Free Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy Page A

and tut-tutting over the state of the borough.
    Kit Hegarty moved swiftly around her large house in a quiet road that led down to the sea. She had a lot to do. The first day was always important, it set the tone for the whole year. She would cook them all a good breakfast and make it clear that she expected them to be at the table on time.
    She had kept students for seven years now, and was known as one of the University’s favored landladies. Normally they didn’t like to sanction a digs so far away from the city and the University buildings, but Mrs. Hegarty had been quick to explain how near her house was to the railway station, how short was the train journey into town, how good the bracing sea air.
    She didn’t need to plead for long; soon the authorities realized that this determined woman could look after students better than anyone. She had turned her big dining room into a study; there each boy had his own place at the big felt-covered table, books could be left undisturbed. It was expected in Kit’s house that there would be some period of study after supper, most nights at any rate. And her only son, Frank, studied with them too. It made him feel grown up sitting at the same table as real university students, engineers and agricultural science students, law or medicine, they had all sat and studied around the Hegarty dining table while young Frank was working for his Intermediate and his Leaving Certificate.
    Today he would join them as a fully fledged student himself.
    Kit hugged herself with pleasure at the thought that she had raised a son who would be an engineer. And raised him all on her own. Joseph Hegarty had been long gone now, his life in England was no concern of hers anymore. He had sent money for a little while, and dates when he was going to be back; and then excuses, and little money. And then nothing.
    She had tried not to bring Frank up with any bitterness against his father. She had even left a photograph of JosephHegarty in the boy’s room lest he should think that his father was being banished from his memory on top of everything else. It had been a heady day when she noticed the photograph no longer in a place of honor, on the chest of drawers, but moved to a shelf where it could hardly be seen, and then facedown, and then in the bottom of a drawer.
    Tall, gangly Frank Hegarty didn’t need any mythical father’s picture anymore.
    Kit wondered whether Joseph, if he had stayed around, would have had any views on Frank’s motorbike. It was a black 250cc BSA—his pride and joy.
    Probably not. He had never been a man to face up to anything unpleasant. And Frank’s bike was unpleasant. And dangerous, and it was the only black cloud in her life on this morning when her son started university.
    In vain she had pleaded and begged him to use the train. They were only minutes from the railway station, the service was frequent. She would pay for his weekly ticket. He could make as many journeys as he liked. It was the only thing he had ever stood out for.
    He had gone to Peterborough and worked long hours in a canning factory only that he could own this bike. Why did she want to take away the one possession that was truly valuable to him? Just because she didn’t know how to ride a motorbike or even want to, it was unfair that she should try to stop him.
    He was eighteen years and six months. Kit looked at the statue of the Infant of Prague that she kept in the house to impress the mothers of the students who boarded with her. She wished she had a stronger conviction that the Infant of Prague might be any earthly use in keeping her son safe on this terrible machine. It would be nice to have been able to offload your worries onto someone or something like that.

    Patsy asked Mrs. Hogan if she’d like her to wet another pot of tea.
    “Ah, go on, mam, you’d need tea on a bad day like this,” Patsy said encouragingly.
    “That would be nice, Patsy.” She sank back into her chair relieved.
    It