Evening Class

by Maeve Binchy

  “He thought about the nice sum clicking up on his meter, that’s what he thought.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, the van went off and turned into the lane behind Quentin’s.” She paused. She didn’t look very upset. Fiona had often seen Mrs. Healy more strained, more stressed than this. What could she have seen on this extraordinary mission?

  “And then?”

  “Well, then we waited. I mean he waited, and the taxi driver and I waited. And a woman came out. I couldn’t see her, it was so dark. And she got straight into the van as if she knew it was going to be there, and they took off so quickly that we lost them.”

  Fiona felt vastly relieved. But Mrs. Healy was practical. “We won’t lose them next Wednesday,” she said determinedly.

  Fiona had been very unsuccessful in trying to head off this second excursion. “Would you look at the cost of it? You could get a lovely new check skirt for what you pay the taxi driver.”

  “It’s my housekeeping money, Fiona. I’ll spend what I save on what gives me pleasure.”

  “But suppose he sees you, suppose you’re discovered.”

  “I’m not the one that’s doing anything wrong, I’m just going out for a drive in a taxi.”

  “But what if you do see her? What difference will it make?”

  “I’ll know what she’s like, the woman he thinks he loves.” And her voice sounded so sure that Dan Healy only thought he loved another that Fiona’s blood ran chill.

  “DOESN’T YOUR MOTHER work in Quentin’s?” Fiona asked Brigid.

  “Yeah, she does. Why?”

  “Would she know people who work there at night, like waitresses, young ones?”

  “I suppose she would, she’s been there long enough. Why?”

  “If I were to give you a name would you be able to ask her about them, like without saying why you were asking?”

  “I might, why?”

  “You never stop asking why.”

  “I don’t do anything without asking why,” Brigid said.

  “Okay, forget it then,” said Fiona with spirit.

  “No, I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”

  “Forget it. Forget it.”

  “All right, I’ll check it out with her. Is it your Barry? Is that what it is? Do you think he has someone else who works in Quentin’s?” Brigid was all interest now.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, I could ask her of course.”

  “No, you ask too many questions. Let’s leave it, you’d give everything away.”

  “Oh come on, Fiona, we’ve all been friends forever. You cover for us, we cover for you. I’ll find out, just give me the name and I’ll ask dead casual like to my mum.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What is her name anyway?” Brigid asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but I will soon,” said Fiona, and it was obvious to Brigid and anyone else who might have been listening that she was telling the truth.

  “HOW COULD WE find out her name?” Fiona asked Mrs. Healy.

  “I don’t know. I think we just have to confront them.”

  “No, I mean knowing her name would give us an advantage. There might be no need to confront her.”

  “I don’t see how that could be.” Nessa Healy was confused. They sat in silence thinking about it.

  “Suppose,” said Fiona. “Suppose you were to say that someone from Quentin’s rang and asked him to ring back, but whoever it was, she didn’t leave a name, said he’d know who it was. Then we could listen who he asks for.”

  “Fiona, you’re wasted in that hospital,” Barry’s mother said. “You should have been a private eye.”

  THEY DID IT that very evening, when Dan had been welcomed and given a little bit of peanut brittle to taste. Then, as if she had just remembered it, his wife told him about the message from Quentin’s.

  He went to the hall to phone, and Fiona kept the sounds of the electric mixer at high blast while Barry’s mother crept to listen at the door.

  They were both among the ingredients when Dan Healy came back into the kitchen. “Are you sure she said Quentin’s?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “It’s just that I rang them now and they say that no one there was looking for me.”

  His wife shrugged. It implied that this was business for you. He seemed troubled and he left soon to go upstairs.

  “Did you hear him ask for anyone?” said Fiona.

  Mrs. Healy nodded, her eyes bright and feverish. “Yes, we have the name. He spoke to her.”

  “And who was it? What was her name?” Fiona could hardly breathe with the excitement and the danger of it all.

