanted to know was there a dance or an occasion?

"No, there's not." Eve sounded worried. "She said she wants her mother to get used to her being away from home."

"And what about Jack Foley?"

"That's the question I wanted to ask and didn't," Eve said.

Hogan's had closed for lunch. Annabel, Patsy and Mike adjourned to the back room and ate shepherd's pie and tinned beans. Mike said he hadn't felt as well in years. These midday dinners in the shop would build you up for the afternoon. Patsy said it was a grand, handy place to cook. They should move up here altogether.

Nan tried three pubs before she found them. It was nearly closing time. Almost the Holy Hour when the Dublin city pubs closed between half past two and half past three.

"Well, look who's here." Bill Dunne was pleased. "Caught you, Nan.

You're on a pub crawl," said Aidan. Jack as always said the right thing. He said it was great to see her and what would she like.

Nan said she was sick and tired of studying and she had come out to find a few handsome men to take her mind off her books. They were all flattered to think she had set out to look for them.

They sat around her in an admiring circle. She looked fresh in her pale green jumper with a dark green skirt and jacket. Her eyes sparkled as she laughed and joked with them.

"How goes the romance with Milord?" Aidan asked. "Who?"

"Come on. Simon."

"I haven't seen him for ages," she said.

Aidan was surprised. Only last night Eve had been fulminating about it all. "Did it end in tears?" Aidan knew that Eve would demand the whole story from him, not just half said, half understood bits of conversation.

"Not a bit. Nothing could come of it. We knew that. He's one world, I'm another," Nan said.

"That's establishment baloney. Just because he's part of the crumbling classes," Bill Dunne said.

"Exactly. And much as I know we should be nice to the crumbling classes, they're a bit hard to take," said Nan.

Bill, Jack and Aidan realized immediately that this Simon was besotted with Nan, but that she had thrown him over because she couldn't go along with all that would be involved if she was to play the game as they wanted to play it at the Big House.

Aidan knew that Eve would be very pleased with this news. Jack knew that Nan was just saying what he knew already. Only a few weeks ago he had seen Simon approach Nan and beg to be taken back into her warmth, while she had been polite and distant. Bill Dunne was pleased that he could report to everyone else that Nan Mahon was in circulation again.

The barman mentioned that drinking up time had long been exceeded. He looked stern, young law students weren't going to be much help to him if he got an endorsement on his licence.

Bill and Aidan drifted back to the university. Jack dallied and spoke to Nan.

"I don't suppose you'd think of being really bad and coming to the pictures with me?"

"Lord no, more Swamp Women!"

"We could look at a paper." They bought an Evening Herald. Nan said, "What about Benny?"

"What about her?"

"I mean where is she?"

"Search me," said Jack. There was nothing they could agree on.

They walked slowly through the Green debating this one and that, heads close together inside the pages of the newspaper.

It took them a long time to get to Grafton Street. They still hadn't made up their minds. The pubs were open again now. The Holy Hour was well over.

"Let's have a drink and discuss it," Jack suggested. He had a Guinness. Nan had a pineapple juice. Jack told her a long, sad saga about Benny never being there. He said he knew things were difficult in Knockglen and that Benny was trying to get her mother started in the shop. But he wondered was she taking it all on her shoulders too much?

"She shouldn't stay holding her hand," Nan agreed with him. She explained that she had never felt responsible for her mother, who went out to work every day and didn't need anyone to mind her.

Jack brightened. He had been afraid that he was being selfish.

No, Nan told him, it was a sign of how much he liked Benny around that he missed her.

He warmed to this view. Take tonight for example. There was a club dance. Everyone brought a partner. And here would he be, Jack Foley, yet again with no partner.

He looked across at her suddenly. "Unless, of course. . . ?"

"I wouldn't like to. Benny might. . . ?"

"Oh, come on. Benny won't mind. Didn't she ask us to go to the pictures together?"

Nan looked doubtful.

"You're not worried about your old pal Cavalry Twill, are you?"

"I told you, that's long forgotten. He's no part of my life."

"Well then." Jack was easy and somewhat cheered. "Will we meet at the club?"

Carmel was on the Ladies" Committee. It involved helping to prepare the supper for the functions. Sean liked her to be involved. He was Treasurer of course, and very important. She was buying bread for the sandwiches when she met Benny, who was trying to turn her back on the sweet counter and make do with an apple.

"It's the Tiffin Bar that's almost reaching out its arms at me from the shelf," Benny said. "Thank God you came in. I was nearly going to buy it."

"It'd be a shame to go back on the Tiffin now," Carmel said.

Benny didn't like the feeling that seemed to hang unspoken that there had been years of wedging chocolate bars down her throat.

She bought the apple unenthusiastically.

"It's a pity you're not going to be here tonight," Carmel said.

"The party's going to be great. They've given us much more money than usual. We're going to have sponge flans filled with whipped cream and decorated with chocolate flake. Oh, sorry, Benny, but you're not here, so you won't be tempted anyway."

"I am here as it happens. I'm staying with Eve," Benny said. "Great," said Carmel warmly. "See you tonight."

"Ring him," Eve said. "Ring him and tell him you're in town."

"He knows. He must know. I told him."

"They never listen. Ring him."

Benny said she'd have to talk to that woman, Jack's mother, who always made people sound as if they were looking for autographs instead of trying to speak to her son. Eve said that was nonsense. Benny had only phoned the house once. She must ring now. Jack would be delighted.

From the house in Dunlaoghaire Benny eventually did phone. "I'm sorry, but he's gone out to the Rugby Club. They're having some kind of party tonight. He said he'd be late back."

"He can't have known you were in town," Eve said. "No."

They sat at the kitchen table. Neither of them suggested that Benny should just dress up and go in to the club anyway.

Neither of them said it had all been the forgetfulness of men, and that Jack would be delighted to see her.

They concentrated instead on Kit Hegarty who was going out with Kevin Hickey's father.

"Don't cheapen yourself now, remember," Eve warned. "He won't respect you," said Benny.

Kit said that it was wonderful to see the high moral tone of the younger generation. She was relieved to know that this was their attitude.

"It's not our attitude for ourselves. We have no restraint at all," Eve assured her. "It's only for you."

"I wish we had no restraint," Benny said gloomily. "We might be better off."

Annabel Hogan had brightened up the shop considerably by taking away some of the wooden panels and surrounds in the window. It did not look nearly so sepulchral and solemn. She had V-necked jumpers in several colours displayed on stands. For the first time a man coming into Hogan's might be able to browse and choose rather than knowing what he wanted before he came in the door.

It also meant that she could see out much more clearly, without having to peer.

She saw Sean Walsh walk into Healy's Hotel without a backward glance at the business where he had worked for so long.

She knew that he had left his belongings there while he went away to make his plans. Perhaps he had got a job somewhere and he had returned to collect his belongings. Peggy Pine had said that Sean had hopes of Mrs. Healy. Annabel doubted it. Dorothy Healy was no fool. She would know quicker than most that Sean would not have left Hogan's as he did unless there had been an incident. He was no longer an aspiring merchant in the town.

"I'm no longer a person of substance in this town," Sean Walsh said to Mrs. Healy.

She inclined her head graciously. There had been a time when he thought he would have more to offer, something to bring to the request he was going to make. But circumstances had changed. Her head was angled like a bird considering its options. Sean spoke of his admiration for her. The respect in which she was held. The potential in Healy's Hotel, a potential as yet not fully realized. He said there was a need for an overseer, someone to look after the daily business, the nuts and bolts, while Mrs. Healy's own flair was used where it was of most use in greeting the customers, and being a presence.

Dorothy Healy waited.

He spoke of his admiration, his gratitude for her interest in him and his career, the affection that he hoped he was correct in thinking had grown between them. He was sorrier than he could ever say that things had not worked out as he would have liked.

He had always envisaged himself making this speech, when he was a partner in a business and the owner of a small property on the Quarry Road.

He spoke a lot of the time with his head hanging, and addressed many of his remarks to Mrs. Healy's knees. She gazed at his dead-looking hair, which would be perfectly all right if he used a good shampoo and went to a proper barber. When he looked up at her anxiously, his pale face working with the anxiety of his proposal, she smiled at him encouragingly.

"Yes, Sean?"

"Will you accept my proposal of matrimony?" he said. "I shall be happy to accept," said Dorothy Healy. She saw some colour flood into his face and join the look of disbelief. He reached out and touched her hand.

He didn't realize that he was a far likelier prospect now than he had been before.

Mrs. Healy wanted no refurbished cottage up on a path by the quarry.

She wanted no connections with a dying clothing business across the road. She needed a man who could manage the heavy and duller side of the hotel for her. And she knew, since Sean Walsh must have been thrown out because he was found with his hand in the till across the road, that he would have to be careful in his new employ.

She had him where she wanted him now. "I don't know what to say," he said.

But as the afternoon became evening they found a lot to say.

Plans were made, big plans and little plans. A jeweller in Ballylee would be visited for a ring. Father Ross would be consulted about a date. Sean would visit Dublin and buy three suits off the peg, since he was a stock size. Sean would be declared the Manager as of Monday.

He would live in the new building which had been erected at the back.

Sean hadn't been aware of its purpose. He had thought it some kind of store house.

Together they looked at it. It had all the makings of a fine family house.

As if Mrs. Healy had known that this would happen one day.

Paddy Hickey was a fine dancer. And he said Kit was light as a feather.

"It was the hand of God that directed my son to your house," he said.

"That and the notice I have up in the university," Kit replied. "Will you come down to Kerry with me?" he asked. She looked at his big square handsome face. He was an honourable man, who wouldn't run away from her.

"I might, one day, go down and see the place you're from," she said.

He had told her that his family was reared. That Kevin was the youngest lad. That his place was grand and modern, the kitchen had the best Formica in it, and you could eat your dinner off the tiled floor.

He said he had nice neighbours and relatives who knew all about Mrs. Hegarty the widow in Dublin who had given such a home to Kevin.

"I'm only a recent widow," Kit said.

"Well, I didn't know that, until you told me, and they need never know it, and I suppose Joe Hegarty would be pleased to know that someone was looking after you."

"I never called him Joe, in all the years. I never called him that," she said almost wonderingly.

"Maybe that was part of it all," said Kevin Hickey's father, who had every intention of making this woman his wife.

The mournful sound of the fog horn boomed around Dunlaoghaire Harbour.

Eve was so used to it now that she hardly heard it any more.

But she stirred and looked at her clock with the luminous hands.

It was half past three.

She listened. Benny didn't seem to be breathing the way a sleeping person does. She must be lying there awake.

"Benny?"

"It's all right. Go back to sleep."

Eve turned on the light. Benny was propped up against her pillows in the small camp bed. Her face was tearstained.

Eve swung her legs out of the bed and reached for her cigarettes.

"It's just that I love him so much," wept Benny. "I know, I know."

"And he must have gone off me. Just like that."

"It's a misunderstanding. For God's sake, if he was going with anyone else we'd know."

"Would we?"

"Of course we would. You should have rung earlier. You'd have saved yourself all this. You'd be out somewhere in a steamy car trying to keep your clothes on you."

"Maybe I kept them on me too much."

"Stop blaming yourself. You always think it's your fault."

"Would you tell me if you knew?

Really and truly would you tell me? You'd not keep it from me to be kind?"

"I swear I'd tell you," Eve said. "I swear I'd not let you be made a fool of."

The party was great. Carmel was in the kitchen most of the time and so didn't see the way Jack Foley and Nan Mahon danced together. And how they found everything funny, and hardly talked to anyone else.

Carmel was busy washing plates when Jack Foley got Nan's coat and took her home.

"I'm honoured to be allowed to take you home. Bill Dunne and the boys say you never tell them where you live."

"Maybe I don't want them to know," Nan said. They sat outside the door of Maple Gardens and talked. The light of the street lamp on Nan's face made her look very beautiful. Jack leaned across and kissed her.

She didn't move away when he bent over to kiss her. Instead she clung to him eagerly.

It was very easy to kiss and hold Nan Mahon. She didn't move away and pull back just as you were feeling aroused. He stroked her breast through the lilac silky dress she wore under her coat.

His voice was husky. There was no other sensation outside this car.

When she did pull away she spoke to him, cool and unruffled and different to the woman he had held in his arms, pliant, eager and wrapping herself close to him.

"Jack, don't you think we should talk about Benny?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"She's not here." He realized that it sounded too harsh, too dismissive. "What I mean is that anything between Benny and me has nothing to do with this." He reached for her again.

She leaned over and kissed him on the nose.

"Goodnight, Jack," she said, and vanished. He saw her let herself into the house and the door close behind her.

It was the same ritual of hanging up the clothes, sponging them and brushing them.

Cleaning her face with cream and doing her stretching exercises.

Though she might have to change those exercises. Nan lay in her bed and thought about the events of the day. She laid her two hands on her stomach where a lab report had proved what she knew already. That a child was beginning to grow. She did not think about Simon Westward.

She would never think about him again, no matter what happened.

She lay in the bedroom that she and her mother had decorated over the years, the years when they had told each other Nan was like a princess, and that she would leave Maple Gardens and find a prince.

Her first attempt had not been very successful. Nan stared ahead of her unseeingly and thought out the options. She did not want to go to this person and have something that was less important than tooth extraction. She did not want the sordidness of it, the shabby end of something that had been important. She didn't think it was a speck, as Simon had said. But she didn't believe it was a baby either.

If it were done, then it would all be over, the slate would be clean, she could continue with her studies.

She looked over at her desk. She didn't enjoy them. They took up too much time. They ate into the hours she should have been grooming herself, and preparing for the places to go. She found no great joy sitting in those large musty chalk-smelling halls, or the cramped tutorial rooms. She wasn't academic. Her tutor had told her more than once that she would not make the Honours group. What was the point of struggling on doing a pass degree while the kudos was on the Honours students?

She could go to England and have the child. She could have it adopted.

Take less than a year out of her life. But why have a child to give it away? Go through all that just to make some anonymous couple's dream come true?

If she lived in a remote country village in the West of Ireland, the community might have excused a beautiful girl falling for the Squire and bringing up his child, ashamed but still accepted.

In parts of working-class Dublin, an unexpected child would have been welcomed in the family. The child would grow up believing its granny was its mother.

But not in Maple Gardens. It was the beginnings of respectability for the Mahons and their neighbours. And for Nan and Em it would be the end of the dream.

It looked as if a lot of the options weren't really options after all.

It was too early for morning sickness. But she didn't take any breakfast. Em looked at her anxiously.

"You'll be seeing Simon this evening, is that right?" she asked, hoping to see Nan's face light up. But she was disappointed.

"I haven't seen Simon for weeks and weeks, Em."

"But I thought you said "I'm saying now, and I want you to remember it, I haven't been going out with Simon Westward since just after Christmas."

Emily Mahon looked at her daughter astonished. But there was something about the set of Nan's jaw that made it seem very important.

Emily nodded, as if she had taken the instruction to heart. It didn't make it any easier to understand. Either Nan had been lying when she told her of the outings to smart places with Simon, or else she was lying now.

Jack came into the Annexe. Benny waved eagerly from a table. She had been holding a chair against all comers, by draping her scarf and her books all over it.

She looked so glad to see him and a lurch of guilt shook him.

Nobody had reported his long hours dancing with Nan to her anyway; he was slightly afraid that Carmel might have seen it as her duty to make sure that Benny was informed.

But Benny's eyes were shining with pleasure to see him. "How was the party?"

"Oh, you know, these things are always the same. Everyone was fine, very cheerful." There had been two wins to celebrate, some fine playing and thanks to Sean they were in funds. He told her all those details and little about the night itself.

"It was a pity you couldn't have been in Dublin."

"But I was.

Remember I said it would be early-closing day and Mother was going to have a rest and an early night."

"I'd forgotten," Jack admitted. There was a pause.

"And of course you didn't know about the party."

"Well, I did, because I ran into Carmel when she was shopping for it.

And she told me."

She looked unsure. He felt a heel, not just for holding Nan so close last night, but because Benny had thought he mightn't have asked her.

"I'd have loved you to have been there. I just forgot. Honestly, I'm so used to your not being there. What did you do?"

"I went to the pictures with Eve."

"You should have rung me."

"I did, but it was too late."

Jack hadn't even looked at the message pad this morning. His mother would have written the names of anyone who called.

