Part Two
Simple? Trying to cross O’Connell Street at midday had been simpler than what she expected him to take on board. He’d expected trouble more of a domestic nature...not this. Never this. Only in dreams…his dreams to be specific. God, had he shared those dreams with her? Jack couldn’t remember ever telling her about his vivid dreams. Nevertheless, how could she now be telling him about something he had dreamed about alone in his own bed across the sea? The steak and ale they’d had at the cosy pub at lunchtime sat heavily on his stomach now.
The Celtic cross half was on the coffee table. Intricately carved, it was made from a hand span of peat bog thousands of years old, yet now laid out on a soft, purple velvet wrap. According to Kate, the cross was suspected to be around fifteen hundred years old. He watched her face, but saw only sincerity, so at the very least she believed her own tale.
‘Magic you say?’ He knew about these things, because what he was able to do was definitely inexplicable, but this was different; this wasn’t like that at all. She could be crazy—he’d thought about that more than once, but his growing desire for her seemed to be getting in the way of good sense. He glanced around the small room, at the seemingly normal effects; a select few photos of what he supposed were her family were displayed on a windowsill; thrown haphazardly on the floor near the TV on a newish chocolate rug, were some stuffed mix and match cushions. On opposites walls, were two similar oil paintings of a breathtaking scene of a mountain and a cabin somewhere. It stirred some old memory, but it was something elusive and disappeared into a wisp of unconscious memory. He turned to face Kate who was patiently watching his appraisal of her humble abode. ‘Magic? Did you just say, magic?’
Kate nodded; her face a worried mask. She hoped he understood. She didn’t quite understand herself what it was she wanted from him, but was hoping things would become clear.
‘Like, we’re talking real magic?’ He began to think she was leading him up the garden path. Was this all an elaborate ruse to get to know him? Surely not, but then other women thought him a good catch, so why not Kate? He pondered on that knowledge and tried to smile as she leaned over in front of him.
‘I’ll pour the tae,’ she cooed, while she proceeded to pour him more tea without asking. For the love of God, he hated tea. Most of the guys at work drank coffee. Real men swallowed coffee and beer, he thought chauvinistically, not tales from beyond the crypt. But something else that he understood with realistic clarity; he’d probably listen to her weird stories all day just to watch her bend over in front of him and pour the tae. Deftly, she tipped in some milk, dumped a spoon of sugar (also without asking) then handed him the steaming mug.
‘Bloody hell!’ It was molten, though it had taken several moments for his tired brain to register that fact as it was otherwise occupied viewing Kate’s rear end. When the mug hit the floor without ceremony, he jumped up and nearly sent Kate sprawling over the table. After she shrieked, he shook his head and chuckled—more at himself than at what he’d done. An odd reaction for him. He was always more in control of himself.
‘Jaysus, yer tense, and all?’ She frowned crossly at him.
‘What can I say?’ he mumbled sheepishly, and, squatting down on his haunches, passed her several great chunks of the broken, blue ceramic.
‘Sorry’d be a good start, y’great lummox.’ She took the pieces from him impatiently, her alabaster hands curling lightly but expertly around the broken mug with the efficiency of a woman in charge of her life, but unfortunately, this had him grinning even more because by God she was quite beautiful—even when she was cross. He thought perhaps he loved her before he’d even seen her...her quick wit, sharp intellect and passion for history.
‘Ooh!’ she protested and picked up the rest of the pieces of the cup; disappearing into her tiny kitchen muttering and trying hard to ignore the twang of her heartstrings at his boyish expression.
A program on TV danced softly around his ears, as a man interviewed some cute little Irish kids from a school in Athlone. Sooner than expected, Kate returned with the cloth and a smile that warmed him from the toes up to the tips of his hair. He returned the smile, feeling his father’s dimples pull. Armed with a hand towel and new mug, Kate placed the clean, folded towel on the faded rose-studded carpet, and set about making him fresh tea.
His smile faded. ‘Kate, I need to ask you this; why did you lie about the colour of your hair? It makes no sense? You didn’t tell me...you also didn’t let on you were alarmingly…beautiful.’ He expelled the remainder of his breath.
