by Maeve Binchy
“Martedì… Tuesday…now you know one word already.”
“Martedì,” Bill said, and walked to the bus stop. He felt that even more than his fine wool well-cut jacket, this was good money being thrown away.
“What will I wear for the evening class?” Lizzie asked him on Monday night. Only Lizzie would want to know that. Other people might want to know whether to bring notebooks or dictionaries or name badges.
“Something that won’t distract everyone from their studies,” Bill suggested.
It was a pretty vain hope and a foolish suggestion. Lizzie’s wardrobe did not include clothes that would not distract. Even now, at the end of summer, she would have a short skirt that would show her long, tanned legs, she would have a tight top and a jacket loosely around her shoulders.
“But what exactly?”
He knew it wasn’t a question of style. It was a matter of choosing a color. “I love the red,” he said.
Her eyes lit up. It was very easy to please Lizzie. “I’ll try it on now,” she said, and got her red skirt and red-and-white shirt. She looked marvelous, fresh and young, like an advertisement for shampoo with her golden hair.
“I could wear a red ribbon in my hair?” She seemed doubtful.
Bill felt a huge protective surge well up in him. Lizzie really did need him. Owlish and obsessed with paying debts as he was, she would be lost without him.
“Tonight’s the night,” he told Grania at work next day.
“You’ll tell me honestly, won’t you? You’ll tell me what it’s like.” Grania seemed very serious. She was wondering how it would go for her father, whether he might look good or just foolish.
Bill assured her he would tell the truth, but somehow he knew it was unlikely. Even if it was a disaster, Bill would not feel able to blow the whistle. He would probably say that it was fine.
BILL DID NOT recognize the dusty school annex when they arrived. The place had been transformed. Huge posters festooned the walls, pictures of the Trevi Fountain and the Coliseum. Huge images of the Mona Lisa and of Michelangelo’s David and mixed among them mighty vineyards and plates of Italian food. There was a table covered in red, white, and green crepe paper that held paper plates covered with cling film.
They seemed to have real food on them, little pieces of salami and cheese. There were paper flowers, too, each one with a big label giving its name. Carnations were garofani… Somebody had taken immense pains and trouble.
Bill hoped that it would all work out well. For the strange woman with the odd-colored red-and-gray hair called simply Signora, to the kind man hovering in the background who must be Grania’s father, to all the people who sat awkwardly and nervously around waiting for it to start. All of them with some hope or dream like his own. None of them, by the look of it, wanting to make a career in international banking.
Signora clapped her hands and introduced herself. “Mi chiamo Signora. Come si chiama?” she asked the man who must be Grania’s father.
“Mi chiamo Aidan,” he said. And so on around the classroom.
Lizzie loved it. “Mi chiamo Lizzie,” she cried, and everyone smiled admiringly as if she had achieved a great feat.
“Let’s try to make our names more Italian. You could say: ‘Mi chiamo Elisabetta.’”
Lizzie loved that even more and could hardly be stopped from repeating it.
Then they all wrote Mi chiamo and their names on huge pieces of paper and pinned them on. And they learned how to ask each other how they were, what time it was, what day it was, what date, where they lived.
“Chi è?” pointing at Bill.
“Guglielmo,” the class all shouted back.
Soon they knew everyone’s names in Italian and the class had visibly relaxed. Signora handed out pieces of paper. There were all the phrases they had been using, familiar to the sound but they would never have been able to pronounce them had they seen them written first.
They went through them over and over, what day, what time, what is your name and they answered them. People’s faces were taking on a look of near smugness.
“Bene,” said Signora. “Now we have ten minutes more.” There was a gasp. The two hours could not truly be over. “You have all worked so hard there is a little treat, but we have to pronounce the salami before we eat it, and the formaggio.”
Like children the thirty adults fell on the sausage and cheese and pronounced the words.
“Giovedì,” Signora was saying.
“Giovedì,” they were all chorusing. Bill began to put the chairs away neatly by the wall in a stack. Signora seemed to look at Grania’s father as if to know whether this was what was needed. He nodded quietly. Then the others helped. In minutes the classroom was tidy. The porter would have little to do in terms of clearing up.
Bill and Lizzie went out to the bus stop.
“Ti amo,” she said to him suddenly.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Oh go on, you’re the one with the brains,” Lizzie said. She was smiling fit to break his heart. “Go on, guess. Ti…what’s that?”
“It’s ‘you,’ I think,” said Bill.
“And what’s amo?”
“Is it love?”
“It means I love you.”
“How do you know?” He was amazed.
“I asked her just before we left. She said they were the most beautiful two words in the world.”
“They are, they are,” said Bill.
Perhaps the Italian classes might work after all.
“IT WAS REALLY and truly great,” Bill told Grania next day.
“My father came home high as a kite, thank God,” Grania said.
“And she’s really good, you know, she makes you think you can speak the language in five minutes.”
“So you’re off to run the Italian section then,” Grania teased.
“Even Lizzie liked it, she was really interested. She kept saying the sentences over and over on the bus, everyone was joining in.”
“I’m sure they were.” Grania was clipped.
