. . . on a man of mystery
THE MOMENT BEFORE he appears, she might be standing outside a train station or under a clock, she expects him to look like this: tall and rugged, with a mop of thick, black hair and a devilish twinkle in his eye. She is surprised, every single time, when this other man appears. This man is watery of eye, with grey, mostly gone hair and a limp. She has changed a lot herself, of course. The decades do that to a person, but she still finds herself in that moment thinking, who is this man? And then he calls hello and she realises it is Seán. Seán. Imagine. This man is actually Seán.
I’ve been hearing about him for years from my 70-something friend.
Seán O’Nothisrealname. The other love of her life. He was her husband’s best friend. Even when she was married she fancied him, in that vague way where nothing would ever be acted on but it was still something interesting to flirt with this tall, dark unstranger in the pub. And then her husband died and at 40 she was still young, and one day Seán called to the door. Would she like to go out with him? And why not? She knew his reputation. She knew it could be dangerous. But her heart was already broken and it would never be properly fixed so what harm?
It was everything she could have hoped for. Another great passion. He wasn’t cultured, he didn’t share her love of theatre or cinema or a good book but none of that mattered. She hears single young women on the bus talking about “the spark” and she knows what they mean. Seán and she had the spark.
She can’t think now, it’s so far back, whether it was weeks or months that it lasted. All she knows is that one day he was there and the next he was not. She knew what had happened. He wanted to find out if he could have his best friend’s widow and then, because he was a coward, he couldn’t even say goodbye when he was no longer interested. Her heart was already broken. So she was only disappointed, and then life went on and she heard he got married and was living somewhere rural. She sometimes thought of him and sometimes she even smiled.
When he turned up again two decades later he was full of remorse and talk of how he had split with his wife, and my friend said life was too short to hold a grudge. He had to woo her this time. Restaurants. Gifts. Even taking her to those plays he couldn’t figure out. One night, in her flat, one of her daughters pointed a finger at him across the table and said: “If you ever hurt my mother again I will come after you with a gun and I will shoot you.” He looked scared.
He liked country and western music. Walks by the sea. The simple things in life. They got into a rhythm. He’d go out to work and she’d have dinner waiting for him. She lived alone now. Children all gone. It was another chance at being part of a couple again. Life was richer and more textured with him in it. She was thinking about this as she ladled out stew and filled two glasses with red wine. She put on the new honky tonk CD she had bought him and sat there waiting to hear his key in the door. It grew dark around her. She didn’t put on the lamps. The stew congealed. And still she sat.
At first she had been worried. An accident at work. Or on the drive home.
She thought of ringing round the hospitals. And then it dawned on her that he had done it again. She barely spoke for days. She put the new CD in an envelope and posted it somewhere rural, instinctively knowing that he had gone back to his wife who did not understand him.
Since then she has infrequently dabbled in internet dating where she learned that most men her age don’t know how to have conversations. They just monologue their way through dinner. Then a few months ago she told me that after 10 years without a word, Seán had called again and just out of curiosity and because, thank Haughey, she had the free travel pass, she had gone to see him in the country. He had picked her up from the train in a van that smelled of the freshly rendered meat he fed to his dogs. Later, she sat in his house on a sofa still covered with the factory plastic, trying to ignore the dog mixed with air freshener smell. She couldn’t help laughing, loudly and a little hysterically, and when he asked what she was laughing at, she replied between giggles: “That’s the funniest thing of all, you don’t even know.”
He comes up to Dublin every week now. She picks the restaurant and he winces when he sees the bill. He rings her every night. Makes her laugh. At him, with him. She thinks she might be in love with him. Again. And she waits under clocks and at train stations still expecting to see this tall, rugged man with a mop of curly hair and a devilish twinkle in his eye. And every single time, she is surprised.
In other news . . . Mercifully free of drunken hecklers, Ireland’s only alcohol-free alternative comedy club takes place on Monday night (and the first Monday of every month) at Accents Coffee and Tea Lounge, Stephen Street, Dublin 2. Non-drinker Abie Philbin Bowman headlines. 7pm, entrance €5