Evening Class Part V

Aidan realises that his marriage is over and he learns that Nell was having an affair, and he knows now that he is in love with Nora and wants to be with her. Nora has by now recovered from Mario's death and has fallen in love with Aidan. They set off for Rome, and the adventure begins. Connie decides to go though it is not the kind of fancy holiday she is used to. She is depressed that her marriage is a failure, and that Harry has ended up in prison for fraud. But he got a light sentence and will soon be out. When she arrives in Rome, she gets a message threatening her, and she begins to worry that it might be Siobhan, Harry's mistress who is angry that his wife reported him to the Fraud squad and that when he gets out of prison he will probably need to go to England to make a new life. But Connie cannot feel sympathy for Harry, since she found out that he demanded large payments from clients who had borrowed money from him, and one of the victims was Gus, Laddy's nephew who looks after him. Gus and his wife had a small hotel, and they had to pay a large sum to Harry's company which left them very close to losing the business and they were only saved by Connie getting involved. Nora is happy to be back in Italy, but she gets a big surprise when she finds that Alfredo, one of Mario's sons is now living in Rome, running a restaurant. She gets a warmer welcome from him than she expected and he tells her that Gabriella, Mario's wife, is dead.. she died of cancer only a few months after her husband. Nora is shocked. Then Alfredo tells her that although they didnt have much to do with her in the village, the children were all aware of her affair with their father and they respected her for keeping the affair discreet and for giving her father good advice. He now suggests that she could come back to Sicily and help in the family business. She doesn't know what to do. She lived there so long, and although she has made a new home in Ireland she is a little tempted by the idea of returning to Sicily. Connie goes out walking alone and finds that she is indeed being followed.. by Siobhan. She is terrified, but tries to keep cool. Siobhan has followed her into a cafe and she is forced to talk to her. Siobhan berates her for turning Harry in to the police. Connie remains calm though she is terrified, and tells Siobhan that she never hated her and was glad that Harry had just one woman - though she knows he also had other affairs. She then tells her that she has left a letter for her solicitors, in case she were to die suddenly in Rome. Siobhan is flummoxed by how cool Connie is being and seems to give up fighting. Connie hopes that when Harry comes out of prison he may go to the UK and take Siobhan with him.. but she is just relieved to have escaped the mistress's vengeance. Siobhan leaves her and she goes back to her hotel. The party go to visit the Italian family whom Laddy thought had invited him to come and see them. They remember him and feel a bit guilty that they inadvertently led him to think that he was to be a guest of theirs, but now they make up for it by welcoming him and his friends. He is delighted. As they plan to return to Ireland, Aidan tells Nell that he loves her and if she goes to Sicily it will break his heart. She tells him she will stay with him and Aidan will get a divorce and sell his house and buy a small flat. She has finally found love and respect from a man... and the group go back to Ireland.

Evening Class Part IV

Fran has to tell Kathy that her father Paul is from a well to do family and that he is now married to a very rich woman, and they are well known socialites in Dublin. She feels upset and angry that her fathers family paid her mother off and that she is poor while Paul is living a luxurious life. She decides to go and see him and makes her way boldly into his office. He is surprised to see her, and touched.. and they get on well. She tells him about Fran, and that her mother had a boyfriend a while ago who went to America but she stayed in Dublin to be with her child. Paul hopes that Fran will be happy some time and he and Kathy agree to stay in touch. Nora manages to extricate Lou from his association with the criminal gang and he and Suzi plan their wedding. Another member of the group is Barry who has a problem with his mother. She is convinced her husband is having an affair, and has gotten very depressed. She attempts suicide and is taken to hospital.. and while visiting her there, Barry meets Fiona, a shy girl who works in the hospital cafe. He tells Fiona about his mother and how its hard for him to cope with her. Fiona starts going to their house to learn cookery from his mother and she confides about how she believes her husband is seeing someone else. Fiona persuades her to smarten herself up and try to be more cheerful - and she finds out that the woman the father is seeing is Nell Dunne, the wife of Aidan. Fiona meets Dan, Barry's father at a party to celebrate the first year of the Italian classes, and Nell is also at the party. She tells Nell that Dan is a womaniser who once had an affair iwth her own mother and made her miserable, and that he has no respect for the women he seduces. Nell is angry but it scares her, and it appears that Dan is reconciling with his wife. The two of them seem happier and Nell faces the fact that her marriage to Aidan is pretty much over and her lover has also dropped her. Aidan and Nora prepare for the "viaggio", the trip to Rome where they can show off their Italian. Lou and Suzi decide to make it their honeymoon trip and they get married just before the departure for Rome. Tony O'Brien is surprised that the Italian classes have done so well. People enjoy them and noone has dropped out, and he admires Aidan for having had the bright idea of starting them. He and Grania are now together, though Aidan is not too happy with it.

