The backs of her hands tried to stem the flow bulging in her eyes, but she was losing the battle.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s not you,’ she said looking up, attempting a smile. ‘It’s just all so new and … well…’ her face began to crumble again.
I had no handkerchief to gallantly produce. Well, I did, but let’s just say it would have made the situation worse, it had been a while since washday. I looked about me to see who was watching. Nancy, bloody, Regan. She was loving this, itching to get out of the place to tell the world that Maurice Hannigan was harassing innocent women.
‘Listen, I can’t leave you like this,’ I said, ‘I’ll hold this crowd off for a minute while you go powder your nose or whatever.’
‘I can’t be doing that, sure they’d have me fired.’
‘What’ll he know? I’ll tell him I asked you for some more lodgement dockets or something.’
She bit her lip, considering my proposition.
‘Two seconds, so,’ she said, and was gone.
I smiled at Nancy as she left the counter, giving me a good long stare before tottering away in those heels of hers.
Sadie was back before I knew it, tissue in hand, looking a sight better.
‘Thanks,’ she said hopping back up on her stool.
‘All better now, what? So are you ready for this lot, so?’ I inclined my head to the queue to my rear. ‘I can’t promise they’ll be as charming as myself, now.’
She nodded and gave me a small vulnerable smile that stayed with me long after I’d left the counter and gone back to work the fields. That evening my sisters looked at me like I was ailing as I played all the wrong cards in the game Jenny dealt. Mind you, their concern didn’t stop them filling their pockets with my pennies. The following day I seemed incapable of doing anything right what with me putting too much milk in my tea, tripping over the front door step that had been there since the day I was born and burning my hand on the range when I put it down, thinking it was the kitchen table. By Sunday I knew I had no other choice but to go back. After the dinner, I announced my intentions of visiting the bank again the following Thursday, giving the family enough time to gather their few coppers together.
By Thursday I stood before her with a fresh handkerchief in my pocket and five bank books in my hands.
‘Hello,’ she said, quietly, a little embarrassed smile rising to her face once she recognised me.
Now, son, you know I’m not one for sentimentality but I swear to God the woman just took my breath away. I mean she looked no different from the first time I saw her, granted there were no tears, but this time, this time it was like she had multiplied all of that gorgeousness by ten. I reached inside myself, past my shock and from somewhere pulled out my voice.
‘Grand day, now. It must be hard on a day like this to be cooped up in here with the sun splitting the trees.’
‘Oh, aye. What I wouldn’t give to be out for a stroll right now.’ She laughed, looked at me ever so quickly, took the books I offered and got stuck into the counting straight away. I ran a hand over my flattened hair.
‘Maurice,’ I said, ‘the name’s Maurice Hannigan.’
‘Well, Maurice,’ she said looking up from the books, ‘you Hannigans are great savers.’
She looked below again, writing and totting away. And then, I heard her name for the first time:
‘Sadie McDonagh,’ she said, her face flashing up briefly to mine.
‘Things seem better today … Sadie. I mean, I’m glad to see you’re looking better today … I mean … it’s not so busy.’
She looked up and laughed again. Pitch-perfect laughter. Her work completed, she tapped the books efficiently together on her counter and passed them back to me.
‘Things are much better, thank you, Maurice.’
I took the books and paused for a second wondering if now was my chance. And as my eyes seemed unable to lift to her face, staring at the black tiles instead, I wondered where my charm had decided to feck off to. I tipped the books to my forehead, and had begun to walk away when she said:
‘See you again next Thursday, I suppose?’
‘Well,’ I said, stepping back to face her fully now, ‘unless, that is you’d like to take a stroll with me later. Maybe even a bite to eat?’ There he was, Mr Confident, back to save the day.
‘Well, I…’ she stumbled as I waited, my toes crossed in my shined Sunday-best shoes, ‘I would love that. I finish at six.’
‘Six it is, so. I’ll be outside.’
I think I actually winked at her before I left her counter. I near ran from it, convinced that I couldn’t’ve been that lucky and any minute now she’d call me back to say she’d changed her mind. I don’t think I took a breath until I got outside and leaned up against the wall wondering how I’d managed that at all.
‘It’s a big thing getting a job in the bank,’ she told me later, in that Donegal lilt of hers after we’d given our order in the Duncashel Central and handed back our menus.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I passed the exams. Neither could Mammy and Daddy. I mean it’s not something you can say no to, is it? Permanent, pensionable and all that,’ she said, moving the salt and pepper cellars around. ‘I know it sounds ungrateful but … I don’t think it’s me. I haven’t an ounce of interest. Money’s a nasty business really,’ she added, leaving the condiments, now happy with their new positions.
Is it? I thought.
‘You’re a long way from Donegal, alright,’ I said instead.
‘And that’s another thing, I’d rather be nearer home. To help out and that.’
‘Farming people?’
‘No. My father’s a guard. No, it’s just…’ She looked like she was about to say something further but stopped short, thinking of Noreen no doubt, not that I knew about her then. ‘Well, you know yourself, there’s always work to be done about the place, farm or no farm.’
‘True, true,’ I said, not wishing to dig any further at such an early stage, ‘it’s back north for you, so? No way we can keep you down here?’ I said, giving the condiments a good going over myself.
‘Well…’ She smiled over at me with a gorgeous shyness.
‘Well, what?’ I asked eagerly.
‘You never know, I suppose.’
Our eyes met for a brief second before our blushes forced us to look around. The tables were a mixture of all sorts: a single bachelor, eating his fry in silence, looking out to the passers-by on Patrick’s Street; a couple, more experienced than ourselves in the ways of relationships, sitting opposite us, him with his paper held up and she reading the adverts on the back page. There was one family, all dressed up for their Thursday treat. The children with their knee socks pulled right up, the boys with their Brylcreemed hair, the girls in pigtails with green polka dot ribbons. The mother keeping a watchful eye over their behaviour as the father chatted across to her. Every now and again he gave a big neighing laugh and hit the table with his hand, making the cutlery protest as he looked around for the appreciation he felt his joke deserved.
‘Do you come to this place much?’ Sadie asked.
‘I like to take all my girlfriends here.’
She laughed too then. But hers was a laugh that felt precious and dainty, quite the opposite of the father, three tables down. Her eyes met mine, just long enough not to embarrass us but to acknowledge our beginning. I knew for certain then, that there, sitting across the red Formica table, with the perfectly placed condiments, was the woman I was ready to love until the life went out of me.
I never attempted to kiss her on our first date. I wanted nothing more than to hold her hand, but as we left the Duncashel Central, I decided against pushing my luck. I walked her home to her lodgings. I was glad she lived the other end of the town. We chatted comfortably all the way to her door and stood doing the same once we’d arrived. We could have been there an hour for all I know. I’m sure it was just a matter of minutes before she started to root in her bag for her key. I’d lost all sense of time, you see, couldn’t have given a damn if it was five in the morning and it was time to milk the cows. I would’ve done it, happily. That’s how she made me feel, happy with the world, with myself.