Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'I'm very grateful to you all here.' Fran sounded as if she meant it. 'You really do give your time, and care about the children. Years ago when I was at school it wasn't like that, or maybe I'm only making excuses.' She was serious and pale-faced. Young Kathy Clarke was lucky to have such a concerned sister.

Fran went to the bus stop hands in pockets and head down. She had to pass an annexe on the way out and saw a notice up advertising Italian lessons next September. A course to introduce you to the colours and paintings and music and language of Italy. It promised to be fun as well as educational. Fran wondered whether something like that might be a good idea. But it was too dear. She had so many outgoings. It would be very hard to pay a whole term in advance. And suppose Kathy decided to take the whole thing too seriously like she had taken everything else. Then it might be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. No, she would have to think of something else. Fran sighed and walked to the bus stop.

There she met Peggy Sullivan, one of the women who worked at the checkout. 'They'd put years on you, these meetings, wouldn't they?' said Mrs. Sullivan.

'There's a lot of hanging about certainly, but it's better than when we were young and no one knew where we were half the time. How's your own little fellow getting on?' As manageress Fran had made it her business to know personally as many of the staff as possible. She knew that Peggy had two children, both of them severe trials. A grown-up daughter who didn't get on with the father and a youngster who wouldn't open a book.

'Well, Jerry's not going to believe this but apparently he's much improved. They all said it. He's started to join the human race again, as one of them put it.'

'That's a bit of good news.'

'Well it's all down to this cracked one we have living with us. Not a word to anyone, Miss Clarke, but we have a lodger, half Italian half Irish. Says she was married to an Italian and he died but that's not true at all. I think she's a nun in disguise. But anyway, didn't she take an interest in Jerry and she has him a changed man, it would appear.' Peggy Sullivan explained that Jerry hadn't understood that poetry was meant to mean something until Signora came to the house, and this had made all the difference. His English teacher was delighted with him. And he hadn't understood that History really happened and now he did, and that had made all the difference.

Fran thought sadly that her own sister on whom she had lavished such attention had not realised that Latin was a language people spoke. Perhaps this Signora might open doors for her, too. 'What does she do for a living, your lodger?' she asked.

'Oh, you'd need a fleet of detectives to find out. A bit of sewing here and a bit of work up in a hospital I believe, but she's going to be teaching an Italian class here in the school next term and she's high as a kite over it. You'd think it was the World Cup she'd won all by herself, singing little Italian songs. She's spending the whole summer getting ready for it. Nicest woman that ever wore shoe leather, but off the wall I tell you, off the wall.'

Fran decided there and then. She would sign up for the course. She and Kathy would go there every Tuesday and Thursday, they'd bloody learn Italian that's what they'd do, and they'd enjoy doing it, with this madwoman who was singing songs and getting ready for it so excitedly. It might make the poor, nervous, tense Kathy relax a bit, and it might help Fran to forget Ken who had gone to America without her.

'They said Kathy was a great girl,' Fran said proudly at the kitchen table.

Her mother, despondent over some heavy losses at the machines, tried to show enthusiasm. 'Well, why wouldn't they? She is a great girl.'

'They didn't say anything bad about me?' Kathy asked.

'No, they didn't. They said you were great at your homework and that it was a pleasure to teach you. So now!'

'I'd like to have been there, child, it's just that I didn't think I'd get off in time.' Kathy and Fran forgave their Dad. It didn't matter now.

'I have a great treat for you, Kathy, we're going to learn Italian. Yourself and myself.'

If she had suggested they fly to the moon nothing could have surprised the Clarke family more.

Kathy flushed with pleasure. 'The two of us?'

'Why not? I always fancied going to Italy, and wouldn't my chances of picking up an Italian fellow be much better if I could speak the language!'

'Would I be able for it?'

'Of course you would, it's for eejits like myself who haven't learned anything, you'd probably be top of the class, but it's meant to be fun. There's this woman and she's going to play us operas and show us pictures and give us Italian food. It'll be terrific.'

'It's not very dear, is it, Fran?'

'No, it's not, and look at the value we'll get from it,' said Fran, who was already wondering was she verging on madness to have made such an announcement.

During the summer Ken settled himself in the small town in New York State. He wrote again to Fran. 'I love you, I will always love you. I do understand about Kathy but couldn't you come out here? We could have her out for holidays, you could teach her then. Please say yes before I get a little service flat for myself. Say yes and we'll get a little house. She's sixteen, Fran, I can't wait another four years for you.'

She wept over the letter but she couldn't leave Kathy now. This had been her dream, to see one of the Clarkes get to University. True, Ken had said wait until their children were born then they could plan it from the word go, to give them all the chances in the world, but Ken didn't understand. She had invested too much in Kathy. The girl was not an intellectual, but she was not stupid. If she had been born to wealthy parents she would have had all the advantages that would cushion her. She would get her place in University merely because there would be enough time, there would be books in the house, people would have expectations. Fran had raised Kathy's hopes. She couldn't go now, and leave her to her mother who would look up vaguely from the gambling machines and her father who would mean well but see no further than the next cash-in-hand job for the few simple comforts he wanted from life.

Kathy would drown without her.

It was a warm summer, visitors came to Ireland in greater numbers than before. The supermarket arranged special picnic lunches that people could take out to the park. It had been Fran's idea, and it was a great success.

Mr. Burke at the bacon counter had been doubtful. 'I don't want to go on about being in this business man and boy, Miss Clarke, but really I can't think it's a good idea to slice bacon and fry it and serve it cold in a sandwich. Why wouldn't they make do with nice lean ham like they always did?'

'There's a taste now, Mr. Burke, that people like their bacon crispy and you see if we keep the pieces nice and warm and fill the sandwiches as they come in, I can tell you they'll want more and more.'

'But suppose I cut it and it's fried and nobody buys it, what then, Miss Clarke?' He was such a nice man, anxious and very willing to please but fearful of change.

'Let's give it a three-week trial, Mr. Burke, and see,' she said.

She had been totally correct. People flocked for the great sandwiches. They lost money on them, of course, but that didn't matter; once you got people into the supermarket they bought other things on the way to the checkout.

She took Kathy to the Museum of Modern Art and on her day off they went on a three-hour bus tour of Dublin. Just so that we know about where we live, Fran had said. They loved it, the two Protestant cathedrals that they had never been inside, and they drove around the Phoenix Park and they looked on proudly as the Georgian doors and fanlight windows were pointed out.