Evening Class

  Connie felt her heart harden. She’d followed her mother’s instructions to the letter, done her secretarial course, stayed with her cousins, got herself a job. She was not going to be insulted and patronized in this way. “If you remember, Mother, what I wanted was to go to university and be a lawyer. That didn’t happen, so I’m doing the best I can. I am sorry you think so poorly of it, I thought you’d be pleased.”

  Her mother was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry, I really am. If you knew how sharp-tongued I’m getting…They say here I’m like our great-aunt Katie, and you remember what a legend she was in the family.”

  “It’s all right, Mother.”

  “No it’s not, I’m ashamed. I’m very proud of you. I just say these hard things because I can’t bear to have to be grateful to people like that Hayes man your father played golf with. He probably knows you’re poor Richard’s daughter and gave you the job out of charity.”

  “No, I don’t think he would know that at all, Mother,” Connie lied in a cool tone.

  “You’re right, why would he? It’s nearly two years ago.” Her mother sounded sad.

  “I’ll ring and tell you about it, Mother.”

  “Do that, Connie dear, and don’t mind me. It’s all I have left, you know, my pride. I won’t apologize to any of them round here, my head is as high as ever.”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased for me, give my love to the twins.” Connie knew she would grow up a stranger now from the two fourteen-year-old boys who went to a Brothers school in a small town and not the private Jesuit college that had been planned.

  Her father was gone, her mother was going to be no help. She was on her own. She would do what Mr. Hayes said. She would make a great job of this, her first serious position. She would be remembered in the Hayes Hotel as the first and best receptionist they ever had.

  SHE WAS AN excellent appointment. Mr. Hayes congratulated himself over and over. And so like Grace Kelly. He wondered how long it would take before she met her prince.

  IN FACT IT took two years. There were, of course, endless offers of all kinds of things. Businessmen staying regularly in the hotel longed to escort the elegant Miss O’Connor at the front desk to some of the smarter restaurants and, indeed, nightclubs that were starting up around the city. But she was very detached. She smiled and talked to them warmly and said she didn’t mix business with pleasure.

  “It doesn’t have to be business,” Teddy O’Hara cried in desperation. “Look, I’ll stay in some other hotel if you just come out with me.”

  “That would hardly be a good way to repay Hayes Hotel for my good job here.” Connie would smile at him. “Sending all the clients off to rival establishments.”

  She would tell Vera all about them. She called every week to see Vera, Kevin, and Deirdre, who was shortly to be joined by another baby.

  “Teddy O’Hara asked you out?” Vera’s eyes were round. “Oh please marry him, Connie, then we can get the contract for all the decorating on his shops. We’d be made for life. Go on, marry him for our sake.”

  Connie laughed, but she realized she had not been putting any business in her friends’ way, which she could have been doing. Next day she said to Mr. Hayes that she knew a very good small firm of painters and decorators if they wanted to add them to their list of service suppliers. Mr. Hayes said that he left all that to the relevant manager, but he did need someone to do a job for him in his own house out in Foxrock.

  Kevin and Vera never stopped talking about the size and splendor of the house, and the niceness of the Hayes family, who had a little girl themselves called Marianne, and Kevin and his father had done up the girl’s bedroom for her with every luxury you could think of. Her own little pink bathroom off it, for a child!

  Vera and Kevin never sounded jealous, and always grateful for the introduction. Mr. Hayes had been pleased with the work done and because of that recommended the small firm to others. Soon Kevin drove a smarter van. There was even talk of a bigger house when the new baby arrived.

  They were still friendly with Jacko, who was in the electrical business. Could I put a bit of work his way? Connie had wondered. Vera said she’d test the water. What Jacko actually said was: “You can tell that stuck-up bitch to take her favors and stuff them.” “He didn’t seem keen” was the way Vera reported it, being someone who liked to keep the peace.

