“I’m off now,” Grania said. “Tell Dad I’ll not be coming in so that he can lock the door.”
Their father was hardly ever at the kitchen supper anymore. He was either away in his room planning colors and pictures for the wall, or up in the school talking about the evening class.
AIDAN DUNNE HAD gone to the school in case Signora might be there, but the place was all locked up. She never went to the pub on her own. The coffee shop would be too crowded with last-minute shoppers. He had never telephoned her at the Sullivans’ house, he couldn’t start now.
But he really wanted to see her before Christmas to give her a little gift. He had found a locket with a little Leonardo da Vinci face inside. It wasn’t expensive but it seemed entirely suitable. He hoped she would have it for Christmas Day. It was wrapped up with Buon Natale printed on the gold paper. It wouldn’t be the same afterward.
Or perhaps it would, but he felt like talking to her for a while. She had once said to him that at the end of the road where she lived there was a wall where she sat sometimes and looked across at the mountains, and thought how different her life had become, and how vista del monte meant the school to her now. Perhaps she might be there tonight.
Aidan Dunne walked up through the busy estate. There were Christmas lights in the windows, cartons of beer being delivered at houses. It must be so different to Signora from last year, when she had spent Christmas with all those Italians in the village in Sicily.
She was sitting there very still. She didn’t seem a bit surprised. He sat down beside her.
“I brought your Christmas present,” he said.
“And I brought yours,” she said, holding a big parcel.
“Will we open them now?” He was eager.
“Why not?”
They unwrapped the locket and the big colored Italian plate with yellow and gold and a dash of purple, perfect for his room. They thanked each other and praised the gifts. They sat like teenagers with nowhere to go.
It got cold and somehow they both stood up at the same time.
“Buon natale, Signora.” He kissed her on the cheek.
“Buon natale, Aidan, caro mio,” she said.
CHRISTMAS EVE THEY worked long, hard hours in the electrical store. Why did people wait until then to decide on the electric carving knife, the video, the electric kettle? Lou toiled all day, and it was at closing time that Robin came into the warehouse with a sales receipt. Lou had somehow expected him.
“Happy Christmas, Lou.”
“Buon natale, Robin.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the Italian you made me learn, I can hardly think in English anymore.”
“Well, I came to tell you that you can give it up any time you like,” Robin said.
“What?”
“Sure. Another premises has been located, but the people have been very grateful indeed for the smooth way your premises were organized.”
“But the last one?” Lou’s face was white.
“What about the last one?”
“It’s still in there,” Lou said.
“You are joking me in this matter.”
“Would I joke about a thing like this? Nobody ever came on the Thursday. Nothing was picked up.”
“Hurry along there, get the man his appliance.” The foreman wanted to close up.
“Give me your receipt,” hissed Lou.
“It’s a television for you and Suzi.”
“I can’t take it,” Lou said. “She’d know it was nicked.”
“It’s not nicked, haven’t I just paid for it?” Robin was hurt.
“No, but you know what I mean. I’ll go and put it into your car.”
“I was going to drive you back to her flat with the surprise Christmas present.”
It was, as Lou would have guessed, the most expensive in the whole store. The top of the range. Suzi Sullivan would never have accepted any explanation for something like that being carried up the stairs into her bed-sitter.
“Listen we’ve much bigger problems than the telly, wait till I get my wages and then we’ll see what we’re going to do about the school.”
“I presume you have taken some steps.”
“Some, but they mightn’t be the right ones.”
Lou went in and stood with the lads. They got their money, a drink, and a bonus, and after what seemed forever he came to where the big man sat in his station wagon, the huge television set in the back.
“I have the key to the school but God knows what kind of lunatics they employ to walk round and test doors at odd times. The principal there is some kind of maniac apparently.”
He produced the key, which he had carried with him at all times since the day he took it from Signora’s key ring.
“You’re a bright boy, Lou.”
“Brighter than those who didn’t tell me what to do if a bloody man in an anorak doesn’t turn up.” He was angry and aggrieved and frightened now. He was sitting with a criminal in the car park of his workplace with a giant television set that he could not accept. He had stolen a key, left a shipment of drugs in a school. He didn’t feel like a bright man, he felt like a fool.
“Well, of course there are always problems with people,” Robin said. “People let you down. Somebody has let us down. He will not work again.”
“What will happen to him?” Lou asked fearfully. He had visions of the offending anorak who hadn’t turned up ending up dead, weighed down with cement blocks in the River Liffey.
“As I said, he will never work again for people.”
“Maybe he had a car crash, or maybe his child went to hospital.” Why was Lou defending him? This was the man who had broken all their hearts.
He could have been off the hook if it hadn’t been for this. Robin’s people had found new premises. Oddly, he thought he might have continued with the lessons. He enjoyed them anyway. He might even have gone on the trip that Signora was planning to Italy next summer. There would have been no need to stay on as a cover. Nothing had been proved. It had been a successful resting place. No accusation of an inside job would have been made because nothing had been discovered, apart from this fool who had not turned up on the last Thursday.
