by Maeve Binchy
“JIMMY, SHE’S CUT her hair,” whispered Peggy Sullivan.
Jimmy was listening to an in-depth interview with a soccer manager. “Yeah, great,” he said.
“No honestly, she’s not what she pretends, I saw her coming in. You wouldn’t know her, she looks twenty years younger.”
“Good, good.” Jimmy raised the volume a bit, but Peggy took the control and turned it down.
“Have some respect. We’re taking the woman’s money, we don’t have to deafen her as well.”
“All right, but hush talking.”
Peggy sat brooding. This Signora, as she called herself, was very odd altogether. No one could be as simple as she was and survive. No one with that little money could get a haircut that must have cost a fortune. Peggy hated mysteries and this was a very deep mystery indeed.
“YOU’LL HAVE TO forgive me if I take my bedspread with me today. I didn’t want you to think I was taking away all the furnishings or anything,” Signora explained to them at their breakfast next morning. “You see, I think people are a bit confused by me. I have to show them that I can do some kind of work. I got my hair cut in a place that needed people to experiment on. Do you think it makes me look more ordinary?”
“It’s very nice indeed, Signora,” said Jimmy Sullivan.
“It looks most expensive, certainly.” Peggy approved.
“Is it dyed?” asked Jerry with interest.
“No, it’s got henna in it, but they said it was an unusual color already, like a wild animal,” Signora said, not at all offended by Jerry’s question or the verdict of the young hairdressers.
IT WAS PLEASING that everyone liked her work so much and admired the intricate stitching and the imaginative mingling of place names with flowers. But there were no jobs. They said they would keep her name on file and were surprised by the address, as if they thought she would live somewhere more elegant. It was a day of refusals like other days, but somehow they seemed to be given with more respect and less bewilderment. Dress designers, boutiques and two theater companies looked at her handwork with genuine interest. Suzi had been right that she should aim high.
Could she dare try to be a guide or a teacher as she had done so confidently for half her adult life in a Sicilian village?
SHE GOT INTO the habit of talking to Jerry in the evenings.
He would come and knock on her door. “Are you busy, Mrs. Signora?”
“No, come in, Jerry. It’s nice to have company.”
“You could always come downstairs, you know. They wouldn’t mind.”
“No, no. I rented a room from your parents, I want them to like having me here in the house, not living on top of them.”
“What are you doing, Mrs. Signora?”
“I’m making little baby dresses for a boutique. They told me they would take four. They have to be good because I spent some of my savings on the material, so I can’t afford for them not to take them.”
“Are you poor, Mrs. Signora?”
“Not really, but I don’t have much money.” It seemed quite a natural, reasonable answer. It satisfied Jerry totally. “Why don’t you bring your homework up here, Jerry?” she suggested. “Then you could be company for me and I could give you a hand if you needed it.”
THEY SAT TOGETHER all through the month of May, chatting easily. Jerry advised her to make five baby dresses and pretend she thought they’d ordered five. It had been great advice, they took all five and wanted more.
Signora showed huge interest in Jerry’s homework. “Read me that poem again, let’s see what does it mean?”
“It’s only an old poem, Mrs. Signora.”
“I know, but it must mean something. Let’s think.” Together they would recite: “‘Nine bean-rows will I have there.’ I wonder why he wanted nine.”
“He was only an old poet, Mrs. Signora. I don’t suppose he knew what he wanted.”
“‘And live alone in the bee-loud glade.’ Imagine that, Jerry. He only wanted to hear the sound of the bees around him, he didn’t want the noise of the city.”
“He was old, of course,” Jerry explained.
“Who was?”
“Yeats, you know, who wrote the poem.”
LITTLE BY LITTLE she made him interested in everything.