  And just when Vera and Kevin’s new baby, Charlie, was born Connie met Harry Kane. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, tall with thick brown hair that curled on his shoulders, very unlike the business people she mixed with. He had an easy smile for everyone and a manner that seemed to expect he would get good attention everywhere. Doormen rushed to open doors for him, the girl in the boutique left other customers to get him his copy of the newspaper, and even Connie, who knew she was regarded as an ice maiden, looked up and smiled at him welcomingly.

  She was particularly pleased that he saw her dealing with some difficult business travelers very efficiently. “Quite the diplomat, Miss O’Connor,” he said admiringly.

  “Always good to see you here, Mr. Kane. Everything’s arranged in your meeting room.”

  Harry Kane with two older partners ran a new and very successful insurance firm. It was taking a lot of business from the more established companies. Some people looked on it with suspicion. Growing too big too fast, they said, bound to be in trouble. But it showed no signs of it. The partners worked in Galway and Cork, they met every Wednesday in Hayes Hotel. They worked from nine until twelve-thirty with a secretary in their conference room, then they entertained people to lunch.

  Sometimes it was government ministers, or heads of industry or of big trade unions. Connie wondered why they didn’t have their meeting in the Dublin office. Harry Kane had a big prestigious office in one of the Georgian squares, with almost a dozen people working there. It must be for privacy, she decided, that and lack of disturbance. The hotel had strict instructions that no calls whatsoever be put through to the conference room on a Wednesday. Obviously this secretary must know all their secrets and where the bodies were buried. Connie looked at her with interest as she went in and out with them each week. She would carry a briefcase of documents away with her and never joined the partners at lunch. Yet she must be a highly trusted confidante.

  Connie would like to work like that for someone. Someone very like Harry Kane. She began to talk to the woman, using all her charm and every skill she could rustle up.

  “Everything in the room to your satisfaction, Miss Casey?”

  “Certainly, Miss O’Connor, otherwise Mr. Kane would have mentioned it to you.”

  “We have just stocked quite a new range of audiovisual equipment in case any of it would be of use for your meetings.”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  Miss Casey always seemed anxious to leave, as if her briefcase contained hot money. Maybe it did. Connie and Vera talked it over for hours.

  “She’s obviously a fetishist, I’d say,” Vera suggested as they bounced baby Charlie on their knees and assured Deirdre that she was much more beautiful and much more loved than Charlie would ever be.

  “What?” Connie had no idea what Vera was suggesting.

  “Sadomasochism, whips them within an inch of their life every Wednesday. That’s the only way they can function. That’s what’s in the case. Whips!”

  “Oh, Vera, I wish you could see her.”

  Connie laughed till the tears came down her face at the thought of Miss Casey in that role. And, oddly, at the same time she felt a wave of jealousy in case the quiet, elegant Miss Casey did have an intimate relationship with Harry Kane. She had not felt that way about anyone before.

  “You fancy him,” Vera said sagely.

  “Only because he doesn’t look at me. You know that’s the way of it.”

  “Why do you like him, do you think?”

  “He reminds me a bit of my father,” Connie said suddenly before she realized that this is what she had felt.

&n
bsp; “All the more reason to keep a sharp eye on him then,” said Vera, who was the only person allowed to mention the late Richard O’Connor’s little gambling habit without getting a withering look from his daughter.

  Without appearing to ask, Connie found out more and more about Harry Kane. He was almost thirty, single, his parents were from the country, small farmers. He was the first of his family to get into business in a big way. He lived in a bachelor apartment overlooking the sea, he went to first nights and to gallery openings, but always in a group.

  His name had been mentioned in newspaper columns and always as part of a group, or sharing a box at the races with the highest of the land. When he married, it would be into a family like that of Mr. Hayes. Thank God that his daughter was only a young schoolgirl, otherwise she would have been ideal for him.

  “MOTHER, WHY DON’T you come up to Dublin some Wednesday on the train and take a few of your friends for lunch in Hayes Hotel? I’ll see they make the most enormous fuss of you.”

