The Matchmaker (34 page)

‘Yes, it’s worse than ever. Do you think he’d come in here to take a look at the immersion?’ he begged. ‘The blasted thing is driving me cracked. The water is either boiling hot so that you think you’re going to be scalded alive or stone cold freezing. I’m terrified to have a shower and poor Irina nearly had the hands burned off her the other evening when she went to wash up.’

‘I’ll ask if he’s interested, but who will let him in?’

‘Irina’s here,’ he explained. ‘She can show him the hot press and explain the problem to him and naturally I will pay whatever the cost.’

‘Perfect.’ Maggie laughed. It couldn’t be better. It was sheer happenstance. There would be no need for introductions, he was a workman coming to do a job; the fact that he was tall and blond and very handsome and spoke Polish was a very definite advantage; but it was up to the girl next door to recognize that. Her matchmaking skills did not extend that far, it was up to nature and mutual attraction to do their work. Fate, she sometimes suspected, just needed a little shove in the right direction!

Irina had hoovered the house from top to bottom and changed the sheets, pillowcases and quiltcover on Oscar’s bed. Then she had to do some homework for English class tonight. Write a letter to an employer and another to a friend to apologize for forgetting her birthday. She sucked at the top of her Biro searching for the correct words and how to lay the sentence out. Oscar on his way out had gabbled something about Maggie’s plumber coming to fix the immersion. She shrugged; it was about time that stupid boiler was mended.

She answered the hall door an hour later and showed the plumber upstairs to the hot press. It only took her a few minutes to ascertain that Adam Czibi was not only Polish but from the tiny town of Tuszyn. His cousin, a teacher and her family, lived in Łódź only three streets away from her family.

‘You can’t go anywhere but you meet a fellow Pole,’ he shrugged looking at her with those immense blue eyes.

She made him coffee, the proper type, and a sandwich with beetroot and that baked ham Oscar liked, watching him as he ate.

‘You live in this big house?’ he asked looking around him.

She explained her role and about the kindly old man who was her boss. She told him about her English classes and her plans for the future.

As he packed up his tool bag she held her breath.

‘You know the Polish group Zido?’ Adam asked, standing in front of her.

She nodded. Every day she listened to Polish radio and followed what was happening back at home.

‘They are playing in Dublin on Saturday night and if you want we could get tickets and go to hear them together?’

Irina took a breath. He was tall and very handsome and had just asked her out on a date and she had said
tak
,
tak
,
tak
. . . yes, yes, yes . . .

Anna Ryan looked down at the group of eager enthusiastic faces sitting in front of her. American, Canadian, Australian, German, Japanese, Italian and French, a truly culturally mixed bag of literature-obsessed fanatics keen to learn even more about one of their heroes. Yeats and his work was the discussion topic of the day. Why she had signed on for the two-weeks-long summer school held in college was beyond her!

She had photocopied the poems and texts she was using and put them up on the internet too. The lecture room was stuffy and hot but they had to put up with it. She began to read from Yeats, ‘He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’, a poem she knew so well. The small Japanese man seated in the front row with his pretty younger wife kept asking question after question. He was, she guessed, a fellow academic who would purloin half of what she said for his own lecture series back in Tokyo or Osaka or Kyoto next term. No matter, he would spread the word, which was the important thing, words and language and the poet’s imagery appealing to generation after generation, among all nationalities. Yeats had long since passed the boundary of his Irishness and reached a massive global audience.

As she read the words of love and obsession, the poet offering to spread his dreams under the feet of his beloved, she thought of Rob walking along the beach with the dog, the water running across the sand, the spray of the water lashing against the rocks. She stopped for a minute, lost, looking at these strangers, becalmed in words. The truth was she missed him. What was she doing on a fair summer’s day talking to strangers about love and dreams and the hopes of another when the one she loved and hoped for was so far away!

Over the next few days there was a tour of the National Library and a look at the Yeats collection, a visit to Trinity College and a lecture on the history of the Abbey Theatre. Next week there was a visit to Lissadell House and Gardens in Sligo after which she could perhaps bow out and escape to Connemara. Her department head Brendan had suggested she take on two or more similar groups in mid-August but she had been very clear that she had no intention of doing so. She was heading for Gull Cottage for the rest of the summer. Sarah and Evie and her mother were going up there after the weekend and Grace would probably join them for a few days.

