Evening Class (29 page)

Suzi waved her hand backwards and forwards, it caught the light and it flashed. She laughed with pleasure. ‘God, you’d swear it was the real thing,’ she said to George.

Lou went into a corner with George where he paid over £250 in notes and saw that an extra nine and a half thousand pounds had already been paid towards a ring to be bought by a Mr Lou Lynch on that day.

‘I wish you every happiness, sir,’ said George without changing a line of the expression on his face.

What did George know or not know? Was George someone who once got involved and now couldn’t get uninvolved? Had Robin really been in to a respectable place like this and paid all that money in cash? Lou felt faint and dizzy.

Signora admired Suzi’s ring. ‘It’s very, very beautiful’ she said.

‘It’s only glass, Signora, but wouldn’t you think it was an emerald?’

Signora, who had always loved jewellery but never owned any, knew it was an emerald. In a very good setting. She began to worry about Luigi.

Suzi saw the good looking blonde girl called Grania come in. She wondered how the dinner with the older man had gone. As usual she longed to ask but couldn’t.

‘Table for two?’ she enquired politely.

‘Yes, I’m meeting a friend.’

Suzi was disappointed that it wasn’t the old man. It was a girl, a small girl with enormous glasses. They were obviously old friends.

‘I must explain, Fiona, that nothing is settled, nothing at all. But I might be calling on you in the weeks ahead to say that I am staying with you, if you know what I mean.’

‘I know only too well what you mean. It’s been ages since either of you called on me to be the alibi,’ Fiona said.

‘Well, it’s just that this fellow… well, it’s a very long story. I really do fancy him a lot but there are problems.’

‘Like he’s nearly a hundred, is that it?’ Fiona asked helpfully.

‘Oh, Fiona, if only you knew… that’s the least of the problems. His being nearly a hundred isn’t a problem at all.’

‘You live very mysterious lives, you Dunnes,’ Fiona said in wonder. ‘You’re going out with a pensioner and you don’t notice what age he is. Brigid is obsessed with the size of her thighs which seem perfectly ordinary to me.’

‘It’s all because of that holiday she went on where they had a nudist beach,’ Grania explained. ‘Some eejit said that if you could hold a pencil under your boobs and it didn’t fall down then you were too floppy and you shouldn’t go topless.’

‘And…?’

‘Brigid said that she could hold a telephone directory under hers and it wouldn’t fall.’

They giggled at the thought.

‘Well, if she said it herself,’ said the girl in the enormous spectacles.

‘Yeah, but the awful point was that nobody denied it, and now she’s got a complex the size of a house.’ Suzi tried not to laugh aloud. She offered them more coffee. ‘Hey, that’s a beautiful ring,’ Grania said.

‘I just got engaged.’ Suzi was proud.

They congratulated her and tried it on.

‘Is it a real emerald?’ Fiona asked.

‘Hardly. Poor Lou works as a packer up in the big electrical place. No, but it’s terrific glass, isn’t it?’

‘It’s gorgeous, where did you get it?’

Suzi told her the name of the shop.

When she was out of hearing Grania said in a whisper to Fiona, ‘That’s funny, they only sell precious stones in that shop. I know because they have an account with us. I bet that’s not glass, I bet it’s the real thing.’

It was coming up to the Christmas party in the Italian class. They wouldn’t be seeing each other for two weeks. Signora asked them all to bring something to the last lesson and they would make it into a party. Huge banners with
Buon Natale
hung all over the room, and banners for the New Year too. They had all dressed up. Even Bill, the serious fellow from the bank, Guglielmo as they all called him, had entered into the spirit of it all and had brought paper hats.

Connie, the woman with the car and the jewellery, brought six bottles of Frascati which she said she found in the back of her husband’s car and she felt that he might have been taking them off somewhere for his secretary so they had better be drunk. No one quite knew whether or not to take her seriously and there had been this restriction about drink earlier. But Signora said it had all been cleared with Mr O’Brien the Principal so they needn’t worry about that aspect of things.

Signora didn’t feel it necessary to add that Tony O’Brien had said that since the school seemed to be crawling with hard drugs and kids laying their hands on crack with ease, it seemed fairly minor if some adults had a few glasses of wine as a Christmas treat.