  “Well, whoever it was answered the phone and he said, ‘Jesus, Nell, why did you ring me at home?’ That’s what he said. Her name is Nell.”

  “What?”

  “Nell. Little bitch, selfish, thoughtless little cow. Well, she needn’t think he loves her, he sounded furious with her.”

  “Yes,” said Fiona.

  “So now we know her name, that gives us power,” said Nessa Healy.

  Fiona said nothing.

  Nell was the name of Brigid and Grania’s mother. It was Nell Dunne who worked at the reception desk in Quentin’s and answered the phone when it rang.

  Barry’s father was involved with her friends’ mother. Not a silly little good-time girl as they had thought, a woman as old as Nessa Healy. A woman with a husband and grown-up daughters of her own. Fiona wondered were the complications of this ever going to end.

  “FIONA? IT’S BRIGID.”

  “Oh yes, listen, I’m not meant to get phone calls at work.”

  “If you’d done your leaving cert and got a proper job you’d have been able to have people phone you,” Brigid complained.

  “Yeah, well I didn’t. What is it, Brigid? There’s a crowd of people here waiting to be served.” There was nobody, as it happened, but she felt ill at ease talking to her friend now that she knew such a terrible secret about the family.

  “This bird, the one that you think Barry fancies, the one working in Quentin’s…you were going to tell me her name and I was going to get the lowdown on her from my mam.”

  “No!” Fiona’s voice was almost a screech.

  “Hey, you were the one who asked me.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Well, if he is having a bit on the side you should know. People should know, it’s their right.”

  “Is it, Brigid? Is it?” Fiona knew she sounded very intense.

  “Of course it is. If he says he loves you and if he tells her he loves her, then for God’s sake…”

  “But it’s not exactly like that, you see.”

  “He doesn’t say he loves you?”

  “Yes he does. But well, what the hell!”

  “Fiona?”

  “Yes?”

  “You are becoming quite seriously mad. I think you should know this.”

  “Sure, Brigid,” said Fiona, grateful for once that she had always been considered a person in a permanent tizz.

  “WOULD YOU MIND more if she were young or old?” Fiona asked Barry’s mother.

  “Nell? She has to be young, why else would he have strayed?”

  “There’s no understanding men, everyone says that. She could be as old as a tree, you know.”

  Nessa Healy was very serene. “If he had a dalliance it was because some young one threw herself at him. Men go for flattery. But he loves me. That was always clear. When I was unavoidably in hospital that time I told you about, he came in when I was asleep and left me flowers. Whatever else there is to hold on to, there’s that.”

  Barry came in full of excitement. The party on Thursday had been so well subscribed, you would never believe it. It was going to be fantastic. Magnifico. Mr. Dunne had said that he would be able to announce that with a success like this on their hands, a whole new program in adult education might start next year.

  “Mr. Dunne?” Fiona said
in a hollow voice.

  “He was the one who set it up, he’s a great pal of Signora’s. You told me you knew his daughters.”

  “Yes, I do.” Fiona spoke in a hollow voice.

  “So he’s delighted about the whole thing. It makes him look good too.”

  “And he’ll be there?”

  “Hey, Fiona, are you asleep or something? Didn’t you tell me we couldn’t sell tickets to his daughters because they’re going with him?”

  “Did I say that?” She must have, but it was long ago, before she knew all that she knew now.

  “And do you think his wife is coming?” she asked.

  “Oh I’d say so. Any of us who have a wife or a husband, a mother or a father, not to mention a loving girlfriend…well, we’re making sure they’re coming.”

  “And your father is coming?” Fiona said.

  “As of today he says he is,” said Bartolomeo, Italian speaker, pleased and happy that he was able to field a good team.

  THE NIGHT OF the festa in Mountainview school was eagerly awaited.

  Signora had been going to buy a new dress, but she decided at the last moment to spend the money on colored lights for the school hall.

