Evening Class (8 page)

‘You don’t want to be with me, happy like it always is and so good?’ He was very surprised.

‘No, Mario, not now. Thank you very very much but not tonight.’

He got out of bed and came around to look at her. He lit the candle in the pottery holder; her room did not run to a bedside light. She lay there white-faced, her long red hair on the pillow under the absurd coverlet with all the cities’ names on it. He was at a loss for words. ‘Soon you must do the places of Sicily,’ he said. ‘Catania, Palermo, Cefalu, Agrigento…’ She sighed again.

He left troubled. But the hills around Annunziata, with their daily carpet of new flowers, had healing powers. Signora walked among them until the colour came back to her face.

The Leone family sometimes packed her a little basket with bread and cheese and olives, and Gabriella the stony-faced wife of Mario gave her a bottle of Marsala, saying that some people drank it as a tonic. The Leone family invited her to lunch on a Sunday and cooked pasta Norma, with aubergines and tomatoes. ‘Do you know why it’s called pasta Norma, Signora?’

‘No, Signora Leone. I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘Because it’s so good it is reaching the same height of perfection as the opera
Norma
by Bellini.’

‘Who was, of course, Sicilian,’ Signora finished proudly. They patted her hand. She knew so much about their country, their village. Who could fail to be delighted with her?

Paolo and Gianna, who had the little pottery shop, made her a special jug. They had written
Signora d’Irlanda
on it. And they put a little piece of gauze over it with beads at the edge. It was to keep her water fresh at night. No flies could get in, or dust in the hot summers. People came in and did little jobs for the old couple whose house she lived in, so that Signora would not have to worry about earning her rent. And, bathed in all this friendship and indeed love, she became well and strong again. And she knew she was loved here even if she wasn’t loved back home in Dublin, where the letters were written with greater frequency, wanting to know her plans.

She wrote back almost dreamily of life in Annunziata, and how she was so needed here, by the old people upstairs who relied on her. By the Leone family who fought so often and so volubly, she had to go to lunch there every Sunday to make sure they didn’t kill each other. She wrote about Mario’s hotel and how much it depended on tourism so everyone in the village had to pull together to get the visitors to come. Her own job was to guide tourists around and she had found a lovely place to take them on a little escorted walk, to a kind of ledge that looked down over the valleys and up at the mountain.

She had suggested that Mario’s younger brother open a little cafe there. It was called Vista del Monte, mountain view—but didn’t it sound so much more wonderful in Italian?

She expressed sympathy for her father, who now spent much of his time in hospital. How right it had been for them to sell the farm and move to Dublin. And for mother now struggling, they told her, to manage in a flat in Dublin. So often they had explained that the flat had an extra bedroom, and so often she ignored the information, only enquiring after her parents’ health and wondering vaguely about the postal services, saying that she had written so regularly since 1969 and now here they were in the eighties and yet her parents had never been able to reply to a letter. Surely the only explanation was that all the letters must have gone astray.

Brenda wrote a letter of high approval.

‘Good girl yourself. You have them totally confused. I’d say you’ll have a letter from your mother within the month. But stick to your guns. Don’t come home for her. She wouldn’t write unless she had to.’

The letter came, and Signora’s heart turned over at her mother’s familiar writing. Yes, familiar even after all these years. She knew every word had been dictated by Helen and Rita.

It skated over twelve years of silence, of obstinate refusal to reply to the beseechings of her lonely daughter overseas. It blamed most of it on ‘your father’s very doctrinaire attitudes to morality’. Signora smiled wanly to herself at the phrase. If she were to look at a writing pad for a hundred years, her mother could not have come up with such an expression.

In the last paragraph the letter said: ‘Please come home, Nora. Come home and live with us. We will not interfere with your life but we need you, otherwise we would not ask.’

