Evening Class (9 page)

‘You could pick up a life again in Ireland. Your friends there, your family, would be happy to see you return.’

‘Do you want me to go away from here, Signora Gabriella?’ The question was very straight. She just wanted to know.

‘He always said you would go if he were to die. He said you would go back to your people and leave me here with my people to mourn my husband.’

Signora looked at her in amazement. Mario had made this promise on her behalf, without any guarantee. ‘Did he say that I had agreed to do this?’

‘He said it was what would happen. And that if I, Gabriella, were to die, he told me that he would not marry you, because it would cause a scandal, and my name would be lessened. They would think that always he had wanted to marry you.’

‘And did this please you?’

‘No, these things didn’t please me, Signora. I didn’t want to think of Mario dead, or of my being dead. But I suppose it gave me the dignity that I need. I didn’t need to fear you. You would not stay on here against the tradition of the place and share in the mourning for the man who was gone.’

The sounds of the square went on outside, meat deliveries to the hotel, a van of clay supplies being carried into the pottery shop, children coming home from school laughing and calling to each other. Dogs barking, and somewhere birds singing too. Mario had told her about dignity and tradition and how important they were to him and his family.

It was as if he were speaking to her now from the grave. He was sending her a message, asking her to go home.

She spoke very slowly. ‘I think at the end of the month, Signora Gabriella. That is when I will go back to Ireland.’

The other woman’s eyes were full with gratitude and relief. She reached out both her hands and took Signora’s. ‘I am sure you will be much happier, much more at peace,’ she said.

‘Yes, yes,’ Signora said slowly, letting the words hang there in the warm afternoon air.

‘Si si… veramente.’

She only barely had the money for the fare. Somehow her friends knew this.

Signora Leone came and pressed the bundles of lire into her hand. ‘Please, Signora. Please. It’s thanks to you I have such a good living, please take it.’

It was the same with Paolo and Gianna. Their pottery business would not have got started if it had not been for Signora. ‘Regard it as a tiny commission.’

And the old couple who owned the room where she had lived most of her adult life. They said she had improved the property so well she deserved some compensation.

On the day that the bus came to take her with her belongings to the town with the airport, Gabriella came out on her steps. She didn’t speak and nor did Signora, but they bowed to each other. Their faces were grave and respectful. Some of those who watched the little scene knew what was being said. They knew that one woman was thanking the other with all her heart in a way that could never be put into words, and wishing her good fortune in whatever lay ahead.

It was loud and crowded in the city, and the airport was full of noise and bustle, not the happy, easy bustle of Annunziata but people rushing without meeting each other’s gaze. It would be like this in Dublin too, when she got back there, but Signora decided not to think about it.

She had made no plans, she would just do what seemed the right thing to do when she got there. No point in wasting her journey planning what could not be planned. She had told no one that she was coming. Not her family, not even Brenda. She would find a room and look after herself as she had always done, and then she would work out what to do next.

On the plane she began talking to a boy. He was about ten, the age of Mario and Gabriella’s youngest son, Enrico. Automatically she spoke to him in Italian, but he looked away confused.

Signora looked out the window. She would never know what would happen to Enrico, or his brother in New York, or his sister married to the kitchen help and up in Vista del Monte. She would not know who came to live in her room. And whoever it was would never know of her long years there, and why she had spent them.

It was like swimming out to sea and not knowing what would happen where you had left and what was going to happen where you would arrive.

She changed planes in London. She had no wish to spend any time there. Not to visit the old haunts where she had lived with Mario in a different life. Not to look up people long forgotten, and places only barely remembered. No, she would go on to Dublin. To whatever lay ahead.

It had all changed so much. The place was much, much bigger than she remembered. There were flights arriving from all over the world. When she had left, most of the big international flights had gone in and out of Shannon Airport. She hadn’t known that things would be so different. Like the road in from the airport. When she had left the bus had wound its way out through housing estates; now it came in on a motorway with flowers planted on each side. Heavens, how Ireland was keeping up with the times!

