Evening Class

EVENING CLASSby Maeve Binchy

Also by Maeve Binchy

Light a Penny Candle

Echoes London Transports

Dublin

The Lilac Bus

Firefly Summer

Silver Wedding

Circle of Friends

The Copper Beech

The GlassLake

Cross Lines (short stories)

To dear, generous Gordon,

grazie per tutto, and with all my love

AIDAN

There was a time back in 1970 when they would love filling in a questionnaire. Aidan might find one in a newspaper at a weekend. Are You A Thoughtful Husband? or possibly What Do You Know About Show Biz? They scored high on the answers to Are You Well Suited? and How Well Do You Treat Your Friends?

But that was long ago.

Nowadays if Nell or Aidan Dunne saw a list of questions they didn't rush eagerly to fill them in and see how they scored. It would be too painful to answer How Often Do You Make Love? a) More than four times a week? b) Twice a week on average? c) Every Saturday night? d) Less than this? Who would want to acknowledge how very much less than this, and look up what kind of interpretation the questionnaire sages had applied to this admission?

The page would be turned nowadays if either of them saw a survey asking Are You Compatible? And there had been no row, no falling out. Aidan had not been unfaithful to Nell, and he assumed that she had not strayed either. Was it arrogant to assume this? She was an attractive looking woman; other men would definitely find her worth a second glance, as they always had.

Aidan knew that a great many men who were genuinely astounded when it was proved that their wives had been having affairs, were just smug and unobservant. But not him. He knew Nell wouldn't meet anyone else, make love to another man. He knew her so well he would know if this was the case. Anyway, where would she have met anyone? And if she had met someone she fancied where would they have gone? No, it was a ludicrous idea.

Possibly everyone else felt like this. It could well be one of the things they didn't tell you about getting older. Like having aches and pains in the backs of your legs after a long walk, like not being able to hear or understand the lyrics of pop songs any more. Maybe you just drifted apart from the person that you had thought was the centre of the world.

It was quite likely that every other man of forty-eight going on forty-nine felt the same. All over the world there could be men who Canted their wives to be eager and excited about everything. It Wasn't only about lovemaking, it was about enthusiasm for other things as well.

It had been so long now since Nell had asked about his job, and his hopes and dreams in the school. There was a time when she had known the name of every teacher and many of the pupils, when she would talk about the large classes, and the posts of responsibility and the school excursions and plays, about Aidan's projects for the Third World.

But now she hardly knew what was happening. When the new Minister for Education was appointed Nell just shrugged. 'I suppose she can't be worse than the last one,' was her only comment. Nell knew nothing of the Transition Year except to call it a bloody luxury. Imagine giving children all that time to think and discuss and… find themselves… instead of getting down to their exams.

And Aidan didn't blame her.

He had become very dull explaining things. He could hear his own voice echoing in his ears; there was a kind of drone to it, and his daughters would raise their eyes to heaven wondering why at the ages of twenty-one and nineteen they should have to listen to any of this.

He tried not to bore them. Aidan knew it was a characteristic of teachers; they were so used to the captive audience in the classroom they could go on for far too long, approaching every subject from several sides until they were sure that the listener had grasped the drift.

He made huge efforts to key into their lives.

But Nell never had any stories or any issues to discuss about the restaurant where she worked as a cashier. 'Ah, for heaven's sake, Aidan, it's a job. I sit there and I take their credit cards, or their cheque cards or their cash, and I give them change and a receipt. And then at the end of the day I come home and at the end of the week I get my wages. And that's the way it is for ninety per cent of the world. We don't have issues and dramas and power struggles; we're normal, that's all.'

It was not intended to wound him or put him down, but still it was a slap in the face. It was obvious that he himself must have been going on and on about confrontations and conflicts in the staff room. And the days were gone - obviously long gone - when Nell was waiting eagerly to know what had happened, always rooting for him, championing his cause and declaring that his enemies were her enemies. Aidan ached for the companionship, the solidarity and the teamwork of other times.

Perhaps when he became Principal it would return.

Or was this fooling himself? Possibly the headship would still hold little interest for his wife and two daughters. His home just ticked along easily. Recently he had felt this odd feeling that he had died some time ago, and they were all managing perfectly well. Nell went to and from the restaurant. She went to see her mother once a week; no, Aidan needn't come, she had said, it was just a nice family chat. Her mother liked to see them all regularly to know were they all right.

'And are you all right?' Aidan had asked anxiously.

'You're not with the Fifth Years now doing amateur philosophy,' Nell had said. 'I'm as all right as anyone, I suppose. Can't you leave it at that?'

But of course Aidan couldn't leave it. He told her it wasn't amateur philosophy it was Introduction to Philosophy, and it wasn't Fifth Years, it was Transition Years. He would never forget the look Nell had given him. She had begun to say something but then changed her mind. Her face was full of distant pity. She looked at him as she might have looked at a poor tramp sitting on the street, his coat tied with a rope and drinking the dregs of a ginger wine bottle.

He fared no better with his daughters.

Grania worked in the bank but had little to report from it, to her father at any rate. Sometimes he came across her talking to her friends, and she seemed much more animated. And it was the same with Brigid. The travel agency is fine, Dad, stop going on about it. Of course it's fine, and the free holiday twice a year, and the long lunch hours because they worked a rota.

Grania didn't want to talk about the whole system of banking and whether it was unfair to encourage people to take loans that they would find it difficult to repay. She didn't invent the rule, she told him, she had an In basket on her desk and she dealt with what was in it each day. That was it. Dead simple. Brigid didn't have any views on whether the travel trade was selling tourists some kind of dream it could never deliver. 'Dad, if they don't want a holiday nobody's twisting their arms, they don't have to come in and buy one.'

Aidan wished he were more observant. When had all this happened… this growing apart? There was a time when the girls had sat all clean and shiny after their bath time in pink dressing gowns while he told them stories and Nell would look on pleased from across the room. But that was years back. There had been good times since then. When they were doing their exams, for example, Aidan remembered doing out revision sheets for them, planning how they should study to the best advantage. They had been grateful then. He remembered the celebrations when Grania got her Leaving Certificate and later when she was accepted in the bank. There had been a lunch on each occasion in a big hotel, the waiter had taken photographs of them all. And it had been the same with Brigid, a lunch and a picture session. They looked a perfectly happy family in those pictures. Was it all a facade?

In a way it must have been, because here he was now only a few short years later, and he could not sit down with his wife and two daughters, the people he loved most in the world, and tell them his fears that he might not be made Principal.

He had put in so much time in that school, worked so many extra hours, involved himself in every aspect of it, and somewhere in his bones he felt that he would be" passed over.

Another man, a man almost precisely his own age, might well get the post. This was Tony O'Brien, a man who had never stayed on after hours to support a school team playing a home match, a man who had not involved himself in the restructuring of the curriculum, in the fundraising for the new building project. Tony O'Brien who smoked quite openly in the corridors of a school which was meant to be a smoke-free zone, who had his lunch in a pub, letting everyone know it was a pint and a half and a cheese sandwich. A bachelor, in no sense a family man, often seen with a girl half his age on his arm, and yet he was being suggested as a very possible candidate for head of the school.

Many things had confused Aidan in the last few years, but nothing as much as this. By any standards Tony O'Brien should not be in the running at all. Aidan ran his hands through his hair, which was thinning. Tony O'Brien of course had a huge shock of thick brown hair falling into his eyes and resting on his collar. Surely the world hadn't gone so mad that they would take this into consideration when choosing a principal?

Lots of hair good, thinning hair bad… Aidan grinned to himself. If he could laugh to himself at some of the worst bits of the paranoia maybe he could keep self-pity at bay. And he would have to laugh to himself. Somehow, there was no one else to laugh with these days.

There was a questionnaire in one of the Sunday papers, Are You Tense? Aidan filled in the answers truthfully. He scored over 75 on the scale, which he knew was high. He wasn't however quite prepared for the terse and dismissive verdict. If you scored over 70 you are in fact a clenched fist. Lighten up friend, before you explode.

They had always said that these tests were just jokes really, space fillers. That's what Aidan and Nell used to say when they emerged less well than they had hoped from a questionnaire. But this time, of course, he was on his own. He told himself that newspapers had to think of something to take up half a page, otherwise the edition would appear with great white blanks.

But still it upset him. Aidan knew that he was jumpy, that was one thing. But a clenched fist? No wonder they might think twice about him as headmaster material.

He had written his answers on a separate sheet of paper lest anyone in the family should find and read his confessional of worries and anxieties and sleeplessness.

Sundays were the days that Aidan now found hardest to bear. In the past when they were a real family, a happy family, they had gone on picnics in the summer and taken healthy, bracing walks when the weather was cold. Aidan boasted that his family would never be like those Dublin families who didn't know anywhere except the area they lived themselves.

One Sunday he would take them on a train south and they would climb Bray Head, and look into the neighbouring county of Wicklow, another Sunday they would go north to the seaside villages of Rush and Lusk and Skerries, small places each with their own character, all on the road that would eventually take them up to the Border. He had arranged day excursions to Belfast for them too, so that they would not grow up in ignorance of the other part of Ireland.

Those had been some of his happiest times, the combination of schoolteacher and father, explainer and entertainer. Daddy knew the answer to everything: where to get the bus out to CarrickfergusCastle, or the UlsterFolkMuseum, and a grand place for chips before getting on the train back home.

Aidan remembered a woman on the train telling Grania and B rigid that they were lucky little girls to have a daddy who taught them so much. They had nodded solemnly to agree with her and Nell had whispered to him that the woman obviously fancied Aidan but she wasn't going to get her hands on him. And Aidan had felt twelve feet tall and the most important man on earth.

Now on a Sunday he felt increasingly that he was hardly noticed in his home.

They had never been people for the traditional Sunday lunch, roast beef or lamb or chicken and great dishes of potatoes and vegetables, like so many other families were. Because of their outings and adventures, Sunday had been a casual day in their home. Aidan wished that there were some fixed point in it. He went to Mass. Nell sometimes came with him, but usually she was going on somewhere afterwards to meet one of her sisters or a friend from work. And of course nowadays the shops were open on Sundays, so there were plenty of places to go.

The girls never went to Mass. It was useless to talk to them. He had given up when they were seventeen. They didn't get up until lunchtime and then they made sandwiches, looked at whatever they had videoed during the week, lounged around in dressing gowns, washed their hair, their clothes, spoke on the phone to friends, asked other friends in for coffee.

They behaved as if they lived in a flat together with their mother as a pleasant, eccentric landlady who had to be humoured. Grania and Brigid contributed a very small amount of money each for bed and board, and handed it over with a bad grace as if they were being bled dry. To his knowledge they contributed nothing else to the household budget. Not a tin of biscuits, a tub of ice cream nor a carton of fabric softener ever came from their purses, but they were quick to grizzle if these things weren't readily available.

Aidan wondered how Tony O'Brien spent his Sundays.

He knew that Tony certainly didn't go to Mass, he had made that clear to the pupils when they questioned him: 'Sir, sir, do you go to Mass on Sundays?'

'Sometimes I do, when I feel in the mood for talking to God,' Tony O'Brien had said.

Aidan knew this. It had been reported gleefully by the boys and girls, who used it as ammunition against those who said they had to go every Sunday under pain of Mortal Sin.

He had been very clever; too clever, Aidan thought. He didn't deny the existence of God, instead he had made out that he was a friend of God's and friends only drop in to have a chat when they are in good form. It made Tony O'Brien have the inside track somehow while Aidan Dunne was left on the outside, no friend of the Almighty, just a time server. It was one of the many annoying and unfair things about it all.

On a Sunday Tony O'Brien probably got up late… he lived in what they called a'townhouse' nowadays, which was the equivalent of a flat. Just one big room and kitchen downstairs, and one big bedroom and bathroom upstairs. The door opened straight onto the street. He had been observed leaving in the morning accompanied by young women.

There was a time when that would have ended his career, let alone his chances of promotion - back in the 1960s teachers had been sacked for having relationships outside marriage. Not, of course, that this was right. In fact, they had all protested very strongly at the time. But still, for a man who had never committed to any woman, to parade a succession of them through his townhouse, and still be considered headmaster material, a role model for the students… that wasn't right either.

What would Tony O'Brien be doing now, at two thirty on a wet Sunday? Maybe round to lunch at one of the other teachers' houses. Aidan had never been able to ask him since they literally didn't have lunch, and Nell would reasonably have enquired why he should impose on them a man he had been denouncing for five years. He might still be entertaining a lady from last night. Tony O'Brien said he owed a great debt of gratitude to the people of China since there was an excellent takeaway only three doors away - lemon chicken, sesame toast and chilli prawns were always great with a bottle of Australian Chardonnay and the Sunday papers. Imagine, at his age, a man who could be a grandfather, entertaining girls and buying Chinese food on a Sunday.

But then again, why not?

Aidan Dunne was a fair man. He had to admit that people had a choice in such matters. Tony O'Brien didn't drag these women back to his townhouse by their hair. There was no law that said he should be married and bring up two distant daughters as Aidan had done. And in a way it was to the man's credit that he wasn't a hypocrite, he didn't try to disguise his lifestyle.

It was just that things had changed so very much. Someone had moved the goalposts about what was acceptable and what was not, and they hadn't consulted Aidan first.

And how would Tony spend the rest of the day?

Surely they wouldn't go back to bed again for the afternoon? Maybe he would go for a walk or the girl would go home and Tony would play music, he often spoke of his CDs. When he had won £350 on the Match Four of the Lotto he had hired a carpenter who was working on the school extension, and paid him the money straight out to make a rack that would hold 500 CDs. Everyone had been impressed. Aidan had been jealous. Where would you get the money to buy that number of CDs? He knew for a fact that Tony O'Brien bought about three a week. When would you get the time to listen to them? And then Tony would stroll down to the pub and meet a few friends, or go to a foreign language movie with subtitles, or to a jazz club.

Maybe it was all this moving around that made him more interesting and gave him the edge on everyone else. Certainly on Aidan. Aidan's Sundays were nothing that would interest anyone.

When he came back from late Mass around one o'clock and asked would anyone like bacon and egg, there was a chorus of disgust from his daughters: 'God no, Daddy!' or 'Daddy, please don't even mention something like that, and could you keep the kitchen door closed if you're going to have it?' If Nell were at home she might raise her eyes from a novel and ask 'Why?' Her tone was never hostile, only bewildered, as if it were the most unlikely suggestion that had ever been made. Left to herself Nell might make a salad sandwich at three.

Aidan thought back wistfully to his mother's table, where the chat of the week took place and no one was excused without a very good reason. Of course, dismantling this had all been his own doing. Making them into free spirits who would discover the length and breadth of County Dublin and even the neighbouring counties on their one full day off. How could he have known it would lead to his being displaced and restless, wandering from the kitchen where everyone heated up their own food in a microwave, to the sitting room where there was some programme that he didn't want to see on television, to the bedroom where it was so long since he had made love with his wife he could barely endure looking at it until it was time to go to sleep.

There was of course the dining room. The room with the heavy dark furniture that they had hardly used since they bought the house. Even if they had been people who entertained, it was too small and poky. Once or twice recently Nell had suggested casually that Aidan should make it into a study for himself. But he had resisted. He felt that if he turned it into a copy of his room at the school he might somehow lose his identity as head of this house, as father, provider and man who once believed that this was the centre of the world.

He also feared that if he made himself too much at home there then the next step would be that he should sleep there too. After all, there was a downstairs cloakroom. It would be perfectly feasible to leave the three women to roam the upstairs area.

He must never do that, he must fight to keep his place in the family as he was fighting to keep his presence in the minds of the Board of Management, the men and women who would choose the next Principal of Mountainview College.

His mother had never understood why the school wasn't called Saint something college. That's what all schools were called. It was hard to explain to her that things were different now, a changed setup, but he kept reassuring her that there were both a priest and a nun on the Board of Management. They didn't make all the decisions but they were there to give a voice to the role the religious had played in Irish education over the years.

Aidan's mother had sniffed. Things had come to a strange state when priests and nuns were meant to be pleased that they had a place on the Board instead of running it like God intended. In vain Aidan had tried to explain about the fall in vocations. Even secondary schools ostensibly run by religious orders had in the nineties only a very few religious in teaching positions. The numbers just weren't there.

Nell had heard him arguing the situation with his mother once and had suggested that he save his breath. 'Tell her they still run it, Aidan. It makes for an easier life. And of course in a way they do. People are afraid of them.' It irritated him greatly when Nell spoke like this. Nell had no reason to fear the power of the Catholic Church. She had attended its services for as long as it had suited her, had abandoned confession and any of the Pope's teachings on contraception at an early stage. Why should she pretend that it had been a burden that lay heavily on her? But he didn't fight her on

ü this. He was calm and accepting as in so many things. She had no time for his mother; no hostility, but no interest in her at all.

Sometimes his mother wondered when she would get invited for dinner and Aidan had to say that the way things were they were in a state of flux, but once they got organised…

He had been saying this for over two decades and as an excuse it had worn thin. And it wasn't fair to fault Nell over this. It wasn't as if she was constantly inviting her own mother around or anything. His mother had been asked to any family celebration in hotels, of course. But it wasn't the same. And it had been so long since there was anything to celebrate. Except, of course, the hope that he would be made Principal.

'Did you have a good weekend?' Tony O'Brien asked him in the staffroom.

Aidan looked at him, surprised. It was so long since anyone had enquired. 'Quiet, you know,' Aidan said.

'Oh well, lucky you. I was at a party last night and I'm suffering after it. Still, only three and a half hours till the good old re-hydrating lunchtime pint,' Tony groaned.

