Evening Class

by Maeve Binchy

  “Right then,” said Grania. “Off we go.”

  THIS WAS NESSA Healy’s first outing since she had been in hospital. The woman who had done her colors had given her very good advice.

  Barry thought he hadn’t seen his mother looking so well in years. There was no doubt but that Fiona had been a wonderful influence on her. He wondered should he ask Fiona to go on the viaggio with him. It was implying a lot, like they would share a room, and that side of things had not progressed very far in the weeks they had been together. He wanted to, but there was never the opportunity or the place or the right occasion.

  His father looked uneasy. “What kind of people will be there, Son?”

  “All the people who go to the class, Dad, and whoever they could drag like I’m dragging you. It’ll be great, honestly.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “And, Dad, Miss Clarke says I can drive the supermarket van even though it’s a social outing. So I can take you home or Mam home if you get bored or tired or anything.”

  He looked so eager and grateful that his father felt ashamed. “When did Dan Healy ever leave a party while there was still drink on the table?” he asked.

  “And Fiona’s meeting us there?” Mrs. Healy would have liked the moral support of this lively young girl she had grown so fond of. Fiona had made her promise to hold off about confronting everyone with Nell. Just for a week. One week. And reluctantly Nessa Healy had agreed.

  “Yes, she was very insistent. She wanted to go on her own,” said Barry. “Right, are we off?”

  They were off.

  SIGNORA WAS THERE in the hall.

  She had looked at herself in the long mirror before she left the Sullivans’ house. Truly she hardly recognized herself as the woman who had come to Ireland a year ago. The widow, as she saw herself, weeping for her dead Mario, her long hair trailing behind her, her long skirt hanging unevenly. Timid, unable to ask for work or a place to live, frightened of her family.

  Today she stood tall and elegant, her coffee and lilac dress somehow perfect with her odd-colored hair. Suzi had said that this dress might have cost £300. Imagine. She had let Suzi make up her face.

  “Nobody will see me,” she had protested.

  “It’s your night, Signora,” Peggy Sullivan had insisted.

  AND IT WAS. She stood there in a hall with flashing colored lights, with pictures and posters all over it, with the sound system playing a loop tape of Italian songs and music until the live band would arrive with a flourish. They had decided that “Nessun dorma,” “Volare,” and “Arrivederci Roma,” should be played often on the tape. Nothing too unfamiliar.

  Aidan Dunne came in. “I’ll never be able to thank you,” he said.

  “It’s I who have to thank you, Aidan.” He was the only person around them who had not been given an Italianized form of his name. It made him more special.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked.

  “A little. But then, we are surrounded by friends, why should I be nervous? Everyone is for us, there’s nobody against us.” She smiled. She was putting out of her mind the fact that not one of her family, her own family, would come to support her tonight. She had asked them gently but had not begged. It would have been so nice, just once, to have said to people, this is my sister, this is my mother. But no.

  “You look really terrific, Nora. Yourself, I mean, not just the whole place.”

  He had never called her Nora before. She hadn’t time to take it in because people were arriving. At the door a friend of Constanza’s, an extremely efficient woman called Vera, was taking the tickets.

  In the cloakrooms, young Caterina from the Italian class and her friend, a bright girl called Harriet, were busy giving people cloakroom tickets and telling them not to lose them. Strangers were coming in and marveling over the place.

  The principal, Tony O’Brien, was busy passing all compliments their way. “Nothing to do with me I’m afraid, all down to Mr. Dunne whose project this is, and to Signora.”

  They stood there like a bride and groom accepting compliments.

  Fiona saw Grania and Brigid come in with their mother. She gasped. She had met Mrs. Dunne many times before, but tonight she hardly recognized her. The woman looked a complete wreck. She had barely bothered to wash her face.

  Good, thought Fiona grimly. She felt a horrible sensation in her chest, as if she’d swallowed a lump of something that would not go up or down, like a piece of very hard potato or a piece of raw celery. She knew it was fear. Fiona, the mouse in spectacles, was going to interfere in everyone else’s life. She was going to tell a whole lot of people a pack of lies and frighten them to death. Would she be up to it, or would she fall on the floor in a swoon and make everything worse?

  Of course she would be up to it. Remember that night hanging around in the town house when the old man had gone out and Grania had bought the Chinese take-away. Fiona had changed her whole style then, and look how much good had come out of it. She had single-handedly persuaded Nessa Healy to dress up and come to this party. That wasn’t the action of a mouse in spectacles. She had gone so far, she must get over this last fence. She must end the affair that was breaking everyone’s heart. As soon as she had done this, then she could get on with her own life and begin her own affair properly.

  Fiona looked around her, trying to fasten a confident smile on her face. She would just wait until it began to warm up a bit.

  It took no time at all for it all to warm up. There was the roar of conversation, the clink of glasses, and then the band arrived. The dancing started to serious sixties music, which suited every age group.

  Fiona went up to Nell Dunne, who was standing on her own looking very scornful. “Do you remember me, Mrs. Dunne?”

  “Oh, Fiona?” She seemed to drag up the name with difficulty and not great interest.

  “Yes, you were always nice to me when I was young, Mrs. Dunne, I remember that.”

