Evening Class (38 page)

There was the big, decent Lorenzo with hands the size of shovels playing the part of a guest in a restaurant, with Connie as the waitress.

Una tavola vicina alia finestra
, Lorenzo would say, and Connie would move a cardboard box to where there was a drawing of a window and seat him there, waiting while Lorenzo thought up dishes he would like to order. Lorenzo learned all kinds of new dishes, like eels, goose liver and sea urchins. Signora would remonstrate and tell him to learn only the list she had provided.

‘You don’t understand, Signora, these people I’ll be meeting in Italy, they’ll be classy eaters, they wouldn’t be your pizza merchants.’

Then there was the terrifying Luigi with the dark scowl and particular way of murdering the Italian language. He was someone she would never have met in the ordinary run of things, yet sometimes he was her partner, like the time they were playing doctors and nurses with pretend stethoscopes, telling each other to breathe deeply.
Respiri profondamente per favore, Signora
Luigi would shout, listening to one end of a rubber hose.
Non mi sento bene
, Connie would reply.

And gradually they were all getting less self-conscious and more united in this far-fetched dream of a holiday in Italy next summer. Connie, who could have paid for everyone in the class to take a scheduled flight, joined in the discussions of sponsorship and cost-cutting and putting down early deposits for a group charter. If they got the trip together she would certainly go.

Connie noticed that the school was improving week by week. It was getting a definite face-lift, a new coat of paint, trees planted, the school yard smartened up. The broken bicycle sheds were replaced.

‘You’re doing a real make-over here,’ she said approvingly to the shaggy, attractive looking Principal Mr O’Brien, who came in from time to time to give his general praise to the Italian class.

‘Uphill work, Mrs Kane, if you could put a word in for us to those financiers you and your husband meet we’d be grateful.’ He knew who she was all right, there was no calling her Constanza like all the others. But he was pleasantly incurious about what she was doing there.

‘They are people without hearts, Mr O’Brien. They don’t understand about schools being a country’s future.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he sighed. ‘Don’t I spend half my life in bloody banks and filling in forms. I’ve forgotten how to teach.’

‘And do you have a wife and family, Mr O’Brien?’ Connie didn’t know why she had asked him such a personal question. It was out of character for her to be intrusive. In the hotel business she had learned the wisdom of listening rather than enquiring.

‘No, I don’t as it happens,’ he said.

‘Better I suppose, if you’re kind of wedded to a school. I think a lot of people should never marry. My own husband is a case in point,’ she said.

He raised an eyebrow. Connie realised she had gone too far for pleasant casual conversation. ‘Sorry,’ she laughed. ‘I’m not doing the lonely wife bit, I was just stating a fact.’

‘I would love to be married, that’s a fact too,’ he said. It was polite of him to exchange a confidence. One had been given, it was courtesy to return one. ‘Problem was, I never met anyone that I wanted to marry until I was too old.’

‘You’re not too old now, surely?’

‘I am, because it’s the wrong person, like she’s a child. She’s Mr Dunne’s child actually,’ he said, nodding his head back at the school where Aidan Dunne and Signora were saying goodnight to the members of the class.

‘And does she love you?’

‘I hope so, I think so, but I’m wrong for her, far too old. I’m
so
wrong for her. And there are other problems.’

‘What does Mr Dunne think?’

‘He doesn’t know, Mrs Kane.’

She let out a deep breath. ‘I see what you mean about there being problems,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you to try and sort them out.’

He grinned at her, grateful that she asked no more. ‘Your husband is a madman to be married to his business,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Mr O’Brien.’ She got into her car and drove home. Since joining this class she was learning the most extraordinary things about people.

