lost love
Created | Updated Mar 1, 2007
Last Love
Ian Mitchell
1
“Your coffee sir. Sure you won’t have some jam with the scone?”
The waitress stood there balancing my order in one hand and clearly not appreciative of the way my clutter spread across the wet-wiped eating surface. But then, unlike me, she didn’t have all day.
“Sure thanks. But let me clear this away a bit. Sorry about the sprawl”
My apology broke the ice and she smiled at my confusion. Put the latté on the table. In other circumstances we might have flirted. She subtly coquettish, me the urbane-man-about-town. But my state of mind was all wrong for flirting. Hers too, apparently – maybe she’d been on the town the night before. Or maybe it was just a step too far to flirt with a man who had such scant respect for table ergonomics.
I’d been walking along Royal Avenue looking for a coffee shop, the sunburst sky all dappled with longing and the feel of a fresh morning on my face. I was back in Belfast catching up with a few old friends, but my mind was somewhere else entirely. I had a problem that I needed to resolve. It had been eating away at me for some time now, and my internal suggestion box was bereft of suggestions.
Inside Rankin’s Café on Fountain Street people were eating gigantic scones and drinking over priced coffee and chatting with smiles on their faces. I was convinced that they all had their lovers or partners. Some of them maybe had both. And I sat there and read the newspaper sports pages and speculated on the outcome of the last test match of the series and wondered how I might join their human race.
The waitress bustled around the tables, laden with lattés and scones, cappuccinos and vast cherry muffins; engaging in small talk and admiring chubby babies sat resplendent in their pushchairs. There’s an ambiance in coffee shops that you find nowhere else in the world. It’s easy to be anonymous. Lost in the morning crowd.
She was a looker all right, black lace blouse, mini-skirt and hair oh so skilfully tousled. But I’d missed my moment with the waitress. And you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Anyway, I had years ahead of me for flirting with waitresses.
I doodled with a pen I had bought earlier in WH Smith’s, covering the large taupe and brown napkin with words that were swimming round my soul and drawing beards and glasses on the sporting icons pictured in the newspaper. Childish, I know. Eavesdropping on other peoples’ conversations provided my inspiration and soon the napkin groaned with the weight of random snippets of human angst and trivia that elbowed each other for prominence on its creased surface. Occasionally I reached beyond the thoughts of others and emptied some of my own internal landscape onto the collage. Words like “why?” or “how?” written in big bold letters. Meaningless, I know. And of course self pity is so unattractive in a man.
“Is this seat taken?”
I didn’t look up from my doodles. Just grunted something accommodating and minded my own business. She didn’t give up so easy.
“Beautiful day isn’t it?”
So I had to acknowledge her, and glancing upwards met her tentative smile with one of those I’m-one-of-life’s-victims looks that seemed to be all I could muster back then.
“Yes, maybe the summer isn’t over yet”
A mine of originality. That’s always been me.
At that moment the travelling coffee refill reached our table and I said yes. It was an impulse thing - maybe I just wanted value for money, or maybe my day was too empty and sitting here doodling somehow made me feel less of a vacant space in the bustle that is midweek centre-of-town Belfast. Or maybe there was something in her eyes that broke into my reverie and hinted somehow at all the mayhem that was to follow. I really don’t know. But I smiled, a little less grudgingly this time, and tried a slightly more conspiratorial line.
“You have to get your money’s worth in here all right”
She smiled back. Mischievously it seemed to me. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. How could I ever have guessed so soon at the solution she would soon be offering me?
She looked about thirty five, but how can you tell these days? She might have been fifty. Not classically beautiful in any sense. But there was an infectious vivacity in her green eyes and her auburn hair hung in an uncontrollable tangle around her slightly asymmetrical face. She was still smiling. I think she found my preoccupation funny.
“You have indeed. Though sometimes it’s harder than it looks” She laughed and sat down.
For awhile there was silence. Not exactly companionable, but then again not awkward either. Just silence. Her slicing her scone into bite sized chunks and me drawing a beard on Tony Blair. Me wondering if I wanted to speak. Her gazing idly out the window at the passers by enjoying the early autumn sunshine.
There comes a moment when you’re sharing a table. When you’re sharing a meal time. Even if it’s only a snack in an overpriced coffee shop. Me, I think it’s a religious thing – meals are almost sacramental, and the ambiance of a shared table with fallen crumbs and half full coffee cups backdropped by the chatter of relaxing 11am shoppers lends itself to the development of a kind of intimacy. Even with strangers. Your eyes meet conspiratorially over the rim of your cappuccinos, you share a smile at the antics of the child at the next table, you grimace together when a waitress drops her tray, and before you know it the body language is inclusive and the words start to tumble out.
“It’s hectic shopping for everything you need on a Wednesday morning”
“I always think it must be hard being a waitress when the place is full like this”
Of course there isn’t always confluence in the conversation. And the opening gambits collided somewhere over the sugar bowl that sat between us on the table. But it was a start and the laughter this time was spontaneous.