'Aren't you marvellous, the stamina I mean.' Aidan hoped the bitterness and criticism were not too obvious in his voice.

'Not at all, I'm far too long in the tooth for this, but I don't have the consolations of wife and family like all the rest of you do.' Tony's smile was warm. If you didn't know him and his lifestyle you'd have believed that he was genuinely wistful, Aidan thought to himself.

They walked together along the corridors of Mountainview College, the place his mother would like to have been called Saint Kevin's or even more particularly Saint Anthony's. Anthony was the saint who found lost things, and his mother had increasing calls on him as she got older. He found her glasses a dozen times a day. The least that people could do was thank him by naming the local school after him. Still, when her son was Principal… she lived in hope.

The children ran past them, some of them chorusing 'good morning', others looking sullenly away. Aidan Dunne knew them all, and their parents. And remembered many of their elder brothers and sisters. Tony O'Brien knew hardly any of them. It was so unfair.

'I met someone who knew you last night,' Tony O'Brien said suddenly.

'At a party? I doubt that,' Aidan smiled.

'No, definitely she did. When I told her I taught here she asked did I know you.'

'And who was she?' Aidan was interested in spite of himself.

'I never got her name. Nice girl.'

'An ex-pupil possibly?'

'No, then she'd have known me.'

'A mystery indeed,' Aidan said, and watched as Tony O'Brien went into Fifth Year.

The silence that fell immediately was beyond explanation. Why did they respect him so much, fear to be caught talking, behaving badly? Tony O'Brien didn't remember their names, for heaven's sake. He barely marked their work, he lost not an hour's sleep over their examination results. Basically he didn't care about them very much. And yet they sought his approval. Aidan couldn't understand it. In sixteen-year-old boys and girls.

You always heard that women were meant to like men who treated them hard. He felt a flicker of relief that Nell had never crossed Tony O'Brien's path. Then it was followed by another flicker, a sense of recognition that somehow Nell had left him long ago.

Aidan Dunne went into the Fourth Years and stood at the door for three minutes until they gradually came to a sort of silence for him.

He thought that Mr. Walsh, the old Principal, may have passed by behind him in the corridor. But he may have imagined it. You always imagined that the Principal was passing by when your class was in disorder. It was something every single teacher he ever met admitted to. Aidan knew that it was a trivial worry. The Principal admired him far too much to care if the Fourth Years were a bit noisier than usual. Aidan was the most responsible teacher in Mountainview. Everyone knew that.

That was the afternoon that Mr. Walsh called him into the Principal's office. He was a man whose retirement could not come quickly enough. Today for the first time there was no small talk.

'You and I feel the same about a lot of things, Aidan.'

'I hope so, Mr. Walsh.'

'Yes, we look at the world from the same viewpoint But it's not enough.'

'I don't know exactly what you mean?' And Aidan spoke only the truth. Was this a philosophical discussion? Was it a warning? A reprimand?

'It's the system, you see. The way they run things. The Principal doesn't have a vote. Sits there like a bloody eunuch, that's what it amounts to.'

'A vote?' Aidan thought he knew where this was going, but decided to pretend not to.

It had been a wrong calculation. It only annoyed the Principal. 'Come on, man, you know what I'm talking about. The job, the job, man.'

'Well, yes.' Aidan now felt foolish.

'I'm a non-voting member of the Board of Management. I don't have a say. If I did you'd be in this job in September. I'd give you a few bits of advice about taking no nonsense from those louts in Fourth Year. But I still think you're the man with the values, and the sense of what's right for a school.'

'Thank you, Mr. Walsh, that's very good to know.'

'Man, will you listen to me before you mouth these things… there's nothing to thank me for. I can't do anything for you, that's what I'm trying to tell you, Aidan.' The elder man looked at him despairingly as if Aidan were some very slow-learning child in First Year.

The look was not unlike the way Nell looked at him sometimes, Aidan realised with a great feeling of sadness. He had been teaching other people's children since he was twenty-two years of age, over twenty-six years now, yet he did not know how to respond to a man who was trying hard to help him; he had only managed to annoy him.

The Principal was looking at him intently. For all that Aidan knew Mr. Walsh might be able to read his thoughts, recognise the realisation that had just sunk into Aidan's brain. 'Come on now, pull yourself together. Don't look so stricken. I might be wrong, I could have it all wrong. I'm an old horse going out to grass, and I suppose I just wanted to cover myself in case it didn't go in your favour.'

Aidan could see that the Principal deeply regretted having spoken at all. 'No, no. I greatly appreciate it, I mean you are very good to tell me where you stand in all this… I mean…' Aidan's voice trickled away.

'It wouldn't be the end of the world you know… suppose you didn't get it.'

'No no, absolutely not.'

'I mean, you're a family man, many compensations. Lots of life going on at home, not wedded to this place like I was for so long.' Mr. Walsh had been a widower for many years, his only son visited him but rarely.

'Utterly right, just as you say,' Aidan said.

'But?' the older man looked kind, approachable.

Aidan spoke slowly. 'You're right, it's not the end of the world, but I suppose I thought… I hoped that it might be a new beginning, liven everything up in my own life. I wouldn't mind the extra hours, I never did. I spend a lot of hours here already. In a way I am a bit like you, you know, wedded to Mountainview.'

'I know you are.' Mr. Walsh was gentle.

'I never found any of it a chore. I like my classes and particularly the Transition Year when you can bring them out of themselves a bit, get to know them, let them think. And I even like the parent teacher evenings which everyone else hates, because I can remember all the kids and… I suppose I like it all except for the politics of it, the sort of jostling for position bit.' Aidan stopped suddenly. He was afraid there would be a break in his voice, and also he realised that his jostling hadn't worked.

Mr. Walsh was silent.

Outside the room were the noises of a school at four thirty in the afternoon. In the distance the sounds of bicycle bells shrilling, doors banging, voices shouting as they ran for the buses in each direction. Soon the sound of the cleaners with their buckets and mops, and the hum of the electric polisher, would be heard. It was so familiar, so safe. And until this moment Aidan had thought that there was a very sporting chance that this would be his.

'I suppose it's Tony O'Brien,' he said in a defeated tone.

'He seems to be the one they want. Nothing definite yet, not till next week, but that's where their thinking lies.'

'I wonder why?' Aidan felt almost dizzy with jealousy and confusion.

'Oh search me, Aidan. The man's not even a practising Catholic. He has the morals of a torn cat. He doesn't love the place, care about it like we do, but they think he's the man for the times that are in it. Tough ways of dealing with tough problems.'

'Like beating an eighteen-year-old boy nearly senseless,' Aidan said.

'Well, they all think that the boy was a drug dealer, and he certainly didn't come anywhere near the school again.'

'You can't run a place like that,' Aidan said.

'You wouldn't and I wouldn't, but our day is over.'

'You're sixty-five, with respect, Mr. Walsh. I am only forty-eight, I didn't think my day was over.'

'And it needn't be, Aidan. That's what I'm telling you. You've got a lovely wife and daughters, a life out there. You should build on all that. Don't let Mountainview become like a mistress to you.'

'You're very kind and I appreciate what you say. No, I'm not just mouthing words. Truly I do appreciate being warned in advance, makes me look less foolish.' And he left the room with a very straight back.

At home he found Nell in her black dress and yellow scarf, the uniform she wore for work in the restaurant.

'But you don't work Monday night,' he cried in dismay.

'They were short-handed, and I thought why not, there's nothing on television,' she said. Then possibly she saw his face. 'There's a nice bit of steak in the fridge,' she said. 'And some of Saturday's potatoes… they'd be grand fried up with an onion. Right?'

'Right,' he said. He wouldn't have told her anyway. Maybe it was better that Nell was going out. 'Are the girls home?' he asked.

'Grania's taken possession of the bathroom. Heavy date tonight, apparently.'

'Anyone we know?' He didn't know why he said it. He could see her irritation.

'How would it be anyone we know?'

'Remember when they were toddlers and we knew all their friends?' Aidan said.

'Yes, and remember too when they kept us awake all night roaring and bawling. I'll be off now.'

'Fine, take care.' His voice was flat.

'Are you all right, Aidan?'

'Would it matter all that much if I were or I weren't?'

'What kind of an answer is that? There's very little point in asking you a civil question if this is all the response I get.'

'I mean it. Does it matter?'

'Not if you're going to put on this self-pitying thing. We're all tired, Aidan, life's hard for everyone. Why do you think you're the only one with problems?'

'What problems do you have? You never tell me.'

'And as sure as hell I'm not going to tell you now with three minutes before the bus.'

She was gone.

He made a cup of instant coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Brigid came in. She was dark-haired, freckled like he was but fortunately less square. Her elder sister had Nell's blonde good looks.

'Daddy, it's not fair, she's been in the bathroom for nearly an hour. She was home at five thirty and she went in at six and now it's nearly seven. Daddy, tell her to get out and let me in.'

'No,' he said quietly.

'What do you mean, no?' Brigid was startled.

What would he usually have said? Something bland, trying to keep the peace, reminding her there was a shower in the downstairs cloakroom. But tonight he hadn't the energy to placate them. Let them fight, he would make no effort to stop them.

'You're grown up women, sort out the bathroom between you,' he said, and walked out with his coffee into the dining room, closing the door behind him.

He sat still for a while and looked around him. It seemed to signify all that was wrong with the life they lived. There were no happy family meals around this big bleak table. Friends and extended family never drew up those dark chairs to talk animatedly.

When Grania and Brigid brought friends home they took them up to their bedrooms or giggled with Nell in the kitchen. Aidan was left in the sitting room looking at television programmes that he didn't want to see. Wouldn't it be better if he had his own little place, somewhere he could feel at peace?

He had seen a desk that he would love in a second-hand shop, one of those marvellous desks with a flap that came down and you sat and wrote on it like people were meant to do. And he would fresh flowers in the room because he liked their beauty and he didn't mind changing the water every day which Nell said was a bore.

And there was a nice light that came in the window here during the daytime, a soft light which they never saw. Maybe he could get a windowseat or sofa and put it there, and get big drapey curtains. And he could sit and read, and invite friends in, well, whoever there was, because he knew now there would be no life for him from the family any more. He would have to realise this and stop hoping that things would change.

He could have a wall with books on it, and maybe tapes until he got a CD player. Or maybe he would never get a CD player, he didn't have to try to compete with Tony O'Brien any more. He could put up pictures on the wall, frescoes from Florence, or those heads, those graceful necks and heads of Leonardo da Vinci. And he could play arias to himself, and read articles in magazines about the great operas. Mr. Walsh thought he had a life. It was time for him to get this life. His other life was over. He would not be married to Mountainview from now on. He sat warming his hands on the coffee cup. This room would need more heating, but that could be seen to. And it would need some lamps, the harsh centre light gave it no shadows, no mystery.

There was a knock on the door. His blonde daughter Grania stood there, dressed for her date. 'Are you all right, Daddy?' she asked. 'Brigid said you were a bit odd, I was wondering if you were sick.'

'No, I'm fine,' he said. But his voice seemed to come from far away. If it seemed far to him it must be very far to Grania; he forced a smile. 'Are you going somewhere nice?' he asked.

She was relieved to see him more himself. 'I don't know, I met a gorgeous fellow, but listen, I'll tell you about it sometime.' Her face was soft, kinder than it had been for a long while.

'Tell me now,' he said.

She shuffled. 'No, I can't yet, I have to see how we get on. If there's anything to tell, you'll be the first to know.'

He felt unbearably sad. This girl whose hand he had held for so long, who used to laugh at his jokes and think he knew everything, and she could hardly wait to get away. 'That's fine,' he said.

'Don't sit in here, Daddy. It's cold and lonely.'

He wanted to say it was cold and lonely everywhere, but he didn't. 'Enjoy your night,' he said.

He came back and sat by the television.

'What are you watching tonight?' he asked Brigid.

'What would you like, Daddy?' she countered.

He must have taken this blow much worse than he believed, his naked disappointment and sense of injustice had to be showing in his face if both his daughters…

He looked at his younger child, her freckled face and big brown eyes so dear and loved and familiar since she was a baby in the pram. Normally so impatient with him, tonight she looked at him as if he were someone on a stretcher in a hospital corridor, with that wave of sympathy that washes over you for a complete stranger going through a very bad time.

They sat beside each other until 11.30 pm, looking at television programmes that neither of them liked, but both with an air of pleasure that they were pleasing the other.

Aidan was in bed when Nell came home at one o'clock. The light was out but he was not asleep. He heard the taxi pulling up outside the door; they paid for a cab home when she was on the late shift.

She came into the room quietly. He could smell toothpaste and talcum powder, so she had washed in the bathroom rather than disturb him by using the hand basin in their bedroom. She had a bedside light which pointed downwards at whatever book she was reading and didn't shine in his eyes, so often he had lain there listening as she turned the pages. No words between them would ever be as interesting as the paperbacks she and her friends and sisters read, so nowadays he didn't offer them.

Even tonight when his heart was like lead and he wanted to hold her in his arms and cry into her soft clean skin and tell her about Tony O'Brien who should not be allowed do dinner duty but who was going to get the headship because he was more upfront, whatever that might mean. He would have liked to tell her that he was sorry that she had to go in and sit in a cash desk watching rich people eat and get drunk and pay their bills because it was better than anything else a Monday night might offer a married couple with two grown daughters. But he lay there and heard the faraway town hall clock strike the hours.

At two o'clock Nell put down her book with a little sigh and went to sleep, as far from him on her side of the bed as if she were sleeping in the next room. When the town hall said it was four o'clock Aidan realised that Crania would only have three hours' sleep before she went to work.

But there was nothing he could do or say. It was clearly understood that the girls lived their own lives without interrogation. He had not liked to think about it but had accepted that they had been to the Family Planning Association. They came home at the times that suited them and if they did not come home then they called at eight o'clock during breakfast to say they were all right, that they had stayed over with a girl friend. This was the polite fiction that covered the Lord knew what. But as Nell said, it was often the actual truth, and she much preferred Grania and Brigid staying in some other girl's flat rather than risking being driven home by a drunk, or not getting a taxi in the small hours of the morning.

Still, Aidan was relieved when he heard the hall door click and the light footsteps running up the stairs. At her age she could survive on three hours' sleep. And it would be three hours more than he would have.

His mind was racing with foolish plans. He could resign from the school as a protest. Surely he could get work in a private college, Sixth Year Colleges, for example, where they did intensive work. Aidan as a Latin teacher would be useful there, there were so many careers where students still needed Latin. He could appeal to the Board of Management, list the ways in which he had helped the school, the hours he had put in to see that it got its rightful place in the community, his liaising with Third Level education so that they would come and give the children talks and pointers about the future, his environmental studies backed up by the wildlife garden.

Without appearing to do so, he could let it be known that Tony O'Brien was a destructive element, that the very fact of using violence against an ex-pupil on the school premises sent the worst possible signal to those who were meant to follow his leadership. Or could he write an anonymous letter to the religious members of the Board, to the pleasant open-faced priest and the rather serious nun, who might have no idea of Tony O'Brien's loose moral code? Or could he get some of the parents to set up an action group? There were many, many things he could do.

Or else he would accept Mr. Walsh's view of him and become a man with a life outside the school, do up the dining room, make it his last-ditch stand against all the disappointments that life had thrown at him. His head felt as if someone had attached a lead weight to it during the night, but since he hadn't closed his eyes he knew that this could not have happened.

He shaved very carefully; he would not appear at school with little bits of Elastoplast on his face. He looked around his bathroom as if he had never seen it before. On every inch of available wall were prints of Venice, big shiny reproductions of Turners that he had bought when he went to the Tate Gallery. When the children were young they used to talk of going to the Venice Room not the bathroom; now they probably didn't see them at all, they were literally the wallpaper that they almost obscured.

He touched them and wondered would he ever go there again. He had been there twice as a young man, and then they had spent their honeymoon in Italy, where he had shown Nell his Venice, his Rome, his Florence, his Siena. It had been a wonderful time, but they had never gone back. When the children were young there hadn't been the money or the time, and then lately… well… who would have come with him? And it would have been a statement to have gone alone. Still, in the future there might have to be statements, and surely his soul was not so dead that it would not respond to the beauty of Italy?

Somewhere along the line they had all agreed not to talk at breakfast. And as a ceremony somehow it worked well for them. The coffee percolator was ready at eight, and the radio news switched on. A brightly coloured Italian dish of grapefruit was on the table. Everyone helped themselves and prepared their own. A basket of bread was there and an electric toaster sat on a tray with a picture of the Trevi Fountain on it. It had been a gift from Nell on his fortieth birthday. By twenty past eight Aidan and the girls had gone, each of them leaving their mug and plates in the dishwasher to minimise the clearing up.

He didn't give his wife a bad life, Aidan thought to himself. He had lived up to the promises he had made. It wasn't an elegant house but it had radiators and appliances and he paid for the windows to be cleaned three times a year, the carpet to be steamed every two years, and the house painted on the outside every three years.

Stop thinking in this ridiculous petty-clerk way, Aidan warned himself, and forcing a smile on his face began his exit.

'Nice evening last night, Crania?' he asked.

'Yeah, OK.' There was no sign of the hesitant confidences of last night. No wondering about whether people were sincere or not.

'Good, good,' he nodded. 'Was it busy in the restaurant?' he asked Nell.

'Fair for a Monday night, you know, nothing spectacular,' she said. She spoke perfectly pleasantly but as if to a stranger she had met on a bus.

Aidan took up his briefcase and left for school. His mistress, Mountainview College. What a fanciful idea. She certainly didn't have the allures of a lover to him this morning.