That amazing girl with the curls, Elizabetta, had told her that Guglielmo was going to manage a bank in Italy next year when he had a command of the language; the glowering Luigi had asked her would an ordinary person know if someone was wearing a ring worth twelve grand. Aidan Dunne had asked her did she know where you could buy brightly coloured second-hand carpets. Bartolomeo wanted to know if she had ever come across people who committed suicide and did they always try it again. It was just for a friend, he had said several times. Caterina, who was either the sister or the daughter of Francesca, impossible to know, had said that she had lunch in Quentin’s one day and the artichokes were terrific. Lorenzo kept telling her that the family he was going to stay with in Italy were so rich that he hoped he wouldn’t disgrace himself. And now Mr O’Brien said that he was having an affair with Mr Dunne’s daughter.

A couple of months back she had known none of these people or their lives.

When it rained she would give people a lift home, but she didn’t do it regularly in case she became an unofficial taxi service. But she had a soft spot for Lorenzo, who had to take two buses to get back to his nephew’s hotel. This was where he lived and worked as an odd job man and night porter. Everyone else went home to bed or television or to the pub or a cafe after class. But Lorenzo went back to work. He had said that the lift had made all the difference in the world, so Connie made sure she drove him.

His real name was Laddy, she learned. But they all called each other their Italian names, it made it easier in class. Laddy had been invited by some Italians to come and visit them in Rome. He was a big, simple, cheerful man of around sixty who found nothing odd about being driven back to his hotel porter’s job by a woman in a top-of-the-range car.

Sometimes he talked of his nephew Gus, his sister’s boy, a lad who had worked every hour God sent, and now there was every possibility he would lose his hotel.

There had been a scare a while back, an insurance and investment company that had failed. But at the last moment hadn’t it all come right and they were all to get their money after all. Lorenzo’s sister was in the Hospice at the time, and it nearly broke her heart. But God had been good, she lived long enough to know that her only son Gus would not be bankrupt. She died happy after that. Connie bit her lip as the story was being told. These were the people that Harry would have walked out on.

So what was the new problem, she wondered? Well, it was all part of the old problem. The company that had been in trouble and that had honoured its debts in the end had made them all re-invest, a very large sum. It was as if to thank the company for having stood by them when it hadn’t needed to. Lorenzo’s understanding of it was vague, but his concern was enormous. Gus was at the end of his tether, he had been down every avenue. The hotel needed improvement, the Health Authorities had said that it could well be a fire hazard, there were no resources left. Everything that he could have called on was gone in this new investment, and there was no way he could cash it in. Apparently there was some law in the Bahamas that you needed an unholy amount of advance notice before you could get at it.

Connie pulled the car into the side of the road when she heard this.

‘Could you tell me about it again, please, Lorenzo.’ Her face was white.

‘I’m no financial expert myself, Constanza.’

‘Can I talk to your nephew? Please.’

‘He mightn’t like my telling his business…’ Lorenzo was almost sorry he had confided in this kind woman.

‘Please, Lorenzo.’

During the conversation with the worried Gus Connie had to ask for a brandy. The story was so squalid, so shabby. For the last five years since their investment had been saved Gus, and presumably many, many others like him, had been persuaded to invest in two entirely separate companies based in Freeport and Nassau.

With tears in her eyes Connie read that the directors were Harold Kane and Siobhan Casey. Gus and Lorenzo looked at her uncomprehending. First she took out her chequebook and wrote Gus a very substantial cheque, then she gave them the address of builders and decorators who were good friends of hers and would do an expert job. She wrote the name of an electrical firm as well, but suggested that they should not use her name in this context.

‘But why are you doing all this, Constanza?’ Gus was totally bewildered.

Connie pointed at the names on the stationery. ‘That man is my husband, that woman is his mistress. I have turned a blind eye to their affair for years. I don’t
care
that he sleeps with her, but by God I do care that he has used my money to defraud decent people.’ She knew she must look mad and wild eyed to them.

Gus spoke gently. ‘I can’t take this money, Mrs Kane, I can’t. It’s far too much.’

‘See you Tuesday, Lorenzo,’ she said, and she was gone.

So many Thursday nights when she had let herself into the house she had hoped he would be at home and he so rarely was. Tonight was no exception. It was late, but she telephoned her father’s old friend the barrister T. P. Murphy. Then the solicitor. She fixed a meeting for the following morning. There were no apologies or recriminations. It was eleven o’clock at night when they had finished talking to her.

