by Cathy Kelly
‘OK, don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ Claire said. ‘I was only asking. Will I ever get to meet him?’
‘If he turns out to be the love of my life and we decide to emigrate to the Bahamas leaving you with the kids, then, yes, you will meet him. It’ll be the least I can do. Must dash, Mum.’
Hugh had suggested meeting in a pub in Dublin so Leonie decided to take the DART into town rather than drive. Hobbling a bit in her new and slightly tight court shoes, she left the house at a trot after giving explicit instructions on how to reheat lasagne and on how she didn’t want to return and find Danny had gone out leaving the girls on their own.
‘Where you going to in your finery, anyway?’ Danny enquired, taking in her best ruched velvet skirt, the silky red shirt with the top three buttons opened and her Egyptian scarab necklace.
‘Out with the girls,’ his mother fibbed, dragging on the black suede jacket she only wore on special occasions. As Abby had been sulking all day, she didn’t want to start another row by mentioning that she was going to meet a man. Who knew what sort of extreme reaction that would provoke? In her current emotional state, Abby would probably race for the airport to fly to Boston, stopping only to phone the ISPCC to report her mother for child cruelty.
Having timed her departure to coincide with the passing of a bus, Leonie was soon on her way to get the DART into the city centre. However, by the time she’d got to the Greystones train station, having hobbled from the bus, every step agony, Leonie was tempted to throw her new shoes in a bin and go into town in her stockinged feet. People might point and stare, but surely not any more than they were going to do on seeing a tall woman limping along with little yelps of pain at every step. She took a seat on the right-hand side of the carriage so she could look out of the window at the sea. Easing her feet out of the shoes, she realized at last just how apt the Cockney for feet was. Plates of meat suited hers perfectly, both visually and realistically. She rested the plates on the empty seat opposite, hoping a train employee wouldn’t appear and remind her that ‘seats aren’t for feet’. He’d get a court shoe in the gob if he did.
Pain notwithstanding, Leonie enjoyed her train journey, peering into gardens and lit-up houses from the vantage point of the carriage, and watching people walking delirious dogs along the strand at Sandymount. That was her favourite bit of train journeys: the insight it gave you into other people’s lives. It was fun looking into curtainless kitchens, watching people at the sink with saucepans or wandering around drinking tea, oblivious to the fact that the passengers on the DART could see them.
The only flaw in this form of entertainment was the fact that the train went too fast for her to have a thoroughly good look.
At Tara Street station, she realized that taking the shoes off had been a serious error. Cramming her feet back into them was like stuffing an anaesthetized rodent through a narrow cage door. Hobbling even more painfully on now swollen feet, she trudged slowly along to the hotel in Temple Bar where she was meeting Hugh.
She was ten minutes late, her feet felt as if they required urgent amputation and she knew her ‘banish the blemish’ corrective foundation was sliding down her cheeks with the heat of struggling along in painful shoes and a heavy jacket. Her spirit of romance felt deeply absent. Perhaps he wouldn’t turn up and she could go home. There was a Richard Gere film on the telly and if the kids were all sulking madly, they’d probably stay in their respective bedrooms and sulk there, leaving her with control of the remote.
One foot in the door of the hotel and she spotted Hugh immediately. It would be hard not to. He was the only person in the premises over the age of twenty-five, apart from herself, that was. Standing by a pillar with a glass of beer and an uncomfortable expression on his face was a man of medium height with big shoulders, the bullish neck common to sporty blokes, and plenty of short nutty brown hair that was greying at the temples. He was good looking, she realized with a pleasant shock; he had a healthy out-doorsy colour, strong features and a solid, reliable sort of chin. In a casual open-necked shirt and tweedy jacket, he looked as out of place in this youthful emporium as a dowager duchess at a rave. Busker’s was clearly the in spot for the city’s bright young things on a Saturday night, because it was jammed with huge gangs of guys and girls, all dressed up for partying.
Overpowering wafts of hairspray competed with pungent aftershaves and perfumes. It was an asthmatic’s idea of hell. Minxy girls in snippets of lycra giggled into their bottles of beer and eyed up newly shaved blokes who attempted to look cool by smoking too much.
