by Cathy Kelly
“Well, it is interesting,” said Mara. “How very mysterious that you and Cashel don’t get on. I’ve never heard you talk of him, and he certainly hasn’t met you since he’s been here, so this must all be in the past.”
“Sometimes,” Tess said, “the past really is better left in the past. Now, I’ll tell you about the house, but do not think you’re going to cross-examine me about my relationship with Cashel Reilly, OK? Plus, I’ve no idea if we get on anymore, because I haven’t seen him for so long.”
Mara knew there was a story there and she was determined to get to the bottom of it.
There was no point asking Cashel; he was far too canny for even her wonderful wiles. And Danae was no help: “I really don’t know,” she said. “It must have been before my time.”
Belle, however, was much more forthcoming. Belle, Danae and Mara were having dinner in the hotel brasserie one evening when Mara broached the question.
“What exactly went on with Cashel and Tess Power? There’s something there, I can feel it.”
“Ah, well,” said Belle, “there’s a long story to that.”
“How do you know all this?” said Danae. “I mean, you moved here around the same time that I did.”
Both Mara and Belle looked at each other in amusement.
“You’re gas, Danae, do you know that?” said Belle fondly. “The difference between you and me is that I ask. I have to know what’s going on. When you run a hotel it’s very important. I mean, I need to know who’s fallen out with who, which families are feuding, so that when they all come in for dinner I don’t put them near one another. The last thing I want is customers grabbing the ceremonial swords off the wall and starting a duel! When you’re running a licensed business, you can’t be too careful. When people get a few glasses under their belt, they’re liable to decide it’s time a long-term grudge gets aired.”
Mara patted her aunt affectionately, “You missed out on the gossip gene, Danae. Unlike me and Belle.”
“I do not have the gossip gene,” Belle said haughtily. “I have the mother of all gossip genes.” And she began to explain what she knew about Tess and Cashel. “It’s all a bit mysterious and nobody knows exactly what went on, but things looked very serious between Tess and Cashel for a time. Then suddenly it was a case of one minute they were engaged—and the next minute he was gone.”
Mara recalled the way Cashel had looked at her with narrowed eyes, heavy brows beetling, when she’d idly mentioned having worked in Something Old.
“Tess Power’s shop?” he said.
For the first time, Mara had a sense of what it must be like to be an underling who had displeased Cashel Reilly by doing something terribly wrong. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and what’s more she wasn’t afraid of him.
“Yes, I work for her occasionally. Lovely woman, very beautiful,” Mara said innocently. “It’s sad too, because she and her husband have split up. I think she’s lonely, you know . . .”
“Can we stop talking about this and get on with our work,” Cashel had rasped out.
So it wouldn’t be entirely true if she were to tell Tess that Cashel had evinced an interest in visiting Something Old. On the other hand, he hadn’t said he didn’t want to visit the shop either. The path of true love never did run smooth.
For a second, Mara thought of what Cici would say if she could see her.
“You’re meddling, you mad thing,” Cici would say.
Mara didn’t see it as meddling. It seemed wrong to stand by and do nothing while two people who’d once loved each other were leading sad and lonely lives apart, especially when it was obvious that they’d be just perfect together. She wished she had a magic wand to fix all past broken romances. But then, if she had a wand, she might have fixed her own.
Danae had found herself changing lately. She’d begun to talk to the people who came to the post office; like the Nigerian priest, who’d come in shivering from the cold despite being a strapping lad with huge muscles. Father Olumbuko was a recent arrival, and he was a joy. He spoke English like an Oxford graduate and had the kindest face. It soon became apparent to Danae that he understood people and felt great affection for them. The previous curate had been inclined to take the high moral ground on all occasions. From what Danae could see, Father Olumbuko appeared to share her view that there wasn’t enough oxygen for sensible people up there on the high moral ground.
He’d given a blessing to a young couple who were marrying in the registry office because of an early, ill-fated marriage and divorce. Danae wasn’t supposed to know about it, but she did.
