Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'Have you been to bed with him yet?'

'No, but there's no rush, it's all going according to plan,' Fiona said.

'Longest plan since time began,' Brigid grumbled.

'No, believe me, I know what I'm doing.'

'I'm glad someone does,' Brigid said. 'Dad and Grania have gone all emotional on us. Crania's sitting in Dad's room talking to him as u a cross word had never been said between them.'

'Isn't that good?'

'Yes, it's good, of course it's good, but it's a mystery,' Brigid complained.

'And what does your mother say about it?'

'Nothing. That's another mystery. I used to think that we were

«Is the dullest, most ordinary family in the western world. Now I think I live in a madhouse. I used to think that you were the odd one, Fiona. But there you are, the little pet of the house, learning to be a gourmet chef from the mother and planning to bed the son. How did it all happen?'

Brigid hated mysteries and being confused by things. She sounded very disgruntled indeed.

The cookery classes were a great success. Sometimes Barry's father was there. Tall and dark and watchful, he looked a lot younger than his wife, but then his mind was not so troubled. He worked in a big nurseries and vegetable farm, delivering produce and flowers to restaurants and hotels around the city. He was perfectly pleasant to Fiona but not enthusiastic. He was not curious about her and he gave the impression of someone passing through rather than someone who lived there.

Sometimes Barry came back from his own Italian class and ate the results of their cooking, but Fiona said he shouldn't hurry back specially. It was too late for eating anyway, and he liked talking to the people afterwards. She would take the bus home herself. After all, they would meet on other nights.

Bit by bit she began to hear the story of the Great Infidelity. She tried not to listen at first. 'Don't tell me all this, Mrs. Healy please, you'll wish you hadn't when you're all nice and friendly with Mr. Healy again and then you'll be sorry.'

'No, I won't, you're my friend. Chop those a lot finer, Fiona. You don't want great lumps in it. You have to hear. You have to know what Barry's father is like.'

Everything had been fine until two years ago. Well, you know, fine in a manner of speaking. His hours had always been difficult, she had lived with that. Sometimes up for the four-thirty run in the morning, sometimes working late at night. But there had been time off. Grand time in the middle of the day sometimes. She could remember when they had gone to the cinema for the two o'clock show, and then had tea and buns afterwards and she was the envy of every other woman around. None of them ever went to the pictures in the daylight with their husbands. And he had never wanted her to work in the old days. He had said that he brought in plenty for the two of them and the child. She should keep the home nice and cook for them and be there when he got time off. That way they could have a good life.

But two years ago it had all changed. He had met someone and started having an affair.

'You can't be sure, Mrs. Healy,' Fiona said as she weighed out the raisins and sultanas for the fruit cake. 'It could be anything, you know, like pressure at work, or the traffic getting worse, you know the way everyone's giving out about rush hour.'

'There's no rush hour at four a.m. when he comes home.' Her face was grim.

'But isn't it these awful hours?'

'I checked with the company, he works twenty-eight hours a week. He's out of here nearly twice that much.'

'The travelling to and fro?' Fiona said desperately

'He's about ten minutes from work,' Barry's mother said.

'He might just want a bit of space.'

'He has that all right, he sleeps in the spare room.'

'Maybe not to wake you?'

'Maybe not to be near me.'

'And if she exists who do you think she is?' Fiona spoke in a whisper.

'I don't know but I'll find out.'

'Would it be someone at work, do you think?'

'No, I know all of them. There's no one likely there. But it's someone he met through work though, and that could be half of Dublin.'

It was very distressing to listen to her. All that unhappiness, and according to Barry it was all in her mind.

'Does she talk to you at all about it?' Barry asked Fiona.

Fiona thought there as a sort of sacredness about the conversations over the floured boards and the bubbling casseroles, over cups of coffee after the cooking when Fiona would sit on the sofa and the huge half-blind Cascarino would lie purring on her lap.

'A bit here and there, not much,' she lied.

Nessa Healy thought that Fiona was her friend, it wasn't the action of a friend to repeat conversations back.

Barry and Fiona saw a lot of each other. They went to football matches and to the cinema and as the weather got nicer they went on the motorbike out to Wicklow or Kildare and saw places that Fiona had never been.

He had not asked her to come on the trip to Rome, the viaggio as they kept calling it. Fiona hoped that at some stage soon he would, and so she had applied for a passport just in case.

Sometimes they went out in a foursome with Suzi and Luigi, who had invited them to their wedding in Dublin the middle of June. Suzi said that mercifully the idea of a Roman wedding had been abandoned. Her parents said no, Luigi's parents said no, and all their friends who weren't in the Italian class said they were off their skulls. So it would be a Roman honeymoon instead.

'Are you learning any Italian yourself?' Fiona enquired.

'No. If they want to talk to me they have to speak my language,' said Suzi, the confident handsome girl who would have expected Eskimos to learn her language if she were passing the North Pole.

Then there was the big fund-raising party. The Italian class, all thirty of them, were to provide the food. Drink was being sponsored by various off licences and the supermarket. Somebody knew a group which would play free in return for their picture in the local paper. Each pupil was expected to invite at last five people who would pay £53 head for the party. That would raise £750 for the viaggio and then there would be a huge raffle. The prizes were enormous, and that might raise another £150 or even more. The travel agency was bringing the price down all the time. The accommodation had been booked in a pensione in Rome. There would be the trip to Florence staying overnight at a hostel, and on to Siena before they went back to Rome.

Barry was drumming up his five for the party.

'I'd like you to come, Dad,' he said. Tt means a lot to me, and remember Mam and I always went to your works outings.'

'I'm not sure I'll be free, son. But if I am I'll be there, I can't say fairer than that.'

And Barry would have Fiona, his mother, a fellow from work and a next-door neighbour. Fiona was going to ask her friends Grania and Brigid but they were going already because of their father. And Suzi was going with Luigi. It would be a great night.

The cookery lessons continued. Fiona and Barry's mother were going to make a very exotic dessert for the party; it was called cannali . Full of fruit and nuts and ricotta cheese in pastry and deep fried.

'Are you sure that's not one of the pastas?' Barry asked anxiously.

No, the women assured him, that was cannelloni . He knew nothing. They asked him to check with Signora. Signora said that cannali alla siciliana was one of the most mouth-watering dishes in the world, she couldn't wait to taste it.

The confidences continued to be exchanged between Fiona and Nessa Healy as they cooked. Fiona said that she really did like Barry a lot, he was a generous kind person, but she didn't want to rush him because she didn't think he was ready to settle down.