  “I don’t have any friends left in Dublin.”

  “Yes, you do.” She listed a few.

  “I don’t want their pity.”

  “What pity would there be if you invited them to a nice lunch? Come on, try it. Maybe they’ll suggest it another time. You can take the day excursion ticket.”

  Grudgingly her mother agreed.

  They were placed near Mr. Kane’s party, which included a newspaper owner and two cabinet ministers. The ladies thoroughly enjoyed their lunch and the fact that they seemed to be even more feted than the amazingly important people nearby.

  As Connie had hoped it would be, the lunch was pronounced a huge success, and one of the others said that next time it must be her treat. It would also be a Wednesday, in a month’s time. And so it went on, her mother becoming more confident and cheerful since nobody mentioned her late husband apart from saying Poor Richard as they would to any widow about the deceased.

  Connie always arranged to pass their table and offer them a glass of port with her compliments. Very publicly she would sign the bill for it so that everyone knew it was accountable for. She would flash a smile at the Kane table too.

  After the fourth time she realized that he really did notice her. “You’re very kind to those older women, Miss O’Connor,” he said.

  “That’s my mother and some of her friends. They do enjoy their lunch here, and it’s a pleasure to see her, she lives in the country, you see.”

  “Ah, and where do you live?” he asked, his eyes alert waiting for her reply.

  It was her cue to say: “I have my own flat” or “by myself.” But Connie was prepared. “Well, I live in Dublin, of course, Mr. Kane, but I do hope to travel sometime, I would love to see other cities.” She was giving nothing away. She saw further interest in his face.

  “And so you should, Miss O’Connor. Have you been to Paris?”

  “Sadly not yet.”

  “I’m going next weekend, would you like to come with me?”

  She laughed pleasantly, as if she was laughing with him not at him. “Wouldn’t that be nice! But out of the question I’m afraid. I hope you have a good time.”

  “Perhaps I could take you to dinner when I come back and tell you about it?”

  “I’d like that very much indeed.”

  And so it began, the courtship of Connie O’Connor and Harry Kane. And throughout it all she knew that Siobhan Casey, his faithful secretary, hated her. They kept the relationship as private as they could, but it wasn’t easy. If he was invited to the opera, he wanted to take her, he didn’t want to go with a crowd of singles handpicked for him. It wasn’t long before their names were linked. She was described by one columnist as his blond companion.

  “I don’t like this,” she said when she saw it in a Sunday paper. “It makes me look flashy, trash almost.”

  “To be my companion?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “You know what I mean, the word ‘companion’ and all it suggests.”

  “Well, it’s not my fault that they’re not right about that.” He had been urging her to bed and she had been refusing for some time now.

  “I think we should stop seeing each other, Harry.”

  “You can’t mean it.”

  “I don’t want it but I think it’s best. Look, I’m not just going to have a fling with you, and then be thrown aside. Seriously, Harry, I like you too much. I more than like you, I think of you all the time.”

  “And I of you.” He sounded as if he meant it.

  “So isn’t it better if we stop now?”

  “I don’t know what the phrase is…?”

  “‘Get out in time.’” She smiled at him.

  “I don’t want to get out,” he said.

  “Neither do I, but it will be harder later.”

  “Will you marry me?” he asked.

  “No, it’s not that, I’m not putting a gun to your head. This isn’t an ultimatum or anything, it’s for our own good.”

  “I am putting a gun to yours. Marry me.”

  “Why?”

  “I love you,” he said.

  THE WEDDING WAS to be in Hayes Hotel. Everyone insisted, Mr. Kane was like part of the family there, and Miss O’Connor had been the heartbeat of the place since it opened.

  Connie’s mother had nothing to pay for except her outfit. She was able to invite her friends, the ladies with whom she had regained contact. She even invited some of her old enemies. Her twin sons were ushers at the smartest wedding Dublin had seen in years, her daughter was a beauty, the groom was the most eligible man in Ireland. On that day Connie’s mother almost forgave the late Richard. If he turned up alive now, she might not choke him to death after all. She had become reconciled to the hand that fate had dealt.

