by Maeve Binchy
“Let me find out. I’m almost certain.” He smiled at the girl.
“You mean let’s get back into bed together until you test it?” She sounded very bitter.
“No I don’t, as it happens. Let’s go out for dinner somewhere and talk like we used to talk.”
“Until bedtime and then it’s let’s get back into bed like we used to do that.”
“We only did that once, Grania. It’s not just about that.” Suzi was hooked now. He was a nice old guy, the girl Grania should give him a chance, just for dinner. She was dying to suggest it but knew she had to say nothing.
“Just dinner then,” Grania said, and they smiled at each other and held hands.
IT WAS NOT always the same man, the same van, or the same anorak. But the contact was always minimal and the speed great.
The weather became dark and wet, and Lou provided a big hanging rail for the wet coats and jackets that might otherwise have been stacked in the hall cupboard. “I don’t want to drip all over Signora’s boxes,” he would say.
Weeks of boxes in on Tuesday and out on Thursday. Lou didn’t want to think about what was in them. It wasn’t bottles, that was for sure. If Robin were involved in bottles, it would be a whole liquor store full of them like the time in the supermarket. Lou couldn’t deny it anymore. He knew it must be drugs. Why else was Robin so worried? What other kind of business involved one person delivering and another collecting? But God Almighty, drugs in a school. Robin must be mad.
AND THEN BY chance there was this matter of Suzi’s young brother, a young redhead with an impudent face. He had been found with a crowd of the older boys in the bicycle shed. Jerry had sworn that he was only being their delivery boy, they had asked him to pick up something at the school gates because they were being watched by the headmaster. But the Mr. O’Brien who terrorized them all nearly lifted the head off Suzi’s entire family about the whole thing.
Only the pleas of Signora had succeeded in keeping Jerry from being expelled. He was so very young, the whole family would ensure that he didn’t hang around after school but came straight home to do his lessons. And in fact, because he had shown such improvement and because Signora gave her personal guarantee, Jerry had been spared.
The older boys were out, expelled that day. Apparently Tony O’Brien said that he didn’t give one damn about what happened to their futures. They didn’t have much of a future, but what they had of it would not be spent in his school.
Lou wondered what hell would break loose if it were ever discovered that the school annex was acting as a receiving depot for drugs every Tuesday and passing them on the next stage of their journey on a Thursday. Perhaps some of these very consignments were the ones that had been handled by young Jerry Sullivan, his future brother-in-law.
Suzi and he decided that they would marry next year.
“I’ll never like anyone more,” Suzi said.
“You sound fed up, as if I’m only the best of a bad bunch,” Lou said.
“No, that’s not true.” She had become even fonder of him since he had taken up Italian. Signora always spoke of how helpful he was at the class. “He’s full of surprises certainly,” Suzi had said. And indeed he was. She used to hear him recite his Italian homework, the parts of the body, the days of the week. He was so earnest about it, he looked like a little boy. A good little boy.
IT WAS JUST when he was thinking of getting a ring that he heard from Robin.
“Maybe a nice jewel for your red-haired girlfriend, Lou,” he said.
“Yes, well Robin, I was thinking of buying it myself, you know, wanting to take her to the shop so that we could discuss…” Lou didn’t know if there was to be further payment for his work up in the school. In one way it was so simple that he didn’t really need any more. In another he was doing something so dangerous that he really should be paid very well for it. To make it worth the risk.
“I was going to say that if you went into that big place near Grafton Street and chose her a ring, you’d only have to leave a deposit on it, the rest would be paid.”
“She’d know, Robin. I don’t tell her anything.”
Robin smiled at him. “I know you don’t, Lou, and she wouldn’t know. There’s this guy who’d show you a tray of really good stuff, no prices mentioned, and then she’d always have something really nice on her finger. And paid for absolutely legitimately because the balance would be sorted out.”
“I don’t think so, listen I know how good this is but I think…”
“Think when you have a couple of kids and things are hard how glad you were that you once met a fellow called Robin and got a deposit for a house and your wife is wearing a rock that cost ten big ones on her finger.”
Did Robin really mean ten thousand pounds? Lou felt dizzy. And there was the mention of a deposit for a house as well. You’d have to be stark staring mad to fly in the face of this.
They went into the jeweler’s. He asked for George.
George brought a tray. “These are all in your price range,” he said to Lou.
“But they’re enormous,” hissed Suzi. “Lou, you can’t afford these.”
“Please don’t take away the pleasure of giving you a nice ring,” he said, his eyes big and sad.
“No, but Lou, listen to me. We save twenty-five a week between us and we find it hard going. These must be two hundred and fifty pounds at least, that’s ten weeks saving. Let’s get something cheaper, really.” She was so nice, he didn’t deserve her. And she didn’t have an idea she was looking at serious jewelry.
“Which one do you like best?”
“This isn’t a real emerald is it, Lou?”
“It’s an emerald-type stone,” he said solemnly.
Suzi waved her hand backward and forward, it caught the light and it flashed. She laughed with pleasure. “God you’d swear it was the real thing,” she said to George.