And otherwise they would not have written, Signora thought to herself. She was surprised that she did not feel more bitter, but that had all passed now. She had been through it when Brenda had written saying how they didn’t care about her as a person, only as someone who would look after elderly and unbending parents.

Here in her peaceful life she could afford to feel sorry for them. Compared to what she had in life, her own family had nothing at all. She wrote gently and explained that she could not come. If they had read her letters they would realise how much she was needed here now. And that of course if they had let her know in the past that they wanted her as part of their life then she would have made plans not to get so involved in the life of this beautiful peaceful place. But of course how could she have known that they would call on her? They had never been in touch, and she was sure they would understand.

And the years went on.

Signora’s hair got streaks of grey in the red. But unlike the dark women who surrounded her it didn’t seem to age her. Her hair just looked bleached by the sun. Gabriella looked matronly now. She sat at the desk of the hotel, her face heavier and rounder, her eyes much more beady than when they had flashed with jealousy across the
piazza
. Her sons were tall and difficult, no longer the little dark-eyed angels who did whatever they were asked to do.

Probably Mario had got older too, but Signora didn’t see it. He came to her room—less frequently, and often just to lie there with his arm around her.

The quilt had hardly any space on it now for more cities. Signora had put in smaller places that appealed to her.

‘You should not put Giardini-Naxos there among the big places, it’s only a tiny place,’ Mario complained.

‘No, I don’t agree. When I went to Taormina I went out there on the bus, it was a lovely place… its own atmosphere, its own character, a lot of tourism. No, no, it deserves a place.’ And sometimes Mario would sigh heavily as if he had too many problems. He told her his worries. His second boy was wild. He was going to New York, aged only twenty. He was too young, he would get in with all the wrong people. No good would come of it.

‘He’s in with all the wrong people here,’ Signora said soothingly. ‘Possibly in New York he will be more timid, less assured. Let him go with your blessing because he’ll go anyway.’

‘You are very, very wise, Signora,’ he said, and lay with his head tucked companionably on her shoulder.

She didn’t close her eyes, she looked at the dark ceiling and thought of the times in this room when he had told her she was foolish, the most foolish stupid woman in the world, to have followed him here. Here where there was no future for her. And the years had turned it all into wisdom. How strange the world was.

And then the daughter of Mario and Gabriella became pregnant. The boy was not at all the kind of husband they would have wanted for her, a boy from the countryside who washed pots in the kitchen of the hotel in the
piazza
. Mario came and cried in her room about this, his daughter, a child, a little child herself. The disgrace, the shame.

It was 1994, she told him. Even in Ireland it was no longer a disgrace and a shame. It was the way life went on. You coped with it. Perhaps the boy could come and work in Vista del Monte, expand it a little, then he would be seen to have his own place.

That was her fiftieth birthday, but Signora didn’t tell Mario, she didn’t tell anyone. She had embroidered herself a little cushion cover with
BUON COMPLEANNO
, Happy Birthday, on it. She fingered it when Mario had gone, his tears for his defiled daughter dried. ‘I wonder am I really mad as I feared all those years ago?’

She watched from her window as the young Maria was married to the boy who worked in the kitchen, just as she had watched Mario and Gabriella go to the church. The bells of the campanile were still the same, ringing over the mountain like bells should ring.

Imagine being in her fifties. She didn’t feel a day older than she had when she came here. She didn’t have a single regret. Were there many people in this or any other place who could say the same?

And of course she had been right in her predictions. Maria was married to the man who was not worthy of her and her family, but the loss was made up by the boy having to work night and day in Vista del Monte. And if people gossiped about it, it was only for a few days.

And their second son, the boy who was wild, went to New York and the news was that he was as good as gold. He was working in his cousin’s trattoria and saving money every week for the day when he would buy his own place back home in the island of Sicily.

Signora always slept with her window on the square slightly open, so she was one of the first to hear the news when the brothers of Gabriella, thickset men, middle-aged now, came running from their cars. First she heard them wake the
dottore
in his house. Signora stood in the shadows of her shutter and watched. There had been an accident, that much was obvious.