“His punishment will be that he never works again.” Robin shook his head in sorrow.
Lou saw a chink of light at the end of the tunnel. That was what you had to do to get uninvolved. Just screw up on a deal. Just do one job badly and you were never called again. If only he had known it would be so simple. But this job wasn’t his to falter on. The anorak man was already suffering for this, and Lou had got the key and probably saved the day. It would have to be the next one.
“Robin, is this your car?”
“No, of course it isn’t. You know that. I got it off a friend just so that I could transport the television to you and Suzi. But there you are.” He looked sulky, like a child.
“The Guards won’t be watching for you in this car,” Lou said. “I have an idea. It might not work but it’s all I can think of.”
“Tell it to me.”
And Lou told him.
It was almost midnight when Lou drove up to the school. He reversed the station wagon up to the door of the school annex, and looking left and right to see was he being watched, he let himself into the building.
Almost afraid to breathe, he went to the store cupboard and there they were, four boxes. Just as they always were, looking indeed as if they held a dozen bottles of wine each, but there was no sign saying This Way Up. Nothing saying Handle with Care. Tenderly he lifted them one by one outside the door. Then, straining and panting, he carried the huge television into the classroom. It had a built-in video, it was state of the art. He had written the note already in colored pencils, which he had bought in a late-night shop.
Buon natale a lei, Signora, e a tutti, it said.
The school would have a television. The boxes had been rescued. He would drive them in Robin’s car to a place where a different man in a
different van would meet him and take them silently.
Lou wondered about the lifestyle of people who were suddenly available on Christmas Eve. He hoped he would never be one of them.
He wondered what Signora would say when she saw it. Would she be the first in? Perhaps that madman Tony O’Brien, who seemed to prowl the place night and day, would find it first. They would wonder about it forever. The number had been filed off it. It could have been bought in any of two dozen stores.
The box revealed nothing of its origin. They would realize it had not been stolen when they began to inquire. They would guess forever and not be able to come up with a solution. The mystery of how the place had been entered would fade in time. After all, nothing had been stolen. There had been no vandalism.
Even tetchy Mr. O’Brien would have to give up eventually.
Meanwhile, there would be a great television and video for the use of the school and presumably the evening class where it had appeared.
And the next job that Robin asked Lou to do would be botched. And then sadly Lou would be told that he could never work again, and he could get on with his life.
IT WAS CHRISTMAS morning and he was exhausted. He went around to Suzi’s parents’ house for tea and Christmas cake. Signora was there quietly in the background playing chess with Jerry.
“Chess!” whispered Suzi in amazement. “That fellow can understand the pieces and the moves of chess. Wonders will never cease.”
“Signora!” he said.
“Luigi.” She seemed delighted to see him.
“You know, I got a present of a key ring just like yours,” he said. They weren’t all that uncommon, it was hardly something to be marveled at.
“My owl key ring.” Signora was always pleasant and responded to any conversation that was presented to her.
“Yeah, let me see, are they the same?” he said.
She took it from her bag and he pretended to make a comparison as he made the switch. He was safe now, and so was she. No one would ever remember this harmless little conversation. He must talk about other gifts and confuse them.
“GOD, I THOUGHT that Lou would never stop talking tonight,” Peggy Sullivan said as she and Signora washed up. “Do you remember when they used to say people were vaccinated with a gramophone needle, they can’t say that today I suppose what with CDs and tapes.”
“I remember that phrase. I once tried to explain it to Mario, but like so many things it got lost in the translation and he never knew what I meant.”
It was a moment for confidences. Peggy never dared to ask this odd woman a personal question, but she had sort of lowered the guard here. “And did you not think of being with your own people at all, Signora, on Christmas Day?” she asked.
Signora did not look at all put out. She answered the question thoughtfully, with deliberation, as she answered Jerry’s questions. “No, you know, it wasn’t something I would have liked. It would have been artificial. And I have seen my mother and sisters many times and none of them suggested it. They have their own ways and customs now. It would be hard to try and add me to them. It would have been very false. None of us would have enjoyed it. But I did enjoy myself here today with your family.” She stood there calm and untroubled. She wore a new locket around her neck. She had not said where she got it and nobody had liked to ask. She was much too private a person.
“And we liked having you very, very much, Signora,” said Peggy Sullivan, who wondered nowadays what she had ever done before this odd woman had come to live there.
THE CLASS BEGAN again on the first Tuesday of January. A cold evening, but they were all there. Nobody was missing from the thirty who had signed on in September. It must be a record in any evening class.
And all the top brass were there, the principal, Tony O’Brien, and Mr. Dunne, and they were beaming all over their faces. The most extraordinary thing had happened. The class had been given a gift. Signora was like a child, almost clapping her hands with pleasure.
