Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

Meanwhile there would be a great television and video for the use of the school and presumably the evening class where it had appeared.

And the next job that Robin asked Lou to do would be botched. And then sadly Lou would be told that he could never work again, and he could get on with his life.

It was Christmas morning and he was exhausted. He went around to Suzi's parents' house for tea and Christmas cake. Signora was there quietly in the background playing chess with Jerry.

'Chess!' whispered Suzi in amazement. 'That fellow can understand the pieces and the moves of chess. Wonders will never cease.'

'Signora!' he said.

'Luigi.' She seemed delighted to see him.

'You know, I got a present of a key ring just like yours,' he said. They weren't all that uncommon, it was hardly something to be marvelled at.

'My owl key ring.' Signora was always pleasant and responded to any conversation that was presented to her.

'Yeah, let me see, are they the same?' he said.

She took it from her bag and he pretended to make a comparison as he made the switch. He was safe now, and so was she. No one would ever remember this harmless little conversation. He must talk about other gifts and confuse them.

'God, I thought that Lou would never stop talking tonight,' Peggy Sullivan said as she and Signora washed up. 'Do you remember when they used to say people were vaccinated with a gramophone needle, they can't say that today I suppose, what with CDs and tapes.'

'I remember that phrase. I once tried to explain it to Mario, but like so many things it got lost in the translation and he never knew what I meant.'

It was a moment for confidences. Peggy never dared to ask this odd woman a personal question but she had sort of lowered the guard here. 'And did you not think of being with your own people at all, Signora, on Christmas Day?' she asked.

Signora did not look at all put out. She answered the question thoughtfully, with deliberation, as she answered Jerry's questions.

'No, you know, it wasn't something I would have liked. It would have been artificial. And I have seen my mother and sisters many times and none of them suggested it. They have their own ways and customs now. It would be hard to try and add me to them. It would have been very false. None of us would have enjoyed it. But I did enjoy myself here today with your family.' She stood there calm and untroubled. She wore a new locket around her neck. She had not said where she got it and nobody had liked to ask. She was much too private a person.

'And we liked having you very, very much, Signora,' said Peggy Sullivan, who wondered nowadays what she had ever done before this odd woman had come to live there.

The class began again on the first Tuesday of January. A cold evening, but they were all there. Nobody was missing from the thirty who had signed on in September. It must be a record in any evening class.

And all the top brass were there, the Principal, Tony O'Brien, and Mr. Dunne, and they were beaming all over their faces. The most extraordinary thing had happened. The class had been given a gift. Signora was like a child, almost clapping her hands with pleasure.

Who could have done it? Was it anyone here? Was it one of the class? Would they say so that they could thank him or her? Everyone was mystified, but of course they all thought it was Connie.

'No, I wish it had been. I really do wish I had been nice enough to think of it.' Connie seemed almost embarrassed now that she hadn't been responsible.

The Principal said he was delighted but he was anxious in terms of security. If nobody owned up to having given this generous present then they would have to have the locks changed because somebody somewhere must have a key to the place. There had been no sign of a break-in.

'That's not the way the bank would look at it,' Guglielmo said. 'They'd say leave things as they are, whoever it is might give us a hi-fi next week.'

Lorenzo, who was actually Laddy the hotel porter, said that you'd be surprised how many keys there were walking round the city of Dublin that would open the same doors.

And suddenly Signora looked up and looked at Luigi and Luigi looked away.

Please may she say nothing, he said. Please may she know it will do no good, only harm. He didn't know if he were praying to God or just muttering to himself, but he meant it. He really meant it.

And it seemed to have worked. She looked away too.

The class began. They were revising. What a lot they had forgotten, Signora said, how much work there was to be done if they were all going to make the promised trip to Italy. Shamed, they struggled again with the phrases that had come so easily before the two-week break.

Lou tried to slip out when the class was over.

'Not helping me with the boxes tonight, Luigi?' Her look was unfaltering.

' Scusi, Signora , where are they? I forgot.'

They lifted them into the now blameless store cupboard, an area that would never again house anything dangerous.

'Is um… Mr. Dunne coming to walk you home, Signora?'

'No, Luigi, but you on the other hand are walking out with Suzi who is the daughter of the house where I stay.' Her face looked cross.

'But you know that, Signora. We're engaged.'

'Yes, that's what I wanted to discuss with you, the engagement, and the ring. Un anello di fidanzamento , that's what we call it in Italian.'

'Yes, yes, a ring for the fiancee,' Lou was eager.

'But not usually emeralds, Luigi. Not a real emerald. That is what is so strange.'

'Aw, go on out of that, Signora, real emerald? You have to be joking. It's glass.'

'It's an emerald, uno smeraldo . I know them. I love to touch them.'

'They're making them better and better, Signora, no one can tell the real thing from the fakes now.'

'It cost thousands, Luigi.'

'Signora, listen to me…'

'As that television set cost hundreds and hundreds… maybe over a thousand.'

'What are you saying?'

'I don't know. What are you saying to me?'

No schoolteacher in the past had ever made Lou Lynch feel like this, humbled and ashamed. His mother and father had never been able to get him to conform, no priest or Christian Brother, and suddenly he was terrified of losing the respect and the silence of this strange woman.

'I'm saying…' he began. She waited with that curious stillness. 'I suppose I'm saying it's over, whatever it was. There won't be any more of it.'

'And are these things stolen, the beautiful emerald and the magnificent television set?'

'No, no they're not, as it happens,' he said. 'They were paid for, not exactly by me but by other people that I worked for.'

'But that you don't work for any more?'

'No, I don't, I swear it.' He desperately wanted her to believe him. His soul was all in his face as he spoke.

'So, no more pornography.'

'No more what , Signora?'

'Well, of course I opened those boxes, Luigi. I was so worried with the drugs in the school, and young Jerry, Suzi's little brother… I was afraid that's what you had in the store cupboard.'

'And it wasn't?' He tried to take the question out of his voice.

'You know it wasn't. It was ridiculous filthy stuff, judging by the pictures on the covers. Such a fuss getting them in and out, so silly, and for young impressionable people probably very harmful.'

'You looked at them, Signora?'

'I told you I didn't play them, I don't have a video, and even if I did…'

'And you said nothing?'

'For years I have lived silently saying nothing. It becomes a habit.'

'And did you know about the key?'

'Not until tonight, then I remembered the nonsense about a keyring. Why did you need it?'

'There were some boxes accidentally left over Christmas,' he said.