“Let’s try one at a time will we? I’m Rebecca, out for a day’s shopping. Its my niece’s wedding in a month or two and I’m sorting my wardrobe early”
“Hi Rebecca. I’m Jimmy. Jimmy Dornan. Back up from Dublin for the week catching up with some old friends. Today, however, I’m all alone.”
“What do you do in Dublin Jimmy?”
“I run a small hedge fund for one or two International clients”
“Ah ha, a tycoon”
“Not quite a tycoon yet Rebecca, though it’s a great thought”
I laughed aloud at that one. Rebecca joined in, though there was an interested gleam in her eye that I couldn’t quite work out. Maybe she was some kind of gold digger. And the fund was certainly doing well enough for the clients. And hence for me. But if she was one of those she’d be disappointed. My gold wasn’t there to be dug.
Rebecca was petite. Must have been all of five feet three. Slim, boyish build with that long auburn tangle hiding half her face. Green eyes peering through to the outside world. Dressed in khaki combats and one of those cream F C U K t-shirts. And wearing a ring on the third finger of her left hand.
“Where’s the wedding?” Time to change the subject.
“It’s on the North Coast. My husband’s family come from up there”
“I love the North Coast. My grandmother lived in Portstewart and I used to spend my summers roaming the beach and stealing balls from the golf course!”
Ah so before you were a tycoon you were a kleptomaniac, were you?”
“I told you Rebecca. I’m certainly not a tycoon. Not even close. But enough about me for a moment. You haven’t told me yet what it is that you do”
Her smile broadened and she leaned across the table, bringing me right into her personal space.
“Well Jimmy, if I told you that I’d have to kill you”
“Na you wouldn’t. I’m away off back to Dublin tomorrow. You’ll never see me again. You can tell me anything. I mean it. Anything at all.”
I swear that I didn’t expect to hear what I heard next. I swear on my kids lives that I never knew until she told me. Didn’t have an inkling. And I swear that until she said it I had never ever thought even for a moment that the solution to my dilemma might be so easy. I’ve been a law keeping man all my life. Pretty much. But when she looked me straight in the eye and whispered her next sentence something just clicked in my brain and I knew that she had told me the future. Opened the door for me to walk on through into my new life.
“Well Jimmy Dornan, I know I don’t look like one, but you see ….. I’m a sort of a hit man” She laughed softly. “A professional assassin”
And then the madness began.
2
Dublin is a black haired woman. Everything else is peripheral. If you ever met her you would understand.
I came here early in the August of my life, worn threadbare by empty Northern resolutions and the pounding of ancient drums. July, my first escaping, had passed in a flurry of solitary coffees drunk in emotionally sterile airports and unsatisfactory assignations in hotel chain bedrooms. On a Tuesday it was probably Swindon.
Prior to all that I had tried to care about the choreography of politics. About playing my part as a concerned citizen in a society reeking of failure and dysfunction. But by the end of June I was exhausted and my feet refused to dance those old familiar rhythms. Half a life goes by so quickly. And, of course, you never get it back.
I met her in Merrion Square where she was posing as a receptionist in the offices of a film production company. The shafts of early spring sunlight slanting through the window were particularising the airborne meander of dust across the hallway and she had a bemused look on her face. Posing as a receptionist is no straightforward occupation.
“You’re here to see Mr Ní Dhomhnaill” she reiterated, self consciously correcting my pronunciation. “What name can I give?”
“Jimmy Dornan. Tell him it’s Jimmy Dornan here to talk about renting a room. That ought to raise a flicker”
I sat on the art deco sofa and watched her as she made the call. Took in how her brown eyes softened in colour at the edges of the iris. The first sign of a crease at their corners when she smiled. Wondered why she wore so many rings on her elegant fingers. Mentally traced my hand slowly along the nape of her neck, gently brushing at an out of place strand of her blue-black hair. Imagined how it might taste to kiss her mouth. I took my time. My foot was off the accelerator now. My life was in August and every observation was important. By August you focus on the journeys hoping to postpone the destinations.
“He’ll be with you in a moment Mr Dornan. Would you like a coffee while you’re waiting?”
I could see her struggle with the role. Clearly unused to dealing with inconsequentialities. I wondered what it was that had made her want to squeeze her casual grace into such an undemanding situation.
“It’s Jimmy, and I’d love one thanks. Milk. No sugar. How long are his ‘moments’ usually?”
She laughed at that one and settled back in her chair.
“Well it depends; it seems, on many things. I’ve only been here for three days and ‘moments’ seem to vary from around thirty seconds right up to half an hour. I have no idea about the criteria for a ‘moment’. And as I’ll be gone on Friday I’ll probably never find out”
“This isn’t your regular job then?”
“Oh no, I’m an actor amongst other things. This is me just filling in for a friend who went to Stockholm for a week’s holiday with her fella”
“I see. Does your friend know that her position is in such secure hands?”
I must have made it sound like a suggestive remark because she giggled. Delicately. Then disappeared downstairs. Presumably to locate the coffee. I wondered if I should man the telephone in her absence. But I had no idea how a film production company ought to sound nor of who was who on the many internal extensions so I ignored the flashing light on the switchboard and reclined back on the sofa taking the weight off my feet.
