A Week in Winter(33)

When she was in her early thirties, Winnie had more or less given up on it all. She had a busy life: a nurse doing agency work, one day here, one night there, in the Dublin hospitals. She went to the theatre, met friends, went to cookery classes and read a lot.

She couldn’t say life was sad and lonely. It was far from that, but she would love to have been able to meet someone and know that this was the right one. Just know.

Winnie was an optimist. On the wards they always said she was a great nurse to work with because she always saw something to be pleased about. The patients liked her a lot – she always made time to reassure them and tell them how well they were doing and how much modern medicine had improved. She wasted no time moaning in hospital canteens that the men of Ireland were a sorry lot. She just got on with it.

She was still vaguely hopeful that there was love out there somewhere – just a little less sure that she might actually find it.

It was on her thirty-fourth birthday that she met Teddy.

She had gone with three girlfriends – all of them married, all of them nurses – to have dinner at Ennio’s restaurant down on the quays by the Liffey. Winnie wore her new silver and black jacket. She had been persuaded by the hairdresser to get a very expensive conditioning treatment for her hair. The girls said she looked great, but then they always told her that. It just hadn’t seemed to work in terms of attracting a life partner.

It was a lovely evening, with the staff all coming to the table and singing ‘Happy Birthday’, a drink of some Italian liqueur, on the house. At the next table two men watched them admiringly. They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ so lustily that the restaurant included them in the complimentary drink. They were polite and anxious not to impose.

Peter said he was a hotelier from Rossmore and that his friend was Teddy Hennessy who made cheese down in that part of the world. They came to Dublin every week because Peter’s wife and Teddy’s mother liked to go to a show. The men preferred to try out a new restaurant each time. This was their first visit to Ennio’s.

‘And does your wife not come to Dublin too?’ Fiona asked Teddy, quite pointedly.

Winnie felt herself flush. Fiona was testing the ground, seeing was Teddy available. Teddy didn’t seem to notice.

‘No, I don’t have a wife. Too busy making cheese, everyone says. No, I’m fancy-free.’ He was boyish and eager; he had soft fair hair falling into his eyes.

Winnie thought she felt him looking at her.

But she must not become foolish and over-optimistic. Maybe he could see that, of the four women, she was the only one without a wedding ring. Maybe it was pure imagination.

The conversation was easy. Peter told them about his hotel. Fiona had tales of the heart clinic where she worked. Barbara described some of the disasters her husband David had faced setting up his pottery works. Ania, the Polish girl, who had trained late as a nurse, showed them pictures of her toddler.

Teddy and Winnie said little, but they looked at each other appreciatively, learning little about each other except that they were comfortable to be there. Then it was time for the men to go and pick up the ladies from the theatre. The drive to Rossmore would take two hours.

‘I hope we meet again,’ Teddy said to Winnie.

The three other women busied themselves saying heavy goodbyes to Peter.

‘I hope so,’ Winnie said. Neither of them made any move to give a phone number or address.

Peter did it for them in the end.

‘Can I give you ladies my business card, and if you know of any other good restaurants like this you could pass them on to us?’ he said.

‘That’s great, Peter. Oh, Winnie, do you have a card there?’ Fiona said meaningfully.

Winnie wrote her email address and phone number on the back of a card advertising Ennio’s Good Value Wine. And then the men were gone.

‘Really, Fiona, you might as well have put a neon sign over my head saying Desperate Spinster,’ Winnie protested.

Fiona shrugged. ‘He was nice. What was I to do, let him escape?’

‘Cheesemaking!’ Barbara reflected. ‘Very restful, I’d say.’

‘Mrs Hennessy . . . That has a nice sound to it,’ said Ania with a smile.

Winnie sighed. He was nice, certainly, but she was way beyond having her hopes raised by chance encounters.

Teddy rang Winnie the next day. He was going to be in Dublin again at the weekend. Would Winnie like to meet him for a coffee or something?

They talked all afternoon in a big sunny café. There was so much to say and to hear. She told him about her family – three sisters and two brothers, scattered all over the world. She said it was a series of goodbyes at the airport and tears and promising to come out to visit, but Winnie had never wanted to go to Australia or America. She was a real home bird.

Teddy nodded in agreement. He was exactly the same. He never wanted to go too far from Rossmore.

When Winnie was twelve her mother had died and the light had gone out of the house. Five years later her father had married again; a pleasant, distant woman called Olive who made jewellery and sold it at markets and fairs around the country. It was hard to say whether she liked Olive or not. Olive was remote and seemed to live in another world.

Teddy was an only child and his mother was a widow. His father had been killed in an accident on the farm many years ago. His mother had gone out to work in the local creamery to earn the money to send him to a really good school. He had enjoyed it there but his mother was very disappointed that he had not become a doctor or a lawyer. That would have been a reward for the long, hard hours she had worked.