Father Olumbuko wasn’t supposed to know she knew, but he did.
“You are the eyes of Avalon,” he said to Danae when he came into the post office to buy stamps for his Christmas cards.
“As are you, Father.” Danae smiled at him from behind her plexiglass.
“But there is much to learn here,” he went on. “Father Liam is a busy man.”
Father Liam was juggling a huge parish, dwindling resources and four crumbling churches.
“We have so many areas of pastoral concern,” Father Olumbuko went on.
He had the warmest eyes, Danae thought: like great, wise lights in that open face.
“Unemployment among local men has gone up,” Danae said thoughtfully, aware that, a month or so ago, she wouldn’t have ventured an opinion at all. “Women are better at facing it than men. I read somewhere about working on allotments being a great idea for men who are retired or unemployed. They feel better when they’re doing something.”
Father Olumbuko’s eyes lit up even more. He was a thinker, Danae could see. Once delivered, an idea wouldn’t leave that clever mind until a solution had been reached.
“These wintry months are not good times for gardening in this country,” he said, with a small shiver. “But perhaps, before we work on allotments, we could work on the common areas in the town.”
“The ground around the high cross is a bit raggy at the moment,” Danae agreed. “There’s no money in the public purse for flowers, but we could plant bulbs for the New Year.”
“Crocuses and snowdrops,” said Father Olumbuko dreamily.
“Lovely,” agreed Danae.
She’d never have had a conversation like that with Father Liam, whose mind occupied a more cerebral plane when he wasn’t worrying about parish finances. Give him a glass of sherry, and Father Liam could spend hours discussing angels dancing on pins.
Father Olumbuko’s eyes suddenly focused on hers. “Why are you not on our pastoral committee, Miss Rahill?”
“I’m not a joiner,” Danae replied simply. She’d used that phrase many times over the past eighteen years. It kept people at a distance, while saying nothing about her. But perhaps it was time to be a joiner, after all. Perhaps in the New Year she might consider getting involved in some of the local groups. “And you may call me Danae.”
“Ah, the Greek princess who gave birth to Perseus, a child fathered by Zeus himself,” he said, then added ruefully: “The benefits of a classical education.”
Danae was impressed. “My mother loved the Greek myths,” she said. “If I’d been a boy, I was to be Ulysses. Since you know my name, what is yours?”
“Edgar.” He bowed formally, and Danae found herself thinking that it was a shame Catholic priests were destined to a life of celibacy. This kind, interesting man would have made some young woman a lovely husband. Mara came to mind. But Mara kept insisting that she was off men for good, determined to obliterate the past. The young liked to run away from the past until they grew older and realized the past was always with you.
“We’ll talk again, Edgar,” Danae said. “Off with your stamps, now. I need a cup of tea.”
She must tell Mara all about it. Mara would be thrilled. Even if Danae had put her foot down over going to see a therapist—“I had quite enough of them when I was in the hospital, Mara. I couldn’t bear to see another one . . .”—she was venturing out into the world
so much more.
But of course, tonight was Mara’s date night with the New Zealand man. So much for being off men!
“It’s not a date,” Mara kept telling herself as she got ready for her dinner with Rafe. “It’s only an evening out with somebody I’ve met in a new place, that’s all.” And then inside her head came Cici’s voice saying, “You’re putting a lot of work into something that isn’t a date!” Mara had to admit that was true.
She’d used the hot-oil conditioning treatment that made her hair all silky and glossy, and she’d spent quite some time on her makeup, flicking her eyeliner up very carefully, which, even though she was well practiced at it, took time and a steady hand.
Smelling of a delicious combination of lemon and a faintly scented lavender body cream, she was ready to go, all dressed up in an outfit she’d bought for a date with Jack. “You have no power over me anymore,” she had told the blouse fiercely as it hung innocently on the hanger. It was green silk, fitted at the waist, cut low enough in front to give the faintest hint of creamy cleavage. It went with a dark olive tweedy pencil skirt. Jack had loved it.