Mr Ní Dhomhnaill certainly liked his luxury. There were hand woven Persian carpets on the walls interspaced with carefully framed posters advertising the many films that his company had taken a hand in producing - all well known, and big box office successes. The wooden floor was polished up and gleaming and the receptionist’s desk and chair were of an opulence not normally bestowed on staff members dwelling so far down the food chain. But then, of course, this receptionist was merely holding her friend’s position in secure hands whilst the regular nine to fiver was visiting Stockholm with her fella.
“Here’s the coffee. I hope you like it strong.”
“Today I like coffee any way it comes, thanks. I really needed this – I’ve been walking the streets of Dublin looking at office space all morning. By the way, what’s your name, if that’s not a rude question?”
“Brenda. And why would it be rude?”
“Only because of the abrupt way I framed it. ‘What’s your name?’ sounds like the kind of question that a policeman might ask. Or maybe that’s just my misspent youth talking”
“You had a misspent youth? I like that. I’ve always felt that there’s something so deeply attractive about hedonism. Are you still misspending your time or did you mature?”
“Oh there’s no better way. And so as I age I age disgracefully”
Notwithstanding my lack of originality we talked for about twenty minutes. There was an ease in our communication that drew the conversation beyond the banal idling of time and hinted at the possibility of meaningful connection.
“So is there a Mr Brenda?” I finally asked.
“No, there was a man I lived with for awhile. But we split up over a year ago and my love life seems to be on hold just now. And you? Is there a Mrs Jimmy?”
I was about to answer when the telephone light flashed. It seemed that Mr Ní Dhomhnaill’s moment had run its course and I was to go in and state my case.
“Phone me sometime if you like, I’ll write my number on a piece of paper for you. Mind you, I’m off to England next week for six weeks to do some filming. Call me after that.”
“I will”
Ní Dhomhnaill was an imposing man – if slightly vague looking - seated behind a large glass desk in a spacious, airy room in which a state of the art flat screen TV dominated one corner and several more famous faces stared out of promotional posters on the perfectly painted walls. He had the air of a man with all the time in the world, but I didn’t let that fool me for a moment. I explained who I was, and offered my references.
The meeting went well, though later I discovered that he had been pre prepared for my visit by a mutual friend in Belfast, and the fully furnished basement suite was mine to rent from the first of the next month. We had a glass of champagne to seal the deal.
Brenda had disappeared when I came out. Lunchtime I supposed. There wasn’t a piece of paper to be seen on the empty desk.
* * * *
The August of my life was going well. After more than four years in Dublin I felt that it was almost home. My career as a private fund manager was taking off and Mr Ní Dhomhnaill or Fergus as I called him now, had introduced me to several of his wealthy investors who in turn had opened doors. Dublin works like that I found. Who you know has more significance than what. I had begun to attend a writer’s group in Parnell Square and had become a Director in a Charitable Trust. My social life was on the up and up and I had purchased a mews-house-for-one in fashionable D4. My children had re-connected with me after the trauma of their parents’ unhappy parting and now appeared, rightly or wrongly, to parcel out the blame in even dollops between us both. Passing time, I find, always blurs the edges of perceived morality. I rarely went to the North – there was nothing left for me to be or do back there.
Brenda had never reappeared in the building on Merrion Square, though she continued to smile at me from time to time in my memory and in my dreaming. For the first year in the city I used to actively look for her when walking on Grafton Street or Nassau Street or around St Stephens Green. And of course I went to every play I could manage to locate. She was an actor she’d said. “Amongst other things”
Fergus spoke of her in only the vaguest terms. He wasn’t sure what she was up to now and her friend who had gone to Stockholm with her fella had become the victim of one of the occasional Ni Dhomhnaill purgings that would reshape his business from time to time. So she wasn’t much good to me either. But I knew that one day I would see Brenda again. Call it intuition. Or possibly naivety. Meanwhile there had been a few women who had caught my attention fleetingly. Though none had caused me to stop and take a second look. That was the thing about Brenda. In half an hour she had burrowed under my skin and left a need in me to find out more about her. But I had to be content to bide my time. To wait until our paths might accidentally cross again – as I was sure that they would one day do.
Yes, all in all the August of my life was going well.
The Christmas lights on Grafton Street loomed deep pink through the freezing mist. I searched in my head to describe their precise colour. “Cerise” didn’t sound quite right for describing Christmas lights, and “red” just made the street seem sleazy. It was bitterly cold and my breath billowed out from my mouth only to be swallowed up and lost in the swirling winter atmosphere around me. I peered out from under the rim of my recently acquired black homburg, soaking up the bustle of last minute shoppers and enjoying the cheerful efforts of the street entertainers. The collar on my Crombie was turned up against the cold.
I was on my way to yet another Corporate Christmas-excuse-for-a-booze-up, though by this stage my tolerance for evenings fuelled by alcohol and bulls"!t was beginning to plummet so I was taking the long way round to the venue. Enjoying the city. Postponing the moment. Call it what you will.