"Ah, Benny, I'm very sorry. I'm stupid." He banged his head as if it were wood.

He seemed very sorry. "Well, no harm done," she said.

"I ran into Nan. And since she wasn't doing anything I asked her to come instead. I think she quite enjoyed it., Benny's smile was broad.

Everything was all right. He had genuinely forgotten. He wasn't trying to tell her anything. He wasn't wriggling out. He would have loved her to have been with him last night.

Thank God he had met Nan and invited her. Now she had nothing to worry about.

Chapter 17

Jack woke suddenly with his heart pounding. He was in the middle of a very violent dream. It was so real it was hard to shake it off.

Benny's father, Mr. Hogan, was standing at the top of the quarry pushing the black Morris Minor belonging to Dr. Foley over the edge.

Mr. Hogan had red burning coals where his eyes should be, laughing while the car bounced to the bottom of the quarry with a crash.

It was the crash that had jerked Jack awake. He lay there, panting.

Beside him lay Nan, sleeping innocently, her hands folded under her face, a little smile on her lips.

They lay in Eve's cottage, the place he had come for a party just after Christmas.

They had needed somewhere to go, Nan said. This was a perfectly safe place. Nobody ever passed by. The key was in the stone wall.

Nan had been wonderful. So cool and practical, saying they must bring a spirit lamp and perhaps their own sheets and towels.

Jack would never have thought of that. She said they should keep the curtains very tightly drawn and leave the car hidden in the square lest anyone see it. There was a place behind the bus shelter where nobody would think to look.

She was naturally observant.

She had said that she never thought it was possible that she could desire someone so much.

He had been worried about everything of course, but she said that it would be all right. The alternative was just to go on being a tease.

She wanted to love him completely and honestly. It had been so wonderful, compared to that girl in Wales, which had all been just rushed and quick and awkward. Nan's beautiful body was magical in his arms. She seemed to love everything as much as he did.

It must have been awful for her the first time, but she had made no complaint. What excited him most was her calm exterior when they met in college. The cool Nan Mahon looking fresh and immaculate was the same girl who wrapped herself around him and gave him an ecstasy that he had not known could exist. This was their third visit to the cottage. He had still not spoken to Benny. It was just that he didn't know what to say.

There was going to be an Easter Pageant at the School. Heather wanted to take part. "We told your brother that you wouldn't be involved in religious instruction," Mother Francis explained.

"But this isn't religion. It's drama. It's only a play," Heather pleaded. It had been an exercise in spirituality intended to give the children some feeling of the message of Easter by re-enacting the Passion of Our Lord. Mother Francis sighed.

"Well, who'll explain it to your brother? Will you, or will I?"

"I don't think we'll bother him about it. He's like a weasel.

Could I be Hitler, please, Mother, please!"

"Could you be who?"

"Um. . . Pontius Pilate. I got confused. .

"We'll have to see. But first I will have to discuss it with Mr. Westward."

"It's too late," said Heather triumphantly. "He's gone to England today. To Hampshire. To look for a wife."

Mossy Rooney cleared out the back of Hogan's shop, and made the derelict yard look as if it had always intended to be a garden.

Benny and her mother decided they must put flowers and even shrubs in it.

Mossy said that they could even have a bit of a garden seat. The place was nice and sheltered.

Patsy had told him that if the mistress had an ounce of sense she'd sell Lisbeg and move into the shop good and proper. There was plenty of room in it, and why did she want to be rattling around like a tin can in a big empty house?

If they were in the shop it would be easier for Patsy to come and do a bit of daily work. It wouldn't be as heavy and constant as looking after a big house where nobody lived. Annabel Hogan had not admitted it to herself yet, but as she stood beside Benny watering in the fuchsias that they had taken at Eve's request from the cottage, she began to think that it might be the wisest course. In a way it would be nice just to walk upstairs and be home. Or be able to stretch out your feet on the sofa. But time enough to think of that later. There was more than enough to sort out already. Benny had been careful not to make the first floor, the lumber room where they had found the money in the sewing machine, a place they didn't visit. Bit by bit she managed to get rid of what had to go. Very gradually she started to ferry things up from Lisbeg. Little by little she and Patsy were transforming that big room into a place where it would be quite possible to sit and spend an evening. They took a wireless, some chairs that did not have the springs protruding. They polished a shabby old table and put place mats on it. Soon they were having their meals up here. Shep spent more time nosing around the lane, prowling the small garden which he regarded as his own exercise yard, and sitting proprietorially in the shop, than he did lording it over an empty Lisbeg.

Soon the shop was beginning to feel like home. Soon Benny would be able to feel more free.

Dekko Moore asked Dr. Johnson was there a chance that Mrs. Hogan might part with Lisbeg.

Very often customers came in to him, people from big places, loaded down with money, and they often enquired were there any houses of a certain style going to come up on the market.

"Give them a few months, yet," Dr. Johnson said. "I imagine they'll be moved up above by the end of the summer, but you wouldn't want to rush them."

Dekko said it was extraordinary the way things had gone already.

He had gone into the shop to buy a pair of socks the other day, and he had spent a fortune.

Nan and Jack ran down the track from the quarry walk to the square.

The Morris Minor was hidden behind the bus shelter. For the third time they were lucky nobody was about. It was only six thirty in the morning. The car started and they were on the road to Dublin.

"One morning it won't start. And then we're for it," Jack said, squeezing her hand.

"We're very careful. We won't be caught," she said. She looked out of the window, as they sped past the fields and farms on their way to Dublin.

He sighed, thinking of the nights and early mornings they had spent in Eve Malone's small bed. But a part of him felt almost sick at the risk they were taking. Eve would kill them if she knew they were using her house like this.

Knockglen was a village. Someone must see them sooner or later.

Knockglen was much more than a village. It was Benny's home town.

Benny.

He tried to put her out of his mind. He had managed to see her only with other people for the last two weeks. Since this amazing explosive thing with Nan had begun. He didn't think that Benny noticed. He made sure that Bill or Aidan or Johnny was there, or else he called over people to join them.

They never went to the pictures alone; on the hard-fought nights that Benny was able to stay in Dublin he made sure they went out in a group.

He tried not to include Nan with them, though sometimes Benny brought her along.

Nan told him that she accepted exactly what he said, that whatever happened between them had nothing to do with Jack and Benny. They were two different worlds.

Yes, he had said that in the heat of the moment, but when he saw Benny's trusting face, and laughed at her funny remarks. . . when she turned out on a cold afternoon to watch him at a practice match, when she offered to help Carmel with the sandwiches, when he realized that he actually wanted to be with her alone and to touch her the way he touched Nan, then he felt confused.

It was easy to say that your world was compartmentalized. But in real life it wasn't easy.

Nan must be much more mature than all of them if she could accept that what Jack felt for her was a huge and almost overpowering passion. It had everything to do with desire and very little to do with sharing a life. They didn't talk much in the car, while with Benny they would both find the words stumbling over each other.

Jack felt a great sense of anxiety as the traffic began to build up a little on the road and they approached Dublin. Nan told him nothing of her home and family.

"How do they let you stay out all night?" he had asked. "How do yours let you stay out all night?" she had replied. The answer was simple.

That he was a boy. Nothing terrible could happen to him, like getting pregnant.

But he didn't say it. He didn't dare to say it out of politeness, and out of superstition.

Nan watched fields turn into first factory premises and then housing estates. They would soon be home. She would ask him to leave her at the corner of Maple Gardens. As soon as his car had disappeared, Nan would go to the bus stop.

She would come into college early and get herself ready for lectures.

Not that her heart was in them. But she couldn't go home. Her father thought she was staying with Eve Malone in Dunlaoghaire, instead of sneaking into Eve's cottage in Knockglen.

It would confuse and worry her mother. Let Jack go home to his house with hot water and clean shirts, and a mildly perplexed mother and maid putting bacon and egg on the table. He had nothing to worry about, a lover and a patient loving girlfriend.

From what you read in books it was what all men wanted.

Nan bit her lip as they drove along in silence. She would have to tell him very soon. She could see no other way out.

That night when she lay on her bed she examined the options. This was the only one that looked as if it might possibly work.

She was not going to think about Benny. Jack had said that was his business. It had nothing to do with what was between them.

Nan didn't really believe that. But he had said that it was up to him to cope with. She had enough to worry about.

She could not confide in one single person because there was nobody alive who would condone what she was about to do. For the second time in a month she was going to have to tell a man that she was pregnant.

And with the unfairness of life, the second one who had no duty or responsibility would probably be the one to do the right thing.

Mossy's mother said that May was nice for a wedding. Paccy Moore said they could have the reception in the room behind his shop.

After all, his sister Bee was being the bridesmaid, and Patsy didn't have a home of her own.

It wasn't what Patsy had hoped. The guests coming through the cobbler's shop. But it was either that or let it be known she was coming in with nothing to her mother-in-law's house and have the gathering there.

What she would really have liked was to be able to use Lisbeg, and have the reception in the Hogans" house, but it didn't look likely. The master would only be four months gone. The mistress and Benny spent that much time above in the shop they would have little time and energy to spare for Patsy. She was getting a dress at Pine's. She had been paying for it slowly since Christmas.

Clodagh told Benny about Patsy's hopes. "It may be impossible, I'm not suggesting you do it, it's just that you'd hate to hear afterwards and not have realized."

Benny was very grateful to be told. It was bad of them not to have thought of it in the first place. They had assumed that all the running would be made by Mossy's side and didn't even think of suggesting a venue.

Patsy's joy knew no bounds. It was one in the eye for Mossy's mother.

She began to get the wedding invitations printed.

"And how's your own romance?" Clodagh enquired. "I believe he was down here the other night."

"God, I wish he had been. I think it's going all right. He's always coming looking for me and suggesting this and that, but there's a cast of thousands as well."

"Ah well, that's all to the good. He wants to show you to his friends.

And he has friends. That lunatic across the road there has no friends except people who sell pinball machines and juke boxes. I could have sworn I saw him at Dessie Burns" getting petrol."

"Who? Fonsie?"

"No, your fellow. Oh well, I suppose there's dozens of handsome blokes in college scarves getting petrol in Morris Minors."

"It's not only Mr. Flood who's seeing visions," Benny said to Jack next day. "Clodagh thought she saw you getting petrol in Knockglen the other night."

"Would I have come to Knockglen and not gone to see you?" he asked.

It was a ridiculous question. It didn't even need an answer. She had only brought it up to show him that he was a person there, that he had an identity. He breathed slowly through his teeth and remembered the shock that he and Nan had got when he realized the petrol gauge was showing empty. They had to fill up there and then. There would be nowhere open when they made their dawn escape.

Another very near miss. He wouldn't tell Nan about it. He hoped Benny wouldn't.

Sean Walsh was taking his early morning walk. These days he was accompanied by the two unattractive Jack Russell terriers with whom he would be sharing his home. They were less yappy and unpleasant if they were wearied by this harsh morning exercise.

He had ceased to look at the houses with the resentment and longing that he had once felt.

Things had turned out very much better than he would have dared to hope. Dorothy was a woman in a million.

From Eve Malone's cottage he saw two figures emerge. The early sunlight was in his eyes and he couldn't see who they were.

They ran hand in hand, almost scampered down the way that led to the square. He squinted after them. They both looked vaguely familiar.

Or perhaps he was imagining it. They must be Dublin people who had rented or borrowed the cottage.

But where were they going?

It was much too early for a bus. There had been no cars in the square.

It was a mystery, and that was something Sean Walsh didn't like at all.

Lilly Foley spoke to her husband about Jack.

"Three nights last week, and three again this week, John. You'll have to say something."

"He's a grown man."

"He's twenty. That's not a grown man."

"Well, it's not a child. Leave him be. When he's passed over for a team, or fails an exam, that's the time to talk to him."

"But who could he be with? Is it the same girl, or a different one each time?"

"It's a fair distance on the old milometer, I notice, whoever it is."

Jack's father laughed roguishly.

He had found a receipt for petrol from Knockglen. It must be that big girl Benny Hogan. Which was a turn-up for the books, and where on earth did they go? Her father had died, but her mother was strict.

Surely she wouldn't have been able to entertain Jack in her house?

Heather rang Eve. "When are you coming home? I miss you."

Eve felt absurdly flattered.

She said she'd come soon, next weekend or the weekend after. "It doesn't have to be the weekend." Eve realized that was true. It didn't.

She was free to leave any afternoon. She could travel on the bus with Benny. She'd have tea with Mother Francis and the nuns and then take Heather up to the cottage. She'd hear at first hand how the plans for the Easter Pageant were going. She could go to see Benny's mother and admire the changes in Hogan's. She could call to Mario's to end the evening. Knockglen was full of excitement these days. She might go tomorrow, but she had better check it wasn't a night that Benny was coming to town. It would be silly to miss her.

Benny said they'd skip a lecture and meet on the three o'clock bus.

That way they'd have a bit of time. They had sandwiches in the place that the boys liked. The pub with the relaxed view about the Holy Hour.

Aidan, Jack and Bill were there. Rosemary had called in to borrow ten shillings. She needed to have a hair-do in a very good place.

Tom the medical student had been harder to pin down than she had hoped.

It was time for heavy remedies now, like new hairstyles.

Nobody felt like work, but Eve and Benny refused the offer of being taken to play some slot machines in an amusement arcade.

"I'm getting the bus," said Benny.

"Goodbye, Cinderella," Jack blew her a kiss. His eyes were very warm.

She must have been mad to worry about him.

Benny and Eve left the pub.

Aidan said that he felt sure those two would be up all night and maybe bopping till dawn in Mario's.

"What?" Jack spilled some of his drink. He hadn't realized that Eve was going back to her cottage. He had arranged to meet Nan on the Quays at six o'clock. They had been planning to go to the very same place.

Nan Mahon walked briskly down towards the river. Her overnight bag contained the usual sheets, pillowcases, candlesticks, breakfast and supper materials. Jack just brought a primus stove and something to drink.

But this time Nan had packed a bottle of wine as well. They might need it. Tonight was the night she was going to tell him.

Heather was overjoyed to see Eve. As she went through the school hall she called her over excitedly. There was a rehearsal in progress, and she was wearing a sheet. Heather Westward was playing Simon of Cyrene, the man who helped Jesus to carry his cross.

It was something that Knockglen would not have believed possible a few short weeks ago.

"Are you coming to cheer me on when we do it for real?" Heather wanted to know.

"I don't think cheering you on is what Mother Francis had in mind. .

"But I'm one of the good people. I help him. I step forward and lighten his burden," Heather said.

"Yes. I'll certainly come and support you."

"You see, I won't have any relations here like everyone else has." Eve promised that she would be there when the pageant was performed. She might even bring Aidan so that Heather would have two people. Eve Malone knew very well what it was like to be the only girl in the school who had nobody to turn up with a cake for the sale of work or with applause for the pageants and the plays.

That had been her lot all during her years in St. Mary's. She let Heather get back to rehearsal and said she'd see her later in the cottage. It was time to talk to Mother Francis.

Eve said she had to go down to Healy's Hotel to have a cup of coffee so that she could get a close-up look at Love's Young Dream, Dorothy and Sean, Great Lovers of our Time. Mother Francis said she wasn't to be making a jeer out of them. Everyone was being very restrained, and Eve must be the same.

Hadn't it turned out better than anyone dared to hope, Mother Francis said sternly, and Eve realized that she must have known or suspected something of the secret Benny had told her, the missing money and the terror of the confrontation.

But if she did, it would never be discussed.

Up in her own cottage, waiting for Heather to come pounding up the convent path, Eve looked around.

There was something different. Not just the way things were placed.

Mother Francis came here often. She polished and she dusted.

Sometimes she rearranged things. But this was different.

Eve couldn't think what it was. It was just a feeling that someone else had been there. Staying there, cooking even.

Sleeping in her bed. She ran her hand across the range. Nobody had used it. Her bed was made with the neat corners she had learned at school.

Eve shivered. She was becoming fanciful. All those stories about the place being haunted must have got to her. But on a bright April evening this was ridiculous.

She shook herself firmly and started getting the fire going.

Heather would need toast within minutes of her arrival.

Later, down in Healy's Hotel, Eve saw Sean. In his dark manager's suit.

