Evening Class

by Maeve Binchy

  “Grazie tante grazie, Signora,” he said.

  Signora! She would be back now surely, and Connie wanted to give her the surprise. It all seemed much more real to her than the sad woman sitting in this pizza house, the woman who had been her husband’s mistress for most of her life, who had come to Rome to kill Connie. She glanced at Siobhan Casey briefly, but she didn’t say good-bye. There was nothing more to say.

  IT WAS VERY noisy in the bar where Barry and Fiona were looking for the friends from the World Cup.

  “This is the corner we sat in,” Barry said.

  Great crowds of young people were gathered and the giant television set was being moved into a position of even greater prominence. There was a match, and everyone was against Juventus. It didn’t matter who they were for, Juventus was the enemy. The game began and Barry got drawn into it in spite of his quest. Fiona too was interested and howled with rage at a decision that went against everyone’s wishes.

  “You like the football?” a man said to her.

  Barry immediately put his arm around her shoulder. “She understands a little, but I was here, here in this very bar for the World Cup. Irlanda.”

  “Irlanda!” the man cried with delight. Barry produced the pictures, great happy shouting throngs then as now, but more bedecked. The man said his name was Gino, and he showed the pictures to other people and they came and clapped Barry on the back. Names were exchanged. Paul McGrath, Cascarino, Houghton, Charlton. A. C. Milan was mentioned tentatively and proved to have been a good way to go. These were good guys. More and more beer kept flowing.

  Fiona lost all track of the conversation. And she was getting a headache. “If you love me, Barry, let me go back to the hotel. It’s only a straight line along the Via Giovanni and I know where to turn left.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please, Barry. I don’t ask much.”

  “Barry, Barry,” his friends were calling.

  “Take great care,” he said.

  “I’ll leave the key in the door,” she said, and blew him a kiss.

  It was as safe as the streets in her own part of Dublin. Fiona walked happily back to the hotel, rejoicing that Barry had found his friends. They seemed to be fairly casual in their great reunion, none of them remembering anyone’s names at first. But still, maybe that’s the way men were. Fiona looked at the window boxes with the geraniums and busy lizzies in them, clustered in little pots. They looked so much more colorful than at home. Of course, it was the weather. You could do anything if you had all this sunshine.

  Then, passing a bar, she saw Mr. Dunne sitting on his own, a glass of beer in front of him, his face sad and a million miles away. On an impulse Fiona suddenly turned in the door to join him. “Well, Mr. Dunne…the two of us on our own.”

  “Fiona!” He seemed to drag himself back. “And where’s Bartolomeo?”

  “With his football friends. I got a headache so he let me go home.”

  “Oh, he found them. Isn’t that marvelous!” Mr. Dunne had a kind, tired smile.

  “Yes, and he’s delighted with himself. Are you enjoying it all, Mr. Dunne?”

  “Yes, very much.” But his voice sounded a bit hollow.

  “You shouldn’t be out here on your own, you organized it with Signora. Where is she, by the way?”

  “She met some friends from Sicily, that’s where she used to live, you see.” His voice sounded bitter and sad.

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “Nice for her, she’s spending the evening with them.”

  “It’s only one evening, Mr. Dunne.”

  “As far as we know.” He was mutinous, like a twelve-year-old.

  Fiona looked at him, wondering. She knew so much. She knew, for example, all about Mr. Dunne’s wife, Nell, who had been having an affair with Barry’s father. It was over now, but apparently there were still bewildered letters and phone calls from Mrs. Dunne, who had no idea that Fiona had been responsible for breaking everything up. Fiona knew from Grania and Brigid Dunne that their father was not happy, that he withdrew into his own little Italian sitting room all the time and hardly ever came out. She knew, as everyone on the viaggio knew, that he was in love with Signora. Fiona remembered that divorce was now possible in Ireland.

  She recalled that the old Fiona, the timid Fiona, would have left things as they were, would not interfere. But the new Fiona, the happy version, went in there fighting. She took a deep breath. “Signora was telling me the other day that you had made the dream of her life come true. She said she never felt of any importance until you gave her this job.”