Leonie couldn’t help but grin at the stupidity of meeting in such a place and when his eyes met hers across the throng of exquisite twenty-year-old flesh, Hugh grinned back in agreement. He wound his way to the door, his face apologetic. He had nice crinkly eyes – laughing eyes, she could see up close – and a scar in the aforementioned reliable chin.
‘Leonie?’ he said loudly so she’d hear him over the music. ‘This is what I get for pretending to be trendy and suggesting we meet in Temple Bar.’
‘If it’s any consolation,’ she said, eyes shining, ‘I’m just as untrendy or I’d have known that this isn’t our sort of place. Will we find somewhere for geriatrics where we don’t have to semaphore our conversation? My hearing-aid battery is running low.’
He nodded, put his half-full glass down and they went outside.
In the disco-beat-free atmosphere, Leonie half-expected that their instant easiness with each other would disappear. But it didn’t. She liked this guy, mad though it was to make such a decision after a few minutes. But she did.
They walked slowly along Temple Bar and laughed at how stupid otherwise mature, intelligent people became when they started dating via the personal ads. ‘The first time I tried it, I suggested dinner in this ultra-posh restaurant to impress her and she said she hated pretentious restaurant bores so much that she left after the first course,’ Hugh recalled. ‘This time, I thought I’d be sort of trendy and with it by suggesting Busker’s.’
Leonie didn’t bridle at the mention of other personal ad dates on the grounds that he might be a serial dater. He wasn’t, she was sure. There was something comfortable about him, as if she’d known him for years.
‘My dating sin tonight is wearing new shoes to impress you,’ she said, struggling on the cobblestones that were considered part of the Left Bank-ish charm of Temple Bar. ‘Consequently, my feet are in agony and these cobblestones are hell.’
‘You should have said,’ Hugh declared, taking her arm. ‘I’ll drag you over to the footpath, milady, and we shall find a suitable hostelry where you can take the shoes off and nobody will notice.’
‘I need somewhere I can lie down,’ she joked, then blushed at what she’d said.
Hugh took no notice. ‘This is too advanced in the personal ad dating department for me,’ he said blithely. ‘Sex in the first ten minutes is too confusing, don’t you think?’
Leonie laughed. ‘Definitely. But a drink would be nice.’
‘Or how about something to eat?’ he said. ‘I’m actually ravenous and didn’t want to suggest dinner in case we hated each other and needed to escape quickly.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought,’ Leonie said. ‘I’d even invented a fictitious private party I’d have to get to by ten, in case you were as dull as ditchwater, but I’m starving.’
‘Right. Dinner. Lean on me. And if you suddenly need to leave at half nine, I’ll get the picture.’
Finding a table for two on a Saturday night when you haven’t booked is the Holy Grail of modern dating. But they managed it without having to hobble too far. Installed in a tiny booth for munchkins in a Chinese restaurant – the only place with a table – Leonie slipped off her shoes and moaned with relief.
‘You can’t do the fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally without food,’ Hugh warned her. ‘Otherwise we’ll be thrown out for fondling each other under the paper tablecloth. The police may even be involved. It won�
��t be nice. I’m a respectable man.’
She giggled. He was very funny, which was refreshing. Bob, whom she’d met twice since in a platonic way, was about as amusing as piles – and that was on a good day.
‘Ethnic restaurants are a good way of establishing if you can bear each other or not,’ Hugh remarked, putting on a pair of half-moon reading glasses to peruse the menu. ‘If one person starts laughing like a drain when they ask for “flied lice”, then you either know you’ve met your soul mate or not.’
‘If you’re a flied lice merchant, then I’m off,’ Leonie said. ‘Those glasses are great, by the way. I can just picture you peering at someone over a big desk and telling them they’ve been very bad.’
Hugh raised his dark eyebrows questioningly. ‘I think you’ve got your personal ads mixed up,’ he said. ‘I’m the investment adviser person; you’re thinking of Mr Whippy, who advertises on the next page as being good at punishment.’
