by Maeve Binchy
“Hey, Fran, do you see that guy who says Mi chiamo Bartolomeo? Isn’t that Barry from your supermarket?” It was indeed. Fran was pleased, the overtime must have been good enough to sort out the bike. They waved at each other across the room.
What an extraordinary assortment of people. There was that elegant woman, surely she was the one who gave those huge lunches at her house. What on earth could she be doing at a place like this? And the beautiful girl with the golden curls, Mi chiamo Elisabetta, and her nice staid boyfriend in his good suit. And the dark, violent-looking Luigi and the older man called Lorenzo. What an amazing mixture.
Signora was delightful. “I know your landlady,” Fran said to her when they were having little snacks of salami and cheese.
“Yes, well, Mrs. Sullivan is a relation, I am a relation,” Signora said nervously.
“Of course. How stupid, yes I know she is.” Fran was reassuring. It was her own father’s lifestyle, she knew it well. “She said you were very helpful to her son.”
Signora’s face broke into a wide smile. She was very beautiful when she smiled. Fran didn’t think she could be a nun. She was sure Peggy Sullivan had got it wrong.
THEY LOVED THE lessons, Fran and Kathy. They went together on the bus, laughing like children at their mispronunciations and at the stories Signora told them. Kathy told the girls at school and they could hardly believe it.
There was an extraordinary bond among the people in the class. It was as if they were on a desert island and their only hope of rescue was to learn the language, and remember everything they were taught. Possibly because Signora believed that they were all capable of great feats, they began to believe it too. She begged them to use the Italian words for everything, even if they couldn’t form the whole sentence. They found themselves saying that they had to get back to the casa or that the camera was very warm or that they were stanca instead of tired.
And all the time Signora watched and listened, pleased but not surprised. She had never thought that anyone faced with the Italian language would feel anything but delight and enthusiasm for it. With her was Mr. Dunne, whose special project all this was. They seemed to get on together very well.
“Maybe they were friends from way back,” Fran wondered.
“No, he’s got a wife and grown-up children,” Kathy explained.
“He could still have a wife and be her friend,” Fran said.
“Yes, but I think he could be having it off with her, they’re always giving special little smiles. Harriet says that’s a dead giveaway.” Harriet was Kathy’s friend at school who was very interested in sex.
AIDAN DUNNE WATCHED the flowering of the Italian class with a pleasure that he had not known possible. Week after week they came to the school, bicycles, motorbikes, vans, and bus, even the amazing woman in the BMW. And he loved planning the various surprises for them too. The paper flags they made, she would give everyone a blank flag then call out colors that they were to fill in. Each person would hold up a flag and the rest of the class had to call out the colors. They were like children, eager, enthusiastic pupils. And when the class was over, that tough-looking fellow, called Lou or Luigi or whatever, used to help tidy up, tough type, the last one you’d ever think would be hanging around to tidy up, put away boxes and stack chairs.
But that was Signora for you. She had this simple way of expecting the best and getting it. She had asked him if she could make cushion covers for him.
“Come and see the room,” Aidan suggested suddenly.
“That’s a good idea. When will I come?”
“Saturday morning. I’ve no school, would you be free?”
“I can be free anytime,” she said.
He spent all of Friday evening cleaning and polishing his room. He took out the tray with the two little red glasses that came from Murano beside Venice. He had bought a bottle of marsala. They would toast the success of the room and the classes.
She came at midday and brought some sample fabrics. “I thought that yellow would be right from what you told me,” she said, holding up a glowing rich color. “It costs a little more a meter than the others, but then it’s a room for life, isn’t it?”
“A room for life,” Aidan repeated.
“Do you want to show it to your wife before I begin?” she asked.
“No, no. Nell will be pleased. I mean, this is my room really.”
“Yes, of course.” She never asked questions.
Nell was not at home that morning, nor was either of his daughters. Aidan hadn’t told them of the visit, and he was glad they weren’t there. Together he and Signora toasted the success of the Italian class and the Room for Life.
“I wish you could teach in the school itself, you can create such enthusiasm,” he said admiringly.
“Ah. That’s only because they want to learn.”
“But that girl Kathy Clarke, they say she’s as bright as a button these days, all due to the Italian classes.”
“Caterina…a nice girl.”
“Well, I hear that she has them all entertained in the classroom with stories of your class, they all want to join.”
“Isn’t that wonderful?” said Signora.
What Aidan did not report, because he didn’t know it, was that Kathy Clarke’s description of the Italian class included an account of his playing footsie with the ancient Italian teacher, and that he looked at her with the adoring eyes of a puppy. Kathy’s friend Harriet said she had always suspected it. It was the quiet ones that you had to watch. That’s where real passion and lust were lurking.
MISS HAYES WAS taking a history class and was anxious to relate things to the modern day. Something the children might recognize. Telling them the Medicis were patrons of the arts was no use, she called them sponsors. That would mean something.
“Can anyone think of the people that they sponsored?” she asked.
They looked at each other blankly.
“Sponsor?” Harriet asked. “Like a drinks company or an insurance company?”