  “Aw, come on, Signora,” said Suzi Sullivan. “I have a great dress picked out for you in the Good as New shop. Let them have whatever old lights are there, up in the school.”

  “I want them to remember this evening always. If there are nice colored lights it will add to the romance of it…what will anyone care if I spend forty pounds on a dress? Nobody will notice.”

  “If I can get you the lights will you get the dress?” Suzi asked.

  “You’re not going to suggest that Luigi…” Signora looked very doubtful about it indeed.

  “No, I swear I won’t let him get in touch with the underworld again. It took me long enough to get him out of it. No, I really do know someone in the electrical business, a fellow called Jacko. I needed someone to rewire the flat and Lou asked in the Italian class and Laddy knew this guy who did up the hotel where he works. He’d know what you want, will I send him up to you?”

  “Well, Suzi…”

  “And if he’s cheap, as he will be, then you’ll buy the dress?” She looked so eager.

  “Of course, Suzi,” Signora said, wondering why people set such a store by clothes.

  JACKO CAME UP to look at the school hall. “Built like a bloody barn of course,” he said.

  “I know, but I thought if we had three or four rows of colored lights, you know, a bit like Christmas lights…”

  “It would look pathetic,” Jacko said.

  “Well, we don’t have enough money to buy anything else.” Signora looked distressed now.

  “Who said anything about buying? I’ll light the place properly for you. Bring proper gear up, do it like a disco. Install it for the night, take it away after.”

  “But you can’t do that. It would cost a fortune. There’d have to be someone to operate it.”

  “I’ll come and see it doesn’t blow up. And it’s only for a night, I won’t charge you.”

  “But we couldn’t expect you to do all that.”

  “Just a nice big board advertising my electrical business,” Jacko said, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Could I give you a couple of tickets, in case you would like to bring a partner or anything?” Signora was desperate to return his kindness.

  “No, I travel alone these days, Signora,” he said with his crooked smile. “But you never know what I might pick up at the party. Minding the lights won’t take up all my time.”

  BILL BURKE AND Lizzie Duffy had to get ten people between them, and Bill found it hard to sell tickets at the bank because Grania Dunne had got in first. As it happened, Lizzie’s mother was going to be in Dublin for the night.

  “Do you think we dare?” Bill said. Mrs. Duffy was very much a loose cannon, the dangers might be greater than the rewards.

  Lizzie thought about it seriously. “What’s the very worst she could do?” she wondered.

  Bill gave it serious thought. “She could get drunk and sing with the band?” he suggested.

  “No, when she gets drunk she tells everyone what a bastard my father is.”

  “The music will be very loud, no one will hear her. Let’s ask her,” said Bill.

  CONSTANZA COULD HAVE bought every ticket and not noticed the dip in her bank balance, but that wasn’t the point. She had to invite people, that’s what it was about.

  Veronica would come, of course, and bring a friend from work. Daughters were marvelous. More diffidently, she asked her son, Richard, would he like to take his girlfriend, and to her surprise he sounded eager. The children had been a huge support to her after the trial and sentence. Harry was serving a minimum prison sentence, as she had foretold. Every week in her small seaside apartment she got phone calls and visits from her four children. She must have done something right.

  “You won’t believe this.” Richard rang her a couple of days later. “But you know your Italian festa thing up in Mountainview school. Mr. Malone, my boss, is going. He was just talking to me about it today.”

  “What a small world,” said Connie. “Maybe I’ll ask his father-in-law, then. Is Paul bringing his wife?”

  “I imagine so,” said Richard. “Older people always do.” Connie wondered who on earth at their Italian class could have invited Paul Malone.

  GUS AND MAGGIE told Laddy that of course they would come to the festa. Nothing would keep them away. They would ask their friend who ran the chip shop to come too, to thank him for all his interpreting, and they would give prizes of free dinners in the hotel with wine for the raffle.