Leonie smiled. ‘You mean, you’re not Mr Whippy?’
He appeared to consider this. ‘As long as it never gets out, I’d be prepared to consider it. No fee, seeing as it’s for you.’
She grinned with delight. This was marvellous, this was flirting. Ah, remember that. Smiling and making jokes with wicked innuendoes.
The waiter appeared and took their order. When Hugh got to the bit where he said he wanted fried rice with his beef, Leonie felt the giggles bubbling up inside her. She couldn’t laugh now. It would be too, too rude to the nice waiter who’d think they were making fun of his accent when it wasn’t that at all.
Hugh sent her a stern look. ‘Behave yourself,’ he mouthed. ‘She goes berserk after a few pints of shandy,’ he told the waiter.
She laughed seriously this time.
‘What is it about you that makes me keep laughing?’ she asked when the waiter had gone, unperturbed by the strange antics of diners.
‘My bald patch?’ he offered, bending forward so she could see it.
‘I think it’s relief because you’ve turned out to be so normal,’ Leonie declared. ‘Well, a bit abnormal really, but my sort of abnormal. I feel as if I’ve known you for years.’
He nodded. ‘Ditto. I never joke around with people I don’t know: I’m actually quite shy and when I don’t know someone, I’m very formal to cover up. Handy in my line of work, mind you. You can’t discuss investing money for someone and keep making cheap jokes. But with you, I feel very comfortable.’
‘Me too. So, you weren’t the life and soul of the party when you brought your last blind date to the posh restaurant?’ she asked slyly.
Hugh raked a bit of hair back with one hand and looked pained. ‘Hell, no. It was like a job interview. I told her what I did, where I did it and what my hobbies were. That was all before we’d ordered our first drink. If we’d had time, I’d have probably moved on to my career strategies and where I hoped to be in five years. Horrible. It’s a miracle I tried this again, after that fiasco.’
‘What was she like and why did you answer her ad?’ Leonie asked. ‘Actually, why did you answer mine?’
‘She said she worked with money and I thought it might be nice to meet someone in the same line of work,’ he explained. ‘That was a big mistake because I’ll probably spend the rest of my professional career hoping I’m never allocated to a branch where she works. She’s a tough cookie. It takes some nerve to stand up and say that we obviously weren’t suited and she didn’t want to waste the evening.’
‘Ouch. Maybe she’s a Miss Whippy,’ Leonie said evilly.
‘Wouldn’t be at all surprised. I’m afraid I was Mr Wimpy to her Miss Whippy. It’s not nice sitting on your own in a restaurant when your date has left abruptly. Everyone probably assumed we were married and I’d just told her I was having an affair or something.’
He looked so forlorn at the memory of that restaurant scene, that Leonie had to bite her lip to stop herself smiling.
‘That was in November,’ he said, ‘so I’ve been sitting at home licking my wounds for the past couple of months.’
Food and wine arrived and they tucked in.
‘You’re not getting off that easily,’ Leonie said, when she’d sated the first pangs of hunger with satay chicken. ‘Come on, spill the beans: why did you answer my ad?’
‘You sounded lovely and friendly, and you said you loved animals. Obviously, I do too and that was it. Also, I’m a sucker for statuesque blondes and my friends told me I was getting too big for my boots and needed another strange woman walking out on me on a blind date to knock me down to size. Only kidding,’ he added. ‘Although not about the first bit.’
‘If you’re hoping to get out of paying for your half of dinner with flowery compliments, stop right there,’ Leonie warned.
‘Not guilty, miss,’ Hugh said honestly.
He gazed straight at Leonie. ‘You’ve the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,’ he added softly. ‘They’re so blue, beautiful. And I’m having a wonderful time. Honest.’
Leonie’s belly quivered. Or at least something in her nether regions quivered. Maybe it wasn’t her belly after all, but some of the long-since rusted up sexual bits that hadn’t been out of dust sheets since Adam was a lad. Yes, definitely a quiver. She breathed deeply and said: ‘That party at ten o’clock has been cancelled, by the way.’