  Mr. Dunne didn’t respond, not as she would have liked. “That was before she met all these Sicilians.”

  “She said it again today at lunchtime,” Fiona lied.

  “She did?” He was like a child.

  “Mr. Dunne, could I speak to you frankly and in total secrecy?”

  “Of course you can, Fiona.”

  “And will you never tell anyone what I said, particularly not Grania or Brigid?”

  “Sure.”

  Fiona felt weak. “Maybe I need a drink,” she said.

  “A coffee, a glass of water?”

  “A brandy I think.”

  “If it’s as bad as that I’ll have a brandy myself,” Aidan Dunne said, and they ordered it flawlessly from the waiter.

  “Mr. Dunne, you know that Mrs. Dunne isn’t here with you.”

  “I had noticed,” Aidan said.

  “Well, there’s been a bit of unfortunate behavior. You see she’s friendly, rather overfriendly actually, with Barry’s father. And Barry’s mother, she took it badly. Well, very badly. She tried to kill herself over it all.”

  “What?” Aidan Dunne looked utterly shocked.

  “Anyway it’s all over now, it was over on the night of the festa up in Mountainview. If you remember, Mrs. Dunne went home in a bit of a hurry, and now Barry’s mother is all cheered up and his father isn’t, well, unsuitably friendly, with Mrs. Dunne anymore.”

  “Fiona, none of this is true.”

  “It is, actually, Mr. Dunne, but you swore and promised you’d tell nobody.”

  “This is nonsense, Fiona.”

  “No it’s not, it’s utterly true. You can ask your wife when you get home. She’s the only person you can tell about it. But maybe better not bring it up at all. Barry doesn’t know, and Grania or Brigid don’t, no point in getting everyone upset about it.” She looked so straightforward, with her huge glasses reflecting all the lights in the bar, that Aidan believed her utterly.

  “So why are you telling me if no one is to know and no one is to get upset about it?”

  “Because…because I want you and Signora to be happy, I suppose, Mr. Dunne. I don’t want you to think that you were the one to make the first move cheating on your wife. I suppose I wanted to say that the cheating had started and it was open season.” Fiona stopped abruptly.

  “You’re an amazing child,” he said. He paid the bill and they walked back to the Hotel Francobollo in total silence. In the hall he shook her hand formally. “Amazing,” he said again.

  And he went upstairs to the bedroom where Laddy had arranged all the items that would be blessed by the Pope tomorrow. The papal audience in St. Peter’s. Aidan put his head in his hands. He had forgotten all about it. Laddy had six pairs of rosary beads to be blessed by the Pope. He was sitting in the little anteroom sorting them out. He had already polished the shoes for the Buona Seras, who didn’t know what to make of him. “Domani mercoledì noi vedremo Il Papa,” he said happily.

  UPSTAIRS, LOU HAD to admit to Suzi that he was full of desire for her but didn’t think that the performance would live up to it. “A bit too much drink,” he explained, as if this were an insight.

  “Never mind, we need our energy to see the Pope tomorrow,” Suzi said.

  “Oh God, I’d forgotten the damn Pope,” said Lou, and fell asleep suddenly.

  BILL BURKE AND Lizzie had fallen asleep with their clot
hes on, lying on the bed. They woke frozen at five o’clock in the morning.

  “Is today a quiet day by any chance?” Bill asked.

  “After the papal audience I think it is.” Lizzie had an inexplicable headache.

  BARRY FELL OVER the chair and Fiona woke in alarm. “I forgot where we were living,” he said.

  “Oh Barry, it was a straight line from the pub and then you turn left.”

  “No, I meant in the hotel. I kept opening the wrong people’s doors.”

  “You’re so drunk,” Fiona said sympathetically. “Was it a nice night?”

  “Yesh, but there’s a myshtery,” Barry said.

  “I’m sure there is. Drink some water.”

  “I’ll be going to the loo all night.”