I stopped for a moment to watch the antics of a fire juggler who had drawn an admiring crowd. It struck me later how many of life’s conclusions are predicated on coincidences of timing. How fine the line between being where you need to be at those pivotal moments that shape and dictate your life and simply being someplace else. The importance of seeming inconsequentialities like the different speeds of supermarket check out operators or an impulsive decision to take a coffee refill before leaving a café. Like the length of stride when walking along a street or the day on which a trip to look for office premises is planned. Like the attraction of a fire juggler on Grafton Street at Christmas to a reluctant party goer.
I watched for longer than I had intended, enjoying both the show and the momentary feeling of belonging that came from being a part of relaxed and entertained Grafton Street crowd. I love the way that a group of people, created spontaneously with no past and no future and only the most tenuous of reasons to exist in the present, can generate its own in-jokes and temporary camaraderie. And we, the fire juggler’s gallery, some of us more than a little inebriated, were generating a warmth from our own wit and laughter that reflected the glow of his juggling sticks and created a cosy, inviting place for us to stand. Comparisons with the ego infested rent-a-crowd corporate gathering that was awaiting my presence were inevitable. So of course I made them.
“Oops…. Excuse me…. I’m so sorry! ...Oh…”
Coincidence. Being where I needed to be at the pivotal moment because I stood too long and watched the show. Bumping headlong into Brenda in the middle of Grafton Street at Christmastime. Not being someplace else. Being at this place. At just the right time. I think they call it serendipity.
“Imagine bumping into you like this”
I spoke from below her as I bent to pick up her scattered bags. Brown Thomas, Pia Bang, HMV and Marks and Spencer food. Her privacy all invaded and displayed. La Perla logos strewn across the cobbled street. I passed my retrievals to her and as she reached to take the bags from me I noticed the new arrangement of rings on her finger. Saw the Bob the Builder book peeking from the corner of one of the bags. Thought again about the co-incidence of timing.
“Thank you so much” she said and looking up I caught her eye and saw her tentative smile of bemused appreciation but, looking deeper, I could see no sign of recognition on her face. Moments later she had gone. Headed off up Grafton Street. Leaving me standing abandoned on the pavement.
I was hurt. Disappointed. Illogically and disproportionately so. Perhaps, I began to rationalise, perhaps it wasn’t her. I have always been too fast to recognise, or think I recognise, faces. To quick to leave myself embarrassed and exposed. I don’t know why I’m like this. Perhaps it’s just my way of making the world a smaller or a safer place. All of us have our ways of doing that. That’s the thing about the Twenty First Century world. It’s grown too big to be comfortable. Too hostile to feel like home.
And then some force deep inside me took charge of my feet and I was running up Grafton Street trying to catch her. Shouting her name in undignified decibels, needing to catch her attention. Refusing to allow the moment to evaporate into the mist. Sure in my heart that serendipity only knocks once.
“Brenda!”
Dodging between dedicated shoppers. Trampling on performers’ collection hats spilling pre Christmas generosity onto the cobbles. Bumping into wide eyed, trusting children and only half muttering my regrets. Knowing that this was a moment that I had to make my own. Uncaring about consequences.
“Brenda!”
Panting now, as only a man in August would. Stumbling as legs begin to feel the pace. Feeling sharp pains where pains never used to be felt. Needing to make myself known and to take a chance on the outcome. Wondering if there is enough in my now to trade for a chance of being part of her future. (You get these crazy thoughts when the oxygen in your brain has been diverted down to the pumping leg department).
“Brenda!”
And there she was stopped at the top of Grafton Street. Laughing.
“Do I know you? You seem to know my name. You’re not a stalker are you? I’ve never had a stalker”
“Four. Years. Ago. I. Met. You. In. Merrion Square.”
Gasping more than speaking, really.
“You did? Are you sure? Hmmm, I don’t know. Though maybe, yes, maybe you did! I remember now I think. Sort of. Was it in Fergus Ní Dhomhnaill’s office in Merrion Square? I thought you looked a bit familiar. Though all that panting and puffing has made your face all red. I remember you as being better looking that that! Though I’m terrible with names, you’ll have to remind me”
I was slowly getting my breath back so I didn’t interrupt her flow. And anyway, she remembered me as being good looking. That had to be significant.
“Listen, you clearly need to sit down. A man of your age shouldn’t be tearing up Grafton Street at that kind of pace. Sorry, that was so rude!”
“Jimmy Dorman. Don’t worry about the rudeness. Let’s focus on the sitting down” I said with a grin.
And so it was that we went for a drink.
* * * *
Later, I think it might have been much later but I really can’t remember, I turned up at my rent-a-crowd Yuletide extravaganza. We had steak grilled in testosterone with flirtatious Jeroboams of champagne destabilising the defences of mini skirted female corporates whilst the real men drank Guinness, defying the smoking ban in a corner of the bar. Sometimes you wonder when it was that Christmas got to be so tacky.
I stood for awhile weighing up just how long to give the party before making my way home, though there was little for me there except a fridge full of last week’s food and a television showing repeats of last year’s low budget Christmas specials. But somehow I wasn’t in the mood for giggling strangers and champagne stains on my jacket. I was feeling lost. Like the proverbial duck out of water. A man in August looking at the flaunting of May and June in all of its semi dressed glory and thanking his lucky stars that his life had moved on.