She pretended her own memory was bad. As she sewed she asked him to say it to her over and over. So Jerry Sullivan learned his poetry, wrote his essays, attempted his maths. The only thing he was remotely interested in was geography. It had to do with a teacher, Mr. O’Brien. He was a great fellow apparently. Mr. O’Brien used to teach about riverbeds and soil strata and erosion and a rake of things, but he always expected you to know it. The other teachers didn’t expect you to, that was the difference.
“He’s going to be the head, you know, next year,” Jerry explained.
“Oh. And are people in Mountainview school pleased about that?”
“Yeah, I think so. Old Walsh was a terrible bollocks.”
She looked at him vaguely, as if she didn’t understand the word. It worked every time.
“Mr. Walsh, the old fellow who’s head at the moment, he’s not good at all.”
“Ah I see.”
Jerry’s language had improved beyond all recognition, Suzi reported to Signora. And what was more, some teacher at school had said that his work had taken a turn for the better as well. “It’s they should be paying you,” Suzi said. “You’re like a private governess. Isn’t it a pity you couldn’t get a job teaching.”
“Your mother’s asking me to tea on Thursday so that I can meet you,” Signora said. “I think Jerry’s teacher is calling then too. She probably wanted a bit of support.”
“He’s a real lady’s man, Tony O’Brien is. I’ve heard a tale or two about him, you’d want to watch yourself there, Signora. With your smart new hairdo and all he could have his way with you.”
“I’m not ever going to be interested in a man again.” She spoke simply.
“Oh, I said that after the second-last fellow, but suddenly the interest came back.”
THE TEA PARTY began awkwardly.
Peggy Sullivan was not a natural hostess, so Signora took over the conversation, gently, almost dreamily talking about all the changes in Ireland she noticed and most of them were for the better. “The schools are all so bright and cheerful nowadays, and Jerry tells me of the great projects you do in geography class. We had nothing like that when I was at school.”
And after that everything thawed. Peggy Sullivan had seen the visit of the schoolteacher as a possible list of complaints against her son. She hadn’t hoped that her daughter and Signora would get on so well. Or that Jerry would actually tell Mr. O’Brien that he was doing a project on place names, trying to find out why all the streets around here were called what they were. Jimmy came home in the middle of it all, and Signora explained that Jerry was lucky to have a father who knew the city so well, he was better than any map.
They talked like a normal family. More polite than many Tony O’Brien had visited. He had always thought young Jerry Sullivan was part of the group for whom there was no hope. But this odd, unsettling woman who seemed to have taken over the household obviously had a good effect on the kid too.
“You must have loved Italy to stay there so long.”
“I did, very, very much.”
“I’ve never been there myself, but a colleague of mine above in the school, Aidan Dunne, now he’d live, sleep, and breathe Italy to you if you let him.”
“Mr. Dunne, he teaches Latin,” Jerry said in a glum voice.
“Latin? You could learn Latin, Jerry.” Signora’s eyes lit up.
“Oh it’s only for brainy people, ones going on to university to be lawyers and doctors and things.”
“No, it’s not.” Signora and Tony O’Brien spoke at the same time.
“Please…” He motioned her to speak.
“Well, I wish I had learned Latin because it’s sort of the root of all other languages, like
French and Italian and Spanish. If you know the Latin word you know where everything comes from.” She spoke enthusiastically.
Tony O’Brien said: “God, you really should meet Aidan Dunne, that’s what he’s been saying for years. I like kids to learn it because it’s logical. Like doing a crossword, trains them to think and there’s no problem with an accent.”
When the teacher had gone, they all talked together eagerly. Signora knew that Suzi would come home a little more regularly now, and wouldn’t have to avoid her father. Somehow fences had been mended.
SIGNORA MET BRENDA for a walk in Stephen’s Green. Brenda brought stale bread for the ducks and they fed them together, peaceable in the sunshine.
“I go to see your mother every month, will I tell her you’re home?” Brenda asked.
“What do you think?”
“I think no, but then that’s just because I’m still afraid you’ll go and live with her.”
“You don’t know me at all. I am as hard as hell. Do you like her as a person? Truthfully now?”
