Evening Class

by Maeve Binchy

  They were getting a fair few Italians now, and Paolo, who worked in the chip shop, was worn out coming to translate. “One of you should learn to speak the language,” he said to Gus. “I mean we’re all Europeans but none of you are even trying.”

  “I had hoped the girls might be interested in languages,” Gus had apologized. But it hadn’t happened.

  An Italian businessman, his wife, and two sons came to stay in the hotel. The man was holed up in offices with the Irish Trade Board all day, his wife was in the shops fingering soft Irish tweed and examining jewelry. Their two teenage sons were bored and discontented. Laddy offered to take them to play snooker. Not in a hall where there would be smoking and drinking and gambling, but in a Catholic boys’ club where they would come to no harm. And he completely transformed their holiday.

  From Paolo he got a written list…tavola da biliardo, sala da biliardo, stecca da biliardo. The boys responded by learning the words in English: billiard table, cue.

  They were a wealthy family. They lived in Roma, that was all Laddy could get from them. When they were leaving, they had their photograph taken with him outside the hotel. Then they got into their taxi and went to the airport. On the footpath when the taxi pulled away Laddy saw the roll of notes. Irish banknotes tightly wrapped together with a rubber band. He looked up to see the taxi disappearing. They would never know where they dropped it. They might not notice it until they got home. They were wealthy people, they wouldn’t miss it. The woman had spent a fortune in Grafton Street every time she got near the place.

  They wouldn’t need this money.

  Not like Maggie and Gus, who badly needed some things. Nice new menu holders, for example. Theirs had become very stained and tattered. They needed a new sign over the door. He thought along these lines for about four minutes, then he sighed, and got the bus out to the airport to give them back the money they had lost.

  He found them checking in all their lovely expensive soft leather luggage. For a moment he wavered again, but then he thrust out his big hand before he could change his mind.

  The Italian family all hugged him. They shouted out to everyone around about the generosity and the marvelousness of the Irish. Never had they met such good people in their lives. Some notes were peeled off and put into Laddy’s pocket. That wasn’t important.

  “Può venire alla casa. La casa a Roma,” they begged him.

  They’re asking you to go to Rome to stay with them, translated people in the queue, pleased to hear such enthusiasm for one of their own.

  “I know,” said Laddy, his eyes shining. “And what’s more I’ll go. I had my fortune told years ago, and she said I’d go abroad across the water.” He beamed at everyone. The Italians all kissed him again and he went back on the bus. He could hardly wait to tell them his good news.

  Gus and Maggie talked about it that night.

  “Maybe he’ll forget it in a few days,” Gus said.

  “Why couldn’t they just have given him the tip and left it?” Maggie wondered. Because they knew in their hearts that Laddy would think he was invited to stay with these people in Rome and that he would prepare for it and then his heart would break.

  “I’LL NEED TO get a passport you know,” Laddy said next day.

  “Won’t you need to learn to speak Italian first?” Maggie said with a stroke of genius.

  If they could delay the whole expedition for some time, Laddy might be persuaded that the trip to Rome was only a dream.

  IN HIS SNOOKER club Laddy asked around about Italian lessons.

  A van driver he knew called Jimmy Sullivan said there was a great woman altogether called Signora who had come to live with them, and she was starting Italian lessons up in Mountainview school.

  Laddy went up to the school one evening and booked. “I’m not very well educated, do you think I’d be able to keep up with the lessons?” he asked the woman called Signora when he was paying his money.

  “Oh there’ll be no problem about that. If you love the whole idea of it we’ll have you speaking it in no time,” she said.

  “It’ll only be two hours off on Tuesday and Thursday evening,” Laddy said in a pleading tone to Gus and Maggie.

  “Take all the time you like, for God’s sake, Laddy. Don’t you work a hundred hours a week as it is?”

  “You were quite right that I shouldn’t go out there like a fool. Signora says she’ll have me speaking it in no time.”

  Maggie closed her eyes. What had made her open her mouth and get him to go to Italian lessons? The notion of poor Laddy keeping up with an evening class was ludicrous.

