by Anne Griffin
‘Do you come to this place much?’ Sadie asked.
‘I like to take all my girlfriends here.’
She laughed too then. But hers was a laugh that felt precious and dainty, quite the opposite of the father, three tables down. Her eyes met mine, just long enough not to embarrass us but to acknowledge our beginning. I knew for certain then, that there, sitting across the red Formica table, with the perfectly placed condiments, was the woman I was ready to love until the life went out of me.
I never attempted to kiss her on our first date. I wanted nothing more than to hold her hand, but as we left the Duncashel Central, I decided against pushing my luck. I walked her home to her lodgings. I was glad she lived the other end of the town. We chatted comfortably all the way to her door and stood doing the same once we’d arrived. We could have been there an hour for all I know. I’m sure it was just a matter of minutes before she started to root in her bag for her key. I’d lost all sense of time, you see, couldn’t have given a damn if it was five in the morning and it was time to milk the cows. I would’ve done it, happily. That’s how she made me feel, happy with the world, with myself.
‘Go on in, so,’ I said, fighting the urge to hold her just a moment longer. ‘Mrs Durkin’s hand must be getting tired holding back that curtain there, as if we can’t see her.’
‘Ssh! Make no mistake she knows you can see her. That’s what she’s aiming for. She knows all about the likes of you.’ She laughed, and I smiled too, feeling the cheekiness of her statement egging me on. I took hold of her free hand as her other turned the lock. I looked down at it and asked:
‘Might you be free for the dance, so, on Saturday? Over in O’Reilly’s hall, it’s a bit out the road but I can come get you on the bike – nothing but the best for my girlfriends.’
‘Would you go on with you and your girlfriends. I bet I’m the first who’s ever said yes.’
‘You’ll go then. Seven o’clock, Saturday? I’ll pick you up at the mall, not here. Don’t want herself getting in touch with your parents just yet.’
‘Goodnight,’ she said, in mock exasperation at a boy who thought he might keel over in pure delight. I stayed until the door closed and then ran down the street. Retrieving my bike, I cycled as if I was representing Ireland in the Olympics, speeding past fields, whooping at cows that might have lazily raised their heads too late to see my ghost of a cap pass by.
Saturday couldn’t come quick enough. I hadn’t seen Sadie for two days, but it may as well have been a year. Arriving at the mall good and early, I waited, leaning up against my vehicle with as much panache as any farmer from Meath with a pushbike could manage. My stomach did somersaults as I paced up and down the path, hopping from kerb to road, anything to distract myself, until eventually I saw her. And as she approached me in a white dress with red roses, it began to dawn on me that I was about to make this picture of beauty sit up on a cold, uncomfortable crossbar for the two-mile journey out the road. By the time she reached me I was sure she could smell the panic.
‘Well, what do you think, do I scrub up well?’ she asked.
‘I can tell you now that I’m the envy of every man on the street.’
‘So is this my carriage? Well, it’ll do, I suppose.’
I swallowed hard and felt my armpits go damp, again.
‘This, I’ll have you know, is also the envy of every man around.’
‘Well, let’s go show off, so.’
I took off my jacket and laid it down on the cold crossbar. And up she hopped, not a hesitation. White dress and white high-heeled shoes. All I needed was the chain to come off. I said a quick prayer in my head as we pushed away from the kerb. Normally, with Jenny or May, who never got the jacket treatment, there would be an initial wobble but not with Sadie. We glided down Patrick Street and off out the road heading for Rainsford like a pair of professional ballroom dancers. We took the breeze with us, pulling it along to our advantage. I had honestly never laughed and smiled so much as on that journey. She spent half the time with my cap on her head, grabbing it off me when we passed the Duncashel Arms. I couldn’t get enough of that deviousness in her eye that made me wonder what she might get up to next. I am happy to report that we skidded to a halt outside the dance hall with not an oil stain in sight.