“Yes. You must know the names of some of the famous artists of Italy, don’t you?” The history teacher was young, she was not yet hardened to how much children had forgotten or what they had never known.
Quietly Kathy Clarke stood up. “One of the most important was Michelangelo. Pope Sixtus V asked Michelangelo to do the roof of the Sistine Chapel, and he wanted all the different scenes.” In a calm, confident voice she told the class about the scaffolding that was built, the rows and the fallings-out. The problems that there still were in keeping the colors alive.
There was no frown, there was just enthusiasm. Since she had obviously gone further than Miss Hayes the young history teacher could have attempted, it was soon time to bring it to an end.
“Thank you for that, Katherine Clarke, now can anyone else name any other artist of the period?”
Kathy’s hand went up again. The teacher looked around to see if there was any other taker, but there was no one. The boys and girls looked on amazed as Kathy Clarke explained about Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, five thousand pages of them, all in mirror writing, maybe because he was left-handed or maybe because he wanted them kept secret. And how he applied to the Duke of Milan for a job saying he could design cannon-proof ships in wartime and statues in peacetime.
Kathy knew all this and was telling it as if it were a story.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, those Italian culture classes must be something else,” said Josie Hayes in the staff room.
“What do you mean?” they asked.
“I’ve had Kathy Clarke standing up giving me a rundown of the Renaissance like nobody’s ever heard.”
Across the room Aidan Dunne, who had dreamed up the classes, stirred his coffee and smiled to himself. A big happy smile.
IT BROUGHT THEM even closer together, Kathy and Fran, the hours spent at the Italian class. Matt Clarke came home from England in the autumn to tell them that he was getting married to Tracey from Liverpool but that they were
n’t having much of a do, they were going to go to the Canaries instead. Everyone was relieved that it didn’t mean a trek to England for the wedding. They giggled a bit when they heard that the honeymoon was going to be before not after the marriage.
Matt thought it was sensible. “She wants a suntan for the wedding snaps and of course if we hate each other out there then we can call it off,” he said cheerfully.
Matt gave his mother money for the slot machines and took his father for a few pints. “What’s all this business about learning Italian?” he asked.
“Search me,” said his father. “I can’t make head nor tail of it. Fran is worn out above in the supermarket early mornings, late nights. The fellow she was going with has gone off to the States. I haven’t a notion why she wants to bring all this on herself, specially since they say over in the school that young Kathy works too hard already. But they’re mad about it. Planning to go there next year and all. So let them at it.”
“Kathy’s turning into a grand little looker, isn’t she?” Matt said.
“I suppose she is. Do you know, seeing her every day I never noticed,” his father said with an air of surprise.
Kathy was indeed becoming more attractive. At school her friend Harriet commented on it. “Do you have a fellow or something at this Italian class? You seem different somehow.”
“No, but there are lots of older men there all right.” Kathy laughed. “Very old, some of them. We have to pair into couples to do the asking-for-a-date bit. It’s a scream. I had this man, he must be about a hundred, called Lorenzo. Well, I think it’s Laddy in real life. Anyway Lorenzo says to me ‘È libera questa sera’ and he rolls his eyes and twirls an imaginary mustache and everyone was sick with laughter.”
“Go on. And does she teach you anything really useful like How’s about it and what you’d say?”
“Sort of.” Kathy searched her memory for the phrase. “There’s things like Vive solo or sola, that’s Do you live alone. And there’s one I can’t quite remember…Deve rincasare questa notte, Do you have to go home tonight.”
“And she’s the old one we see in the library sometimes with the funny-colored hair?”
“Yes, Signora.”
“Imagine,” said Harriet. Things were getting stranger all the time.
“DO YOU STILL go to those classes in Mountainview, Miss Clarke?” Peggy Sullivan was handing in her till’s takings.
“They’re really terrific, Mrs. Sullivan. Do pass that on to Signora, won’t you? Everyone just loves them. Do you know that nobody at all has fallen out of the class. That must be unheard of.”
“Well, she sounds very cheerful about them, I must say. An extraordinarily secretive person, of course, Miss Clarke. Claims she was married to some Italian for twenty-six years in a village out there…never a letter from Italy…not a picture of him in sight. And it turns out she has a whole family living in Dublin, a mother in those expensive flats down by the sea, a father in a home, and brothers and sisters all over the place.”
“Yes, well…” Fran didn’t want to hear anything even mildly critical or questioning about Signora.
“It just seems odd, doesn’t it. What’s she living in one room in our estate for if she has all this family dotted all over the place?”
“Maybe she doesn’t get on with them. It could be as simple as that.”
“She goes to see her mother every Monday and her father twice a week up in the home. She wheels him out in his chair, one of the nurses told Suzi. She sits and reads to him under a tree and he just sits and stares ahead, even though he makes an effort to talk to the others who only come once in a blue moon.”
“Poor Signora,” said Fran suddenly. “She deserves better than that.”
“Well she does, now that you say it, Miss Clarke,” said Peggy Sullivan.
