Evening Class (32 page)

The baby was an angel, small and dark-eyed with loads of black hair like Vera and Kevin. At the christening Connie felt her first small twinge of envy. She and Jacko were the godparents. Jacko had another girl now, a pert little thing. Her skirt was too short, her outfit not right for a christening.

‘I hope you’re happy,’ Connie whispered to him at the font.

‘I’d come back to you tomorrow. Tonight, Connie,’ he said to her.

‘That’s not only not on, it’s not fair to think like that,’ she said.

‘She’s only to get me over you,’ he pleaded.

‘Maybe she will.’

‘Or the next twenty-seven, but I doubt it.’

The hostility that Vera’s family had been showing to Kevin’s had disappeared. As so often happened, a tiny innocent baby in a robe being handed from one to the other made all the difference… the looking for family noses and ears and eyes in the little bundle. There was no need for Vera to sing ‘Hey Jude’ to cheer them up, they were happy already.

The girls had not lost touch. Vera had asked: ‘Do you want to know how much Jacko yearns over you or not?’

‘Not, please. Not a word.’

‘And what should I say when he asks are you seeing anyone?’

‘Tell him the truth, that I do from time to time but you think I’m not all that interested in fellows, and certainly not in settling down.’

‘All right,’ Vera promised. ‘But for me, tell me have you met anyone you fancied since him?’

‘Ones I half fancy, yes.’

‘And have you gone all the way with them?’

‘I can’t talk to a respectable married woman and mother about such things.’

‘That means no,’ Vera said, and they giggled as they had when they learned typing.

Connie’s good looks and cool manner were an asset at interviews. She never allowed herself to look too eager, and yet there was nothing supercilious about her either. She refused quite an attractive job in the bank since it was only a temporary one.

The man who interviewed her had been surprised and rather impressed. ‘But why did you apply if you didn’t intend to take it?’ he asked.

‘If you see the wording of your advertisement, there was nothing to suggest that my job would be in the nature of temporary relief,’ she said.

‘But once with a foot in the bank, Miss O’Connor, surely that would be to your advantage.’

Connie was unflustered. ‘If I were to go in for banking I would prefer to be part of the natural intake and be part of a system,’ she said.

He remembered her and spoke of her that night to two friends in the golf club. ‘Remember Richard O’Connor, the dentist who lost his shirt? His daughter came in to see me, real little Grace Kelly, cool as anything. I wanted to give her a job, out of decency for poor old Richard, but she wouldn’t take it. Bright as a button though.’

One of the men owned a hotel. ‘Would she be good at a front desk?’

‘Exactly what you’re looking for, maybe even too classy for you.’

So next day Connie was called for another interview.

‘It’s very simple work, Miss O’Connor,’ the man explained.

‘Yes, but what could I learn then? I wouldn’t like to do something that didn’t stretch me, require me to grow with it.’

‘This job is in a new top-grade hotel, it can be what you make of it.’

‘Why do you think I would be suitable for it?’

‘Three reasons: you look nice, you talk well, and I knew your dad.’

‘I didn’t mention anything about my late father in this interview.’

‘No, but I know who he was. Don’t be foolish, girl, take the job. Your father would like you to be looked after.’

‘Well, if he would have, he certainly didn’t do much during his lifetime to see that this would be the case.’

‘Don’t talk like that, he loved you all very much.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He was for ever showing us pictures on the golf course of the three of you. Brightest children in the world, we were told.’

She felt a stinging behind her eyes. ‘I don’t want a job from pity, Mr Hayes,’ she said.

‘I would want my daughter to feel the same way, but also I wouldn’t want her to make a big thing about pride. You know it’s a deadly sin, but that’s not as important as knowing it’s a very poor companion on a winter’s evening.’

This was one of the wealthiest men in Dublin sharing his views with her. ‘Thank you, Mr Hayes, and I do appreciate it. Should I think about it?’

‘I’d love you to take it now. There are a dozen other young women waiting for it. Take it and make it into a great job.’

Connie rang her mother that night.

‘I’m going to work for the Hayes Hotel starting on Monday. When the hotel opens I’ll be introduced as their first hotel receptionist, chosen from hundreds of applicants. That’s what the public relations people say. Imagine, I’m going to have my picture in the evening papers.’ Connie was very excited.

Her mother was not impressed. ‘They just want to make you into some kind of little dumb blonde, you know, simpering for the photographers.’