“God I could rip that off you right now,” he’d said when she turned up to meet him in the restaurant. “Who needs food? Let’s go back to my place.” And they had. They’d left the restaurant without so much as a bite. Jack had thrown some money on the table and had whisked her off to his apartment, where he had indeed removed the outfit and made love to her.
Going out with Rafe would be an exorcism for the outfit. She’d stopped thinking about Jack as often as she used to; she was too busy, for a start. Nobody working for Cashel ever had time to be bored. But Jack’s memory sometimes crept in when she was in bed at night, and she’d wonder if there would ever again be somebody to caress her, to kiss her, to nuzzle into her neck and say he loved her smell.
Mara jammed a brown felt hat on top of her curls and put on her coat, adding a scarf before marching back into the kitchen.
“Okay, Danae, I won’t be long—it’s only dinner.”
“Have fun,” said Danae, beaming at her. “I’m tired tonight, I might be in bed when you come back.”
It was only after Mara had kissed her goodbye, petted Lady and got into her car, that it suddenly occurred to her Danae was subtly saying: “Stay out as long as you want, darling, nobody will be here to see it, it’s up to you.”
Morelli’s restaurant in Avalon was busy when Mara walked in the door. She was ten minutes late; it had been hard to find parking and these shoes, though joyful to look at, were a nightmare to walk in—well, totter in.
She’d been in Morelli’s before with the girls, and Belle had filled her in on the facts. Gino Morelli had married into a huge Irish family and had set up the restaurant and it had been jammed ever since, people loving the combination of fabulous Italian cooking and the hospitality dished out by his wife, Laura, and her two daughters, Concepta and Jacinta.
Mara was embarrassed because she wasn’t entirely sure which of the two sisters was on the desk this evening. The Morelli women all looked exactly the same: tall, with olive skin, dark eyes and long dark hair.
“Hello,” said Mara, smiling, hoping the smile might make up for her not saying the woman’s name. “I’m Mara—I was here a few weeks ago with my aunt and some friends. I’m joining Rafe Berlin tonight. I don’t know if he’s here already but I am a bit late.”
The dark haired woman behind the counter smiled. “Hello, Mara, lovely to have you back. My sister Jacinta and I were saying only the other day what a lovely evening that was when you and the ladies invited us to join you. Mr. Berlin is here. We’ve been admiring him already,” she said and one eyebrow lifted, “if I wasn’t a married lady, well . . .”
She left the rest of the sentence unsaid and Mara found herself grinning happily. He was good looking, there was no doubt about that, but this wasn’t a date. If Cici were to ask her about it again, she’d explain: No. Date. Whatsoever.
With swaying hips, Concepta brought her to the table where Rafe was waiting and Mara had to agree with Concepta: Rafe was looking pretty good tonight. He stood up when she arrived and held back her seat. She was surprised, Jack had never done that sort of thing. Then he kissed her gently on both cheeks, European style. Mara found herself getting a bit flustered. Definitely not a date, she said to herself. This is two people meeting for dinner. Modern people do this: have dinner, make friends with members of the opposite sex, it doesn’t have to mean anything.
“You look beautiful,” Rafe said, and this time Mara actually flushed.
“Thank you,” she said, and busied herself picking up the menu. “Sorry I’m late, these shoes . . . and I couldn’t find parking . . .”
“I didn’t mind waiting for you,” Rafe said in that beautiful Kiwi accent. And the way he said it made Mara think what he was really saying was that he’d be prepared to wait a long time for her.
“So how have you been?” Mara asked, in a voice that sounded a little false even to her. She’d been aiming for matey, but it wasn’t coming out quite right.
“I’ve been fine,” said Rafe. “Looking forward to this, of course. I hadn’t expected to wait so long for you to set a date.”
“I was a bit busy,” said Mara, which was an understatement.
“I figured that,” he said lazily, smiling at her in a way that was very date-like.
“Yes,” breathed Mara, flushing a bit.
This wasn’t turning out the way she’d expected. He was acting like a suitor and she was responding. Boy, was she responding.