He thought her attractive? Her mouth twitched in attempt to keep the smile at bay—the smile she’d felt since meeting this guy face to face. I wanted y’to like me for who I am...not for what assets I happened to be born with, Jack.’ Her flecked green eyes smouldered with an odd blend indignation and humour.
‘I see...’ Though he did not really see, he kept his thoughts to himself, content with watching the emotions pass across her face like a slowly flickering screen. She was even more beautiful when simmering with anger....wildly intoxicating and he drew a deep breath in the need to steady his racing heart. He wondered if she’d agree to go to bed with him right now if he asked...
Her eyes sparkled with intense emotion and for a moment in time it was as though they were an old married pair locked in an intense argument about an important issue that would affect their lives. ‘Fine,’ she snapped suddenly, and lowered her head.
Uh-oh…the weird Female Logic alarm. His mother and sister were the same. ‘Fine’ didn’t actually mean fine, it meant, ‘You’re in really serious trouble,’ amongst a million other unspoken nuances of applied female logic and rules. He longed to be a mind reader, and thought better of asking her about the going-to-bed thing for now.
Kate fingered her watch and lifted her gaze with arrow sharp precision to stare right into his eyes; right through him. ‘Yer nervous of me,’ she declared.
It was a statement. Black and white, and from what he’d learned of Kate since he met her six months ago online, that was who Kathleen Mary O’Donaghue was. There was no grey area with her. On or off, so he decided to deal the flesh and blood version the same way...magic or not.
‘Yes, I’m nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof, because you’re...well, you’re beautiful, and I’m...’ Restlessly, he took a deep and fortifying breath as he stood up in his search for the right words, and then cast a glance to the view from the kitchen window of her second floor flat in Donnybrook, feeling much like he’d been there before. He turned briefly behind him to see Kate sat silently; her hands folded neatly in her lap in what he deemed as an uncharacteristic posture of patience and submission.
Some of Jack’s mother’s family had come from Ireland—from Down and Omagh, while his father’s family descended from a long line of Welsh miners from somewhere in the north of Wales in Flintshire. Last year his sister had passed comment on a visit to Ireland, ‘I swear Jack...it’s like coming home.’ He’d laughed at her then. Now he knew a slightly more consuming feeling. Descending from the cloud cover and seeing Ireland from the seat of his short flight from Cardiff, he’d felt like he’d never left. He loved his home; was deeply attached to Wales at a grass-roots level, but he also felt something akin to this same feeling here. A feeling of foreboding suddenly washed over him but in an uncharacteristic gesture, he shrugged it off.
Presently, in the distance he spied a couple of gangly young things strolling to the University gates, and a bus stopped on the corner near the phone box from where he’d called his mother not one hour before. Sunlight flashed momentarily across the dying day, and he bid it farewell for now, knowing its performance in the Irish sky would be limited. Somebody started a car up nearby, and another bus rumbled by, and the two guys fixing a window on the flats across the way banged and crashed some more.
Jack plonked down next to her on the worn lounge and winced as something foreign stuck into his rear-end, so he moved closer to her. As she waited for him to finish his tho
ughts, he was conscious of the stale, but not entirely unpleasant odour of cigarette smoke, beer, and other undecipherable things, but caught himself wondering peevishly whether they were remnants of one of Kate’s old boyfriends.
‘Aye...but what else?’ she murmured on an outward breath. ‘What is it Jack?’ Her brown eyes were soft but also mysterious and ancient. Was it worry he detected in her voice? Well, well. He just found a grey area in Kathleen Mary O’Donaghue’s life. Himself. That single fact gave him licence to be brutally honest, and then be done with it. ‘Love me or leave me, Katie-girl, but I think I’ve fallen for you. I feel…kind of like I already know you. Y’know?’
She nodded—so slightly that he wondered if he’d imagined it. The sun chose that moment to sketch its way over to her, casting a glowing burnished aura around her head, and bringing twinkles in her eyes that ground on his heart. Then, she opened her mouth slowly, licked her lips, and then dropped her own bolt of lightning delivered to him on the faint whisper of the breeze. ‘Aye, Jackie...you and me both.’
*