“No, not very much. I went to please you in the beginning and then I got sucked into it because she seems so miserable, complaining about Rita and Helen and the awful daughters-in-law as she calls them.”
“I’ll go and see her. I won’t have you trying to cover over for me.”
“Don’t go, you’ll give in.”
“Believe me, that will not happen.”
SHE CALLED ON her mother that afternoon. Just went and rang on the bell of number 23.
Her mother looked at her confused. “Yes?” she said.
“I’m Nora, Mother. I’ve come to visit you.”
No smile, no arms outstretched, no welcome. Just hostility in the small brown eyes that looked back at her. They stood almost frozen in the doorway. Her mother had not moved back to let her enter, and Nora would not ask could she come in.
But she did speak again. “I came to see how you are and to ask whether Daddy would like me to go and see him in the home or not. I want to do what’s best for everyone.”
Her mothers lip curled. “When did you ever want to do what was best for anyone except yourself?” she said. Signora stood calm in the doorway. It was at times like this that her habit of stillness came into its own. Eventually her mother moved back into the apartment. “Come in as you’re here,” she said ungraciously.
Signora recognized a few, but not many, pieces from her home. There was a cabinet, where the good china and the few small bits of silver were kept. You could hardly see into it years ago, any more than you could see now. There were no pictures on the wall, or books on the bookshelf. A big television set dominated the room, a bottle with orange squash stood on a tin tray on the dining table. There were no flowers, no sign at all of any enjoyment of life. Her mother did not offer her a seat, so Signora sat at the dining table. She wondered had it known many meals served on it, but then she was not in a position to criticize. For twenty-six years she had lived in rooms where nobody was entertained to a dinner. Maybe it ran in the family.
“I suppose you’ll want to smoke all over the place.”
“No, Mother. I never smoked.”
“How would I know what you do or don’t do?”
“Indeed, Mother, how would you?” Her voice was calm, not challenging.
“And are you home on a holiday or what?”
In the level voice that was driving her mother mad, Signora explained that she had come home to live, that she had found a room and some small sewing jobs. She hoped to get further work to keep herself. She ignored her mother’s scornful sniff at the area where she was living. She paused then and waited politely for some reaction.
“And did he throw you out in the end, Mario or whatever his name is?”
“You know his name was Mario, Mother. You met him. And no he didn’t throw me out. If he were alive I would still be there. He was killed very tragically, Mother, I know you’ll be sorry to hear, in an accident on a mountain road. So then I decided to come home and live in Ireland.” Again she waited.
“I suppose they didn’t want you there in that place once he wasn’t there to protect you, is that what happened?”
“No, you’re wrong. They wanted what was best for me, all of them.”
Her mother snorted again. The silence hung between them.
Her mother couldn’t take it. “So you’re going to live with these people up in that tough estate, full of the unemployed and criminals, rather than with your own flesh and blood. Is this what we are to expect?”
“It’s very kind of you to offer me a home, Mother, but we have been strangers for too long. I have developed my little ways and I am sure you have yours. You didn’t want to know about my life, so I would only bore you talking about it, you made that clear. But perhaps I can come and see you every now and then, and tell me if Father would like me to visit or not.”
“Oh, you can take your talk of visits with you when you go. None of us want you and that is a fact.”
“I would hate to think that. I tried to keep in touch with everyone. I wrote letter after letter. I know nothing about my six nieces and five nephews. I would love to get to know them now that I am home.”
“Well, none of them want anything to do with you, I can tell you that, half cracked as you were thinking you can come back here and take up as if nothing has happened. You could have turned out a somebody. Look at that friend of yours, Brenda, a nice groomed person, married and a good job and all. She’s the kind of girl any woman would like as a daughter.”
“And of course you have Helen and Rita,” Signora added. There was a half snort this time, showing that they had been less than totally satisfactory. “Anyway, Mother, now that I’m back perhaps I could take you out somewhere for a meal sometimes, or we could go into town for afternoon tea. And I’ll inquire at the home whether Father would like a visit or not.”