He stood for a moment at the gates of the school yard, scene of the disgraceful and brutal fight between Tony O'Brien and that boy whose ribs were broken and who needed stitches over his eye and in his lower lip. The yard was untidy, with litter blowing in the early morning breezes. The bicycle shed needed to be painted, the bikes were not properly stacked. Outside the gates the bus stop was open and exposed to the winds. If Bus Eireann would not provide a proper bus shelter for the children who waited there after school, then the Vocational Education Committee should do so, and if they refused a parents' committee would raise the funds. These were the kind of things Aidan Dunne had intended to do when he was Principal. Things that would never be done now.

He nodded gruffly to the children who saluted him, instead of addressing them all by name which was his usual way, and he walked into the staffroom to find no one there except Tony O'Brien mixing a headache seltzer in a glass.

'I'm getting too old for these nights,' he confided to Aidan.

Aidan longed to ask him why he didn't just cut them out, but that would be counterproductive. He must make no false stupid moves, in fact no moves at all until he had worked out what his plan was to be. He must continue in his bland, good-natured way.

'I suppose all work and no play…' he began.

But Tony O'Brien was in no mood to hear platitudes. 'I think forty-five is a sort of watershed. It's half of ninety after all, it's telling you something. Not that some of us listen.' He drained the glass and smacked his lips.

'Was it worth it, I mean the late night?'

'Who knows if it's ever worth it, Aidan. I met a nice little girl, but what's the good of that when you have to face the Fourth Years.' He shook his head like a dog coming out of the sea trying to get rid of the water. And this man was going to run Mountainview College for the next twenty years while poor old Mr. Dunne was expected to sit by and let it happen. Tony O'Brien gave him a heavy clap on the shoulder. 'Still, ave atque vale as you Latinists say. I have to be getting on, only four hours and three minutes before I stand with that healing pint in my hand.'

Aidan would not have thought that Tony O'Brien would have known the Latin words for hallo and goodbye. He himself had never used any Latin phrases in the staffroom, aware that many of his colleagues might not have studied it and fearing to show off in front of them. It just showed you must never underestimate the enemy.

The day passed as days always pass, whether you have a hangover like Tony O'Brien, or a heavy heart like Aidan Dunne, and the next passed, and the next. Aidan had still settled on no definite plan of action. He could never find the right moment to tell them at home that his hopes of being Principal had been misplaced. In fact, he thought it would be easier to say nothing until the decision was announced, let it appear a surprise to everyone.

And he had not forgotten his plans to make himself a room. He sold the dining table and chairs and bought the little desk. When his wife worked in Quentin's restaurant and his daughters went out on their dates, he sat and planned it for himself. Gradually he assembled little bits of his dream: second-hand picture frames, a low table for near the window, a big cheap sofa that fitted the space exactly. And one day he would get loose covers, something in gold or yellow, a sunny colour, and he would get a square of carpet that would be a splash of some other colour, orange, purple, something with life and vigour.

They weren't very interested at home so he didn't tell them his plans. In a way he felt that his wife and daughters thought it was yet another harmless little interest for him, like the projects in Transition Year and his long struggle to get a few metres of wildlife garden up and running in Mountainview.

'Any word of the big job above in the school?' Nell asked unexpectedly one evening when the four of them were seated around the kitchen table.

He felt his heart lurch at the lie. 'Not a whisper. But they'll be voting next week, that's for sure.' He seemed calm and unruffled.

'You're bound to get it. Old Walsh loves the ground you walk on,' Nell said.

'He doesn't have a vote, as it happens, so that's no use to me.' Aidan gave a nervous little laugh.

'Surely you'll get it, Daddy?' Brigid said.

'You never know, people want different things in Principals. I'm sort of slow and steady, but that mightn't be what's needed these days.' He spread out his hands in a gesture to show that it was all beyond him but wouldn't matter very much either way.

'But who would they have if they didn't have you?' Grania wanted to know.

'Wouldn't I be doing the horoscope column if I knew that? An outsider maybe, someone inside that we hadn't reckoned on…' He sounded good-natured and full of fair play. The job would go to the best man or woman. It was as simple as that.

'But you don't think they'll pass you over?' Nell said.

There was something that he hated in her tone. It was a kind of disbelief that he could possibly let this one slip. It was the phrase 'passed over', so dismissive, so hurtful. But she didn't know, she couldn't guess, that it had already happened.

Aidan willed his smile to look confident. 'Passed over? Me? Never!' he cried.

'That's more like it, Daddy,' said Grania, before going upstairs to spend further time in the bathroom where she possibly never saw any more the beautiful images of Venice on the wall, only her face in the mirror and her anxieties that it should look well for whatever outing was planned tonight.

It was their sixth date. Grania knew now that he definitely wasn't married. She had asked him enough questions to have tripped him up. Every night so far he had wanted her to come back to his place for coffee. Every night so far she had said no. But tonight could be different. She really liked him. He knew so much about things, and he was far more interesting than people of her own age. He wasn't one of those middle-aged ravers who pretended they were twenty years younger.

There was only one problem. Tony worked at Dad's school. She had asked him the very first time she met him whether he knew an Aidan Dunne, but hadn't said he was her father. It seemed an ageist sort of thing to say, putting herself in a different generation. And there were loads of Dunnes around the place, it wasn't as if Tony would make the connection. There wasn't any point in mentioning it to Dad, not yet anyway, not until it developed into anything if it did. And if it were the real thing then everything else like him working in the same place as Dad would fall into place, and Grania made a silly face at herself in the mirror and thought that maybe Tony would have to be even nicer than ever to her if she was going to be the Principal's daughter.

Tony sat in the bar and dragged deep on his cigarette. This was one thing he was going to have to cut down on when he was Principal. There really couldn't be any more smoking on the premises. And probably fewer pints at lunchtime. It hadn't been actually spelled out but it had been hinted at. Heavily. But that was it. Not a huge price to pay for a good job. And they weren't going to ask about his social life. It might still be Holy Catholic Ireland, but it was the 1990s after all.

And by extraordinary timing he had just met a girl who really did hold his attention, and might well be around for more than a few weeks' duration. A bright lively girl called Grania, worked in the bank. Sharp as anything, but not at all hard or tough. She was warm and generous in her outlook. They didn't come in that kind of a package often. She was twenty-one, which was of course a problem. Less than half his age, but she wouldn't always be that. When he was sixty she'd be thirty-five, which was half of seventy when you came to think of it. She'd be catching up all the time.

She hadn't come back to the townhouse with him, but she had been very frank. It wasn't because she was afraid of sex, it was just that she wasn't ready for it with him yet, that was all, and if they were to get along together then they must respect each other and not one of them force the other. He had agreed with her, that seemed perfectly fair. And for once it did. Normally he would have regarded such a response as a challenge, but not with Grania. He was quite ready to wait. And she had assured him that she wasn't going to play games.

He saw her come into the bar and he felt lighter and happier than he had for a long time. He wasn't going to play games either. 'You look lovely,' he said. Thank you for dressing up for me, I appreciate it.'

'You're worth it,' she said simply.

They drank together, like people who had always known each other, interrupting, laughing, eager to hear what the other would say.

'There are lots of things we could do this evening,' Tony O'Brien said. 'There's a New Orleans evening, you know, Creole food and jazz in one of the hotels, or there was this movie we were talking about last night… or I could cook for you at home. Show you what a great chef I am.'

Grania laughed. 'Am I to believe that you'll be making me Won Tons and Peking Duck? You see, I remember that you said you had a neighbouring Chinese restaurant.'

'No, if you come home with me I'll cook for you myself. To show you how much it means to me. I won't just get menu A or menu B, good and all as they may be.' Tony O'Brien had not spoken so directly for a long time.

'I'd love to come home with you, Tony,' Grania said very simply, without a hint of playing games.

Aidan slept in fits and starts. And then near dawn he felt wide awake and clear headed. All he had was the doddering word of a retiring Principal, a man fussed and confused by the way the world was going. The vote had not been taken, there was nothing to be depressed about, no excuses to make, action to take, career to abandon. Today would be a much, much better day now that he was clear about all this.

He would speak to Mr. Walsh, the present Principal, and ask him briefly and directly if his remarks of some days ago had any substance and intent, or if they were mere speculation. After all, as a non-voting member he might also have been a non-listening member to their deliberations. He would be brief, Aidan told himself. That was his weakness, a tendency to go on at too great a length. But he would be crystal clear. What was it that the poet Horace said? Horace had a word for every occasion. Brevis esse aboro obscurus fio. Yes, that was it, the more I struggle to be brief, the more unintelligible I become. In the kitchen Brigid and Nell exchanged glances and shrugs when they heard him whistling. He wasn't a very good whistler, but nobody could remember when he had last even attempted it.

Just after eight o'clock the phone rang.

'Three guesses,' Brigid said, reaching for more toast.

.6

'She's very reliable, you both are,' Nell said, and went to answer it.

Aidan wondered was it very reliable for one of his daughters to spend the night with a man who had been described by the other as a heavy date. About whom only a week ago she had raised tentative worries, whether he was reliable… sincere. Aidan didn't voice these wonderings. He watched Nell at the phone.

'Sure, fine, good. Do you have proper clothes to go into the bank in or will you come back here? Oh, you brought a sweater, how lucky. Righto, love, see you this evening.'

'And how did she seem?' Aidan asked.

'Now, Aidan, don't start taking attitudes. We've always agreed that it's much wiser that Grania should stay with Fiona in town instead of getting a dodgy lift home.'

He nodded. None of them thought for a moment that Grania was staying with Fiona.

'No problems, then?' Tony asked.

'No, I told you… they treat me as a grown up.'

'And so do I in a different way.' He reached out for her as she sat on the edge of the bed.

'No, Tony, I can't possibly. We have to go to work. I have to get to the bank, you have to go to Mountainview.'

He was pleased that she remembered the name of the place he worked. 'No, they won't mind, they're very lax there, let the teachers do what they like most of the time.'

She laughed at him. 'No that's not true, not even a little bit true. Get up and have a shower, I'll put on some coffee. Where's the machine?'

'It's only instant, I'm afraid.'

'Oh, that's not classy enough for me at all, I'm afraid, Mr. O'Brien,' she said, shaking her head at him in mock disapproval. 'Things will have to improve round here if I am to visit again.'

'I was hoping you'd pay a visit this evening,' he said.

Their eyes met. There was no guile.

'Yes, if you have real coffee,' she said.

'Consider it done,' he said.

Grania had toast, Tony had two cigarettes.

'You really should cut down on those,' she said. 'I could hear your wheeze all night.'

'That was passion,' he said.

'No, it was cigarettes.' She was firm.

Perhaps, perhaps for this lively bright young woman he might, he just might, be able to cut them out. It was bad enough to be so much older than her, he didn't want to be so much wheezier as well. 'I might change, you know,' he said seriously. 'There are going to be a lot of changes in my life at work for one thing, but more important, now that I've met you I think I might have the strength to cut out a lot of the rubbishy bits.'

'Believe me, I'll help you,' Grania said, reaching for his hand across the table. 'And you must help me too. Help me to keep my mind alert and busy. I've stopped reading since I left school. I want to read again.'

'I think we should both take the day off to cement this promise,' he said, only half joking.

'Hey, you won't even be thinking about suggesting that next term,' she laughed.

'Why next term?' How could she have known of his promotion? Nobody knew except the Board who had offered him the job. It was to be kept totally secret until it was announced.

She had not meant to tell him yet about her father being on the staff, but somehow with all they had shared it seemed pointless to keep it secret any longer. It would have to come out some time, and anyway she was so proud of Dad's new post. 'Well, you'll want to keep well in with my father, he's going to be the Principal of Mountainview.'

'Your father's going to be what?

'Principal. It's a secret until next week but I think everyone expected it.'

'What's your father's name?'

'Dunne, like mine. He's the Latin teacher, Aidan Dunne. Remember, I asked you did you know him the first time we met?'

'You didn't say he was your father.'

'No, well it was a crowded place and I didn't want to be making myself sound too babyish. And later it didn't matter.'

'Oh my God,' said Tony O'Brien. He didn't look at all pleased.

Grania bit her lip and regretted that she had ever mentioned it. 'Please don't say to him that you know, please.'

'He told you this? That he was going to be Principal?' Tony

O'Brien's face was hardly able to register the shock. 'When? When did he tell you this? Was it a long time ago?'

'He's been talking about it for ages, but he told us last night.'

'Last night? No, you must be mistaken, you must have misunderstood.'

'Of course I didn't misunderstand, we were just talking about it before I came out to meet you.'

'And did you tell him that you were meeting me?' He looked almost wild.

'No. Tony, what is it?'

He held both her hands in his and spoke very slowly and carefully. 'This is the most important thing I have ever said in my whole life. In my whole long life, Grania. You must never, never tell your father what you told me now. Never.'

She laughed nervously and tried to draw her hands away. 'Oh come on, you're behaving like someone in a melodrama.'

'It's a bit like that, honestly.'

'I'm never to tell my father I met you, know you, like you… What kind of relationship is that?' Her eyes blazed at him across the breakfast table.

'No, of course we'll tell him. But later, not a lot later, but there's something else I have to tell him first.'

'Tell me,' she asked.

'I can't. If there's any dignity to be left anywhere in this whole world it depends on your trusting me this minute and believing I want the best, the very, very best for you.'

'How can I believe anything if you won't tell me what all the mystery is about?'

'It's about faith and trust.'

'It's about keeping me in the dark, that's what it is, and I hate it.'

'What have you to lose by trusting me, Grania? Listen, two weeks ago we hadn't even met, now we think we love each other. Can't you give it just a day or two till I sort something out?' He was standing up and putting on his jacket. For a man who had said Mountainview College was a lax place where it didn't matter what time you rolled in, Tony O'Brien seemed in a very great hurry.

Aidan Dunne was in the staffroom. He looked slightly excited, feverish even. His eyes were unnaturally bright. Was it possible that he could be suffering from some kind of delusions? Or did he suspect that his beloved daughter had been seduced by a man as old as himself but ten times as unreliable?

'Aidan, I want to talk to you very very urgently,' Tony O'Brien hissed in an undertone.

'After school hours possibly, Tony…'

'This very minute. Come on, we'll go to the library.'

'Tony, the bell will go in five minutes.'

'To hell with the bell.' Tony half pulled, half dragged him out of the staffroom.

In the library two studious girls from Sixth Year looked up, startled.

'Out,' Tony O'Brien said in a voice that wasn't going to be argued with.

One of them tried to argue. 'But we're studying here, we were looking up…'

'Did you hear me?'

This time she got the message and they were gone. •

'That's no way to treat children, we're meant to encourage them, lead them into the library, for heaven's sake, not throw them out of it like some bouncer in these night clubs you go to. What example is that for them to follow?'

'We're not here to be some example to them, we're here to teach them. To put some information into their heads. It's as simple as that.'

Aidan looked at him aghast, and then he spoke. 'I'll thank you not to give me the benefit of your half-baked hungover philosophies at this time in the morning, or any time. Let me back to my classes this minute.'

'Aidan.' Tony O'Brien's voice had changed. 'Aidan, listen to me. I'm going to be the Principal. They were going to announce it next week, but I think it's better if I make them do it today.'

'What, what… Why do you want to do that?' Aidan felt he had a blow in the stomach. This was too soon, he wasn't ready for it. There was no proof. Nothing was fixed yet.

'So that all this nonsense in your head can be knocked out if it, so that you don't go round believing that it's you who's getting the job… upsetting yourself, upsetting other people… that's why.'

Aidan looked at Tony O'Brien. 'Why are you doing this to me, Tony, why? Suppose they do give you the job, is your first response to drag me in here and start rubbing my nose in it, the fact that you… you who don't give a tuppenny damn about Mountainview are going to get the job? Have you no dignity at all? Can't you even wait until the Board offer you the job before you start gloating? Are you so bloody confident, so eager…?'

'Aidan, you can't have gone on believing that it was going to be you. Did that old blatherer Walsh not tell you? They all thought he would mark your card about it, he actually said that he bad told you.'

'He said it was likely that you might get it, and I might add that he said he would be very sorry indeed if you did.'

A child put his head around the library door and stared with amazement at the two red-faced teachers facing each other across a table.

Tony O'Brien let out a roar that nearly lifted the child up in the air. 'Get the hell out of here, you interfering young pup, and back to your classroom.'

White-faced, the boy looked at Aidan Dunne for confirmation.

'That's the boy, Declan. Tell the class to open their Virgil, I'll be along shortly.' The door closed.

'You know all their names,' Tony O'Brien said wonderingly.

'You hardly know any of them,' Aidan Dunne said flatly.

'Being Principal doesn't have anything to do with being a Dale Carnegie figure, a Mister Nice Guy, you know.'

'Evidently not,' Aidan agreed. They were much calmer now, the heat and fury had gone from both of them.

'I'm going to need you, Aidan, to help me, if we're going to keep this place afloat at all.'

But Aidan was stiff, rigid with his disappointment and humiliation. 'No, it's too much to ask. I may be easy-going but I can't do this. I couldn't stay on here. Not now.'

'But what will you do, in the name of God?'

'I'm not completely washed up you know, there are places who would be glad of me, even though this one doesn't seem to be.'

'They rely on you here, you great fool. You're the cornerstone of Mountainview, you know that.'

'Not cornerstone enough to want me as Principal.'

'Do I have to spell it out for you? The job of Principal is changing. They don't want a wise preacher up in that office… they need someone with a loud voice, who's not afraid to argue with the VEC, with the Department of Education, to get the guards in here if there's vandalism or drugs, to deal with the parents if they start bleating…'

'I couldn't work under you, Tony, I don't respect you as a teacher.'

'You don't have to respect me as a teacher.'