Lou went into a corner with George, where he paid more than two hundred and fifty in notes and saw that an extra nine and a half thousand pounds had already been paid toward a ring to be bought by a Mr. Lou Lynch on that day.
“I wish you every happiness, sir,” said George without changing a line of the expression on his face.
What did George know or not know? Was George someone who once got involved and now couldn’t get uninvolved? Had Robin really been in to a respectable place like this and paid all that money in cash? Lou felt faint and dizzy.
SIGNORA ADMIRED SUZI’S ring. “It’s very, very beautiful,” she said.
“It’s only glass, Signora, but wouldn’t you think it was an emerald?”
Signora, who had always loved jewelry but never owned any, knew it was an emerald. In a very good setting. She began to worry about Luigi.
SUZI SAW THE good-looking blond girl called Grania come in. She wondered how the dinner with the older man had gone. As usual she longed to ask but couldn’t.
“Table for two?” she inquired politely.
“Yes, I’m meeting a friend.”
Suzi was disappointed that it wasn’t the old man. It was a girl, a small girl with enormous glasses. They were obviously old friends.
“I must explain, Fiona, that nothing is settled, nothing at all. But I might be calling on you in the weeks ahead to say that I am staying with you, if you know what I mean.”
“I know only too well what you mean. It’s been ages since either of you called on me to be the alibi,” Fiona said.
“Well, it’s just that this fellow…well it’s a very long story. I really do fancy him a lot but there are problems.”
“Like he’s nearly a hundred, is that it?” Fiona asked helpfully.
“Oh Fiona, if only you knew…that’s the least of the problems. His being nearly a hundred isn’t a problem at all.”
“You live very mysterious lives, you Dunnes,” Fiona said in wonder. “You’re going out with a pensioner and you don’t notice what age he is. Brigid is obsessed with the size of her thighs, which seem perfect
ly ordinary to me.”
“It’s all because of that holiday she went on where they had a nudist beach,” Grania explained. “Some eejit said that if you could hold a pencil under your boobs and it didn’t fall down then you were too floppy and you shouldn’t go topless.”
“And…?”
“Brigid said that she could hold a telephone directory under hers and it wouldn’t fall.”
They giggled at the thought.
“Well, if she said it herself,” said the girl in the enormous spectacles.
“Yeah, but the awful point was that nobody denied it, and now she’s got a complex the size of a house.” Suzi tried not to laugh aloud. She offered them more coffee. “Hey, that’s a beautiful ring,” Grania said.
“I just got engaged.” Suzi was proud.
They congratulated her and tried it on.
“Is it a real emerald?” Fiona asked.
“Hardly. Poor Lou works as a packer up in the big electrical place. No, but it’s terrific glass, isn’t it?”
“It’s gorgeous, where did you get it?”
Suzi told her the name of the shop.
When she was out of hearing, Grania said in a whisper to Fiona: “That’s funny, they only sell precious stones in that shop. I know because they have an account with us. I bet that’s not glass, I bet it’s the real thing.”
IT WAS COMING up to the Christmas party in the Italian class. They wouldn’t be seeing each other for two weeks. Signora asked them all to bring something to the last lesson and they would make it into a party. Huge banners with Buon Natale hung all over the room, and banners for the New Year too. They had all dressed up. Even Bill, the serious fellow from the bank, Guglielmo as they all called him, had entered into the spirit of it all and had brought paper hats.
Connie, the woman with the car and the jewelry, brought six bottles of Frascati that she said she found in the back of her husband’s car, and she felt that he might have been taking them off somewhere for his secretary, so they had better be drunk. No one quite knew whether or not to take her seriously, and there had been this restriction about drink earlier. But Signora said it had all been cleared with Mr. O’Brien, the principal, so they needn’t worry about that aspect of things.
Signora didn’t feel it necessary to add that Tony O’Brien had said that since the school seemed to be crawling with hard drugs and kids laying their hands on crack with ease, it seemed fairly minor if some adults had a few glasses of wine as a Christmas treat.
“What did you do last Christmas?” Luigi asked Signora for no reason except that he was sitting near her when all the salute and molte grazie and va bene were going on around them.
“Last year I went to midnight Mass at Christmas and watched my husband, Mario, and his children from the back of the church,” Signora said.
“And why weren’t you sitting with them?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “It wouldn’t have been proper,” she said.
“And then he went and died,” Lou said. Suzi had filled him in on Signora, a widow apparently, even though Suzi’s mother thought she was a plainclothes nun.
“That’s right, Lou, he went and died,” she said gently.
“Mi dispiace,” Lou said. “Troppo triste, Signora.”
“You’re right, Lou, but then life was never going to be easy for anyone.”
He was about to agree with her when a horrifying thought struck him.
It was a Thursday and there had been no man with an anorak. No van. The school would be locked up for two weeks with all of whatever it was in the store cupboard in the hall. What in the name of God was he to do now?
Signora had brought them the words of “Silent Night” in Italian, and the evening was coming to a close. Lou was frantic. He had no car; even if he could get a taxi at this late stage, what on earth would he do to explain why he was carrying four heavy boxes from the store cupboard. There was no way that he could come in here again until the first week of January. Robin would kill him.