  “Well go, you will anyway after all the beer.”

  “How did you get home?” he asked suddenly.

  “As I told you, it was only a straight line. Drink up.”

  “Did you have a convershashun with anyone?”

  “Only Mr. Dunne, I met him along the way.”

  “He’s in bed with Signora,” Barry reported proudly.

  “He never is! How do you know?”

  “I could hear them talking when I passed the door,” Barry explained.

  “What was he saying?”

  “It was about the temple of Mars the Avenger.”

  “Like the lecture?”

  “Just like that. I think he was giving her the lecture again.”

  “God,” said Fiona. “Isn’t that weird?”

  “I’ll tell you something even more weird,” Barry said. “All those fellows in the pub, they’re not from here at all, they’re from somewhere else…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re from a place called Messagne way down at the bottom of Italy, near Brindisi where you get the boat from. Full of figs and olives, they say.” He sounded very troubled.

  “What’s wrong with that? We all have to be from somewhere.” Fiona gave him more water.

  “This is their first time in Rome they say, I couldn’t have met them when I was here before.”

  “But you were such friends.” Fiona was sad.

  “I know.”

  “Could it have been a different pub, honestly?”

  “I don’t know.” He was very glum.

  “Maybe they forgot they’d been to Rome,” she said brightly.

  “Yes, it’s not the kind of thing you’d forget though, is it?”

  “But they remembered you.”

  “And I thought I remembered them.”

  “Come on, go to bed. We have to be bright-eyed for the Pope,” Fiona said.

  “Oh God, the Pope,” said Barry.

  IN THEIR BEDROOM Connie had given her surprise to Signora. It was a full tape-recording of Aidan’s speech. She had bought the tape recorder and got every word of it for her.

  Signora was touched to the heart. “I’ll listen to it under my pillow here so that it won’t disturb you,” she said, after they had tried some of it out.

  “No, I’m happy to hear it again,” Connie said.

  Signora looked at the other woman. Her eyes were bright and she seemed flushed. “Is everything all right, Constanza?”

  “What? Oh yes, absolutely, Signora.”

  And they sat there, each of them having had an evening that might change their lives. Was Connie Kane in any real danger from the mentally disturbed Siobhan? And would Nora O’Donoghue go back to the small town in Sicily that had been the center of her life for twenty-six years? Even though they had confided in each other a little, they both had a strong tradition of keeping troubles to themselves. Connie wondered what had kept Signora from Aidan’s lecture and, indeed, out so late on her own tonight. Signora longed to ask if Constanza had heard anything more from the person who had written the unpleasant letter.

  They got into bed and discussed the time for the alarm.

  “Tomorrow is the papal audience,” Signora said suddenly.

  “Oh God, I’d forgotten,” Connie admitted.

  “So had I, aren’t we a disgrace?” said Signora with a giggle.

  THEY LOVED SEEING the Pope. He looked a little frail but in good spirits. They all thought he was looking directly at them. There were hundreds and hundreds of people in St. Peter’s, and yet it seemed very personal.

  “I’m glad it wasn’t a private audience,” Laddy said, as if such a thing could ever have been possible. “This big one is better somehow. It shows you religion isn’t dead, and what’s more you wouldn’t have to think of anything to say to him, yourself like.”

  Lou and Bill Burke had three cold beers each before they went, and when Barry saw them he joined in quickly. Suzi and Lizzie had two very cold ice creams each. They all took photographs. There was an optional lunch, which everyone took. Most of them had been too hungover or upset to have thought of making sandwiches at breakfast time.

  “I HOPE THEY’LL all be in better shape for the party at Signor Garaldi’s tomorrow,” Laddy said disapprovingly to Kathy and Fran.

  Lou was passing by when he said it. “God Almighty, the party,” he said, holding his head.

  “SIGNORA?” AIDAN SPOKE to her after lunch.

  “That’s a bit formal, Aidan, you used to call me Nora,” she said.

  “Ah well.”

  “Ah well what?”

  “How was your meeting yesterday, Nora?”

