At a Time Like This (15 page)

‘I know who you are,’ he said quickly. ‘Please don’t hang up. You bought one pair of suede walking shoes and one pair of Italian leather courts. I took the risk of
putting my phone number in with your purchases.’ There was a pause, but I didn’t feel able to fill it.

‘I hope I didn’t offend,’ he said. ‘But I did want to meet you again.’

I really didn’t know what to say. ‘Well,’ I said, and got no further after that. And then: ‘Well,’ again, with almost no change of tone.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘please let me know your name.’

I hesitated for a minute. I was afraid that there might be no going back this time either. ‘It’s Nora,’ I said. I wasn’t sure about this conversation, wasn’t sure
about it at all, but at least he couldn’t see my face over the phone. And I knew that I could hang up any time I wanted to and he’d never be able to find me. That was something to be
grateful for.

‘I’d like to meet you, Nora. It’s a lovely name, by the way’ ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Just meet me for an hour, after work, any time this week. You name the place. A cup of coffee, a drink – you decide.’ His voice was nice, firm, and I could feel that he was
smiling. I imagined I could see the creases at the corners of his eyes.

‘Bewley’s?’ I said, naming the first place that came into my head.

There was another pause. ‘I might not make it before Bewley’s closes. The shop stays open until six.’

‘Oh.’ I hadn’t thought of that. I felt foolish all over again. I should have thought of that.

‘Perhaps the Earl Mooney?’ he said. ‘It’s very central – top of North Earl Street, near O’Connell Street?’

A pub, I thought. And not a very nice one, late at night. In fact I had often seen old men staggering out after closing time, full of Guinness and bad temper. But it should be fine in the early
evening.

‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I think that would be all right.’

‘Shall we say a quarter past six tomorrow then? Half-six, if you prefer. Sometimes I get delayed closing up and I wouldn’t want you waiting for me.’

I could feel all my anxiety beginning to drain away. He sounded like a gentleman, a real old-fashioned gentleman. He reminded me of the polite lovers in Jane Austen’s books. Men like
Captain Wentworth. I’d fallen for Captain Wentworth straight away. I’d read all of Jane Austen’s novels the summer after I did my Leaving Cert. I couldn’t get enough of
them. I read them at the same time as I began to realize that men in ordinary life – men like Eddie – didn’t behave like Wentworth or Dashwood or even Bingham and Darcy It was a
funny coincidence, I’ve often thought since. Well, not funny really, more like strange. There I was as an eighteen-year-old girl running away across Europe with Eddie, at the same speed as
disappointment and grief were making their way back towards me. I suppose the mercy of it is that I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know about unhappy endings back then.

‘Yes, all right,’ I said, ‘half-six is fine but I’ll have to go by eight o’clock at the latest.’

‘That’s perfectly all right,’ he said. ‘You already have my home number should you change your mind, and the shop number is in the phone book. Number eleven, Henry
Street.’

‘I won’t change my mind,’ I heard myself saying. And it was true. I knew by then that I wouldn’t.

Frank was waiting for me as I came through the door of the pub. I had the impression of shiny wood and stained glass and huge open spaces. He came towards me at once, a
newspaper tucked under his arm. I thought he wasn’t as tall as he had seemed in the shoe shop, but maybe that was just the high ceilings of the Earl Mooney High ceilings like that make
everything look smaller.

‘Nora,’ he said, and took my hand. ‘How nice to see you again.’ He nodded towards a corner of the pub, but he didn’t let go of my hand. ‘There’s a grand
quiet table over here.’

We ordered coffee first and then he had a pint. I had a dry Martini and white lemonade. All too soon, it was eight o’clock. I didn’t need to go, not really, but I wasn’t going
to tell him that, not on a first date. Frank listened to me that night. I think that that’s what really made me like him. He still listens in the same manner, even after all these years. In
fact, he listens in that intense way that people have when they want to understand what someone else is saying. You know that they’re really interested. I don’t mean
‘listening’ by just staying quiet and waiting for the chance to jump into the conversation and tell
their
story just as soon as there’s a bit of a gap.