"Might I be the first to congratulate you?" she said. "That's uncommonly gracious of you, Eve." Eve enquired politely about when they intended to marry. Was courteously interested in the expansionist plans for the hotel, the honeymoon that would include the Holy City and the Italian lakes, and enquired whether Mrs. Healy was around so that she could express her congratulations and pleasure personally.

"Dorothy is having a rest. She does that in the early evenings," Sean said, as if he were describing the habits of some long extinct animal in a museum.

Eve stuffed her hand into her mouth to stop any sound coming out.

"I see you've decided to capitalize on your property," Sean said.

Eve looked at him blankly.

"Let your cottage out to people."

"No, I haven't," she said. "Oh, I'm sorry."

She thought he was manoeuvring the conversation around to a point where he would ask her to rent it to him or to let it to someone he knew.

A feeling of revulsion rose in her throat. She decided that this must be nipped in the bud. Sean Walsh must be left under no illusion that her home could be let to anyone, not to anyone for money.

"No, I'm sorry for speaking so sharply Sean. It's just that I never intend to. I'm keeping it for myself and my friends."

"Your friends. Yes," he said.

Suddenly he realized who he had seen coming out of Eve's cottage.

It was that blonde girl he had seen several times before, most recently getting off the Knockglen bus, on the Quays in Dublin.

And the man. Of course he remembered who he was. He was Benny's boyfriend. The doctor's son.

So that little romance hadn't lasted long. And there had been precious little said about its being over.

He smiled a slow smile. There was something about it that made Eve feel very uneasy. That was twice this afternoon she had got goosebumps. She must be getting very jumpy. Aidan was right. Eve Malone was a deeply neurotic woman. She felt an overwhelming urge to be away from Sean Walsh and out of his presence.

She jumped up and started to hasten out of the hotel. "You'll pass on my good wishes to Mrs. Healy," she tried to say Dorothy, but somehow the word wouldn't form in her mouth.

The traffic was bad on the Quays. Jack saw Nan but he couldn't attract her attention. She was leaning against the wall, and looking down into the Liffey. She seemed many miles away.

Eventually by hooting and shouting he managed to make her hear him.

She walked threading her way confidently between the parked cars in the traffic jam. He thought again how beautiful she was, and how hard it was to resist these nights with her. However, he would have to resist it tonight. His heart nearly stopped when he realized how near they had been to discovery. In future they would have to check and double check that Eve was not going home mid-week.

It was terrifying enough that time they had seen the man with the dogs, the tall thin fellow that Benny hated so much, the one there had been all the fuss over about getting him to leave.

Nan slipped into the car easily and laid her overnight bag on the back seat.

"Change of plan," he said. "Let's have a drink and discuss it."

It was always something that made Benny smile, that phrase. Nan didn't know it.

"Why?"

"Because we can't go down there. Eve's going home."

"Damn!" She seemed very annoyed.

"Isn't it lucky we discovered?" He wanted to be congratulated on the amazing accident that made Aidan reveal this to him.

"Isn't it unlucky that she chose tonight of all nights to go down there?" Jack noticed that Nan never referred to Eve by name.

"Well, it is her house," he said with a little laugh. Nan didn't seem amused.

"I really wanted to be there tonight," she said. Even frowning she looked beautiful.

Then her face cleared. She suggested this lovely hotel in Wicklow. It was absolutely marvellous. Very quiet and people didn't disturb you.

It was exactly where they could go.

Jack knew the name. It was a place where his parents had dinner sometimes. It was much too expensive. He wouldn't be able to afford it and he told her so.

"Do you have a cheque book?"

"Yes, but not enough money in the bank."

"We'll get the money tomorrow. Or I will. Let's go there."

"And stay the night. Nan, we're not married. We can't." He looked alarmed.

"They don't ask for your wedding certificate." He looked at her.

She changed her voice slightly. "I've heard of people who've been there, and stayed the night. There was no problem."

As they drove out south past Dunlaoghaire they saw the house where Eve lived with Kit Hegarty.

"Why on earth can't she be there tonight?" Nan said.

Jack thought it would certainly be a lot cheaper for everyone if she were.

He dreaded the thought of writing a cheque that bounced in this hotel, and having to face his mother and father when it all came out.

He wished that Nan could just have faced the fact that this was one night they would have to put off. Benny would have been most agreeable and understanding.

He wished he didn't keep thinking of Benny at times like this. It was as hypocritical as hell.

Benny and Eve met in the square next morning. They sat in the shelter and waited for Mikey to arrive with the bus.

"Why do we call this a square?" Eve asked. "It's only a bit of waste ground really."

"That's until the young tigers get their hands on it. It might be a skating rink next week," Benny laughed.

It was true that Clodagh and Fonsie were tireless in their efforts to change Knockglen. They had even frightened other people into improving their businesses.

Fonsie had gone to Flood's and said that if ever he owned a fine frontage like that he'd have the lettering repainted in gold. Mr. Flood, terrified that somehow it would be taken from him unless he lived up to this young man's expectations, had the signwriters in next day. Clodagh had stood in Mrs. Carroll's untidy grocery and chatted about the food inspectors who were closing shops down all over the place. It was amazing what a coat of paint and a spring clean did to fool them. All the time she pretended she was talking in the abstract.

But she could have told Mossy Rooney that he would be called in next day, as indeed he was.

Clodagh told Mossy to put up a fitting for an awning without being asked. Dessie Burns was now stocking various colours of big canvas blinds. Clodagh and Fonsie were going to have their town looking like a rainbow before they finished.

"I suppose they'll get married," Eve said. "Clodagh says never.

There's too many nuptials coming up, she says we'll be sick of weddings. Mrs. Healy and Mr. Walsh, Patsy and Mossy, and Maire Carroll home from Dublin with a fiance already, I gather, unlike the two of us who were very slow off the mark."

They were giggling as usual when they got on the bus. Nothing had changed since they were schoolgirls.

Rosemary was full of smiles. The hair-do had been highly successful, she said. Benny had lent her three shillings. It was counted meticulously back to her. Tom had been very impressed.

"It looks a bit flattened," Benny said, examining the hair-do.

"Yes, I know," Rosemary said delightedly. "I owe Jack a shilling.

Will you give it to him for me?"

Benny said she would. She'd be seeing him in the Annexe anyway.

Sean and Carmel had a table. Benny joined them with Jack's shilling clutched in her hand so that she wouldn't forget to give it to him.

"Jack was looking for you everywhere this morning," Sean said.

Benny was pleased.

"He went and stood outside a Latin lecture, he thought it was yours, but it was Baby Latin."

"Oh, I'm not Baby Latin," Benny said proudly. She was just one step above it. Everyone in First Arts had to do some kind of Latin in their first year. Mother Francis would have killed her if she had gone into the easy option.

Bill Dunne joined them.

"Jack said if I saw you, to say that he'll meet you at one o'clock in the main hall," Bill said. "Though if you want my personal opinion you wouldn't touch him with a bargepole. He hasn't shaved. He's like a bear with a sore head. He's not worthy of you."

Benny laughed. It made her feel as high as a kite when Bill Dunne said things like this in front of everyone. It confirmed somehow that she was Jack's girl.

"He's not coming here now, then." She had been looking at the door.

"Him come anywhere? I asked him about cars and all for the outing to Knockglen after Easter. He said not to talk to him about cars, outings or Knockglen or he'd knock my head off."

Benny knew that Bill was dramatizing it all, so that he could cast himself in the role of the beautifully mannered nice person and Jack the villain.

Since this was different to the way things were, everyone knew it was a joke. She smiled at Bill affectionately. She knew Jack was longing for the great weekend in Knockglen. It would be even better than Christmas.

Everyone had been planning it for ages. Sean had been collecting money from people, a shilling now and a shilling then. The fund was building up.

There would be a gathering in Eve's, in Clodagh's, and very possibly something upstairs in Hogan's. The rooms were so big and with high ceilings they positively called out to have a party.

Benny had been sounding her mother out. And the signs looked good.

She was pleased that Jack was looking for her. For the past few weeks he had never wanted to see her on her own. Benny hoped that he might want them to go off to lunch together, like that time ages ago when they had gone to Carlo's.

Maybe she should take him there for a treat. But she'd wait and see his mood. She didn't want to be too pushy.

Bill was right. Jack did look very badly. Pale and tired as if he hadn't slept all night. He still looked just as handsome, maybe even more so. There was less of the conventional College Hero and more of the lead player in some film or theatre piece.

Yes, Jack Foley looked as if he were in a play. And he spoke as if he were in one too.

"Benny, I have to talk to you. Where can we go that's away from all these people?"

She laughed at him good-naturedly.

ú "Hey, you were the one who said the main hall at one o'clock. I didn't choose it. Did you think it would be deserted and just the two of us?"

The crowds swarmed past them in and out, and just standing around in groups talking, duffle coats over arms now, scarves loosely hanging.

The weather was getting too warm for them, but they were the badge of being a student. People didn't want to discard them entirely.

"Please," he said.

"Well would you like to go to Carlo's, you know that lovely place we went.

"No." He almost shouted it.

Everywhere else would be full of people they knew. Even if they were to sit in Stephen's Green, half the university would pass by on its way to stroll down Grafton Street at lunch time.

Benny was at a loss, and yet she knew she had to make the decision.

Jack looked all in.

"We could sit by the canal?" she suggested. "We could get apples for us and some stale bread in case we see the swans." She looked eager and anxious to please him. It seemed to distress him still further.

"Oh, Jesus, Benny," he said, and pulled her towards him. A flicker of fear came and went. She felt something was wrong, but then she was always feeling that and it never was.

There was a place near one of the locks where they often sat.

There was a bit of raised ground.

Benny took off her coat and laid it down for them to sit on. "No, no, we'll ruin it."

"It's only clay. It'll brush off. You're as bad as Nan," she teased him. "It's Nan," he said. "What is?"

"She's pregnant. She found out yesterday."

Benny felt a jolt of shock for her friend. At the same time she felt the sense of surprise that Nan of all people had been going all the way with Simon Westward. Nan. So cool and distant. How had she made love properly? Benny would have thought that she would have been the last person on earth to have found herself in this position.

"Poor Nan," she said. "Is she very upset?"

"She's out of her mind with worry," he said. They sat in silence.

Benny went over the whole awfulness of it in her mind. A university career in ruins, a baby by the age of twenty. And possibly from the look of sympathy on Jack's face a problem about Simon Westward. Eve would have been right about him.

He would never marry Nan Mahon from the North Side of Dublin, a builder's daughter. And beautiful though she was, the fact that she had given in to him would make him less respectful of her than ever.

"What's she going to do? I suppose she's not going to get married?"

She looked at Jack.

His face was working with emotion. He seemed to be struggling for words.

"She is getting married."

Benny looked at him alarmed. This wasn't normal speech. He took her hand, and held it to his face. There were tears on his face.

Jack Foley was crying.

"She's getting married. . . to me," he said. She looked at him in disbelief.

She said absolutely nothing. She knew her mouth was open and her face red with fright.

He was still holding her hand to his face. His body was shaking with sobs.

"We have to get married, Benny," he said. "It's my baby."

Chapter 18

Eve was in the Singing Kettle when she saw Benny at the door. At first she thought that Benny was going to join them and was about to pull up another chair.

Then she saw her face.

"See you later," she said hastily to the group.

"You haven't finished your chips." Aidan was amazed. Nothing could be that pressing. But Eve was out in Leeson Street.

She drew Benny away from the doorway where they were in the main path of almost everyone they knew.

Then, leaning against the iron railings of a house, Benny began to tell her the tale. Sometimes it was hard to hear the words, and sometimes she said the same words over, and over and over again.

Like that he said he loved her, he loved Benny. He really did and he wouldn't have had this happen for the world. But there was nothing else that could be done. The announcement would be in the Irish Times on Saturday.

Eve looked across the road and saw a taxi letting someone off at St. Vincent's Private Nursing Home. She dragged Benny through the traffic and pushed her into the back of it.

"Dunlaoghaire," she said briskly.

"Are you girls all right?" The taxi driver watched them in the mirror.

The big girl look particularly poorly, as if she might get sick all over his car.

"We have the fare," Eve said. "I didn't mean that," he began.

"You did a bit." They both grinned.

Eve said to Benny that she should rest. There'd be plenty of time to talk when they got home.

Kit was out. She was shopping for a new outfit for Easter when she was going to Kerry as a guest of Kevin Hickey and his father.

They had the kitchen to themselves. Benny sat at the table and through a blur saw Eve prepare a meal for them. She noticed her small thin hands cut deftly through the cold cooked potatoes and trim the rinds from rashers of bacon. She saw thin fingers of bread dipped in a beaten egg.

"I don't want any of this," Benny said.

"No, but I do. I left my whole lunch in the Kettle, remember?"

Eve took a bottle of sherry from inside a cornflake packet. "It's to hide it from the drinky students," she explained. "I'm not having any."

"Medicinal," Eve said, and poured out two huge tumblers for them as she placed the big white plates of comfort food in front of them.

"Now start at the very beginning and tell me slowly. Start from when you sat down on the coat by the canal, and don't tell me that he loves you or I'll get up and throw every single thing that's on this table on the floor and you'll have to clear it up."

"Eve, please. I know you mean to help."

"Oh, I mean to help all right," said Eve. Benny had never seen her face looking so grim. Not in all that long war she had waged with the Westwards, not in the fight with Mother Clare or in her hospital bed had she seen Eve Malone's face so hard and unforgiving.

They talked until the shadows got longer. Benny heard Kit let herself in. She looked around at the untidy kitchen and the half finished sherry bottle.

"It's all right," Eve said gently, "she'll understand. I'll do a quick clear-up."

"I should be going for my bus."

"You're staying here. Ring your mother. And Benny. . . she'll ask are you seeing Jack. Tell her you don't see Jack any more.

Prepare her for it being over."

"It needn't be over. He doesn't want it to be over. He says that we have to talk."

Kit came to the door and looked around her in surprise. Before she could make any protest Eve spoke.

"Benny's had a bit of a shock. We're coping with it the best we can, by eating most of tomorrow's breakfast. I'll go up to the huckster's shop and replace it later."

Kit knew a crisis when she saw one.

"I have to hang up my finery. See you in half an hour to prepare supper. That's if there's any of that left."

She nodded encouragingly and disappeared.

Annabel Hogan said that was fine. She had a lot of work to do in the shop. It would save them making a supper. She and Patsy would just get something from Mario's. Benny thought bitterly of all the nights she had left Jack Foley to his own devices in Dublin while she had trundled wearily home to keep her mother company.

Now she was less in the way staying in Dublin.

"Are you going out with Jack?" Mother asked. Despite Eve's warning, Benny couldn't do it. She couldn't tell her mother that it was over.

Even to say it meant it might be true.

"Not tonight," she said brightly. "No, tonight I'm just going out with Eve."

Benny lay on Eve's bed and bathed her eyes with cold water while Eve served the supper downstairs. The curtains were drawn and she could hear the clatter of plates and cutlery below. Kit had looked in briefly with a cup of tea. She had made no attempt to cheer her or sympathize. Benny could see why she must be such a restful person to live with.

She dreaded the bucketfuls of sympathy that Mother would pour on her, the endless wondering and speculating and ludicrous little suggestions.

Maybe if you wore paler colours or darker colours, perhaps if you went round to his house to talk to his mother. Men like girls who get on well with their mothers.

She wouldn't tell Mother that Nan was pregnant. It demeaned them all somehow. It put everything on a different level.

They walked, Benny and Eve, for what seemed and felt like hours and miles.

Sometimes they argued, sometimes Benny stopped to cry again. To say that Eve wouldn't be so harsh if only she could have seen Jack's face, and Eve would tighten her lips and say nothing. As they walked up the Burma road and into Killiney Park, Benny said that it was all her fault. She hadn't understood how a man needs to make love. It's a biological thing. And when they sat by the obelisk and looked down on the bay she said that Jack Foley was the most dishonest cheating man in the whole world, and why in God's name did he keep saying he loved her if he didn't?

"Because he did love you. Or thought he did," Eve said. "That's the whole bloody problem."

It cheered Benny that Eve could find some ray of hope and sincerity in the whole thing. She thought that Eve had set her heart against him.

"I'm not against him," Eve said softly. "I'm only against the idea of your thinking that somehow you'll get him back."

"But if he still loves me "He loves the idea of you, and hates hurting you. That's totally different."