  HE WAS VERY nervous on the first evening, so Maggie went with him.

  They looked a decent crowd going into the rather bleak-looking school yard. The classroom was all decorated with pictures and posters, and there even seemed to be plates of cheese and meat that they would eat later. The woman in charge was giving them big cardboard labels with their names on them, translating them into an Italian form as she went along.

  “Laddy,” she said. “Now that’s a hard one. Do you have any other name?”

  “I don’t think so.” Laddy sounded fearful and apologetic.

  “No that’s fine. Let’s think of a nice Italian name that sounds a bit like it. Lorenzo! How about that?” Laddy looked doubtful, but Signora liked it. “Lorenzo,” she said again and again, rolling the word. “I think that’s the right name. We don’t have any other Lorenzos in the class.”

  “Is that what all the people called Laddy in Italy call themselves?” he asked eagerly.

  Maggie waited, biting her lip.

  “That’s it, Lorenzo,” said the woman with the strange hair and the huge smile.

  Maggie went back to the hotel. “She was a nice person,” she told Gus. “There’d be no way she’d make poor Laddy feel a fool or anything. But I’d give it three lessons before he has to give it up.”

  Gus sighed. It was just one more thing to sigh about these days.

  THEY COULDN’T HAVE been more wrong about the class. Laddy loved it. He learned the phrases that they got as homework each week as if his very life depended on it. When any Italians came to the hotel, he greeted them warmly in Italian, adding mi chiamo Lorenzo with a sense of pride, as if they should have expected the porter at a small Irish hotel to be called something like that. The weeks went on, and often on nights when it rained they saw Laddy being driven home to the door in a sleek BMW.

  “You should ask your lady friend in, Laddy.” Maggie had peered out a few times and just seen the profile of a handsome woman driving the car.

  “Ah no, Constanza has to get back. She has a long drive home,” he said.

  Constanza! How had this ridiculous teacher hypnotized the whole class into her game playing? She was like some pied piper. Laddy missed a snooker competition, which he would definitely have won, because he couldn’t let down the Italian class. It was parts of the body that week, and he and Francesca would have to point out to the class things like their throats and elbows and ankles. He had them all learned: la gola, he had his hand on his neck; i gomiti, one hand on each elbow; and he bent down to touch la caviglia on each foot. Francesca would never forgive him if he didn’t turn up. He’d miss the snooker competition, there’d be another. There wouldn’t be another day with parts of the body. He would be furious if Francesca didn’t turn up because she was in some sort of competition or other.

  Gus and Maggie looked at each other, amazed. They decided that it was good for him. They had to believe that; other things were so grim at the moment. There were improvements that were now pressing, and they just couldn’t afford to make them. They had told Laddy that things were difficult, but he didn’t appear to have taken it on board. They were trying to live one day at a time. At least Laddy was happy for the moment. At least Rose had died thinking all was well.

  SOMETIMES LADDY FOUND it hard to remember all the vocabulary. He hadn’t been used to it at school, where the Brothers hadn’t seemed to need too
much studying from him. But in this class he was expected to keep up.

  Sometimes he sat, fingers in ears, on the wall of the school yard, learning the words. Trying to remember the emphasis. Dov’è il dolore? you must say that in a questioning way. It was the thing the doctor would say to you when you ended up in hospital. You wouldn’t want to be an eejit and not know where you were hurting, so remember what he would ask. Dov’è il dolore, he said over and over.

  Mr. O’Brien, who was the principal of the whole school, came and sat beside him. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Bene, benissimo.” Signora had told them to answer every question in Italian.

  “Great stuff…And do you like the classes? What’s your name again?”

  “Mi chiamo Lorenzo.”

  “Of course you do. Well, Lorenzo, is it worth the money?”

  “I’m not sure how much it costs, Signor. My nephew’s wife pays it for me.”