'Yes I would. You see, I couldn't go along with the things that you would want or the things you'd ignore.'

'Give me one example, one, now this minute. What did you think of as you were coming in the school gate… what one thing would you do as Principal?'

'I'd get the place painted, it's dirty, shabby…'

'Okay, snap. That's what I'd do too.'

'Oh you just say that.'

'No, Aidan, I don't bloody say that, but even better I know how I'm going to do it. You wouldn't know where to start. I'm going to get a young fellow I know on the evening paper to come up here with a photographer and do an article called Magnificent Mountain-view, showing the peeling paint, the rusty railings, the sign with the letters missing.'

'You'd never humiliate the place like that?'

'It wouldn't be humiliation. The day after the article appears I'll have the Board agree to a huge refurbishing job. We can announce details of it, say it was all on line and that local sponsors are going to take part… list who is going to do what… you know, garden centres, paint shops, that wrought-iron place for the school sign… I've a list as long as my arm.'

Aidan looked down at his hands. He knew that he himself could not have set up something like this, a plan that was sure to work. This time next year Mountainview would have a facelift, one that he would never have been able to organise. It left him more bereft than ever. 'I couldn't stay, Tony. I'd feel so humbled, passed over.'

'But no one here thought you were going to get it.'

'I thought it.' He said it simply.

'Well then, the humiliation that you speak of is only in your mind.'

'And my family, of course… they think it is in the bag for me… they're waiting to celebrate.'

There was a lump in Tony O'Brien's throat. He knew this was true. This man's glowing daughter was so proud of her father's new post. But there was no time for sentiment, only action.

'Then give them something to celebrate.'

'Like what, for example?'

'Suppose there was no race to be Principal. Suppose you could have some position in the school, bring in something new… set up something… What would you like to do?'

'Look, I know you mean well, Tony, and I'm grateful to you for it, but I'm not into let's pretend at the moment.'

'I'm the Principal, can't you get that into your head. I can do what I like, there's no let's pretend about it. I want you on my side. I want you to be enthusiastic, not a Moaning Minnie. Tell me what you'd do for God's sake, man - if you were given the go-ahead.'

'Well, you wouldn't wear it because it's not got much to do with the school, but I think we should have evening classes.'

'What?'

'There, I knew you wouldn't want it.'

'I didn't say I didn't want it. What kind of evening classes?'

The two men talked on in the library, and oddly, their classrooms were curiously quiet. Normally the noise of any room left without a teacher could reach a very high decibel level indeed. But the two studious girls who had been thrown out of the library by Mr. O'Brien had scuttled to their classroom with news of their eviction and of Mr. O'Brien's face. It was agreed that the Geography teacher was on the warpath and it was probably better to keep things fairly low until he arrived. They had all seen him in a temper at some stage, and it wasn't something you'd want to bring on yourselves.

Declan, who had been instructed to tell his class to get out their Virgil, spoke in low tones. 'I think they were arm wrestling,' he said. 'They were purple in the face, both of them, and Mr. Dunne spoke as if there was a knife held in his back.'

They looked at him, round-eyed. Declan was not a boy with much imagination, it must be true. They got out their Virgils obediently. They didn't study them or translate them or anything, that had not been part of the instructions, but every child in the class had an open copy of The Aeneid Book IV ready, and they looked at the door fearfully in case Mr. Dunne should come staggering in with blood coming down his shoulderblades.

The announcement was made that afternoon. It was in two parts.

A pilot scheme for Adult Education Classes would begin in September under the supervision of Mr. Aidan Dunne. The present

Principal Mr. John Walsh having reached retirement age would now stand down, and his post would be filled by Mr. Anthony O'Brien.

In the staffroom there seemed to be as many congratulations for Aidan as for Tony. Two bottles of sparkling wine were opened, and people's health was drunk from mugs.

Imagine evening classes. The subject had been brought up before but always to be knocked down. It was the wrong area, too much competition from other Adult Education Centres, trouble heating the school, the business of keeping on the caretaker after hours, the whole notion of classes being self-funding. How had it happened now?

'Apparently Aidan persuaded them,' Tony O'Brien said, pouring more fizzy drink into the school mugs.

It was time to go home.

'I don't know what to say,' Aidan said to his new Principal.

'We made a deal. You got what you wanted, you are to go straight home to your wife and family and present it as that. Because this is what you want. You don't want all the shit of fighting with people morning, noon and night, which is what being the Principal is about. Just remember that, present it to them as it is.'

'Can I ask you something, Tony? Why does it matter to you one way or the other how I present things to my family?'

'Simple. I need you, I told you that. But I need you as a happy, successful man. If you present yourself in this old self-pitying I-was-passed-over role, then you'll begin to believe it all over again.'

'That makes sense.'

'And they'll be pleased for you that you have got what you really wanted all along.'

As Aidan walked out the school gate he paused for a moment and felt its peeling paint and looked at the rusting locks. Tony was right, he wouldn't have known where to begin on a project like this. Then he looked at the annexe where he and Tony had decided the evening classes should be held. It had its own entrance, they wouldn't have to trek through the whole school. It had cloakrooms and two big classrooms. It would be ideal.

Tony was an odd guy, there were no two ways about it. He had even suggested to him that he come home and meet the family but

Tony had said not yet. Wait until September when the new term began, he had insisted.

'Who knows what will have happened by September?'

Those were his words. As odd as two left shoes, but quite possibly the best thing that could happen to Mountainview.

Inside the building Tony O'Brien inhaled deeply. He would smoke in his own office from now on, but never outside it.

He watched Aidan Dunne hold the gate and even stroke it lovingly. He was a good teacher and a good man. He was worth the sacrifice about the evening classes. All the bloody work that lay ahead, the fights with this committee and that Board, and the lying promises that the classes would be self-financing when everyone knew there wasn't a chance that they would be.

He sighed deeply and hoped that Aidan would handle it right at home. Otherwise, his own future with Grania Dunne, the first girl to whom he could even consider a real commitment, would be a very rocky future indeed.

'I have very good news,' Aidan said at supper.

He told them about the evening classes, the pilot scheme, the annexe, the funds at his disposal and how he would have Italian Language and Culture.

His enthusiasm was catching. They asked him questions. Would he have walls to put up pictures, posters, maps? Would these things remain up all week? What kind of experts should he invite to lecture? Would there be Italian cookery? And arias from operas as well?

'Won't you find this a lot of extra work as well as being Principal?' Nell asked.

'Oh no, I'm doing it instead of being Principal,' he explained eagerly and he looked at their faces. Nobody missed a beat, it seemed to them a perfectly reasonable alternative. And oddly it began more and more to seem that way to him too. Maybe that crazy Tony O'Brien was more intelligent than people gave him credit for. They talked on like a real family. What numbers would they need? Should it be more conversational Italian suitable for holidays? Or something more ambitious? The dishes were pushed aside on the table as Aidan made notes.

Later, much later it seemed, Brigid asked: 'Who will become Principal now if you're not going to do it?'

'Oh a man called Tony O'Brien, the Geography teacher, a good fellow. He'll do all right for Mountainview.'

'I knew it wouldn't be a woman,' Nell said, sniffing.

'Now there were two women, I believe, in the running, but they gave it to the right person,' Aidan said. He poured them another glass of wine from the bottle he had bought to celebrate his good news. Soon he would move into his room; he was going to measure it tonight for the shelves. One of the teachers at school did carpentry in his spare time, he would build the bookshelves and little racks for Italian plates.

They didn't notice Grania getting up quietly and leaving the room.

He sat in the sitting room and waited. She would have to come, just to tell him how much she hated him. That if nothing else. The doorbell rang and she stood there, eyes red from weeping.

'I bought a coffee machine,' he said. 'And some fine ground Colombian blend. Was that right?'

She walked into the room. Young but not confident, not any more. 'You are such a bastard, such a terrible deceitful bastard.'

'No, I'm not.' His voice was very quiet. 'I am an honourable man. You must believe me.'

'Why should I believe the daylight from you? You were laughing all the time at me, laughing at my father, even at the notion of a coffee percolator. Well, laugh as much as you like. I came to tell you that you are the lowest of the low, and I hope you are the worst I meet. I hope I have a very long life and that I meet hundreds and hundreds of people and that this is the very worst that will ever happen to me, to trust someone who doesn't give a damn about people's feelings. If there is a God then please, please God let this be the very lowest I ever meet.' Her hurt was so great he didn't even dare to stretch out a hand to her.

'This morning I didn't know you were Aidan Dunne's daughter. This morning I didn't know that Aidan thought he was getting the headship,' he began.

'You could have told me, you could have told me,' she cried.

Suddenly he was very tired. It had been a long day. He spoke quietly. 'No, I could not have told you. I could not have said:

'Your father's got it wrong, actually it's yours truly who is getting the job." If there was loyalty involved, mine was to him, my duty was to make sure he didn't make a fool of himself, didn't set himself up for disappointment, and that he got what was rightfully his - a new position of power and authority.'

'Oh I see.' Her voice was scornful. 'Give him the evening classes, a little pat on the head.'

Tony O'Brien's voice was cold. 'Well, of course, if that's the way you see it I can't hope to change your mind. If you don't see it for what it is, a breakthrough, a challenge, possibly the beginning of something that will change people's lives, most of all your father's life, then I'm sorry. Sorry and surprised. I thought you would have been more understanding.'

'I'm not in your classroom, Mr. O'Brien, sir. I'm not fooled by this shaking your head more in sorrow than in anger bit. You made a fool of my father and of me.'

'How did I do that?'

'He doesn't know that you slept with his daughter, heard of his hopes and ran in and took his job. That's how.'

'And have you told him all these things to make him feel better?'

'You know I haven't. But the sleeping with his daughter bit isn't important. If ever there was a one-night stand, that was it.'

'I hope you'll change your mind, Grania. I am very, very fond of you, and attracted to you.'

'Yeah.'

'No, not "Yeah". It's true what I say. Odd as it may seem to you, it's not your age and your looks that appeal to me. I have had many young attractive girlfriends and should I want company I feel sure I could find more. But you are different. If you walk out on me I'll have lost something very important. You can believe it or not as you will, but very truthfully that's what I feel.'

This time she was silent. They looked at each other for a while. Then he spoke. 'Your father asked me to come and meet the family but I said we should wait until September. I said to him that September was a long way away and who knows what could have happened by then.' She shrugged. 'I wasn't thinking of myself, actually I was thinking of you. Either you'll still be full of scorn and anger about me, and you can be out the day I call. Or maybe we will love each other fully and truly and know that all that happened here today was just some spectacularly bad timing.'

She said nothing.

'So September it is,' he said.

'Right.' She turned to go.

'I'll leave it to you to contact me, Grania. I'll be here, I'd love to see you again. We don't have to be lovers if you don't want to be. If you were a one-night stand I'd be happy to see you go. If I didn't feel the way I do I'd think that maybe it was all too complicated and it would be for the best that we end it now. But I'll be here, hoping you come back.'

Her face was still hard and upset. 'Ringing first, of course, to make sure you haven't company, as you put it,' she said.

'I won't have company until you come back,' he said.

She held out her hand. 'I don't think I'll be back,' she said.

'No, well, let's agree never say never.' His grin was good-natured. He stood at the doorway as she walked down the road, her hands in the pockets of her jacket, her head down. She was lonely and lost. He wanted to run and swoop her back to him, but it was too soon.

And yet he had done what he had to do. There could have been no future for them at all if he had sat down behind Aidan's back and told the man's daughter what he didn't know himself. He wondered what a betting man would give as odds on her ever coming back to him. Fifty-fifty he decided.

Which were much more hopeful odds than anyone would get on whether the evening classes would succeed. That was a bet that no sane person would take. They were doomed before they even began.

SIGNORA

For years, yes years, when Nora O'Donoghue had lived in Sicily, she had received no letter at all from home. She used to look hopefully at il postino as he came up the little street under the hot blue sky. But there was never a letter from Ireland, even though she wrote regularly on the first of every month to tell them how she was getting on. She had bought carbon paper; it was another thing hard to describe and translate in the shop where they sold writing paper and pencils and envelopes. But Nora needed to know what she had told them already, so that she would not contradict herself when she wrote. Since the whole life she described was a lie, she might as well make it the same lie. They would never reply but they would read the letters. They would pass them from one to the other with heavy sighs, raised eyebrows and deep shakes of the head. Poor stupid headstrong Nora who couldn't see what a fool she had made of herself, wouldn't cut her losses and come back home.

'There was no reasoning with her,' her mother would say.

'The girl was beyond help and showed no remorse,' would be her father's view. He was a very religious man, and in his eyes the sin of having loved Mario outside marriage was greater far than having followed him out to the remote village of Annunziata even when he had said he wouldn't marry her.

If she had known that they wouldn't get in touch at all she would have pretended that she and Mario were married. At least her old father would have slept easier in his bed and not feared so much the thought of meeting God and explaining the Mortal Sin of his daughter's adultery.

But then she would not have been able to do that, because Mario had insisted on being upfront with them.

'I would love to marry your daughter,' he had said, with his big dark eyes looking from her father to her mother, backwards and forwards. 'But sadly, sadly it is not possible. My family want me very much to marry Gabriella and her family also want the marriage. We are Sicilians; we can't disobey what our families want. I'm sure it is very much the same in Ireland.' He had pleaded for an understanding, a tolerance and almost a pat on the head.

He had lived with their daughter for two years in London. They had come over to confront him. He had been in his own mind admirably truthful and fair. What more could they want of him?

Well, they wanted him gone from her life for one thing.

They wanted Nora to come back to Ireland and hope and pray that no one would ever know of this unfortunate episode in her life, or her marriage chances which were already slim would be further lessened.

She tried to make allowances for them. It was 1969, but then they did live in a one-horse town; they even thought coming up to Dublin was an ordeal. What had they made of their visit to London to see their daughter living in sin, and then accept the news that she would follow this man to Sicily?

The answer was they had gone into complete shock and did not reply to her letters.

She could forgive them. Yes, part of her really did forgive them, but she could never forgive her two sisters and two brothers. They were young; they must have understood love, though to look at the people they had married you might wonder. But they had all grown up together, struggled to get out of the lonely remote little town where they lived. They had shared the anxiety of their mother's hysterectomy, their father's fall on the ice which had left him frail. They had always consulted each other about the future, about what would happen if either Mam or Dad were left alone. Neither could manage. They had always agreed that the little farm would be sold and the money used to keep whoever it was that was left alive in a flat in Dublin somewhere adjacent to them all.

Nora realised that her having decamped to Sicily didn't suit that long-term plan at all. It reduced the helpforce by more than twenty per cent. Since Nora wasn't married the others would have assumed that she might take sole charge of a parent. She had reduced the helpforce by one hundred per cent. Possibly that was why she never heard from them. She assumed that they would write and tell her if either Mam or Dad was very ill, or even had died.

But then sometimes she didn't know if they would do that. She seemed so remote from them, as if she herself had died already. So she relied on a friend, a good kind friend called Brenda, who had worked with her in the hotel business. Brenda called from time to time to visit the O'Donoghues. It was not difficult for Brenda to shake her head with them over the foolishness of their daughter Nora. Brenda had spent days and nights trying to persuade, cajole, warn and threaten Nora about how unwise was her plan to follow Mario to his village of Annunziata and face the collective rage of two families.

Brenda would be welcome in that house because nobody knew she kept in touch and told the emigrant what was happening back home. So it was through Brenda that Nora learned of new nieces and nephews, of the outbuilding on the farm house, of the sale of three acres, and the small trailer that was now attached to the back of the family car. Brenda wrote and told her how they watched television a lot, and had been given a microwave oven for Christmas by their children. Well, by the children they acknowledged.

Brenda did try to make them write. She had said she was sure Nora would love to hear from them; it must be lonely for her out there. But they had laughed and said: 'Oh no, it wasn't at all lonely for Lady Nora who was having a fine time in Annunziata, living the life of Reilly with the whole place probably gossiping about her and ruining the reputation of all Irishwomen in front of these people.'

Brenda was married to a man whom they had both laughed at years back, a man called Pillow Case, for some reason they had all forgotten. They had no children and they both worked in a restaurant now. Patrick, as she now called Pillow Case, was the chef and Brenda was the manageress. The owner lived mainly abroad and was content to leave it to them. She wrote that it was as good as having your own place without the financial worries. She seemed content, but then perhaps she wasn't telling the truth either.

Nora certainly never told Brenda about how it had turned out; the years of living in a place smaller than the village she had come from in Ireland and loving the man who lived across the little piazza, a man who could come to visit her only with huge subterfuge, and as the years went on made less and less effort to try and find the opportunities.

Nora wrote about the beautiful village of Annunziata and its white buildings where everyone had little black wrought-iron balconies and filled them with pots of geraniums or Busy Lizzies, but not just one or two pots like at home, whole clusters of them. And how there was a gate outside the village where you could stand and look down on the valley. And the church had some lovely ceramics which visitors were coming to see more and more.

Mario and Gabriella ran the local hotel and they did lunches now for visitors and it was very successful. Everyone in Annunziata was pleased because it meant that other people, like wonderful Signora Leone who sold postcards and little pictures of the church and Nora's great friends Paolo and Gianna who made little pottery dishes and jugs with Annunziata written on them, made some money. And people sold oranges and flowers from baskets. And even she, Nora, benefited from the tourists since, as well as making her lace-trimmed handkerchiefs and table runners for sale, she also gave little guided tours for English-speaking visitors. She took them round the church and told of its history, and pointed out the places in the valley where there had been battles and possibly Roman settlements and certainly centuries of adventure.