She peered to see what had happened. Please God may
it
not be one of their children. They had already had too many problems with that family.

And then she saw the solid figure of Gabriella on the doorstep, in her nightdress, with a shawl around her shoulders. Her hands were to her face and the sky was rent apart by her cries.

‘MARIO, MARIO…’

The sound went up into the mountains around Annunziata and down into the valleys.

And the sound went into Signora’s bedroom, and chilled her heart as she watched them lift the body out of the car.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, like stone. But soon, as the square filled up in the moonlight with his family and neighbours and friends, she found herself amongst them, the tears flowing unchecked. She saw his face with the bloodstains and the bruising. He had been driving home from a village not far away. He had missed a corner. The car had turned over many times.

She knew she must touch his face. Nothing would ever settle down in the world unless she touched him, kissed him even as his sisters and children and wife were doing. She moved towards him unaware of anyone looking at her, forgetful entirely of the years of secrecy and covering up.

When she was quite near him she felt hands reaching out to her, and keen bodies in the crowd pulled her back. Signora Leone, her friends the pottery makers, Paolo and Gianna and, strange as it seemed ever afterwards, two of the brothers of Gabriella. They just moved her away, back from where the eyes of Annunziata would see her naked grief and the memories of the village would store yet one more amazing happening, the night when the
Signora irlandese
broke down and admitted in public her love for the man who ran the hotel.

She was in houses that night where she had never been before, and people gave her strong brandy to drink and someone stroked her hand. Outside the walls of these houses she could hear the wailing and the prayers, and sometimes she stood to go and stand at her rightful place by his body but always gentle hands held her back.

On the day of his funeral, she sat pale and calm at her window, her head bowed as they carried his coffin out from the hotel and across the square to the church with the frescoes and ceramics. The bell was one lonely mournful sound. Nobody looked up at her window. Nobody saw the tears fall down her face and splash on to the embroidery that lay in her lap.

And after that they all assumed that she should now be leaving, that it was time for her to go home.

Little by little she realised it. Signora Leone would say: ‘Before you go back you must come once with me to the great passion procession in my home town Trapani… you will be able to tell the people back in Ireland about it all.’

And Paolo and Gianna gave her a big plate they had made specially for her return. ‘You can put on it all the fruits that are grown in Ireland and the plate will remind you of your time in Annunziata.’ They seemed to think that this is what she would do.

But Signora had no home to go to, she didn’t want to move. She was in her fifties, she had lived here since before she was thirty. This was where she would die. One day the church bell here would ring for her funeral too, she had money to pay for it all ready in a little carved wooden box.

So she took no notice of the hints that were getting heavier, and the advice that was trembling on lips waiting to be given.

Not until Gabriella came to see her.

Gabriella crossed the square in her dark mourning clothes. Her face looked old, as if it were set in lines of grief and sorrow. She had never come to Signora’s rooms before. She knocked on the door as if she had been expected. Signora fussed to make her guest welcome, offering her a little fruit juice and water, a biscuit from the tin. Then she sat and waited.

Gabriella walked around the two small rooms. She fingered the coverlet on the bed with all its intricately woven place names.

‘It’s exquisite, Signora,’ she said.

‘You are too kind, Signora Gabriella.’

Then there was a long silence.

‘Will you go back soon to your country?’ Gabriella asked eventually.

‘There is nobody for me to go back to,’ Signora said simply.

‘But there is nobody here, nobody that you should want to stay for. Not now.’ Gabriella was equally direct.

Signora nodded as if to agree. ‘But in Ireland, Signora Gabriella, there is nobody at all. I came here when I was a young girl, now I am a woman, middle-aged, about to approach the beginning of old age. I thought I would stay here.’ Their eyes met.

‘You do not have friends here, not a real life, Signora.’

‘I have more than I have in Ireland.’