Evening Class

by Maeve Binchy

  “Nora O’Donoghue!” she called out excitedly. It had been a lifetime since she had seen her friend. The young waiters and Mrs. Dunne at the desk looked surprised to see Brenda, the impeccable Brenda Brennan, running across to embrace this unlikely-looking woman. “My God, you actually left that place, you actually got on a plane and came home.”

  “I came back, yes,” Signora said.

  Suddenly Brenda looked worried. “It’s not…I mean your father didn’t die or anything?”

  “No, not that I know of.”

  “So you haven’t gone back to them?”

  “Oh no. No, not at all.”

  “Great, I knew you wouldn’t give in. And tell me, how’s the love of your life?”

  And then Signora’s face changed. All the color and life seemed to go out of it. “He’s dead, Brenda. Mario died. He was killed on the road, on a corner. He’s in a churchyard in Annunziata now.”

  Even saying it had drained her; she looked as if she were about to faint. In forty minutes the place would fill up. Brenda Brennan had to be out there, the face of Quentin’s, not crying with a friend over a lost love. She thought quickly. There was one booth that she usually reserved for lovers, or people having discreet lunches. She would take it for Nora. She led her friend to the table, and called for a large brandy and a glass of iced water. One of them would surely help.

  With a practiced eye and hand she changed the reservation list, and asked Nell Dunne to photocopy the new version.

  Nell was almost too interested in events. “Is there anything at all we can do to help…the situation, Ms. Brennan?”

  “Yes, thank you, Nell. Photocopy the new seating plan, make sure the waiters have it and that there’s a copy in the kitchen. Thank you.” She was brisk and barely courteous. Sometimes Nell Dunne annoyed her, although she never knew quite why.

  And then Brenda Brennan, who was known as the Ice Maiden by staff and customer alike, went into the booth and cried tears with her friend over the death of this man Mario whose wife had crossed the square to tell Nora to go home to where she belonged.

  It was a nightmare and yet it was a love story. Brenda wondered wistfully for a while what it must have been like to have loved like this, so wildly and without care for the consequences, without planning for the future.

  The guests wouldn’t see Signora in her booth any more than they ever saw the government minister and his lady friend who often dined there, or the headhunters lunching a likely candidate from another company. It was safe to leave her there alone.

  Brenda dried her eyes, touched up her makeup, straightened her collar, and went to work. Signora, peering around from time to time, saw with amazement her friend Brenda escorting wealthy, confident people to tables, asking them about their families, their business deals…And the prices on the menu! It would have kept a family for a whole week in Annunziata. Where did these people get the money?

  “Chef has some very fresh brill today which he recommends highly, and there’s a medley of wild mushrooms…but I’ll leave it with you and Charles will come and take your order when you’re ready.”

  How had Brenda learned to talk like this, to refer to Pillow Case as Chef in some kind of awe, to hold herself so straight? To be so confident? While Signora had lived striving to be deferential, to find a background to live in, other people had been putting themselves forward. This is what she would have to learn in her new life. If she was to survive.

  Signora blew her nose and straightened herself up. She didn’t hunch over the table anymore, looking at the menu with frightened eyes. Instead she ordered a tomato salad followed by beef. It had been so long since she had eaten meat. Her budget hadn’t run to it, and probably would not ever run to it again. She closed her eyes feeling almost faint at the prices on the menu, but Brenda had insisted. Have what she liked, this was her welcome-home lunch. Without her asking for it a bottle of Chianti appeared. Signora steeled herself not to look it up on the price list. It was a gift and she would accept it as such.

  Once she began to eat, she realized just how hungry she was. She’d had hardly anything to eat on the plane, she was too excited, nervous rather. And then last night at the Sullivans’ she had not eaten. The tomato salad was delicious. Fresh basil sprinkled over the plate. When had they heard about things like this in Ireland? The beef was served rare, the vegetables crisp and firm, not soft and swimming in water the way she had thought all vegetables used to be before she learned how to cook them properly.

  When she had finished, she felt much stronger.

  “It’s all right, I won’t cry again,” she said when the lunchtime crowd had left and Brenda slid in opposite her.

  “You’re not to go back to your mother, Nora. I don’t want to come between families, but really and truly she was never a mother to you when you needed it, why should you be a daughter to her now when she needs it.”

  “No, no I don’t feel any sense of duty about it at all.”

  “Thank God, for that,” Brenda said, relieved.

  “But I will need to work, to earn a living, to pay my way. Do you need anyone here to peel potatoes, clean up or anything?”

  Gently Brenda told her friend that it wouldn’t work out, and they had youngsters, trainees. They had been themselves trainees all those years ago. Before…well, before everything changed.

  “Anyway, Nora, you’re too old to do that, you’re too well trained. You can do all kinds of things, work in an office, teach Italian maybe.”

  “No, I’m too old, that’s the problem. I never used a typewriter, let alone a computer. I don’t have any qualifications to teach.”

  “You’d better sign on to get some money, anyway.” Brenda was always practical.

  “Sign on?”

  “For the dole, for unemployment benefit.”