That night, I told him about Trinity, about the lonely feelings I had that I hadn’t even admitted to myself. About being different and not fitting in; that kind of thing. I even told him
about Miriam Fuller. That first evening was all about me, and that was something new in itself. When I finished he just nodded and then took my hand in both of his. I liked his warmth. It reminded
me of how he’d held my foot, just before he eased on my new shoe.

‘I’d like to see you again, Nora. As a matter of fact, I’d very much like to see you again.’

Frank said this as I stood up to go. He rose with me, and held my duffel coat while I struggled my way into it. I never did find it easy when someone else held my coat. My arms seemed to keep
missing the sleeves and I’d jab at the air uselessly until whoever was holding the coat would bring the sleeves to me, rather than me to the sleeves. It was always embarrassing but I was
never able to say no, thank you, I can do it myself. This time, though, it was a blessing in disguise. All that faffing about with the coat meant that I had my back to Frank when he said that he
wanted to see me again, in that tone of voice that left no doubt but that he meant it. By the time I turned to face him, I think my colour had returned to normal.

‘I’d like that,’ I said. And I watched as his face lit up from the inside.

‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could give me your number and I’ll call you tomorrow.’

I hesitated.

‘Or perhaps the day after, if that suits you better,’ he offered then.

‘It’s easier for me to call you,’ I said, and watched as his face slumped again, the way it had that first day in the shop. ‘I will call, I promise. It’s just not
so convenient for me to get calls at home.’ I hoped that he’d accept that, that he wouldn’t push me or ask any awkward questions.

He nodded and made no comment about the strangeness of my home. What sort of family didn’t allow its children to speak on the telephone? Ones like mine, I wanted to tell him, with hard
rules and judgements and no forgiveness. Ones like mine.

He squeezed my hand. ‘Then I’ll wait until you do so. If it’s easier, you could always call to the shop. Next time, I’d like very much to take you out to dinner, if you
think you’d enjoy that.’

I smiled at him then. ‘Could we go to the Sunflower?’

He laughed. ‘We could indeed. Are you a fan of Chinese food, then?’

I nodded. I preferred Indian, but in those days Dublin didn’t give us a lot of choice. And I could hardly offer to cook for him.

‘Friday?’ he said. He’d walked me to my bus stop and waited till my bus arrived.

‘Yes, Friday would be lovely. Thank you.’

‘Why don’t we have a drink in the Gresham at eight and I’ll book us a table in the Sunflower for afterwards?’

‘Yes,’ I said again, ‘why not? Let’s do that.’

‘Good. I’ll look forward to your call.’

We waved to each other as I got on the number 10 bus and I allowed the numbness to settle around me all the way home. A nice man, a gentle man, a man like Captain Wentworth. Not handsome,
certainly, but then neither was I. He did have nice eyes, though, and a lovely smile. You can forgive a lot when that’s the case. Not that I had anything to forgive. Quite the opposite.

Time would tell, as my mother used to say. Time would tell.

It took a few weeks before Frank understood that I had a real passion for cooking. By that time, we’d had dinner in all of the few decent restaurants and hotels that
Dublin had to offer. Of course, it’s all different now, but back then there were very few places to try. The Trocadero, Quo Vadis, Nico’s; then there were the hotels, the Gresham, the
Hibernian, the Shelbourne. And outside the city centre there was the Beaufield Mews, where you could have your dinner surrounded by lovely antique furniture and paintings. I have very fond memories
of all of those places. Maybe there were one or two others, as well, but I don’t remember them any more.

‘Why don’t we cook at my house?’ Frank said to me one Wednesday when I dropped into the shop to see him. It was that quiet half-hour just before closing, or so we both hoped.
Frank said it had been hectic all week. He had a young woman in to help him over the busy times, but she’d already gone home by the time I arrived. It was very near Christmas, I remember, and
I think that people were worn out shopping by then. I had taken to dropping into the shop like this most weeks. That way, we were able to make our arrangements to meet in person without having to
use the phone. If Frank found this strange, he never said. In fact, he never once pushed me to explain why phoning me at home kept on being such a problem.

But he must have seen something in my face or else something in the way I hesitated over his invitation, because he rushed to say: ‘Only if you feel comfortable, that is. Only if you feel
it’s appropriate.’ Just then, the door of the shop opened and a woman came in, dragging a screaming toddler by one arm. ‘Excuse me, my dear,’ he said and went to deal with
his customer.