  She paused for a moment. “It was interesting, and despite the fact that it was in a restaurant, I managed to stay sober, unlike almost everyone else in the group. I’m surprised the Holy Father wasn’t lifted out of his chair with the fumes of alcohol from our group.”

  He smiled. “I went to a bar and drowned my sorrows.”

  “What are these sorrows now?”

  He tried to keep it light. “Well, the main one was that you weren’t there for my talk.”

  Her face lit up and she reached into her big handbag. “But I was. Look what Constanza did for me. I’ve heard the whole thing. It was wonderful, Aidan, and they clapped so much at the end and they loved it. It was so clear, I could see it all. In fact, when we have a little free time I’m going back there and I’ll play the tape just for myself. It will be as if I got a special tour all for myself.”

  “I’d give you a repeat, you know that.” His eyes were full of warmth, he was reaching out for her hand, but she pulled away.

  “No, Aidan don’t, please don’t it’s not fair. To make me think things I shouldn’t think, like that you…that you care about me and my future.”

  “But God, Nora, you know I do.”

  “Yes, but we’ve been fond of each other in this way for over a year and it’s impossible. You live with your wife and family.”

  “Not for much longer,” he said.

  “Ah well, Grania’s getting married but nothing else has changed.”

  “Yes it has. A lot has changed.”

  “I can’t listen to you, Aidan. I have to make up my mind about something huge.”

  “They want you to go back to Sicily, don’t they?” he said, his heart heavy and his face rigid.

  “Yes they do.”

  “I never asked you why you left.”

  “No.”

  “Nor why you stayed so long there either.”

  “So doesn’t that show something?”

  “I don’t ask about you either. I don’t ask questions I might like to know the answers to.”

  “I’d answer them, I promise you, and I’d hold nothing back.”

  “Let’s wait. It’s too hothouse to ask each other questions and answer them here in Rome.”

  “But if we don’t, then you may go away and live in Sicily, and then…”

  “And then what?” Her voice was gentle.

  “And then the whole point of my life will have gone away,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears.

  THE FORTY-TWO GUESTS arrived at the Garaldi residence at five o’clock on Thursday. They had dresse
d in their best finery, and they all carried cameras. Word had got around that this was the kind of house that you might see in Hello! magazine. They wanted it recorded.

  “Will we be able to take photos, do you think, Lorenzo?” Kathy Clarke asked.

  Laddy was the authority on all aspects of the visit. He thought about it for a while. “There should be an official group photograph certainly, to record the occasion, and as many shots of the outside as we like. But I somehow feel that we shouldn’t take pictures of their possessions you know, in case they were to be seen and stolen later.”

  They nodded their agreement. Laddy had certainly worked it all out. When they saw the building they all stopped, amazed. Even Connie Kane, who was used to visiting splendid places, was knocked backward.

  “We can’t be allowed in here,” Lou whispered to Suzi, loosening his tie, which had begun to choke him.

  “Shut up, Lou, how are we going to go up in the world if you panic in front of a bit of money and class,” Suzi hissed back at him.

  “This is the kind of life I was born to,” Lizzie Duffy said, bowing graciously at the staff who conducted them in, and up the steps.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Lizzie.” Bill Burke was anxious. He hadn’t learned any really good phrases about international banking that would advance his career. He knew she would be disappointed in him.

  THE GARALDI FAMILY were there, and they had invited a photographer of their own. Would anyone mind if they took pictures? Then these could be developed and given to the guests as they departed. Mind? They were thrilled. First there was Lorenzo with Signor Garaldi. Then one of Lorenzo and the whole Garaldi family. Then that group plus Signora and Aidan, and after that, everyone ranked on the stairs. This was a house that had seen the need for group photography before.

  The two sullen sons of the family, whom Laddy had entertained in the snooker halls of Dublin, had cheered up mightily, and they bore him away to show him their own games room. There were trays of wine and soft drinks. There was beer in tall, elegant glasses, plates of crostini and little cakes and tartlets.