On resuscitating romance. . . .
SOMETIMES IT SEEMS as though we are running a small, barely breaking-even business. I suppose this is what a relationship looks like sometimes. Much of the day-to-day interaction between the two directors of the company occurs during fraught meetings around the kitchen table. There is much cross referencing of diaries, airing of views, voicing of resentments, talk of child development and childcare. There are countless dreary conversations between the two directors about keeping heads above water and the show on the road. Never mind. It’s just . . . oh, I suppose it’s just what a relationship looks like sometimes.
If romance is not quite dead, then it’s on a life-support machine and the love doctors don’t hold out much hope for recovery. So the small birthday presents carefully wrapped and presented over breakfast in bed are the equivalent of seeing the left eye of the patient – poor, half-dead Mrs Romance – flicker. It is, at least, a sign of life. The presents are clues, he says, for the surprise birthday night ahead. One package contains two train tickets to somewhere deep in Co Wicklow. And inside the other is a very sharp chef’s knife.
“Are you not worried?” jokes someone I meet later that day. “Tickets to somewhere in Wicklow and a knife?” I hadn’t thought about it like that. I put all thoughts of murder out of my mind until I get home and then murderous thoughts surface in me when, in the 15 minutes we have to get ready, I see that his crumpled, mismatched outfit is not appropriate for the high-class venue I’ve been fantasising about all day. It’s not his fault, but I am raging and not doing a good job of keeping a lid on the rage.
You see, while ensuring the small business survives means always keeping the freezer stocked with home-made meals, it leaves little time or funds for sourcing decent going-out-as-a-couple clothes. And anyway, who needs going-out-as-a-couple clothes when you no longer go out as a couple?
It almost doesn’t happen, this much-needed mystery date but then something half-decent is located at the back of a wardrobe. A jacket bought before children were even on the agenda. A jacket left to languish until some last-ditch romance was initiated. A jacket that saves the day.
The second we step on to the train I get that nervous, anticipatory, slightly sick feeling. It’s as though we have only just met. Somewhere between Connolly and Pearse stations, he stops being my business partner and becomes my boyfriend and we are two people without children or responsibilities facing each other with smiles on our faces on a train.
At Pearse Street station a woman gets on and sits beside us. We get to talking, the way you do. Cliona is an immunologist with grown-up children on her way to Wexford to join her husband who thought she had to work this evening. He will be pleasantly surprised that she will make it down in time for dinner. She congratulates my boyfriend on the train journey idea. These are the most romantic views from a train to be found in Ireland, she reckons. The three of us look out through the fading light at Dalkey Island and Sorrento Terrace and the blue grey sea. The immunologist buys us all celebratory plastic glasses of red wine and the man wheeling the snack trolley apologises for the lack of crystal.
We get off the train at Rathdrum. Outside the tiny train station is a large white mini-bus driven by a man called Eugene. My boyfriend exchanges words with him through the open window and Eugene says he will take a detour on account of the surprise. We hurtle through back roads in the dark. I squeeze my boyfriend’s hand. It is the year 2000 and we are on our second date and I’m wondering where all of this is going. At least that’s what it feels like in my head.
We could be heading anywhere and even before we get there I already know this will be my best birthday in years. I flick through some destinations in my head. A camper van. A grotty BB. A cowshed. I don’t mind at all. Then here we are at a place called BrookLodge, where the reception area glows with candlelight. Here we are at Ireland’s only certified organic restaurant, The Strawberry Tree, eating foraged chickweed and elderberries with goats’ cheese and a plate of organic chocolate. (The restaurant featured on a recent episode of MasterChef, hence the knife clue. Subtle.) Here we are. Laughing and talking, sometimes about the children and sometimes not about the children, and this is no longer a business meeting, more a meeting of hearts and minds.
We stay the night but take a train back to the city at 9am because we don’t want to use up the limited store of the babysitter’s goodwill. Because we might get into the habit of this. Not just for birthdays either. At one of our subsequent fraught kitchen-table encounters we find ourselves initiating a programme of Romance For No Reason. Because there is more to life than taking care of business.
In other news . . . The ‘Signs of Life’ photographic exhibition featuring well-known people including Vincent Browne and Jedward using Irish sign language is showing in Filmbase, Temple Bar at the moment. The accompanying 2012 diary raises funds so the Irish Deaf Society can invest in better teaching resources around the country. signsoflife.ie