Authors: Glenys O'Connell
“Okay,
I do fancy you,” she admitted, “But that’s all – I’m not into one night stands
or losing propositions. And maybe it would be good for the business – who knows?
But can’t any of you – the Henleys, Granny Somers, you – can’t you understand
that I want this for myself? I don’t want anyone else to come along with their
advice, or their money, or their fame, and build it for me?”
Jonathon
was silent, gazing out of the window as if he was suddenly fascinated by Dame
Street’s going-on. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he said quietly. And
silently damned himself for a fool. He should have known Cíara was the kind of
girl who would take things seriously. Despite her chosen profession.
They finished their
meal in a heavy silence. But after he’d tossed cash on the table to pay the
bill, Jonathon captured her hand in his, briefly stroking the sensitive back
with his thumb. “Cíara, come down to Waterford with me. Spend some time out of
the city, and we’ll talk. I won’t force my company on you – but you’d enjoy the
break, I’m sure.”
Put
like that, she had to admit that it was a long time since she’d been on any
kind of a holiday. When other people celebrated public holidays, she’d taken on
the extra, double-time shifts at the police station where she’d worked as a
civilian dispatcher. Later, with the detective agency just barely up and
running, she’d either been chasing around seeking lost cats or straying
husbands, or sitting in her office plotting and planning and waiting for the
phone to ring.
And two days of relaxation, sitting on a beach, browsing the
stores and….
“Okay.
So long as you mean it – no attempts on my person!”
“I
promise,” Jonathon said, and his solemn, mocking bow made her smile.
* * *
Winters had promised to meet Bill for ‘a quick
pint’ before leaving and
Cíara
wanted to talk to Mary Margaret, so they agreed to meet back at the flat round
lunchtime and start the three hour drive down to Waterford County and Dunmore
East.
“Mary
Margaret, the man has turned my life upside down! I don’t know what to do with
myself! My life’s not my own – jeez, he’s even moving into the flat because he
doesn’t like living in hotels and he’s only going to be here a few days a
week!”
Cíara
wailed at her friend.
“What does he drive?” Mary Margaret asked.
“For God's sake, that was just once, just one
time. If I'd known Tony Mahon was such a loser…but is no one ever going to let
me forget? Jonathon Winters is a different kettle of fish altogether.”
Mary Margaret grinned. “Careful girl, the way you
go on about this man, a person could think maybe you fancied him,” she said
mildly. Since discovering her pregnancy, Mary Margaret was working on a sweet,
Madonna like expression which was already driving her friends –
Cíara
most of all – right around the bend. She wished
her friend a pair of hyperactive twins – and felt immediately ashamed.
“Maybe
I do fancy him a bit,” she admitted, “But he’s not giving me any space.”
“Sure
sounds like he fancies you also,” Mary Margaret said, patting her as yet
invisible bump.
“Yeah,
like he comes into my life, takes over my business, takes over my flat, moves
in on my Grandparents – did I tell you Granny Somers is positively fawning over
him?”
That
jolted Mary Margaret. Her eyes went wide and she sat forward. “No! I don’t
believe that! Granny Somers usually has every male she meets terrorized in
about twenty seconds – and you say she was fawning over this fella? Nah,
Cíara
, I think you’re getting obsessed, is
what. Imagining things. The guy’s got in your head.”
“Stop
it! Just stop it, okay? Just ‘cos you're preggers and happy about it doesn’t
mean that everybody else is looking for a wedding gown, a three bed roomed
semi, and the movies on a Friday night. Some of us want lives!” She was
immediately sorry for snapping, especially as Mary Margaret burst into tears.
When
she’d finally calmed down enough to speak through the wad of paper napkins
Cíara
had snatched from an astounded waiter, Mary Margaret
confided: “Joey doesn’t want to get married, not yet. He says after the baby,
doesn’t want people to think it was a shotgun wedding. Says they’ll say I
trapped him,” she sniffed.
Privately,
Cíara
thought the errant Joey had a lot of nerve believing anyone would want
to trap him, but she decided to be diplomatic and keep her thoughts to herself.
“Well,
it might be for the best. Who wants to have morning sickness on their wedding
day?” she said, as she tried to cheer Mary Margaret up.
“But
it means my baby will be born a…born a…BASTARD!” And, at that, Mary Margaret
began to really wail. The B-word still had the power to shock apparently,
because suddenly everyone in the crowded little café where they were having
coffee was staring at them. Mostly at
Cíara
, because it appeared she was the recipient of the insult. Blushing,
Cíara reached out and grabbed Mary Margaret’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.
The crowd watched on, interestedly.
“That’s
not true, not when his mammy and daddy are
engaged,
” she said,
emphasizing the last word.
Mary Margaret brightened.
“Do
you think so? I hadn’t thought about it like that!”
“Of
course. You
intend
to get married, so how can the baby be a…”
“That’s right. I
don’t know what’s wrong with me, Cíara, I keep getting these weepy moods, and
all – “
“I
think it’s maybe that you’re pregnant.”
Mary
Margaret smiled back. “Yeah, I am, aren’t I?”
She
promised she would have her stuff out of the flat before the weekend was out,
and begged Cíara to visit her and Joey in their new place. “You can bring yer
man with you, if you want – I’d love to meet him,” she said slyly.
“Go to Hell, Mary
Margaret.”
Cíara dropped money
on the table and gathered up her things. She’d just reached the door when Mary
Margaret called: “Thanks, you cheered me up – enjoy your dirty weekend!”
The
eyes of every other patron in the restaurant swiveled towards her, and
Cíara
fled, cheeks aflame.
* * *
“I don’t know what the
hell’s the matter, Bill. Honestly, I’d jump the woman’s bones in a minute – I
get horny just thinking about her. And I know she fancies me – I’ve seen that
look on her face. But the minute I even think of making a move, she acts as if
she’d rip my heart out if I put a finger on her!”