  JERRY SULLIVAN IN the house where Signora stayed wanted to know what was the lower age limit.

  “Sixteen, Jerry. I keep telling you that,” Signora said. She knew there was an inordinate interest in the school in a dance in their school hall, which would have disco lights and real liquor.

  Mr. O’Brien, the principal, had discouraged even the older children from attending. “Don’t you all spend enough time on these premises?” he had said. “Why don’t you go to your horrible smoke-filled basements listening to ear-injuring music as usual?”

  Tony O’Brien was like a devil these days. In order to please Grania Dunne, the love of his life, he had given up smoking and it didn’t suit him. But Grania had worked a miracle for him, so in fairness he had to trade the smoking business. She had gone to visit her father and got him on their side.

  He never knew how she had managed it, but the following day Aidan Dunne had strode into his office and offered his hand.

  “I’ve been behaving like a father in a Victorian melodrama,” he had said. “My daughter is old enough to know her own mind and if you make her happy then that’s a good thing.”

  Tony had nearly fallen out of his chair with the shock. “I’ve lived a rackety old life, Aidan, and you know this. But honestly, Grania is the turning point for me. Your daughter makes me feel good and young and full of hope and happiness. I’ll never let her down. If you believe anything, you must believe that.”

  And they had shaken hands with such vigor that both of their arms were sore for days.

  It made everything much simpler both at school and at home. She had stopped taking her contraceptive pill. He knew it had taken a lot for Aidan to make that gesture. He was an odd man…. If he hadn’t known him better, Tony O’Brien would have believed that the Latin master really did have a thing going with Signora.

  But there wasn’t a chance of that.

  SIGNORA’S FRIENDS BRENDA and Patrick Brennan were both coming to the party. What was the point of being successful, they said, if they could not delegate? There was an underchef, there was another greeter, the place could survive one evening without them or it wasn’t run properly in the first place. And, of course, Nell Dunne from the cash desk would be there too, so Quentin’s would be really running on the B team, they laughed to each other.

  “I d
on’t know why we’re all going at all, we must be touched in the head,” Nell Dunne said.

  “For solidarity and support of course, what else?” Ms. Brennan said, looking at Nell oddly.

  Nell felt, as she so often felt, that Ms. Brennan didn’t really like her. It was, after all, a reasonable question. Smart people like the Brennans and yes, even herself, Nell Dunne, a person who mattered in Dublin in her black dress and yellow scarf sitting like a queen in Quentin’s, and all of them traipsing up to that barracks of a school Mountainview, where Aidan had soldiered on so long and for nothing.

  But she wished she hadn’t spoken. The Brennans thought less of her for it somehow.

  Still, she might well go. Dan wasn’t free that night, he had to go to something with his son, he said, and her own children would be annoyed with her if she didn’t make the effort.

  It would be dreary, like everything always had been in that school. But at least it wasn’t the kind of outing that you’d bother dressing up for. Five pounds for a bit of pizza and a band that would deafen you belting out Italian songs. God Almighty, what she did for her family!

  Grania and Brigid were getting dressed for the festa.

  “I hope it goes well for Dad’s sake,” Grania said.

  “Dad can take anything if he accepts that you go to bed with his boss. Nothing’s going to knock him off his perch now.” Brigid was back-combing her hair in front of the sitting room mirror.

  Grania was annoyed. “I wish you’d stop dwelling on the going-to-bed bit. There’s a lot more to it than that.”

  “At his age would he not get exhausted?” Brigid giggled.

  “If I were into talking about it I’d have you green with jealousy,” Grania said, putting on her eyeshadow. Their mother came in. “Hey Mam, get a move on, we’re going in a few minutes,” Grania said.

  “I’m ready.”

  They looked at their mother, hair barely combed, no makeup, an ordinary dress with a loose cardigan over her shoulders. There was no point in saying anything. The sisters exchanged a glance and made no comment.