Evening Class

by Maeve Binchy

  They sat and looked at each other. The choosing of the pizza had been a nightmare. Fiona had said yes to both the pizza margherita and the pizza napoletana, so Barry had eventually ordered them a quattro stagioni each. This one had four different fillings, he said, one in each corner. You could eat them all, no further decisions would be called for.

  He told her that at the Italian class Signora, the teacher, had brought in pizzas one evening. He said that she must spend all the money she earned on bringing them gifts. They all sat there eating and chanting the names of the various pizzas aloud, it had been wonderful. He looked boyish and so enthusiastic about it all. Fiona wished she could have that kind of life in her face and her heart. About anything.

  IT WAS, OF course, all her mother and father’s fault. They were nice, kind people but they had nothing to say to anyone. Her father said that “Least said soonest mended” should be tattooed onto everyone’s arm at birth and then people wouldn’t go round saying the wrong thing. It did mean that her father hardly said anything at all. Her mother had a different rule to live by. It had to do with not getting carried away over things. She had always told Fiona not to get carried away by the Irish dancing class, or the holiday in Spain, or anything at all that she got enthusiastic about. That’s why she had no opinions, no views.

  She had ended up as the kind of person who couldn’t decide what film to see, what pizza to eat, and what to say next. Should she talk to him about his mother’s suicide attempts, or was he just trying to have some time off to forget about it. Fiona frowned with the concentration of it all.

  “I’m sorry, I suppose I’m a bit boring about the Italian classes.”

  “Oh no, heavens no, you’re not,” she cried. “I just love hearing you talk about them. You see, I wish I cared about things like you do. I was envying you and all the people who bothered to go to that class, I feel a bit dull.” Very often, when she least expected it, she appeared to have said something that pleased people.

  Barry smiled from ear to ear and patted her hand. “No you’re not a bit dull, you’re very nice and there’s nothing to stop you going to any evening class yourself, is there?”

  “No, I suppose not. Is your one full?” Again she wished she had not spoken. It looked too eager, chasing him, not being able to find an evening class of her own. She bit her lip as he shook his head.

  “It wouldn’t be any good joining ours now. It’s too late, we’re all too far ahead,” he said proudly. “And anyway, everyone joined for some kind of reason, you know. They all had a need to learn Italian. Or that’s the way it looks.”

  “What was your need to learn it?” she asked.

  Barry looked a bit awkward. “Oh well, it has to do with being there for the World Cup,” he said. “I went with a crowd but I met a lot of nice Italian people and I felt as thick as a plank not being able to speak their language.”

  “But the World Cup won’t be there again, will it?”

  “No, but the Italians will still be there. I’d like to go back to the place I was in and talk to them,” he said. There was a faraway look on his face.

  Fiona wondered whether to ask him about his mother, but she decided against it. If he had wanted to tell her, he would have. It could be too personal and private. She thought he was very, very nice and would love to see him again. How did these girls who were great with fellows manage it? Was it by saying something witty? Or by not saying anything at all? She wished she knew. Fiona would love to have said something that would make this nice kind boy realize that she liked him and would love to be his friend. And even more in time. Why was there no way of sending out a signal?

  “I suppose we should be thinking of going home,” Barry said.

  “Oh yes. Of course.” He was tired of her, she could see.

  “Will I walk you to the bus?”

  “That would be nice, thank you.”

  “Or would you rather a lift home on my motorbike?”

  “Oh, that would be terrific.” She realized she had agreed to both things. What a fool he would think she was. Fiona decided to explain. “I mean when you offered to walk me to the bus, I didn’t know that there was a chance of a lift on the bike. But I would prefer the bike actually.” She was shocked at her own courage.

  He seemed to be pleased. “Great,” he said. “You’ll hang on to me tight then. Is that a promise?”

  “It’s a promise,” said Fiona, and smiled at him from behind her big glasses. She asked him to leave her at the end of the road, because it was a quiet place where motorbikes didn’t often travel. She wondered would he ask to see her again.

  “I’ll see you,” Barry said.

  “Yes, that would be nice.” She prayed that her face didn’t look too hopeful, too beseeching.

  “Well, you might run across me in the supermarket,” he said.

  “What? Oh sure. Yes. Easily.”

  “Or I might see you in the hospital?” he added as another possibility.

  “Well, yes. Yes, of course, if you were passing by,” she said sadly.

  “I’ll be passing by every day,” Barry said. “They’ve kept my mother in. Thank you for not asking about her…I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, no of course not.” Fiona held her breath with relief. She had been within a whisper of leaning on the table in the pizza place and asking him every detail.

  “Good night, Fiona.”

  “Good night, Barry, and thank you,” she said.

  She lay awake in her bed for a long time. He did like her. And he admired her for not prying into his life. All right, she had made a few silly mistakes, but he had said he would see her again.

  BRIGID CALLED BY the hospital to see Fiona. “Could you do us a favor, come up to the house tonight?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “Tonight’s the night. Grania’s going to tell them about the Old Age Pensioner. There should be fur and feathers flying.”

  “What good will I be?” Fiona asked anxiously.