‘What did you do last Christmas?’ Luigi asked Signora, for no reason except that he was sitting near her when all the
salute
and
molto grazie
and
va bene
were going on around them.

‘Last year I went to midnight mass at Christmas and watched my husband Mario and his children from the back of the Church,’ Signora said.

‘And why weren’t you sitting with them?’ he asked.

She smiled at him. ‘It wouldn’t have been proper,’ she said.

‘And then he went and died,’ Lou said. Suzi had filled him in on Signora, a widow, apparently, even though Suzi’s mother thought she was a plain-clothes nun.

‘That’s right, Lou, he went and died,’ she said gently.

‘
Mi spiace
,’ Lou said. ‘
Troppo triste
, Signora.’

‘You’re right, Lou, but then life was never going to be easy for anyone.’

He was about to agree with her when a horrifying thought struck him.

It was a Thursday and there had been no man with an anorak. No van. The school would be locked up for two weeks with all of whatever it was in the store cupboard in the hall. What in the name of God was he to do now?

Signora had brought them the words of Silent Night in Italian and the evening was coming to a close. Lou was frantic. He had no car with him, even if he could get a taxi at this late stage what on earth would he do to explain why he was carrying four heavy boxes from the store cupboard. There was no way that he could come in here again until the first week of January. Robin would kill him.

But then it was Robin’s fault. He had given no contact number, no fall-back position. Something must have happened to whoever was due to pick up. That was where the weak link was. It wasn’t Lou’s fault. No one could blame him. But he was paid, very well paid, to think quickly and stay cool. What would he do?

The clear-up was beginning. Everyone was shouting their goodbyes.

Lou offered to get rid of the rubbish. ‘I can’t have you do all that, Luigi, you’re far too good already,’ said Signora.

Guglielmo and Bartolomeo helped him. In no other place would he have been friendly with two fellows like this, a serious bank clerk and a van driver. Together they carried black sacks of rubbish out into the night and found the big school bins.

‘She’s terribly nice, your one, Signora, isn’t she?’ said Bartolomeo.

‘Lizzie thinks she’s having a thing with Mr Dunne, you know, the man in charge of the whole thing,’ Guglielmo whispered.

‘Get away.’ Lou was amazed. The lads speculated about it.

‘Well, wouldn’t it be great if it were true.’

‘But at their age…’ Guglielmo shook his head.

‘Maybe when we get to their age we’ll think it the most natural thing in the world.’ Lou somehow wanted to stand up for Signora. He didn’t know whether he should deny this ridiculous suggestion or confirm it as the most normal thing in the world.

His heart was still racing about the boxes. He knew he had to do something he hated; he had to deceive this nice kind woman with the amazing hair. ‘How are you getting home, will Mr Dunne be picking you up?’ he asked casually.

‘Yes, he did say he might drop by.’ She looked a little pink and flustered. The wine, the success of the evening, and the directness of his question.

Signora thought that if Luigi, not the brightest of pupils, had seen something in the way she related to Aidan Dunne then it must be very well known in the class. She would hate it to be thought that she was his lady friend. After all, it wasn’t as if words or anything else except companionship had been exchanged between them. But if his wife were to find out, or his two daughters. If they were to be a subject of gossip that Mrs Sullivan would hear about, as she well might considering how her daughter was engaged to Luigi.

Having lived so discreetly for years, Signora was nervous of stepping out of her role. And also, it was so unnecessary. Aidan Dunne didn’t think of her as anything except a good friend. That was all. But it might not look that way to people who were, how would she put it, more basic, people like Luigi.

He was looking at her quizzically. ‘Right, will I lock up for you? You go ahead and I’ll catch you up, we’re all a bit late tonight.’

‘
Grazie, Luigi. Troppo gentile
. But be sure you
do
lock it. You know there’s a watchman comes round an hour after we’ve all gone. Mr O’Brien is a stickler for this. So far we’ve never been caught leaving it unlocked. I don’t want to fall at the last fence.’

So he couldn’t leave it open and come back when he thought up a plan. He
had
to lock the bloody thing. He took the key. It was on a big heavy ring shaped like an owl. It was a silly childish thing but at least it was big, no one would be able to forget it, or think they had it in a handbag if it weren’t there.