  She and Connie slept in the same hotel room the night before the wedding. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you so happy,” she said to her daughter.

  “Thank you, Mother, I know you’ve always wanted the best for me.” Connie was very calm. She was having a hairdresser and beautician come to the room in the morning to look after her mother and Vera and herself. Vera was the matron of honor, and utterly overawed by the splendor of it all.

  “You are happy?” her mother said suddenly.

  “Oh, Mother, for goodness sake.” Connie tried to control her anger. Was there no occasion, no timing, no ceremony that her mother could not try to spoil? Yet she looked into the kind, concerned face. “I’m very, very happy. But just afraid I might not be enough for him, you know. He’s a very successful man, I might not be able to keep up with him.”

  “You’ve kept up with him so far,” her mother said shrewdly.

  “But that’s a matter of tactics, I didn’t sleep with him like everyone else did from what I hear. I didn’t give in easily, it might not be the same when I’m married.”

  Her mother lit another cigarette. “Just remember this one thing I said to you tonight and don’t ever talk about it again, but remember it. Make sure he gives you money for yourself. Invest it, have it. Then in the end whatever happens won’t be too bad.”

  “Oh Mother.” Her eyes were soft and filled with pity for a mother who had been betrayed. A mother whose whole life had to be rewritten now that her husband had frittered away the future.

  “Would money have made that much difference?”

  “You’ll never know how much, and my prayer for you tonight is that you will never have to know.”

  “I’ll think about what you say,” Connie said. It was a very useful phrase, she used it a lot at work when she had no intention whatsoever of thinking about what anyone said.

  The wedding was a triumph. Harry’s two partners and their wives said it was the best wedding they had ever been at, and this was like a seal of approval. Mr. Hayes from the hotel said that since the bride’s father was sadly no longer with us, could he say that Richard would be so happy and proud to be here today and see his beautiful daughter so happy and radiant. It was the good fortune
of the Hayes Hotel Group that Connie Kane, as she would now be known, had agreed to continue working until something might stop her doing so.

  There was a titter of excitement at the thought of such a rich man’s wife working as a hotel receptionist until she got pregnant. Which would be in the minimum time it took.

  They had a honeymoon in the Bahamas, two weeks that Connie had thought would be the best in her life. She liked talking to Harry and laughing with him. She liked walking along the beach with him, making sand castles in the morning sunshine just by the water’s edge, hand in hand at sunset before they went to dinner and dance.

  She did not enjoy being in bed with him, not even a little bit. It was the last thing she would have expected. He was rough and impatient. He was terribly annoyed with her failure to respond. Even when she realized what he would like and tried to pretend an excitement she did not feel, he saw through it.

  “Oh, come off it, Connie, stop all that ludicrous panting and groaning, you’d embarrass a cat.”

  She had never felt more hurt or more alone. To give him his due, he tried everything. He was gentle and wooing and flattering. He tried just holding her and stroking her. But as soon as penetration seemed likely she tensed up and seemed to resist it, no matter how much she told herself it was what they both wanted.

  Sometimes she lay awake in the dark, warm night listening to the unfamiliar cicadas and the Caribbean sounds in the distance. She wondered did all women feel like this. Was it perhaps just a giant conspiracy for centuries, women pretending they enjoyed it when all they wanted was children and security? Was this what her mother had meant by telling her to demand that security? In today’s world in the 1970s it didn’t automatically exist for women. Men could leave home now without being considered villains, men could lose all their savings in gambling like her father and still be remembered as a good fellow.

  In those long, warm, sleepless nights where she dare not stir for fear of wakening him and starting it all over again, Connie wondered too about the words of her friend Vera. “Go on, Connie, sleep with him now for God’s sake. See do you like it. Suppose you don’t—imagine a lifetime of it.”