  “I can’t do that, I’m not entitled.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re Irish, aren’t you?”

  “But I lived away for so long, I contributed nothing to the country.” She was adamant.

  Brenda looked worried. “You can’t start being like Mother Teresa here, you know. This is the real world, you have to look to yourself and take what’s being offered.”

  “Brenda, don’t worry about me, I’m a survivor. Look what I survived for a quarter of a century. Most people would not have done that. I found a place to live within hours of coming back to Dublin. I’ll find a job too.”

  Signora was brought into the kitchen to meet Pillow Case, whom she managed to call Patrick with difficulty. He was courteous and grave as he welcomed her back and sympathized formally on the death of her husband. Did he think Mario really had been her husband or was it just for appearances in front of these young people who watched him with reverence?

  Signora thanked them for the delicious meal and said she would return to eat there again under her own steam.

  “We are going to have an Italian season of cooking soon. Perhaps you would translate the menus for us?” Patrick suggested.

  “Oh I’d be delighted.” Signora’s face lit up. This would go some way toward paying for a meal that would have cost more than she could hope to earn in two weeks.

  “It would be all done officially, for a fee and everything,” Patrick insisted. How had the Brennans become so smooth and sophisticated? Offering her money without being seen to give her a handout.

  Signora’s will strengthened even further. “Well, we’ll discuss that when the time comes. I won’t delay you and I’ll be in touch next week to tell you my progress.” She left swiftly without protracted good-byes. That was something she had learned over the years in her village. People liked you more if you didn’t stay on interminably, if they realized that a conversation was going to have an end.

  She bought tea bags and biscuits, and as a luxury a cake of nice soap.

  She asked several restaurants for kitchen work and was politely refused everywhere. She tried a supermarket for shelf stacking and newsagents for a job as an assistant or someone to ope
n the piles of papers and magazines for them. She felt that they looked at her puzzled. Sometimes they asked her why she wasn’t going through the job centre, and she looked at them with vague eyes that confirmed their view that she might be a bit simple.

  But she did not give in. Until five o’clock she sought work. Then she took a bus to where her mother lived. The flats were in their own grounds, raised flower beds with little bushes and ground cover provided the landscaping as it was called. A lot of the doors had ramps as well as steps. This was a development purposely built for the needs of the elderly. With mature trees and bushes around it and built in red brick, it looked solid and safe, something that would appeal to those who had sold their family homes to end their days here.

  Signora sat quietly hidden by a large tree. She held her paper bag of possessions on her lap and watched the doorway of number 23 for what must have been a long time. She was so used to being still, she never noticed time pass. She never wore a watch, so time and its passing were not important to her. She would watch until she saw her mother, if not today then another day, and once she saw her then she would know what to do. She could make no decision until she had seen her mother’s face. Perhaps pity would be uppermost in her heart, or love from the old days, or forgiveness. Perhaps she might see her mother only as another stranger and one who had spurned love and friendship in the past.

  Signora trusted feelings. She knew she would know.

  Nobody went in or out of number 23 that evening. At ten o’clock Signora gave up her post and took a bus back to the Sullivans’. She let herself in quietly and went upstairs, calling good night into the room where the television blared. The boy, Jerry, sat with them watching. No wonder the child didn’t pay much attention at school if he was up till all hours watching westerns.

  They had found her an electric ring and an old kettle. She made herself tea and looked out at the mountains.

  Already in thirty-six hours there was a little veil in her mind over the memory of Annunziata and the walk out to Vista del Monte. She wondered would Gabriella ever be sorry that she had sent Signora away. Would Paolo and Gianna miss her? Would Signora Leone wonder how her friend the Irishwoman was faring far across the sea? Then she washed with the nice soap that smelled of sandalwood, and slept. She didn’t hear the sound of the gunfights in the saloons or the flight of the covered wagons. She slept long and deeply.

  When she got up, the house was empty. Peggy gone to her supermarket, Jimmy out on a driving job, and Jerry putting in the day at his school. She set out on her journey. This time she would target her mother’s home for a morning stakeout. She would look for jobs later on. Again she sat behind her familiar tree, and this time she didn’t have long to wait. A small car drew up outside number 23 and a matronly woman, thickset with very tightly permed red hair, got out. With a gasp she realized this was her younger sister, Rita. She looked so settled in her ways, so middle-aged even though she must only be forty-six. She had been a girl when Signora left, and of course there had been no photograph, any more than there had been warm family letters in the meantime. She must remember that. They only wrote when they needed her, when the comfort of their own lives seemed bigger than the effort of getting in touch with the madwoman who had disgraced herself by fleeing to Sicily to follow a married man.

  Rita looked stiff and tense.

  She reminded Signora of Gabriella’s mother, a small, angry woman whose eyes darted around her seeing faults everywhere but not being able to define them. She was meant to suffer with her nerves, they said. Could this really be Rita, her little sister, this woman with shoulders hunched, with feet squashed into shoes that were too tight, taking a dozen short fussy steps when four would have done? Signora watched aghast from behind her tree. The door of the car was open, she must be going in to collect Mother. She braced herself for the shock. If Rita looked old, what must Mother be like now?

