Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'You sound fed up, as if I'm only the best of a bad bunch,' Lou said.

'No, that's not true.' She had become even fonder of him since he had taken up Italian. Signora always spoke of how helpful he was at the class. 'He's full of surprises certainly,' Suzi had said. And indeed he was. She used to hear him his Italian homework, tlie parts of the body, the days of the week. He was so earnest about it, he looked like a little boy. A good little boy.

It was just when he was thinking of getting a ring that he heard from Robin.

'Maybe a nice jewel for your red-haired girl friend, Lou,' he said.

'Yes, well, Robin, I was thinking of buying it myself, you know, wanting to take her to the shop so that we could discuss…' Lou didn't know if there were to be further payment for his work up in the school. In one way it was so simple that he didn't really need any more. In another he was doing something so dangerous that he really should be paid very well for it. To make it worth the risk.

'I was going to say that if you went into that big place near Grafton Street and chose her a ring, you'd only have to leave a deposit on it, the rest would be paid.'

'She'd know, Robin. I don't tell her anything.'

Robin smiled at him. 'I know you don't, Lou, and she wouldn't know. There's this guy who'd show you a tray of really good stuff, no prices mentioned, and then she'd always have something really nice on her finger. And paid for absolutely legitimately because the balance would be sorted out.'

'I don't think so, listen, I know how good this is, but I think…'

'Think when you have a couple of kids and things are hard how glad you'll be that you once met a fellow called Robin and got a deposit for a house and your wife is wearing a rock that cost ten big ones on her finger.'

Did Robin really mean ten thousand pounds? Lou felt dizzy. And there was the mention of a deposit for a house as well. You'd have to be stark staring mad to fly in the face of this.

They went into the jeweller's. He asked for George.

George brought a tray. 'These are all in your price range,' he said to Lou.

'But they're enormous,' hissed Suzi. 'Lou, you can't afford these.'

'Please don't take away the pleasure of giving you a nice ring,' he said, his eyes big and sad.

'No but, Lou, listen to me. We save twenty-five a week between us and we find it hard going. These must be two hundred and fifty pounds at least, that's ten weeks' saving. Let's get something cheaper, really.' She was so nice he didn't deserve her. And she didn't have an idea she was looking at serious jewellery.

'Which one do you like best?'

'This isn't a real emerald is it, Lou?'

'It's an emerald-type stone,' he said solemnly.

Suzi waved her hand backwards and forwards, it caught the light and it flashed. She laughed with pleasure. 'God, you'd swear it was the real thing,' she said to George.

Lou went into a corner with George where he paid over £250 in notes and saw that an extra nine and a half thousand pounds had already been paid towards a ring to be bought by a Mr. Lou Lynch on that day.

'I wish you every happiness, sir,' said George without changing a line of the expression on his face.

What did George know or not know? Was George someone who once got involved and now couldn't get uninvolved? Had Robin really been in to a respectable place like this and paid all that money in cash? Lou felt faint and dizzy.

Signora admired Suzi's ring. Tt's very, very beautiful' she said.

'It's only glass, Signora, but wouldn't you think it was an emerald?'

Signora, who had always loved jewellery but never owned any, knew it was an emerald. In a very good setting. She began to worry about Luigi.

Suzi saw the good looking blonde girl called Grania come in. She wondered how the dinner with the older man had gone. As usual she longed to ask but couldn't.

'Table for two?' she enquired politely.

'Yes, I'm meeting a friend.'

Suzi was disappointed that it wasn't the old man. It was a girl, a small girl with enormous glasses. They were obviously old friends.

'I must explain, Fiona, that nothing is settled, nothing at all. But I might be calling on you in the weeks ahead to say that I am staying with you, if you know what I mean.'

'I know only too well what you mean. It's been ages since either of you called on me to be the alibi,' Fiona said.

'Well, it's just that this fellow… well, it's a very long story. I really do fancy him a lot but there are problems.'

'Like he's nearly a hundred, is that it?' Fiona asked helpfully.

'Oh, Fiona, if only you knew… that's the least of the problems. His being nearly a hundred isn't a problem at all.'

'You live very mysterious lives, you Dunnes,' Fiona said in wonder. 'You're going out with a pensioner and you don't notice what age he is. Brigid is obsessed with the size of her thighs which seem perfectly ordinary to me.'

'It's all because of that holiday she went on where they had a nudist beach,' Grania explained. 'Some eejit said that if you could hold a pencil under your boobs and it didn't fall down then you were too floppy and you shouldn't go topless.'

'And…?'

'Brigid said that she could hold a telephone directory under hers and it wouldn't fall.'

They giggled at the thought.

'Well, if she said it herself,' said the girl in the enormous spectacles.

'Yeah, but the awful point was that nobody denied it, and now she's got a complex the size of a house.' Suzi tried not to laugh aloud. She offered them more coffee. 'Hey, that's a beautiful ring,' Grania said.

'I just got engaged.' Suzi was proud.

They congratulated her and tried it on.

'Is it a real emerald?' Fiona asked.

'Hardly. Poor Lou works as a packer up in the big electrical place. No, but it's terrific glass, isn't it?'

'It's gorgeous, where did you get it?'

Suzi told her the name of the shop.

When she was out of hearing Grania said in a whisper to Fiona, 'That's funny, they only sell precious stones in that shop. I know because they have an account with us. I bet that's not glass, I bet it's the real thing.'

It was coming up to the Christmas party in the Italian class. They wouldn't be seeing each other for two weeks. Signora asked them all to bring something to the last lesson and they would make it into a party. Huge banners with Buon Natale hung all over the room, and banners for the New Year too. They had all dressed up. Even Bill, the serious fellow from the bank, Guglielmo as they all called him, had entered into the spirit of it all and had brought paper hats.

Connie, the woman with the car and the jewellery, brought six bottles of Frascati which she said she found in the back of her husband's car and she felt that he might have been taking them off somewhere for his secretary so they had better be drunk. No one quite knew whether or not to take her seriously and there had been this restriction about drink earlier. But Signora said it had all been cleared with Mr. O'Brien the Principal so they needn't worry about that aspect of things.

Signora didn't feel it necessary to add that Tony O'Brien had said that since the school seemed to be crawling with hard drugs and kids laying their hands on crack with ease, it seemed fairly minor if some adults had a few glasses of wine as a Christmas treat.

'What did you do last Christmas?' Luigi asked Signora, for no reason except that he was sitting near her when all the salute and molto grazie and va bene were going on around them.

'Last year I went to midnight mass at Christmas and watched my husband Mario and his children from the back of the Church,' Signora said.

'And why weren't you sitting with them?' he asked.