Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'So why did you do it?'

'Because it wasn't fair. You had your warning, you were rescued, wasn't that enough?'

'You know nothing of men. Nothing.' He almost spat the words.

'Not only do you not know how to please them, you actually think that a man could be a real man and accept your money and pats on the head.'

'It would be a help if you were strong for the children's sake,' she said.

'Get out of here, Connie.'

'They loved you all through the last time, they really did. They have lives of their own but you are their father. You didn't care much about your father, but most people do.'

'You really hate me, don't you, you'll rejoice that I'm in gaol.'

'No, and you probably won't serve much time, if any. You'll get away with things, you always do.' She left the office.

She saw Siobhan Casey's name on a brass plate on her door. Inside that office files and software were also being removed. Siobhan apparently had no family or friends to give her support. She was sitting with bankers, inspectors in the Fraud Squad and lawyers.

Connie's steps never faltered as she walked out the door and pressed the remote switch that opened her car. Then she got in and drove to her new apartment on the sea.

r

X

LADDY

When Signora was choosing Italian names for people she tried to make sure that they had the same initial rather than being too purist about the translation. There was a woman there called Gertie. Strictly speaking that should have been Margaret, then Margaretta. But Gertie would never have recognised her own name in that form so she was called Gloria. In fact, she decided that she like the name Gloria so much that she might keep it ever after.

The big man with the eager face said he was called Laddy. Signora paused. No future in trying to work out the origins. Give him something that he might like to roll around. 'Lorenzo,' she cried.

Laddy liked it. 'Is that what all the people called Laddy in Italy call themselves?' he asked.

'That's it, Lorenzo,' Signora rolled out the name again for him.

'Lorenzo, would you credit it?' Laddy was delighted with the name. He said it over and over. ' Mi chiamo Lorenzo' .

When Laddy was christened in the 1930s the name they gave him at the font was John Matthew Joseph Byrne, but he was never called anything except Laddy. The only boy after five girls, his arrival meant that the small farm would be safe. There would be a man to run it.

But things don't always turn out the way people think.

Laddy was coming home from school, the mile and a half through puddles and under dripping trees, when he saw his sisters coming out to meet him and he knew that something terrible had happened. He thought first that something had happened to Tripper, the collie dog he loved so much. Maybe it had hurt its paw or been bitten by a rat.

He tried to run past them, the crying girls, but they held him back and told him that Mam and Dad had gone to heaven, and that from now on they would look after him.

'They can't have both gone at the same time.'

Laddy was eight, he knew things. People went to heaven one by one and everyone wore black and cried.

But it had happened. They had been killed at a level crossing, pulling a cart that had got stuck in the rails, and the train was on top of them before they realised it. Laddy knew that God had wanted them, that it was their time, but all through the years he wondered why God had chosen that way.

It had caused such upset and hurt for everyone. The poor man who had been driving the train was never the same again and went to a mental home. The people who had found Mam and Dad never spoke of it to anyone. Laddy once asked a priest why God couldn't have given his Mam and Dad heavy winter colds if He had wanted them to die. And the priest had scratched his head and said that it was a mystery, and that if we understood all the things that happened on earth we would be as wise as God Himself, which of course couldn't happen.

Laddy's eldest sister Rose was a nurse in the local hospital. She gave up her job and came back to look after the family. It was lonely for her, and the boy who was courting her didn't continue the romance when it meant a mile and a half walk to see her and a family of children in the house dependent on her.

But Rose made a good home for them. She supervised the homework every night in the kitchen, she washed and mended their clothes, she cooked and cleaned the house, she grew vegetables, kept hens, and she employed Shay Neil as the farm man.

Shay worked with the small herd of cattle, and kept the place ticking over. He went to fairs and markets, he did deals. He lived silently in a converted outhouse separate from the farmhouse. It had to look right when people called. No one would like to think of a man, a working farm-hand, living in the same house as all those girls and a child.

But the Byrne girls did not stay on the little farm. Rose made sure they got their exams and with her encouragement one by one they left. One for nursing, another to be trained as a teacher, one to a job in a shop in Dublin and one to a post in the Civil Service.

They had done well for the Byrne girls, the nuns and Rose. Everyone said that. And she was making a great fist of bringing up young Laddy. A big boy now, sixteen years of age, Laddy had almost forgotten his parents. He could only remember life with Rose, patient and funny and never thinking he was thick.

She would sit for ages with him at his books going over and over a thing until he could remember it, and she was never cross if he sometimes forgot it the next morning. From what he heard from other fellows at school, Rose was better than any mother.

There were two weddings the year that Laddy was sixteen, and

Rose did all the cooking and entertaining for her younger sisters. They were great occasions and the photographs hung on the wall, pictures taken outside the house which had been newly painted by Shay for the festivities. Shay was there of course, but in the background. He didn't really mix, he was the hired man.

And then Laddy's sister who was working in England said she was having a very quiet wedding, which meant that she was pregnant and it would be in a register office. Rose wrote and said that she and Laddy would be happy to come over if it would help. But the letter back was full of gratitude and underlined words saying that it wouldn't be at all helpful.

And the sister who was nursing went out to Africa. So that was the Byrne family settled, people said, Rose running the farm until poor Laddy grew up and was able to take over, God bless him if that were ever to happen. Everyone assumed that Laddy was slow. That was, everyone except Rose and Laddy himself.

Now that he was sixteen Laddy should have been right in the middle of all the fuss getting ready for his Intermediate Certificate, but there seemed to be no mention of it at all.

'Lord, but they take things very easily above in the Brothers,' Rose said to him one day. 'You'd think there'd be all sorts of revision and plans and studying going on, but not a squeak out of them.'

'I don't think I'm doing it this year,' Laddy said.

'Well, of course you are, fourth year. When else would you do it?'

'Brother Gerald didn't say a word about it.' He looked worried now.

'I'll sort it out, Laddy.' Rose had always sorted everything out.

She was nearly thirty now, a handsome dark-haired woman, cheerful and good-natured. Over the years there had been a fair share of interest in her. But she never responded. She had to look after the family. When that was all sorted out she would think of romance… she would say this with a happy laugh, never offending anyone because overtures were turned down at an early stage before they had become serious and before anyone could be offended.