Connie felt her heart harden. She’d followed her mother’s instructions to the letter, done her secretarial course, stayed with her cousins, got herself a job. She was not going to be insulted and patronised in this way. ‘If you remember, Mother, what
I
wanted was to go to university and be a lawyer. That didn’t happen so I’m doing the best I can. I am sorry you think so poorly of it, I thought you’d be pleased.’

Her mother was immediately contrite. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. If you knew how sharp tongued I’m getting… They say here I’m like our great Aunt Katie, and you remember what a legend she was in the family.’

‘It’s all right, Mother.’

‘No, it’s not, I’m ashamed. I’m very proud of you. I just say these hard things because I can’t bear to have to be grateful to people like that Hayes man your father played golf with. He probably knows you’re poor Richard’s daughter and gave you the job out of charity.’

‘No, I don’t think he would know that at all, Mother,’ Connie lied in a cool tone.

‘You’re right, why would he? It’s nearly two years ago.’ Her mother sounded sad.

‘I’ll ring and tell you about it, Mother.’

‘Do that, Connie dear, and don’t mind me. It’s all I have left, you know, my pride. I won’t apologise to any of them round here, my head is as high as ever.’

‘I’m glad you’re pleased for me, give my love to the twins.’ Connie knew she would grow up a stranger now from the two fourteen-year-old boys who went to a Brothers school in a small town and not the private Jesuit college which had been planned.

Her father was gone, her mother was going to be no help. She was on her own. She would do what Mr Hayes said. She would make a great job of this, her first serious position. She would be remembered in the Hayes Hotel as the first and best receptionist they ever had.

She was an excellent appointment. Mr Hayes congratulated himself over and over. And so like Grace Kelly. He wondered how long it would take before she met her Prince.

In fact it took two years. There were of course endless offers of all kinds of things. Businessmen staying regularly in the hotel longed to escort the elegant Miss O’Connor at the front desk to some of the smarter restaurants and indeed night clubs that were starting up around the city. But she was very detached. She smiled and talked to them warmly and said she didn’t mix business with pleasure.

‘It doesn’t have to be business,’ Teddy O’Hara cried in desperation. ‘Look, I’ll stay in some other hotel if you just come out with me.’

‘That would hardly be a good way to repay Hayes Hotel for my good job here.’ Connie would smile at him. ‘Sending all the clients off to rival establishments.’

She would tell Vera all about them. She called every week to see Vera, Kevin and Deirdre, who was shortly to be joined by another baby.

‘Teddy O’Hara asked you out?’ Vera’s eyes were round. ‘Oh please marry him, Connie, then we can get the contract for all the decorating on his shops. We’d be made for life. Go on, marry him for our sake.’

Connie laughed, but she realised she had not been putting any business in her friends’ way which she could have been doing. Next day she said to Mr Hayes that she knew a very good small firm of painters and decorators if they wanted to add them to their list of service suppliers. Mr Hayes said that he left all that to the relevant manager but he did need someone to do a job for him in his own house out in Foxrock.

Kevin and Vera never stopped talking about the size and splendour of the house, and the niceness of the Hayes family, who had a little girl themselves called Marianne, Kevin and his father had done up the girl’s bedroom for her with every luxury you could think of. Her own little pink bathroom off it, for a child!

Vera and Kevin never sounded jealous, and always grateful for the introduction. Mr Hayes had been pleased with the work done and because of that recommended the small firm to others. Soon Kevin drove a smarter van. There was even talk of a bigger house when the new baby arrived.

They were still friendly with Jacko, who was in the electrical business. Could I put a bit of work
his
way? Connie had wondered. Vera said she’d test the water. What Jacko actually said was: ‘You can tell that stuck-up bitch to take her favours and stuff them.’ ‘He didn’t seem keen’ was the way Vera reported it, being someone who liked to keep the peace.

And just when Vera and Kevin’s new baby, Charlie, was born Connie met Harry Kane. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen, tall with thick brown hair which curled on his shoulders, very unlike the business people she mixed with. He had an easy smile for everyone and a manner that seemed to expect that he would get good attention everywhere. Doormen rushed to open doors for him, the girl in the boutique left other customers to get him his copy of the newspaper and even Connie, who knew she was regarded as an ice maiden, looked up and smiled at him welcomingly.

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.