She never found it necessary to tell Brenda about Mario and Gabriella's children, five of them in all, with big dark eyes looking at her suspiciously with sullen downcast glances from across the piazza. Too young to know who she was and why she was hated and feared, too knowing to think she was just another neighbour and friend.

Brenda and Pillow Case didn't have any children of their own, they wouldn't be interested in these handsome, unsmiling Sicilian children who looked across from the steps of their family hotel at the little room where Signora sat sewing and surveying all that passed by.

That's what they called her in Annunziata, just Signora. She had said she was a widow when she arrived. It was so like her own name Nora anyway, she felt she had been meant to be called that always.

And even had there been anyone who truly loved her and cared about her life, how hard it would have been to try and explain what her life was like in this village. A place she would have scorned if it were back in Ireland, no cinema, no dance hall, no supermarket, the local bus irregular and the journeys when it did arrive positively endless.

But here she loved every stone of the place because it was where Mario lived and worked and sang in his hotel, and eventually raised his sons and daughters, and smiled up at her as she sat sewing in her window. And she would nod at him graciously, not noticing as the years went by. And the passionate years in London that ended in 1969 were long forgotten by everyone except Mario and Signora.

Of course, Mario must have remembered them with love and longing and regret as she did, otherwise why would he have stolen into her bed some nights using the key that she had made for him? Creeping across the dark square when his wife was asleep. She knew never to expect him on a night there was a moon. Too many other eyes might have seen a figure crossing the piazza and known that Mario was wandering from the wife to the foreign woman, the strange foreign woman with the big wild eyes and long red hair. Occasionally Signora asked herself was there any possibility that she could be mad, which was what her family at home thought and was almost certainly the view of the citizens of Annunziata.

Other women would surely have let him go, cried over the loss of his love and got on with their lives. She had only been twenty-four back in 1969, and she lived through her thirties, sewing and smiling and speaking Italian, but never in public to the man she loved. All that time in London when he had begged her to learn his language, telling her how beautiful it was, she had learned hardly a word, telling him that he was the one who must learn English so that they could open a twelve-bedroom hotel in Ireland and make their fortune. And all the time Mario had laughed and told her that she was his redheaded principessa, the loveliest girl in the world.

Signora had some memories that she did not run past herself in the little picture-show of memories which she played in her mind.

She didn't think of the white-hot anger of Mario when she followed him to Annunziata and got off the bus that day, recognising his father's little hotel immediately from the description. His face had hardened in a way that frightened her to think about. He had pointed to a van that was parked outside and motioned her to get in. He had driven very fast, taking corners at a terrible speed, and then turned suddenly off that road into a secluded olive grove where no one could see them. She reached for him, yearning as she had been yearning since she had set out on her journey.

But he pushed her away from him and pointed to the valley down below.

'See those vines, those belong to Gabriella's father, see the ones there, they belong to my father. It has always been known that we will marry. You have no right to come here like this and make things bad for me.'

'I have every right. I love you, you love me.' It had been so simple.

His face was working with the emotion of bewilderment. 'You cannot say that I have not been honest, I told you this, I told your parents. I never pretended that I was not involved with and promised to Gabriella.'

'Not in bed you didn't, you spoke of no Gabriella then,' she had pleaded.

'Nobody speaks of another woman in bed, Nora. Be reasonable, go away, go home, go back to Ireland.'

'I can't go home,' Nora had said simply. 'I have to be where you are. It's just the way things are. I will stay here forever.'

And that was the way it was.

The years passed and by sheer grit Signora became a part of the life of Annunziata. Not really accepted, because nobody knew exactly why she was there and her explanation that she loved Italy was not considered enough. She lived in two rooms in a house on the square. Her rent was low because she kept an eye on the elderly couple who owned the house, brought them steaming cups of caffe latte in the morning and she did their shopping for them.

But she was no trouble. She didn't sleep with the menfolk or drink in the bars. She taught English in the little school every Friday morning. She sewed little fancies and took them every few months to a big town to sell them.

She learned Italian from a little book and it became tattered as she went over and over the phrases, asking herself questions and answering them, her soft Irish voice eventually mastering the Italian sounds.

She sat in her room and watched the wedding of Mario and Gabriella, sewing all the time and letting no tear fall on the linen that she was embroidering. The fact that he looked up at her as the bells rang from the little campanile of the church in the square was enough. He was walking with his brothers and Gabriella's brothers to be married because it was their way. A tradition that involved families marrying each other to keep the land. It had nothing to do with his love for her or hers for him. That couldn't be affected by something like this.

And she watched from this window as his children were carried to the church to be christened. Families needed sons in this part of the world. It didn't hurt her. She knew that if he could have it another way then she would have been his principessa irlandese for all to see.

Signora realised that many of the men in Annunziata knew that there was something between Mario and herself. But it didn't worry them, it made Mario more of a man than ever in their eyes. She always believed that the women knew nothing of their love. She never thought it odd that they didn't invite her to join them when they went to market together, or to gather the grapes that were not used for wine, or to pick the wild flowers for the festival. They were happy when she made beautiful clothes to deck the statue of Our Lady.

They smiled at her over the years as she stumbled through and then mastered their language. They had stopped asking her when she was going home, back to her island. It was as if they had been watching her and she had passed some test. She wasn't upsetting anyone, she could stay.

And after twelve years she started hearing from her sisters. Inconsequential letters from Rita and Helen. Nothing that referred to anything that she had written herself. No mention that they had heard from her on birthdays and at Christmas and read all the letters she had written to their parents. Instead they wrote about their marriages and their children and how times were hard and everything was expensive and time was short, and everything was pressure these days.

At first Signora was delighted to hear from them. She had long wanted something that brought her two worlds together. The letters from Brenda went a little way along the road but didn't connect with her past, with her family life. She replied eagerly, asking questions about the family and how her parents were, and had they become at all reconciled to the Situation. Since this drew no response, Signora wrote different kinds of questions, seeking their views on subjects from the IRA hunger strikers, to Ronald Reagan being elected President of America, and the engagement of Prince Charles and Lady Di. None of these were ever answered, and no matter how much she told them about Annunziata, they never commented on it at all.

Brenda's note said she wasn't at all surprised by the arrival of letters from Rita and Helen.

'Any day now you'll be hearing from the brothers as well,' she wrote. 'The hard truth is that your father is very frail. He may have to go into hospital on a permanent basis, and then what will become of your mother? Nora, I tell you this harshly, because it is harsh and sad news. And you know well that I think you were foolish to go to that godforsaken spot on a mountain and watch the man who said he loved you flaunt his family in front of you… but still by God I don't think you should come home to be a minder to your mother who wouldn't give you the time of day or even reply to your letters.'

Signora read this letter sadly. Surely Brenda must be mistaken. And surely she had read the situation all wrong. Rita and Helen were writing because they wanted to keep in touch. Then came the letter saying that Dad was going to hospital and wondering when Nora would come home and take things over.

It was springtime and Annunziata had never looked more beautiful. But Signora looked pale and sad. Even the people who did not trust her were concerned. The Leone family who sold the postcards and little drawings called to see her. Would she like a little soup, stracciatella, it was a broth with beaten egg and lemon juice? She thanked them but her face was wan and her tone was flat. They worried about her.

Across the piazza in the hotel, the word reached dark handsome Mario and Gabriella his solid dutiful wife that Signora was not well. Perhaps someone should send for the dottore.

Gabriella's brothers frowned. When a woman had a mystery frailty in Annunziata it often meant one thing. Like that she was pregnant.

The same thought had crossed Mario's mind. But he met their glances levelly. 'Can't be that, she's nearly forty,' he said.

Still they waited for the doctor, hoping he would let fall some information over a glass of sambucca, which was his little weakness.

'It's all in the head,' the doctor said confidentially. 'Strange woman, nothing physical wrong with her, just a great sadness.'

'Why does she not go home to where she comes from then?' asked the eldest brother of Gabriella. He was the head of the family since his father had died. He had heard the odd troublesome rumour about his brother-in-law and Signora. But he knew it couldn't possibly be true. The man could not be so stupid as to do something like that right on his doorstep.

The people of the village watched as Signora's shoulders drooped and not even the Leone family were able to throw any light on it. Poor Signora. She just sat there, her eyes far away.

One night when his family slept Mario crept in and up the stairs to her bed.

'What has happened? Everyone says that you have an illness and that you are losing your mind,' he said, as he put his arms around her and pulled up the quilt that she had embroidered with the names of Italian cities, Firenze, Napoli, Milano, Venezia, Genova. All in different colours and with little flowers around them. It was a labour of love, she told Mario. When she did the stitching she thought how lucky she was to have come to this land and to live near the man she loved; not everyone was as lucky as she was.

That night she didn't sound like one of the luckiest women in the world. She sighed heavily and lay like lead on the bed instead of turning to welcome Mario joyfully. She said nothing at all.

'Signora.' He called her that too, like everyone else. It would have marked him out if he had known her real name. 'Dear, dear Signora, many many times I have told you to go away from here, that there is no life for you in Annunziata. But you insist that you stay and it is your decision. People here have begun to know and like you. They tell me you had the doctor. I don't want you to be sad, tell me what has happened.'

'You know what has happened.' Her voice was very dead.

'No, what is it?'

'You asked the doctor. I saw him go into the hotel after he left me. He told you I am sick in the mind, that's all.'

'But why? Why now? You have been here so long when you couldn't speak Italian, when you knew nobody. That was the time to be sick in the mind, not now when you have been ten years as a part of this town.'

'Over eleven years, Mario. Nearly twelve.'

'Yes, well whatever.'

'I am sad because I thought my family missed me and loved me, and now I realise that they just want me to be a nursemaid to my old mother.' She never turned to look at him. She lay cold and dead without response to his touches.

'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 'y°ur 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.'

'You could pick up a life again in Ireland. Your friends there, your family, would be happy to see you return.'

'Do you want me to go away from here, Signora Gabriella?' The question was very straight. She just wanted to know.

'He always said you would go if he were to die. He said you would go back to your people and leave me here with my people to mourn my husband.'

Signora looked at her in amazement. Mario had made this promise on her behalf, without any guarantee. 'Did he say that I had agreed to do this?'

'He said it was what would happen. And that if I, Gabriella, were to die, he told me that he would not marry you, because it would cause a. scandal, and my name would be lessened. They would think that always he had wanted to marry you.3

'And did this please you?'

'No, these things didn't please me, Signora. I didn't want to think of Mario dead, or of my being dead. But I suppose it gave me the dignity that I need. I didn't need to fear you. You would not stay on here against the tradition of the place and share in the mourning for the man who was gone.'

The sounds of the square went on outside, meat deliveries to the hotel, a van of clay supplies being carried into the pottery shop, children coming home from school laughing and calling to each other. Dogs barking, and somewhere birds singing too. Mario had told her about dignity and tradition and how important they were to him and his family.

It was as if he were speaking to her now from the grave. He was sending her a message, asking her to go home.

She spoke very slowly. 'I think at the end of the month, Signora Gabriella. That is when I will go back to Ireland.'

The other woman's eyes were full with gratitude and relief. She reached out both her hands and took Signora's. 'I am sure you will be much happier, much more at peace,' she said.

'Yes, yes,' Signora said slowly, letting the words hang there in the warm afternoon air.

'Si si… veramente.'

She only barely had the money for the fare. Somehow her friends knew this.

Signora Leone came and pressed the bundles of lire into her hand. 'Please, Signora. Please. It's thanks to you I have such a good living, please take it.'

It was the same with Paolo and Gianna. Their pottery business would not have got started if it had not been for Signora. 'Regard it as a tiny commission,'

And the old couple who owned the room where she had lived most of her adult life. They said she had improved the property so well she deserved some compensation.

On the day that the bus came to take her with her belongings to the town with the airport, Gabriella came out on her steps. She didn't speak and nor did Signora, but they bowed to each other. Their faces were grave and respectful. Some of those who watched the little scene knew what was being said. They knew that one woman was thanking the other with all her heart in a way that could never be put into words, and wishing her good fortune in whatever lay ahead.

It was loud and crowded in the city, and the airport was full of noise and bustle, not the happy, easy bustle of Annunziata but people rushing without meeting each other's gaze. It would be like this in Dublin too, when she got back there, but Signora decided not to think about it.

She had made no plans, she would just do what seemed the right thing to do when she got there. No point in wasting her journey planning what could not be planned. She had told no one that she was coming. Not her family, not even Brenda. She would find a room and look after herself as she had always done, and then she would work out what to do next.

On the plane she began talking to a boy. He was about ten, the age of Mario and Gabriella's youngest son, Enrico. Automatically she spoke to him in Italian, but he looked away confused.

Signora looked out the window. She would never know what would happen to Enrico, or his brother in New York, or his sister married to the kitchen help and up in Vista del Monte. She would not know who came to live in her room. And whoever it was would never know of her long years there, and why she had spent them.

It was like swimming out to sea and not knowing what would happen where you had left and what was going to happen where you would arrive.

She changed planes in London. She had no wish to spend any time there. Not to visit the old haunts where she had lived with Mario in a different life. Not to look up people long forgotten, and places only barely remembered. No, she would go on to Dublin. To whatever lay ahead.

It had all changed so much. The place was much, much bigger than she remembered. There were flights arriving from all over the world. When she had left, most of the big international flights had gone in and out of Shannon Airport. She hadn't known that things would be so different. Like the road in from the airport. When she had left the bus had wound its way out through housing estates; now it came in on a motorway with flowers planted on each side. Heavens, how Ireland was keeping up with the times!

An American woman on the bus asked her where she was staying.

'I'm not absolutely sure,' Signora explained. 'I'll find somewhere.'

'Are you a native or a visitor?'

'I came from here a long time ago,' Signora said.

'Same as me… looking for ancestors.' The American woman was pleased. She was giving a week to finding her roots, she thought that should be long enough.

'Oh definitely,' Signora said, realising how hard it was to find instantly the right response in English. She had been about to say certo. How affected it would sound breaking into Italian, they would think she was showing off. She must watch for it.

Signora got out of her bus and walked up the quays beside the Liffey to O'Connell Bridge. All around her there were young people, tall, confident, laughing, in groups. She remembered reading somewhere about this youthful population, half the country under the age of twenty-four was it?

She hadn't expected to see such proof of it. And they were dressed brightly too. Before she had gone to England to work, Dublin had been a grey and drab place. A lot of the buildings had been cleaned, there were smart cars, expensive cars in the busy traffic lanes. She remembered more bicycles and second-hand cars. The shops were bright and opened up. Her eye caught the magazines, girls with big bosoms, surely these had been banned when she was last here or was she living in some kind of cloud cuckoo land?

For some reason she kept walking down the Liffey after O'Connell Bridge. It was almost as if she were following the crowd, and there she found Temple Bar. It was like the Left Bank in Paris when once she had gone there so many years ago with Mario for a long weekend. Cobbled streets, outdoor cafes, each place full of young people calling to each other and waving at those they knew.

Nobody had told her Dublin was like this. But then would Brenda, married to Pillow Case and working in a much more settled kind of place, have even visited these streets?

Her sisters and their hard-up husbands, her two brothers and their inert wives… they were not people who'd have discovered Temple Bar. If they knew of it, then it would be surely only to shake their heads.

Signora thought it was wonderful. It was a whole new world, she couldn't get enough of it. Eventually she sat down to have a coffee.

A girl of about eighteen with long red hair, like her own many years ago, served her coffee. She thought Signora was a foreigner.

'What country are you from?' she asked in slow English, mouthing the words.

'Sicilia, in Italia,' Signora said.

'Beautiful country, but I tell you I'm not going there until I can speak the language though.'

'And why is that?'

'Well, I'd want to know what the fellows are saying, I mean you wouldn't know what you were letting yourself in for if you didn't know what they were saying.'

'I didn't speak any Italian when I went there, and I sure didn't know what I was letting myself in for,' Signora said. 'But you know it worked out all right… no, more than all right. It was wonderful.'

'How long did you stay for?'

'A long time. Twenty-six years.' Her voice sounded wondering.

The girl who wasn't born when she had set out on this adventure looked at her in amazement. 'You stayed all that time, you must have loved it.'

'Oh I did, I did.'

'And when did you come back?'

'Today,' Signora said.

She sighed heavily and wondered had she imagined that the girl looked at her slightly differently, as if she had somehow revealed herself to be a little strange. Signora knew she must watch that she didn't let people think that. No letting Italian phrases fall, no sighing, no saying strange, disconnected things.

The girl was about to move away.

'Excuse me, this seems a very nice part of Dublin. Is this the kind of place I could rent a room, do you think?' Now the girl knew she was odd. Perhaps people didn't call them rooms any more. Should she have said apartment? Flat? Place to stay? 'Just somewhere simple,' Signora said.

She listened glumly as she learned that this was one of the most fashionable parts of town; everyone wanted to live here. There were penthouse apartments, pop stars had bought hotels, business people had invested in townhouses. The place was coming down with restaurants. It was the last word now.

'I see.' Signora did see something, she saw she had a lot to learn about the city she had returned to. 'And please could you tell me where would be a place that would be good value to stay, somewhere that hasn't become the last word?'

The girl shook her head of long, dark red hair. It was hard to know. She seemed to be trying to work out whether Signora had any money at all, whether she would have to work for her keep, how long she would perch in wherever she landed.

Signora decided to help her. 'I have enough money for bed and breakfast for a week, but then I'll have to find a cheap place and maybe somewhere I could do some jobs… maybe mind children.'

The girl was doubtful. 'They usually want young ones to mind kids,' she said.

'Or maybe over a restaurant and work in it?'

'No, I wouldn't get your hopes up over that, honestly… we all want those kind of places. They're very hard to get.'

