Evening Class (18 page)

Then there was a cry from outside. ‘Mummy? Bill? What’s happening? Why aren’t you talking, shouting?’

‘We’re resting,’ Bill called. As an explanation he wondered was it adequate.

But Lizzie seemed to think so. ‘Okay,’ she said from outside.

‘Is she on some kind of drugs?’ her mother asked.

‘No. Heavens no, not at all.’

‘Well, what was it all about? All this locking me in, saying she wanted to talk and then not talking any sense.’

‘I think she misses you,’ Bill said slowly.

‘She’ll be missing me a lot more from now on in,’ said Mrs Duffy.

Bill looked at her, trying to take her in. She was young and slim, she looked a different generation to his own mother. She wore a floaty kind of caftan dress, with some glass beads around the neckline. It was the kind of thing you saw in pictures of New Age people, but she didn’t have open sandals or long flowing hair. Her curls were like Lizzie’s, but with little streaks of grey. Apart from her tearstained face she could have been going to a party. Which was of course what she
had
been doing when she was waylaid.

‘I think she was sorry that you had grown a bit apart,’ Bill said. There was a snort from the figure in the caftan. ‘Well, you know, you live so far away and everything,’

‘Not far enough, I tell you. All I did was ask the girl to come out and meet me for a quick drink and she insists on coming to the station in a taxi, and bringing me here. I said, well only for a little while because we had to go to Chester’s opening… Where Chester thinks I am now is beyond worrying about.’

‘Who is Chester?’

‘He’s a friend, for God’s sake, a friend, one of the people who lives near where I live, he’s an artist. We all came up, no one will know what happened to me.’

‘Won’t they think of looking for you here—in your daughter’s house?’

‘No, of course not, why would they?’

‘They know you have a daughter in Dublin?’

‘Yes, well maybe. They know I have three children but I don’t bleat on and on about them, they wouldn’t know where Elizabeth
lived
or anything.’

‘But your other friends, your real friends?’

‘These are my real friends,’ she snapped.

‘Are you all right in there?’ Lizzie called.

‘Leave it for a bit, Lizzie,’ Bill said.

‘By God, you’re going to pay for this, Elizabeth,’ her mother called.

‘Where are they staying—your friends?’

‘I don’t know, that’s the whole bloody problem, we said we’d see how it went at the opening and maybe if Harry was there we might all go to Harry’s. He lives in a big barn, we once stayed there before. Or if all else failed Chester would know some marvellous little B & Bs for half nothing.’

‘And will Chester have called the Guards, do you think?’

‘Why on earth should he have done that?’

‘To see what had happened to you.’

‘The Guards?’

‘Well, if he was expecting you and you had disappeared.’

‘He’ll think I just drifted off with someone at the exhibition. He might even think I hadn’t bothered to come up at all. That’s what’s so bloody maddening about it all.’

Bill let out a sigh of relief. Lizzie’s mother was a floater and a drifter. There would not be a full-scale alert looking for her. No Garda cars would cruise by, eyes out for a blonde in a caftan. Lizzie would not spend the rest of the night in a cell in a Garda station. ‘Will we let her in, do you think?’ He managed to make it appear that they were together in this.

‘Will she go on with all that stuff about never talking and never relating and running away?’

‘No, I’ll see to it that she doesn’t, believe me.’

‘Very well. But don’t expect me to be all sunshine and light after this trick she’s pulled.’

‘No, you have every right to be upset.’ He moved past her to the door. And there was Lizzie cowering outside in the dark corridor. ‘Ah, Lizzie,’ Bill said in the voice you would use if you found an unexpected but delightful guest on your doorstep. ‘Come in, won’t you. And perhaps you could make us all a cup of tea.’

Lizzie scuttled by him into the kitchen, avoiding the eye of her mother.

‘Wait until your father hears about this carry-on,’ her mother said.

‘Mrs Duffy, do you take your tea with milk and sugar?’ Bill interrupted.

‘Neither, thank you.’

‘Just black for Mrs Duffy,’ Bill called as if he were giving a command to the staff. He moved around the tiny flat tidying things up, straightening the counterpane on the bed, picking up objects from the floor, as if establishing normality in a place which had temporarily abandoned it. Soon they were sitting, an unlikely threesome, drinking mugs of tea.