Eve put her small hand over Benny's. She wished she had better words, softer ones. But she knew that Benny mustn't sleep a night in false hopes. She pointed out that there was very little hope in a situation where one party was explaining things to an unbelieving family in Donnybrook and another in Maple Gardens.

"Why didn't I sleep with him? Then we'd be explaining things tonight in Knockglen."

When it was dark and they got back to Dunlaoghaire, Eve said Benny should have a bath.

"I don't feel like going to bed."

"Who said anything about that? We're going out, on the town."

Benny looked at her friend as if she were mad. After these hours of listening and appearing to understand she must have had no realization of how Benny felt, if she suggested going out. "I don't want to meet anyone now. I don't want to be taken out of myself."

Eve said that wasn't the object of the outing. They were going to go everywhere and meet everyone. They were going to talk about Jack and Nan before it became gossip, and long before it appeared as an engagement announcement in the papers. Eve said that it was the only thing that could be done now. Benny must be seen to hold her head high. She didn't want to live with the sympathy vote for the rest of her life. She didn't want to be written off as someone who was letdown. Let nobody be the one to tell Benny the news. Let Benny be the one to tell it everywhere.

"What you are asking is ridiculous," Benny said. "Even if I could do it, everyone would still see through me. They'd know I was upset."

"But they would never think you had been made a fool of," Eve said, eyes burning. "The one good thing about Jack that came out of all this is that he told you first. He told you before he told his mates and asked them for advice. He gave you the story before he gave it to his parents, to the chaplain. You must use that advantage."

"I don't like to. . . and I suppose I keep hoping that his parents won't let him."

"They will. When they hear the sound of shotguns coming from Nan's family and moral responsibility from the clergy. And he's a man of twenty. In a few months he won't even have to ask them."

It was a shadowy night. She only remembered patches of it. Bill Dunne asking was it an April Fool? He couldn't believe that Jack was going to marry Nan Mahon. If he was going to marry anyone it should have been Benny. He said that three times in front of Benny.

Three times she answered brightly that she was far too busy becoming a tycoon in Knockglen and trying to get an Honours BA to get married.

Carmel held her hand too tightly and too sympathetically. Benny wanted to snatch it away, but she knew Carmel meant well.

"It could be all for the best, and we'll still be seeing lots of you, won't we?"

Sean said that he could be knocked over with a feather. And how was Jack going to manage as a married man, with all those years ahead of him? Perhaps he was going to give up his degree and go straight into his uncle's firm as an apprentice. And where were they going to live?

The whole thing was startling in the extreme.

Had Jack given any indication of what he was going to live on?

And presumably a family was planned. Fairly imminently. Hence the haste. Had Jack given Benny any idea of what he was going to live on?

Through clenched teeth Benny said that he hadn't. Johnny O'Brien said he wondered where they'd done it. It gave the lie to the fact that you couldn't get pregnant in a Morris Minor.

When they lay exhausted in their beds in Dunlaoghaire, Benny said sarcastically that she hoped that Eve had found the evening worthwhile, and that it had served her purposes.

"Most certainly it has," Eve said cheerfully. "Firstly, you're so tired that you'd sleep standing up, and secondly you've nothing to dread going in tomorrow. They know you've survived the news.

They've seen you surviving."

Aengus Foley had a toothache. He had been given whiskey on a piece of cottonwool. But not much sympathy and no attention. His mother's voice had been sharp as she asked him to go to bed, close the door and realize that pain had to be borne in this life. It wasn't permanent, it would go, probably at the precise moment they took him to Uncle Dermot the dentist.

They seemed to want to talk to Jack interminably in the sitting room.

Twice he had come down to hear what it was all about, but the voices were low and urgent, and even the phrases that he could hear he couldn't understand.

John and Lilly Foley were both white with fury as they stood in their drawing room listening to their eldest son describe how he had ruined his life.

"How could you have been so stupid?" his father said over and over again.

"You can't possibly be a father, Jack, you're only a child yourself," said his mother with tears coming down her face. They begged, they pleaded, they cajoled. They would visit Nan's parents, they would explain about his career. How it couldn't be ruined before it had begun.

"What about her career? That has been ruined no matter what happens."

Jack's voice was flat.

"Do you want to marry her?" His father asked, exasperated. "I don't want to marry her now, in three weeks" time, obviously I don't. But she's a wonderful girl. We made love. I was the one who wanted to, and now we have no other option."

The pleas began again. She might like to go to England, and give the child for adoption. A lot of people did that.

"It is my child. I'm not going to give it to strangers."

"Forgive me, Jack, but do we know that it is your child? I have to ask you this."

"No, you don't have to ask me, but I'll answer you. Yes, I'm absolutely certain that it's my child. She was a virgin the first night I slept with her."

Jack's mother looked away in disgust.

"And are we also absolutely sure that she is pregnant? It's not just a false alarm? A frightened young girl. These things can happen, believe me."

"I'm sure they can, but not this time. She showed me the report from Holles Street. The lab test was positive."

"I don't think you should marry her. Truly I don't. She's not even someone you've been going out with for a long time. Someone you've known, that we've all known, for years."

"I met her on the first day in college. She's been in this house."

"I'm not saying that she's not a very lovely girl . . ."

Jack's father shook his head. "You're shocked now and frightened.

Leave it. Leave it for a fewweeks."

"No, it's not fair on her. If we say we'll wait she'll think I've been persuaded to change my mind. I'm not going to let her think that."

"And what do her parents think of all this mess. . . ?"

"She's telling them tonight."

Brian Mahon was sober. He sat at his kitchen table wordless as Nan in an even tone explained to her father, mother and two brothers that she would be getting married to Jack Foley, a law student, in three weeks" time.

She saw her mother twist her hands and bite her lip. Em's dream lay broken into a thousand pieces.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," Brian Mahon roared. "I think it would be better for everyone if I did."

"If you think. . . I'm going to let you. . "he began, but stopped.

It was all bluster anyway. The damage had been done.

Nan sat looking at him cool and unflustered, as if she were telling him that she was going to the cinema.

"I suppose you knew all about this." He looked at his wife. "I deliberately didn't tell Em, so that you couldn't accuse her of covering things up," Nan said.

"And by God there's plenty to cover. He's put you up the pole, I suppose."

"Brian!" Emily cried.

"Well, if he has, he'll pay good and proper, for whatever we decide to do." He looked foolish as he sat there angry and red-faced, trying to be the big man in a situation over which he had no control.

"You'll decide nothing," Nan said to him coldly. "I decide. And our engagement will be in the Irish Times on Saturday morning.

"Janey Mac, the Irish Times," Nasey said. It was the poshest of the three papers, not often seen in the Mahon household.

"While you're living in my house. . . I tell you that I make decisions."

"Well, that's just it. I won't be living here much longer."

"Nan, are you sure that this is what you want to do?"

Nan looked at her mother, faded and frightened. Always living her life in the shadow of someone else, a loud drunken husband, a meanspirited employer at the hotel, a beautiful daughter whose fantasies she had built up.

Emily would never change.

"It is, Em. And it's what I'm going to do."

"But university. . .

your degree."

"I never wanted one. You know that. We both know that. I was only going there to meet people."

They talked, mother and daughter, as if the men didn't exist.

They spoke to each other across the kitchen, across the broken dream, without any of the accusations or excuses that would be the conversation of most girls in this situation.

"But it wasn't a student you were going to meet. Not this way.

"The other didn't work, Em. The gap was too wide."

"And what do you expect us to do, coming home with this kind of news.. ."

Brian wanted to put a stop to the conversation that he didn't even understand.

"I want to ask you a question. Are you prepared to put on a good suit and behave well for four hours at a wedding, without a drink in your hand, or are you not?"

"And if I'm not?"

"If I even think you're not, we'll go to Rome and get married there. I will tell everyone that my father wouldn't have a wedding for us."

"Go on, do that then," he taunted her.

"I will if I have to. But I know you, you'd like to blow and blow and boast to your pals and the people you sell supplies to that your daughter's having a big society wedding. You'd like to hire the clothes, because you're still a handsome man and you know it."

Emily Mahon looked at her daughter in amazement. Unerringly she had gone for the right targets. She knew exactly how to make her father give her a wedding.

Brian would think of nothing else. No expense would be spared.

"Go home with her for the weekend," Kit urged Eve.

"No, she has to do it on her own.

Knockglen was quick to judge, and it was important who began to spread the story. If Benny was there saying to people that her romance with Jack Foley was a thing of the past, then no serious whispers would begin. Benny was going to have to live with enough this summer without having to live with the pity of Knockglen as well. Eve was an expert on avoiding the pity of Knockglen.

Mother was still in the shop. It was after seven, and Benny had only looked in automatically and seen her there. Benny let herself in with the key she carried on her key ring.

"Glory be to God, you put the heart across me. Annabel Hogan was standing on a chair trying to reach something that had slid away on the top of a cupboard. Annabel was hoping that it was some nice rolls of paper with the name Hogan's on it. Eddie had bought it years ago, but it had proved impractical to cut. It hadn't been thrown out. It might be up here covered with dust.

Benny looked up at her animated face. Perhaps when people were older they did recover from things. It was impossible to believe that this was the same listless woman who had sat by the fire with the book falling from her hand. Now she was lively and occupied, her eyes were bright and her tone had light and shade.

Benny said she was bigger, she'd reach. And true there it was, rolls of it. They threw it down on the floor. Tomorrow they would dust it, see if it was usable. "You look tired. Was it a busy day?" Mother asked. It had been a day of heartache to walk the corridors and sit in lectures while the rumour about Jack and Nan spread like a forest fire.

Sheila actually came and offered her sympathy as one would for a bereavement. Several groups had stopped speaking as Benny approached.

But Eve had been right. Better let the other story spread too, the news that Benny was not wearing mourning. That she had been able to talk about it cheerfuly. There had been no sign of either Nan or Jack in college. Benny kept thinking that Jack was going to appear by magic, all smiles, tucking his arm into hers, and that the whole thing would have been a bad dream.

Mother knew none of this, of course. But she did realize that Benny looked worn out.

She thought she knew just what would cheer her up. "Come up and look at what Patsy and I were doing today. We've pulled around a lot of the furniture on the first floor. We thought it would be grand for your party before we get the place painted. Then you could make as much mess as you liked without having to worry about it. . . you could even have some of the boys stay here and the girls stay at Lisbeg. .

Benny's face was stony. She had forgotten the party. The great gathering planned for the weekend after Easter. She and Jack had talked of little else as they sat with their groups of friends over the last weeks. And all the time, every night possibly, he was saying goodbye to her and making love with Nan.

She gave a little shudder at how she had been deceived, and how he had said with his eyes full of tears that he couldn't help himself, and he was sorrier than he could ever say. She walked wordlessly up the stairs behind her mother and listened to the animated conversation about the party that would never be.

Gradually her mother, noticing no response, let her voice die away.

"They are still coming, aren't they?" she said. "I'm not sure. A lot of things will have changed by then." Benny swallowed. "Jack and Nan are going to get married," she said.

Her mother looked at her open-mouthed. "What did you say?"

"Jack. He's going to marry Nan, you see. So things might change about the party."

"Jack Foley. . . your Jack?"

"He's not my Jack any more. Hasn't been for some time."

"But when did this happen? You never said a word. They can't get married."

"They are, Mother. The engagement will be in tomorrow's Irish Times."

The look on her mother's face was almost too much to bear. The naked sympathy, the total incomprehension, the struggling for words.

Benny realized that Eve was probably right in this harsh face-saving exercise. Bad as it was now, it would be worse if she had said nothing and her mother had found out through someone else. Like today in college, it was over now, the shock and the pity and the whispering.

They couldn't continue indefinitely if Benny seemed to be in the whole of her senses. What was very hard was this pretence that she and Jack had been just one more casual romance, with no hearts broken at the end of it.

"Benny, I'm so sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am."

"That's all right, Mother. You were always the one to say that college romances come and go . . ." The words were fine, but the tone was shaky.

"I suppose she s.

"She's very excited, certainly, and. . . and. . . everything." If her mother said the wrong thing now she would lose the little control she still held on to. Please let Mother not embrace her or say something about the fickleness of men.

Being in business for a few weeks must have taught Annabel a great deal about life.

There were just a few headshakes at the modern generation, and then a suggestion that they go home for tea before Patsy sent a search party out to look for them.

After supper she called on Clodagh. She moved restlessly around, picking things up and putting them down again as they talked.

Clodagh sat and stitched, watching her carefully.

"Are you pregnant?" Clodagh asked eventually. "I'm not the one who is, unfortunately," Benny said. She told the tale.

Clodagh never put down her needle. She nodded, and agreed, and disagreed and asked questions. At no time did she say that Jack Foley was a bastard, and that Nan Mahon was worse to betray her friend. She accepted it as one of the things that happen in life.

Benny grew stronger as she spoke. The prickling of her nose and eyes, the urge to weep, had faded a little.

"I still believe that it's me he loves," she said timidly at the end of the saga.

"It might well be," Clodagh was matter of fact. "But that's not important now. It's what people do is important, not what they say or feel."

She sounded so like Eve, so determined, so sure. In the most matterof-fact way she said that Jack and Nan would probably make no better or no worse a fist of getting married and having a child than most people did. But that's what they would be. A couple with a child And then another and another.

Whether Jack still loved Benny Hogan was irrelevant. He had made his choice. He had done what was called the decent thing.

"It was the right thing," Benny said, against her will. Clodagh shrugged. It might have been, or it might not, but whatever it was it was the thing he had done. "You'll survive, Benny," she said comfortingly. "And to give him his due, which I don't want to do at this moment, he wants you to survive. He wants the best for you. He thinks that's love."

Late that night at the kitchen table Patsy said that all men were pigs and that handsome men were out and out pigs. She said he had been well received and made welcome in this house, and that he was such a prize pig he didn't know a lady when he saw one. That Nan wasn't a lady for all her fine talk. He'd discover that when it was too late. "I don't think it was a lady he wanted," Benny explained. "I think it was more a lover. And I wasn't any use to him there."

"Nor should you have been," Patsy said. "Isn't it bad enough that we're going to have to do it over and over when we're married, and have a roof over our heads. What's the point in letting them have it for nothing before?"

It seemed to shed a gloomy light on the future that lay ahead for Patsy and Mossy. It was almost impossible to imagine other people having sex, but depressing to think that Patsy was dreading it so much.

Patsy poured them more drinking chocolate and said that she wished Nan not a day of luck for the rest of her life. She hoped that her baby would be born with a deformed back and a cast in its eye.

The engagement is announced between Ann Elizabeth (Nan), only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Brian Mahon, Maple Gardens, Dublin and John Anthony (Jack), eldest son of Dr. and Mrs. John Foley, Donnybrook, Dublin.

"I saw the Irish Times this morning." Sean Walsh had made it his business to exercise the two Jack Russells up and down the street until he met Benny. "Oh yes?"

"That's a bit of a surprise, isn't it?"

"About Princess Soraya?" she asked innocently. The Shah of Persia was about to divorce his wife. There had been a lot about it in the press.

Sean was disappointed. He had hoped for a better reaction, a hanging of the head. An embarrassment even.

"I meant your friend getting married?"

"Nan Mahon? That's right. You saw it in the paper. We didn't know when they'd be making it official."

"But the man . . . she's marrying your friend." Sean was totally confused now.

"Jack? Of course." Benny was bland and innocent. "I thought you and he. . ." Sean was lost for words. Benny helped him. They had indeed been friends, even walking out as people might put it. But college life was renowned for all the first-year friendships, people moved around like musical chairs.

Sean looked at her long and hard. He would not be cheated of his moment of victory.

"Well, well, well. I'm glad to see that you take it so well, Benny. I must say that when I saw them here, around Knockglen, I thought it was a. . . well, a little insensitive, you know. But I didn't say anything to you. I didn't want to upset anybody."

"I'm sure you didn't, Sean. But they weren't here. Not here around Knockglen. So you were mistaken."

"I don't think so," said Sean Walsh.

She thought about the way he said it. She thought about Clodagh having seen Jack at Dessie Burns" petrol pump. She thought about Johnny O'Brien wondering where they did it. But it was beyond belief.

Where could they have gone? And if Jack loved her, how could he have come back to her home town to make love to someone else?

