Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

He tried to remember what he had to eat at the Sullivans' house. 'Chicken,' he said. 'She just loves a bit of chicken.' Even his mother could hardly destroy a chicken.

'They liked you,' he said to her afterwards, putting on exactly the same note of surprise as she had.

'That's good.' She pretended indifference but he knew she was pleased.

'You're the first, you see,' he explained.

'Oh, yeah?'

'No, I mean the first I brought home.'

She patted him on the hand. He had been very, very lucky to have met a girl like Suzi Sullivan.

At the beginning of September he met Robin by accident. But of course it wasn't by accident. Robin was parked near his parents' shop and just got out of the car.

'A half pint to end the day?' Robin said, jerking his head towards the nearby pub.

'Great,' Lou said with fake enthusiasm. He sometimes feared Robin could read minds, he hoped he couldn't see the insincerity in Lou's tone.

'How are things?'

'Great, I've got a smashing girl.'

'So I see, she's a real looker, isn't she?'

'Absolutely. We're quite serious about it all.'

Robin punched him on the arm. It was meant to be a punch of solidarity but somehow it hurt. Lou managed not to rub where it felt bruised. 'So you'll be needing a deposit on a house soon?' Robin asked casually.

'We're not in any hurry with that, she's got a grand bedsit.'

'But eventually , of course?' Robin wasn't taking any argument.

'Oh yes, way down the line.' There was a silence. Did Robin know that Lou was trying to get off the hook?

Robin spoke. 'Lou, you know I always said I liked you.'

'Yes, and I always liked you too. It was mutual. And is mutual,' Lou added hastily

'Considering how we met, as it were.'

'You know the way it is, you forget how you met people.'

'Good, good.' Robin nodded. 'What I'm looking for, Lou, is a place.'

'A place. To live in?'

'No, no. I've got a place to live in, a place that our friends the Guards turn over with great regularity. They sort of regard it as part of their weekly routine, go in and search my place.'

'It's harassment.'

'I know it is, they know it is. They never find anything, so they know well it's harassment.'

'So if they don't find anything…?' Lou had no idea where all this was going.

'It means that things have to be somewhere else and that's getting increasingly difficult,' Robin said. In the past Lou had always waited. Robin would say what he wanted in time. 'The kind of place I want is somewhere that there's a lot of activity two or three times a week, a place where people wouldn't be noticed going in and out.'

'Like the warehouse where I work?' Lou asked nervously.

'No, there's proper security there.'

'What would this place have to have, in terms of facilities?'

'Not very much space at all, like enough for… Imagine five or six cases of wine - packages about that size, in all.'

'That shouldn't be hard, Robin.'

'I'm watched like a hawk. I'm spending weeks going round talking to everyone I know that they don't have a file on, just to confuse them. But there's something coming in soon, and I really do need a place.'

Lou looked anxiously out the door of the pub in the direction of his parents' shop.

'I don't think it would be possible in my Ma and Da's place.'

'No, no that's not what I want at all, it's a place with bustle, doors in and out, lots of people moving through.'

'I'll think,' Lou said.

'Good, Lou. Think this week will you, and then I'll give you the instructions. It's very easy, no driving cars or anything.'

'Well actually, Robin, this is something I meant to bring up, but I'm thinking of… um… well not being involved any more.'

Robin's frown was terrible to see. 'Once you're involved you're always involved,' he said. Lou said nothing. 'That's the way it is,' Robin added.

'I see,' said Lou, and he frowned hard in response to show how seriously took it.

That night Suzi said she wasn't free, she had promised to help the mad old Italian woman who lived as a lodger in their house to do up an annexe up in Mountainview school for some evening class. ' Why do you have to do that?' Lou grumbled. He had wanted to go to the pictures and then for some chips and then back to bed with Suzi in her little bedsitter. He did not want to be on his own thinking about the fact that once you were involved you could never get uninvolved again.

'Come with me,' Suzi suggested,'that'll make it quicker.' Lou said he would, and they went to this annexe attached to the school but slightly separate from it. It had an entrance hall, a big classroom, two lavatories and a small kitchen space. In the hall there was a store room with a few boxes in it. Empty boxes.

'What are all these?' he asked.

'We're trying to tidy up the place so it looks more festive and not so much like a rubbish dump for when the classes start,' said the deranged woman they called Signora. Harmless but very odd, and some most peculiar coloured hair, like a piebald mare.

'Should we throw out the boxes?' Suzi suggested.

Slowly Lou spoke. 'Why don't I just tidy them up and leave them in a neat stack in there? You'd never know when you might need a few boxes.'

'For Italian classes?' Suzi said in disbelief.

But at this moment Signora interrupted. 'No, he's right. We could use them to be tables when we are learning the section on what to order in an Italian restaurant, they could be counters in the shops, or a car at the garage.' Her face seemed radiant at all the uses there would be for boxes.

Lou looked at her with amazement. She was obviously missing her marbles but at this moment he loved her. 'Good woman, Signora,' he said, and tidied the boxes into neat piles.

He couldn't contact Robin but he wasn't surprised to get a phone call at work.

'Don't want to come and see you, the toy soldiers are going mad with excitement these days. I can't move without five of them padding after me.'

'I found somewhere,' said Lou.

'I knew you would, Lou.'

Lou told him where it was, and about the activity every Tuesday and Thursday, thirty people.

'Fantastic,' Robin said. 'Have you enrolled?'

'For what?'

'For the class, of course.'

'Oh Jesus, Robin, I scarcely speak English, what would I be doing learning Italian?'

'I'm relying on you,' said Robin, and hung up.

There was an envelope waiting for him at home that night. It contained five hundred pounds and a note. 'Incidental expenses for language learning.' He had been serious.

'You're going to do what' ?'

'Well you're the one who said I should better myself, Suzi. Why not?'

'When I said better yourself, I meant smarten yourself up, get a better paid job. I didn't mean go mad and learn a foreign language.' Suzi was astounded. 'Lou, you have to be off your head. It costs a fair amount. Poor Signora is afraid that it will be too dear for people and suddenly out of the blue, you decide to take it up. I can't take it in.'

Lou frowned a mighty frown. 'Life would be very dull if we all understood everyone,' he said.

And Suzi said that it would be a lot easier to get on with.

Lou went to the first Italian lesson as a condemned man walks to Death Row. His years in the classroom had not been glorious. Now he would face further humiliation. But it had been surprisingly enjoyable. First the mad Signora asked them all their names and gave them ridiculous pieces of coloured cardboard to write them on, but they had to write Italianised versions.

Lou became Luigi. In a way he liked it. It was important.

' Mi chiamo Luigi ,' he would say, and frown at people, and they seemed impressed.

They were an odd bunch, a woman dripping in jewellery that no one in their sane senses would have worn to Mountainview school, and driving a BMW. Lou hoped that Robin's friends wouldn't steal the BMW. The woman who drove it was nice as it happened, and she had sad eyes.