An American woman on the bus asked her where she was staying.

‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ Signora explained. ‘I’ll find somewhere.’

‘Are you a native or a visitor?’

‘I came from here a long time ago,’ Signora said.

‘Same as me… looking for ancestors.’ The American woman was pleased. She was giving a week to finding her roots, she thought that should be long enough.

‘Oh definitely,’ Signora said, realising how hard it was to find instantly the right response in English. She had been about to say
certo
. How affected it would sound breaking into Italian, they would think she was showing off. She must watch for it.

Signora got out of her bus and walked up the quays beside the Liffey to O’Connell Bridge. All around her there were young people, tall, confident, laughing, in groups. She remembered reading somewhere about this youthful population, half the country under the age of twenty-four was it?

She hadn’t expected to see such proof of it. And they were dressed brightly too. Before she had gone to England to work, Dublin had been a grey and drab place. A lot of the buildings had been cleaned, there were smart cars, expensive cars in the busy traffic lanes. She remembered more bicycles and second-hand cars. The shops were bright and opened up. Her eye caught the magazines, girls with big bosoms, surely these had been banned when she was last here or was she living in some kind of cloud cuckoo land?

For some reason she kept walking down the Liffey after O’Connell Bridge. It was almost as if she were following the crowd, and there she found Temple Bar. It was like the Left Bank in Paris when once she had gone there so many years ago with Mario for a long weekend. Cobbled streets, outdoor cafes, each place full of young people calling to each other and waving at those they knew.

Nobody had told her Dublin was like this. But then would Brenda, married to Pillow Case and working in a much more settled kind of place, have even visited these streets?

Her sisters and their hard-up husbands, her two brothers and their inert wives… they were not people who’d have discovered Temple Bar. If they knew of it, then it would be surely only to shake their heads.

Signora thought it was wonderful. It was a whole new world, she couldn’t get enough of it. Eventually she sat down to have a coffee.

A girl of about eighteen with long red hair, like her own many years ago, served her coffee. She thought Signora was a foreigner.

‘What country are you from?’ she asked in slow English, mouthing the words.

‘Sicilia, in Italia,’ Signora said.

‘Beautiful country, but I tell you I’m not going there until I can speak the language though.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Well, I’d want to know what the fellows are saying, I mean you wouldn’t know what you were letting yourself in for if you didn’t know what they were saying.’

‘I didn’t speak any Italian when I went there, and I sure didn’t know what I was letting myself in for,’ Signora said. ‘But you know it worked out all right… no, more than all right. It was wonderful.’

‘How long did you stay for?’

‘A long time. Twenty-six years.’ Her voice sounded wondering.

The girl who wasn’t born when she had set out on this adventure looked at her in amazement. ‘You stayed all that time, you must have loved it.’

‘Oh I did, I did.’

‘And when did you come back?’

‘Today,’ Signora said.

She sighed heavily and wondered had she imagined that the girl looked at her slightly differently, as if she had somehow revealed herself to be a little strange. Signora knew she must watch that she didn’t let people think that. No letting Italian phrases fall, no sighing, no saying strange, disconnected things.

The girl was about to move away.

‘Excuse me, this seems a very nice part of Dublin. Is this the kind of place I could rent a room, do you think?’ Now the girl knew she was odd. Perhaps people didn’t call them rooms any more. Should she have said apartment? Flat? Place to stay? ‘Just somewhere simple,’ Signora said.

She listened glumly as she learned that this was one of the most fashionable parts of town; everyone wanted to live here. There were penthouse apartments, pop stars had bought hotels, business people had invested in townhouses. The place was coming down with restaurants. It was the last word now.

‘I see.’ Signora did see something, she saw she had a lot to learn about the city she had returned to. ‘And please could you tell me where
would
be a place that would be good value to stay, somewhere that hasn’t become the last word?’