Somehow the weekend passed. It was hard to remember that when the phone rang it wouldn't be Jack. It was hard when Fonsie talked about the party to realize that nobody would come to it. It was hard to believe that he wouldn't be waiting in the Annexe with eyes dancing, waving her over, delighted to see her.

The hardest thing was to forget that he had said on the banks of the canal that he still loved her.

It was easy for Eve and Clodagh to dismiss that. But Benny knew Jack wouldn't have said it unless he meant it. And if he did still love her none of the other business made sense.

She didn't even allow herself to think about meeting Nan. The day would come, probably next week, when she would have to see her.

There had been conflicting stories. Nan was going to continue and finish her degree, while her mother did the babysitting. Or that Nan was going to leave immediately. That she was out already flat hunting.

Benny had kept the cutting from the newspaper. She read it over and over to make it have some meaning.

John Anthony. She had known that. And even more, like that the name he took at Confirmation was Michael, so his initials were JAM Foley.

She hadn't known that Nan would have been baptized Ann Elizabeth.

Probably Nan had been a pet name when she was a beautiful little baby.

A baby who could get what she wanted. All the time.

Perhaps she hadn't been able to get Simon Westward, and so she had taken Jack instead. How unfair of Simon not to want Nan.

That's what must have happened. Benny raged at him, and his snobbery.

Nan was exactly the kind of person who would have livened up Westlands.

If only that romance had continued then none of this would have happened.

Benny stood behind the counter in the shop, in order to free her mother and Mike for earnest discussions on new cloth. Heather Westward came in in her St. Mary's uniform.

She had come in to buy a handkerchief for her grandfather. It was a treat because he was so ill, and it would cheer him up. Was there one for under one and six? Benny found one, and wondered should it be wrapped up for him? Heather thought not. He wouldn't be able to open the wrapping paper, maybe just a bag.

"He mightn't even know what it is, but he's not well, you have to do something?" She looked at Benny for approval.

Benny thought she was right. She handed over the handkerchief for the old man who had shouted at Eve and called Eve's mother a whore.

He might have done the same if Simon had married Nan. Suddenly with a jolt Benny wondered if Nan had slept with Simon. Suppose she had.

Just suppose that she had, then this baby might be his, and not Jack's after all.

Why hadn't she thought of it before?

The whole thing that looked as if it could never be solved, might in fact have a solution after all.

She looked wild-eyed at the thought of it. She saw Heather watching her in alarm.

She must say it to Jack. She had to. He couldn't be forced to marry someone he didn't love, when it might not be his child. No matter that he had slept with Nan. Benny would forgive him. Like she had forgiven him over that business in Wales. It wouldn't matter, just as long as he loved her.

But the feeling of excitement, the ray of hope, died down. Benny realized that she was clutching at straws. That Jack and Nan must have had this discussion. She wished she could remember how long ago it was that Nan had been talking enthusiastically about Simon, but if it was over for ages. . . then there was no hope.

And anyway Jack wouldn't be foolish enough. He'd know, wouldn't he?

Men always did. That's why you had to keep your virginity until you married, so that they'd know it was the first time.

No, it was just a mad, wild hope.

But suppose she believed it to be true. It would only lead to a huge confrontation, and almighty indignation if she were to suggest it to Jack. Imply that Nan was passing off someone else's child on him.

The thought had better go back to where it came from. Heather was still in the shop. She seemed to be hovering as if about to askafavour.

"Is there anything else, Heather?"

"You know the Easter Pageant. Eve and Aidan are going to come.

It's on Holy Thursday. I was wondering would you like to come too? As part of my group."

"Yes, yes I will, thank you." Her mind was still far away. "I'd have forced Simon to come, but he's in England. He mightn't even be back for Easter."

"What's he doing there?"

"Oh, they think he's going to ask this woman to marry him. She's got pots and pots of money."

"That would be nice."

"We could get the drainage and the fencing done."

"Would you mind, someone else coming in there?"

"No, I'd hardly notice."

Heather was practical. "And this romance with the lady in England.. ." Benny enquired. "Has it been going on for a while or is it new?"

"For ages," Heather said. "It's about time they made some move."

So that was that. The wild little hope that Simon could be drawn into the whole business seemed to have faded.

Benny looked distant and abstracted. Heather had been about to tell her that there had been some great row with Nan. That Nan had come to Westlands about four weeks ago all dressed up and there had been words in the Morning Room and she had driven Simon's car to the bus and wouldn't let him come with her.

Heather remembered the date, because it was when they were casting for the Easter Pageant and she had been very nervous. If she had told Benny then, Benny would have realized that it was the very same day as the party in the rugby club. The one she hadn't gone to, but Nan had.

The very night it had all begun.

Nan went to Sunday lunch at the Foleys" to meet the family. She was immaculately dressed, and Lilly thought that they would have no apologies or explanations to make for her on grounds of appearance.

Her stomach was flat, and her manner was entirely unapologetic.

She came up the steps of the large Donnybrook house as of right, not as the working-class girl who had been taken advantage of by the son of the house. She spoke easily and without guile. She made no effort to ingratiate herself.

She paid more attention to Dr. Foley than to his wife, which would have been the appropriate attitude of any intelligent girl coming to the house.

She was pleasant, but not effusive to Kevin, Gerry, Ronan and Aengus.

She didn't forget their names or mix them up, but neither did she seek their approval.

Lilly Foley watched her with dislike, this cunning, shrewd girl with no morals who had ensnared her eldest son. There were few ways she could fault the public performance. The girl's table manners were perfect.

At coffee afterwards in the drawing room, just the four of them, Nan spoke to them with such a clear and unaffected stance that both of Jack's parents were taken aback.

"I realize what a disappointment all this must be to you, and how well you are covering this. I want to thank you very much."

They murmured, startled words denying any sense of disappointment.

"And I am sure that Jack has told you my family are all much simpler people than you are, less educated, and in many ways their hopes for me have been realized rather than crushed. If I am to marry into such a family as yours."

She went on to explain to them the kind of ceremony that she would like to provide and for which her father would pay. A lunch for perhaps twenty or thirty people in one of the better hotels.

Very possibly the one where her mother worked in the hotel shop.

There would be minimum speech-making because her father was not a natural orator, and she thought that she would wear an oyster satin coat and dress instead of a long, white dress. She would hope that some of Jack's and her friends would attend. On her side she would provide two parents, two brothers, two business associates of her father and one aunt.

When Jack took her away on their journey for afternoon tea in Maple Gardens, John and Lilley Foley exchanged glances.

"Well?" she said. "Well?" he answered.

He filled the silence by pouring them a small brandy each. It was never their custom to have a drink like this in the afternoon, but the circumstances seemed to call for it.

"She's very presentable," said Jack's mother grudgingly. "And very practical. She had the Holles Street report in her handbag, left open for us to see in case we were going to question it."

"And very truthful about her own background."

"But she never said one word about loving Jack," Dr. Foley said with a worried frown.

In Maple Gardens the table was set for tea. A plate of biscuits with sardines on them, another with an egg mayonnaise. There was a bought swiss roll and a plate of Jacob's USA assortment. Nasey and Paul were in navy suits and shirts. Brian Mahon wore his new brown suit. It hadn't cost as much as it should have because he had been able to give the man in the shop a few cans of paint for his own house. Cans of.paint that hadn't cost anything in the first place.

"There's no need to tell all that to Jack Foley when he arrives," Emily had warned.

"Jesus Christ, will you stop nagging at me? I've agreed to stay away from the jar until after they've been and gone, which is a fine imposition to put on a man who's going to lash out for a fancy society wedding. But still, give you lot an inch and you take a bloody mile..

Jack Foley was a handsome young fellow. He sat beside Nan during afternoon tea. He tried a little of everything. He thanked Mr. Mahon for the generous plans for the wedding. He thanked Mrs. Mahon for all her support. He hoped Paul and Nasey would be ushers in the church.

"You'd hardly need ushers for that size of a crowd," said Nasey, who thought twenty people was the meanest he ever heard of.

"Who's going to be your best man?" Paul asked. Jack was vague. He hadn't thought. One of his brothers, possibly. He felt awkward asking Aidan, what with the whole Eve and Nan friendship. And Bill Dunne or Johnny. . . it was all a bit awkward, to be honest.

He turned to Nan. "Who'll be the bridesmaid?" he asked. "Secret," Nan said.

They talked about places to live, and flats. Brian Mahon said that he'd be able to give them the name of builders who did good conversion jobs if they found an old place and wanted to do it up.

Jack said that he would be working in his uncle's office, first as a clerk, and then as an apprentice. He was going to take lessons in bookkeeping almost at once, in order to be of some use in there.

Several times he felt Nan's mother's eyes on him, with a look of regret.

Obviously she was upset about her daughter being pregnant, but he felt it was something more than that.

As Nan talked on cheerfully of basements in South Circular Road, or top-storey landings in Rathmines, Emily Mahon's eyes filled with tears.

She tried to brush them away unseen, but Jack felt that there was some terrible sorrow there, as if she had wanted something very different for her beautiful daughter.

When they had gone Brian Mahon loosened his collar. "You can't say too much against him."

"I never said anything against him," Emily said. "He had his fun and he's paying for it. At least that's to his credit." Brian was grudging.

Emily Mahon took off her good blouse and put on her old one automatically. She tied an apron around her waist and began to clear the table. She could puzzle for a thousand years and never understand why Nan was settling for this.

Nan and she had never wanted cheap bed-sitters, student flats, cobwebby conversion jobs. For years they had turned the pages of the magazines and looked at the places where Nan might live.

There was never a moment when they planned a shotgun marriage to a student.

And Nan was adamant about saying that her relationship with Simon Westward was long over. And had never been serious. She was almost too adamant when she was telling her mother how long it had been over.

Brian changed into his normal clothes for going to the pub. "Come on, lads, we'll get a pint and talk normally for a while." Emily filled the sink with hot water and did the washing-up. She was very worried indeed.

Jack and Nan sat in his father's car.

"That's the worst over," she said. "It'll be fine," he assured her.

She didn't believe the worst was over, and he didn't believe everything would be fine.

But they couldn't admit it.

After all, it was there in black and white in the paper. And the chaplain would be able to give them a date very shortly.

Aidan Lynch said that Sundays weren't the same without Heather.

Eve said that he had been invited to watch Heather in a sheet helping Our Lord to carry his burden. Next week, on Holy Thursday, could he bear to come? Aidan said he'd love it, it would count as his Easter Duty. Would they bring a First Night present for Heather?

Eve said that he was worse than Heather. The thing was meant to be some kind of religious outpouring, not a song and dance act.

Still it was great that he'd come down, and he could even stay the night in the cottage.

"It'll make up for us not having the party," Eve said. "Why won't we have the party?" Aidan asked.

Rosemary was sitting in the Annexe with Bill and Johnny. She was telling them that Tom, her medical boyfriend, had very healing hands.

She refused to listen to ribald jokes on the subject. She said that she had an unmerciful headache and he had massaged it right away. "I'm very sorry that there'll be no party now, down in Knockglen," she said.

"I was looking forward to Tom coming and meeting you all properly."

"Why won't there be a party?" asked Bill Dunne. "I never heard anything about it being off," said Johnny O'Brien.

Jack was not at his lectures now. He hadn't officially given up, but he was in his uncle's office all day. Learning the ropes.

Aidan was going to meet him at six o'clock.

"He has time to go out and drink pints, has he?" Eve said disapprovingly.

"Listen, he hasn't been sent to Coventry. He's not in disgrace.

He's just getting married. That's not the end of the earth," Aidan said.

Eve shrugged.

"And what's more, I'm going to be his best man, if he asks me."

"You're not." She was aghast.

"He's my friend. He can rely on me. Anyone can rely on a friend."

Nan made an appearance in college. She went to a ten o'clock lecture and then joined the crowds streaming down the stairs to the Annexe.

There was a rustle as they saw her coming to join the queue.

"Well, I'm off now," Rosemary said under her breath to Carmel.

"If there's one thing I can't bear, it's the sight of bloodshed."

"Benny won't say anything," Carmel whispered back. "Yes, but have you seen Eve's face?"

Benny was trying to calm Eve down. It was ridiculous to say that Nan didn't have a right to show her face in college. Benny begged Eve not to make a scene. What had been the point of urging her to get over everything publicly if Eve was going to ruin it all now?

"That's quite right," Eve said suddenly. "It was just a surge of bad temper."

"Well, why don't you go now, in case it surges again?"

"I can't, Benny. I'd be afraid you'd be so bloody nice and ask her all about the wedding dress and offer to knit bootees."

Benny squeezed her friend's hand. "Go on, Eve, please. I'm better on my own. I won't do any of that. And anyway she won't join us."

Nan went to another table. She drank her coffee with a group she knew from another class.

She looked across at Benny, who looked back. Neither of them made a gesture or mouthed a word. Nan looked away first.

Nan lay on her bed. Jack was going out with Aidan, which surprised her. She thought that there would be a heavy boycott from Eve's side of things.

But men were easier, more generous at forgiving. Men were more generous at everything. She lay with her feet raised on two cushions.

If Em had been a different kind of mother, she would have pursued the question she had been skirting around. Emily Mahon knew that her daughter was carrying Simon Westward's child. What she didn't know was why she, the princess, was going to let this one mistake spoil a lifetime of planning. Emily would suggest going to England, having the child adopted, and starting all over again.

The pursuit, the quest, the path to a better life. But Em didn't know that Nan was tired. Tired and weary of pretending. And that for once she had met someone, a good and honest person, who didn't have a life plan. . . a system of passing black as white.

That's what she had been doing. Like Simon had been passing as rich.

Jack Foley was just himself.

When told that a child was his he accepted that it was. And when it was born, it would be theirs. She could leave university. She had made a good impression on the Foley parents. She could see that.

There was a small mews at the end of their garden. In time it would be done up, in more time they would live in a house similar to his parents'. They would entertain, they would have dinner parties, she would keep in touch with her mother.

It would all be a great sense of peace compared to the never-ending contest. The game where the goalposts kept moving, and the rules changing.

Nan Mahon was going to marry Jack Foley, not just because she was pregnant, but because at the age of almost twenty she was tired.

Kit Hegarty had a lemon-coloured suit and a white blouse for her trip to Kerry.

"You need some colour to go with it. I keep forgetting we can't ask Nan."

"Have you spoken to her at all?" Kit asked. "Nope."

"God, you're a tough girl. I'd hate to make you my enemy." The Hayes next door had come in to wish Kit well. Ann Hayes said what she needed was a big copper-coloured brooch and she had the very thing at home.

Mr. Hayes looked at Kit admiringly. "Lord bless us, Kit, but you're like a bride," he said.

"Stop putting so much hope in this. It's only an outing."

"Your Joseph would have been glad for you to meet another fellow. He often said."

Kit looked at him startled. Joseph Hegarty would have said little to the Hayes, he hardly knew them.

She thanked him, but said as much.

"You're wrong, Kit. He did know us. He sent us letters for his son."

Eve's heart chilled. Why did this man have to tell Kit now?

"He wanted to keep in touch with his boy. He wrote every month, giving his address as he moved on from place to place."

"And Francis read these?"

"Frank read them all. He went to see him last summer when he was canning peas in England."

"Why did he never say, why did neither of them ever say?"

"They didn't want to hurt you. The time wasn't right to tell you."

"And why is the time right now?"

"Because Joe Hegarty wrote to me before he died. He wrote to say that if you met a good man I was to explain that you must never worry about having deprived your son of his father. Because you didn't."

"Did he know he was going to die?"

"Sure, we're all going to die," said Mr. Hayes, as his wife came back in and pinned the brooch on Kit Hegarty's lapel.

Kit smiled, unable to speak. It was something she had been worrying a lot about lately. When she saw how close Paddy Hickey was to his sons, she wondered had she done wrong letting Francis grow up without knowing a father?

She was glad that it had been explained in front of Eve. It showed how much Eve was part of the family.

The Hayes were going to keep an eye on the house for two weeks.

The outing was going to be much longer than Kit had first thought when it had been described as a weekend. And Eve would be down in Knockglen. Kit was delighted they had decided to go ahead with their party. It would be a further betrayal to admit that there could be no party now. That the stars had gone.

When Carmel's Sean had been organizing the finances, he had given some money to Jack as an advance. Jack was the one with most access to a car. Jack could get them a reduction through a wine merchant. He had been the one who was going to bring the drink.