Evening Class III

We learn that Harry Kane's business has failed and he comes close to bankruptcy, but Connie saves him by having invested money throughout her marriage which she now uses to bail him out. However Harry is not grateful and continues his affair with his secretary and to engage in dubious business practices. Connie gets on well with the people in her Italian class and is less lonely. Nora enjoys the work and she becomes friends with Aidan. However his wife is having an affair behind his back and is bored stiff with him. Another pupil at the class is Lou, a Dublin boy who works as a packer in an electrical goods shop. His parents own a small shop. He has gotten involved with a gang of criminals who use him to facilitate jobs, and he now regrets it although they have paid him generously. However, he meets a girl, Suzi, who is the daughter of Nora's landlords, and falls in love with her and he wants out of the criminal involvement. But his gang still want him to work for them, and suggest that he finds a place to stash things that they want kept for a few weeks. He's told to join the evening class so that he has an excuse for going into the school where security is fairly loose. He is not happy as he's not academic, but finds he enjoys the class. Laddy is another member of the class, he's a middle aged man who has learning difficulties, and he lives with his sister's son Gus and Gus's wife. They run a small hotel and at the hotel, Laddy met a rich Italian family and did them a favour, and they said he should come and visit them. Gus suggests that Laddy learn a bit of Italian, as he is trying to distract him from the idea of going to Italy.. since he does not think they really meant the invitation. Kathy Clark learns that Fran is not her sister but her mother. She became pregnant by a rich boy at the age of 16 and her family looked after her and she was treated as her grandparents' child. Fran is upset that she's found out the truth, but tells her that she will always be part of their family. Kathy finds that her father's family did not want him to marry Fran and they made a payment to the Clarks to keep it secret. Fran spent the money on bringing Kathy up.

Evening Class Part II

Aidan is delighted to find a teacher who will work for a small fee and who share his interest in Italy. They talk, and he feels a bit less depressed at not getting the headship and his wife's increasing coolness towards him. His elder daughter, Grainne, works in a bank and unknown to him, is seeing Tony OBrien, who has now become head of the school. She is angry when she finds that Tony got the job her father was hoping for but although he is several years older than her, she is attracted to him and goes on seeing him. The classes start and a surprising number of people turn up. One is Bill, a bank officer who knows Grainne. He is a nice shy lad who has a ditzy extravagant girlfriend. Another is a wealthy woman, Constance, who is married to a rich businessman. She and her husband have 4 children but their marriage is not very happy. Their sex life never worked out, and her husband soon turned to a mistress and ignores her. Connie's father was a gambler and he died in debt and her mother pushed her to find a well to do husband. She genuinely loved Harry but now after many years of an empty marriage she is depressed. Another pair who join the class are 2 sisters, Fran and Kathy Clark. Their father is a plumber and Kathy is still at school. Fran tries to encourage her sister to learn more and work towards getting a good job...

Evening Class by Maeve Binchy

Evening Class is a novel set in modern day Dublin, in Maeve's format of writing a chapter from each character's point of view. It starts with the return of Nora, a middle aged Irishwoman who has been living in Italy for many years. She went there because her Italian lover had told her that he could not marry her, that he was engaged to a girl in his home village and was expected to go back home to marry her. Nora followed him and managed to scrape a living teaching English and doing sewing. She waits for her lover to change his mind but instead sees him only occasionally for sex while he rears a family with his wife. Then after 20 years he is killed in a car crash and his wife tells Nora that she should leave the village. She has been shunned by her family in Ireland for having a long standing affair with a married man and does not know what will happen to her back in Dublin. She flies home and manages to find a room to live in a house in a working class estate near the Dublin mountains. She meets with her old friend Brenda, who runs a restaurant and Brenda tells her that she fears that Nora's family may welcome her back but it is because they want someone to look after her elderly mother. She advises her not to give way to their emotional blackmail. Meanwhile Aidan Quinn is a teacher at a school near to where Nora is living. He has 2 grown up daughters and a wife who seems indifferent to him. He had hopes of becoming headmaster of teh school, but is told by another teacher that its not going to happen, that he is not tough enough to manage a school in these hard times. Tony O'Brien, the other teacher, tells him that he himself is going to be headmaster and that AIdan should find another avenue to explore in teaching. He decides to set up Italian evening classes. Tony thinks that it will be hard to get funding for them but he wants to keep Aidan who is a good teacher, and he agrees to help. Nora finds out the rumours and goes to Aidan and offers herself as an evening class teacher who can teach Italian.