‘Good. When my friend rings my mobile at nine forty-five pretending to be locked out of his flat, to which, incidentally, I have the only spare key, I’ll tell him it’s OK, you’ve turned out to be wonderful.’
Chinese food had never been more fun. They laughed and talked their way through far too much Peking Duck and Sizzling Beef, until Leonie said she’d have to open all the buttons on her skirt or she’d burst out of it. She couldn’t imagine making such a statement with any other man, but she felt so relaxed with Hugh, it seemed natural. Of course, the second bottle of plonk helped.
‘I’m not really a heavy drinker,’ Leonie said, holding up her glass for another refill. ‘I like wine but it doesn’t take that much to get me drunk.’
‘I hope you haven’t copped on to my fiendish plan,’ said Hugh, dead-pan. ‘I’ve got a van out the back and I’m taking you on to my place to have my wicked way with you.’
‘Not that drunk yet,’ said Leonie, waving a reproving finger at him. ‘The worst I ever was when I was drunk was in college,’ she said, shivering at the memory. ‘It was a medical students’ party and they’d made ferociously strong punch with poteen and God knows what other booze. I mean, I was plastered after about four glasses, and I got talking to this guy who was a gynaecologist.’ She giggled at the memory. ‘Of course, I just had to ask him that fatal question.’
Hugh looked blank.
Leonie leaned forward and lowered her voice: ‘You know, how they can look at women’s bits all day and then go home and make love to their wives or girlfriends.’
Hugh’s eyes were dancing now. ‘What did he say?’
‘I can’t remember. I was too drunk! God, I was embarrassed the next day. People kept coming up to me and telling me things I’d done, all of it terrible. I was mortally embarrassed. The only reason I’d got drunk in the first place was because I desperately wanted to fit in and I thought booze would help.’
‘Your poor girl,’ Hugh said, petting her hand kindly. ‘I am ashamed to say that at the age of forty-seven, I’m not much better. The night of my ill-fated date with Ms Whippy, after she left the restaurant I finished the bottle of wine that we’d only just started and then had three brandies. At least you were a mere child when you did it.’
It was Leonie’s turn to pet his hand. ‘That’s perfectly understandable, Hugh,’ she said indignantly. ‘I’d have had two bottles in misery – or else I’d have pretended to go to the loo, climbed out the window and never gone back out of sheer embarrassment.’
He nodded. ‘Being a grown-up with kids doesn’t make you immune to the same pangs you went through as a teenager, does it?’
‘You�
��ve got kids?’ said Leonie delightedly. ‘You never told me.’ This was great. A separated man with children was perfect because he would understand how important they were to Leonie.
‘Jane, who’s twenty-one and Stephen, who’s eighteen. He lives with his mother, but Jane lives on her own in a flat near here. They’re terrific,’ he said warmly. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without them.’
‘Tell me everything,’ Leonie said.
Everything involved two more coffees on the grounds that they shouldn’t have any more to drink for health reasons. ‘I’d like to be able to get out of bed for some of the day tomorrow,’ Hugh said, ‘and not be hopelessly hungover.’
He didn’t say why he and his wife had separated three years ago and Leonie didn’t like to ask a question as personal as that. If he wanted to tell her eventually, he would. But he loved talking about his kids; his eyes lit up when he told her all about them.
Jane was ‘beautiful. I don’t know whose side of the family she got it from, but she’s a corker.’ She worked in an insurance company as a clerk. She was very clever and a wonderful artist. ‘I keep telling her to visit galleries with some of her paintings but she won’t.’
Stephen, on the other hand, sounded like a bit of a wild child and was currently saving up to take a year off his business studies degree to travel round the world. ‘Every time he mentions the Far East, Rosemary, that’s my ex, has a fit.’
‘I can understand that,’ Leonie said, sympathizing with Rosemary. If Danny had announced he wanted to travel to the Far East, she’d have had a fit. Only the week before she’d read another article about vulnerable young Westerners getting duped into the shady world of drugs in Thailand through having all their belongings ‘stolen’ by drug gangs, who then roped them in by lending them money and new luggage – luggage with a street value of a few million dollars in hidden heroin.