But obviously everything had changed now. And no one liked to remind Jack that he was already in possession of eleven pounds of the communal money.

Carmel's Sean suggested they should forget it. The other boys agreed.

Jack had quite enough on his plate without reminding him that he owed the kitty eleven pounds.

Heather was wonderful in the pageant.

Aidan, Eve and Benny were enormously proud of her. She was a stockier, more solid, Simon of Cyrene than was normally shown by artists, but then surely they would have pulled from the crowd someone strong to help in the journey up the hill of Calvary.

Mother Francis had always urged the children to make up their own words.

Heather had been adept at this.

"Let me help you with that cross, Jesus, dear," she said to Fiona Carroll, who was playing Our Lord with a sanctimonious face.

"It's a difficult thing to carry going uphill," Heather added.

"It would be much easier on the flat, but then they wouldn't see the Crucifixion so well, you see."

There was tea and biscuits in the school hall afterwards and Heather was greatly congratulated.

"It's the best Easter ever," she said, with her eyes shining.

"And Eve says I can be a waitress at her party, next week, so long as I go home before the necking starts."

Eve looked at Mother Francis sadly. A grown-up look of collusion, of admitting how children would hang you. Heather was unaware of anything amiss.

"Will your friend be here again?" she asked Benny. "Which one?"

"The man that took to fancying Welsh girls for a bit, but came back."

"He went off again," Benny said.

"Better leave him to go then," Heather advised. "He sounds a bit unreliable."

Standing there in her sheet, in the middle of the party, Heather had no idea why Eve, Aidan and Benny got such a fit of hysterial laughter, and had to wipe the tears out of their eyes. She wished she knew what she had said that was so funny, but she was glad anyway that it had pleased them all so much.

Everyone was delighted to be going to Knockglen. Not for just a party, but for a series of outings.

They would arrive on the Friday after six o'clock, when there would be drinks in Hogan's, and then they would all adjourn to Mario's for the evening. There were bunk beds and sofas and sleeping bags for the boys in Hogan's shop; the girls were going to stay in Eve's and Benny's houses. Then there would be a great trek to Ballylee for lunch and a walk in the woods on Saturday and back for the main event, the proper party in Eve's cottage.

They all said that the one at Christmas would take some beating.

Eve said it would be better than ever now. An April moon, and the blossom out on the hedges and grass instead of mud around. There would be wild flowers all over the disused quarry, it would look less like a bomb site than it had done in winter. No one would slip on the mucky paths this time. They wouldn't need to huddle by the fire.

Sister Imelda was as usual aching to be asked to help with the cooking.

"It's no fun for you, Sister, if you can't see them enjoying it," Eve pleaded.

"It's probably just as well I don't see all that goes on up there.

It's enough for me to be told they like it."

"If Simon and the woman from Hampshire come home that weekend, are you going to ask them?" Heather asked.

"No," said Eve.

"I thought you only hated Grandfather. I thought you and Simon got on well enough."

"We do. Eve was dry.

"If he had married Nan, would you have come to the wedding?"

"You ask an awful lot of questions."

"Mother Francis says we should have enquiring minds," Heather said primly.

Eve laughed heartily. That was true. Mother Francis had always said It.

"I might have, if I'd been asked. But I don't think your brother would ever have married Nan."

Heather said it would all depend whether Nan had money or not.

Simon couldn't marry anyone poor because of the drainage and the fencing.

He had thought that Nan's father was a wealthy builder in the beginning. She heard a lot of this from Bee Moore, but Bee always had to stop when Mrs. Walsh came in because Mrs. Walsh didn't like gossip.

Heather was helping to tidy up the cottage garden. They had a big sack, which they were filling with weeds. Mossy would take it away later.

They worked easily, the unlikely friends and cousins, side by side.

Eve said that maybe they shouldn't talk too much about Nan over the weekend. She was going to marry Jack Foley shortly. Neither of them would be here. There was nothing hush hush, just better not to bring the subject up.

"Why?" Heather asked.

Eve was a respecter of the enquiring mind. As they dug the dandelions and slashed back the nettles, she told an edited version of the story.

Heather listened gravely.

"I think you're taking it worse than Benny," she said eventually.

"I think I am," Eve agreed. "Benny fought all my battles for me at school. And now there's nothing I can do for her. If I had my way, I'd kill Nan Mahon. I'd kill her with my bare hands."

The night before they were all due to arrive, Benny lay in bed and couldn't sleep.

She would close her eyes and think that a lot of time had passed, but when she saw the luminous hands of the little pink clock she realized that it had only been ten minutes.

She got up and sat by her window. Out in the moonlight she saw the shape of Dr. Johnson's house opposite, and the edge of Dekko Moore's, where young Heather said she was going to work as a harness maker.

What had Benny wanted when she was Heather's age, twelve? She had grown out of the wish for pink velvet dresses and pointed shoes with pom poms. What had she wanted? Maybe a crowd of friends, people that she and Eve could play with without having to be home at a special time. It wasn't very much.

And they had got it, hadn't they? A whole crowd coming down from Dublin to herself and Eve. How little you knew when you were twelve.

Heather Westward wouldn't want to be a harness maker when she was twenty. She'd forget that this is what she had wanted now.

She couldn't get Jack out of her mind tonight. The weeks in between had passed by without touching her. His face was just as dear as it always was, and never more dear than when he had cried on the canal bank and told her he still loved her and that he wouldn't have had this happen for all the world.

She wondered what he and Nan talked about. Did Nan ever tell him how she had helped Benny to put on make-up, and to use good perfume? How Nan had advised Benny to hold in her tummy and push out her chest?

But it was madness to suppose that they ever talked about her at all.

Or to suppose that either of them even remembered that they had been intending to spend this weekend in Knockglen.

"What are you going to wear?" Clodagh asked her next morning.

"I don't know. I've forgotten. I can't get interested. Please, Clodagh, don't nag me."

"Wouldn't dream of it. See you at Mario's tonight then."

"What about up above the shop first, that's where we're starting."

"If you can't be bothered to get dressed for it, why should I be bothered to go?"

"Damn you to Hell, Clodagh. What'll I wear?"

"Come into the shop and we'll see," said Clodagh, smiling from ear to ear.

By six o'clock they were coming up the stairs, exclaiming and praising.

The huge rooms, the high ceilings, the lovely old windows, the davenport, the marvellous frames on the old pictures.

It was like Aladdin's Cave.

"I'd live here if I were you," Bill Dunne said to Benny's mother.

"Not that your own house isn't terrific. .

"I'm half thinking about it," Annabel Hogan said to him. Benny felt her heart soar. The groundwork was beginning to pay off. She was afraid to smile too much. Clodagh had sewed her into a very tight country and western type bodice. She looked as if she were going to take out a guitar and give them a song. Johnny O'Brien said that she looked utterly fantastic. Fabulous figure, out-in-out, he said, showing her with his hands. Jack must be mad, he said helpfully.

They were all in high form to cross the street to rock the night away in Mario's.

Eve nudged Benny as Sean Walsh, Mrs. Healy and the two Jack Russells went for an evening constitutional around the town.

Mario was delighted to see them, rather over-welcoming, Fonsie thought, until he heard that Mr. Flood had been in with a message from the nun in the tree saying that his cale was a den of vice and must not only be closed down, but should be exorcized as well.

Any company other than Mr. Flood looked good to Mario at the moment.

Fonsie's new juke box, which Mario secretly thought looked like the product of a diseased mind, spat out the music. The tables were pushed back and those who couldn't fit in the cale watched and cheered from outside.

With a mixture of regret and amazement Mario looked back on the days before his sister's son had come to work with him. The peaceful poverty-stricken days when his till hardly ever rang and most people couldn't have told you there was a chip shop and a cale in Knockglen.

On Saturday Benny and Patsy fried a breakfast for Sheila, Rosemary and Carmel. Then they went up to the shop and did the same for Aidan, Bill, Johnny and the man who was always called Carmel's Sean.

"I do have an identity of my own," he grumbled when Benny called out to know if Carmel's Sean would like one egg or two.

"In this town if your name is Sean, you'd be wise to give yourself some other handle," Benny said. Patsy got a fit of the giggles. It was magical to be able to mock Sean Walsh in these very premises. Slowly the day took shape. The journey to Ballylee began. Never had the countryside looked lovelier. Benny turned round in the car twice to point things out to Jack. She wondered would it take her long to remember he wasn't there. And wouldn't ever be there again.

Bill Dunne and Eve got separated from the others as they walked up to see an old folly. A summer house facing the wrong way that a family even more unused to the land than the Westwards were had built.

"Benny's fine over all this Jack business, isn't she?" Bill asked, looking for confirmation.

"Hasn't she plenty of fellows looking for her attention? Of course she's fine," Eve was burningly loyal.

"Has she?" Bill seemed disappointed.

He told Eve that nothing had ever surprised him as much. Jack was inclined to talk, the way fellows do, the way girls did too amongst each other, he supposed. He never mentioned a word about Nan. Oh, he used to complain that Benny was a convent girl through and through which presumably meant she wouldn't go to bed with him, despite all his blandishments, and that she wasn't in Dublin enough. But not till the night of the rugby club party did Jack even go out with Nan, he knew that for a fact.

"That was only a few weeks ago," Eve said, surprised. "Yes, didn't the other business happen very quick?" Bill shivered in case talking about it might make him the putative father of someone's child.

"Well, it only takes once, that's what they always say." Eve's voice was light.

"That must have been all it was." Bill was sympathetic. Eve changed the subject. Bill's line of thinking was dangerously near to her own.

That the pregnancy had happened too suddenly. She had not been able to pinpoint Jack and Nan's first encounter until now, and that night was only a few weeks ago. It was the night she and Benny had gone to the pictures in Dunlaoghaire. Even with Benny's poor mathematics, that was surely too soon for anything to have happened and be confirmed. Surely they would know this.

Surely Jack's father, a doctor, would know?

And that meant something almost impossible to believe. It meant that Nan Mahon was pregnant with someone else's child, and had taken Benny's Jack to be its father.

Her mind was racing, but the race came to an abrupt end. The engagement was announced. The marriage date was fixed. This is what Nan and Jack were going to do. It wasn't a melodrama of blood tests and confrontations. It would go ahead, no matter what.

To cast any suspicions would only raise Benny's hope again and break her heart further.

And then there was the possibility that she could be wrong. Eve had never been sure where Simon and Nan could have made love, and had been forced to dismiss the possibility that they ever had.

Westlands was out, Maple Gardens was out, so was a car. Simon had no money for hotels. Nan had no friends. None at all except Benny and Eve. She was having great difficulty in finding anyone to be her bridesmaid.

Eve had been forced reluctantly to believe that they might not have been lovers at all. Which was disappointing, as it meant there was no chance of being able to blame the pregnancy on Simon.

But then if there had been any possibility of doing that, surely Nan would have done it. She wouldn't have let a chance like that pass by.

But there had been no tales of any rows with Simon. According to all accounts, or to Nan's account, the friendship had ended amicably a long time ago.

"You're muttering to yourself," Bill Dunne criticized her. "It's my only unpleasant habit. Aidan says it's a tiny flaw in an otherwise perfect character. Come on, I'll race you up to the folly."

She wanted no more of these buzzings in her mind.

The house looked beautiful. It had been well worth it to have Mossy give the door a coat of paint. And the garden was a tribute to Heather's and Eve's hard work. Heather was inside in a white chef's hat made for her by Clodagh, and a butcher's apron. It seemed excessive for passing plates of savouries, but she felt important in it. The dusk was turning to darkness. The stars were coming out in the clear sky. Figures came up the path to the party. Teddy Flood, Clodagh Pine, Maire Carroll and her new fiance, Tom, the medical student that Rosemary had such ferocious designs on. A few more from college who were just coming for the night rather than making a whole weekend out of it. Aidan was explaining that tomorrow was called Low Sunday and that this was probably prophetic. With the amount they had eaten, drunk and danced, low would be exactly how they would feel.

"Keep the drink moving will, you?" Eve said. "I have to carve this beast."

They had a huge joint of pork boned and rolled by Teddy Flood for them.

He said you'd be able to cut it like butter. Honestly, it would be like carving a swiss roll. But Eve didn't want to make a mess of it.

She closed the door behind her so that she could be on her own in the kitchen.

And as she prepared the place for herself, the huge carving dish, something that Benny had found in the shop, the plates that were heating in the bottom of the range, she was concentrating so hard that she didn't hear the door open and two extra guests arrive.

Carrying bottles of wine and cans of beer, in came Jack and Nan.

Rosemary was the nearest to the door and therefore the first to see them. She let her arm drop from Tom's shoulder where it had rested all evening to mark clearly lines of possession.

"My God," she said.

Jack smiled his easy smile. "Not exactly. Just his deputy," he said.

Carmel was nuzzling Sean on a bench close by. "You didn't say they were coming," she accused Sean in a whisper.

"I didn't bloody know," Sean hissed back.

Johnny O'Brien was doing a complicated tango step with Sheila.

"Hey, it's the black sheep," he called happily. Sheila whirled around to see if she could see Benny. She was just in time to see Benny look up from where she and Bill Dunne were sorting out records. And to see the colour go out of Benny's face as she dropped three of the EPS straight from her hands.

"Thank God for the passing of the seventy-eights," said Fonsie, whose record collection would have been the loser.

"There's a surprise," Bill said.

Even though the music of "Hernando's Hideaway" was thumping and thudding itself all round them, Nan and Jack must have felt the silence and the chill.

Jack's legendary smile came to his rescue. "Now, come on, did you think I'd forgotten I said I'd get the drink?" he laughed. He had put it down on the floor, his hands were wide apart, being held out helplessly in the little gesture Benny knew and loved.

It must have been a dream. All of it, and now that he was back it was over.

She felt herself smiling at him. And he saw the smile. All the way across the room. "Hallo, Benny," he said.

Now everyone could feel the silence. Everyone except the Johnson Brothers, who were singing "Hernando's Hideaway'. Clodagh had dressed Benny in black and white for the party. A big black corduroy skirt, a white blouse with a black velvet trim. She looked flushed and happy at the moment that Jack saw her.

He was walking over to her.

"How's your mother and the shop?"

"Fine, going great. We had a party there last night." She spoke too quickly. She looked over his shoulder. Aidan Lynch had taken the bottles of wine from Nan and laid them on the table. Clodagh was trying to explain to Fonsie out of the corner of her mouth.

Johnny O'Brien, who could always be relied on to say something, if not the right thing, came over and punched Jack warmly on the arm.

"It's great to see you. I thought you were barred," he said.

Aidan poured Jack a drink. "Jack the lad!" he said. "Like old times."

"I thought it would be silly to act as if there was a feud or something." Jack looked only mildly anxious that he had done the right thing.

"What feud would there be?" Aidan asked, looking nervously over at where Nan stood beside the door, hardly having moved since she came in.

"Well, that's what I thought. Anyway I couldn't make off with all the money for the jar."

They both knew it had nothing to do with the drink. "How are things?"

Aidan asked him. "~e. A bit unreal."

"I know," said Aidan, who didn't know and couldn't possibly imagine it.

He thought it safer to move to different waters. "And your uncle's office?"

"Crazy. They're all so petty, you wouldn't believe. . ." Jack had his arm upon a tall chest of drawers and was talking easily.

Benny had moved slightly away. She felt very hot and then very cold.

She hoped she wasn't going to faint. Perhaps she could get some air.

Then she realized that Eve didn't know they were here. She must go into the kitchen and tell her.

Aidan had realized this at the same time. He had moved Fonsie in to talk to Jack and headed Benny off at the kitchen door.

"I'll do it," he said. "Come in to rescue me if I'm not out in an hour and there's no sign of supper."

She gave a watery smile.

"Are you all right?" he asked, concerned.

"I'm okay." For Benny that was like saying she was terrible.

Aidan looked around him and caught Clodagh's eye. She moved over to join them.

As Aidan went into the kitchen, Clodagh said, "She can stand there at the bloody door all night. She's got some nerve coming here, I tell you. She got short shrift from me."

"What?"

"She said, "Hallo, Clodagh", nice as pie. I looked through her.

She said it again. "Do I know you?" is what I said." Clodagh was pleased with her repartee.

"People will have to speak to her."