Gone with the Wind Part VIII

Scarlett makes a slow recovery from her miscarriage, and Rhett tries to persuade Melanie to get Ashley to buy out the mill, and run it, partly because he wants his wife to work less hard but also to sever the link between her and Ashley. Scarlett is watching Bonnie riding her pony, and as she watches Bonnie puts the pony at a higher fence and falls, breaking her neck. Rhett is devastated and Scarlett attacks him for encouraging the child to ride and jump fences and buying her a spirited pony. He begins to drink heavily. She feels guilty then and tries to persuade him to give their marriage another chance and have another child. He shrugs her off and goes on drinking. He is beginning to feel that he was wrong to turn against his southern heritage and he wants to reconnect with his roots again, to visit places where the Old South still exists. Scarlett goes to Tara for a holiday, to rest and then is summoned back to Atlanta, by a telegram to say that Melanie is very ill. SHe hurries back and Rhett takes her to Melanie's house, explaining that she had become pregnant and had been told when Beau was born that she should not have any more children.. and the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Scarlett goes in to see Melanie who is very ill and she asks her to look after Beau and Ashley. She promises that she will do so, but realises that she does not really want Ashley any more and that he only wanted her on a physical level. When she gets home, she tries to tell Rhett that she now knows that he is the one she loves. He laughs at her, saying that she has found out how dull Ashley is and no longer wants him. She tries to explain and he laughs again and tells her that she is such a child, that she thinks she can just say sorry and be forgiven and make up for all the hurt she has caused. He tells her that he did really love her when they got married but he knew that if he revealed his love, she would bully him and so he concealed it. He says it is too late to make up for the fissures in their marriage, and that he'll give her a divorce. She says no, and he says that he will go travelling, trying to find the Old South and places where he can fit in, after his years of estrangement from his roots, but he'll come back often enough to avoid gossip about their marriage. He tells her that he has just stopped loving her and no longer cares what she does. He walks out and Scarlett collapses in tears. She then shakes herself up and tells herself that she can get him back, and that she will think of her problems tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.

Gone with the Wind Part VII

Unfortunately, Scarlett pays a visit to Ashley at the mill, because Melanie has asked her to distract him while she prepares a surprise birthday party. He and Scarlett talk, and remember old times before the war when life was happy and luxurious, and he kisses her in a brotherly way. India Wilkes, Ashley's sister, who has always disliked Scarlett, and is rather sour spinster, finds them in an embrace and rushes to tell everyone in the town. Rhett is furious and he insists that Scarlett face her detractors at the birthday party. She is scared because she knows that most of the local elite do not like her because she has made more of a success of her businesses than they have, including the men, and she will be sneered at now for her apparent flirtation with Ashley. She has also had a reputation as a flirt which doesnt help. She begs Rhett to let her stay home but he fairly drags her to the party, wanting her to be humiliated. Scarlett finds that Melanie who has always been loyal to her, welcomes her and asks her to help receive the guests. She is wretched but faces it out, hating Melanie for her goodness. When she gets back home, Rhett is waiting and they have a violent row, which ends by his telling her that he's going to only have one person in his bed that night.. and he forces her upstairs and rapes her. THe book was written in the 1930s, so the idea of a woman enjoying rape was not unknown at the time, but it is distasteful to modern minds. Scarlett finds that she is overwhelmed by Rhett's sexual force, and is surprised when the next morning he tells her he is going away on a trip, and he takes Bonnie with him. Soon afterwards Scarlett finds that she is pregnant. She hopes that Rhett will return and that their marriage will work out, if they have another baby. She is realising that she and Ashley are not compatible and that her love for him was just an illusion. A couple of months later, Rhett returns with Bonnie who has missed her mother. He is not willing to show vulnerabilty to his wife, knowing that she will domineer over him if she realises that he cares for her. They soon have a row, and she is angry and resentful when she tells him she's pregnant.. He laughs at her and says that she might be lucky and have a miscarriage. Angrily, she lashes out at him and slips on the stairs. She does have a miscarriage and is very ill. She is delerious and calls for Rhett but he is drunk and weeping over the miscarriage...