I kissed her on the cheek later, when we took some air on the wall behind the dance hall. After, I reached for her hand and she caressed my thumb with hers as the summer evening heat still managed to warm us. It wasn’t for another week before the real kiss came. Have you the stomach for all of this, son? Tune out now, if you want, I’ll tell you when it’s over.
I will never forget it. It felt as if someone had lit a fire in my belly when her lips touched mine. I’d planned for nothing more than a repeat of that first peck on the cheek and had reached down to do just that as we stood at her door, Mrs Durkin being out at bingo, but her head turned and her lips found mine. Sweet divine, I was transported, to heaven. My urge, of course, was to continue and, I’ll be honest, to do much more. But I refused the temptation to pull her back when she moved her head away. She looked up and smiled.
‘Where did a wee innocent girl from Annamoe in Donegal learn to kiss like that?’ I asked.
‘That would be telling, wouldn’t it.’
There were more of those encounters over the coming weeks, each one lasting a little longer and becoming a little deeper. But I always pulled away, not tempting myself and maybe her too, beyond a point of no return; it wouldn’t have been right no matter how much I wanted it. Nowadays, of course, it’s all different. I’m not sure I’d have had it any other way, though; the waiting and the longing built up a good thirst in me by the time we said our vows.
It was three months later that the official invite came to meet her parents. Nervous was too weak a word to describe the torture I felt at the very prospect of meeting the father. My own father was forever berating my poor sisters about the men who he found ‘sniffing’ around. I wouldn’t mind, but these poor lads were no more dangerous than me; ‘sniffing’ involved nothing other than the neighbouring farmers’ sons raising their caps as they passed down the lane or on the road that ran outside our house. If that was all they were guilty of then Mr McDonagh would surely have me arrested as soon as I crossed the Donegal border.
‘Are you sure it’s the right time, Sadie? Might we leave it for a month or two? Sure I’ve very little saved. I’ve no ring or anything.’
‘Is that right? Remember I’ve seen your bank book, Mr Hannigan.’ She had me there, while meagre, my savings were steadily growing. ‘And might that be a proposal?’
This woman was a force to be reckoned with.
‘Oh, you know what I mean. I don’t want your father thinking I’m some Johnny come lately, trying to take advantage.’
‘What, of my wealth and status?’
‘Well, Sadie, there aren’t many women who’ve a job in the bank and are as beautiful as you.’
‘Maurice, you’ll be fine. They know all about you. I’ve told them everything. They know you’re upstanding and aren’t about to have your wicked way and then run out on me.’
‘Sadie!’
‘Oh would you stop. I want you to meet Mammy and Daddy and our Noreen, to see who I am and where I come from – to see what you’re signing up for, so to speak.’
‘But I know all that, nothing will change how I feel about you, even if your family turn out to be a pack of nutcases.’
‘That’s not funny, Maurice!’ she snapped. The weather had suddenly turned.
Now bear in mind that at this point I knew nothing of Noreen’s issues, so I was completely thrown, totally unaware of what I’d just landed my two clodhoppers in. I allowed the silence to settle between us as she manhandled her magazine, violently flapping the pages back and forth.
‘He’ll not bite, you know. Although, if you go around saying things like that I’m not so sure.’
‘Ah Sadie, I didn’t mean it. It was just a joke.’
/> Flick, flick, flap, flap, page after page. I almost felt sorry for the magazine. She refused to look at me while I took terrified peeks at her. Slowly, however, the thaw began to set in, the tempo eased, finally the exhausted magazine came to rest on her lap. My eyes glanced sideways to assess the significance of the alteration. She was staring ahead of her, thinking her thoughts, possibly mulling over the wisdom of having agreed to go on that first date at all. She remained that way for a moment or two as I sweated beside her. In the end she sighed, a beautiful Donegal sigh.
‘Ach, Maurice,’ she said turning to me, ‘I promise, he’s a wee dote. He’ll just love you, how could he not?’
‘I’ll go then. To meet this “wee dote”.’
She smiled and nodded; and I kissed her, the rest of that journey to Annamoe, you know.