  Tony O’Brien looked at the big simple man with the beginnings of a lump in his throat. Aidan Dunne had been right to fight for these classes. And they seemed to be going like a dream. All kinds of people coming there. Harry Kane’s wife, of all people, and gangsters like the fellow with the low brow.

  He had said as much to Grania, but she still thought that he was patronizing her, patting her father on the head for his efforts. Maybe he should learn something specific so he could prove to Grania that he was interested.

  “What are you doing today, Lorenzo?”

  “Well, all this week it’s parts of the body for when we get heart attacks or have accidents in Italy. The first thing the doctor will say when you’re wheeled in is Dov’è il dolore? Do you know what that means?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m not in the class. The doctor would say to you Dov’è il dolore?”

  “Yes, it means Where is the pain? And you tell him.”

  “Dov’è is ‘where is,’ is that it?”

  “Yes, it must be, because you have Dov’è il banco; Dov’è il albergo. So you’re right, Dov’è must be ‘where is?’” Laddy seemed pleased, as if he hadn’t made the connection before.

  “Are you married, Lorenzo?”

  “No, Signor, I wouldn’t be much good at it. My sister said I should concentrate on snooker.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be one or the other, man. You could have had both.”

  “That’s all right if you’re very clever, and run a school like you do. But I wouldn’t be able to do too many things at one time.”

  “I’m not either, Lorenzo.” Mr. O’Brien looked sad.

  “And are you not married, then? I’d have thought you’d have big grown-up children by now,” Laddy said.

  “No, I’m not married.”

  “Maybe teaching’s a job where people don’t get married,” Laddy speculated. “Mr. Dunne he’s not married either.”

  “Oh, is that so?” Tony O’Brien was alert to this piece of news.

  “No, but I think he’s having a romance with Signora!” Laddy looked around him as he spoke, in case he was overheard. It was so daring to say such a thing aloud.

  “I’m not sure that’s the situation.” Tony O’Brien was astounded.

  “We all think it is. Francesca and Guglielmo and Bartolomeo and I were talking about it. They laugh a lot together and go home along the road after class.”

  “Well, now,” said Tony O’Brien.

  “It would be nice for them, wouldn’t it?” Laddy liked everyone pleased about things.

  “It would be very interesting, yes,” Tony O’Brien agreed. Whatever he had wanted to find out to tell Grania, he had never expected this. He wondered about the piece of information. It might be this poor fellow’s oversimple interpretation, or it might in fact be true. If it was true, then things were looking up. Aidan Dunne could not be too critical if he himself was involved in something a little unusual, to put it mildly. There was no high moral ground he could claim and preach from. After all, Tony O’Brien was a straightforward single man wooing a single woman. Compared to the Aidan-Signora relationship, this was totally straight and uncomplicated.

  But it wasn’t something he would mention to Grania yet. They had met and the conversation had been stilted, both of them trying to be polite and forget the cruel timing that had upset them before.

  “Are you going to stay the night?” he had asked.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to make love.” She spoke without coyness or any element of game playing.

  “And shall we sleep in the same bed or will I sleep on the sofa?”

  She had looked very young and confused. He had wanted to take her in his arms, stroke her, and tell her that it would all work out in the end, it would be all right eventually. But he didn’t dare.

  “I should sleep on the sofa, it’s your house.”

  “I don’t know what to say to you, Grania. If I beg you to sleep in my bed with me, it looks as if I am just being a beast and after your body. If I don’t, it looks as if I don’t care. Do you see what a problem it is for me?”

  “Please let me sleep on the sofa this time?” she had asked.

  And he tucked her in and kissed her on the forehead. In the morning he had made her Costa Rican coffee and she looked tired with dark circles under her eyes.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I read some of your books. You have amazing things I’ve never heard of.”

  He saw Catch-22 and On the Road beside her bed. Grania would not have read Heller or Kerouac. Possibly the gulf between them was too great. She had looked mystified at his collection of traditional jazz. She was a child.

  “I would love to come back for supper again,” she had said as she left.

  “You tell me when and I’ll cook it for you,” he had said.

  “Tonight? Would that be too soon?”