“No, stop being like that. She took much more notice of it than I thought she would. She calls herself Elisabetta now.” Bill was proud.
“I bet she does,” Grania said grimly. “I’d also like to bet she’ll have dropped out by lesson three.”
AS IT HAPPENED Grania was right, but not because Lizzie wasn’t interested. It was because her mother came to Dublin.
“She hasn’t been for ages and I have to meet her off the train,” she said to Bill apologetically.
“But can’t you tell her you’ll be back at half past nine?” Bill begged. He felt sure that if Signorina Elisabetta was to miss out on one lesson, that would be it. She would claim that she was far too far behind to catch up.
“No honestly, Bill, she doesn’t come to Dublin very often. I have to be there.” He was silent. “You care about your mother enough to live with her for heaven’s sake, why shouldn’t I meet mine at Heuston Station? It’s not much to ask.”
Bill was very reasonable. “No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”
“And Bill, could you lend me the money for a taxi? My mother hates traveling on a bus.”
“Won’t she pay for the taxi?”
“Oh don’t be so mean, you’re mean and tightfisted and penny-pinching.”
“That’s not fair, Lizzie. It’s not true and it’s not fair.”
“Okay.” She shrugged.
“What do you mean okay?”
“Just that. Enjoy the lesson, give my love to Signora.”
“Have the money for the taxi.”
“No, not like that, not with a bad grace.”
“I’d love you and your mother to travel by taxi, I’d love it. It would make you feel happy and generous and welcoming. Please take it, Lizzie, please.”
“Well, if you’re sure.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “Will I meet your mother this time?”
“I hope so, Bill, you know we wanted you to
last time but she had so many friends around. They took all her time. She knows so many people, you see.”
Bill thought to himself that Lizzie’s mother might know a lot of people, but none of them well enough to meet her at the railway station with a car or taxi. But he didn’t say it.
“Dov’è la bella Elisabetta?” Signora asked.
“La bella Elisabetta è andata alla stazione,” Bill heard himself say. “La madre di Elisabetta arriva stasera.”
Signora was overwhelmed. “Benissimo, Guglielmo. Bravo, bravo.”
“You’ve been cramming, you little sneak,” said an angry-faced thickset fellow with Luigi on his blue name tag. His real name was Lou.
“We did andata last week, it was on the list, and we did stasera the first day. They’re all words we know. I didn’t cram.”
“Oh Jesus, keep your shirt on,” said Lou, who frowned more than ever and joined with the class shouting that in this piazza there were many beautiful buildings. “There’s a lie for a start,” he muttered, looking out the window at the barrack-like school yard.
“It’s getting better, they are painting it up,” Bill said.
“You’re a real cheerful Charlie, aren’t you?” Lou said. “Everything’s always bloody marvelous as far as you’re concerned.”
Bill longed to tell him that everything was far from cheerful, he was trapped in a house where everyone depended on him, he had a girlfriend who didn’t love him enough to introduce him to her mother, he had no idea how he was going to pay his term loan next month.
But, of course, he said none of these things. Instead he joined in the chorus chanting that in questa piazza ci sono molti belli edifici. He wondered where Lizzie and her mother had gone. He hoped beyond reason that she hadn’t taken her mother to a restaurant and cashed a check. This time there would be real trouble in the bank.
They had little bits of bread with filling of some sort on them. Signora said they were crostini. “What about the vino?” someone asked.
“I wanted to have vino, vino rosso, vino bianco. But it’s a school you see, they don’t want any alcohol on the premises. Not to give a bad example to the children.”
“A bit late for that round here,” Lou said.
Bill looked at him with interest. It was impossible to know why a man like that was learning Italian. Although it was difficult to see why any of them were there, and he felt sure that a lot of them must puzzle about Lizzie, there seemed to be no reason that anyone could fathom why Lou, now transformed to Luigi, should come to something that he obviously despised, two nights a week, and glower at everyone from beginning to end. Bill decided he would have to regard it as part of the rich tapestry of life.
One of the paper flowers was broken and on the floor.
“Can I have this, Signora?” Bill asked.
“Certo, Guglielmo, is it for la bellissima Elisabetta?”
“No, it’s for my sister.”
“Mia sorella, mia sorella my sister,” Signora said. “You are a kind, good man, Guglielmo.”
“Yeah, but where does that get you these days?” Bill asked as he went out to the bus stop.
OLIVE WAS WAITING for him at the door. “Speak in Italian,” she cried.
“Ciao, sorella,” he said. “Have a garofano. I brought it for you.”
The look of pleasure on her face made him feel worse than he had been feeling already, which had been pretty bad.
BILL WAS TAKING sandwiches to work this week. There was no way he could afford even the canteen.
“Are you okay?” Grania asked him, concerned. “You look tired.”
“Oh, we international linguists have to learn to take the strain,” he said with a weak smile.
Grania looked as if she had been about to ask him about Lizzie but changed her mind. Lizzie? Where was she today? With her mother’s friends maybe, having cocktails in one of the big hotels. Or somewhere down in Temple Bar discovering some new place that she would tell him about, eyes shining. He wished she would ring and speak to him, ask about last night at the class. He would tell her how she had been missed and called beautiful. He would tell her about the sentence he had made up, saying she had gone to the station to meet her mother. She would tell him what she did. Why this silence?
