Evening Class by Maeve Binchy, Kate Binchy

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