Free Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy Page B

hadn’t been so wet earlier, when Benny had left for her first day at College. Benny in her navy jumper and white blouse with the navy and gray checked skirt.
    “You’ll be the belle of the ball,” Eddie had said to her, bursting with pride.
    “Oh, Father, I won’t. I’m so big and drab-looking,” Benny had said suddenly. “I’m like some kind of hearse. I caught sight of myself in the mirror.”
    Eddie’s eyes had filled with tears. “Child, you’re beautiful,” he had said. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.
Please
. Don’t upset your mother and me.”
    Annabel had wanted to hug her and tell her that she looked lovely. Big, certainly, but with that lovely glowing skin and all that chestnut hair tied back in a navy and white ribbon, she looked what she was: a girl from a nice family, from a house in the country, whose father ran an established business.
    But it wasn’t a morning for hugging. Instead she had reached out her hand.
    “You are a handsome, lovely girl, and they’ll all see that,” she said softly.
    “Thank you, Mother,” Benny said dutifully.
    “And what’s more, you’ll be very, very happy there. You won’t be going back to dreary little bed-sitters like a lot of girls have to do, or being half starved in some digs …” Annabel sighed with pleasure. “
You’ll
be coming home to your own good home every night.”
    Benny had smiled at her but again it had seemed a little as if it were expected.
    The girl was nervous, as any girl would be starting out in a new place, with strangers.
    “It’ll be a quiet house from now on, mam.” Patsy arrived with the teapot and put it on the stand. She placed the quilted cozy on it and patted it approvingly.
    “I expect she’ll make friends.” Annabel was doubtful. There had always been Eve and only Eve; it was going to be a big wrench.
    “And will she be bringing them down here to stay do you think?” Patsy’s eyes shone at the excitement. She loved speculating.
    “I hadn’t thought of that. But I’m sure she will. After all she can’t possibly stay up in Dublin with people we don’t know or have never heard of. She knows that.”
    Mother Francis in the convent at Knockglen was thinking about Eve as she watched the rain fall steadily on the convent grounds. She would miss her. Obviously she had to go to Dublin and stay in the convent there; this was the only way she could train for a career. Mother Francis hoped that the community in Dublin would understand the need to make Eve feel important and part of the place as they had always done here in Knockglen. Eve had never felt remotely like a charity child, nor had there been any pressure on her to join the Order.
    Her father had worked long hours for the convent in his time, he had paid many times over in advance for his child to be housed and educated, had he but known it. Mother Francis sighed and prayed silently that the Lord would look after the soul of Jack Malone.
    At times there had been other options. Mother Francis and her old school friend of years ago, Peggy Pine, discussed it long and often.
    “I could let her serve her time to me, and make her fitfor a job in any shop in Ireland, but we want more than that for her don’t we?”
    “Not that it isn’t a very worthwhile career, Peggy,” Mother Francis had said diplomatically.
    “You’d love the few letters after her name though, wouldn’t you now, Bunty?” Few people on earth called Mother Francis that and got away with it.
    And what Peggy said was true. Mother Francis
did
want everything that might help to push Eve up some kind of ladder. She had been such an innocent victim from the start, it seemed only fair to help her all they could now.
    There had never been enough money to dress the child properly and even if there had been they didn’t have the style or the know-how. Peggy had advised from the wings, but Eve didn’t want outside charity. Anything that came from the convent she regarded as her right. St.