But then, it was Robin’s fault. He had given no contact number, no fallback position. Something must have happened to whoever was due to pick up. That was where the weak link was. It wasn’t Lou’s fault. No one could blame him. But he was paid, very well paid, to think quickly and stay cool. What would he do?
The clear-up was beginning. Everyone was shouting their good-byes.
Lou offered to get rid of the rubbish. “I can’t have you do all that, Luigi, you’re far too good already,” said Signora.
Guglielmo and Bartolomeo helped him. In no other place would he have been friendly with two fellows like this, a serious bank clerk and a van driver. Together they carried black sacks of rubbish out into the night and found the big school bins.
“She’s terribly nice, your one, Signora, isn’t she?” said Bartolomeo.
“Lizzie thinks she’s having a thing with Mr. Dunne, you know, the man in charge of the whole thing,” Guglielmo whispered.
“Get away.” Lou was amazed. The lads speculated about it.
“Well, wouldn’t it be great if it were true.”
“But at their age…” Guglielmo shook his head.
“Maybe when we get to their age we’ll think it the most natural thing in the world.” Lou somehow wanted to stand up for Signora. He didn’t know whether he should deny this ridiculous suggestion or confirm it as the most normal thing in the world.
His heart was still racing about the boxes. He knew he had to do something he hated; he had to deceive this nice kind woman with the amazing hair. “How are you getting home, will Mr. Dunne be picking you up?” he asked casually.
“Yes, he did say he might drop by.” She looked a little pink and flustered. The wine, the success of the evening, and the directness of his question.
Signora thought that if Luigi, not the brightest of pupils, had seen something in the way she related to Aidan Dunne, then it must be very well known in the class. She would hate it to be thought that she was his lady friend. After all, it wasn’t as if words or anything else except companionship had been exchanged between them. But if his wife were to find out, or his two daughters. If they were to be a subject of gossip that Mrs. Sullivan would hear about, as she well might, considering how her daughter was engaged to Luigi.
Having lived so discreetly for years, Signora was nervous of stepping out of her role. And also, it was so unnecessary. Aidan Dunne didn’t think of her as anything except a good friend. That was all. But it might not look that way to people who were, how would she put it, more basic, people like Luigi.
He was looking at her quizzically. “Right, will I lock up for you? You go ahead and I’ll catch you up, we’re all a bit late tonight.”
“Grazie, Luigi. Troppo gentile. But be sure you do lock it. You know there’s a watchman comes round an hour after we’ve all gone. Mr. O’Brien is a stickler for this. So far we’ve never been caught leaving it unlocked. I don’t want to fall at the last fence.”
So he couldn’t leave it open and come back when he thought up a plan. He had to lock the bloody thing. He took the key. It was on a big heavy ring shaped like an owl. It was a silly childish thing, but at least it was big, no one would be able to forget it, or think they had it in a handbag if it wasn’t there.
Like lightning he put his own key onto the silly owl ring and took off Signora’s. Then he locked the school, ran after her, and dropped the key into her handbag. She wouldn’t need it until next term, and even if before, he could always manage to substitute something, get the real key back into her handbag somehow. The main thing was to get her home thinking she had the key.
He did not see Mr. Dunne step out of the shadows and take her arm tonight, but wouldn’t it be amazing if it were true. He must tell Suzi. Which reminded him, he had better stay with Suzi tonight. He had just given away his mother and father’s key.
“I’LL BE STAYING with Fiona tonight,” Grania said.
Brigid looked up from her plate of tomatoes.
Nell
Dunne didn’t look up from the book she was reading. “That’s nice,” she said.
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow evening then,” Grania said.
“Great.” Her mother still didn’t look up.
“Great altogether,” Brigid said sourly.
“You could go out too if you wanted to, Brigid. You don’t have to sit sighing over tomatoes, there are plenty of places to go and you could stay in Fiona’s too.”
“Yes, she has a mansion that will fit us all,” Brigid said.
“Come on, Brigid, it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. Cheer up.”
“I can cheer up without getting laid,” Brigid muttered.
Grania looked across anxiously, but her mother hadn’t registered it. “Yes, so can we all,” Grania said in a low voice. “But we don’t go round attacking everyone over the size of our thighs, which, it may be said in all cases, are quite normal.”
“Who mentioned my thighs to you?” Brigid was suspicious.
“A crowd of people came by the bank today to protest about them. Oh Brigid, do shut up, you’re gorgeous, stop all this anorexic business.”
“Anorexic?” Brigid gave a snort of laughter. “Suddenly you’re all sweetness and light because lover boy has materialized again.”
“Who is lover boy? Come on, who? You know nothing.” Grania was furious with her younger sister.
“I know you’ve been moping and moaning. And you talk of me sighing over tomatoes, you sigh like the wind over everyone and you leap ten feet in the air when the phone rings. Whoever it is he’s married. You’re as guilty as hell.”
“You have been wrong about everything since you were born,” Grania told her. “But you were never more wrong in your life about this. He is not married, and I would lay you a very good bet that he never will be.”
“That’s the kind of crap people talk when they’re dying for an engagement ring,” said Brigid, turning the tomatoes over with no enthusiasm.