  “Was I?”

  “Yes, when I’d come to tea. I wouldn’t want you to be made a fool of.”

  “Why would I be made a fool of?”

  “Dan, the man over there.”

  “What?” Nell looked to where Fiona was pointing.

  “You know he goes round telling everyone he has this frump of a wife, and that she’s always committing suicide and he can’t wait to leave her. But he has a string of women, and he tells them all the same story.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “And you’re probably, let me see, Wednesday’s woman and one other day. That’s the way he works it.”

  Nell Dunne looked at the smart woman with Dan Healy, laughing easily. This couldn’t be the wife he had spoken of. “And what makes you think you know anything about him?” she asked Fiona.

  “Simple,” Fiona said. “He had my mother too. Used to come up in the van and collect her outside work and take her off. She was besotted over him. It was awful.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Her eyes were wild, her voice was hushed. She was looking to the right and left of her.

  Fiona realized that Mrs. Dunne was greatly rattled. “Well, he delivers vegetables and flowers to where I work, you see, and he’s always talking about his women, even you, and how you’re just made for it. ‘Posh lady from Quentin’s,’ he calls you. And then I realized it was Brigid and Grania’s mum he was talking about, just like it was once my mum…and I felt sick.”

  “I don’t believe a word of this. You’re a very dangerous and mad girl,” Mrs. Dunne said through eyes narrow as slits.

  LUIGI WAS DANCING up a storm with Caterina from the class. Caterina and her friend Harriet had been released from cloakroom duty now and were making up for lost time.

  “Excuse me.” Fiona dragged Luigi off the dance floor.

  “What is it? Suzi doesn’t mind, she likes me to dance.” He looked indignant.

  “Do me one big favor,” Fiona begged. “One thing without asking any questions at all.”
r />   “That’s me,” Luigi said.

  “Could you go over to that dark man over there near the door, and tell him that if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll leave his Wednesday-night lady alone.”

  “But…?”

  “You said you wouldn’t ask why!”

  “I’m not asking why, I’m only asking would he hit me?”

  “No, he won’t. And Luigi?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Two things. Could you not say anything at all about this to Suzi or Bartolomeo?”

  “That’s done.”

  “And could you try and look a bit ferocious when you’re talking to him?”

  “I’ll try,” said Luigi, who thought it was something he might have to work at.

  NELL DUNNE WAS about to approach Dan. He was talking to a thickset, jowlish man with a very angry expression. She thought she would walk by and speak to him out of the corner of her mouth. Say she needed a word. Jerk her head to the corridor outside.

  Why hadn’t he told her he was coming to this anyway? So secretive. So hidden. There could be a lot more she didn’t know. But just before she approached him he looked up and saw her, and a look of fear came into his eyes. He started to move away from her. She saw him grab his wife’s arm and ask her to dance.

  The band was playing “Ciao Ciao Bambino.” They hated it, but a job was a job. They were going to appear in tomorrow’s evening paper.

  AND FIONA STOOD on a chair so that she could observe it all. And remember it forever. Barry had just asked her if she would come on the viaggio with him and she had said yes. Her future mother- and father-in-law were dancing with each other.

  Grania and Brigid’s mother was struggling to get out and look for her coat. She was demanding that Caterina and her friend Harriet open up the cloakroom for her. Only Fiona saw her go. Barry certainly didn’t notice her. Maybe he might never have to know about her any more than anyone ever had to know about the freesias.

  “Will you dance with me?” he said. It was “Three Coins in the Fountain.” Sugary and sentimental.

  Barry held her very tight. “Ti amo, Fiona, carissima Fiona.”

  “Anch’io,” she said.

  “What?” He could hardly believe it.

  “Anch’io. It means me too. I love you too. Ti amo da morire.”

  “God, how did you learn that?” he asked, impressed as he never had been.

  “I asked Signora. I practiced it. Just in case.”

  “In case?”

  “In case you said it, so that I’d know what to say.”

  Around them people danced and sang the silly words of the song. Grania and Brigid’s father hadn’t gone hunting for his wife, he was talking to Signora. They looked like people who might dance at any moment if it occurred to one of them. Barry’s father wasn’t looking around anxiously, he was talking to his wife as if she were a real person again. Brigid wasn’t laced into some tight skirt tugging at it, she wore a loose scarlet dress and had her arms around the neck of a man who would not escape. Grania was leaning on the arm of Tony, the old man. They didn’t dance, but they were getting married. Fiona had been invited to the wedding.

  Fiona thought it was wonderful to be grown up at last. She hadn’t made all this happen, but she had made a very important part of it happen.

  VIAGGIO

  “Why are we asking Mr. Dunne to our wedding?” Lou wanted to know.

  “Because it would be nice for Signora, she won’t have anyone.”

  “Won’t she have everyone else? Doesn’t she live with your family, for God’s sake?”

  “You know what I mean.” Suzi was adamant.

  “Do we have to have his wife as well? The list is getting longer every minute. You do know it’s seventeen pounds a head and that’s before a drink passes their lips?”

  “Of course we’re not asking his wife. Are you soft in the head?” Suzi said, and the look came over her face that Lou didn’t like, the look that said she wondered was she marrying someone as thick as the wall.

