I was in a cafe having a snack in a midlands town, and an old woman was sitting at the next table, talking to the young man beside her about her two newborn lambs. I guessed she was on a day out from some nursing home and he was her son.
“Did you check the house?” she asked him. “I left the keys with Tommy next door.”
“I did,” he replied. “Everything is fine.”
“Is the sheds locked?” she wondered.
“I didn’t check,” he confessed; an answer that only an honest son could give.
“Tommy said there were two lambs,” she said. “Isn’t that great?”
“That’s great,” he agreed.
“What were you doing yesterday?” she wondered. “I tried to call you.”
“I was moving silage,” he said.
She paused. I suspect she didn’t believe him. But she changed the subject.
“And how is the poor hens?” she wondered, as if she were inquiring about her dearest companions.
“They’re good except for the red one,” he said.
“Oh don’t mind her,” the woman said. “That one has a disease. She’ll die soon; like myself.”
The comment was so bleak and without self-pity that I gagged on my fruit scone and splattered crumbs all over the table.
“She survived the winter,” the son said, regarding the hen.
“I survived the winter too,” the old woman said, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll go on forever.”
Then she saw me and she whispered something to the young man. The young man turned to look at me.
“That’s him,” the woman said.
“It’s not,” the son said. “It couldn’t be. Not here.”
Heads turned away
Clearly I wasn’t who they thought I was, because they kept their heads turned away when I was leaving the cafe.
I walked through the centre of town, where young women were pushing old buggies towards the post office, and a little boy was holding his father’s hand outside the bookie’s shop, as his father buried his nose in a phone screen.
I checked into my hotel and on the way to my room I noticed a sign on the wall beside the elevator, saying that suitable clothes were to be worn at all times in the hotel. And in case anyone might be in doubt as to what suitable clothes meant, there was a further sign declaring that pyjamas were not to be worn in the dining area at breakfast.
A woman dressed in a hotel uniform waited beside me for the same elevator.
“Clearly this is a very friendly hotel,” I joked, “if people want to come for breakfast in their onesies.”
She didn’t laugh.
“We get a lot of people from Dublin,” she explained. “For weddings.”
And, right on cue, the door of the elevator opened and there before us stood a glowing bride, flanked by two tuxedoed gentlemen in a state of collective glee.
That night I heard the Hokey Pokey and lots of Abba songs leaking up into my room from the lounge below, and occasionally the sound of men’s voices on the corridor shouting each other’s names, as if they were on a busy Dublin street in the middle of the afternoon and not in a country hotel at 3am in the morning.
I drifted in and out of sleep until about five o’clock, when the phone on my bedside locker rang, and a red light flashed on and off.
“Hello?” I began.
Strong Dublin accent
A woman with a strong Dublin accent responded with authority.
“Could you send up a bottle of Champagne to the room, please,” she commanded.
“Not possible,” I replied.
“It most certainly is possible,” she countered. “We are all residents. Room 343.”
“I can’t send you up champagne,” I said, “because I don’t have any.”
“Are you f***ing joking?” she asked. “This is a four-star hotel. You must have Champagne! How much did you people make on my daughter’s wedding this afternoon, and now you’re telling me you don’t have Champagne, just because it’s past midnight?”
“It’s past 5am,” I said relishing the confusion and wanting to prolong it as much as I could.
“Actually, I’m in bed,” I declared.
“And what the f**k are you doing in bed?” she screamed. “What kind of night porter are you, anyway?”
“I’m not a night porter,” I declared, knowing that the fun was over. “I’m a guest in another room.”
The penny dropped. She slammed down the phone, and I lay wide-eyed in the darkness, contemplating the grim possibility of meeting her at breakfast, in her pyjamas.