Evening Class (7 page)

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.