The afternoon seemed long and tedious. After work he began to worry. A whole day never passed like this without any contact. Should he go around to her flat? But then if she was entertaining her mother, might she not regard this as intrusive? She had said she hoped they would meet. He mustn’t force it.
Grania was working late too. “Waiting for Lizzie?” she asked.
“No, her mother’s in town, she’s probably tied up. Just wondering what to do.”
“I was wondering what to do too. Great fun being in the bank, isn’t it? When the day ends you’re such a zombie you can’t think what to do next.” Grania laughed at the whole notion of it.
“You’re always rushing here and there, Grania.” He sounded envious.
“Well, not tonight. I haven’t a notion of going home. My mother will be on her way out to the restaurant, my father disappeared into his study, and Brigid like some kind of wild animal because she’s put on weight again. She’s kicking the scales and saying that the house is full of the smell of frying, and she talks about food for about five hours each evening. She’d make your hair go white overnight listening to her.”
“Is she really worried about it?” Bill was always so kind and interested in people’s problems.
“I don’t know whether she is or not. She’s always looked the same to me, a bit squarish but fine. When she has her hair done and she’s smiling she’s as good as anyone, but there’s this dreary litany of a pound here or a kilo there or a zip that broke or tights that split. Jesus, she’d drive you insane. I’m not going home to listen to that, I tell you.”
There was a pause. Bill was on the point of asking her to have a drink when he remembered his finances. This would be a good excuse to go home on his season ticket and spend not a single penny.
At that moment Grania said: “Why don’t I take you to the pictures and chips, my treat?”
“I can’t do that, Grania.”
“Yes you can. I owe you for signing up for those classes, it was a great favor.” She made it sound reasonable.
They went through the film listings in the evening paper and argued good-naturedly about what might be good and what might be rubbish. It would have been so easy to be with someone like this all the time, Bill thought yet again. And he felt sure that Grania was thinking the same thing. But when it wasn’t there, it wasn’t there. She would remain loving this awkward older man and endure the problems that lay ahead when her father found out. He would stay with Lizzie, who had his heart broken morning, noon, and night. That’s what happened to people.
When he got back home, his mother had an anxious face. “That Lizzie’s been here,” she said. “Whatever time you came in you were to go to her flat.”
“Is anything wrong?” He was alarmed. It wasn’t like Lizzie to come to the house, not after her uncertain welcome on her one official visit.
“Oh, I’d say there’s plenty wrong, she’s a troubled girl,” his mother said.
“But was she sick, had anything happened?”
“Troubled in herself, I mean,” his mother repeated.
He knew he would get nothing but a general mood of disapproval, so he went down the road and caught a bus in the other direction.
She was sitting there in the warm September night outside the house where she had her bed-sitter. There were big stone steps leading up to the door, and Lizzie sat hugging her knees swaying backward and forward. To his relief she wasn’t crying and didn’t seem upset or in a state.
“Where were you?” she asked accusingly.
“Where were you?” Bill said. “You are the one who says I’m not to call you, not to turn up.”
“I was here.”
“Yes, well I was out.”
“Wh
ere did you go?”
“To the pictures,” he said.
“I thought we had no money, we weren’t meant to be doing anything normal like going to the pictures.”
“I didn’t pay. Grania Dunne took me as a treat.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. What’s wrong, Lizzie?”
“Everything,” she said.
“Why did you come to my house?”
“I wanted to see you, to make things right.”
“Well, you succeeded in frightening the life out of my mother and out of me. Why didn’t you ring me at work?”
“I was confused.”
“Did your mother arrive?”
“Yes, she did.”
“And did you meet her?”
“Yes.” Her voice was very flat.
“And take the taxi?”
“Yes.”
“So, what’s wrong?”
“She laughed at my flat.”
“Oh, Lizzie. Come on. You didn’t drag me all the way here, twenty-four hours later, to tell me that, did you?”
“Of course.” She laughed.
“It’s her way, it’s your way…people like you and your mother laugh all the time, it’s what you do.”
“No, not that kind of laughing.”
“Well, what kind?”
“She just said it was too funny and asked could she go now that she’d seen it. She said I’d never let the taxi go and marooned her in this neck of the woods, had I?”
Bill was sad. Lizzie had obviously been very upset. What a thoughtless bloody woman. She hardly ever saw her daughter, couldn’t she have been nice for the few hours she was in Dublin.
“I know, I know,” he said soothingly. “But people always say the wrong thing, they’re known for it. Come on, let’s not worry about it, let’s go upstairs. Hey, come on.”
“No, we can’t.”
She was going to need a bit of persuading.
“Lizzie, I have people in the bank all day from nine o’clock in the morning saying the wrong thing, they’re not evil people, they just upset others. The trick is not to let them. And then when I go home my mother tells me she’s worn out pouring tinned sauce over the frozen chicken, and my father tells me of all the chances he never had as a boy and Olive tells anyone who will listen that I am the head of the bank. And sometimes it’s a bit hard to take, but you just put up with it, that’s what it’s all about.”