‘I bought a tin of shortbread,’ Lizzie said proudly, taking out a tartan-patterned box.

‘They cost a fortune,’ Bill said aghast. ‘I wanted to have something for my mother’s visit.’

‘I
never
said I was coming to visit, that was all your idea. Some idea it was, too.’

‘Still, they’re in a tin,’ Bill said. ‘They could last for a long time.’

‘Are you soft in the head?’ Lizzie’s mother suddenly asked Bill.

‘I don’t think so. Why do you ask?’

‘Talking about biscuits at a time like this. I thought you were meant to be the one in charge.’

‘Well, isn’t it better than screaming and talking about needing and relating and all the things you said you didn’t want talked about?’ Bill was stung with the unfairness of it.

‘No it’s not, it’s insane if you ask me. You’re just as mad as she is. I’ve got myself into a lunatic asylum.’

Her eyes darted to the door, and he saw her grip bag beside it. Would she make a run for it? Would that perhaps be for the best? Or had they gone so far into this that they had better see it through to the end. Let Lizzie tell her mother what was wrong, let her mother accept or deny all this. His father had always said that they should wait and see. It seemed a poor philosophy to Bill. What were you waiting for? What would you see? But his father seemed pleased with the end product, so perhaps it had its merits.

Lizzie munched the biscuit. ‘These are beautiful,’ she said. ‘Full of butter, you can tell.’ She was so endearing, like a small child. Could her mother not see that in her too?

Bill looked from one to the other. He hoped he wasn’t imagining that the mother’s face seemed to be softening a little.

‘It’s quite hard, Lizzie, in ways, a woman alone,’ she began.

‘But you didn’t have to be alone, Mummy, you could have had us all with you, Daddy and me and John and Kate.’

‘I couldn’t live in a house like that, trapped all day waiting for a man to come home with the wages. And then your father often
didn’t
come home with the wages, he went to the betting shop with them. Like he does still over in Galway.’

‘You didn’t have to go.’

‘I had to go because otherwise I would have killed somebody, him, you, myself. Sometimes it’s safer to go and get a bit of air to breathe.’

‘When
did
you go?’ Bill asked conversationally, as if he were enquiring about the times of trains.

‘Don’t you know, don’t you know every detail of the wicked witch who ran away abandoning everyone?’

‘No I don’t, actually. I didn’t even know you
had
ever gone until this moment. I thought you and Mr Duffy had separated amicably and that all your children had scattered. It seemed very grown up and what families should do.’

‘What do you mean, what families should do?’ Lizzie’s mother looked at him suspiciously.

‘Well, you see, I live at home with my mother and father and I have a handicapped sister, and honestly I can’t ever see any way of
not
being there, or nearby anyway, so I thought what Lizzie’s family had was very free… and I kind of envied it.’ He was so transparently honest. Nobody could put on an act like that.

‘You could just get up and go,’ Lizzie’s mother suggested.

‘I suppose so, but I wouldn’t feel easy about it.’

‘You’ve only one life.’ They were both ignoring Lizzie now.

‘Yes, that’s it. I suppose, if we had more than one then I wouldn’t feel so guilty.’

Lizzie tried to get back into the conversation. ‘You never write, you never stay in touch.’

‘What’s there to write
about
, Lizzie? You don’t know my friends. I don’t know yours, I don’t know John’s or Kate’s. I still love you and want the best for you even though we don’t see each other all the time.’ She stopped, almost surprised at herself that she had said this much.

Lizzie was not convinced. ‘You couldn’t love us otherwise you’d come to see us. You wouldn’t laugh at me and this place I live in, and laugh at the idea of staying with me, not if you loved us.’

‘I think what Mrs Duffy means…’ Bill began.

‘Oh, for Jesus’ sake call me Bernie.’ Bill was so taken aback he forgot his sentence. ‘Go on, you were saying what I meant was… What
do
I mean?’

‘I think you mean that Lizzie
is
very important to you, but you have sort of drifted away a bit, what with West Cork being so far from here… and that last night was a bad time to stay because your friend Chester was having an art exhibition, and you wanted to be there in time to give him moral support. Was it something like that?’ He looked from one to the other with his round face creased in anxiety. Please may she have meant something like this, and not have meant that she was going for the Guards or that she was never going to see Lizzie as long as she lived.