She was nice, the girl. Her face was pitying of course, but Signora would have to get used to a lot of that in what lay ahead. She decided to be brisk to hide her messiness, anything to make her acceptable and not to appear like a doddery old bag lady.

'Is that your name there on your apron? Suzi?'

'Yes. I'm afraid my mother was a Suzi Quatro fan.' She saw the blank look. 'The singer, you know? She was big years ago, maybe not in Italy.'

'I'm sure she was, it's just that I wasn't listening then. Now, Suzi, I can't take up your day with all my problems, but if you could give me just half a minute I'd love you to tell me what area would be a nice cheap one where I should start looking.'

Suzi listed off the names of places that used to be small areas, suburbs if not exactly villages, well outside the city when Signora was young, but now apparently they were big sprawling working-class estates. Half the people there would take someone in to rent a room if their kids had left home maybe. As long as it was cash. It wouldn't be wise to mention that she herself was badly off. Be fairly secretive about things, they liked that.

'You're very good to me, Suzi. How do you know all about things like this at your age?'

'Well, that's where I grew up, I know the scene.'

Signora knew she must not tire the patience of this nice child. She reached for her purse to get out the money for the coffee.

'Thank you very much for your help -1 do appreciate it. And if I do get settled I'll come in and give you a little gift.'

She saw Suzi pause and bite her lip as if to decide something.

'What's your name?' Suzi asked.

'Now I know this sounds funny, but my name is Signora. It's not that I'm trying to be formal, but that's what they called me and what I like to be called.'

'Are you serious about not minding what kind of a place it is?'

'Absolutely serious.' Her face was honest. It was quite clear that Signora couldn't understand people who cared about their surroundings.

'Listen. I don't get on with my family myself, so I don't live at home any more. And only a couple of weeks ago they were talking about trying to get someone to take my room. It's empty, and they could well do with a few pounds a week - it would have to be cash, you know, and you'd have to say you were a friend in case anyone asked… because of income tax.'

'Do you think I could?' Signora's eyes were shining.

'Listen, now.' Suzi was anxious there should be no misunderstandings. 'We're talking about a very ordinary house in an estate of houses that look the same, some a bit better, some a bit worse… it wouldn't be gracious or anything. They have the telly on all the time, they shout to each other over it and of course my brother's there, Jerry. He's fourteen and awful.'

'I just need a place to stay. I'm sure it would be lovely.' Suzi wrote down the address and told her which bus to take. 'Why don't you go down their road and ask a few people who I know definitely won't be able to have you and then go by chance as it were to my house and ask. Mention the money first and say it won't be for long. They'll like you because you're a bit older like, respectable is what they'll say. They'll take you, but don't say you came from me.'

Signora gave her a long look. 'Did they not like your boyfriend?'

'Boyfriends.' Suzi corrected her. 'My father says I'm a slut, but please don't try to deny it when he tells you because it will show you've met me.' Suzi's face looked hard.

Signora wondered had her own face been hard like that when she set out for Sicily all those years ago.

She took the bus and wondered at how the city she had once lived in had grown and spread so wide. In the evening light children played in the streets amongst the traffic, and then they went further afield, in where there were small gardens and children cycled round in circles leaning on gates and running in and out of each other's gardens.

Signora called at the houses that Suzi had suggested. Dublin men and women told her that their houses were full and they needed all the space they had.

'Can you suggest anyone?' she asked.

'Try the Sullivans,' someone suggested.

Now she had her reason. She knocked on the door. Would this be her new home? Was this the roof she would lie under and hope to ease the pain of losing her life in Annunziata? Not only the man she loved but her whole life, her future, her burial with the bells ringing for her. Everything. She must not try to like it in case they said no.

Jerry opened the door, his mouth full. He had red hair and freckles and he had a sandwich in his hand.

'Yeah?' he said.

'Could I speak to your mother or your father please?'

'What about?' Jerry asked.

This was a household where he had obviously welcomed in people who should not have been welcomed in the past.

'I was wondering if I could rent a room?' Signora began. She knew that inside they had turned down the television to hear was happening on the doorstep.

'A room here? Jerry was so utterly disbelieving that Signora thought maybe he was right, it did seem a foolish notion. But then her life had been based on a series of foolish notions. Why stop now?

'So perhaps I could talk to them?'

The boy's father came to the door. A big man with tufts of hair on each side of his head, looking like handles that he could be lifted by. He was about Signora's age, she supposed, but red-faced and looked as if the years had taken their toll. He was wiping his hands down the sides of his trousers, as if about to shake hands.

'Can I help you?' he said suspiciously.

Signora explained that she had been looking for a place in the area, and that the Quinns in number 22 had sent her over here in case they might have a spare room. She sort of implied that she had known the Quinns; it gave her an introduction.

'Peggy, will you come out here?' he called. And a woman with tired, dark shadows under her eyes and straight hair pushed behind her ears came out smoking and coughing at the same time.

'What is it?' she asked unwelcomingly.

It was not very promising, but Signora told her tale again.

'And what has you looking for a room up in this area?'

'I have been away from Ireland for a long time, I don't know many places now but I do need somewhere to live. I had no idea that things had become so expensive and… well… I came out this way because you can see the mountains from here,' she said.

For some reason this seemed to please them. Maybe it was because it was so without guile.

'We never had boarders,' the woman said.

'I would be no trouble, I would sit in my room.'

'You wouldn't want to eat with us?' The man indicated a table with a plate of very thick unappetising sandwiches, butter still in its foil paper and the milk still in the bottle.

'No, no thank you so much. Suppose I were to buy an electric kettle, I eat mainly salads, and I suppose I could have an electric ring thing. You know, to heat up soups?'

'You haven't even seen the room,' the woman said.

'Can you show it to me?' Her voice was gentle but authoritative.

Together they all walked up the stairs, watched by Jerry from below.

It was a small room with a wash handbasin. An empty wardrobe and an empty book case, no pictures on the walls. Not much memory of the years that the beautiful vibrant Suzi with her long dark red hair and her flashing eyes had spent in this room.

Outside the window it was getting dark. The room was on the back of the house. It looked out over wasteland which would soon be more houses, but at the moment there was nothing between her and the mountain.

'It's good to have a beautiful view like this,' Signora said. 'I have been living in Italy, they would call this Vista del Monte, mountain view.'

'That's the name of the school the young lad goes to, Mountain-view,' said the big man.

Signora smiled at him. 'If you'll have me, Mrs. Sullivan, Mr. Sullivan… I think I've come to a lovely place,' she said.

She saw them exchange glances, wondering was she cracked in the head, were they wise to let her into the house.

They showed her the bathroom. They would tidy it up a bit, they said, and give her a rack for her towel.

They sat downstairs and talked, and it was as if her very gentleness seemed to impose more manners on them. The man cleared the food away from the table, the woman put out her cigarette, and turned off the television. The boy sat in the far corner watching with interest.

They explained that there was a couple across the road who made a living out of informing the tax offices on other people's business, so if she did come she would have to be a relation, so that the busybodies couldn't report there was a paying guest contributing to the household expenses.

'A cousin maybe.' Signora seemed excited at the thought of the subterfuge.

She told them she had lived long years in Italy, and having seen several pictures of the Pope and the Sacred Heart on the walls she added that her Italian husband had died there recently and she had come home to Ireland to make her life here.

'And have you no family here?'

'I do have some relations. I will look them up in time,' said

Signora, who had a mother, a father, two sisters and two brothers living in this city.

They told her that times were hard and that Jimmy worked as a driver, freelance sort of, hackney cabs, vans, whatever was going, and that Peggy worked in the supermarket at the checkout.

And then the conversation came back to the room upstairs.

'The room belonged to someone else in the family?' Signora enquired politely.

They told her of a daughter who preferred to live nearer the city. Then they talked of money, and she showed them her wallet. She had five weeks' rent. Would they like a month in advance? she wondered.

They looked at each other, the Sullivans, faces anxious. They were suspicious of unworldly people like this who showed you their entire wallet.

'Is that all you have in the world?'

'It's all I have now but I will have more when I get some work.' Signora seemed unruffled by the thought of it. They were still uneasy. 'Perhaps I could step outside while you talk it over,' she said, and went out to the back garden where she looked at the distant, faraway mountains that some people called hills. They weren't rugged and sharp and blue like her mountains were back in Sicily.

People would be going about their business there in Annunziata. Would any of them wonder about Signora and where she was going to lay her head tonight?

The Sullivans came to the door, their decision made.

'I suppose, being a bit short and everything, you'll want to stay immediately, if you are going to be here, that is?' said Jimmy Sullivan.

'Oh, tonight would be great,' Signora said.

'Well, you can come for a week and if you like us and we like you we can talk about it being for a bit longer,' Peggy said.

Signora's eyes lit up. 'Grazie, grazie,' she said before she could help herself. 'I lived there so long, you see,' she said apologetically.

They didn't mind, she was obviously a harmless eccentric.

'Come on up and help me make the bed,' Peggy said.

Young Jerry's eyes followed them wordlessly.

'I'll be no trouble, Jerry,' Signora said.

'How did you know I was called Jerry?' he asked.

Surely his parents must have spoken to him. This was a slip-up, but Signora was used to covering her tracks. 'Because it's your name,' she said simply.

And it seemed to satisfy him.

Peggy got out sheets and blankets. 'Suzi had one of those candlewick bedspreads but she took it with her when she went,' Peggy said.

'Do you miss her?'

'She comes round once a week, but usually when her father's out. They never saw eye to eye, not since she was about ten years of age. It's a pity but that's the way it is. Better for her to live on her own rather than all the barneys they had here.'

Signora unpacked the coverlet with all the Italian place names embroidered on it. She had wrapped it in tissue paper and had used it to keep her jug safe. She had brought few possessions with her; she was happy to unpack them so that Peggy Sullivan could see how blameless and innocent was her lifestyle.

Peggy's eyes were round with amazement.

'Where on earth did you get that, it's beautiful?' she gaped.

'I made it myself over the years, adding names here and there. Look there's Rome, and that's Annunziata, the place I lived.'

Peggy's eyes had tears in them. 'And you and he lay under this… how sad that he died.'

'Yes, yes it was.'

'Was he sick for a long time?'

'No, killed in an accident.'

'Do you have a picture of him, to put up here maybe?' Peggy patted the top of the chest of drawers.

'No, I have no pictures of Mario, only in my heart and mind.'

The words hung there between them.

Peggy Sullivan decided to talk of something else. 'I tell you if you can do sewing like that it won't be long till you get a job. Anyone would take you on.'

'I never thought of earning my living by sewing.' Signora's face was far away.

'Well what were you going to take up?'

'Teaching maybe, being a guide. I used to sell little embroidered things, fine detailed work^ior tourists in Sicily. But I didn't think they'd want them here.'

'You could do shamrocks and harps, I suppose,' Peggy said. But neither of them liked the thought of it very much. They finished the room. Signora hung up her few garments and seemed well pleased with it all.

'Thank you for giving me a new home so quickly. I was just saying to your son I'll be no trouble.'

'Don't mind him, he's trouble enough for us all, bone idle lazy. He has our hearts broken. At least Suzi's bright, that fellow will end in the gutter.'

'I'm sure it's just a phase.' Signora had talked like this to Mario about his sons, soothing, optimistic. It was what parents wanted to hear.

'It's a long phase if that's what it is. Listen, will you come down and have a drink with us before you go to bed?'

'No, thank you. I'll start as I mean to go on. I'm tired now. I'll sleep.'

'But you don't even have a kettle to make yourself a cup of tea.'

'Thank you, truly I am fine.'

Peggy left her and went downstairs. Jimmy had a sports programme on television. 'Turn it down a bit, Jimmy. The woman's tired, she's been travelling all day.'

'God almighty, is it going to be like when those two were babies, shush this and shush that?'

'No it's not, and you're as anxious for her money as I am.'

'She's as odd as two left shoes. Did you get anything out of her at all?'

'She says she was married and her husband was killed in an accident. That's what she says.'

'And you don't believe her obviously?'

'Well, she has no picture of him. She doesn't look married. And she's got this thing on the bed. It's like a priest's vestment, a quilt. You'd never have time to do that if you were married.'

'You read too many books and see too many films, that's your trouble.'

'She is a bit mad though, Jimmy, not the full shilling.'

'She's hardly an axe murderer, is she?'

'No, but she might have been a nun, she has that sort of still way

?

about her. I'd say that's what she was. Is, even. You never know these days.'

'It could be.' Jimmy was thoughtful. 'Well in case she is a nun, don't be too free with telling her all that Suzi gets up to. She'd be out of here in a flash if she knew how that young rossie that we reared carries on.'

Signora stood at her window and looked across the wasteground at the mountains.

Could this place ever be her home?

Would she give in when she saw a mother and father more frail and dependent than when she had left? Would she forgive their slights and their coldness, the lack of response once they knew she was not going to run home obediently and do the single daughter's duty for them?

Or would she stay in this small shabby house with noisy people banging around downstairs, a sullen boy, a disaffected daughter? Signora knew she would be kind to this family, the Sullivans whom she had never met before this day.

She would try to bring about a reconciliation between Suzi and her father. She would find some way to interest the sullen child in his work. In time she would hem the curtains, she would mend the frayed cushions in the sitting room, and put ribbon on the edges of the towels in the bathroom. But she would do it slowly. Her years in Annunziata had taught her patience.

She would not go tomorrow and look at her mother's house or visit the home where her father lived.

She would however go to see Brenda and Pillow Case, and she would remember to refer to him as Patrick. They would be even more pleased to see her once they realised she had found herself accommodation and was about to look for work. Maybe they might even have something in their restaurant. She could wash up and prepare vegetables in the kitchen like the boy who had married Mario's daughter.

Signora washed and undressed. She put on the white nightdress with the little rosebuds she had embroidered around the neckline. Mario had said he loved it; she remembered his hands stroking the rosebuds before he would stroke her.

Mario, asleep now in a graveyard that looked out over the valleys and mountains. He had known her well in the end, known she would follow his advice after his death even though she had not done so in his lifetime. Still, all in all he was probably glad she had stayed, glad she had come and lived in his village for twenty-six years, and he would be glad to know that she had left as he wanted her to do, to give his widow dignity and respect.

She had made him happy so often under this very quilt and wearing this very nightdress. She had made him happy by listening to his worries, stroking his head and giving him gentle thoughts and suggestions. She listened to the strange unfamiliar dogs barking and the children shouting to each other.

Soon she would sleep and tomorrow her new life would start.

Brenda always walked through the dining room of Quentin's at midday. It was a routine. In a nearby church the Angelus rang over a Dublin that rarely paused to acknowledge it by saying prayers these days, as people had done when Brenda was a young girl. She wore a plain coloured dress always, with a crisp clean white collar. Her make-up was freshly applied and she checked each table carefully. The waiters knew they might as well get it right in the beginning because Brenda had such high standards. Mr. Quentin who lived abroad always said that his name was good in Dublin entirely due to Brenda and Patrick, and Brenda wanted to keep it that way.

Most of the staff had been there for a while; they knew each other's ways and worked well as a team. There were regular customers, who all liked to be addressed by name, and Brenda had stressed how important it was to remember small details about the customers. Had they enjoyed their holiday? Were they writing a new book? Glad to see their photograph in the Irish Times, nice to hear their horse won at the Curragh.

Although her husband Patrick thought that they came for the food Brenda knew that their clientele came to be welcomed, and to be made much of as well. She had spent too many years being nice to people who were nobodies, watching them turn into somebodies and always remembering the flattering reception they got in Quentin's. This was the basis of the regular lunch trade, even when economic times were meant to be hard and belts were reported to be in need of tightening.

Brenda adjusted the flowers on a table by the window and heard the door opening. Nobody came to lunch at this time. Dubliners were late lunch eaters anyway, and Quentin's never saw anyone until well after twelve thirty.

The woman came in hesitantly. She was about fifty or maybe more, long hair streaked in grey but with the remains of red in it, and it was tied back loosely with a coloured scarf. She wore a long brown skirt almost to her ankles and an old-fashioned jacket, like people wore way back in the seventies. She was neither shabby nor smart, she was just totally different. She was about to approach Nell Dunne, already seated in her place at the cash desk, when Brenda realised who she was.

'Nora O'Donoghue!' she called out excitedly. It had been a lifetime since she had seen her friend. The young waiters and Mrs. Dunne at the desk looked surprised to see Brenda, the impeccable Brenda Brennan, running across to embrace this unlikely looking woman. 'My God, you actually left that place, you actually got on a plane and came home.'

'I came back, yes,' Signora said.

Suddenly Brenda looked worried. 'It's not… I mean your father didn't die or anything?'

'No, not that I know of.'

'So you haven't gone back to them?'

'Oh no. No, not at all.'

'Great, I knew you wouldn't give in. And tell me, how's the love of your life?'

And then Signora's face changed. All the colour and life seemed to go out of it. 'He's dead, Brenda. Mario died. He was killed on the road, on a corner. He's in a churchyard in Annunziata now.'

Even saying it had drained her; she looked as if she were about to faint. In forty minutes the place would fill up. Brenda Brennan had to be out there, the face of Quentin's, not crying with a friend over a lost love. She thought quickly. There was one booth that she usually reserved for lovers, or people having discreet lunches. She would take it for Nora. She led her friend to the table, and called for a large brandy and a glass of iced water. One of them would surely help.

With a practised eye and hand she changed the reservation list, and asked Nell Dunne to photocopy the new version.

Nell was almost too interested in events. 'Is there anything at all we can do to help… the situation, Ms Brennan?'

'Yes, thank you, Nell. Photocopy the new seating plan, make

° sure the waiters have it and that there's a copy in the kitchen. Thank you.' She was brisk and barely courteous. Sometimes Nell Dunne annoyed her, although she never knew quite why.