It was then that I heard the single bleep of my mobile phone.
Ian Mitchell
1
“Your coffee sir. Sure you won’t have some jam with the scone?”
The waitress stood there balancing my order in one hand and clearly not appreciative of the way my clutter spread across the wet-wiped eating surface. But then, unlike me, she didn’t have all day.
“Sure thanks. But let me clear this away a bit. Sorry about the sprawl”
My apology broke the ice and she smiled at my confusion. Put the latté on the table. In other circumstances we might have flirted. She subtly coquettish, me the urbane-man-about-town. But my state of mind was all wrong for flirting. Hers too, apparently – maybe she’d been on the town the night before. Or maybe it was just a step too far to flirt with a man who had such scant respect for table ergonomics.
I’d been walking along Royal Avenue looking for a coffee shop, the sunburst sky all dappled with longing and the feel of a fresh morning on my face. I was back in Belfast catching up with a few old friends, but my mind was somewhere else entirely. I had a problem that I needed to resolve. It had been eating away at me for some time now, and my internal suggestion box was bereft of suggestions.
Inside Rankin’s Café on Fountain Street people were eating gigantic scones and drinking over priced coffee and chatting with smiles on their faces. I was convinced that they all had their lovers or partners. Some of them maybe had both. And I sat there and read the newspaper sports pages and speculated on the outcome of the last test match of the series and wondered how I might join their human race.
The waitress bustled around the tables, laden with lattés and scones, cappuccinos and vast cherry muffins; engaging in small talk and admiring chubby babies sat resplendent in their pushchairs. There’s an ambiance in coffee shops that you find nowhere else in the world. It’s easy to be anonymous. Lost in the morning crowd.
She was a looker all right, black lace blouse, mini-skirt and hair oh so skilfully tousled. But I’d missed my moment with the waitress. And you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Anyway, I had years ahead of me for flirting with waitresses.
I doodled with a pen I had bought earlier in WH Smith’s, covering the large taupe and brown napkin with words that were swimming round my soul and drawing beards and glasses on the sporting icons pictured in the newspaper. Childish, I know. Eavesdropping on other peoples’ conversations provided my inspiration and soon the napkin groaned with the weight of random snippets of human angst and trivia that elbowed each other for prominence on its creased surface. Occasionally I reached beyond the thoughts of others and emptied some of my own internal landscape onto the collage. Words like “why?” or “how?” written in big bold letters. Meaningless, I know. And of course self pity is so unattractive in a man.
“Is this seat taken?”
I didn’t look up from my doodles. Just grunted something accommodating and minded my own business. She didn’t give up so easy.
“Beautiful day isn’t it?”
So I had to acknowledge her, and glancing upwards met her tentative smile with one of those I’m-one-of-life’s-victims looks that seemed to be all I could muster back then.
“Yes, maybe the summer isn’t over yet”
A mine of originality. That’s always been me.
At that moment the travelling coffee refill reached our table and I said yes. It was an impulse thing - maybe I just wanted value for money, or maybe my day was too empty and sitting here doodling somehow made me feel less of a vacant space in the bustle that is midweek centre-of-town Belfast. Or maybe there was something in her eyes that broke into my reverie and hinted somehow at all the mayhem that was to follow. I really don’t know. But I smiled, a little less grudgingly this time, and tried a slightly more conspiratorial line.
“You have to get your money’s worth in here all right”
She smiled back. Mischievously it seemed to me. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. How could I ever have guessed so soon at the solution she would soon be offering me?
She looked about thirty five, but how can you tell these days? She might have been fifty. Not classically beautiful in any sense. But there was an infectious vivacity in her green eyes and her auburn hair hung in an uncontrollable tangle around her slightly asymmetrical face. She was still smiling. I think she found my preoccupation funny.
“You have indeed. Though sometimes it’s harder than it looks” She laughed and sat down.
For awhile there was silence. Not exactly companionable, but then again not awkward either. Just silence. Her slicing her scone into bite sized chunks and me drawing a beard on Tony Blair. Me wondering if I wanted to speak. Her gazing idly out the window at the passers by enjoying the early autumn sunshine.
There comes a moment when you’re sharing a table. When you’re sharing a meal time. Even if it’s only a snack in an overpriced coffee shop. Me, I think it’s a religious thing – meals are almost sacramental, and the ambiance of a shared table with fallen crumbs and half full coffee cups backdropped by the chatter of relaxing 11am shoppers lends itself to the development of a kind of intimacy. Even with strangers. Your eyes meet conspiratorially over the rim of your cappuccinos, you share a smile at the antics of the child at the next table, you grimace together when a waitress drops her tray, and before you know it the body language is inclusive and the words start to tumble out.
“It’s hectic shopping for everything you need on a Wednesday morning”
“I always think it must be hard being a waitress when the place is full like this”
Of course there isn’t always confluence in the conversation. And the opening gambits collided somewhere over the sugar bowl that sat between us on the table. But it was a start and the laughter this time was spontaneous.
“Let’s try one at a time will we? I’m Rebecca, out for a day’s shopping. Its my niece’s wedding in a month or two and I’m sorting my wardrobe early”
“Hi Rebecca. I’m Jimmy. Jimmy Dornan. Back up from Dublin for the week catching up with some old friends. Today, however, I’m all alone.”