Anna planned to spend as much time as she could there combining work on her papers with being with Rob. She didn’t even want to think of next term and the distance between them.

She was tidying up and switching off the PowerPoint and large screen when Brendan appeared. Her group had gone off to sample the delights of lunch in the college dining hall.

‘A few bigwigs in the group,’ he said, casting his eye over her notes and group list.

‘I noticed,’ she said packing up her laptop and notes.

‘Anna, you’re great at this,’ he praised her. ‘Both academics and students love you and the evaluations are always top notch.’

‘Thanks.’ She smiled. ‘But I’ll be glad to have the rest of the summer off to work on my own papers and relax.’

‘I can’t get you to change your mind, then?’ her department head asked as she got ready to leave.

‘Brendan, I told you already, I’m off to Connemara for the rest of the summer.’ She grinned, tossing her hair back over her shoulders, thinking of Roundstone and Gull Cottage and endless days being with Rob. ‘Enjoy the holidays!’

Grace couldn’t get Mark McGuinness out of her mind. She kept replaying in her head the feel of his mouth and lips against hers. She had finally lost it, she admitted to herself. She had given up trying to banish him from her thoughts. Yet again she found herself waiting for his call. She was pathetic! Falling for someone like Mark was a disaster. Ever since he’d come to her apartment with Evie, she had been waiting and hoping he would reappear at her front door. He had sent her a text to say he was thinking of her but otherwise had made no other effort to contact her. Sarah had said she thought he might be away but her mother had let slip she’d seen his car back outside number 29.

Gutted, she buried herself in work. She had even volunteered to check all the financial projections for a new health centre in Cork which a colleague, John O’Leary, was working on. His wife had just had a new baby and he wanted to take a few days off to give her a hand and bond with his child.

‘It’s fine, John. If there’re any problems on it I’ll phone you at home. I’ll fly down to Cork on Thursday morning to meet the surveyors and the contractors and go through the figures with them.’

‘Thanks, Grace.’ He beamed as he cleared his laptop and the silver-framed photo of his wife Lizzie and his new baby son Killian off the desk. ‘I owe you big time.’

‘No, you don’t, John. Lizzie and Killian are far more important.’

Sitting at her desk she suddenly realized how her priorities were shifting; lines and drawings on paper and stone and glass and concrete and steel could never compete with the tiny infant with the fuzz of hair in his wife’s arms.

She sat at her desk, overwhelmed.

At the weekend she had invited Niamh and the girls for dinner on Saturday night. Lisa surprised them with the announcement that she was moving to work in London with AIB bank. She would really miss her but Lisa had promised a bed for the night for anyone wanting to visit.

‘But what will you do about Tom Callaghan?’ Roisin asked the question on all their minds as they considered how he’d dumped Lisa when he’d moved to London.

‘It’s a big city, but I’ll see plenty of him, and I’ll pester him till the big oaf realizes that he loves me too,’ she said firmly.

Grace had made paella with shellfish and chicken and served it with a red pepper salad. Roisin, the baker of the group, had excelled herself with a massive chocolate torte for dessert. There were two big jugs of sangria and she found a really nice Rioja to serve with their food.

They stayed chatting at the table for hours and Grace thanked heaven for her girlfriends. Niamh with a huge smile on her face told them she was dating Kevin, and already Grace got the sense that it was serious between them. She stifled a pang of envy and hugged her as she knew how hard Niamh had found breaking up with her previous boyfriend Dave after living together for two years.

It was almost three a.m. when they finally said goodbye and fell into two taxis.

On Sunday there was a family lunch in Roly’s to celebrate her mother’s birthday. It was one of Maggie Ryan’s favourite restaurants and held so many memories of birthdays and exam results and special occasions shared by their family over the years. The waiter made a great fuss over them as he led them to their table upstairs near the window. Their mum was delighted with their present and was thrilled at the thought of sampling the delights of the fancy new Wicklow spa.

‘I’ll take Kitty along with me; she could do with a bit of calming down and relaxing before the wedding. Harry has her driven mad doing costings for every item they need and Orla’s wedding dress is too big and needs to be taken in since she did two weeks on the Atkins diet!’