SHE HAD GOOD reason to be grateful to this strange visitor, nun or not a nun. She had been a great influence on their lives. Suzi got on great with her and came home much more regularly, Jerry regarded her as his own private tutor. She had made net curtains for them and matching cushion covers. She had painted the dresser in the kitchen and planted window boxes. Her room was immaculate and neat as a new pin. Sometimes Peggy Sullivan had gone in to investigate. As one would. But Signora seemed to have acquired no more possessions than those she had when she arrived. She was an extraordinary person. It was good that they all liked her in the class.
KATHY CLARKE WAS the youngest of her students by far. The girl was eager to learn and asked about the grammar, which the others didn’t know or didn’t bother about. She was attractive, too, in that blue-eyed, dark-haired way that she had never seen in Italy. There the dark beauties all had huge brown eyes.
She wondered what Kathy would do when she left school. Sometimes she saw the girl studying in the library. She must have hopes of getting a third-level education.
“What does your mother think you might do when you leave school?” she asked Kathy one evening when they were all tidying up the chairs after the lesson. People stayed and chatted, no one was anxious to run away, which was good. She knew for a fact that some of them went for a drink in a pub up the hill and others for coffee. It was all as she had hoped.
“My mother?” Kathy seemed surprised.
“Yes, she seems so eager and enthusiastic about everything,” Signora said.
“No, she doesn’t really know much about the school or what I’m doing. She doesn’t go out much, she’d have no idea what there was to do or study or anything.”
“But she comes here to the class with you, doesn’t she, and she goes out to work in the supermarket? Mrs. Sullivan where I stay says she’s the boss.”
“Oh, that’s Fran. That’s my sister,” Kathy said. “Don’t let her hear you said that, she’d go mad.”
Signora looked puzzled. “I’m so sorry, I get everything wrong.”
“No, it’s an easy mistake.” Kathy was anxious for the older woman not to be embarrassed. “Fran’s the oldest of the family, I’m the youngest. Of course you thought that.”
She didn’t say anything to Fran about it. No point in making Fran go to the mirror to look for lines. Poor Signora was a bit absentminded, and she did get a lot of things wrong. But she was so marvelous as a teacher. Everyone in the class, including Bartolomeo, the one of the motorbike, loved her.
Kathy liked Bartolomeo, he had a lovely smile and he told her all about football. He asked where she went dancing, and when she told him about the disco in the summer he said it was a date when it came to half term and they could go out dancing again, he’d tell her a good place.
She reported this to Harriet. “I knew you joined that class just for sex,” Harriet said. And they laughed and laughed over it long after anyone else would have thought it remotely funny.
THERE WAS A bad rainstorm in October and a leak came in the roof of the annex where the evening class was held. With huge solidarity they all managed to cope with it by getting newspapers, and moving tables out of the way and finding a bucket in one of the cloakrooms. All the time they shouted Che tempaccio at each other and Che bruto tempo. Barry said he would wait outside in his rain gear at the bus stop and flash his lights when the bus arrived so that everyone would not get soaked to the skin.
Connie, the woman with the jewelry that Luigi said would buy a block of flats, said she could give four people a lift. They scrambled into her beautiful BMW—Guglielmo, the nice young man from the bank, his dizzy girlfriend, Elisabetta, Francesca, and young Caterina. They went first to Elisabetta’s flat and there was a lot of chorusing of ciao and arrivederci as the two young lovers scampered up the steps in the rain.
And then it was on to the Clarkes’ house. Fran in front gave directions. This was not the kind of territory that would be familiar to Connie. When they got there, Fran saw her mother putting out the dustbin, a cigarette still in her mouth despite the rain that would fall on it and make it soggy, the same scuffed slippers and sloppy housecoat that she wore all the time. S
he then felt ashamed of herself for feeling ashamed of her mother. Just because she was getting a lift in a smart car didn’t mean that she should change all her values. Her mother had had a hard life and had been generous and understanding when it was needed.
“There’s Mam getting drenched. Wouldn’t the bins have done in the morning?” Fran said.
“Che tempaccio, che tempaccio,” Kathy said dramatically.
“Go on, Caterina. Your granny’s holding the door open for you,” Connie said.
“That’s my mother,” Kathy said.
There was so much rain, so much confusion of banging doors and clattering dustbins, nobody seemed to take much notice.
Inside the house Mrs. Clarke was looking with surprise and disgust at her wet cigarette. “I got drowned waiting for you to come in from that limousine.”
“God, let’s have a cup of tea,” said Fran, running to the kettle.
Kathy sat down suddenly at the kitchen table.
“Due tazze di tè,” Fran said in her best Italian. “Come on, Kathy. Con latte? Con zucchero?”
“You know I don’t take milk and sugar.” Kathy’s voice was remote. She looked very pale. Mrs. Clarke said there was no point in a person staying up if this is all you were to hear, she was going off to her bed and to tell that husband of hers when and if he ever came in from the pub not to be leaving any frying pan to clean up in the morning.
She was gone, complaining, coughing, and creaking up the stairs.
“What is it, Kathy?”
Kathy looked at her. “Are you my mother, Fran?” she asked.
There was a silence in the kitchen. They could hear the flushing of the lavatory upstairs and the rain falling on the concrete outside.