Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'Where are they staying - your friends?'

'I don't know, that's the whole bloody problem, we said we'd see how it went at the opening and maybe if Harry was there we might all go to Harry's. He lives in a big barn, we once stayed there before. Or if all else failed Chester would know some marvellous little B & Bs for half nothing.'

'And will Chester have called the Guards, do you think?'

'Why on earth should he have done that?'

'To see what had happened to you.'

'The Guards?'

'

'Well, if he was expecting you and you had disappeared.'

'He'll think I just drifted off with someone at the exhibition. He might even think I hadn't bothered to come up at all. That's what's so bloody maddening about it all.'

Bill let out a sigh of relief. Lizzie's mother was a floater and a drifter. There would not be a full-scale alert looking for her. No Garda cars would cruise by, eyes out for a blonde in a caftan. Lizzie would not spend the rest of the night in a cell in a Garda station.

'Will we let her in, do you think?' He managed to make it appear that they were together in this.

'Will she go on with all that stuff about never talking and never relating and running away?'

'No, I'll see to it that she doesn't, believe me.'

'Very well. But don't expect me to be all sunshine and light after this trick she's pulled.'

'No, you have every right to be upset.' He moved past her to the door. And there was Lizzie cowering outside in the dark corridor. 'Ah, Lizzie,' Bill said in the voice you would use if you found an unexpected but delightful guest on your doorstep. 'Come in, won't you. And perhaps you could make us all a cup of tea.'

Lizzie scuttled by him into the kitchen, avoiding the eye of her mother.

'Wait until your father hears about this carry-on,' her mother said.

'Mrs. Duffy, do you take your tea with milk and sugar?' Bill interrupted.

'Neither, thank you.'

'Just black for Mrs. Duffy,' Bill called as if he were giving a command to the staff. He moved around the tiny flat tidying things up, straightening the counterpane on the bed, picking up objects from the floor, as if establishing normality in a place which had temporarily abandoned it. Soon they were sitting, an unlikely threesome, drinking mugs of tea.

'I bought a tin of shortbread,' Lizzie said proudly, taking out a tartan-patterned box.

'They cost a fortune,' Bill said aghast.

'I wanted to have something for my mother's visit.'

'I never said I was coming to visit, that was all your idea. Some idea it was, too.'

'Still, they're in a tin,' Bill said. 'They could last for a long time.'

'Are you soft in the head?' Lizzie's mother suddenly asked Bill.

'I don't think so. Why do you ask?'

'Talking about biscuits at a time like this. I thought you were meant to be the one in charge.'

'Well, isn't it better than screaming and talking about needing and relating and all the things you said you didn't want talked about?' Bill was stung with the unfairness of it.

'No it's not, it's insane if you ask me. You're just as mad as she is. I've got myself into a lunatic asylum.'

Her eyes darted to the door, and he saw her grip bag beside it. Would she make a run for it? Would that perhaps be for the best? Or had they gone so far into this that they had better see it through to the end. Let Lizzie tell her mother what was wrong, let her mother accept or deny all this. His father had always said that they should wait and see. It seemed a poor philosophy to Bill. What were you waiting for? What would you see? But his father seemed pleased with the end product, so perhaps it had its merits.

Lizzie munched the biscuit. 'These are beautiful,' she said. 'Full of butter, you can tell.' She was so endearing, like a small child. Could her mother not see that in her too?

Bill looked from one to the other. He hoped he wasn't imagining that the mother's face seemed to be softening a little.

'It's quite hard, Lizzie, in ways, a woman alone,' she began.

'But you didn't have to be alone, Mummy, you could have had us all with you, Daddy and me and John and Kate.'

'I couldn't live in a house like that, trapped all day waiting for a man to come home with the wages. And then your father often didn't come home with the wages, he went to the betting shop with them. Like he does still over in Galway.'

'You didn't have to go.'

'I had to go because otherwise I would have killed somebody, him, you, myself. Sometimes it's safer to go and get a bit of air to breathe.'

'When did you go?' Bill asked conversationally, as if he were enquiring about the times of trains.

'Don't you know, don't you know every detail of the wicked witch who ran away abandoning everyone?'

'No I don't, actually. I didn't even know you had ever gone until this moment. I thought you and Mr. Duffy had separated amicably and that all your children had scattered. It seemed very grown up and what families should do.'

'What do you mean, what families should do?' Lizzie's mother looked at him suspiciously.

'Well, you see, I live at home with my mother and father and I have a handicapped sister, and honestly I can't ever see any way of not being there, or nearby anyway, so I thought what Lizzie's family had was very free… and I kind of envied it.' He was so transparently honest. Nobody could put on an act like that.

'You could just get up and go,' Lizzie's mother suggested.

'I suppose so, but I wouldn't feel easy about it.'

'You've only one life.' They were both ignoring Lizzie now.

'Yes, that's it. I suppose, if we had more than one then I wouldn't feel so guilty.'

Lizzie tried to get back into the conversation. 'You never write, you never stay in touch.'

'What's there to write about , Lizzie? You don't know my friends. I don't know yours, I don't know John's or Kate's. I still love you and want the best for you even though we don't see each other all the time.' She stopped, almost surprised at herself that she had said this much.

Lizzie was not convinced. 'You couldn't love us otherwise you'd come to see us. You wouldn't laugh at me and this place I live in, and laugh at the idea of staying with me, not if you loved us.'

'I think what Mrs. Duffy means…' Bill began.

'Oh, for Jesus' sake call me Bernie.' Bill was so taken aback he forgot his sentence. 'Go on, you were saying what I meant was… What do I mean?'

'I think you mean that Lizzie is very important to you, but you have sort of drifted away a bit, what with West Cork being so far from here… and that last night was a bad time to stay because your friend Chester was having an art exhibition, and you wanted to be there in time to give him moral support. Was it something like that?' He looked from one to the other with his round face creased in anxiety. Please may she have meant something like this, and not have meant that she was going for the Guards or that she was never going to see Lizzie as long as she lived.

'It was a bit like that,' Bernie agreed. 'But only a bit.'

Still, it was something, Bill thought to himself. 'And what Lizzie meant when she threw away the key was that she was afraid life was passing too quickly and she wanted a chance to get to know you and talk properly, make up for all the lost time, wasn't that it?'

'That was it,' Lizzie nodded vigorously.

'But God almighty, whatever your name is…'

'Bill,' he said helpfully.

'Yes, well, Bill, it's not the act of a sane person to lure me here and lock me in.'

'I didn't lure you here, I borrowed the money from Bill to get a taxi for you. I invited you here, I bought shortbread and bacon and chicken livers and sherry. I made my bed for you to sleep in. I wanted you to stay. That wasn't all that much, was it?'