“Ah, isn’t that
the women for you? And that’s definitely our Cíara – it’s the red hair, you
know. My Mammy always said, stay away from the girls with the red hair.”
“But Sórcha has red
hair,” Winters said suspiciously.
“That’s the thing, see
– the red hair makes them easy to rouse! Like, they’re passionate about other
things as well.” Bill leered.
“Oh, God,” Winters
buried his face in his hands, assailed by x-rated images of Cíara roused to
passion. “But Bill, she's a working girl, and I can't take that. I don't want
to sleep with a……….but she won’t give it up.”
Brian sat and stared, a
stunned look on his face. When he could finally speak, he said: “A working
girl? You mean, like in Stateside speak, working girl? Not working girl, as in
liberated lady who has a career?”
“You know what I mean,”
Winters muttered. “I'd hoped I could make her see sense, try to get her to give
up the game, by showing her that her private detective agency could work, but
she wouldn't hear me out!”
“Have you mentioned
your, er, beliefs, to Cíara?” Bill asked, privately wishing he could be a fly
on the wall when his friend explained to Cíara that he thought she was a
hooker.
“Well, I thought I'd
made it pretty plain – God, this is such a mess. Of all the women in Ireland, I
have to get the hots for one who'd simply see me as another customer!”
“What, you don’t want
to have to pay for it?” Bill couldn’t resist, and he enjoyed the shocked look
on his friend's face. Until the hand reached out and grabbed his shirtfront.
“Whoa, now, mate. You're the one who's calling ……”
“You know as well as I
do what she does for a living, using that agency as a cover….”
“Boy, you’ve got
it bad, haven’t you?” his friend commiserated.
“I’ve done everything I
can think of, short of getting down on my knees and begging her to come to bed
with me. I’ve tried to boost her business, I’ve even taken the worry about
keeping that moth-eaten flat of hers on the go since her flat mate moved out…”
“And you moved
in, you mean. Noble of you,” Bill grinned.
“I know she likes me. I
figured if I was around a lot, she'd give up seeing other men. I just don’t
know what she’s so afraid of – it’s not like I’m asking her to marry me, or
anything…”
Bill rolled his eyes
and gave his friend a quick thump on the shoulder. “Boyyo, are you ever dumb,”
was all he’d say.
Back at the apartment,
Winters and Somers managed to call a truce long enough to pack and set off for
his cottage by the sea in County Waterford. By mutual consent they took both
vehicles, Cíara content for once to let Winters lead the way in his big SUV
while she followed niftily in her beloved MG. They stopped for supper in
Dunmore East at a small, friendly pub overlooking the sea, next to the Church
of Ireland church, facing onto a park with massive old trees bent from the sea
breezes.
“Do you realize we’ve
spent thirty minutes together in a restaurant and not had one
misunderstanding?” Winters asked eventually.
“That’s because we were
eating and I never talk with my mouth full. Also, they’re not
misunderstandings, they’re fights,” she corrected, but her smile softened the
words.
He smiled back,
and for a moment they were like any other couple, out for the evening and
enjoying each other’s company. Cíara even took the risk of smoothing her
fingers gently over Winters' hand as she emphasized a point she was making in
their discussion, and he squeezed her hand in return. But they couldn’t hold that
pose for forever, and finally he said he had to pick up his cottage key from
the agency Frank O’Keefe worked for.
“I asked them to see to
a leaking faucet and a quirky electrical outlet,” he explained. “The electrical
outlets at the cottage are few and far between, and this is the one I use for
my laptop.”
Cíara thought it
probably wasn't appropriate for her to go in with him, although she did want to
drop off her report to Frank – even though she was fairly sure he’d probably
burn it without reading it.
“Maybe you could just
drop in and see Frank by yourself and he wouldn’t know we were here together,”
Winters said, reading her thoughts. “Probably best if he never knows that I
know what he was thinking. After all, it’s a small town and I don’t want embarrassing
moments over the tinned beans in the food mart!”
He went into the
realtor's office, picked up his key and came back out to report that the
receptionist said Frank was out, showing a house over at Arthurstown, County
Wexford, a short car ferry journey from County Waterford, across the Barrow
estuary, and wouldn’t be back until later. Cíara decided not to leave the
report in the office in case someone opened it by mistake. Instead, she used
her cell phone to call the office and leave a message saying she was in the
area and asking him to give her a call. That should keep things anonymous, she
thought – until she saw the office receptionist peering out of the window to
where she stood on the sidewalk with Winters.
“Guess our traveling
together won’t be much of a secret after all,” she said, nudging her companion
and glancing meaningfully at the office window. Winters looked over, saw the
woman and smiled.
“Well, we couldn’t have
kept a partnership like this quiet for long, anyway – not in a town like this.”
Ten minutes later they
were squeezing their vehicles into the tiny parking area alongside the
whitewashed cottage.
“My goodness – it’s so
traditional I feel like I’ve stepped back two centuries.” Cíara, a modern city
girl through and through, marveled at the little house.
“Well, it does have
some mod cons, the shower’s a bit temperamental but it works if you beg the
right way, and the kitchen’s modern.”
“Well, I hope you know
what to do in it, ‘cos it’s not my strong point,” she muttered.
“Ah, I have another
line of defense for that situation,” Jonathon grinned.
“Yeah? You have a
housekeeper?”
“Even better, I have
Bozy’s Take Out – they deliver even out here!”
They stood in the
garden, looking out over the low hedge to where the sea flowed and ebbed below
them. The sun was setting, and its silvery pink glow was echoed on the crests
of the waves. “It’s beautiful,” Cíara murmured.