Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

She had good reason to be grateful to this strange visitor, nun or not a nun. She had been a great influence on their lives. Suzi got on great with her and came home much more regularly, Jerry regarded her as his own private tutor. She had made net curtains for them and matching cushion covers. She had painted the dresser in the kitchen and planted window boxes. Her room was immaculate and neat as a new pin. Sometimes Peggy Sullivan had gone in to investigate. As one would. But Signora seemed to have acquired no more possessions than those she had when she arrived. She was an extraordinary person. It was good that they all liked her in the class.

Kathy Clarke was the youngest of her students by far. The girl was eager to learn and asked about the grammar which the others didn't know or didn't bother about. She was attractive, too, in that blue-eyed, dark-haired way that she had never seen in Italy. There the dark beauties all had huge brown eyes.

She wondered what Kathy would do when she left school. Sometimes she saw the girl studying in the library. She must have hopes of getting a third-level education.

'What does your mother think you might do when you leave school?' she asked Kathy one evening when they were all tidying up the chairs after the lesson. People stayed and chatted, no one was anxious to run away, which was good. She knew for a fact that some of them went for a drink in a pub up the hill and others for coffee. It was all as she had hoped.

'My mother?' Kathy seemed surprised.

'Yes, she seems so eager and enthusiastic about everything,' Signora said.

'No, she doesn't really know much about the school or what I'm doing. She doesn't go out much, she'd have no idea what there was to do or study or anything.'

'But she comes here to the class with you, doesn't she, and she goes out to work in the supermarket? Mrs. Sullivan where I stay says she's the boss.'

'Oh, that's Fran. That's my sister ,' Kathy said. 'Don't let her hear you said that, she'd go mad.'

Signora looked puzzled. 'I'm so sorry, I get everything wrong.'

'No, it's an easy mistake.' Kathy was anxious for the older woman not to be embarrassed. 'Fran's the oldest of the family, I'm the youngest. Of course you thought that.'

She didn't say anything to Fran about it. No point in making Fran go to the mirror to look for lines. Poor Signora was a bit absent-minded, and she did get a lot of things wrong. But she was so marvellous as a teacher. Everyone in the class including Bartolomeo, the one of the motorbike, loved her.

Kathy liked Bartolomeo, he had a lovely smile and he told her all about football. He asked where she went dancing and when she told him about the disco in the summer he said it was a date when it came to half term and they could go out dancing again, he'd tell her a good place.

She reported this to Harriet. 'I knew you joined that class just for sex,' Harriet said. And they laughed and laughed over it long after anyone else would have thought it remotely funny.

There was a bad rainstorm in October, and a leak came in the roof of the annexe where the evening class was held. With huge solidarity they all managed to cope with it by getting newspapers, and moving tables out of the way and finding a bucket in one of the cloakrooms. All the time they shouted Che tempaccio at each other and Che brutto tempo . Barry said he would wait outside in his rain gear at the bus stop and flash his lights when the bus arrived so that everyone would not get soaked to the skin.

Connie, the woman with the jewellery that Luigi said would buy a block of flats, said she could give four people a lift. They scrambled into her beautiful BMW - Guglielmo, the nice young man from the bank, his dizzy girlfriend Elizabetta, Francesca and young Caterina. They went first to Elizabetta's flat and there was a lot of chorusing of ciao and arrivederci as the two young lovers scampered up the steps in the rain.

And then it was on to the Clarkes' house. Fran in front gave directions. This was not the kind of territory that would be familiar to Connie. When they got there Fran saw her mother putting out the dustbin, a cigarette still in her mouth despite the rain that would fall on it and make it soggy, the same scuffed slippers and sloppy housecoat that she wore all the time. She then felt ashamed of herself for feeling ashamed of her mother. Just because she was getting a lift in a smart car didn't mean that she should change all her values. Her mother had had a hard life and had been generous and understanding when it was needed.

'There's Mam getting drenched. Wouldn't the bins have done in the morning?' Fran said.

' Che tempaccio, che tempaccio ,' Kathy said dramatically.

'Go on, Caterina. Your Granny's holding the door open for you,' Connie said.

'That's my mother,' Kathy said.

There was so much rain, so much confusion of banging doors and clattering dustbins nobody seemed to take much notice.

Inside the house Mrs. Clarke was looking with surprise and i

disgust at her wet cigarette. 'I got drowned waiting for you to come in from that limousine.'

'God, let's have a cup of tea,' said Fran, running to the kettle.

Kathy sat down suddenly at the kitchen table.

' Due tazze di te ,' Fran said in her best Italian. 'Come on, Kathy. Con latte? Con zuccheroY

'You know I don't take milk and sugar.' Kathy's voice was remote. She looked very pale. Mrs. Clarke said there was no point in a person staying up if this is all you were to hear, she was going off to her bed and to tell that husband of hers when and if he ever came in from the pub not to be leaving any frying pan to clean up in the morning.

She was gone, complaining, coughing and creaking up the stairs.

'What is it, Kathy?'

Kathy looked at her. 'Are you my mother, Fran?' she asked.

There was a silence in the kitchen. They could hear the flushing of the lavatory upstairs and the rain falling on the concrete outside.

'Why do you ask this now?'

'I want to know. Are you or aren't you?'

'You know I am, Kathy.' A long silence.

'No, I didn't know. Not until now.' Fran came towards her, reaching out. 'No, go away from me. I don't want you to touch me.'

'Kathy you knew, you felt it, it didn't need to be said, I thought you knew.'

'Does everyone else know?'

'What do you mean everyone else? The people who need to, know. You know how much I love you, how I'd do everything on earth for you and get you the best that I could get.'

'Except a father and a home and a name.'

'You have a name, you have a home, you have another father and mother in Mam and Dad.'

'No I haven't. I'm a bastard that you had and never told me about.'

'There's no such word as bastard, as you well know. There's no such thing any more as an illegitimate child. And you were legally part of this household since the day you were born. This is your home.'

'How could you…' Kathy began.

'Kathy, what are you saying - that I should have given you away to strangers for adoption, that I should have waited until you were eighteen before I got to know you and only then if you sought me out?'

'And all of these years letting me think that Mam was my mother. I can't believe it.' Kathy shook her head as if to clear it, to take this new and frightening idea out of her mind.

'Mam was a mother to you and to me. She welcomed you from the day she knew about you. She said won't it be grand to have another baby round here. That's what she said and it was. And, Kathy, I thought you knew.'

'How would I have known? We both called Mam and Dad Mam and Dad. People said you were my sister and that Matt and Joe and Sean were my brothers. How was I to know?'

'Well, it wasn't a big thing. We were all together in the house, you were only seven years younger than Joe, it was the natural way to do things.'