A Week in Winter(96)

‘Well, I don’t want to muscle in on your special place for you and your friends. What about Quentins, that’s good too, isn’t it? Is eight OK with you?’

‘Eight o’clock it is,’ Freda said.

He grinned, and then ostentatiously took her hand and kissed it.

When he had gone, Freda raised her hand to her cheek and held it there. She didn’t know it but she was being watched by her aunt Eva, her friend Lane, Miss Duffy, Lionel the poet and a young girl who happened to be looking for a job as a cleaner.

They all saw Freda’s face as she moved her hand slowly to her lips. The hand that the man had kissed. Something momentous had just happened in front of their eyes.

The rest of the day passed. Somehow.

Lane said, ‘Have you anything to tell me?’

Freda had asked, ‘About puffins?’

‘No, about men coming in and kissing your hand.’

Tomorrow, Freda had promised.

He was already there when Freda went into Quentins. He wore a dark grey suit and a crisp white shirt. He was very handsome. He grinned and stood up to welcome her as Brenda, the elegant owner and manager, led Freda to the table.

‘I thought you might like a glass of champagne, but I didn’t order for you,’ he began.

‘Right on both counts,’ Freda said, smiling. ‘I would indeed like a glass of champagne, but thank you for not assuming.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, I hope,’ he said. ‘I’m so pleased to see you – you look terrific,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said simply.

‘Well you do, you are very beautiful, but that’s not just why I asked you to dinner.’

‘Why did you ask me?’ she genuinely wanted to know.

‘Because I can’t get you out of my mind. I loved what you said about that man’s poetry, the elegant sadness of it. Someone else would have taken twice as many words to say it. And then you got all excited about those schoolgirls and their reading groups; you enthused them all and you have so much energy, so much life radiating from you. Since the first moment I saw you in the library I noticed it; I see it here. I wanted to be part of it. That’s all.’

‘I don’t know what to say. I’ve been lucky; I’m very happy in my job, and life and everything . . .’

‘And are you happy to be here? Now?’

‘Very,’ Freda said.

They talked easily.

He wanted to know everything about her. Her school, her college, the home she lived in with her parents and sisters. How she had got her job at Finn Road Library. Her little flat at the top of a big Victorian house. Her eccentric aunt who wrote the long-running ‘Feathers’ column in the newspaper, and took Freda on birdwatching outings.

‘Sounds like a lark,’ he said solemnly.

‘I can’t top that,’ she snorted. ‘It’s your tern again.’ And they both collapsed laughing.

He seemed interested in every single thing she had ever done in her life. The conversation moved towards holidays, and whether it was worth all the hassle of going away to the sun just for one week, or whether you had to be an athlete to go skiing. Wasn’t that amazing – he had been to the very same Greek island, wasn’t the world a very small place? They liked the same movies, the same songs. He had even read some of Freda’s favourite books.

Freda asked him about his life too. After all, it was like a blind date; they knew nothing about each other, yet here they were, sitting having dinner in one of Dublin’s best restaurants. He had been brought up in England, in an Irish family. His parents still lived there, and his brother. No, he didn’t see much of them, he said sadly. He shrugged it off, but Freda could see that it hurt him.

He had been to university in England, studied marketing and economics but it wasn’t nearly as important as all he had learned through his experience in the leisure industry. He had been in car hire, in yachting charter, in mass catering, all the time learning about what made business tick. He had worked in London, New York and now Dublin; even though he had come here as a child on holidays it was still a new city to him. He was now working for a leisure group that was going to invest in Holly’s Hotel; they wanted to develop it into a major leisure complex.

‘I’m sure it all sounds dull to you but it’s really exciting, and it’s not all about money,’ he said eagerly. ‘And I would love to know more about the history of the area. You could be very helpful.’

He hadn’t found a proper place for himself yet, so he just had a room in the hotel. It was good to be on the premises, as it meant he could see what kind of business the place was. It was such a personal hideaway, the kind of place people believed they had actually discovered for themselves. The staff remembered your name, they seemed eager for you to enjoy the experience of being there. No wonder they were successful.

On the day of the rainstorm, he’d been in a meeting with the developers which had run late, and he’d been dashing along Finn Road just as the downpour was at its worst. It was only a happy accident, pure chance that he’d seen the library was open and decided to take shelter for a while. That’s when he’d spotted her. Suppose he’d just gone on down the street? Suppose the meeting had ended on time and he’d got away before it had started raining?

‘You and I might never have met.’ He laughed, and gave a mock shiver to think this could have been on the cards.