* * *
But today has been about trying to make amends for the many times after that great beginning when I stole that smile from your mother’s beautiful face; for all the things I never did or half did and for the many promises I made and broke.
Like the honeymoon suite for instance, where I’ll lay these exhausted bones down tonight. Remember how I promised to take her there on your wedding night but never did? Or how about the dinner in The Estuary restaurant today? Oh yes, I dined like a King. Stood at the ‘please wait to be seated’ sign of Duncashel’s award-winning restaurant, bold as you like, pressing down my wispy white hair, looking at the white-linened tables, the shining knives and forks, three deep, the lilies tall and erect, sniffing out the interloper, until Felix arrived, whisking me away from my demons and my guilt to the exact table I’d asked for over the phone when I’d made the reservation – the one your mother always said she wanted to sit at, when we passed in the car and she looked in.
And then there is the matter of the tea.
I don’t need to tell you about my reluctance to buy a cup of tea when dining out. Why waste the money when there’s a perfectly good kettle at home? In all our years of Sunday carveries, Sadie went along with me on that one. I’d have even gone so far as to say she wholeheartedly supported my approach. But on reflection, perhaps she chose her battles wisely. After all she’d managed to bring about one of the biggest coups in our house back in the nineties. Can’t even remember exactly when she said those fatal words: ‘I’m done with roasts.’ But I didn’t buck, despite the shock. Just knew to pay the money of a Sunday and say nothing. But not long before she died she fairly told me what she really thought of my tea policy.
We were sat over in Murtagh’s, our empty plates in front of us. I had just leaned over to get my coat from the seat beside Sadie when her hand arrived to stop me with a strength I never knew she had. I stared at the puzzle of her fingers: arthritic worn joints bent at the top – she couldn’t get her rings off by the time she died, did you know that? Her wedding finger was permanently strangled by our love. Now that I think of it, those rings were the only jewellery I ever bought her. Instead, I handed her money when birthdays and Christmases came round. She could buy what she wanted then. Everyone won that way.
‘Tea,’ she said to me that Sunday, loud and clear, staring straight ahead of her. ‘Earl Grey.’
Always Earl Grey. Not that she was born into it, mind; the McDonaghs were Lyons people like the rest of us. ‘You can blame Dublin for that one,’ she had told me years before. She’d been given it by accident in a tearoom on Grafton Street. I can’t remember the name of the place now. It’ll come to me. ‘It was like a tingle on my tongue,’ she said, ‘I was an Earl Grey convert from then on.’ There was always a box of Earl Grey to be found in our house, do you remember? At first it was leaves and then, as time went on and the wheels of industry turned, it became bags. Being the more expensive, she only ever had it for her elevenses. The rest of the day she slummed it with the rest of us on the bog standard.
‘Give me my coat so, woman,’ I said, still trying to release it from her hold, ‘and we’ll go home and get one.’
‘And I’d like it here, no matter what it costs, no matter how long we have to wait. I want it here, served by someone else. And what’s more I’m having dessert. Banoffi.’
I looked at her wondering what I was to do with that information. In the edgy silence, I realised she expected me to go off and find the waitress. I rose, knowing full well it would be impossible to waylay a girl in Murtagh’s at that hour when all and sundry were out for the carvery after twelve Mass, and so queued again at the counter, dragging my annoyance, pace by pace, until I stood in front of the dessert fridge.
‘I’ll have that yoke,’ I said, pointing my finger at the plate of banoffi behind the glass.
‘Anything else with that, sir? Ice cream?’ the young lad asked. Sadie loved ice cream. I gave him my best stare, considering his offer.
He followed behind me carrying the tray with her banoffi and her rattling teacup. When we arrived at the table, I placed the dessert in front of her.
‘No ice cream, no?’ she asked, looking at the plate.
‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re out.’