‘Mum, you deserve a bit of pampering yourself,’ they all insisted.

On Monday Grace had just finished a meeting with Derek when Kate told her that she’d missed a call from Mark McGuinness. He’d left his number on her voicemail and as she played and replayed the message she resolved not to return the call. She had no intention of chasing him!

‘So the lady doesn’t do callbacks,’ he teased about an hour later. Grace, touching her flaming cheeks, was so relieved that they weren’t on videophone.

‘How are you?’ he asked slowly.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, trying to appear relaxed and calm.

‘Grace, will you come for lunch today? I’m flying to London and on to New York tomorrow but I really want to see you before I go.’

‘Lunch would be great, Mark,’ she said, agreeing to meet him in Dobbins just off Baggot Street around one o’clock.

Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror in the ladies’ cloakroom in Thornton’s, Grace wished that she had worn the new pale cream suit she’d bought in Paris instead of her standard lightweight beige one and that she had taken the time to blow dry her hair properly before she went to work this morning. She thanked God for the GHD she kept in the drawer in her office, which was for when she came back windblown from building sites.

Her heart was pounding as she walked to meet him. She spotted him immediately in a booth near the back of the restaurant. He was wearing an expensive charcoal suit. He kissed her the minute they met and the electricity between them jolted her as his skin touched hers. She held on to the table for a minute before sitting down beside him.

They ordered quickly, fish for her and steak for him, the waiter bringing them a half-bottle of nice Bordeaux.

She had no idea what to say to him and waited to see if he would say why he hadn’t bothered to call her.

‘I’m sorry about not getting in touch,’ he said. ‘I’ve been away in America for the past few weeks. A bit of a crisis has blown up there and I have to attend to it. In fact I’m flying over again in the morning and I may not be back for almost a month.’

Grace stared at the starched linen tablecloth.

‘I missed you,’ he said, reaching for her fingers, entwining them in his.

‘I didn’t know what to think.’ She hesitated. ‘I thought that night at my place something pretty special was happening between us and then – nothing! Not a word from you, Mark, it’s so weird!’

‘Grace, in a few weeks all this will be sorted. I promise. Then there will be time for you and me, I swear.’

She nodded. She understood that she was way down the bottom of his list of priorities while he was someplace at the top of hers. They were definitely at odds with each other and she didn’t know if all the chemistry and attraction in the world could bridge that gap.

‘Is it some kind of building or property problem?’ she demanded.

‘Trust me, Grace, it’s nothing like that. It’s personal. Family business, I guess.’

She took a breath. A wife, a girlfriend, a messy divorce: she didn’t really want to get embroiled in whatever situation Mark McGuinness had got himself into and he obviously wasn’t prepared to share it with her.

They made polite small talk; he asked about Evie’s arm and chatted about the progress on his house.

‘Listen, Mark, I’d better get back to work. I’ve a meeting with a client in half an hour.’

‘I’ll walk back with you,’ he said, which surprised her.

Outside it was sunny and bright. Couples strolling through Dublin’s city streets in shorts and T-shirts and summer skirts surrounded them as Mark took her hand.

On the steps in front of Thornton’s they stopped and looked at each other awkwardly. Grace found herself trying to banish the thought of skipping work for the rest of the afternoon and spending it with Mark.

Mark broke the silence. ‘I’ll see you when I get back,’ he promised, kissing her slowly. Almost despite herself, Grace responded, stroking his cheek with the palm of her hand and wishing he didn’t have to go.

Back at her desk in the office she sat staring at her new screensaver – a big red kite flying in a clear blue sky – trying desperately not to cry.

Maggie lay sideways on the rug on the sand, dipping in and out of her paperback as she watched Sarah and Evie and Anna play at the water’s edge. Looking at them she suddenly felt old and tired. Ten years ago she would have been messing around with them; now, like a cat, she was happy to bask in the August sunshine, feel its warmth on her skin and bones as a new generation hollered and chased and splashed. It was good to see the girls running around the beach and having fun just like when they were kids; Sarah in her shorts, tanned and fit and happy, and Anna, her hair all curly from the salt water, giggling like a twelve-year-old as they both tried to catch Evie. Yes, coming back to Gull Cottage year after year did them all good.