My dear, I remember thinking. He’d called me ‘my dear’. I stood behind the till as I had done lots of other times, in case the phone rang or another customer came in while
Frank was busy. I liked helping out there because it made me feel useful. I liked the fact that Frank needed me. That afternoon, I watched as he soothed the shrieking toddler and let him play with
the machine that gave an accurate reading of the shoe sizes needed for children. Their feet grow so quickly, Frank had explained to me, and the bones can be deformed all too easily by ill-fitting
footwear. The little boy was fascinated as he watched the X-ray of his feet and the mother was beaming.

I stood at the till, and thought about the other words Frank had said. ‘Only if you feel it’s appropriate.’ Years and years later, when I saw the film
Thelma and Louise
and one of them, I think Thelma, says: ‘I’ve had it up to my ass with “sedate”,’ I knew just what she meant. By then, I was growing very tired of all the things that
were supposed to be correct. Sedate, correct, appropriate: they’re the same thing, really. In fact, my father, with his legal language and legal judgements, was always going on about the
things that were appropriate. Well, I thought, to blue blazes with that. This is a nice man. I’m going to cook dinner at Frank’s house and nobody is going to stop me.

It was the first time since London that I’d decided to lie to my parents. I was twenty, after all, nearly twenty-one. It was high time I started to get a life of my own. I had started
spending time with Maggie and Claire at the flat. Not Georgie, of course. Most of the time I spent there, I made sure that she wouldn’t be around. It wasn’t too difficult to work it
out. Her lecture timetable was different from ours. I used to have fantasies about what it would be like to share with Claire and Maggie. I’d have loved to be in a flat with other girls. But
Mammy and Daddy wouldn’t hear of it. It was a firm ‘no’ every time I brought it up. So I stopped. But I hated missing out on so much.

And so, when the mother and toddler left the shop that afternoon, I said to Frank, ‘I’d love to cook for us at the weekend. Tell me where you live.’ I spoke quickly because I
was afraid of giving myself the time to change my mind.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked, but I could see how his smile kept getting wider. I nodded, beginning to feel embarrassed. Had I been too forward? It was too late to pull back now.
Besides, most of me didn’t want to.

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said. I was glad that my tone sounded so positive. ‘I’ll even bring everything with me. All the ingredients.’

He shook his head and his face was alive with eagerness. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ve an even better idea. Why don’t we meet up on Friday? It’s my last
Friday off before Christmas. We can have the afternoon and then do the shopping together. My local supermarket is very good and it stays open till six in the evening. We can drive there and get
everything we need.’

And that’s what we did. Frank had a lovely house in Kincora Road in Clontarf I took the number 30 bus from Marlborough street at two o’clock on the Friday afternoon and got off at
Vernon Avenue, where Frank was waiting for me. We walked up the Avenue and turned right on to a lovely leafy street that was packed with neat red-brick houses. Frank’s was five or six from
the end of the road. The front door was painted blue and the gardens both back and front, as I soon discovered, were tidy and well looked after, with the last leaves of a Virginia creeper still
blazing against one wall. Inside, the house was full of light and colour and there was a beautiful extended kitchen. I don’t know why, but the house surprised me. I had never met a
house-proud man before.

‘My brother Ciarán does kitchens,’ Frank explained as he showed me around. ‘He says that a good kitchen is what will always sell a house.’

I remember that I looked at him in surprise. ‘Oh – are you thinking of selling, then?’

He took my hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m hoping I’ll need something bigger some day’

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. But I could feel myself begin to blush. Both of us knew what he had just said.

We went to the supermarket in Frank’s Ford Fiesta. Nolan’s, I think it was called. As we walked up and down the aisles together I thought: ‘This feels so normal, so
right.’ Doing these simple things with him had begun to make me feel happy for the first time in nearly three years. And so that was the night that I told him about Megan.

We had just finished dinner and the table was full of little china bowls of leftovers – raita, Bombay pickle, poppadoms, that sort of thing. They were all things that wouldn’t keep
until the following day, so we hadn’t bothered with the clingfilm. Frank had bought candles, too, and they lit up everything very prettily. I’d had at least one glass of wine more than
I was used to, and it gave me the courage I needed.