Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

The letter back from her mother was sharp and to the point. 'Kindly don't go weeping for sympathy on all and sundry. Pity is no comfort to you, nor are fine soft words. Your dignity and your pride are the only things you need to see you into your middle age. I pray that you will not be deprived of them as I was.'

Never a word about missing Father. About the kind husband he was, the good father. The photographs were taken out of the frames. The frames were sold in the auction. Connie didn't dare to ask whether the pictures of her childhood had been saved.

Connie and Vera got on very well at their secretarial college. They did the shorthand and typing classes, together with the bookkeeping and office routine that were all part of such a comprehensive type of training. The family of cousins that she stayed with were embarrassed by her plight and gave her more freedom than her mother would have done.

Connie enjoyed being young and in Dublin. She and Vera went to dances where they met great people. A boy called Jacko fancied Connie and his friend Kevin fancied Vera, so they often went out together as a four. But neither she nor Vera were serious while both the boys were. There was a lot of pressure on both of them to have sex. Connie refused but Vera agreed.

'Why do you do it if you don't enjoy it, if you're afraid of getting pregnant?' Connie asked, bewildered.

'I didn't say I didn't enjoy it,' Vera protested. 'I said it's not as great as it's made out to be and I can't see what all the puffing and panting is about. And I'm not afraid of getting pregnant, I'm going to go on the Pill.'

Even though birth control was still officially banned in Ireland in the early 1970s, the contraceptive pill could be prescribed for menstrual irregularity. Not surprisingly a large number of the female population were found to suffer from this. Connie thought it might be a good idea to go the same route. You never knew the day or the hour you might need to sleep with someone, and it would be a pity to have to hang around and wait until the Pill started to work.

Jacko had not been told that Connie was taking the contraceptive pill. He remained hopeful that she would eventually realise that they were meant for each other just like Kevin and Vera. He dreamed up more and more ideas that he thought would please her. They would travel to Italy together - they would learn Italian before they left at some night school or from records. When they got there they would Scusi and Grazie with the best of them. He was good looking, eager and besotted with her. But Connie was firm. There would be no affair, no real involvement. Taking the Pill was just part of her own practicality.

Whatever version of the Pill Vera was taking did not agree with her, and in the time when she was changing over to another brand she became pregnant.

Kevin was delighted. 'We always meant to get married anyway,' he kept saying.

'I wanted to have a bit of a life first,' Vera wept.

'You've had a bit of a life, now we'll have a real life, you and the baby and me.' Kevin was overjoyed that they didn't need to live at home any more. They could have their own place.

It didn't turn out to be a very comfortable place. Vera's family were not wealthy and were very annoyed indeed with their daughter having, as they considered it, thrown away her expensive education and costly commercial course before she ever worked for a day in her life.

They were also less than pleased with the family that Vera was about to marry into. While they considered Kevin's people extremely worthy, they were definitely not what they had hoped for their daughter.

Vera didn't need to explain this tension to Connie, Connie's own mother would have been fit to be tied. She could imagine her screaming: 'His father a house painter. And he's going into the business! They call that a business to be going into.' It was useless for Vera to point out that Kevin's father owned a small builder's provider and decorator that in time might well become fairly important.

Kevin had earned a living every week of his life since he had been seventeen. He was twenty-one now and extremely proud of being a father. He had painted the nursery of the two-up two-down house with three coats. He wanted it to be perfect when the baby arrived.

At Vera's wedding, where Jacko was best man and Connie was the bridesmaid, Connie made a decision. 'We can never go out with each other ever again after today,' she said.

'You're not serious, what did I do?'

'You did nothing, Jacko, except be nice and terrific, but I don't want to get married, I want to work and go abroad.'

His open, honest face was mystified. 'I'd let you work, I'd take you away every year to Italy on a holiday.'

'No, Jacko. Dear Jacko, no.'

'And I thought we might even make an announcement tonight,' he said, his face drawn in lines of disappointment.

'We hardly know each other, you and I.'

'We know each other just as much as the bride and groom here, and look how far down the road they are.' Jacko spoke enviously.

Connie didn't say that she thought her friend Vera was very unwise to have signed on for life with Kevin. She felt Vera would tire of this life soon. Vera, with the laughing dark eyes and the dark fringe still in her eyes, as it had been at school, would soon be a mother. She was able to face down her stiff-faced mother and father, and force everyone to have a good time at her wedding party. Look at her now, with the small bump in her stomach obvious to all, leading the singing of 'Hey Jude' at the piano. Soon the whole room was singing 'la la la la la la, Hey Jude.'

She swore to Connie that it was what she wanted.

And amazingly it turned out to be what she did want. She finished the rest of her course and went to work in Kevin's father's office. In no time she had organised their rather rudimentary system of accounts. There was a proper filing cabinet, not a series of spikes, there was an appointment book which everyone had to fill in. The arrival of the tax man was no longer a source of such dread. Slowly Vera moved them into a different league.

The baby was an angel, small and dark-eyed with loads of black hair like Vera and Kevin. At the christening Connie felt her first small twinge of envy. She and Jacko were the godparents. Jacko had another girl now, a pert little thing. Her skirt was too short, her outfit not right for a christening.

'I hope you're happy,' Connie whispered to him at the font.

'I'd come back to you tomorrow. Tonight, Connie,' he said to her.

'That's not only not on, it's not fair to think like that,' she said.

'She's only to get me over you,' he pleaded.

'Maybe she will.'

'Or the next twenty-seven, but I doubt it.'

The hostility that Vera's family had been showing to Kevin's had disappeared. As so often happened, a tiny innocent baby in a robe being handed from one to the other made all the difference… the looking for family noses and ears and eyes in the little bundle. There was no need for Vera to sing 'Hey Jude' to cheer them up, they were happy already.

The girls had not lost touch. Vera had asked: 'Do you want to know how much Jacko yearns over you or not?'

'Not, please. Not a word.'

'And what should I say when he asks are you seeing anyone?'

'Tell him the truth, that I do from time to time but you think I'm not all that interested in fellows, and certainly not in settling down.'

'All right,' Vera promised. 'But for me, tell me have you met anyone you fancied since him?'

'Ones I half fancy, yes.'

'And have you gone all the way with them?'

'I can't talk to a respectable married woman and mother about such things.'

'That means no,' Vera said, and they giggled as they had when they learned typing.

Connie's good looks and cool manner were an asset at interviews. She never allowed herself to look too eager, and yet there was nothing supercilious about her either. She refused quite an attractive job in the bank since it was only a temporary one.