The girl shook her head of long, dark red hair. It was hard to know. She seemed to be trying to work out whether Signora had any money at all, whether she would have to work for her keep, how long she would perch in wherever she landed.

Signora decided to help her. ‘I have enough money for bed and breakfast for a week, but then I’ll have to find a cheap place and maybe somewhere I could do some jobs… maybe mind children.’

The girl was doubtful. ‘They usually want young ones to mind kids,’ she said.

‘Or maybe over a restaurant and work in it?’

‘No, I wouldn’t get your hopes up over that, honestly… we all want those kind of places. They’re very hard to get.’

She was nice, the girl. Her face was pitying of course, but Signora would have to get used to a lot of that in what lay ahead. She decided to be brisk to hide her messiness, anything to make her acceptable and not to appear like a doddery old bag lady.

‘Is that your name there on your apron? Suzi?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid my mother was a Suzi Quatro fan.’ She saw the blank look. ‘The singer, you know? She was big years ago, maybe not in Italy.’

‘I’m sure she was, it’s just that I wasn’t listening then. Now, Suzi, I can’t take up your day with all my problems, but if you could give me just half a minute I’d love you to tell me what area would be a nice cheap one where I should start looking.’

Suzi listed off the names of places that used to be small areas, suburbs if not exactly villages, well outside the city when Signora was young, but now apparently they were big sprawling working-class estates. Half the people there would take someone in to rent a room if their kids had left home maybe. As long as it was cash. It wouldn’t be wise to mention that she herself was badly off. Be fairly secretive about things, they liked that.

‘You’re very good to me, Suzi. How do you know all about things like this at your age?’

‘Well, that’s where I grew up, I know the scene.’

Signora knew she must not tire the patience of this nice child. She reached for her purse to get out the money for the coffee.

‘Thank you very much for your help —I do appreciate it. And if I do get settled I’ll come in and give you a little gift.’

She saw Suzi pause and bite her lip as if to decide something.

‘What’s your name?’ Suzi asked.

‘Now I know this sounds funny, but my name is Signora. It’s not that I’m trying to be formal, but that’s what they called me and what I like to be called.’

‘Are you serious about not minding what kind of a place it is?’

‘Absolutely serious.’ Her face was honest. It was quite clear that Signora couldn’t understand people who cared about their surroundings.

‘Listen. I don’t get on with my family myself, so I don’t live at home any more. And only a couple of weeks ago they were talking about trying to get someone to take my room. It’s empty, and they could well do with a few pounds a week—it would have to be cash, you know, and you’d have to say you were a friend in case anyone asked… because of income tax.’

‘Do you think I could?’ Signora’s eyes were shining.

‘Listen, now.’ Suzi was anxious there should be no misunderstandings. ‘We’re talking about a very ordinary house in an estate of houses that look the same, some a bit better, some a bit worse… it wouldn’t be gracious or anything. They have the telly on all the time, they shout to each other over it and of course my brother’s there, Jerry. He’s fourteen and awful.’

‘I just need a place to stay. I’m sure it would be lovely.’

Suzi wrote down the address and told her which bus to take. ‘Why don’t you go down their road and ask a few people who I know definitely won’t be able to have you and then go by chance as it were to my house and ask. Mention the money first and say it won’t be for long. They’ll like you because you’re a bit older like, respectable is what they’ll say. They’ll take you, but don’t say you came from me.’

Signora gave her a long look. ‘Did they not like your boyfriend?’

‘Boyfriends.’ Suzi corrected her. ‘My father says I’m a slut, but please don’t try to deny it when he tells you because it will show you’ve met me.’ Suzi’s face looked hard.

Signora wondered had her own face been hard like that when she set out for Sicily all those years ago.

She took the bus and wondered at how the city she had once lived in had grown and spread so wide. In the evening light children played in the streets amongst the traffic, and then they went further afield, in where there were small gardens and children cycled round in circles leaning on gates and running in and out of each other’s gardens.