‘How’s the self-portrait coming along?’
‘Grand.’ Maureen was pleased with it. She felt she’d captured her essence and yes, so what if she’d shaved a few years off and given herself a lovely big head of hair like her favourite actress from Ballykissangel, Dervla Kirwan. Better that than the modernistic style Rosemary Farrell was after painting. She said it was reminiscent of Picasso’s style only in watercolour and she thought she might give it to her daughter who had a big birthday coming up. Maureen thought it might finish her off, poor love, ripping off the paper and being confronted by a face that would drive rats from the barn, but she’d kept that to herself.
‘I hope it’s going to be hanging on my wall.’
Maureen giggled. ‘Ah, you don’t want me looking down at you from your wall when you’re trying to watch the tele.’
‘I wouldn’t mind having you keep an eye on me.’ His grey eyes danced.
She blushed and was grateful for the flickering candlelight as she changed the subject. ‘I had a postcard from Aisling today. She wrote that she and Quinn are having a whale of a time over there in Sweden, only she doesn’t write it like that. Every sentence starts with ‘my husband and I’ like she’s the Queen.’
‘Newlyweds.’ Donal commented with a smile.
Maureen smiled back, acutely aware of his knee resting against hers under the table. ‘They’ve seen the Northern Lights and fed Reindeer. They’ve even been on a sleigh ride pulled by doggies.’
‘Huskies.’
Maureen nodded and then frowned. ‘I still don’t know why you’d want to have your honeymoon somewhere you’d have to wear more layers than an onion has skins but my girls always have to rub against the grain.’
Donal winked. ‘I’m sure they’re finding plenty of ways to keep themselves warm.’
Maureen’s face grew hot in a way it hadn’t since she’d gone through the menopause. She could have done with the big fan she’d carried around with her for the best part of a year, like a genteel lady from Victorian times, now, to hide coquettishly behind. Only back then there’d been nothing genteel about the way she used to rattle the bottle of Vitamin B6 tablets her doctor had prescribed to settle her hormones whenever someone in the family was annoying. It was a warning to them they were entering into what she called the danger zone. All that rattling and fan beating had been very exhausting.
She was saved from having to answer by the arrival of the wine. It was a rich, ruby red colour which Donal assured her after going through the palaver of swirling and then tasting the tiddly amount Antony poured into the bottom of his glass, was a warm, oaky flavour. ‘That will do nicely,’ he said, and when their glasses had been filled and Antony had disappeared, he turned his attention to Maureen. ‘Now then, I wanted to talk to you about a luncheon date for when your Aisling and Quinn are home and have got their breath back. What do you think to us going to Johnnie Fox’s over there in Wicklow; the seafood’s very good I hear?’
Maureen sat up straighter in her chair. ‘Oh, look here comes the garlic bread.’ It was only a temporary diversion she knew but it would give her the chance to gather her thoughts because she knew what was coming next.
The herby, buttered bread was placed in front of them and they each helped themselves, taking a bite while it was steaming hot.
Donal waggled what was left of his loaf in Maureen’s direction. ‘As I was saying. What do you think to Johnnie Fox’s? I’d very much like our two families to meet. I feel as though I’m sneaking around behind their backs and I’m too old for that sort of carry on. I’m very proud to be seen out and about with you, Maureen, and I don’t want to have to make excuses to my girls as to where I’m going and what I’m doing any longer.’
It was the most masterful she’d heard Donal sound and her legs went weak under the table. He reminded her of Daniel Day Lewis in her favourite role of his Last of the Mohicans only with the look of Kenny Rogers about him. She quashed the image of Donal rampaging through the Irish countryside in a loin cloth and concentrated on her garlic bread so as she didn’t have to meet his eyes.
Donal had told her his girls. Louise and Anna had taken to ringing him constantly since Ida had passed despite having busy lives of their own to be paying attention to. She’d had a heart attack at the wheel of her car and mercifully nobody else had been killed but it had come as such shock to them all losing her all of a sudden. Even now, four years later, his daughters wanted to know where their dad was and what he was doing, in case. He’d told them his heart was perfectly fine and he wasn’t going anywhere but their sense of security had died along with their mother. It was a sad state of affairs and if he was learning to live again then they needed to learn to do so too. ‘They like to think they’re looking after me the way their mother would have wanted them to but Ida would have wanted me to get on with things and she certainly wouldn’t have wanted me to be reliant on our children.’ Maureen had listened carefully to what he’d said and come back with the reply that children never see their parents as adults with
