Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

She was particularly pleased that he saw her dealing with some difficult business travellers very efficiently. 'Quite the diplomat, Miss O'Connor,' he said admiringly.

'Always good to see you here, Mr. Kane. Everything's arranged in your meeting room.'

Harry Kane with two older partners ran a new and very successful insurance business. It was taking a lot of business from the more established companies. Some people looked on it with suspicion. Growing too big too fast, they said, bound to be in trouble. But it showed no signs of it. The partners worked in Galway and Cork, they met every Wednesday in Hayes Hotel. They worked from nine until twelve thirty with a secretary in their conference room, then they entertained people to lunch.

Sometimes it was government ministers, or heads of industry or of big trade unions. Connie wondered why they didn't have their meeting in the Dublin office. Harry Kane had a big prestige office in one of the Georgian squares, with almost a dozen people working there. It must be for privacy, she decided, that and lack of disturbance. The hotel had strict instructions that no calls whatsoever be put through to the conference room on a Wednesday.

Obviously this secretary must know all their secrets and where the bodies were buried. Connie looked at her with interest as she went in and out with them each week. She would carry a briefcase of documents away with her and never joined the partners at lunch. Yet she must be a highly trusted confidante.

Connie would like to work like that for someone. Someone very like Harry Kane. She began to talk to the woman, using all her charm and every skill she could rustle up.

'Everything in the room to your satisfaction, Miss Casey?'

'Certainly, Miss O'Connor, otherwise Mr. Kane would have mentioned it to you.'

'We have just stocked quite a new range of audio-visual equipment, in case any of it would be of use for your meetings.'

'Thank you, but no.'

Miss Casey always seemed anxious to leave, as if her briefcase contained hot money. Maybe it did. Connie and Vera talked it over for hours.

'She's obviously a fetishist, I'd say,' Vera suggested, as they bounced baby Charlie on their knees and assured Deirdre that she was much more beautiful and much more loved than Charlie would ever be.

' What" ?' Connie had no idea what Vera was suggesting.

'Sado-masochism, whips them within an inch of their life every Wednesday. That's the only way they can function. That's what's in the case. Whips!'

'Oh, Vera, I wish you could see her.'

Connie laughed till the tears came down her face at the thought of Miss Casey in that role. And, oddly, at the same time she felt a wave of jealousy in case the quiet, elegant Miss Casey did have an intimate relationship with Harry Kane. She had not felt that way about anyone before.

'You fancy him,' Vera said sagely.

'Only because he doesn't look at me. You know that's the way of it.'

'Why do you like him, do you think?'

'He reminds me a bit of my father,' Connie said suddenly, before she realised that this was what she had felt.

'All the more reason to keep a sharp eye on him then,' said Vera, who was the only person allowed to mention the late Richard

O'Connor's little gambling habit without getting a withering look from his daughter.

Without appearing to ask, Connie found out more and more about Harry Kane. He was almost thirty, single, his parents were from the country, small farmers. He was the first of his family to get into business in a big way. He lived in a bachelor apartment overlooking the sea, he went to first nights and to gallery openings, but always in a group.

His name had been mentioned in newspaper columns and always as part of a group, or sharing a box at the races with the highest of the land. When he married it would be into a family like that of Mr. Hayes. Thank God that his daughter was only a young school girl, otherwise she would have been ideal for him.

'Mother, why don't you come up to Dublin some Wednesday on the train and take a few of your friends for lunch in Hayes Hotel? I'll see they make the most enormous fuss of you.'

'I don't have any friends left in Dublin.'

'Yes, you do.' She listed a few.

'I don't want their pity.'

'What pity would there be if you invited them to a nice lunch? Come on, try it. Maybe they'll suggest it another time. You can take the day excursion ticket.'

Grudgingly her mother agreed.

They were placed near Mr. Kane's party, which included a newspaper owner and two cabinet ministers. The ladies thoroughly enjoyed their lunch, and the fact that they seemed to be even more feted than the amazingly important people nearby.

As Connie had hoped it would be, the lunch was pronounced a huge success and one of the others said that next time it must be her treat. It would also be a Wednesday, in a month's time. And so it went on, her mother becoming more confident and cheerful since nobody mentioned her late husband apart from saying Toor Richard', as they would to any widow about the deceased.

Connie always arranged to pass their table and offer them a glass of port with her compliments. Very publicly she would sign the docket for it so that everyone knew it was accountable for. She would flash a smile at the Kane table too.

After the fourth time she realised that he really did notice her. 'You're very kind to those older women, Miss O'Connor,' he said.

'That's my mother and some of her friends. They do enjoy their lunch here, and it's a pleasure to see her, she lives in the country, you see.'

'Ah, and where do you live?' he asked, his eyes alert waiting for her reply.

It was her cue to say: 'I have my own flat,' or 'by myself. But Connie was prepared. 'Well, I live in Dublin of course, Mr. Kane, but I do hope to travel sometime, I would love to see other cities.' She was giving nothing away. She saw further interest in his face.

'And so you should, Miss O'Connor. Have you been to Paris?'

'Sadly not yet.'

'I'm going next weekend, would you like to come with me?'

She laughed pleasantly, as if she were laughing with him not at him. 'Wouldn't that be nice! But out of the question, I'm afraid. I hope you have a good time.'

'Perhaps I could take you to dinner when I come back and tell you about it?'

'I'd like that very much indeed.'

And so it began, the courtship of Connie O'Connor and Harry Kane. And throughout it all she knew that Siobhan Casey, his faithful secretary, hated her. They kept the relationship as private as they could, but it wasn't easy. If he were invited to the opera he wanted to take her, he didn't want to go with a crowd of singles hand-picked for him. It wasn't long before their names were linked. She was described by one columnist as his blonde companion.

'I don't like this,' she said when she saw it in a Sunday paper. 'It makes me look flashy, trash almost.'

'To be my companion?' He raised his eyebrows.

'You know what I mean, the word companion and all it suggests.'

'Well, it's not my fault that they're not right about that.' He had been urging her to bed and she had been refusing for some time now.

'I think we should stop seeing each other, Harry.'

'You can't mean it.'

'I don't want it but I think it's best. Look, I'm not just going to have a fling with you, and then be thrown aside. Seriously, Harry, I like you too much. I more than like you, I think of you all the time.'

'And I of you.' He sounded as if he meant it.

'So isn't it better if we stop now?'

'I don't know what the phrase is…?'

'Get out in time,' she smiled at him. 'I don't want to get out,' he said. 'Neither do I, but it will be harder later.'

'Will you marry me?' he asked.