There was a silence. It was all too much for her mother to take in. She had not given her address, just the area. Her sisters could not come and track her down. She felt no qualms. This was not a woman who had loved her or thought of her welfare, not at any time during the long years she had pleaded for friendship and contact.
She stood up to leave.
“Oh, you’re very high and mighty. But you’re a middle-aged woman, don’t think any man in Dublin will have you after all you’ve been through. I know there’s divorce and all now, for all it broke your father’s heart, but still you wouldn’t find many men in Ireland willing to take on a fifty-year-old woman like yourself, another man’s leavings.”
“No indeed, Mother, so it’s just as well I don’t have any plans in that direction. I’ll write you a little note and come and see you in a few weeks time.”
“Weeks?” her mother said.
“Yes indeed, and maybe I’ll bring along a cake or a cherry log from Bewleys with me and we could have tea. But we’ll see. And give my warmest wishes to Helen and Rita, and tell them I’ll write to them too.”
She was gone before her mother could realize it. She knew she would be on the phone to one of her daughters within minutes. Nothing as dramatic as this had happened in years.
SHE FELT NO sadness. That was all over long ago. She felt no guilt. Her only responsibility now was to keep herself sane and strong and self-employed. She must not learn to be dependent on the Sullivan family, no matter how attracted she felt to their handsome daughter and protective of their surly son. She must not be a burden to Brenda and Patrick, who were obviously the success story of their generation in Dublin, and she could not rely on the boutiques that would give her no guarantees that they could sell her intricate embroidery.
She must get a teaching job of some sort. It didn’t matter that she had no real qualifications, at least she knew how to teach Italian to beginners. Had she not taught herself? Perhaps this man up in Jerry’s school, the one that Tony O’Brien said was a lover of Italy…He might know some group, some little organization that could do with Italian lessons. It d
idn’t matter if it wasn’t well paid, she would love to be speaking that beautiful language again…letting it roll around her tongue.
What was his name? Mr. Dunne? That was it. Mr. Aidan Dunne. Nothing could be lost by asking, and if he loved Italian, he would be on her side already.
She took the bus to the school. What a different place to her own Vista del Monte, where the summer flowers would be cascading down the hills already. This was a concrete yard, a shambles of a bicycle shed, litter everywhere, and the whole building needed badly to be painted. Why couldn’t they have had some greenery growing over the walls?
Signora knew that a community school or college or whatever it was did not have any funds or legacies or donations to make the place more stylish. But really, was it any wonder that children like Jerry Sullivan didn’t feel any great sense of pride in their school?
“He’d be in the staff room,” a group said when she asked for Mr. Dunne, the Latin teacher.
She knocked on the door and a man came to answer it. He had thinning brown hair and anxious eyes. He was in his shirtsleeves, but she could see his jacket hanging on a chair behind him. It was lunch hour and all the other teachers were obviously out, but Mr. Dunne seemed to be guarding the fort. Somehow she had thought he would be an old man. Something to do with teaching Latin possibly. But he looked only around her own age or younger. Still, by today’s standards that was old, much nearer to retirement than starting out.
“I’ve come to talk to you about Italian, Mr. Dunne,” she said.
“Do you know I knew someday someone would knock at the door and say that to me,” Aidan Dunne said.
They smiled at each other, and it was quite clear that they were going to be friends. They sat in the big, untidy staff room that looked out on the mountains, and they talked as if they had known each other always. Aidan Dunne explained about the evening class that was his heart’s desire, but said he had got terrible news that very morning. The funding had not been passed by the authorities. They would never now be able to afford a qualified teacher. The new principal-elect had promised a small sum from his own funds, but that would go to do up the classrooms and get the place ready. Aidan Dunne said that his heart had been low in case the whole project might have to be scrapped, but now he felt a glimmer of hope again.