Who could have done it? Was it anyone here? Was it one of the class? Would they say, so that they could thank him or her? Everyone was mystified, but of course they all thought it was Connie.
“No, I wish it had been. I really do wish I had been nice enough to think of it.” Connie seemed almost embarrassed now that she hadn’t been responsible.
The principal said he was delighted, but he was anxious in terms of security. If nobody owned up to having given this generous present, then they would have to have the locks changed because somebody somewhere must have a key to the place. There had been no sign of a break-in.
“That’s not the way the bank would look at it,” Guglielmo said. “They’d say leave things as they are, whoever it is might give us a hi-fi next week.”
Lorenzo, who was actually Laddy the hotel porter, said that you’d be surprised how many keys there were walking round the city of Dublin that would open the same doors.
And suddenly Signora looked up and looked at Luigi and Luigi looked away.
Please may she say nothing, he said to himself. Please may she know it will do no good, only harm. He didn’t know if he was praying to God or just muttering to himself, but he meant it. He really meant it.
And it seemed to have worked. She looked away too.
The class began. They were revising. What a lot they had forgotten, Signora said, how much work there was to be done if they were all going to make the promised trip to Italy. Shamed, they struggled again with the phrases that had come so easily before the two-week break.
Lou tried to slip out when the class was over.
“Not helping me with the boxes tonight, Luigi?” Her look was unfaltering.
“Scusi, Signora, where are they? I forgot.”
They lifted them into the now blameless store cupboard, an area that would never again house anything dangerous.
“Is um…Mr. Dunne coming to walk you home, Signora?”
“No, Luigi, but you on the other hand are walking out with Suzi, who is the daughter of the house where I stay.” Her face looked cross.
“But you know that, Signora. We’re engaged.”
“Yes, that’s what I wanted to discuss with you, the engagement, and the ring. Un anello di fidanzamento, that’s what we call it in Italian.”
“Yes, yes, a ring for the fiancée.” Lou was eager.
“But not usually emeralds, Luigi. Not a real emerald. That is what is so strange.”
“Aw, go on out of that, Signora, real emerald? You have to be joking. It’s glass.”
“It’s an emerald, uno smeraldo. I know them. I love to touch them.”
“They’re making them better and better, Signora, no one can tell the real thing from the fakes now.”
“It cost thousands, Luigi.”
“Signora listen to me…”
“As that television set cost hundreds and hundreds…maybe over a thousand.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know. What are you saying to me?”
No schoolteacher in the past had ever made Lou Lynch feel like this, humbled and ashamed. His mother and father had never been able to get him to conform. No priest or Christian Brother, and suddenly he was terrified of losing the respect and the silence of this strange woman.
“I’m saying…” he began. She waited with that curious stillness. “I suppose I’m saying it’s over, whatever it was. There won’t be any more of it.”
“And are these things stolen, the beautiful emerald and the magnificent television set?”
“No, no they’re not, as it happens,” he said. “They were paid for, not exactly by me but by other people that I worked for.”
“But that you don’t work for anymore?”
“No, I don’t, I swear it.” He desperately wanted her to believe him. His soul was all in his face as he spoke.
“So, no more pornography.”
“No more what, Signora?”
“Well of course I opened those boxes, Luigi. I was so w
orried with the drugs in the school, and young Jerry, Suzi’s little brother…I was afraid that’s what you had in the store cupboard.”
“And it wasn’t?” He tried to take the question out of his voice.
“You know it wasn’t. It was ridiculous filthy stuff, judging by the pictures on the covers. Such a fuss getting them in and out, so silly and for young impressionable people probably very harmful.”
“You looked at them, Signora?”
“I told you I didn’t play them, I don’t have a video, and even if I did…”
“And you said nothing?”
“For years I have lived silently saying nothing. It becomes a habit.”
“And did you know about the key?”
“Not until tonight, then I remembered the nonsense about a key ring. Why did you need it?”
“There were some boxes accidentally left over Christmas,” he said.
“Couldn’t you have left them there, Luigi, rather than steal keys and get them back?”
“It was always a bit complicated,” he said repentantly.
“And the television?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Tell me some of it.”
“Well, it was given to me as a present for…er, storing the…er boxes of tapes. And I didn’t want to give it to Suzi because…well, you know I couldn’t have. She’d know, or guess or something.”
“But there’s nothing for her to find out now.”
“No, Signora.” He felt as if he were four years old with his head hanging down.
“In bocca al lupo, Luigi,” said Signora, locking the door behind them firmly, leaning against it and testing to make quite sure it was closed.
CONNIE
When Constance O’Connor was fifteen, her mother stopped serving desserts at home. There were no cakes at tea, a low-fat spread was on the table instead of butter, and sweets and chocolate were forbidden from the house.
“You’re getting a bit hippy, darling,” her mother said when Constance protested.
“All the tennis lessons, all the smart places we go, will be no use at all if you have a big bum.”