Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

In he came, young, handsome, younger looking than Fran although he had been a year older.

'Hallo,' he said, with a big smile from ear to ear.

'Hallo,' she said. There was a silence.

At that moment Penny arrived with the coffee. 'Shall I leave it?' she asked, dying to stay.

'Thanks, Pen,' he said.

'Do you know who I am?' she asked when Penny had left.

'Yes,' he said.

'Were you expecting me?'

'Not for about two or three more years to be honest.' His grin was attractive.

'And what would you have done then?'

'What I'll do now - listen.'

It was a clever thing to say, he was leaving it all to her.

'Well, I just wanted to come and see you,' she said a little uncertainly.

'Absolutely,' he said.

'To know what you looked like.'

'And now you do.' He was warm as he said it, he was warm and welcoming. 'What do you think?' he asked.

'You look fine,' she said reluctantly.

'And so do you, very fine,' he said.

'I only just found out, you see,' she explained.

'I see.'

'So, that's why I had to come and talk to you.'

'Sure, sure.' He had poured them coffee and left her to add milk and sugar if she wished.

'You see, until this week I honestly thought I was Mam and Dad's daughter. It's been a bit of a shock.'

'Fran didn't tell you that she was your mother?'

'No, she didn't.'

'Well, when you were younger I can understand, but when you were older, surely…?'

'No, she thought I sort of understood, but I didn't. I thought she was just a marvellous elder sister. I wasn't too bright, you see.'

'You look fine and bright to me.' He seemed genuinely to admire her.

'I'm not, as it happens. I'm a hard worker and I'll get there in the end, but I don't have quick leaps of understanding, not like my friend Harriet. I'm a bit of a plodder.'

'So am I, as it happens. You take after your father then.'

It was such an extraordinary moment there in this office. He was admitting he was her father. She felt almost light-headed. But she had no idea where to go now. He had taken away all her arguments. She thought he would have blustered, and denied things and excused himself. But he had done nothing like this.

'You wouldn't have got a job like this if you were just a plodder.'

'My wife is very wealthy, I am a charming plodder, I don't upset people. In a way that's why I am here.'

'But you got to be an accountant all by yourself before you met her, didn't you?'

'Yes, I got to be an accountant, not here exactly. And I hope you'll meet my wife one day, Katherine. You'll like her, she's a very, very nice woman.'

'It's Kathy, and I couldn't like her. I am sure she is very nice, but she wouldn't want to meet me.'

'Yes, if I tell her I would like it. We do things to please each other, I would meet someone to please her.'

'But she doesn't know I exist.'

'Yes, she does. I told her, a long time ago. I didn't know your name but I told her that I had a daughter, a daughter I didn't see, but would probably meet when she was grown up.'

'You didn't know my name?'

'No. When all the business happened Fran said she would just tell me if it was a girl or a boy, that was all.'

'That was the deal?' Kathy said.

'You put it very well. That was the deal.'

'She's very kind about you, she thinks you were great in all this.'

'And what message does she send me?' He was very relaxed, gentle, not watchful or anything.

'She has no idea I'm here.'

'Where does she think you are?'

'At school up in Mountainview.'

'Mountainview? Is that where you are?'

- 'There isn't much money out of four thousand pounds sixteen years ago to send me to a posh place,' Kathy said with spirit.

'So you know about the deal?'

'I heard it all at the same time, in one night. I realised she was not my sister and that you had sold me.'

'Is that how she put it?'

'No. It's how it is, she puts it differently,'

'I'm very sorry. It must have been a bad, bleak kind of thing to hear.'

Kathy looked at him. That's exactly what it had been. Bleak. She had thought about the unfairness of the deal. Her mother was poor, and could be paid off. Her father was the son of privileged people and didn't have to pay for his fun. It had made her think the system was always loaded against people like her, and always would be. Odd that he understood exactly the feeling.

'Yes, it was. It is.'

'Well, tell me what you want from me. Tell me and we can talk about it.'

She had been going to demand everything under the sun for Fran and for herself. She had been going to make him realise that it was too late in the twentieth century for the rich to get away with everything. But somehow it wasn't easy to say all this to the man who sat easily and warmly giving every impression of being pleased to see her rather than horrified.

'I'm not sure yet what I want. It's all a bit soon.'

'I know. You haven't had time to work out how you feel yet.' He didn't look relieved or off the hook, he sounded sympathetic.

'It's still hard for me to take in, you see.'

'And for me, meeting you too. That's hard to take in.' He was putting himself in the same boat.

'Aren't you annoyed I came?'

'No, you couldn't be more wrong. I'm delighted you came to see me. I'm only sorry that life was hard up to now and then it got worse with this shock. That's what I feel.'

She felt a lump in her throat. He couldn't have been more different than she had thought. Was it possible that this man was her father? That if things had been different he and Fran would have been married and she would be their eldest girl?

He took out a business card and wrote a number on it. 'This is my direct line. Ring this and you won't have to go through the whole system,' he said. It seemed almost too slick, as if he were arranging not to have explanations. Avoiding the people at work knowing about his nasty little secret.

'Aren't you afraid I might ring you at home?' she asked, sorry to break the mood of his niceness but determined that she would not allow herself to be conned by him.

He still had his pen in his hand. 'I was about to write down my home number as well. You can call me any time.'

'And what about your wife?'

'Marianne will be happy to speak to you too, of course. I shall tell her tonight that you came to see me.'

'You're very cool, aren't you?' Kathy said with a mixture of admiration and resentment.

'I'm calm, I suppose, on the exterior, but inside I'm very excited. Who wouldn't be? To meet a handsome grown-up daughter for the first time and to realise that it was because of me you came into the world.'

'And do you ever think of my mother?'

'I thought of her for a while, as we all think of our first love, and more than that because of what happened and because you had been born. But then since it wasn't going to happen, I went on and thought of other things and other people.'

It was the truth, Kathy couldn't deny that.

'What will I call you?' she asked suddenly.

'You call Fran, Fran, can't you call me Paul?'

'I'll come and see you again, Paul,' she said, standing up to leave.

'Any time you want me I'll be here, Kathy,' said her father.

They put out a hand each but when they touched he drew her to him and hugged her. Tt will be different from now on, Kathy,' he said, 'Different and better.'

As she went back to school in the bus Kathy scraped off her lipstick and eyeshadow. She rolled up Harriet's mother's jacket in to the canvas bag and went along to rejoin the classes.

'Well?' hissed Harriet.

'Nothing.'

'What do you mean nothing?'

'Nothing happened.'

'You mean you took all that gear and went to his office and he didn't touch you?'