  “No, tonight would be great,” he had said. “But a little later because I like to look in on the Italian class. And before we fight again, I go because I want to, nothing to do with you or your father.”

  “Peace,” she said. But her eyes had been troubled.

  Now Tony O’Brien had gone home and got everything ready. The chicken breasts were marinating in ginger and honey, the table was set. There were clean sheets on the bed and a rug left on the sofa to cover every eventuality.

  Tony had hoped to have something more appropriate to report from his visit to the class than the news that Grania’s father was rumored to be having an affair with the very strange-looking Italian teacher. He had better go into the bloody classroom quick and find some damn thing to tell her about.

  “Dov’è il dolore?” he said as a farewell to Lorenzo.

  “Il gomito,” shouted Laddy, clutching his elbow.

  “Right on,” said Tony O’Brien.

  The whole thing was getting madder by the minute.

  THE PARTS-OF-THE-BODY class was great fun. Tony O’Brien had to keep his hand over his face to stop laughing as they poked at each other and shouted eccolà. But to his surprise they seemed to have learned a hell of a lot of vocabulary and to be quite unselfconscious about using it.

  The woman was a good teacher; she would suddenly hark back to the days of the week or the ordering of a drink in a bar. “We won’t spend all our time in hospital when we go on the viaggio to Roma.”

  These people really thought they were going on an excursion to Rome.

  Tony O’Brien, who could cope with the Department of Education, the various teachers’ unions, the wrath of priests and nuns, the demands of parents, the drug dealers and the vandals, and the most difficult and deprived of schoolchildren, was speechless. He felt slightly dizzy at the thought of the excursion.

  He was about to tell Aidan Dunne that he was leaving, when he saw Aidan and Signora laughing over some boxes that were changing from being hospital beds into seats in a train. The way they stood was the way people who cared about each other might stand. Intimate without touching each other. Jesus God, suppose it was true!

  He grabbed his co
at and continued with his plans to wine, dine, and hopefully bed Aidan Dunne’s daughter.

  THINGS WERE SO bad in the hotel that Gus and Maggie found it very hard to cope with Laddy’s learning problems. His mind was full of words, he told them, and some of them were getting jumbled.

  “Never mind, Laddy. Learn what you can.” Gus was soothing. Just like the Brothers years ago were soothing to Laddy, telling him not to push himself.

  But Laddy would have none of it. “You don’t understand. Signora says this is the stage we must be confident and no humming and hahing. We’re having another lesson on parts of the body and I keep forgetting them. Please hear me, please.”

  Two guests had left today because they said that the rooms were not up to standard, one said she would write to the Tourist Board. They had barely enough to pay the wages this week, and there was Laddy, his big face working with anxiety, wanting his Italian homework to be heard.

  “I’d be all right if I knew I were going to be with Constanza. She sort of helps me along, but we can’t have the same partners. I could be with Francesca or Gloria. But very probably with Elisabetta, so can we go over them please?”

  Maggie picked up the piece of paper. “Where do we begin?” she asked. There was an interruption. The butcher wanted to discuss when if ever his bill was going to be paid. “Let me deal with it, Gus,” Maggie said.

  Gus took the paper. “Right, Laddy. Will I be the doctor or the patient?”

  “Could you be both, Gus, until I get the sound of it back? Could you say the words to me like you used to?”

  “Sure. Now I have come into the surgery and there’s something wrong with me and you’re the doctor, so what do you say?”

  “I have to say: ‘Where is the pain?’ Elisabetta will be the patient, I’ll be the doctor.”

  Gus never knew how he kept his patience. Dov’è il dolore? he said through clenched teeth. Dov’è le fa male? And Laddy repeated it all desperately over and over. “You see, Elisabetta used to be a bit silly when she came first and not learning properly, but Guglielmo has forced her to take it seriously and now she does all her homework too.” These people sounded like the cast of a pantomime to Gus and Maggie. Grown people calling each other ridiculous names and pointing to their elbows and having pretend stethoscopes.