A Week in Winter(35)

‘Whatever you think,’ Gretta said, doubtfully.

Winnie moved purposefully into the bar and dining room of the Rossmore Hotel. She would reassure the old lady and win her over. It was all a matter of letting her know that Winnie was no threat, no rival. They were all in this together.

She could see no elderly figure sitting in the big armchairs. Perhaps Mrs Hennessy’s legendary timekeeping had been exaggerated. Then she saw Teddy hailing a most glamorous woman sitting at the bar.

‘There you are, Mam! Beaten us to it, as usual! Mam, this is my friend Winnie.’

Winnie stared in disbelief. This was no clinging, frail old woman. This was someone in her early fifties, groomed and made-up and dressed to kill. She wore a gold brocade jacket over a wine-coloured silk dress. She must have come straight from the hairdresser’s. Her handbag and shoes were made of soft expensive leather. She wore very classy-looking jewellery.

There had to be some mistake.

Winnie’s mouth opened and closed. Never at a loss for something to say, she now found herself totally wordless.

Mrs Hennessy, however, was able to cope with her own sense of surprise with much more dignity.

‘Winnie, what a pleasure to meet you! Teddy told me all about you.’ Her eyes took Winnie in from head to toe and up again.

Winnie felt very conscious of her big, comfortable shoes. And why had she worn this dreary navy trouser suit? She looked like someone who had come in to move the furniture in the hotel, not to have a dressed-up dinner with this style icon.

Teddy beamed from one to the other, seeing what he had always wanted: a good meeting between his mother and his girl. And he remained delighted all through the meal while his mother patronised Winnie, dismissed her and almost laughed in her face. Teddy Hennessy saw none of this. He only saw the three of them establishing themselves as a family group.

Mrs Hennessy said that of course Winnie must call her Lillian, after all, they were friends now. ‘You are so very different to what I expected,’ she said admiringly.

‘Oh, really?’ Poor Winnie wondered had she ever been so gauche and awkward.

‘Yes, indeed. When Teddy told me he had met this little nurse in Dublin I suppose I thought of someone much younger, sillier somehow. It’s marvellous to meet someone so mature and sensible.’

‘Oh, is that what I seem?’ She recognised the words for what they were: mature and sensible meant big, dull, ordinary and old. She could hear the sigh of relief that Lillian Hennessy was allowing to hiss out from her perfectly made-up lips. This Winnie was no threat. Her golden son, Teddy, couldn’t possibly fancy a woman as unattractive as this.

‘And it’s so good for Teddy to have proper people to meet when he’s in Dublin,’ Lillian went on in a voice that was almost but not quite a gush. ‘Someone who will keep him out of harm’s way and from making unsuitable attachments.’

‘Indeed, I’m great at that,’ Winnie said.

‘You are?’ Lillian’s eyes were hard.

Teddy looked bewildered for a moment.

‘Well, I’m thirty-four and I kept myself out of making any unsuitable attachments so far,’ Winnie said.

Lillian screamed with delight. ‘Aren’t you just wonderful! Well, of course Teddy is only thirty-two, so we have to keep an eye on him,’ she tinkled.

Lillian knew everyone in the dining room and nodded or waved at them all. Sometimes she even introduced Winnie as ‘an old, old friend of ours from Dublin’. She chose the wine, complained that the Hennessy cheeses were not properly displayed on the cheese plate and eventually called the evening to an end by talking about her invitation to lunch the following day.

‘I had been in such a tizz wondering who to invite with you, but now that I’ve met you I see you’d be perfectly at ease with anyone. So you’ll meet a lot of the old buffers around here. All very parochial, I’m afraid, compared to Dublin, but I’m sure you’ll find a few likely souls.’ Then she was out in the foyer tapping her elegantly shod toe until Teddy walked Winnie to the lift.

‘I knew it would be wonderful,’ he said. And with a quick kiss on the cheek he was gone to drive his mother home.

In the Rossmore Hotel, Winnie cried until she had no more tears. She saw her stained face in the mirror. An old, flat face; the face that could be introduced to old buffers. Somebody no one would get into a tizz over. Where did the woman get these phrases?

She wept over Teddy. Was he a man at all to leave her at the lift doors and run after his overdressed, power-crazed mother? Or was he a puppet who had no intention of having a proper relationship with her?

She would not go to this awful lunch tomorrow. She would make her excuses and take the train back to Dublin. Let them all work it out as they wanted to. The last few months had been a fool’s paradise. Winnie should have known better at her age.

And talking about age, Lillian had said Teddy was thirty-two, making him sound as if he were still a child. He would be thirty-three in two weeks’ time. He was only fourteen months younger than Winnie. She and Teddy had already laughed at the age difference. To them it had been immaterial. How had Lillian managed to change it all and make her seem like some kind of cougar stalking the young, defenceless Teddy?

Well, never mind. This was the last she would see of either of them.

She fell into a troubled sleep and woke with a headache.

Gretta was standing beside her bed with a breakfast tray.