Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'Fine, take care.' His voice was flat.

'Are you all right, Aidan?'

'Would it matter all that much if I were or I weren't?'

'What kind of an answer is that? There's very little point in asking you a civil question if this is all the response I get.'

'I mean it. Does it matter?'

'Not if you're going to put on this self-pitying thing. We're all tired, Aidan, life's hard for everyone. Why do you think you're the only one with problems?'

'What problems do you have? You never tell me.'

'And as sure as hell I'm not going to tell you now with three minutes before the bus.'

She was gone.

He made a cup of instant coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Brigid came in. She was dark-haired, freckled like he was but fortunately less square. Her elder sister had Nell's blonde good looks.

'Daddy, it's not fair, she's been in the bathroom for nearly an hour. She was home at five thirty and she went in at six and now it's nearly seven. Daddy, tell her to get out and let me in.'

'No,' he said quietly.

'What do you mean, no?' Brigid was startled.

What would he usually have said? Something bland, trying to keep the peace, reminding her there was a shower in the downstairs cloakroom. But tonight he hadn't the energy to placate them. Let them fight, he would make no effort to stop them.

'You're grown up women, sort out the bathroom between you,' he said, and walked out with his coffee into the dining room, closing the door behind him.

He sat still for a while and looked around him. It seemed to signify all that was wrong with the life they lived. There were no happy family meals around this big bleak table. Friends and extended family never drew up those dark chairs to talk animatedly.

When Grania and Brigid brought friends home they took them up to their bedrooms or giggled with Nell in the kitchen. Aidan was left in the sitting room looking at television programmes that he didn't want to see. Wouldn't it be better if he had his own little place, somewhere he could feel at peace?

He had seen a desk that he would love in a second-hand shop, one of those marvellous desks with a flap that came down and you sat and wrote on it like people were meant to do. And he would fresh flowers in the room because he liked their beauty and he didn't mind changing the water every day which Nell said was a bore.

And there was a nice light that came in the window here during the daytime, a soft light which they never saw. Maybe he could get a windowseat or sofa and put it there, and get big drapey curtains. And he could sit and read, and invite friends in, well, whoever there was, because he knew now there would be no life for him from the family any more. He would have to realise this and stop hoping that things would change.

He could have a wall with books on it, and maybe tapes until he got a CD player. Or maybe he would never get a CD player, he didn't have to try to compete with Tony O'Brien any more. He could put up pictures on the wall, frescoes from Florence, or those heads, those graceful necks and heads of Leonardo da Vinci. And he could play arias to himself, and read articles in magazines about the great operas. Mr. Walsh thought he had a life. It was time for him to get this life. His other life was over. He would not be married to Mountainview from now on. He sat warming his hands on the coffee cup. This room would need more heating, but that could be seen to. And it would need some lamps, the harsh centre light gave it no shadows, no mystery.

There was a knock on the door. His blonde daughter Grania stood there, dressed for her date. 'Are you all right, Daddy?' she asked. 'Brigid said you were a bit odd, I was wondering if you were sick.'

'No, I'm fine,' he said. But his voice seemed to come from far away. If it seemed far to him it must be very far to Grania; he forced a smile. 'Are you going somewhere nice?' he asked.

She was relieved to see him more himself. 'I don't know, I met a gorgeous fellow, but listen, I'll tell you about it sometime.' Her face was soft, kinder than it had been for a long while.

'Tell me now,' he said.

She shuffled. 'No, I can't yet, I have to see how we get on. If there's anything to tell, you'll be the first to know.'

He felt unbearably sad. This girl whose hand he had held for so long, who used to laugh at his jokes and think he knew everything, and she could hardly wait to get away. 'That's fine,' he said.

'Don't sit in here, Daddy. It's cold and lonely.'

He wanted to say it was cold and lonely everywhere, but he didn't. 'Enjoy your night,' he said.

He came back and sat by the television.

'What are you watching tonight?' he asked Brigid.

'What would you like, Daddy?' she countered.

He must have taken this blow much worse than he believed, his naked disappointment and sense of injustice had to be showing in his face if both his daughters…

He looked at his younger child, her freckled face and big brown eyes so dear and loved and familiar since she was a baby in the pram. Normally so impatient with him, tonight she looked at him as if he were someone on a stretcher in a hospital corridor, with that wave of sympathy that washes over you for a complete stranger going through a very bad time.

They sat beside each other until 11.30 pm, looking at television programmes that neither of them liked, but both with an air of pleasure that they were pleasing the other.

Aidan was in bed when Nell came home at one o'clock. The light was out but he was not asleep. He heard the taxi pulling up outside the door; they paid for a cab home when she was on the late shift.

She came into the room quietly. He could smell toothpaste and talcum powder, so she had washed in the bathroom rather than disturb him by using the hand basin in their bedroom. She had a bedside light which pointed downwards at whatever book she was reading and didn't shine in his eyes, so often he had lain there listening as she turned the pages. No words between them would ever be as interesting as the paperbacks she and her friends and sisters read, so nowadays he didn't offer them.

Even tonight when his heart was like lead and he wanted to hold her in his arms and cry into her soft clean skin and tell her about Tony O'Brien who should not be allowed do dinner duty but who was going to get the headship because he was more upfront, whatever that might mean. He would have liked to tell her that he was sorry that she had to go in and sit in a cash desk watching rich people eat and get drunk and pay their bills because it was better than anything else a Monday night might offer a married couple with two grown daughters. But he lay there and heard the faraway town hall clock strike the hours.

At two o'clock Nell put down her book with a little sigh and went to sleep, as far from him on her side of the bed as if she were sleeping in the next room. When the town hall said it was four o'clock Aidan realised that Crania would only have three hours' sleep before she went to work.

But there was nothing he could do or say. It was clearly understood that the girls lived their own lives without interrogation. He had not liked to think about it but had accepted that they had been to the Family Planning Association. They came home at the times that suited them and if they did not come home then they called at eight o'clock during breakfast to say they were all right, that they had stayed over with a girl friend. This was the polite fiction that covered the Lord knew what. But as Nell said, it was often the actual truth, and she much preferred Grania and Brigid staying in some other girl's flat rather than risking being driven home by a drunk, or not getting a taxi in the small hours of the morning.

Still, Aidan was relieved when he heard the hall door click and the light footsteps running up the stairs. At her age she could survive on three hours' sleep. And it would be three hours more than he would have.