“What do you do in Dublin Jimmy?”
“I run a small hedge fund for one or two International clients”
“Ah ha, a tycoon”
“Not quite a tycoon yet Rebecca, though it’s a great thought”
I laughed aloud at that one. Rebecca joined in, though there was an interested gleam in her eye that I couldn’t quite work out. Maybe she was some kind of gold digger. And the fund was certainly doing well enough for the clients. And hence for me. But if she was one of those she’d be disappointed. My gold wasn’t there to be dug.
Rebecca was petite. Must have been all of five feet three. Slim, boyish build with that long auburn tangle hiding half her face. Green eyes peering through to the outside world. Dressed in khaki combats and one of those cream F C U K t-shirts. And wearing a ring on the third finger of her left hand.
“Where’s the wedding?” Time to change the subject.
“It’s on the North Coast. My husband’s family come from up there”
“I love the North Coast. My grandmother lived in Portstewart and I used to spend my summers roaming the beach and stealing balls from the golf course!”
Ah so before you were a tycoon you were a kleptomaniac, were you?”
“I told you Rebecca. I’m certainly not a tycoon. Not even close. But enough about me for a moment. You haven’t told me yet what it is that you do”
Her smile broadened and she leaned across the table, bringing me right into her personal space.
“Well Jimmy, if I told you that I’d have to kill you”
“Na you wouldn’t. I’m away off back to Dublin tomorrow. You’ll never see me again. You can tell me anything. I mean it. Anything at all.”
I swear that I didn’t expect to hear what I heard next. I swear on my kids lives that I never knew until she told me. Didn’t have an inkling. And I swear that until she said it I had never ever thought even for a moment that the solution to my dilemma might be so easy. I’ve been a law keeping man all my life. Pretty much. But when she looked me straight in the eye and whispered her next sentence something just clicked in my brain and I knew that she had told me the future. Opened the door for me to walk on through into my new life.
“Well Jimmy Dornan, I know I don’t look like one, but you see ….. I’m a sort of a hit man” She laughed softly. “A professional assassin”
And then the madness began.
2
Dublin is a black haired woman. Everything else is peripheral. If you ever met her you would understand.
I came here early in the August of my life, worn threadbare by empty Northern resolutions and the pounding of ancient drums. July, my first escaping, had passed in a flurry of solitary coffees drunk in emotionally sterile airports and unsatisfactory assignations in hotel chain bedrooms. On a Tuesday it was probably Swindon.
Prior to all that I had tried to care about the choreography of politics. About playing my part as a concerned citizen in a society reeking of failure and dysfunction. But by the end of June I was exhausted and my feet refused to dance those old familiar rhythms. Half a life goes by so quickly. And, of course, you never get it back.
I met her in Merrion Square where she was posing as a receptionist in the offices of a film production company. The shafts of early spring sunlight slanting through the window were particularising the airborne meander of dust across the hallway and she had a bemused look on her face. Posing as a receptionist is no straightforward occupation.
“You’re here to see Mr Ní Dhomhnaill” she reiterated, self consciously correcting my pronunciation. “What name can I give?”
“Jimmy Dornan. Tell him it’s Jimmy Dornan here to talk about renting a room. That ought to raise a flicker”
I sat on the art deco sofa and watched her as she made the call. Took in how her brown eyes softened in colour at the edges of the iris. The first sign of a crease at their corners when she smiled. Wondered why she wore so many rings on her elegant fingers. Mentally traced my hand slowly along the nape of her neck, gently brushing at an out of place strand of her blue-black hair. Imagined how it might taste to kiss her mouth. I took my time. My foot was off the accelerator now. My life was in August and every observation was important. By August you focus on the journeys hoping to postpone the destinations.
“He’ll be with you in a moment Mr Dornan. Would you like a coffee while you’re waiting?”
I could see her struggle with the role. Clearly unused to dealing with inconsequentialities. I wondered what it was that had made her want to squeeze her casual grace into such an undemanding situation.
“It’s Jimmy, and I’d love one thanks. Milk. No sugar. How long are his ‘moments’ usually?”
She laughed at that one and settled back in her chair.
“Well it depends; it seems, on many things. I’ve only been here for three days and ‘moments’ seem to vary from around thirty seconds right up to half an hour. I have no idea about the criteria for a ‘moment’. And as I’ll be gone on Friday I’ll probably never find out”
“This isn’t your regular job then?”
“Oh no, I’m an actor amongst other things. This is me just filling in for a friend who went to Stockholm for a week’s holiday with her fella”
“I see. Does your friend know that her position is in such secure hands?”
I must have made it sound like a suggestive remark because she giggled. Delicately. Then disappeared downstairs. Presumably to locate the coffee. I wondered if I should man the telephone in her absence. But I had no idea how a film production company ought to sound nor of who was who on the many internal extensions so I ignored the flashing light on the switchboard and reclined back on the sofa taking the weight off my feet.
