And there was Bridget, looking sexier than ever. Her dress was leather – or pleather, it was hard to tell under the studio lights – with a zip that went all the way from top to bottom.
‘Clodagh… thank you…’ She smiled at the camera. ‘But I’m not going to do the weather right now. You all know what it has been like where you are. Let’s just say that it will be more of the same tomorrow. But what I do want to do is pay tribute to Clodagh Cassidy who has been presenting this very news bulletin for the last ten years. And, guess what folks, today is her last day…’
The camera panned to Clodagh who was holding her earpiece with one hand, as though someone was shouting into it, and also trying to remember she was on camera and that it was a good idea to smile. So she did.
‘And I’ll be taking over from Clodagh. From Monday, I’ll be your new news reader and I’m going to make sure that all of you get your fix of the headlines and that we have a bit of fun too. Life isn’t all doom and gloom, is it?’ She smiled broadly at the camera, giving it a cheeky wink. ‘See you all here at six o’clock on Monday.’
Panning out, we saw Clodagh who was gesturing to someone off-camera. ‘Thank you, Bridget,’ she said recovering herself. ‘And I wish you the best in your new role.’
My phone beeped. Red.
Are you watching? She’s some mover.
I texted back:
And she was interested in you. You could have been Mr Bridget O’Flaherty.
And then it beeped again.
You’re my type. Meet me at the bandstand at 8 p.m.?
Another beep.
Forgot to say, I love you.
Before
Waiting for Red at the bandstand on the pier in Dun Laoghaire. I am twenty-one years old. I’m wearing jeans and his jacket that I’d been wearing for months now. And there he is, wearing an old navy fisherman’s jumper, his hands in his pockets and he is looking around, at the boats bobbing beside the pier, tied to their buoys, the seagulls ahead, the skittering clouds. It’s a beautiful evening. And then he sees me, and his face breaks into the most beautiful smile, and I can feel it inside, happiness exploding like a firework in my chest. Red Power. The man I love, the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. And he begins to run towards me. And that’s all I want, everything I love. As the great seer Johnny Logan would say, ‘we’ll always be together, forever in love…’
*
And here I am eighteen years later, older and not particularly wiser. But as soon as I see him, I feel the same. It has never gone away, those feelings, I never stopped loving him. I just learned to pack them up and not to look at them.
He’s sitting on the steps of the bandstand and when he sees me, it’s the same smile and I smile too and he stands up and waits for me and I break into an awkward little skip and then next minute his arms are around me and it’s him. It’s Red Power and we’re us again and there are fireworks. We never went away. We just… we just had some other stuff we needed to sort out. But it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, because nothing has changed, we are still the same.
‘I wish I’d known that you and Michael weren’t happy,’ he said, holding my hand. ‘I would have rescued you from Fuck Me Foggy, ridden up on a white horse. Or my bicycle or whatever, and taken you away.’
‘It was so stupid. All of it. But I have Rosie and I wouldn’t change an ounce of her. Not one thing. I would do it all again, just to have her exactly the same as she is. She’s been the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.’
‘I’m going to apply for the position to be the number two best thing.’
‘You don’t have to apply.’
He smiled at me. ‘Let’s never let that happen again, all right. Let’s always be Red and Tab or Tab and Red. Let’s be us forever. Deal?’
‘Deal. So, I heard from the department that if you want, you can stay another year in Star of the Sea. We’d love to have you, if you stay… Or maybe you’d like to go to the other school. It did sound like a good offer.’
‘They wrote to me too,’ he said. ‘And I would like to have another year being around you. I’d like a lifetime of being around you. So, I’m going to stay.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’ We grinned at each other.
‘You’re the reason I stayed away for so long. I came back because Dad had been ill… but I hadn’t ever stopped thinking about you. I hadn’t ever moved on...’
‘Nor me...’
‘I was curious, you know. I wondered how your story, your life was turning out. The one that got away. Or ran away.’
‘And then you came to the school. Was that a coincidence?’
He shrugged. ‘Kind of. Who knows? I saw it advertised and I knew it was your school. I had known that by a very rudimentary Google search. And something made me apply… and then I was in. I think… I think I just wanted to make sure you were all right, that life was working out for you. I needed to know you were happy and I would have been fine with that. Wished you well and then maybe I would have settled down with someone. But…’
‘But what?’
‘You didn’t seem happy, deeply happy. Not really. That first day we met in your office, it was like a light had gone out… I wanted to be there for you, sort it out. I didn’t know what to do… But as far as I knew, you were happily married.’
‘And then my life began imploding,’ I said. ‘Did you, by chance, have anything to do with that?’
‘What? Your husband running off with his secretary, your mother organising a protest outside your school?’ He shook his head. ‘If only I had such powers, I would have put them to better use.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the two of us flying on a magic carpet to the terrace of a palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice to drink Bellinis.’
‘The last one’s possible,’ I said. ‘Rosie’s even saying she thinks she will be able to go away with her friends in a couple of weeks. She’s even thinking of getting a summer job and…’
‘And what?’
‘I think she’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘I’m so proud of her.’
He smiled. ‘So Venice?’
I nodded. ‘Oh God yes!’
‘However,’ he said, ‘I can’t do the magic carpet. Would Ryanair be an adequate substitution? I’ll book it tonight and find a palazzo fit for you.’
‘On one condition,’ I said.
‘Anything.’
‘That you don’t do any Johnny Logan songs in Venice.’
‘What? But that was going to be the big moment, when I get dressed up in a white suit and be Johnny. I thought that would clinch the deal.’
‘Deal?’
‘I’ll just have to think of another way to get you to marry me.’ He smiled at me. ‘But we can talk about that another time.’ He took my hand again and kissed it. ‘Oh Tabitha Thomas, what a spell you cast on me.’ He held me tightly and I clung on.
‘Dad’s poetry was reviewed in the New York Times yesterday,’ said Red. ‘He’s delighted. Peggy and the poetry gang are going to have a special party. You’ll have to come.’
‘Of course. What did the review say?’
‘A talented voice singing new songs of Irish freedom… something like that anyway. Dad has it cut out. The book should do well.’
‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘When can I buy a copy?’
‘It’s being launched next month. Now, you know he is giving every penny in royalties to the school…’
‘What?’
‘He doesn’t want it. For the school coffers, he said. Tab,’ he laughed at my shocked face. ‘He’s an old communist He doesn’t want to make money out of art. He wants the school to have it.’
‘I don’t know what to say…’
‘Allow an old man the feeling that he might be doing some good.’
The full-length of the pier, we walked with arms around each other, as though we were one person, and talked and talked and talked. Just like we used to, as though nothing had happened except for a couple of weeks away. And the seagulls soared along with our hearts and love and life was in the air
*
I woke really early, thinking of all the people in my life that meant so much. Rosie, Rosaleen, Red… and Nora.