I knew the lad was staring at the back of my head but I didn’t flinch as I turned to take the tea things. I didn’t give two hoots what he or my poor long-suffering wife thought of me. When I sat, I watched the couple at the next table trying to feed their young toddler a carrot rather than looking at Sadie taking her time eating her pudding. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her measure every spoonful with equal amounts of cream and caramel and banana. Savouring it in her mouth like she was sucking a mint. After each swallow she reached for her teacup. Holding it like a chalice. Nestling in, all snug on the couch, looking around at the other diners. Not caring for one second that the Sunday game would be about to start on the telly at home with Mícháel Ó Muircheartaigh’s commentary keeping pace with the speed of those young bucks. But I refused to be riled and continued to watch the couple next door, locked in battle, with his nibs.
‘Just a little bite, Markie, and then you can have the jelly.’
‘Our Kevin would be at that too,’ Sadie said, putting her cup down on its saucer. Her elbow rested on the table now, her head at a tilt, leaning on her hand, watching the woman’s pitiful attempts at getting some goodness into her son.
‘You should try mushing up the veg so he can’t see it.’
The mother gave a tight-lipped smile.
‘I even used to mix it up in his custard. Kevin loved custard.’
A carrot already cut in two was halved again and waved in front of Markie’s mouth, then nudged at the gripped lips.
‘Just this tiny bit, pet.’
‘You could blitz it in a blender.’
Markie was by now sticking his fingers into his jelly and licking them enthusiastically while his mother sat back practically in tears.
‘’Course Kevin is at that himself now, trying to con the greens into his own. What goes around comes around, I told him.’
‘Jesus,’ I muttered under my breath. But she refused to look my way. ‘I’ll be in the car. I’ll see you there when you’ve finished with your parenting tips,’ I added, rising and leaving her to it.
She didn’t take to the bedroom when we got home like I’d expected. But she never spoke a word to me. Flitted about the place like I wasn’t there. In and out of the sitting room the whole day. I couldn’t tell you what she was at. But what I do know is that when I sat to the kitchen table later for tea, no cup and saucer sat at my place. I watched her pour her own and let the pot rest back down on the coaster. She didn’t lift her head once. In the end, I got my own cup and found my very own pot after about ten minutes of searching. We finished our meal in total silence, refilling our cups from pots that sat like two canons pointing at each other across the divide.
This afternoon, after I’d finished the first four courses of my meal – sorbet they gave me, not for the dessert, right after the starter – I waved Felix down.
‘Earl Grey,’ I said to him. ‘Give me a pot of Earl Grey.’
When I took the first sip, the liquid scalded the top of my mouth. It felt like she was sitting in the room, glaring at me as I drank, reminding me that it was far too late to make recompense for my sins now.
Casey’s, that was the place in Dublin.
* * *
Ours was always a difficult relationship when it came to our wealth. Individually our views were clear: I loved it, she despised it. For the sake of our marriage, therefore, it rarely got discussed. I felt bad tainting her with it. She never knew what we had in the bank or how much land we really owned. And when she did happen across some revealing paperwork, she just handed it straight to me like it was a dirty sock I’d dropped on the carpet.
On a Friday at tea, I’d leave the weekly amount for all the shopping and whatever else she needed against the teapot. I’d never even see her take it. I’d look up at some stage and it’d be gone, into her apron pocket. But here’s the funniest thing, when I began to clear away some of her bits after she died – well, when I say ‘clear’ I more rummaged through them, reluctant as I was to part with even a thread – I kept finding money. She must never have spent all I gave. Never bothered sticking it in the bank or the credit union account. Trusted it instead to the pockets of old cardigans and dressing gowns and an old box that held your childhood drawings. Rainy day, I suppose. I must’ve found seven thousand in all. Don’t ask me, son, I’ve no idea.
In all our years I never stopped wanting her. Never. Not for one moment. Not for one second. I watched her skin survive the years, softly, folding upon itself. I touched it often, still hopelessly loving every bit of her, every line that claimed her, every new mark that stamped its permanency. We had our tough times like everyone else, but through it all I never looked at anyone else. Never desired another.