It was beginning to feel like a proper boyfriend/girlfriend dinner, and she was nervous now and conscious of him, how he looked and how he looked at her. Those blue eyes devouring her, not in a horrible way but in a loving, appreciative way.
She kept her head down, looking at the menu, although she wasn’t reading it at all. It was a jumble of words and letters, pasta and basil and God knows what she was going to eat because suddenly she didn’t feel in the slightest bit hungry and he was still looking at her, she could tell. She looked up.
“For God’s sake, stop looking at me, okay?”
“Why am I not allowed look at you?” he demanded.
“Because you’re putting me off,” Mara said. “This isn’t a date.”
“It isn’t?” he asked.
“Well, no. I thought we were going out to dinner and you were going to fill me in on the town, both of us being newcomers.”
“I don’t know about around here, but where I come from that’s a date.”
“I told you, I have recently come out of a very hurtful relationship—well, hurtful when it ended,” Mara said. “I’m not up for going out with anyone. My heart is broken, okay? Totally broken.” She glared at him.
“You are not wearing a totally broken outfit, and you do not look totally broken,” Rafe said. “But forgive me if I’m wrong. Kiwi cowboys, such as I, have no clue what goes on in sophisticated Celtic women’s minds.”
“I did not say you were a cowboy,” she said. “Well, okay, I did. But you were wearing that ridiculous hat.”
“I went to Texas, I bought a hat, I like it,” he said. “And y’know, people have said in the past that it sort of suits me. Not that I’m really tall enough to carry it off.” And Rafe was grinning at her.
“Do not be mocking me, Rafe Berlin,” she said, but she was beginning to grin too. “Fine, for categorizing purposes, it is a date. But a really, really, really early one. A sort of ‘we don’t know each other at all and let’s see if we even vaguely like each other’ one,” Mara said. “Okay? Those are the ground rules.”
“Ground rules, right,” said Rafe. “I will try and remember them. What are the other ground rules? Am I allowed to touch you? Was that double-kissing thing acceptable? ’Cos, you know, most women like that.”
“Do not do things to me that most women like,” she said. “I am not most women. I want to be treated like an individual.”
“Fair enough,” R
afe said. “I thought you might like it.” His voice was lower now and Mara found that she was holding her breath because she had liked it, liked it a lot. But she couldn’t let him in, she was too hurt. It was too early. It was all wrong.
“How about we pick something to eat, and have our dinner and talk about stuff, and that’ll be the first really-really-early embryonic date over?”
“Is there a time limit on this embryonic-date stuff?” Rafe asked.
Mara pretended to think about this. “Mmm, it’s a long time since I’ve done this. I think maybe two hours maximum. And then, you might escort me to my car—very slowly, because I’m wearing high-heeled shoes.”
“I noticed,” he said. “I love your shoes.”
“But not in a shoe-fetishy way, right?” Mara asked.
“No,” he agreed, “not in a shoe-fetishy way. I just like the way they make you sort of walk . . . well, very nicely. Next subject,” Rafe said. He gave up on trying to explain how attractive he found the way she walked, that instinctive little sway of her hips, the fact that all the men in the restaurant had looked at her and she hadn’t noticed them at all. “So after two hours I walk you to your car, shake hands with you and you go home. And if I’m really good we can do it all again next week?”
“That sounds reasonable,” Mara said.
By eleven o’clock, there weren’t many other couples left in Morelli’s. They’d shared a bottle of wine and Mara felt totally giggly and deliciously relaxed. She refused the waiter’s offer of a complimentary Italian liqueur. “Oh, heavens no, I couldn’t,” she said, “sorry.”
“Me neither,” Rafe said. “I feel a bit drunk really,” he added, “which is odd on two and a half glasses of wine.”
“Me too,” Mara said, astonished. “Why is that?”
He reached over and touched her hand on the table. He’d done that a few times and she’d let him. He was affectionate, liked reaching out and touching her. As well as her hand, he’d touched her face once when she had a crumb of bread stick on her mouth. And the strange thing was, she liked him touching her.