Mr Ní Dhomhnaill certainly liked his luxury. There were hand woven Persian carpets on the walls interspaced with carefully framed posters advertising the many films that his company had taken a hand in producing - all well known, and big box office successes. The wooden floor was polished up and gleaming and the receptionist’s desk and chair were of an opulence not normally bestowed on staff members dwelling so far down the food chain. But then, of course, this receptionist was merely holding her friend’s position in secure hands whilst the regular nine to fiver was visiting Stockholm with her fella.
“Here’s the coffee. I hope you like it strong.”
“Today I like coffee any way it comes, thanks. I really needed this – I’ve been walking the streets of Dublin looking at office space all morning. By the way, what’s your name, if that’s not a rude question?”
“Brenda. And why would it be rude?”
“Only because of the abrupt way I framed it. ‘What’s your name?’ sounds like the kind of question that a policeman might ask. Or maybe that’s just my misspent youth talking”
“You had a misspent youth? I like that. I’ve always felt that there’s something so deeply attractive about hedonism. Are you still misspending your time or did you mature?”
“Oh there’s no better way. And so as I age I age disgracefully”
Notwithstanding my lack of originality we talked for about twenty minutes. There was an ease in our communication that drew the conversation beyond the banal idling of time and hinted at the possibility of meaningful connection.
“So is there a Mr Brenda?” I finally asked.
“No, there was a man I lived with for awhile. But we split up over a year ago and my love life seems to be on hold just now. And you? Is there a Mrs Jimmy?”
I was about to answer when the telephone light flashed. It seemed that Mr Ní Dhomhnaill’s moment had run its course and I was to go in and state my case.
“Phone me sometime if you like, I’ll write my number on a piece of paper for you. Mind you, I’m off to England next week for six weeks to do some filming. Call me after that.”
“I will”
Ní Dhomhnaill was an imposing man – if slightly vague looking - seated behind a large glass desk in a spacious, airy room in which a state of the art flat screen TV dominated one corner and several more famous faces stared out of promotional posters on the perfectly painted walls. He had the air of a man with all the time in the world, but I didn’t let that fool me for a moment. I explained who I was, and offered my references.
The meeting went well, though later I discovered that he had been pre prepared for my visit by a mutual friend in Belfast, and the fully furnished basement suite was mine to rent from the first of the next month. We had a glass of champagne to seal the deal.
Brenda had disappeared when I came out. Lunchtime I supposed. There wasn’t a piece of paper to be seen on the empty desk.
* * * *
The August of my life was going well. After more than four years in Dublin I felt that it was almost home. My career as a private fund manager was taking off and Mr Ní Dhomhnaill or Fergus as I called him now, had introduced me to several of his wealthy investors who in turn had opened doors. Dublin works like that I found. Who you know has more significance than what. I had begun to attend a writer’s group in Parnell Square and had become a Director in a Charitable Trust. My social life was on the up and up and I had purchased a mews-house-for-one in fashionable D4. My children had re-connected with me after the trauma of their parents’ unhappy parting and now appeared, rightly or wrongly, to parcel out the blame in even dollops between us both. Passing time, I find, always blurs the edges of perceived morality. I rarely went to the North – there was nothing left for me to be or do back there.
Brenda had never reappeared in the building on Merrion Square, though she continued to smile at me from time to time in my memory and in my dreaming. For the first year in the city I used to actively look for her when walking on Grafton Street or Nassau Street or around St Stephens Green. And of course I went to every play I could manage to locate. She was an actor she’d said. “Amongst other things”
Fergus spoke of her in only the vaguest terms. He wasn’t sure what she was up to now and her friend who had gone to Stockholm with her fella had become the victim of one of the occasional Ni Dhomhnaill purgings that would reshape his business from time to time. So she wasn’t much good to me either. But I knew that one day I would see Brenda again. Call it intuition. Or possibly naivety. Meanwhile there had been a few women who had caught my attention fleetingly. Though none had caused me to stop and take a second look. That was the thing about Brenda. In half an hour she had burrowed under my skin and left a need in me to find out more about her. But I had to be content to bide my time. To wait until our paths might accidentally cross again – as I was sure that they would one day do.
Yes, all in all the August of my life was going well.
The Christmas lights on Grafton Street loomed deep pink through the freezing mist. I searched in my head to describe their precise colour. “Cerise” didn’t sound quite right for describing Christmas lights, and “red” just made the street seem sleazy. It was bitterly cold and my breath billowed out from my mouth only to be swallowed up and lost in the swirling winter atmosphere around me. I peered out from under the rim of my recently acquired black homburg, soaking up the bustle of last minute shoppers and enjoying the cheerful efforts of the street entertainers. The collar on my Crombie was turned up against the cold.
I was on my way to yet another Corporate Christmas-excuse-for-a-booze-up, though by this stage my tolerance for evenings fuelled by alcohol and bulls"!t was beginning to plummet so I was taking the long way round to the venue. Enjoying the city. Postponing the moment. Call it what you will.
