Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

He stood and looked at his beautiful wife and handsome little son. Soon they would have another child. She had kept every part of her bargain. In a way she was right to protect her investment. She didn't see him standing there and when he moved she gave a little jump.

But he noticed that her first reaction was one of pleasure. 'Oh good, you were able to get home for a bit, will I put on some coffee?'

'I saw them,' he said.

'Saw who?'

'Your legal team.' He was crisp.

She was unmoved. 'Much easier to let them do all the paperwork. You've always said that yourself, don't waste time, pay the experts.'

'I'd say we'll be paying T. P. Murphy well to be an expert, judging by the cut of his suits and the watch he was wearing.'

'I've known him a long time.'

'Yes, so he said.'

She tickled Richard under his chin. 'Say hallo to your Daddy, Richard. He doesn't often get home to see you in the daytime.'

'Is it going to be like this all the time, barbed remarks, snide little references to the fact that I'm not home? Will he grow up like this and the next one, bad daddy, neglectful daddy… is that the way it's going to be?'

Her face was contrite. And in as much as he understood her at all, he thought she was sincere.

'Harry, I can't tell you how much I didn't mean that to be a barbed remark. I swear I didn't. I was pleased to see you, I was speaking stupid baby talk telling him to be pleased too. Believe me it's not going to be full of barbed remarks, I hate it in other people, we won't have it.'

For months she hadn't approached him, made a gesture of affection to him. But she saw him standing there desolate and her heart went out to him. She crossed to where he was standing. 'Harry, please don't be like this, please. You are so good to me, we have such a nice life. Can't we get the best from it, get joy from it, instead of acting watchful and guarded the way we do?'

He didn't raise his hands to her even though her arms were around his neck. 'You didn't ask me did I sign,' he said.

She pulled away. 'I know you did.'

'Why do you know that? Did they call the moment I left the office?'

'No, of course they wouldn't.' She looked scornful of such a thought.

'Why not, a job well done?'

'You signed because it was fair, and because you realise it was for your own good in the end,' she said.

Then he pulled her towards him and felt the bump in her stomach resting against him. Another child, another Kane for the dynasty he wanted in this fine house. 'I wish you loved me,' he said.

'I do.'

'Not in the way that matters,' he said. And his voice was so sad.

'I try. I try, you know I'm there every night if you want me. I'd like you to sleep in the same bed in the same room, it's you who wants to be separate.'

'I came home very, very angry, Connie. I wanted to tell you that you were a bitch going behind my back like that, taking me for every penny I have. I kept thinking you were well named Connie, a real con woman all right… I wanted to tell you a lot of things.' She stood there waiting. 'But honestly I think you made just as big a mistake as I did. You are just as unhappy.'

'I'm more lonely than unhappy,' she said.

'Call it whatever you like,' he shrugged. 'Will you be less lonely now that you've got your money?'

'I imagine I'll be less frightened,' she said.

'What were you frightened of? That I'd lose it all like your old man did, that you'd have to be poor again?'

'No, that's totally wrong.' She spoke with great clearness. He knew she was telling the truth. 'No, I never minded being poor. I

could earn a living, something my mother couldn't do. But I was afraid of being bitter like she became, I was afraid that I would hate you if I had to go back to a job that you made me leave, and go in at the bottom rung again. I couldn't bear the children to have grown up in expectation of one kind of life and end up in another. I know that from experience, so those were things I was frightened of. We had so much going for us, we were always so well suited, everywhere except in bed. I wanted that to go on until we died.'

'I see.'

'Can't you be my friend, Harry? I love you and want the best for you, even if I don't seem to be able to show it.'

'I don't know,' he said, picking up his car keys to leave again. 'I don't know. I'd like to be your friend, but I don't think I can trust you and you have to trust friends.' He spoke to the gurgling Richard in his high chair. 'Be good to your mummy, kid, she may look as if she has it nice and easy, but it's not all that great for her either.' And when he had gone Connie cried until she thought her heart would break.

The new baby was a girl. She was called Veronica, and then a year later there were the twins. When the scan showed two embryos Connie was overjoyed. Twins had run in her family, how marvellous. She thought Harry too would be delighted. 'I can see you're pleased,' he said very coldly. 'That makes four. Bargain completed. Curtains drawn on all that nasty, messy business. What a relief.'

'You can be very, very cruel,' she said.

To the outside world they were of course the perfect couple. Mr. Hayes, whose own daughter Marianne was growing up as a young beauty much sought after by the fortune-hunting young men of Dublin, was still a good friend of Connie's and often consulted her about the hotel business. If he suspected that her eyes were sometimes sad he said nothing.

He heard rumours that Harry Kane was not an entirely faithful man. He had been spotted here and there with other women. He still had the pathetic devoted secretary in tow. But as the years went on the watchful Mr. Hayes decided the couple must have come to some accommodation.

The eldest boy, Richard, was doing well at school and even playing on the first fifteen in the schools rugby cup, the girl Veronica was determined to do medicine and had no other aim since she was twelve, and the twins were fine boisterous boys.

The Kanes still hosted marvellous parties and were seen together in public a lot. Connie went through her thirties more elegantly than any other well-dressed woman of her generation. She never seemed to spend much time studying fashion, nor did she specialise in buying the designer outfits she could well afford, but she always looked perfectly groomed.

She wasn't happy. Of course she wasn't happy. But then Connie thought that a lot of people lived life hoping that things would get better, and that lights would turn on, or the film turn into Technicolor.

Maybe that's the way most people lived, and all this talk about happiness was for the birds. Having worked in a hotel for so long she knew how many people were lonely and inadequate. You saw that side of life amongst the guests. Then on the various charity committees she saw many members who were there only to banish the hours of emptiness, people who suggested more and more coffee-morning meetings because there was nothing else to fill their lives.

She read a lot of books, saw every play that she wanted to, and made little trips to London or down to Kerry.

Harry never had time for a family holiday, he said. She often wondered whether the children realised that his partners went on family holidays with their wives and children. But children could be very unobservant. Other women went abroad with their husbands, but Connie never did. Harry went abroad a lot. It was connected with work, he said. She wondered wryly what work there could be for his investment company in the south of Spain or on a newly developed resort in the Greek Islands. But she said nothing.

Harry only went out for sex. He loved it. She had not been able to give it to him, it was unfair of her to deny it to him elsewhere. And she was not at all jealous of his sexual intimacy with Siobhan Casey and whoever else there might be. One of Connie's friends had once cried and cried over a husband's infidelity. She said that the very thought of him doing with another woman what he did with her made her sick to the point of madness. It didn't bother Connie at all.