"Let them. I'm not going to." And indeed Nan did seem curiously isolated, while Jack was the centre of his mates.

Benny looked across the room. Nan's face, serene and beautiful as ever, looked around her in that interested, slightly questioning way.

She gave no sign that she might feel unwelcome, ungreeted.

She looked perfectly at ease standing just where she had come in, when Aidan had removed the wine bottles from her arms.

Benny looked at Nan as she had done so often, admiringly. Nan knew what to say, how to behave, what to wear. Tonight she was in yet another new outfit, a very flowery print, all mauve and white. It looked so fresh, you'd think it had come straight off a shop rail five minutes ago, not from a long car drive.

Benny swallowed. For the rest of her life, Nan would drive in a car with Jack, sit beside him sharing all the things that she had once shared. Tears of disappointment came into her eyes. Why had she not done as he asked, taken off her clothes and lain down beside him, loved him generously and warmly, responded to him, instead of buttoning herself up and moving away and saying they should be going home? If it were Benny who was pregnant, surely he would have been pleased and proud.

He would have explained to his parents, and to her mother as he had done for Nan. Big tears welled up in her eyes at her own foolishness.

Nan saw and came towards her. "I haven't been avoiding you," Nan said.

"No."

"I was going to write to you, but then we never wrote each other letters, so that would be artificial."

"Yes."

"And it's hard to know what to say."

"You always know what to say." Benny looked at her. "And you always know what to do."

"It was never intended to be like this. I assure you."

There was something in Nan's voice that sounded phony. Benny realized with a shock that Nan was lying. Perhaps it was intended to be like this. That this was exactly the way Nan had planned it.

In the kitchen Eve was white-faced. "I don't believe you," she said to Aidan.

"Put those things down." He looked at the carving knife and fork in her hand.

"Well, they're getting out. They're getting straight out of my house, let me tell you."

"No, they're not, Eve." Aidan was unexpectedly firm. "Jack is my friend, and he is not going to be ordered out.

It was always planned that he'd come here. . . he brought the drink."

"Oh, don't be a fool," Eve blazed. "Nobody wanted the bloody drink.

If he was that worried about it couldn't he have sent it. . .

they're not welcome here."

"They're our friends, Eve."

"Not any more. Not now."

"You can't keep up these things for ever. We've got to get back to normal. I think they were absolutely right to come."

"And what are they doing inside? Lording it over everyone?"

"Eve, please. These people are your guests, our guests in a way since you and I are a couple. Please don't make a scene. It would ruin the party for everyone. They're all behaving fine in there."

Eve went over and put her arms around Aidan. "You're very generous, much nicer than I am. I don't think we'll work as a couple."

"No, you're probably right. But could we sort that one at another time, not just when they're going to have their supper?"

Bill Dunne came through the kitchen to go to the bathroom.

"Sorry," he said, as he saw Aidan and Eve in each other's arms.

"You wouldn't know where to put yourself these days."

"All right," Eve conceded, "just so long as I don't have to talk to her."

Benny was dancing with Teddy Flood when Eve went into the room.

Jack was talking to Johnny and Sean. He was as handsome and assured as ever. He looked delighted to see her. "Eve!"

"Hallo, Jack." Unenthusiastic, but not rude. She had made a promise to Aidan. Hospitality must never be abused. "We brought you a vase, a sort of glass jug. It would be nice for all the daffodils and everything," he said.

It was a nice jug. How did someone like Jack Foley do the right thing so often? How did he know she had daffodils, he hadn't been here since Christmas, when there was nothing but holly in bloom.

"Thanks. That's lovely," she said. She moved around the room, emptying ashtrays, making spaces where the plates could be put down.

Nan stood on her own on the edge of a group. Eve couldn't bring herself to say any words of greeting. She opened her mouth, but she couldn't find anything to say. She went back to the kitchen and stood at the table leaning on both hands. The rage she felt was a real thing, you could almost take it out of her and see it, like a red mist.

She remembered how Mother Francis, and Kit Hegarty, and many a time Benny, had warned her that this temper wasn't natural. It would only hurt her in the end.

The door opened, and Nan came in. She stood there in her fresh flowery print, the breeze from the window slightly lifting her blonde hair.

"Listen, Eve. .

"I won't, if you don't mind. I have a meal to prepare."

"I don't want you to hate me."

"You flatter yourself. Nobody hates you. We despise you. That's different altogether."

Nan's eyes flashed now. She hadn't expected this. "That's a bit petty of you, isn't it? A bit provincial? Life goes on. Aidan and Jack are friends She looked proud and confident. She knew she held all the winning cards. She had broken all the rules and yet she had won. Not only was she able to take away her only friend's boyfriend, find somewhere, the Lord knew where, to sleep with him, and then get him to agree to marry her, she was also expecting everything to remain the same as it had been in their social life. Eve said nothing. She looked at her dumbfounded. "Well, say something, Eve," Nan was impatient. "You must be thinking something. Say it."

"I was thinking that Benny was probably your only friend. That of every one of us she was the only one who just liked you for being you, not just for being glamorous."

Eve knew that this was pointless. Nan would shrug. If she physically didn't shrug her shoulders, she would mentally. She would say that these things happened.

Nan would take, she would take everything she saw. She was like a child crawling towards a shining object. She took just by instinct.

"Benny's better off. She'd have had a lifetime of watching him, of wondering."

"And you won't?"

"I'll cope."

"I'm sure you will, you've coped with everything." Eve realized she was shaking. Her hands were trembling as she filled the jug with water and started to arrange a bunch of flowers that someone else had brought.

"I chose that for you," Nan said. "What?"

"The vase. You don't have one."

Suddenly Eve knew where Jack and Nan had spent their nights together.

Here in this house, in her bed.

They had driven to Knockglen, come up the track, taken her key and let themselves in. They had made love in her bed. She looked at Nan aghast. That was why she had had the feeling that someone had been in the house. The strange undefined sense of someone else's presence.

"It was here, wasn't it?"

Nan shrugged. That awful dismissive shrug. "Yes, sometimes. What does it matter, now; "It matters to me.

"We left the place perfect. No one would ever know."

"You came to my house, to my bed, to take Benny's Jack in my bed.

In Benny's town. Jesus Christ, Nan. . Now Nan lost her temper, utterly.

"By God, I'm sick of this. I am sick of it. This Holy Joe attitude, all of you desperate to do it, playing around the edges, not having the guts or the courage, confessing it, titillating everyone still further .

Her face was red and angry.

"And don't talk to me about this cottage. . . don't talk as if it was the Palace of Versailles. It's a damp, falling down shack. .

. that's what it is. It hasn't electricity. It has a Stanley Range that we couldn't light for fear you'd find the traces. It has leaks and draughts, and it's no wonder they say the place is haunted. It feels haunted. It smells haunted."

"Nobody says my house is haunted." There were tears of rage in Eve's eyes.

Then she stopped. People had said that they heard someone playing the piano here at night.

But that was ages ago. Jack didn't play the piano. It must have been before Jack.

"You brought Simon here too, didn't you?" she said. The memory of Simon playing the piano at Westlands came back to her. That day she had gone up there with Heather, the day the old man had cursed at her and called her mother a whore. Nan said nothing.

"You brought Simon Westward to my bed, in my house. You knew I'd never have let him over the doorstep. And you brought him in here. And then, when he wouldn't marry you, you tricked Jack Foley. .

Nan was suddenly pale. She looked around her at the door to the room where the others were dancing.

The music of Tab Hunter was on the record player. "Young love, first love. "Take it easy. . ." Nan began.

Eve had picked up the carving knife. She started to move towards her, the words came tumbling out. She couldn't control them if she tried.

"I will not take it easy. What you have done, by Christ, I won't take it easy."

Nan wasn't near enough to reach the handle of the door to the sitting room. She backed away, but Eve was still moving towards her, eyes flashing and the knife in her hand.

"Eve, stop!" she cried, moving as fast as she could out of range.

She lurched against the bathroom door so hard that the glass broke.

Nan fell, sliding down on the ground, and the broken glass ripped her arm. Blood spurted everywhere, even on to her face.

The dress with mauve and white print became crimson in a second.

Eve dropped the knife on the floor. Her own screams were as loud as Nan's as she stood there in her kitchen amid the broken glass, the blood and the meal ready to be served, and the sound of everyone joining in the song in the room next door.

"Young love, first love, is filled with deep emotion."

Eventually someone heard them and the door opened.

Aidan and Fonsie were in first. "Whose car is nearest?" Fonsie asked.

"Jack's. It's outside the door. "I'll drive it. I know the road better."

"Should we move her?" Aidan asked. "If we don't she'll bleed to death in front of our eyes." Bill Dunne was great at keeping everyone back out of the kitchen. Only Jack, Fonsie and of course Tom, the medical student, in case he knew something the rest of them didn't, were allowed in. Everyone else should stay where they were, the place was too crowded already.

They had opened the back door. The car was only a few yards away.

Clodagh had brought a rug and clean towels from Eve's bedroom.

They wrapped the towel around the arm with the huge, gaping wound.

"Are we pushing the glass further in?" Fonsie asked. "At least we're keeping the blood in," Aidan said. They looked at each other in admiration. Jokers yes, but when it came to the crunch, they were the ones in charge.

Benny sat motionless in the sitting room, her arm around Heather.

"It's going to be all right," she kept saying, over and over.

"Everything's going to be all right."

Before he got into the car Aidan came over to Eve. "Don't let anyone go," he warned. "I'll be back very soon."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't let them crawl away because they think it's expected. Give them something to eat."

"I can't.

"Then get someone else. They need food anyway."

"Aidan!"

"I mean it. Everyone's had too much to drink. For God's sake feed them. We've no idea who'll be in on top of us now."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if she dies, we'll have the guards."

"Die! She can't die."

"Feed them, Eve."

"I didn't . . . she fell."

"I know, you fool."

Then the car, with Jack, Fonsie, Aidan and a still hysterical Nan, left.

Eve straightened herself up.

"I think it's ludicrous myself, but Aidan Lynch says we should all have something to eat, so could you clear a little space and I'll bring it in," she said.

Stricken, they obeyed her. Even though they would never have suggested it, it was exactly the right thing to do.

Dr. Johnson looked at the arm and phoned the hospital.

"We're bringing someone in, severed arteries," he said crisply.

The three white faces of the boys looked at him as he hung up.

"I'll drive her," he said. "Just one of you. Which one?" Fonsie and Aidan stood back, and Jack stepped forward. Maurice Johnson looked at him. His face was familiar. A junior rugby player, he had been in Knockglen before. In fact Dr. Johnson had a feeling that he was meant to be Benny Hogan's boyfriend. There had been talk that she was walking out with a spectacularly handsome young man.

He wasted no time speculating. He nodded to Fonsie and Aidan and drove out of his gate.

It was an endless Sunday. The whole of Knockglen had heard that there had been a terrible accident and an unfortunate girl from Dublin had slipped and fallen, cutting herself on a glass door.

Dr. Johnson had been quick to say that there wasn't any horseplay and everyone seemed to him to be stone cold sober. In fact he had no idea whether this was true or not, but he couldn't bear the tongues to wag, and Eve Malone to get further criticism for things that were beyond her control.

Dr. Johnson also told everyone in sight that the girl would recover.

And recover she did. Nan Mahon was out of danger on the Sunday night.

She had received several blood transfusions and there had been a time when her heartbeat had slowed down, causing alarm.

But she was young and healthy. It was wonderful, the recuperative powers of the young.

Some time on the Monday night, she miscarried. But the hospital was very discreet. After all, she wasn't a married woman.

Chapter 19

It was summer before Jack Foley and Nan Mahon had the conversation they knew that they would have to have. After her stay in the hospital in Ballylee she had gone back to Dublin.

That was at her insistence. She had seemed so agitated that Dr. Johnson agreed.

Jack still worked in his uncle's office, but he studied for his first-year examination as well. There was, unspoken, the thought that he might return and do his degree in Civil Law. Aidan kept the notes from lectures.

Aidan and Jack met a lot, but they never talked about what was uppermost in their minds. Somehow it was easier to chat and be friends if they didn't mention that.

Brian Mahon wanted to sue. He said that by God people were always suing his customers for harmless jackass incidents. Why shouldn't they get a few quid out of it? That girl had to have some kind of insurance, surely?

Nan was very weak but her wound was healing, the livid red scar would fade in time.

Since she had never said aloud to her family that she was pregnant she did not have to report that this was no longer the case. She lay long hours in the bed where she had lain full of dreams.

She would not let Jack Foley come to see her. "Later," she had told him. "Later, when we are able to talk." He had been relieved. She could see that in his eyes. She could also see he wished it to be finished, over, so that he could get on with his life.

But she wasn't ready yet. And she had had terrible injuries. He owed her all the time she needed to think about things.

"There's no sign of your fiance," Nasey said to her. "It's all right."

"Da says that if he leaves you now because of your injuries, we can sue him for breach of promise," Nasey said.

She closed her eyes wearily.

Heather told over and over the story about the fall and the blood. She knew she would never have such an audience again. They hung on her every word. Heather aged twelve had been at a grown-ups" party wearing a chef's hat, and had seen all the blood. Nobody had taken her home or said she wasn't to look. She didn't tell them that she had felt dizzy and had cried into Benny's chest most of the time. She didn't tell them that Eve had sat white-faced, saying nothing for hours.

Eve took a long time to get over the night. She told only three people about having had the carving knife in her hand.

She told Benny, and Kit and Aidan. They had all said the same thing.

They told her she hadn't touched Nan, she was only gripping it. They told her that she wouldn't have, that she would have stopped before she got near her.

Benny said that you couldn't be someone's best friend for ten years and not know that about them.

Kit said she wouldn't have anyone living in the house unless she knew what they were like. Eve would shout and rage. She wouldn't knife someone.

Aiden said the whole thing was nonsense. She had been gripping that knife all evening. Hadn't he asked her to put it down himself? He said the future mother of his eight children had many irritating qualities, but she was not a potential murderess.

Gradually she began to believe it.

Little by little she could go into her kitchen and not see in her mind's eye all that blood and broken glass.

Soon the strained look began to leave her face.

Annabel Hogan said to Peggy Pine that they would never know the full story of the night above in the cottage, no matter how much they asked.

Peggy said that it was probably better not to ask any more. To think on more positive things like Patsy's wedding, like whether she should sell Lisbeg and move in over the shop. Once people heard that it might be for sale there were some very positive enquiries, and figures that would make poor Eddie Hogan turn in his grave.

"He'd turn with pleasure," Peggy Pine said. "He always wanted the best for the pair of you."

It was the right thing to say. Annabel Hogan began to look at the offers seriously.

Benny found the summer term at University College was like six weeks in another city. It was so different to everything that had gone before.

The days were long and warm. They used to take their books to the gardens at the back of Newman House in St. Stephen's Green and study.

She always meant to ask about these gardens and who looked after them.

They belonged to the university, obviously. It was peaceful there and unfamiliar. Not like almost every other square inch of Dublin, which she associated with Jack.

Some nights she stayed with Eve in Dunlaoghaire, other nights they both went home on the bus together. There was a divan couch in Eve's cottage; sometimes she spent the night up there. Mother, absorbed with plans and redecoration, seemed pleased that Benny had Eve to talk to.

They called it studying, but in fact it was talking; as much as started to bud, as the old roses began to bloom, the friends sat and talked. They spoke very little about Nan and Jack and what had happened. It was too soon, too raw.

"I wonder where they went," Benny said once, out of the blue. "A couple of people said they saw them here in Knockglen, but where could they have stayed?"

"They stayed here," Eve said simply.

She didn't have to tell Benny that it was without her permission, and that it had broken her heart. She saw tears in Benny's eyes.

There was a long silence.

"She must have lost the baby," Benny said. "I expect so," Eve said.

She found herself thinking unexpectedly of the curse her father had laid on the Westwards.

And how so many of them had indeed had such bad luck. Could this have been more of it? A Westward not even to survive till birth?

Mr. Flood was referred to a new young psychiatrist, who was apparently a very kind young man. He listened to Mr. Flood endlessly, and then prescribed his medication. There were no more nuns in trees. In fact, Mr. Flood was embarrassed that he should ever have thought there were.

It was decided that it should be referred to as a trick of the light.

Something that could happen to anyone.