I stopped for a moment to watch the antics of a fire juggler who had drawn an admiring crowd. It struck me later how many of life’s conclusions are predicated on coincidences of timing. How fine the line between being where you need to be at those pivotal moments that shape and dictate your life and simply being someplace else. The importance of seeming inconsequentialities like the different speeds of supermarket check out operators or an impulsive decision to take a coffee refill before leaving a café. Like the length of stride when walking along a street or the day on which a trip to look for office premises is planned. Like the attraction of a fire juggler on Grafton Street at Christmas to a reluctant party goer.
I watched for longer than I had intended, enjoying both the show and the momentary feeling of belonging that came from being a part of relaxed and entertained Grafton Street crowd. I love the way that a group of people, created spontaneously with no past and no future and only the most tenuous of reasons to exist in the present, can generate its own in-jokes and temporary camaraderie. And we, the fire juggler’s gallery, some of us more than a little inebriated, were generating a warmth from our own wit and laughter that reflected the glow of his juggling sticks and created a cosy, inviting place for us to stand. Comparisons with the ego infested rent-a-crowd corporate gathering that was awaiting my presence were inevitable. So of course I made them.
“Oops…. Excuse me…. I’m so sorry! ...Oh…”
Coincidence. Being where I needed to be at the pivotal moment because I stood too long and watched the show. Bumping headlong into Brenda in the middle of Grafton Street at Christmastime. Not being someplace else. Being at this place. At just the right time. I think they call it serendipity.
“Imagine bumping into you like this”
I spoke from below her as I bent to pick up her scattered bags. Brown Thomas, Pia Bang, HMV and Marks and Spencer food. Her privacy all invaded and displayed. La Perla logos strewn across the cobbled street. I passed my retrievals to her and as she reached to take the bags from me I noticed the new arrangement of rings on her finger. Saw the Bob the Builder book peeking from the corner of one of the bags. Thought again about the co-incidence of timing.
“Thank you so much” she said and looking up I caught her eye and saw her tentative smile of bemused appreciation but, looking deeper, I could see no sign of recognition on her face. Moments later she had gone. Headed off up Grafton Street. Leaving me standing abandoned on the pavement.
I was hurt. Disappointed. Illogically and disproportionately so. Perhaps, I began to rationalise, perhaps it wasn’t her. I have always been too fast to recognise, or think I recognise, faces. To quick to leave myself embarrassed and exposed. I don’t know why I’m like this. Perhaps it’s just my way of making the world a smaller or a safer place. All of us have our ways of doing that. That’s the thing about the Twenty First Century world. It’s grown too big to be comfortable. Too hostile to feel like home.
And then some force deep inside me took charge of my feet and I was running up Grafton Street trying to catch her. Shouting her name in undignified decibels, needing to catch her attention. Refusing to allow the moment to evaporate into the mist. Sure in my heart that serendipity only knocks once.
“Brenda!”
Dodging between dedicated shoppers. Trampling on performers’ collection hats spilling pre Christmas generosity onto the cobbles. Bumping into wide eyed, trusting children and only half muttering my regrets. Knowing that this was a moment that I had to make my own. Uncaring about consequences.
“Brenda!”
Panting now, as only a man in August would. Stumbling as legs begin to feel the pace. Feeling sharp pains where pains never used to be felt. Needing to make myself known and to take a chance on the outcome. Wondering if there is enough in my now to trade for a chance of being part of her future. (You get these crazy thoughts when the oxygen in your brain has been diverted down to the pumping leg department).
“Brenda!”
And there she was stopped at the top of Grafton Street. Laughing.
“Do I know you? You seem to know my name. You’re not a stalker are you? I’ve never had a stalker”
“Four. Years. Ago. I. Met. You. In. Merrion Square.”
Gasping more than speaking, really.
“You did? Are you sure? Hmmm, I don’t know. Though maybe, yes, maybe you did! I remember now I think. Sort of. Was it in Fergus Ní Dhomhnaill’s office in Merrion Square? I thought you looked a bit familiar. Though all that panting and puffing has made your face all red. I remember you as being better looking that that! Though I’m terrible with names, you’ll have to remind me”
I was slowly getting my breath back so I didn’t interrupt her flow. And anyway, she remembered me as being good looking. That had to be significant.
“Listen, you clearly need to sit down. A man of your age shouldn’t be tearing up Grafton Street at that kind of pace. Sorry, that was so rude!”
“Jimmy Dorman. Don’t worry about the rudeness. Let’s focus on the sitting down” I said with a grin.
And so it was that we went for a drink.
* * * *
Later, I think it might have been much later but I really can’t remember, I turned up at my rent-a-crowd Yuletide extravaganza. We had steak grilled in testosterone with flirtatious Jeroboams of champagne destabilising the defences of mini skirted female corporates whilst the real men drank Guinness, defying the smoking ban in a corner of the bar. Sometimes you wonder when it was that Christmas got to be so tacky.
I stood for awhile weighing up just how long to give the party before making my way home, though there was little for me there except a fridge full of last week’s food and a television showing repeats of last year’s low budget Christmas specials. But somehow I wasn’t in the mood for giggling strangers and champagne stains on my jacket. I was feeling lost. Like the proverbial duck out of water. A man in August looking at the flaunting of May and June in all of its semi dressed glory and thanking his lucky stars that his life had moved on.
It was then that I heard the single bleep of my mobile phone.
