Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

Laddy talked on about the great day and how he wasn't really frightened by the ghost train. Rose looked into the fire and thought about Gypsy Ella, what a strange way to make a living moving on from town to town with the same set of people. Maybe she was married to the man in the bumpers.

Laddy went to bed with the comics she had bought him and Rose wondered what they were all doing in the carnival now. It would be closing soon. The coloured light would be switched off, the people would go to their caravans. Tripper lay beside the fire snoring gently, upstairs Larry would have fallen asleep. Outside it was dark.

Rose thought of the marriage and the one child and the ill health late in life. They should really put a stop to these kind of sideshows. Some people were foolish enough to believe them.

She woke in the dark thinking she was being suffocated. A great weight lay on top of her, she began to struggle and panic. Had the wardrobe fallen over? Had some of the roof fallen down? As she started to move and cry out a hand went across her mouth. She smelled alcohol. She realised in a moment of sick recognition that Shay Neil was in her bed, lying on top of her.

She struggled to free her head from his hand. 'Please Shay,' she whispered. Tlease, Shay, don't do this.'

'You've been begging for it,' he said, still pushing at her, trying to get her legs apart.

'Shay, I haven't. I don't want you to do this. Shay, leave now we'll say no more about it.'

'Why are you whispering then?' He spoke in a whisper too.

'So as not to wake Laddy, frighten him.'

'No, so that we can do it, that's why, that's why you don't want him to wake.'

'I'll give you anything.'

'No, it's what I'm going to give you that we're talking about now.' He was rough, he was heavy, he was too strong for her. She had two choices. One was to shout for Laddy to come and hit him. But did she want Laddy to see her like this, her nightdress torn, her body pinned down? The other choice was to let him get it over with. Rose made the second choice.

Next morning she washed every item of bedclothes, burned her nightdress and opened the windows of her room.

'Shay must have come upstairs in the night,' Laddy said at breakfast.

'Why do you say that?'

'The statue I won for you is on the landing. He must have brought it up,' Laddy said pleased.

'That's right, he must have,' Rose agreed.

She felt bruised and sore. She would ask Shay to leave. Laddy would ask endless questions, she must get a story together that would cover it, and cover it for the neighbours too. Then a wave of anger came over her. Why should she , Rose, who was blameless in all this, have to invent excuses, explanations, cover stories? It was the most unjust thing she had ever heard in her life.

The morning passed as so many mornings had passed for Rose. She made Laddy's sandwiches and he went to school, to do errands for the teachers, as she now realised. She collected the eggs, fed the hens. All the time the sheets and pillowcases flapped on the line, the blanket lay spread on a hedge.

The custom had been that Shay ate bread and butter and boiled tea in his own quarters at breakfast time. After he heard the Angelus ring from the town he washed his hands and face at the pump in the yard and came in for a meal. It wasn't meat every day, sometimes it was soup. But there was always a bowl of big floury potatoes, a jug of water on the table and a pot of tea afterwards. Shay would take his plate and cutlery to the sink and wash it.

It had been a fairly joyless business. Sometimes Rose had read through it, Shay had never been one for conversation. Today she prepared no lunch. When he came in she would tell him that he must leave. But the bells of the Angelus rang and Shay did not come in. She knew he was working. She had heard the cows come in to be milked, she had seen the churns left out for the creamery to collect.

Now she began to get frightened. Maybe he was going to attack her again. Perhaps he took the fact that she had not ordered him out this morning as encouragement. Perhaps he took the whole of last night's passivity as encouragement, when all she was doing was trying to save Laddy from something he would not understand. That no normal sixteen-year-old would understand in relation to his own sister, but especially not Laddy of all people.

By two o'clock she was very uneasy. There had never been a day when Shay had not come in for his midday meal. Was he waiting for her somewhere, would he grab her and hurt her again? Well if he did, by God this time she would defend herself. Outside the kitchen door was a pole with some curved nails in it. They used it to rake twigs and branches off the thatched roof. It was the perfect thing to have to hand. She brought it inside and sat at the kitchen table trying to plan her next move.

He had opened the door and was in the kitchen before she realised it. She moved for the stick but he kicked it out of her way. His face was pale and she could see his Adam's apple moving up and down in his throat. 'What I did last night should not have been done,' he said. She sat trembling. 'I was very drunk. I'm not used to strong drink. It was the drink that made me do it.'

She searched for the words that would make him leave their lives, the actual phrase of dismissal that would not goad him into attacking her again. But she found she still couldn't speak. They were used to silences. Hours, days, weeks, of her life had been spent in this kitchen with Shay Neil and no words being said, but today was different. The fear and the memory of the grunts and obscenities of last night hung between them. 'I would like if last night had not happened,' he said eventually.

'And so would I, by God so would I,' she said. 'But since it did…' Now she could say it, get him out from their place.

'But since it did,' he said, 'I don't think I should come in and eat dinner with you any more in your house. I'll make my own food over beyond. That would be best from now on.'

He seriously intended to stay on after what had happened between them. After the most intimate and frightening abuse of another human being, he thought that it could be put aside with just a minor readjustment of the meal schedule. The man must be truly mad.

She spoke gently and very deliberately. She must not allow the fear to be heard in her voice. 'No, Shay, I don't think that would be enough, I really think you had better leave. It would not be easy for us to forget what happened. You should start somewhere else.'

He looked at her in disbelief. 'I can't go,' he said.

'You'll find another place.'

'I can't go, I love you,' he said.

'Don't talk nonsense.' She was angry and even more frightened now. 'You don't love me or anyone. What you did had nothing to do with love.'

'I've told you that was the drink, but I do love you.'

'You'll have to go, Shay.'

'I can't leave you. What is to happen to you and Laddy if I go?'

He turned and left the kitchen.

'Why didn't Shay come in for his dinner?' Laddy asked on Saturday.

'He says he prefers to have it on his own, he's a very quiet sort of person,' Rose said.

She had not spoken to Shay since. The work went on as it always did. A fence around the orchard had been mended. He had put a new bolt on the kitchen door, for her to fasten at night from the inside.

Tripper, the old collie dog, took to die.

Laddy was very upset. He sat stroking the dog's head and trying to administer him little sips of water on a spoon. Sometimes he would cry with his arms around the dog's neck. 'Get better, Tripper. I can't bear to hear you breathing like this.'

'Rose?' It was the first time that Shay had spoken to her in weeks.

She jumped. 'What?'

'I think I should take Tripper out to the field and shoot him through the head. What do you think?' Together they looked at the wheezing dog.