  “They might tone it down a bit if there’s an outsider in the house. Might.” Brigid seemed doubtful.

  “And will he be there, the old man?”

  “He’ll be parked in a car outside in case he’s needed.”

  “Needed?” Fiona sounded fearful.

  “Well, you know, needed to be welcomed in as a son-in-law, or to come in and rescue Grania if Dad beats her senseless.”

  “He wouldn’t do that?” Fiona’s mouth was an O of horror.

  “No, Fiona, he wouldn’t. You take everything so literally. Have you no imagination?”

  “No, I don’t think I have,” Fiona said sadly.

  DURING THE DAY Fiona made inquiries about Mrs. Healy, Barry’s mother. She knew Kitty, one of the nurses on the ward, who told her. Heavy stomach-pumping job, second time. She seemed determined to do it. Kitty had no time for her, let them finish themselves off if they were intent on it. Why spend all that time and money telling them they were loved and needed? They probably weren’t. If they only knew all the really sick people, decent people who didn’t bring it on themselves, then they’d think again.

  Kitty had no sympathy for would-be suicides. But she said Fiona wasn’t to tell anyone that. She didn’t want to get the reputation for being as hard as nails. And she did give this bloody woman her medication and was as nice to her as she was to all the patients.

  “What’s her first name?”

  “Nessa, I think.”

  “What’s she like?” Fiona asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Weak mainly, in shock a bit. Watches the door of the ward all the time waiting for the husband to come in.”

  “And does he?”

  “Not so far, her son does but that’s not what she’s looking for, she wants to see the husband’s face. That’s why she did it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s why they all do it,” Kitty said sagely.

  IN THE DUNNES’ kitchen they sat around the kitchen table. There was a macaroni
cheese on it, but hardly anyone was eating. Mrs. Dunne had her paperback folded back on itself, as she so often had. She gave the impression of someone waiting in an airport rather than being in the center of her own home.

  Brigid as usual was eating nothing officially but pulling little bits off the edge of the dish and taking bread and butter to mop up a bit of juice that spilled, and in the end eating more than if she had been able to take a sensible portion. Grania looked pale, and Mr. Dunne was about to head off to his room that he loved so much.

  “Dad, wait a minute,” Grania said. Her voice sounded strangulated. “I want to tell you something, all of you in fact.”

  Grania’s mother looked up from her book. Brigid looked down at the table. Fiona felt herself go red and look guilty. Only Grania’s father seemed unaware that anything of moment was to be said.

  “Yes, of course.” He sat down, almost pleased that there was to be general conversation.

  “You’ll all find this very hard to take, I know, so I’ll try to explain it as simply as I can. I love somebody and I want to get married.”

  “Well, isn’t that great,” her father said.

  “Married?” her mother said, as if it was the most unexpected thing that anyone who loved anyone might consider.

  Brigid and Fiona said nothing, but gave little grunts and sounds of surprise and pleasure that anyone would have known were not a serious reaction to the news.

  Before her father could ask whom she loved, Grania told him. “Now, you’re not going to like this in the beginning, you’re going to say he’s too old for me, and a lot of other things, but it’s Tony O’Brien.”

  The silence was worse than even Grania could have believed.

  “Is this a joke?” her father said eventually.

  “No, Dad.”

  “Tony O’Brien! The wife of the principal, no less.” Her mother gave a snort of laughter.

  Fiona couldn’t bear the tension. “I hear he’s very nice,” she said pleadingly.

  “And who do you hear that from, Fiona?” Mr. Dunne spoke like a typical schoolteacher.

  “Well, just around,” Fiona said feebly.

  “He’s not that bad, Dad. And she’s got to marry someone,” Brigid said, thinking this was helping somehow.

  “Well, if you think Tony O’Brien will marry you, you have another think coming.” Aidan Dunne’s face was in a hard, bitter line.

  “We wanted you to know about it first, and then we thought we might get married next month.” Grania tried to keep the shake out of her voice.

  “Grania, that man tells at least three girls a year that he’s going to marry them. Then he takes them back to his bordello and he does what he likes with them. Well, you probably know that, you’ve been there often enough when you’re telling us that you stay with Fiona.”

  Fiona cowered at the lie being unmasked.

  “It’s not like that. It’s been going on for ages, well, it’s been in the air for ages. I didn’t see him anymore after he became principal, because I thought he had sort of cheated us both, you and me, but he says he didn’t and that things are fine now.”

  “Does he, by God?”

  “Yes, he does. He cares about you and he has great admiration for you and the way the evening class is going.”

  “I know a boy who goes to it, he says it’s just great,” squeaked Fiona. She gathered from the looks she got that the interruption had not been hugely helpful.

  “It took him a long time to persuade me, Dad. I was on your side and I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. And he explained that there were no sides…you were all in it for the same reason…”

  “I’m sure it took him a long time to persuade you. Usually about three days, he boasts. He boasts, you know, about how he gets young girls to bed with him. That’s the kind of man we have running Mountainview.”

  “Not nowadays, Dad. Not now. I bet he hasn’t. Think about it.”

  “Only because he’s not in the staff room, because he’s in his little God Almighty tin-pot throne room, the principal’s office as he calls it.”