And then Brenda Brennan, who was known as the Ice Maiden by staff and customer alike, went into the booth and cried tears with her friend over the death of this man Mario whose wife had crossed the square to tell Nora to go home to where she belonged.

It was a nightmare and yet it was a love story. Brenda wondered wistfully for a while what it must have been like to have loved like this, so wildly and without care for the consequences, without planning for the future.

The guests wouldn't see Signora in her booth any more than they ever saw the Government Minister and his lady friend who often dined there, or the head-hunters lunching a likely candidate from another company. It was safe to leave her there alone.

Brenda dried her eyes, touched up her make-up, straightened her collar and went to work. Signora, peering around from time to time, saw with amazement her friend Brenda escorting wealthy confident people to tables, asking them about their families, their business deals… And the prices on the menu! It would have kept a family for a whole week in Annunziata. Where did these people get the money?

'Chef has some very fresh brill today which he recommends highly, and there's a medley of wild mushrooms… but I'll leave it with you, and Charles will come and take your order when you're ready.'

How had Brenda learned to talk like this, to refer to Pillow Case as Chef in some kind of awe, to hold herself so straight? To be so confident? While Signora had lived striving to be deferential, to find a background to live in, other people had been putting themselves forward. This is what she would have to learn in her new life. If she were to survive.

Signora blew her nose and straightened herself up. She didn't hunch over the table any more, looking at the menu with frightened eyes. Instead she ordered a tomato salad followed by beef. It had been so long since she had eaten meat. Her budget hadn't run to it, and probably would not ever run to it again. She closed her eyes, feeling almost faint at the prices on the menu, but Brenda had insisted. Have what she liked, this was her welcome home lunch. Without her asking for it, a bottle of Chianti appeared. Signora steeled herself not to look it up on the price list. It was a gift and she would accept it as such.

Once she began to eat she realised just how hungry she was. She had hardly had anything to eat on the plane, she was too excited, nervous rather. And then last night in the Sullivans' she had not eaten. The tomato salad was delicious. Fresh basil sprinkled over the plate. When had they heard about things like this in Ireland? The beef was served rare, the vegetables crisp and firm, not soft and swimming in water like she had thought all vegetables used to be before she learned how to cook them properly.

When she had finished she felt much stronger.

Tt's all right, I won't cry again,' she said, when the lunchtime crowd had left and Brenda slid in opposite her.

'You're not to go back to your mother, Nora. I don't want to come between families, but really and truly she was never a mother to you when you needed it, why should you be a daughter to her now when she needs it?'

'No, no I don't feel any sense of duty about it at all.'

'Thank God for that,' Brenda said, relieved.

'But I will need to work, to earn a living, to pay my way. Do you need anyone here to peel potatoes, clean up or anything?'

Gently Brenda told her friend that it wouldn't work out, and they had youngsters, trainees. They had been themselves trainees all those years ago. Before… well, before everything changed.

'Anyway, Nora, you're too old to do that, you're too well trained. You can do all kinds of things, work in an office, teach Italian maybe.'

'No, I'm too old, that's the problem. I never used a typewriter, let alone a computer. I don't have any qualifications to teach.'

'You'd better sign on to get some money, anyway.' Brenda was always practical.

'Sign on?'

'For the dole, for unemployment benefit.'

'I can't do that, I'm not entitled.'

'Yes, you are. You're Irish, aren't you?'

'But I lived away for so long, I contributed nothing to the country.' She was adamant.

Brenda looked worried. 'You can't start being like Mother Teresa here, you know. This is the real world, you have to look to yourself and take what's being offered.'

'Brenda, don't worry about me, I'm a survivor. Look what I survived for nearly a quarter of a century. Most people would not have done that. I found a place to live within hours of coming back to Dublin. I'll find a job too.'

Signora was brought into the kitchen to meet Pillow Case, whom she managed to call Patrick with difficulty. He was courteous and grave as he welcomed her back and sympathised formally on the death of her husband. Did he think Mario really had been her husband or was it just for appearances in front of these young people who watched him with reverence?

Signora thanked them for the delicious meal and said she would return to eat there again under her own steam.

'We are going to have an Italian season of cooking soon. Perhaps you would translate the menus for us?' Patrick suggested.

'Oh I'd be delighted.' Signora's face lit up. This would go some way towards paying for a meal that would have cost more than she could hope to earn in two weeks.

'It would be all done officially, for a fee and everything,' Patrick insisted. How had the Brennans become so smooth and sophisticated? Offering her money without being seen to give her a handout.

Signora's will strengthened even further. 'Well, we'll discuss that when the time comes. I won't delay you, and I'll be in touch next week to tell you my progress.' She left swiftly without protracted goodbyes. That was something she had learned over the years in her village. People liked you more if you didn't stay on interminably, if they realised that a conversation was going to have an end.

She bought teabags and biscuits, and as a luxury a cake of nice soap.

She asked several restaurants for kitchen work and was politely refused everywhere. She tried a supermarket for shelf stacking and newsagents for a job as an assistant or someone to open the piles of papers and magazines for them. She felt that they looked at her puzzled. Sometimes they asked her why she wasn't going through the Job Centre and she looked at them with vague eyes which confirm their view that she might be a bit simple.

But she did not give in. Until five o'clock she sought work. Then she took a bus to where her mother lived. The flats were in their own grounds, raised flower beds with little bushes and ground cover provided the landscaping, as it was called. A lot of the doors had ramps as well as steps. This was a development, purpose built for the needs of the elderly. With mature trees and bushes around it and built in red brick it looked solid and safe, something that would appeal to those who had sold their family homes to end their days here.

Signora sat quietly hidden by a large tree. She held her paper bag of possessions on her lap and watched the doorway of number 23 for what must have been a long time. She was so used to being still she never noticed time pass. She never wore a watch so time and its passing were not important to her. She would watch until she saw her mother, if not today then another day, and once she saw her then she would know what to do. She could make no decision until she had seen her mother's face. Perhaps pity would be uppermost in her heart, or love from the old days, or forgiveness. Perhaps she might see her mother only as another stranger and one who had spurned love and friendship in the past.

Signora trusted feelings. She knew she would know.

Nobody went in or out of number 23 that evening. At ten o'clock Signora gave up her post and took a bus back to the Sullivans'. She let herself in quietly and went upstairs, calling goodnight into the room where the television blared. The boy Jerry sat with them watching. No wonder the child didn't pay much attention at school if he was up till all hours watching Westerns.

They had found her an electric ring and an old kettle. She made herself tea and looked out at the mountains.

Already in thirty-six hours there was a. little veil in her mind over the memory of Annunziata and the walk out to Vista del Monte. She wondered would Gabriella ever be sorry that she had sent Signora away. Would Paolo and Gianna miss her? Would Signora Leone wonder how her friend the Irishwoman was faring far across the sea? Then she washed with the nice soap that smelled of sandalwood, and slept. She didn't hear the sound of the gunfights in the saloons or the flight of the covered wagons. She slept long and deeply.

When she got up the house was empty. Peggy gone to her supermarket, Jimmy out on a driving job and Jerry putting in the day at his school. She set out on her journey. This time she would target her mother's home for a morning stake-out. She would look for jobs later on. Again she sat behind her familiar tree, and this time she didn't have long to wait. A small car drew up outside number 23 and a matronly woman, thickset, with very tightly permed red hair, got out. With a gasp she realised this was her younger sister Rita. She looked so settled in her ways, so middle-aged even though she must only be forty-six. She had been a girl when Signora left, and of course there had been no photograph, any more than there had been warm family letters in the meantime. She must remember that. They only wrote when they needed her, when the comfort of their own lives seemed bigger than the effort of getting in touch with the madwoman who had disgraced herself by fleeing to Sicily to follow a married man.

Rita looked stiff and tense.

She reminded Signora of Gabriella's mother, a small angry woman whose eyes darted around her seeing faults everywhere but not being able to define them. She was meant to suffer with her nerves, they said. Could this really be Rita her little sister, this woman with shoulders hunched, with feet squashed into shoes that were too tight, taking a dozen short fussy steps when four would have done? Signora watched aghast from behind her tree. The door of the car was open, she must be going in to collect Mother. She braced herself for the shock. If Rita looked old, what must mother be like now?

She thought of the old people in Annunziata. Small, bent often over sticks, sitting out in the square watching people go by, always smiling, often touching her skirt and looking at the embroidery 'Bella bellissima', they would say.

Her mother would not be like that. Her mother was a well preserved seventy-seven. She wore a brown dress and brown cardigan over it. Her hair was pulled back as it had always been into that unfashionable bun Mario had commented on all those years ago. 'Your mother would be handsome if she let her hair be more free.'

Imagine, her mother then must have only been a little older than she was now. So hard, so set in her ways, so willing to go along with the religious line although she did not feel it in her heart. If her mother had just stood up for her things would have been different. For years Signora could have had a lifeline to home, and she might well have come back and looked after them even in the country, the small farm that they hated leaving.

But now? They were only yards away from her… she could have called out and they would have heard.

She saw Rita's body stiffen still further in irritation and resentment as their mother scolded. 'All right, all right. I'm getting in, no need to rush me. You'll be old one day yourself, you know.' There was no pleasure at seeing each other, no gratitude for the lift to the hospital, no shared solidarity or sympathy about going to see an old man who could no longer live at home.

This must be Rita's day, the next one would be Helen's, and the sisters-in-law did a small amount of the joyless transporting and minding. No wonder they wanted the madwoman back from Italy. The car drove off with the two stern figures upright in it, not talking to each other, animatedly or at all. How had she learned to love so much, Signora wondered, coming as she did from such a loveless family? It had indeed made up her mind for her. Signora walked out of the neatly landscaped gardens, her head held high. It was clear to her now. She would have no regret, no residual guilt.

The afternoon was as dispiriting as the previous one in terms of job hunting, but she refused to let it get her down. When her journeying brought her toward the River Liffey again she sought out the coffee shop where Suzi worked. The girl looked up, pleased.

'You actually went there! My Mam told me they had got a lodger out of a clear blue sky.'

'It's very nice, I wanted to thank you.'

'No, it's not very nice, but it'll tide you over.'

'I can see the mountains from your bedroom.'

'Yeah, and about twenty tons of waste earth waiting for more little boxes to be built on it.'

Tt's just what I need, thank you again.'

'They think you might be a nun, are you?'

'No, no. Far from a nun, I'm afraid.'

'Mam says you say your husband died.'

'In a sort of a way that's true.'

'He sort of died… is that what you mean?'

Signora looked very calm; it was easy to see why people might mistake her for a nun. 'No, I meant that in a sort of a way he was my husband, but I didn't see any need to explain all that to your mother and father.'

'No need at all, much wiser not to,' Suzi said, and poured her a cup of coffee. 'On the house,' she whispered.

Signora smiled to herself, thinking that if she played her cards right she might be able to eat for nothing all around Dublin. 'I had a free lunch in Quentin's; I am doing well,' she confided to Suzi.

'That's where I'd love to work,' Suzi said. I'd dress up in black trousers just like the waiters. I'd be the only woman apart from Ms Brennan.'

'You know of Ms Brennan?'

'She's a legend,' said Suzi. 'I want to work with her for about three years, learn everything there is to know, then open my own place.'

Signora gave a sigh of envy. How great to think this was possible, rather than a further series of refusals as a washer-up. 'Tell me why can't I get a job, just an ordinary job cleaning, tidying up, anything. What's wrong with me? Is it just that I'm too old?'

Suzi bit her lip. 'I think it's that you look a bit too good for the jobs you're looking for. Like, you look a bit too smart for staying in my parents' house, it makes people uneasy. They might think that it's a bit odd. And they're afraid of odd people.'

'So what should I do, do you think?'

'Maybe you should aim for something a bit higher up, like a receptionist or maybe… My Mam says you've an embroidered bedspread that would take the sight out of your eyes. Maybe you could take that to a shop and show them. You know, the right kind of shop.'

'I wouldn't have the confidence.'

'If you lived with a fellow out in Italy at your age, a fellow that wasn't your husband, you've all the confidence that it needs,' said Suzi.

And they made a list of the designers and fashion shops where really top market embroidery might find a home. As she watched Suzi sucking the pencil to think of more places to write down, Signora felt a huge fantasy flood over her. Maybe some day she might bring this lovely girl back with her to Annunziata, say that she was her niece, they had the same red hair. She could show the people there she had a life in Ireland and let the Irish know she was a person of importance in Italy. But it was only a dream, and there was Suzi talking about her hair.

'I have this friend who works in a real posh place cutting hair and they need guinea pigs on training nights. Why don't you'go down there? You'll get a great styling for only two pounds. It costs you twenty - thirty times that if you go for real.'

Could people really pay £60 to have their hair cut? The world had gone mad. Mario had always loved her long hair. Mario was dead. He had sent her a message telling her go back to Ireland, he would expect her to cut her hair if it was necessary to do so. 'Where is this place?' Signora asked, and took down the address.

'Jimmy, she's cut her hair,' whispered Peggy Sullivan.

Jimmy was listening to an in-depth interview with a soccer manager. 'Yeah, great,' he said.

'No honestly, she's not what she pretends, I saw her coming in. You wouldn't know her, she looks twenty years younger.'

'Good, good.' Jimmy raised the volume a bit, but Peggy took the control and turned it down.

'Have some respect. We're taking the woman's money, we don't have to deafen her as well.'

'All right, but hush talking,'

Peggy sat brooding. This Signora as she called herself was very odd altogether. No one could be as simple as she was and survive. No one with that little money could get a haircut that must have cost a fortune. Peggy hated mysteries and this was a very deep mystery indeed.

'You'll have to forgive me if I take my bedspread with me today. I didn't want you to think I was taking away all the furnishings or anything,' Signora explained to them at their breakfast next morning. 'You see, I think people are a bit confused by me. I have to show them that I can do some kind of work. I got my hair cut in a place that needed people to experiment on. Do you think it makes me look more ordinary?'

'It's very nice indeed, Signora,' said Jimmy Sullivan.

'It looks most expensive, certainly.' Peggy approved.

'Is it dyed?' asked Jerry with interest.

'No, it's got henna in it, but they said it was an unusual colour already, like a wild animal,' Signora said, not at all offended by Jerry's question or the verdict of the young hairdressers.

It was pleasing that everyone liked her work so much and admired the intricate stitching and the imaginative mingling of place names with flowers. But there were no jobs. They said they would keep her name on file and were surprised by the address, as if they thought she would live somewhere more elegant. It was a day of refusals like other days but somehow they seemed to be given with more respect and less bewilderment. Dress designers, boutiques and two theatre companies looked at her handiwork with genuine interest. Suzi had been right that she should aim high.

Could she dare try to be a guide or a teacher as she had been so confidently for half her adult life in a Sicilian village?

She got into the habit of talking to Jerry in the evenings.

He would come and knock on her door. 'Are you busy, Mrs. Signora?'

'No, come in, Jerry. It's nice to have company.'

'You could always come downstairs, you know. They wouldn't mind.'

'No, no. I rented a room from your parents, I want them to like having me here in the house not living on top of them.'

'What are you doing, Mrs. Signora?'

'I'm making little baby dresses for a boutique. They told me they would take four. They have to be good because I spent some of my savings on the material so I can't afford for them not to take them.'

'Are you poor, Mrs. Signora?'

'Not really, but I don't have much money.' It seemed quite a natural, reasonable answer. It satisfied Jerry totally. 'Why don't you bring your homework up here, Jerry?' she suggested. 'Then you could be company for me and I could give you a hand if you needed it.'

They sat together all through the month of May, chatting easily. Jerry advised her to make five baby dresses and pretend she thought they ordered five. It had been great advice, they took all five and wanted more.

Signora showed huge interest in Jerry's homework. 'Read me that poem again, let's see what does it mean?'

'It's only an old poem, Mrs. Signora.'

'I know but it must mean something. Let's think.' Together they would recite: 'Nine bean rows will I have there'. 'I wonder why he wanted nine?'

'He was only an old poet, Mrs. Signora. I don't suppose he knew what he wanted.'

'"And live alone in the bee loud glade." Imagine that, Jerry. He only wanted to hear the sound of the bees around him, he didn't want the noise of the city.'

'He was old, of course,' Jerry explained.

'Who was?'

'Yeats, you know, who wrote the poem.'

Little by little she made him interested in everything.

She pretended her own memory was bad. As she sewed she asked him to say it to her over and over. So Jerry Sullivan learned his poetry, wrote his essays, attempted his maths. The only thing he was remotely interested in was Geography. It had to do with a teacher, Mr. O'Brien. He was a great fellow apparently. Mr. O'Brien used to teach about river beds and soil strata and erosion and a rake of things, but he always expected you to know it. The other teachers didn't expect you to, that was the difference.

'He's going to be the Head, you know, next year,' Jerry explained.

'Oh. And are people in Mountainview school pleased about that?'

'Yeah, I think so. Old Walsh was a terrible bollocks.'

She looked at him vaguely, as if she didn't understand the word. It worked every time.

'Mr. Walsh, the old fellow who's Head at the moment, he's not good at all.'

'Ah, I see.'

Jerry's language had improved beyond all recognition, Suzi reported to Signora. And what was more some teacher at school had said that his work had taken a turn for the better as well. 'It's they should be paying you,' Suzi said. 'You're like a private governess. Isn't it a pity you couldn't get a job teaching.'

'Your mother's asking me to tea on Thursday so that I can meet you,' Signora said. 'I think Jerry's teacher is calling then too. She probably wanted a bit of support.'