  She thought of the old people in Annunziata. Small, bent often over sticks, sitting out in the square watching people go by, always smiling, often touching her skirt and looking at the embroidery…“Bella bellissima,” they would say.

  Her mother would not be like that. Her mother was a well-preserved seventy-seven. She wore a brown dress and brown cardigan over it. Her hair was pulled back as it had always been into that unfashionable bun Mario had commented on all those years ago. “Your mother would be handsome if she let her hair be more free.”

  Imagine, her mother then must have been only a little older than she was now. So hard, so set in her ways, so willing to go along with the religious line although she did not feel it in her heart. If her mother had just stood up for her, things would have been different. For years Signora could have had a lifeline to home, and she might well have come back and looked after them even in the country, the small farm that they hated leaving.

  But now? They were only yards away from her…she could have called out and they would have heard.

  She saw Rita’s body stiffen still further in irritation and resentment as their mother scolded. “All right, all right. I’m getting in, no need to rush me. You’ll be old one day yourself, you know.” There was no pleasure at seeing each other, no gratitude for the lift to the hospital, no shared solidarity or sympathy about going to see an old man who could no longer live at home.

  This must be Rita’s day, the next one would be Helen’s, and the sisters-in-law must do a small amount of the joyless transporting and minding. No wonder they wanted the madwoman back from Italy. The car drove off with the two stern figures upright in it, not talking to each other, animatedly or at all. How had she learned to love so much, Signora wondered, coming as she did from such a loveless family. It had indeed made up her mind for her. Signora walked out of the neatly landscaped gardens, her head held high. It was clear to her now. She would have no regret, no residual guilt.

  THE AFTERNOON WAS as dispiriting as the previous one in terms of job hunting but she refused to let it get her down. When her journeying brought her toward the River Liffey again, she sought out the coffee shop where Suzi worked. The girl looked up, pleased.

  “You actually went there! My mam told me they had got a lodger out of a clear blue sky.”

  “It’s very nice, I wanted to thank you.”

  “No it’s not very nice but it’ll tide you over.”

  “I can see the mountains from your bedroom.”

  “Yeah, and about twenty tons of waste earth waiting for more little boxes to be built on it.”

  “It’s just what I need, thank you again.”

  “They think you might be a nun, are you?”

  “No, no. Far from a nun I’m afraid.”

  “Mam says you say your husband died.”

  “In a sort of a way that’s true.”

  “He sort of died…is that what you mean?”

  Signora looked very calm; it was easy to see why people might mistake her for a nun. “No, I meant that in a sort of a way he was my husband, but I didn’t see any need to explain all that to your mother and father.”

  “No need at all, much wiser not to,” Suzi said, and poured her a cup of coffee. “On the house,” she whispered.

  Signora smiled to herself, thinking that if she played her cards right she might be able to eat for nothing all around Dublin. “I had a free lunch in Quentin’s; I am doing well,” she confided to Suzi.

  “That’s where I’d love to work,” Suzi said. “I’d dress up in black trousers just like the waiters. I’d be the only woman apart from Ms. Brennan.”

  “You know of Ms. Brennan?”

  “She’s a legend,” said Suzi. “I want to work with her for about three years, learn everything there is to know, then open my own place.”

  Signora gave a sigh of envy. How great to think this was possible, rather than a further series of refusals as a washer-up. “Tell me why can’t I get a job, just an ordinary job cleaning, tidying up, anything. What’s wrong with me? Is it just that I’m too old?”

  Suzi bit her l
ip. “I think it’s that you look a bit too good for the jobs you’re looking for. Like, you look a bit too smart for staying in my parents’ house, it makes people uneasy. They might think that it’s a bit odd. And they’re afraid of odd people.”

  “So what should I do, do you think?”

  “Maybe you should aim for something a bit higher up, like a receptionist or maybe…my mam says you’ve an embroidered bedspread that would take the sight out of your eyes. Maybe you could take that to a shop and show them. You know, the right kind of shop.”

  “I wouldn’t have the confidence.”

  “If you lived with a fellow out in Italy at your age, a fellow that wasn’t your husband, you’ve all the confidence that it needs,” said Suzi.

  And they made a list of the designers and fashion shops where really top-market embroidery might find a home. As she watched Suzi sucking the pencil to think of more places to write down, Signora felt a huge fantasy flood over her. Maybe someday she might bring this lovely girl back with her to Annunziata, say that she was her niece, they had the same red hair. She could show the people there she had a life in Ireland and let the Irish know she was a person of importance in Italy. But it was only a dream, and there was Suzi talking about her hair.

  “I have this friend who works in a real posh place cutting hair and they need guinea pigs on training nights. Why don’t you go down there? You’ll get a great styling for only two pounds. It costs you twenty…thirty times that if you went for real.”

  Could people really pay sixty pounds to have their hair cut? The world had gone mad. Mario had always loved her long hair. Mario was dead. He had sent her a message telling her go back to Ireland, he would expect her to cut her hair if it was necessary to do so. “Where is this place?” Signora asked, and took down the address.