Dessie Burns said that what was wrong with the country was this obsession with drink. Everyone you met was either on the jar or off the jar. What was needed was an attitude of moderation. He himself was going to be a moderate drinker from now on, not all this going on tears or going off it totally. The management in Shea's said that it all depended on your interpretation of the word moderation, but at least Mr. Burns had cut out the lunch-time drinking and that could only be to everyone's advantage.

Knockglen was cheated of the wedding of Mrs. Dorothy Healy and Mr. Sean Walsh. It was decided, they told people, that since the nuptials would be second time around for Mrs. Healy and since Sean Walsh had no close family to speak of, they would marry in Rome.

It would be so special, and although they would not be married by the Holy Father they would share in a blessing for several hundred other newly married couples.

"They couldn't rustle up ten people between them who'd come to the wedding," Patsy told Mrs. Hogan.

Patsy was thrilled by the decision. It would mean that her own wedding would now have no competition.

Eve was surprised to get an invitation to Patsy's wedding. She had expected just to go to the church to cheer her on. She realized that of course she and Patsy would be neighbours, up on the quarry path.

She assumed that Mossy's mother had heard dire reports of the goings-on at the party, and would look on her as a shameless hussy who gave drunken parties. Eve didn't realize that Mossy told his mother as little as he told anyone else. She was getting increasingly deaf, and since she only knew about the world what he told her, she knew remarkably little.

She knew that Patsy was a good cook, and didn't have a family of her own to make demands, so Patsy would be free to look after Mossy's mother in her old age.

Mother Francis saw Dr. Johnson passing the school in his car. She was looking out of the window as she often did when the girls were doing a test and thinking about the town. How she would hate to leave Knockglen, and go to another convent within the Order.

Every year in summer the changes were announced. It was always a relief to know that she had another year where she was. Holy Obedience meant that you went without question where Mother General decided.

She hoped unworthily each year that Mother Clare would not be sent to join them. She didn't exactly pray that Mother Clare would be kept in Dublin, but God knew her views on that. Any day now they would know.

It was always an unsettling couple of weeks waiting for the news.

She wondered where Dr. Johnson was going, what a strange demanding life, always out to see someone being born or die or go through complicated bits in between.

Major Westward was dead when the doctor arrived. He closed the eyes, pulled a sheet over the head and sat down with Mrs. Walsh.

He would phone the undertakers and the Vicar, just to alert them, but first someone had better find Simon.

"I telephoned him this morning. He's on his way from England."

"Right then. Not much more that I can do." He stood up and reached for his coat.

"Not much loss," he said. "I beg your pardon, Dr. Johnson?"

He had looked at her levelly. She was a strange woman. She liked the feeling of being in the Big House, even though it was Big rather than Grand. She would probably stay if Simon brought home a bride, grow old here, feel that her own state had been ennobled by her contact with these people.

It wasn't fair of him to be snide about the dead man. He had never liked old Westward, he had thought the man arrogant and ungiving to the village that was on his doorstep. He had found the disinheriting of Eve Malone beyond his comprehension.

But he must not tread on the sensibilities of other people. His wife had told him that a thousand times.

He decided to change his epitaph.

"Sorry, Mrs. Walsh, what I said was, "What a loss, such a loss."

You'll pass on my condolences to Simon, won't you?"

"I'm sure Mr. Simon will telephone you, Doctor, when he gets back." Mrs. Walsh was tight-lipped. She had heard very well what he had said the first time.

Jack Foley's parents said that he was behaving most unreasonably.

What were they to think, or indeed to say? Was the wedding on or was it off? Obviously since the urgency had gone out of it and the three-week run-up time had been and gone, they could assume that she was no longer pregnant. Jack had snapped and said he couldn't possibly be expected to discuss all this with them at this early stage while Nan was still convalescing.

"I think we can be expected to know whether you now have reason to call off this rushed marriage." His father spoke sharply.

"She had a miscarriage," he said. "But nothing else is clear." He looked so wretched they left him alone. After all their main question had been answered, the way they hoped it would be.

Paddy Hickey proposed to Kit Hegarty at a window table in a big Dunlaoghaire hotel. His hands were trembling as he asked her to marry him. He used formal words, as if a proposal was some kind of magic ritual and wouldn't work unless he asked her to do him the honour of becoming his wife.

He said that all his children knew he was going to ask her, they would be waiting, hoping for a yes, like himself. He spoke so long and in such flowery tones that Kit could hardly find a gap in the speech to say yes.

"What did you say?" he asked at length.

"I said I'd love to and I think we'll make each other very happy." He got up from his side of the table and came round to her, in front of everyone in the restaurant dining room he took her in his arms and kissed her.

Somehow, even in the middle of the embrace he felt that people had laid down their cutlery and their glasses to look at them.

"We're going to get married," he called out, his face pink with pleasure.

"Thank God I'm going off to the wilds of Kerry, I'd never be able to come in here again," said Kit, acknowledging the smiles and handshakes and even cheers of the other diners at the tables around them.

Simon Westward wondered could his grandfather possibly have known how inconvenient was the day he took to die. The arrangements with Olivia were at a crucial stage. He did not need to be summoned to a sick bed.

But on the other hand, he would be in a better position to talk to her once he was master of Westlands in name as well. He tried to feel some sympathy for the lonely old man. But he feared that he had brought a lot of his misery on himself.

So, it mightn't have been easy to welcome Sarah's ill-matched husband, a handyman, to the house, but he should have made some overtures of friendship to their child.

Eve would have been a good companion for all those years. Petted and feted in the Big House, she would not have developed that prickling resentment which was her hallmark as a result of being banished.

He didn't like thinking about Eve. It reminded him uncomfortably of that terrible day in Westlands when the old man had lashed out all around him. And it reminded him of Nan.

Somebody had sent him a cutting from the Irish Times, with the notice of her engagement. The envelope had been typed. At first he thought it might have been from Nan herself, and later he decided that it was not her style to do that. She had left without a backward glance. And as far as he could see from his statement, had not cashed that cheque.

He didn't know who had sent the newspaper cutting. He thought it might have been Eve.

Heather asked Mother Francis, would Eve be coming to their grandfather's funeral?

Mother Francis said that somehow she thought not. "He used to be very nice once, he got different when he got old," she said.

"I know," Mother Francis said. Her own heart was heavy. Mother Clare was going to be sent to Knockglen. It was all very well for Peggy Pine to urge Mother Francis to take the whip hand, and to show her who was master, and a lot of other highly unsuitable instructions for religious life. It was going to disrupt the Community greatly. If only there was some kind of interest, some area she could find for Mother Clare to be hived off.

"Are you in a bad humour, Mother?" Heather asked. "Oh, Lord, child, you really are Eve's cousin. You have exactly the same way she had of knowing when anything was wrong. The rest of the school could tramp past and never know anything."

Heather looked at her thoughtfully.

"I think you should put more faith in the Thirty Days Prayer.

Sister Imelda says it's never been known to fail. She did it for me when I was lost, and look at how well it turned out."

Mother Francis sometimes worried about how Heather had latched on to some of the more complicated aspects of the Catholic faith.

Nan asked Jack to meet her.

"Where would you like?" he asked. "You know Herbert Park. It's quite near you."

"Is that not too far from you?" They were curiously formal. If anyone saw this handsome couple walking there they would have assumed that this was another summer romance, and smiled at them.

There was no ring to give back. There were very few arrangements to unpick.

She told him that she was going to London. She hoped to do a course in dress designing. She wanted to be away for a while. She didn't really know exactly what she did want, but she knew what she didn't want.

She talked flatly, with no light and shade in her voice. Jack fought down the guilty, overwhelming surge of relief, that he was not going to have to marry this beautiful dead girl and spend the rest of his life with her.

When they left the small park with its bright rows of flowers and the pit-pat of people playing tennis they knew that they would probably never see each other again.

The day dawned bright and sunny for Patsy's wedding. Eve and Benny were there to help her dress. Clodagh would be down to see that those two clowns didn't get anything wrong.

Paccy Moore was going to give her away. He had said that if she wanted someone with a proper leg he wouldn't be a bit insulted, and he might make a bit of clatter with the iron going up the church, but Patsy would have no one else.

His cousin Dekko was going to be the best man, and his sister Bee the bridesmaid. It gave the appearance of a family.

The best silver was out despite Patsy saying that a couple of Mossy's cousins might be light fingered. There was chicken and ham, and potato salad, and a dozen different types of cake, and trifle and cream.

It would be a feast.

Clodagh had plucked Patsy's eyebrows and insisted on doing a make-up.

"I wonder would there be a chance that my mother might see me up in Heaven?" Patsy said.

For an instant, none of the three girls could find an answer.

They found it too moving to think that Patsy would need the support of a mother she had never known, and her easy confidence that this woman was in Heaven.

Benny blew her nose loudly.

"I'm sure she can see you, and she's probably saying you look lovely."

"God, Benny, don't blow your nose like that in the church. You'd lift half the congregation out of their seats," Patsy warned.

Dr. Johnson was driving the party up to the church.

"Good girl, Patsy," he said, as he settled Paccy and the bride into the back of his Morris Cowley. "You'll tear the sight out of the eyes of that old rip above."

It was exactly the right remark, the partisan response to show Patsy that she was on the winning team, that Mossy's mother wouldn't even be a starter in the race.

Dessie Burns had abandoned moderation that morning. He tried to wave a cheery greeting at them from his front door, but it wasn't easy with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other. He somehow went into a spin and fell down. Dr. Johnson looked at him grimly. That would be his next call, stitching up that eejit's head.

It was a great wedding. Patsy had to be restrained several times from clearing up or going to the kitchen to bring out the next course.

They were waved away at four o'clock.

Dekko was going to drive them to the bus, but Fonsie said he had to drive to Dublin anyway, so he'd take them to Bray.

"Fonsie should be canonized," Benny said to Clodagh. "Yes, I can see his statue in all the churches. Maybe they'd even make this a special place of pilgrimage for him. We'd outsell Lourdes."

"I mean it," Benny said.

"Don't you think I don't know?" A rare look of softness came into Clodagh's face.

That night Mother asked Benny if she'd mind if they sold Lisbeg.

She knew she mustn't appear too eager. But she said thoughtfully that it was a good idea, there'd be money to build up the shop.

It was what Father would have liked.

"We always wanted you to be married from here. That's the only thing."

The signs of Patsy's wedding were still everywhere, the silver ornaments from the cake, the paper napkins, the confetti, the glasses around the house.

"I don't want to get married for a long, long time, Mother. I mean that." And oddly she did.

All that pain she had felt over Jack seemed much less now. She remembered how she had ached all over at the very thought of him and how she had wanted to be the one leaving to walk up the church to a smiling Jack Foley. That ache was a lot less painful now.

Rosemary said that they should have a party in Dublin just to show that it wasn't only the socialites in Knockglen who could organize things.

A barbecue maybe, the night their exams were over, down by White Rock, on the beach, between Killiney and Dalkey.

They'd have a huge fire, and there'd be sausages and lamb chops and great amounts of beer.

Sean and Carmel would not be in charge this time. Rosemary would do the food, and her friend Tom would collect the money. The boys started contributing.

"Will we ask Jack?" Bill Dunne said. "Maybe not this time," said Rosemary.

Eve and Benny were going to share a flat next year. The digs in Dunlaoghaire would be closed. They were very excited and kept looking at places now before the vacation so that they'd be ahead of the posse in September.

They were full of plans. Benny's mother would come and stay, maybe even Mother Francis might come and visit. There had been wonderful news from the convent. Mother Clare had broken her hip.

Not that Mother Francis called it wonderful news, but it did mean that Mother Clare would need to be near a hospital and physiotherapy, and all the stairs and the walking in St. Mary's wouldn't be advisable.

Mother Francis was in the middle of the Thirty Days Prayer when this happened. She told Eve that it was her biggest crisis of faith yet.

Could the prayer be too powerful?

As they left one flat they had been examining, they ran into Jack. He looked at Benny. "Hallo, Jack."

Eve said she had to go, seriously, and she'd see Benny later out in Dunlaoghaire. She was gone before they could say anything.

"Would you come out with me tonight?" he asked her. Benny looked at him. Her eyes went all around the face that she had loved so much, every line, every fold of the skin so dear to her.

"No, Jack, thank you." Her voice was gentle and polite. She was playing no games. "I'm going out already."

"But that's just with Eve. She won't mind."

"No, it's impossible.

Thanks all the same."

"Tomorrow then, or the weekend?" His head was on one side. Benny remembered suddenly the way that his mother and father had stood on the steps of their house that night. His mother watchful and wondering.

Little things that she had learned during the past month about the Foleys made her think that this was always the way things were.

Benny didn't want to wonder and watch over Jack for the rest of her life. If she went out with him now, it would be so easy. They would be back to where they had been before. In time Nan would be forgotten like the incident in Wales had been sort of forgotten.

But she would always worry about the next one. The next time she just wasn't around, ever smiling, always ready. It was too much to ask.

"No." Her smile was warm.

His face was surprised and sad. More sad than surprised. He began to say something. "I only did what. . ." Then he stopped. "I never meant it to. . ." He stopped again. "it's all right, Jack," Benny said. "Honestly, it's all right." She thought she saw tears in his eyes and looked away quickly. She didn't want to be reminded of that day on the canal bank.

The firelight danced and they threw more and more logs on. Aidan had said he wondered were he and Eve leaving the conception of their eight children too late; and she assured him that they weren't, it would be wrong to rush these things. He sighed resignedly; he had known she would say this.

Rosemary was flushed and pretty, and Tom paid her the most extravagant compliments; Johnny O'Brien was in disgrace because he had whirled a blazing log and it had set fire to a great bowl of punch. The blaze had been spectacular, but the drink severely diminished.

Fonsie and Clodagh had come up from Knockglen. It would be a long time before anyone forgot their dazzling jive display on the big flat rock.

Sean and Carmel nuzzled up to each other as they had done from the beginning of time, Sheila from the law faculty had a new hair-do and a happier smile. Benny wondered why she hadn't liked her so much in the old days.

It was all over Jack, probably. Like everything had been. The clouds that had been in front of the moon scudded past and it was almost as bright as daylight.

They laughed at each other, delighted. It was as if someone had shone a huge searchlight over them, then more clouds came and made it discreet again.

They were tired now from singing and from dancing to the little record player that Rosemary had provided. They only wanted to sing something gentle.

Not anything that would make Fonsie start to dance again. Someone started the song about "Sailing Alone on Moonlight Bay'. Everyone groaned because it was so awful and old-fashioned, but everyone sang it because they knew the words.

Benny was leaning half against a rock and half against Bill Dunne, who was sitting beside her. Bill was so enjoying the night, and was looking after her, getting her nice bits of burned sausage on a stick and some tomato ketchup to dip it in. Bill was a great friend. You wouldn't have to spend your life watching him and wondering about him.

You wouldn't have to spend the night worrying if he was having a good time or too good a time. She was thinking how comfortable he was when she saw Jack coming down the steps.

It was very dark and to the others it might just have looked like a figure in the distance. But she knew it was Jack coming to join the summer party. Asking to belong again.

She didn't make any move. She watched him for a long time; sometimes he stopped in the shadows, as if doubtful of his welcome.

But Jack Foley would never be doubtful for long. He would know that these were his friends. The long winding steps were quite a distance from the rocks where they sat around their fire.

Probably not very far, but it seemed a long time for him to cross the sand.

Long enough for her to realize how often she had seen his face everywhere. She used to see his face smiling and frowning. She used to see it like Mr. Flood saw visions, up in trees and in the clouds.

She used to see it in the patterns of leaves on the ground. When she woke and when she slept there was no other image in the foreground, and not because she summoned it there. It just wouldn't go away.

That was the way it had been for a very long time, when things were good and when things were bleak.

But tonight she would have difficulty in seeing his face. She would have to wait until he came in to the firelight to remember what he looked like. It was oddly restful.

They were still in full voice when someone saw Jack. The song didn't stop. They were all exaggerating the words anyway, and laughing. A few people waved to him.

He stood on the edge.

Jack Foley on the edge of things. Nobody waved him into the centre of the group. He smiled around him, glad to be back. His nightmares brushed away, his sins, he hoped, forgiven. He seemed happy to be part of the court again. Not even his worst enemy would ever have accused him of having wanted to be king. That's just the way it had turned out.