'He's a real ladies' man, Tony O'Brien is. I've heard a tale or two about him, you'd want to watch yourself there, Signora. With your smart new hairdo and all, he could have his way with you.'

'I'm not ever going to be interested in a man again.' She spoke simply.

'Oh, I said that after the second-last fellow, but suddenly the interest came back.'

The tea party began awkwardly.

Peggy Sullivan was not a natural hostess, so Signora took over the conversation, gently, almost dreamily talking about all the changes in Ireland she noticed and most of them were for the better. 'The schools are all so bright and cheerful nowadays, and Jerry tells me of the great projects you do in Geography class. We had nothing like that when I was at school.'

And after that everything thawed. Peggy Sullivan had seen the visit of the schoolteacher as a possible list of complaints against her son. She hadn't hoped that her daughter and Signora would get on so well. Or that Jerry would actually tell Mr. O'Brien that he was doing a project on place names, trying to find out why all the streets around here were called what they were. Jimmy came home in the middle of it all, and Signora explained that Jerry was lucky to have a father who knew the city so well, he was better than any map.

They talked like a normal family. More polite than many Tony O'Brien had visited. He had always thought young Jerry Sullivan was part of the group for whom there was no hope. But this odd, unsettling woman who seemed to have taken over the household obviously had a good effect on the kid too.

'You must have loved Italy to stay there so long.'

'I did, very, very much.'

'I've never been there myself, but a colleague of mine above in the school, Aidan Dunne, now he'd live, sleep and breathe Italy to you if you let him.'

'Mr. Dunne, he teaches Latin,' Jerry said in a glum voice.

'Latin? You could learn Latin, Jerry.' Signora's eyes lit up.

'Oh it's only for brainy people, ones going on to University to be lawyers and doctors and things.'

'No, it's not.' Signora and Tony O'Brien spoke at the same time.

'Please…' he motioned her to speak.

'Well, I wish I had learned Latin because it's sort of the root of all other languages, like French and Italian and Spanish. If you know the Latin word you know where everything comes from.' She spoke enthusiastically.

Tony O'Brien said: 'God, you really should meet Aidan Dunne, that's what he's been saying for years. I like kids to learn it because it's logical. Like doing a crossword, trains them to think, and there's no problem with an accent.'

When the teacher had gone they all talked together eagerly. Signora knew that Suzi would come home a little more regularly now, and wouldn't have to avoid her father. Somehow fences had been mended.

Signora met Brenda for a walk in St Stephen's Green. Brenda brought stale bread for the ducks and they fed them together, peaceable in the sunshine.

'I go to see your mother every month, will I tell her you're home?' Brenda asked.

'What do you think?'

'I think no, but then that's just because I'm still afraid you'll go and live with her.'

'You don't know me at all. I am as hard as hell. Do you like her as a person? Truthfully now?'

'No, not very much. I went to please you in the beginning and then I got sucked into it because she seems so miserable, complaining about Rita and Helen and the awful daughters-in-law, as she calls them.'

'I'll go and see her. I won't have you trying to cover over for me.'

'Don't go, you'll give in.'

'Believe me, that will not happen.'

She called on her mother that afternoon. Just went and rang on the bell of number 23.

Her mother looked at her, confused. 'Yes?' she said.

'I'm Nora, Mother. I've come to visit you.'

No smile, no arms outstretched, no welcome. Just hostility in the small brown eyes that looked back at her. They stood almost frozen in the doorway. Her mother had not moved back to let her enter, and Nora would not ask could she come in.

But she did speak again. 'I came to see how you are and to ask whether Daddy would like me to go and see him in the home or not. I want to do what's best for everyone.'

Her mothers lip curled. 'When did you ever want to do what was best for anyone except yourself?' she said. Signora stood calm in the doorway. It was at times like this that her habit of stillness came into its own. Eventually her mother moved back into the apartment. 'Come in as you're here,' she said ungraciously.

Signora recognised a few, but not many, pieces from her home.

There was a cabinet, where the good china and the few small bits of silver were kept. You could hardly see into it years ago, any more than you could see now. There were no pictures on the wall, or books on the bookshelf. A big television set dominated the room, a bottle with orange squash stood on a tin tray on the dining table. There were no flowers, no sign at all of any enjoyment of life. Her mother did not offer her a seat so Signora sat at the dining table. She wondered had it known many meals served on it, but then she was not in a position to criticise. For twenty-six years she had lived in rooms where nobody was entertained to a dinner. Maybe it ran in the family

'I suppose you'll want to smoke all over the place.'

'No, Mother. I never smoked.'

'How would I know what you do or don't do?'

'Indeed, Mother, how would you?' Her voice was calm, not challenging.

'And are you home on a holiday or what?'

In the level voice which was driving her mother mad, Signora explained that she had come home to live, that she had found a room and some small sewing jobs. She hoped to get further work to keep herself. She ignored her mother's scornful sniff at the area she was living. She paused then and waited politely for some reaction.

'And did he throw you out in the end, Mario or whatever his name is?'

'You know his name was Mario, Mother. You met him. And no, he didn't throw me out. If he were alive I would still be there. He was killed very tragically, Mother, I know you'll be sorry to hear, in an accident on a mountain road. So then I decided to come home and live in Ireland.' Again she waited.

'I suppose they didn't want you there in that place once he wasn't there to protect you, is that what happened?'

'No, you're wrong. They wanted what was best for me, all of them.'

Her mother snorted again. The silence hung between them.

Her mother couldn't take it. 'So you're going to live with these people up in that tough estate, full of the unemployed and criminals rather than with your own flesh and blood. Is this what we are to expect?'

'It's very kind of you to offer me a home, Mother, but we have been strangers for too long. I have developed my little ways and I

am sure you have yours. You didn't want to know about my life so I would only bore you talking about it, you made that clear. But perhaps I can come and see you every now and then, and tell me if Father would like me to visit or not?'

'Oh, you can take your talk of visits with you when you go. None of us want you and that is a fact.'

'I would hate to think that. I tried to keep in touch with everyone. I wrote letter after letter. I know nothing about my six nieces and five nephews. I would love to get to know them now that I am home.'

'Well, none of them want anything to do with you, I can tell you that, half cracked as you were thinking you can come back here and take up as if nothing has happened. You could have turned out a somebody. Look at that friend of yours, Brenda, a nice groomed person, married and a good job and all. She's the kind of girl any woman would like as a daughter.'

'And of course you have Helen and Rita,' Signora added. -There was a half snort this time, showing that they had been less than totally satisfactory. 'Anyway, Mother, now that I'm back perhaps I could take you out somewhere for a meal sometimes, or we could go into town for afternoon tea. And I'll enquire at the Home whether Father would like a visit or not.'

There was a silence. It was all too much for her mother to take in. Signora had not given her address, just the area. Her sisters could not come and track her down. She felt no qualms. This was not a woman who had loved her or thought of her welfare, not at any time during the long years she had pleaded for friendship and contact.

She stood up to leave.

'Oh, you're very high and mighty. But you're a middle-aged woman, don't think any man in Dublin will have you after all you've been through. I know there's divorce and all now for all it broke your father's heart, but still you wouldn't find many men in Ireland willing to take on a fifty-year-old woman like yourself, another man's leavings.'

'No indeed, Mother, so it's just as well I don't have any plans in that direction. I'll write you a little note and come and see you in a few weeks' time.'

'Weeks?' her mother said.

'Yes indeed, and maybe I'll bring along a cake or a cherry log from Bewleys with me and we could have tea. But we'll see. And give my warmest wishes to Helen and Rita, and tell them I'll write to them too.'

She was gone before her mother could realise it. She knew she would be on the phone to one of her daughters within minutes. Nothing as dramatic as this had happened in years.

She felt no sadness. That was all over long ago. She felt no guilt. Her only responsibility now was to keep herself sane and strong and self-employed. She must not learn to be dependent on the Sullivan family, no matter how attracted she felt to their handsome daughter and protective to their surly son. She must not be a burden to Brenda and Patrick who were obviously the success story of their generation in Dublin, and she could not rely on the boutiques who would give her no guarantees that they could sell her intricate embroidery.

She must get a teaching job of some sort. It didn't matter that she had no real qualifications, at least she knew how to teach Italian to beginners. Had she not taught herself? Perhaps this man up in Jerry's school, the one that Tony O'Brien said was a lover of Italy… He might know some group, some little organisation that could do with Italian lessons. It didn't matter if it wasn't well paid, she would love to be speaking that beautiful language again, letting it roll around her tongue.

What was his name? Mr. Dunne? That was it. Mr. Aidan Dunne. Nothing could be lost by asking, and if he loved Italian he would be on her side already.

She took the bus to the school. What a different place from her own Vista del Monte, where the summer flowers would all be cascading down the hills already. This was a concrete yard, a shambles of a bicycle shed, litter everywhere, and the whole building needed badly to be painted. Why couldn't they have had some greenery growing over the walls?

Signora knew that a community school or college or whatever it was did not have any funds or legacies or donations to make the place more stylish. But really, was it any wonder that children like Jerry Sullivan didn't feel any great sense of pride in their school?

'He'd be in the staff room,' a group said when she asked for Mr. Dunne the Latin teacher.

She knocked on the door and a man came to answer it. He had thinning brown hair and anxious eyes. He was in his shirt sleeves but she could see his jacket hanging on a chair behind him. It was lunch hour and all the other teachers were obviously out, but Mr. Dunne seemed to be guarding the fort. Somehow she had thought he would be an old man. Something to do with teaching Latin possibly. But he only looked around her own age or younger. Still, by today's standards that was old, much nearer to retirement than starting out.

'I've come to talk to you about Italian, Mr. Dunne,' she said.

'Do you know, I knew some day someone would knock at the door and say that to me,' Aidan Dunne said.

They smiled at each other and it was quite clear that they were going to be friends. They sat in the big untidy staffroom that looked out on the mountains and they talked as if they had known each other always. Aidan Dunne explained about the evening class which was his heart's desire, but that he had got terrible news that very morning. The funding had not been passed by the authorities. They would never now be able to afford a qualified teacher. The new Principal-Elect had promised a small sum from his own funds, but that would go to do up the classrooms and get the place ready. Aidan Dunne said that his heart had been low in case the whole project might have to be scrapped but now he felt a glimmer of hope again.

Signora told how she had lived so long in the Sicilian hills and that she could teach not just the language but perhaps something of the culture as well. Could there be a class on Italian artists and sculptors and frescoes for example, that would be three topics and then there could be Italian music, and opera and religious music. And then there could be wines and food, you know the fruits and vegetables and the frutti di mare and really there was so much as well as the conversation and the holiday phrases, so much to add to the grammar and the learning of the language itself.

Her eyes were bright, she looked a younger woman than the tall person with anxious eyes who had stood at the door. Aidan heard the swelling sounds of children's voices in the corridor. It meant that the lunch hour was nearly over. The other teachers would be in soon, the magic would end.

She seemed to understand this without his saying it. 'I'm staying too long, you have work to do. But do you think we might talk of it again?'

'We get out at four o'clock. Now I sound like the children,' Aidan said.

She smiled at him. 'That's what must be wonderful about working in a school, you are always young and think like the children.'

'I wish it were always like that,' Aidan said.

'When I taught English in Annunziata I used to look at their faces and I might think, they don't know something but when I have finished they will know it. It was a good feeling.'

He was admiring her openly now, this man struggling into his jacket to go back to the classroom. It had been a long time since Signora had felt herself admired. In Annunziata they respected her in some strange way. And of course Mario had loved her, there was no question of that. He had loved her with all his heart. But he had never admired her. He had come to her in the dark. He had held her body to him and he had told her his worries but there had never been a look of admiration in his eyes.

Signora liked it, as she liked this good man struggling to share his own love of another land with the people hereabouts. His fear was that they didn't have enough money for leisure time education themselves to make such a study worthwhile.

'Will I wait outside the school for you?' she asked. 'We could talk more then after four o'clock.'

'I wouldn't want to keep you,' he began.

'I have nothing else to do.' She had no disguises.

'Would you care to sit in our library?' he asked.

'Very much.'

He walked her along the corridor as crowds of children shoved past them. There were always strangers in a big school like this, a new face wasn't interesting enough to make them look twice. Except of course for young Jerry Sullivan, who did a double take.

'Jesus, Signora…' he said in amazement.

'Hallo, Jerry,' she said pleasantly, as if she were here in this school the whole time.

She sat in the library reading through what they had in their Italian section, mainly second-hand books obviously bought with his own money by Aidan Dunne. He was such a kind man, an enthusiast, perhaps he could help her. And she could help him. For the first time since she had come back to Ireland Signora felt relaxed, not just holding on by her fingernails. She stretched and yawned in the summer sunshine.

Even though she was going to teach Italian, she felt sure of it, she didn't think of Italy. She thought of Dublin, she wondered where they would find the people to attend the class. She and Mr. Dunne. She and Aidan. She pulled herself together a little. She must not be fanciful. That had been her undoing, people said. She was full of mad notions and didn't see reality.

Two hours had passed and Aidan Dunne stood at the door of the big room. He was smiling all over his face. 'I don't have a car,' he said. 'I don't suppose you do?'

'I've barely my bus fare,' Signora said.

Life would have been much easier, Bill Burke thought, if only he could have been in love with Grania Dunne. She was about twenty-three, his own age. She came from a normal kind of home, her father was a teacher up in Mountainview school, her mother worked in the cash desk of Quentin's restaurant. She was good looking and easy to talk to.

They used to grumble together about the bank sometimes, and wonder how it was that greedy selfish people always got on well. Grania used to ask about his sister, and give him books for her. And perhaps Grania might have loved him too if things had only been different.

It was easy to talk about love to a good friend who understood. Bill understood when Grania told him about this very old man she just couldn't get out of her mind even though she had tried and tried. He was as old as her own father, and smoked and wheezed and would probably be dead in a couple of years the way he went on, but she had never met anyone who attracted her so much.

She couldn't possibly get together with him because he had lied to her and not told her that he was going to be Principal of the school when he knew all along. And Crania's father would have a stroke and drop dead if he knew that she had been seeing this Tony O'Brien and even slept with him. Once.

She had tried going out with other people but it just hadn't worked. She kept thinking about him and the way the lines came out from the side of his eyes when he smiled. It was so unfair. What part of the human mind or body was so inefficient that it could make you think you loved someone so wildly unsuitable?

Bill agreed in the most heartfelt way possible. He too was a victim of this unsuitable streak. He loved Lizzie Duffy, the most improbable person in the world. Lizzie was a beautiful, troublesome bad debt, who had broken every rule and was still somehow allowed more credit than any customer in this or any branch.

Lizzie loved Bill too. Or said she did, or thought she did. She said she had never met anyone so serious and owlish and honourable and silly in her whole life. And indeed, compared to Lizzie's other friends, he was all of these things. Most of them just laughed at nothing, and had very little interest in getting or keeping jobs but huge interest in travel and having fun. It was idiotic loving Lizzie.

But Bill and Grania told each other seriously over coffee that if life was all about loving suitable people then it would be both very easy and very dull.

Lizzie never asked about Bill's big sister, Olive. She had met her of course, once when she came to visit. Olive was slow, that was all, just slow. She didn't have any disease or illness that had a name. She was twenty-five and she behaved as if she were eight. A very nice eager eight.

Once you knew this there was no problem with Olive. She would tell you stories from books like any eight-year-old, she would be enthusiastic about things she had seen on television. Sometimes she was loud and awkward, and because Olive was big she knocked things over. But there were never any scenes or moods with Olive, she was interested in everything and everyone and thought that there was nobody on earth like her family. 'My mother makes the best cakes in the world,' she would tell people and Bill's mother who had never done more than decorate a bought sponge cake would smile proudly. 'My father runs the big supermarket,' Olive said, and her father who worked at the bacon counter there smiled indulgently.

'My brother Bill's a bank manager,' was the one that got a wry smile from Bill, and indeed Grania, when he told her. 'That'll be the day,' he said.

'You don't want it, it will only show you've given in, compromised,' Grania said encouragingly.

Lizzie shared Olive's view. 'You must rise high in banking,' she said to Bill often. 'I can only marry a successful man, and when we are twenty-five and get married you'll have to be well on your way to the top.'

Even though it was said with Lizzie's wonderful sparkling laugh showing all her tiny white teeth, and a toss of the legendary blonde curls, Bill knew that Lizzie meant it. She said she could never marry a failure; it would be so cruel, because she would just drag them both down. But she would seriously consider marrying Bill in two years' time when they were both a quarter of a century old, because she would be getting past her sell-by date then and it would be time to settle down.

Lizzie had been refused a loan because she had not repaid the first one, her Visa card had been withdrawn and Bill had seen letters go out to her saying: 'Unless you lodge by five o'clock tomorrow the bank will have no option…' But somehow the bank always found an option. Lizzie would arrive tearful on some occasions, brimming with confidence and a new job on others. She never went under. And always she was entirely unrepentant.

'Oh for heaven's sake, Bill, banks don't have a heart or a soul. They only want to make money and not to risk losing money. They are the enemy.'

'They're not my enemy,' Bill said. 'They're my employers.'

'Lizzie, don't,' he would say despairingly as she ordered another bottle of wine. Because he knew that she didn't have the money to pay for it he would have to, and it was becoming increasingly difficult. He wanted to contribute at home, his salary was so much better than his father's wages and they had sacrificed a lot to give him the kind of start he had got. But with Lizzie it was impossible to save. Bill had wanted to buy a new jacket but it was out of the question. He wished Lizzie would stop talking about a holiday, there literally wasn't the money for one. And how was he meant to put aside the money to be wealthy at the age of twenty-five so that he and Lizzie could get married?