  “But Dad, wasn’t it always the principal’s office, even when Mr. Walsh was there?”

  “That was different. He was a man worthy of the post.”

  “And hasn’t Tony been worthy of it? Hasn’t he painted the school, got it all smartened up? Started new things everywhere, given you money for your wild garden, set up the Italian class, got the parents to campaign for a better bus service…?”

  “Oh, he has you well indoctrinated.”

  “What do you think, Mam?” Grania turned to her mother.

  “What do I think? What does it matter what I think. You’re going to do whatever you want to anyway.”

  “I wish you would understand it’s not easy for him either. He wanted to tell you a long time ago, he didn’t like it being all secret, but I wasn’t ready.”

  “Oh, yes.” Her father was very scornful.

  “Truly, Dad. He said he didn’t feel good seeing you and knowing that sooner or later he would have to face you, knowing he had been keeping something from you.”

  “Oh dear me, the poor man, the poor worried soul.” They had never seen their father as sarcastic and bitter as this. His face was literally twisted in a sneer.

  Grania straightened her shoulders. “As Mam said, I am of course over twenty-one and I can and will do what I like, but I had hoped to do it with your…well, your encouragement.”

  “And where is he, the great Sir Galahad, who didn’t dare to come and tell us himself?”

  “He’s outside, Dad, in his car. I told him that I’d ask him to come in if it were appropriate.” Grania was biting her lip. She knew he would not be asked in.

  “It’s not appropriate. And no, Grania, I will not give you the blessing or encouragement you ask for. As your mother says, you’ll go your own way and what can we do about it?” Angry and upset, he got up and left the table. They heard the door of his room bang behind him.

  Grania looked at her mother. Nell Dunne shrugged. “What did you expect?” she said.

  “Tony does love me,” Grania protested.

  “Oh he may or he may not. But do you think that matters to your father? It’s just that you picked on the one person out of all the billions in the world that he will never get reconciled to. Never.”

  “But you, you understand?” Grania was dying for someone to support her.

  “I understand that he’s what you want at the moment. Sure. What else is there to understand?”

  Grania’s face was stony. “Thanks, that’s a lot of help,” she said. Then she looked at her sister and her friend. “And thank you, too, what a great support you were.”

  “God, what could we do, go down on our knees and say we always knew you were made for him?” Brigid was stung by the unfairness of the accusation.

  “I did try to say he was well thought of,” poor Fiona bleated.

  “You did.” Grania was grim. She stood up from the table with her face still hard.

  “Where are you going? Don’t go after Dad, he won’t change,” Brigid said.

  “No, I’m going to pack some things and go to Tony’s house.”

  “If he’s so mad for you he’ll still be there tomorrow,” her mother said.

  “I don’t want to stay here anymore,” Grania said. “I didn’t realize it until five minutes ago, but I haven’t ever been really happy here.”

  “What’s happy?” Nell Dunne said.

  And they were silent as they heard Grania’s footsteps going upstairs and into her room to pack a case.

  OUTSIDE IN A car a man strained to see if he could get any indication of what was going on in the house, and wondered whether movement back and forth in the side bedroom was a good sign or a bad sign.

  Then he saw Grania leaving the house with a case.

  “I’ll take you home, sweetheart,” he said to her. And she cried on his shoulder and into his jacket, as she cried on her father not very long ago
when she was a child.

  FIONA THOUGHT ABOUT it all for hours afterward. Grania was only a year older than she was. How had she been able to face up to her parents like that? Compared to the dramas in Grania’s life, Fiona’s were very small. What she must do now was something to get her locked in to Barry and his life again.

  She would think when she got into work next morning.

  IF YOU WORKED in the hospital, you could often get flowers cheap at the end of the day from the florist, blooms that had passed their best. She got a small bunch of freesias and wrote Get well soon, Nessa Healy on it. When nobody was looking, she left them at the nurses’ station in the ward. Then she hurried back to her coffee shop.

  She didn’t see Barry for two days, but he looked cheerful when he came in. “She’s much better, she’ll be coming home at the end of the week,” he said.

  “Oh, I am glad…has she got over it, whatever it was?”

  “Well, it’s my father, you see. She thinks…well, she thought…anyway he wouldn’t come and see her. He said he wasn’t going to be blackmailed by these suicide attempts. And she was very depressed at first.”

  “But now?”

  “Now it seems that he gave in. He sent her flowers. A bunch of freesias. So she knows he cares and she’s going home.”

  Fiona felt herself go cold. “And he didn’t come in himself…with the flowers?”

  “No just left them in the ward and went away. Still, it did the trick.”

  “And what does he say about it all, your dad?” Fiona’s voice was faint.

  “Oh, he keeps saying he never sent her flowers, but that’s part of the way they go on.” He looked a bit worried about it.

  “Everyone’s parents are very odd, my friend was just saying that to me the other day. You couldn’t understand what goes on in their minds at all.” She looked eager and concerned.

  “When she’s settled in back at home will we go out again?” he asked.

  “I’d love that,” said Fiona. Please, please God, may no one ever find out about the flowers, may they decide to take the easy way out and go along with the notion that he had sent them.