Free Evening Class by Maeve Binchy, Kate Binchy Page B

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