Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'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 -1 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.

Signora called at the houses that Suzi had suggested. Dublin men and women told her that their houses were full and they needed all the space they had.

'Can you suggest anyone?' she asked.

'Try the Sullivans,' someone suggested.

Now she had her reason. She knocked on the door. Would this be her new home? Was this the roof she would lie under and hope to ease the pain of losing her life in Annunziata? Not only the man she loved but her whole life, her future, her burial with the bells ringing for her. Everything. She must not try to like it in case they said no.

Jerry opened the door, his mouth full. He had red hair and freckles and he had a sandwich in his hand.

'Yeah?' he said.

'Could I speak to your mother or your father please?'

'What about?' Jerry asked.

This was a household where he had obviously welcomed in people who should not have been welcomed in the past.

'I was wondering if I could rent a room?' Signora began. She knew that inside they had turned down the television to hear was happening on the doorstep.

'A room here ? Jerry was so utterly disbelieving that Signora thought maybe he was right, it did seem a foolish notion. But then her life had been based on a series of foolish notions. Why stop now?

'So perhaps I could talk to them?'

The boy's father came to the door. A big man with tufts of hair on each side of his head, looking like handles that he could be lifted by. He was about Signora's age, she supposed, but red-faced and looked as if the years had taken their toll. He was wiping his hands down the sides of his trousers, as if about to shake hands.

'Can I help you?' he said suspiciously.

Signora explained that she had been looking for a place in the area, and that the Quinns in number 22 had sent her over here in case they might have a spare room. She sort of implied that she had known the Quinns; it gave her an introduction.

'Peggy, will you come out here?' he called. And a woman with tired, dark shadows under her eyes and straight hair pushed behind her ears came out smoking and coughing at the same time.

'What is it?' she asked unwelcomingly.

It was not very promising, but Signora told her tale again.

'And what has you looking for a room up in this area?'

'I have been away from Ireland for a long time, I don't know many places now but I do need somewhere to live. I had no idea that things had become so expensive and… well… I came out this way because you can see the mountains from here,' she said.

For some reason this seemed to please them. Maybe it was because it was so without guile.

'We never had boarders,' the woman said.

'I would be no trouble, I would sit in my room.'

'You wouldn't want to eat with us?' The man indicated a table with a plate of very thick unappetising sandwiches, butter still in its foil paper and the milk still in the bottle.

'No, no thank you so much. Suppose I were to buy an electric kettle, I eat mainly salads, and I suppose I could have an electric ring thing. You know, to heat up soups?'

'You haven't even seen the room,' the woman said.

'Can you show it to me?' Her voice was gentle but authoritative.

Together they all walked up the stairs, watched by Jerry from below.

It was a small room with a wash handbasin. An empty wardrobe and an empty book case, no pictures on the walls. Not much memory of the years that the beautiful vibrant Suzi with her long dark red hair and her flashing eyes had spent in this room.

Outside the window it was getting dark. The room was on the back of the house. It looked out over wasteland which would soon be more houses, but at the moment there was nothing between her and the mountain.

'It's good to have a beautiful view like this,' Signora said. 'I have been living in Italy, they would call this Vista del Monte, mountain view.'

'That's the name of the school the young lad goes to, Mountain-view,' said the big man.

Signora smiled at him. 'If you'll have me, Mrs. Sullivan, Mr. Sullivan… I think I've come to a lovely place,' she said.

She saw them exchange glances, wondering was she cracked in the head, were they wise to let her into the house.

They showed her the bathroom. They would tidy it up a bit, they said, and give her a rack for her towel.

They sat downstairs and talked, and it was as if her very gentleness seemed to impose more manners on them. The man cleared the food away from the table, the woman put out her cigarette, and turned off the television. The boy sat in the far corner watching with interest.

They explained that there was a couple across the road who made a living out of informing the tax offices on other people's business, so if she did come she would have to be a relation, so that the busybodies couldn't report there was a paying guest contributing to the household expenses.

'A cousin maybe.' Signora seemed excited at the thought of the subterfuge.

She told them she had lived long years in Italy, and having seen several pictures of the Pope and the Sacred Heart on the walls she added that her Italian husband had died there recently and she had come home to Ireland to make her life here.