  “Certainly not his wife,” Lou said hastily. “I must have been dreaming, that’s all.”

  “Is there anyone else from your side that you’d like?” Suzi asked.

  “No, no. In a way they’re my side as well, and aren’t they coming on the honeymoon with us?” Lou said, brightening up.

  “Together with half of Dublin,” said Suzi, rolling her eyes.

  “A REGISTRY OFFICE, I see,” said Nell Dunne when Grania told her the date.

  “Well, it would be hypocritical to get the job done in a church, neither of us ever going into one.” Nell shrugged. “You will be there, Mam, won’t you?” Grania sounded concerned.

  “Of course I will, why do you ask?”

  “It’s just…it’s just…”

  “What is it, Grania? I’ve said I’ll be there.”

  “Well, you left that party up in the school before it even got going, and it was Dad’s big night. And you’re not going on his trip to Italy or anything.”

  “I wasn’t asked on his trip to Italy,” Nell Dunne said in a tight, hard voice.

  “CAN EVERYONE COME on this holiday to Rome and Florence?” Bernie Duffy asked her daughter Lizzie.

  “No, Mother. I’m sorry, but it’s restricted to the people in the class,” Lizzie apologized.

  “Wouldn’t they want more people to swell the numbers?” Bernie had enjoyed herself boisterously at the festa. She thought the viaggio might be more of the same.

  “WHAT WILL WE do, she’s at me all the time,” Lizzie asked Bill later.

  “We’ll take her to Galway to see your father instead,” Bill said suddenly.

  “We can’t do that, can we?”

  “Wouldn’t it sort a lot of things out? It would distract her, and one way or the other it would take up her time and she wouldn’t feel she was being left out of any fun if she was in the thick of all that drama.”

  “That’s a great idea.” Lizzie was full of admiration.

  “And anyway, I should meet him, shouldn’t I?”

  “Why? We’re not getting married till we’re twenty-five.”

  “I don’t know. Luigi’s getting married and Mr. Dunne’s daughter is getting married…I think we should get married sooner, don’t you?”

  “Perché non?” said Lizzie, with a huge smile all over her face.

  “I’VE ASKED SIGNORA to write the letter to the Garaldis for me,” Laddy said. “She said she’d explain everything.”

  Maggie and Gus exchanged glances. Surely Signora would realize how casual the invitation had been to Laddy, the exuberance and gratitude of a warm-hearted family touched at the honesty of an Irish porter. They’d never expect him to take it so seriously, to go to Italian classes and to expect a huge welcome.

  Signora was a mature woman who would understand the situation, wasn’t she? Yet there was something childlike about the woman in the coffee and lilac dress, the woman at the festa that night who was so innocently thrilled with the success of the lessons and the support that had been given to her evening class. She was an unworldly sort of person, perhaps she would be like Laddy and think that these Garaldis were waiting with open arms for someone they must have well forgotten by now.

  But nothing would let Gus and Maggie take from Laddy’s excitement. He had his passport in the hotel safe, and he had changed money into lire already. This trip meant everything to him, not a shadow must be allowed to fall on it. It will all be fine, Gus and Maggie told each other, willing it to be so.

  “I’VE NEVER BEEN abroad in my life and imagine I’m going twice this summer,” Fran told Connie.

  “Twice?”

  “Yes, as well as the viaggio Kathy won two tickets to America. You wouldn’t believe it, she entered a competition in some business magazine that her friend Harriet brought into the school, and she won two tickets to New York, so we’re both going.”

  “Isn’t that great. And have you anywhere to stay when you get there?”

  “Yes. I h
ave a friend, a fellow I used to go out with, he’s going to drive to meet us. It’s over four hundred miles, but they think nothing of that over there.”

  “He must like you still if he’s going to drive that distance.”

  Fran smiled. “I hope so, I still like him,” she said. “Wasn’t it a miracle that Kathy won the tickets?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know, when she told me I thought her father had given them to her. But no, when they came they were paid for by this magazine and all, so it’s all aboveboard.”

  “Why would her father have given them and not told you?”

  “Well, I don’t see him now, and he’s married to one of the richest women in Ireland, but I wouldn’t take them from him as a pat on the head.”

  “No, of course not. And do you still have feelings for Kathy’s father?”

  “Not at all, it was all years and years ago. No, I wish him well, for all that he’s married to Marianne Hayes and owns a quarter of Dublin.”

  “BARTOLOMEO, WILL YOU and Fiona be able to share a room do you think?” Signora asked.

  “Sì grazie, Signora, that’s all sorted out.” Barry blushed a bit at the memory of how very pleasurably it had been sorted out.

  “Good, that makes it all easier, single rooms are a big problem.”

  Signora was going to share with Constanza, and Aidan Dunne with Lorenzo. Everyone else had partners of some sort.

  THE TRAVEL AGENCY had been marvelous, it was the place where Brigid Dunne worked. They had given the best price when it had all been analyzed down to the bone. Brigid Dunne said she almost wished she were going herself.

  “Why don’t you and the Old Man of the Sea go?” she asked Grania.