‘What will you do now?’ she asked the solicitor.

‘Phone Harcourt Square,’ he said succinctly. That was where the Garda Fraud Investigation Unit was based.

He had not come home that night. She had not slept. She realised that it had been a ridiculous house to have kept for so long. The children all lived in their own apartments. Pale-faced, she drove herself into the city and parked her car. Taking a deep breath she walked up the steps of her husband’s office to a meeting that would end his life as he knew it.

They had told her that there would be a lot of publicity, most of it unfavourable, the mud would stick to her too. They suggested she find somewhere else to stay. Years ago she had bought a small apartment in case her mother had ever wanted to come and live in Dublin. It was on the ground floor and near the sea. It would be ideal. She could move her things in there in a matter of hours.

‘Hours is what it will be,’ they told her.

She saw him on his own at her request.

He sat in his office watching as files and software were taken away. ‘All I wanted was to be somebody,’ he said.

‘You told me that before.’

‘Well, I’m telling you again. Just because you say something twice doesn’t mean it’s not true.’

‘You were somebody, you were always somebody. That’s not what you wanted, you wanted to have everything.’

‘You didn’t have to do it, you know, you were all right.’

‘I was always all right,’ she said.

‘No, you weren’t, you were a tense frigid jealous bitch and still are.’

‘I was never jealous of what Siobhan Casey could give you, never,’ she spoke simply.

‘So why did you do it?’

‘Because it wasn’t fair. You had your warning, you were rescued, wasn’t that enough?’

‘You know nothing of men. Nothing.’ He almost spat the words. ‘Not only do you not know how to please them, you actually think that a man could be a real man and accept your money and pats on the head.’

‘It would be a help if you were strong for the children’s sake,’ she said.

‘Get out of here, Connie.’

‘They loved you all through the last time, they really did. They have lives of their own but you are their father. You didn’t care much about your father, but most people do.’

‘You really hate me, don’t you, you’ll rejoice that I’m in gaol.’

‘No, and you probably won’t serve much time, if any. You’ll get away with things, you always do.’ She left the office.

She saw Siobhan Casey’s name on a brass plate on her door. Inside that office files and software were also being removed. Siobhan apparently had no family or friends to give her support. She was sitting with bankers, inspectors in the Fraud Squad and lawyers.

Connie’s steps never faltered as she walked out the door and pressed the remote switch that opened her car. Then she got in and drove to her new apartment on the sea.

LADDY

When Signora was choosing Italian names for people she tried to make sure that they had the same initial rather than being too purist about the translation. There was a woman there called Gertie. Strictly speaking that should have been Margaret, then Margaretta. But Gertie would never have recognised her own name in that form so she was called Gloria. In fact, she decided that she liked the name Gloria so much that she might keep it ever after.

The big man with the eager face said he was called Laddy. Signora paused. No future in trying to work out the origins. Give him something that he might like to roll around. ‘Lorenzo,’ she cried.

Laddy liked it. ‘Is that what all the people called Laddy in Italy call themselves?’ he asked.

‘That’s it, Lorenzo,’ Signora rolled out the name again for him.

‘Lorenzo, would you credit it?’ Laddy was delighted with the name. He said it over and over. ‘
Mi chiamo Lorenzo’
.

When Laddy was christened in the 1930s the name they gave him at the font was John Matthew Joseph Byrne, but he was never called anything except Laddy. The only boy after five girls, his arrival meant that the small farm would be safe. There would be a man to run it.

But things don’t always turn out the way people think.

Laddy was coming home from school, the mile and a half through puddles and under dripping trees, when he saw his sisters coming out to meet him and he knew that something terrible had happened. He thought first that something had happened to Tripper, the collie dog he loved so much. Maybe it had hurt its paw or been bitten by a rat.

He tried to run past them, the crying girls, but they held him back and told him that Mam and Dad had gone to heaven, and that from now on they would look after him.

‘They can’t have both gone at the same time.’