‘It was a
bit
like that,’ Bernie agreed. ‘But only a bit.’

Still, it was something, Bill thought to himself. ‘And what Lizzie meant when she threw away the key was that she was afraid life was passing too quickly and she wanted a chance to get to know you and talk properly, make up for all the lost time, wasn’t that it?’

‘That was it,’ Lizzie nodded vigorously.

‘But God almighty, whatever your name is…’

‘Bill,’ he said helpfully.

‘Yes, well, Bill, it’s not the act of a sane person to lure me here and lock me in.’

‘I didn’t lure you here, I borrowed the money from Bill to get a taxi for you. I invited you here, I bought shortbread and bacon and chicken livers and sherry. I made my bed for you to sleep in. I wanted you to stay. That wasn’t all that much, was it?’

‘But I couldn’t.’ Bernie Duffy’s voice was gentler now.

‘You could have said you’d come back the next day. You just laughed. I couldn’t bear that, and then you got crosser and crosser and said awful things.’

‘I wasn’t talking normally because I wasn’t talking to a normal person. I was really shaken by you, Lizzie. You seemed to be losing your mind. Truly. You weren’t making any sense. You kept saying that the last six years you had been like a lost soul…’

‘That’s just the way it was.’

‘You were seventeen when I left. Your father wanted you to go to Galway with him, you wouldn’t… You insisted you were old enough to live in Dublin, you got a job in a dry cleaner’s, I remember. You had your own money. It was what you wanted. That was what you said.’

‘I stayed because I thought you’d come back.’

‘Back to where? Here?’

‘No, back to the house. Daddy didn’t sell it for a year, remember?’

‘I remember, and then he put every penny he got for it on horses that are still running backwards somewhere on English racetracks.’

‘Why didn’t you come back, Mummy?’

‘What was there to come back
to
? Your father was only interested in a form book, John had gone to Switzerland, Kate had gone to New York, you were running with your crowd.’

‘I was waiting for you, Mummy.’

‘No, that’s not true, Lizzie. You can’t rewrite the whole thing. Why didn’t you write and tell me if that was the way it was?’

There was a silence.

‘You only liked hearing from me if I was having a good time, so I told you about the good times. On postcards and letters. I told you when I went to Greece, and to Achill Island. I didn’t tell you about wanting you to come back in case you got annoyed with me.’

‘I would have liked it a hell of a lot more than being hijacked, imprisoned…’

‘And is it nice where you are in West Cork?’ Again Bill was being conversational and interested. ‘It always sounds a lovely place to me, the pictures you see of the coastline.’

‘It’s very special. There are a lot of free spirits there, people who have gone back to the land, people who paint, express themselves, make pottery.’

‘And do you specialise in any of the arts… er… Bernie?’ He was owlish and interested, she couldn’t take offence.

‘No, not myself personally, but I have always been interested in artistic people, and places. I find myself stifled if I’m cooped up anywhere. That’s why this whole business…’

Bill was anxious to head her off the subject. ‘And do you have a house of your own or do you live with Chester?’

‘No, heavens no,’ she laughed just like her daughter laughed, a happy peal of mirth. ‘No, Chester is gay, he lives with Vinnie. No, no. They’re my dearest friends. They live about four miles away. No, I have a room, a sort of studio I suppose, outhouse it once was, off a bigger property.’

‘That sounds nice, is it near the sea?’

‘Yes, of course. Everywhere’s near the sea. It’s very charming. I love it. I’ve been there for six years now, made a real little home of it.’

‘And how do you get money to live, Bernie? Do you have a job?’

Lizzie’s mother looked at him as if he had made a very vulgar noise. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I mean, if Lizzie’s father didn’t give you any money you have to earn a living. That’s all.’ He was unrepentant.

‘It’s because he works in a bank, Mummy.’ Lizzie apologised. ‘He’s obsessed with earning a living.’

Suddenly it became too much for Bill. He was sitting in this house in the middle of the night trying to keep the peace between two madwomen and they thought that
he
was the odd one because he actually had a job and paid his bills and lived according to the rules. Well, he had had just about enough. Let them sort it out. He would go home, back to his dull house, with his sad family.