Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

Her eyes were bright, she looked a younger woman than the tall person with anxious eyes who had stood at the door. Aidan heard the swelling sounds of children's voices in the corridor. It meant that the lunch hour was nearly over. The other teachers would be in soon, the magic would end.

She seemed to understand this without his saying it. 'I'm staying too long, you have work to do. But do you think we might talk of it again?'

'We get out at four o'clock. Now I sound like the children,' Aidan said.

She smiled at him. 'That's what must be wonderful about working in a school, you are always young and think like the children.'

'I wish it were always like that,' Aidan said.

'When I taught English in Annunziata I used to look at their faces and I might think, they don't know something but when I have finished they will know it. It was a good feeling.'

He was admiring her openly now, this man struggling into his jacket to go back to the classroom. It had been a long time since Signora had felt herself admired. In Annunziata they respected her in some strange way. And of course Mario had loved her, there was no question of that. He had loved her with all his heart. But he had never admired her. He had come to her in the dark. He had held her body to him and he had told her his worries but there had never been a look of admiration in his eyes.

Signora liked it, as she liked this good man struggling to share his own love of another land with the people hereabouts. His fear was that they didn't have enough money for leisure time education themselves to make such a study worthwhile.

'Will I wait outside the school for you?' she asked. 'We could talk more then after four o'clock.'

'I wouldn't want to keep you,' he began.

'I have nothing else to do.' She had no disguises.

'Would you care to sit in our library?' he asked.

'Very much.'

He walked her along the corridor as crowds of children shoved past them. There were always strangers in a big school like this, a new face wasn't interesting enough to make them look twice. Except of course for young Jerry Sullivan, who did a double take.

'Jesus, Signora…' he said in amazement.

'Hallo, Jerry,' she said pleasantly, as if she were here in this school the whole time.

She sat in the library reading through what they had in their Italian section, mainly second-hand books obviously bought with his own money by Aidan Dunne. He was such a kind man, an enthusiast, perhaps he could help her. And she could help him. For the first time since she had come back to Ireland Signora felt relaxed, not just holding on by her fingernails. She stretched and yawned in the summer sunshine.

Even though she was going to teach Italian, she felt sure of it, she didn't think of Italy. She thought of Dublin, she wondered where they would find the people to attend the class. She and Mr. Dunne. She and Aidan. She pulled herself together a little. She must not be fanciful. That had been her undoing, people said. She was full of mad notions and didn't see reality.

Two hours had passed and Aidan Dunne stood at the door of the big room. He was smiling all over his face. 'I don't have a car,' he said. 'I don't suppose you do?'

'I've barely my bus fare,' Signora said.

Life would have been much easier, Bill Burke thought, if only he could have been in love with Grania Dunne. She was about twenty-three, his own age. She came from a normal kind of home, her father was a teacher up in Mountainview school, her mother worked in the cash desk of Quentin's restaurant. She was good looking and easy to talk to.

They used to grumble together about the bank sometimes, and wonder how it was that greedy selfish people always got on well. Grania used to ask about his sister, and give him books for her. And perhaps Grania might have loved him too if things had only been different.

It was easy to talk about love to a good friend who understood. Bill understood when Grania told him about this very old man she just couldn't get out of her mind even though she had tried and tried. He was as old as her own father, and smoked and wheezed and would probably be dead in a couple of years the way he went on, but she had never met anyone who attracted her so much.

She couldn't possibly get together with him because he had lied to her and not told her that he was going to be Principal of the school when he knew all along. And Crania's father would have a stroke and drop dead if he knew that she had been seeing this Tony O'Brien and even slept with him. Once.

She had tried going out with other people but it just hadn't worked. She kept thinking about him and the way the lines came out from the side of his eyes when he smiled. It was so unfair. What part of the human mind or body was so inefficient that it could make you think you loved someone so wildly unsuitable?

Bill agreed in the most heartfelt way possible. He too was a victim of this unsuitable streak. He loved Lizzie Duffy, the most improbable person in the world. Lizzie was a beautiful, troublesome bad debt, who had broken every rule and was still somehow allowed more credit than any customer in this or any branch.

Lizzie loved Bill too. Or said she did, or thought she did. She said she had never met anyone so serious and owlish and honourable and silly in her whole life. And indeed, compared to Lizzie's other friends, he was all of these things. Most of them just laughed at nothing, and had very little interest in getting or keeping jobs but huge interest in travel and having fun. It was idiotic loving Lizzie .

But Bill and Grania told each other seriously over coffee that if life was all about loving suitable people then it would be both very easy and very dull.

Lizzie never asked about Bill's big sister, Olive. She had met her of course, once when she came to visit. Olive was slow, that was all, just slow. She didn't have any disease or illness that had a name. She was twenty-five and she behaved as if she were eight. A very nice eager eight.

Once you knew this there was no problem with Olive. She would tell you stories from books like any eight-year-old, she would be enthusiastic about things she had seen on television. Sometimes she was loud and awkward, and because Olive was big she knocked things over. But there were never any scenes or moods with Olive, she was interested in everything and everyone and thought that there was nobody on earth like her family. 'My mother makes the best cakes in the world,' she would tell people and Bill's mother who had never done more than decorate a bought sponge cake would smile proudly. 'My father runs the big supermarket,' Olive said, and her father who worked at the bacon counter there smiled indulgently.

'My brother Bill's a bank manager,' was the one that got a wry smile from Bill, and indeed Grania, when he told her. 'That'll be the day,' he said.

'You don't want it, it will only show you've given in, compromised,' Grania said encouragingly.

Lizzie shared Olive's view. 'You must rise high in banking,' she said to Bill often. 'I can only marry a successful man, and when we are twenty-five and get married you'll have to be well on your way to the top.'

Even though it was said with Lizzie's wonderful sparkling laugh showing all her tiny white teeth, and a toss of the legendary blonde curls, Bill knew that Lizzie meant it. She said she could never marry a failure; it would be so cruel, because she would just drag them both down. But she would seriously consider marrying Bill in two years' time when they were both a quarter of a century old, because she would be getting past her sell-by date then and it would be time to settle down.

Lizzie had been refused a loan because she had not repaid the first one, her Visa card had been withdrawn and Bill had seen letters go out to her saying: 'Unless you lodge by five o'clock tomorrow the bank will have no option…' But somehow the bank always found an option. Lizzie would arrive tearful on some occasions, brimming with confidence and a new job on others. She never went under. And always she was entirely unrepentant.