Like lightning he put his own key on to the silly owl ring and took off Signora’s. Then he locked the school, ran after her and dropped the key into her handbag. She wouldn’t need it until next term, and even if before, he could always manage to substitute something, get the real key back into her handbag somehow. The main thing was to get her home thinking she had the key.

He did not see Mr Dunne step out of the shadows and take her arm tonight, but wouldn’t it be amazing if it were true. He must tell Suzi. Which reminded him, he had better stay with Suzi tonight. He had just given away his mother and father’s key.

‘I’ll be staying with Fiona tonight,’ Grania said.

Brigid looked up from her plate of tomatoes.

Nell Dunne didn’t look up from the book she was reading. ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

‘So, I’ll see you tomorrow evening then,’ Grania said.

‘Great.’ Her mother still didn’t look up.

‘Great altogether,’ Brigid said sourly.

‘You could go out too if you wanted to, Brigid. You don’t have to sit sighing over tomatoes, there are plenty of places to go and you could stay in Fiona’s too.’

‘Yes, she has a mansion that will fit us all,’ Brigid said.

‘Come on, Brigid, it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. Cheer up.’

‘I can cheer up without getting laid,’ Brigid hissed.

Grania looked across anxiously, but her mother hadn’t registered it. ‘Yes, so can we all,’ Grania said in a low voice. ‘But we don’t go round attacking everyone over the size of our thighs which, it may be said in all cases, are quite normal.’

‘Who mentioned my thighs to you?’ Brigid was suspicious.

‘A crowd of people came by the bank today to protest about them. Oh, Brigid, do shut up, you’re gorgeous, stop all this anorexic business.’

‘Anorexic?’ Brigid gave a snort of laugher. ‘Suddenly you’re all sweetness and light because lover boy has materialised again.’

‘Who is lover boy? Come on, who? You know nothing.’ Grania was furious with her younger sister.

‘I know you’ve been moping and moaning. And you talk of
me
sighing over tomatoes, you sigh like the wind over everyone and you leap ten feet in the air when the phone rings. Whoever it is he’s married. You’re as guilty as hell.’

‘You have been wrong about everything since you were born,’ Grania told her. ‘But you were never more wrong in your life about this. He is not married, and I would lay you a very good bet that he never will be.’

‘That’s the kind of crap people talk when they’re dying for an engagement ring,’ said Brigid, turning the tomatoes over with no enthusiasm.

‘I’m off now,’ Grania said. ‘Tell Dad I’ll not be coming in so that he can lock the door.’

Their father was hardly ever at the kitchen supper any more. He was either away in his room planning colours and pictures for the wall, or up in the school talking about the evening class.

Aidan Dunne had gone to the school in case Signora might be there but the place was all locked up. She never went to the pub on her own. The coffee shop would be too crowded with last-minute shoppers. He had never telephoned her at the Sullivans’ house, he couldn’t start now.

But he really wanted to see her before Christmas to give her a little gift. He had found a locket with a little Leonardo da Vinci face inside. It wasn’t expensive but it seemed entirely suitable. He hoped she would have it for Christmas Day. It was wrapped up with
Buon Natale
printed on the gold paper. It wouldn’t be the same afterwards.

Or perhaps it would, but he felt like talking to her for a while. She had once said to him that at the end of the road where she lived there was a wall where she sat sometimes and looked across at the mountains, and thought how different her life had become, and how
vista del monte
meant the school to her now. Perhaps she might be there tonight.

Aidan Dunne walked up through the busy estate. There were Christmas lights in the windows, cartons of beer being delivered at houses. It must be so different to Signora from last year, when she had spent Christmas with all those Italians in the village in Sicily.

She was sitting there, very still. She didn’t seem a bit surprised. He sat down beside her.

‘I brought your Christmas present,’ he said.

‘And I brought yours,’ she said, holding a big parcel.

‘Will we open them now?’ He was eager.

‘Why not?’

They unwrapped the locket and the big coloured Italian plate with yellow and gold and a dash of purple, perfect for his room. They thanked each other and praised the gifts. They sat like teenagers with nowhere to go.

It got cold and somehow they both stood up at the same time.