Mary Kate entered the library feeling glad to be out of the wind and rain. She shook the water off her umbrella, folded it and left it upside-down in the lobby.
She went inside to look for a comfortable chair in which to sit and read for half an hour before going to stand at the bus-stop at the top of the street: a bus at five o'clock would bring her home to her cottage by the shore. She had only gone in to the town to collect her pension and avail of the free offer of a make-up demonstration in the chemist's.
The beauty therapist, what a fancy name, had assured her that all the rejuvenating, revitalising, restoring, reinventing creams definitely made her look ten years younger. Mary Kate smiled at herself in the mirror, forked out half her pension and hoped it would be money well spent.
There was a vacant chair beside a distinguished-looking, well-dressed, silver-haired gentleman who was wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and examining the business section of the newspaper.
Mary Kate was intrigued. Since retiring from her Civil Service clerical job almost a year ago she had been trying to meet a fine-looking prosperous gentleman, with clean fingernails, who might be glad of her as an amiable “n\s companion for friendship, dining out, country walks etc.". In her mind's eye she could see the advert she had almost put in the local paper. Now this fellow ... he could be what she was looking for.
Nonchalantly, despite her slightly fluttering heart, Mary Kate walked a little closer to examine the books in his vicinity. Gingerly fingering thrillers' spines, she sniffed the air: no sense of any tobacco smoke - he must be a non-smoker then. So far, so good.
She sneaked another look at him; he was too engrossed in the newspaper to notice. He must be educated, wealthy: examining the stock market. "I hope he hasn't lost everything!” Mary Kate panicked. Still, she consoled herself, if he had money to spare for stocks and shares he must have been well-off in the first place. He'll do, she decided.
Now ... how to create an impression ... get noticed? Rather more difficult at sixty years of age, wearing flat sensible shoes and a wet raincoat than it had been in her heyday when no man was good enough for her and she had scorned every proposal - always waiting for the elusive Mr. Perfectly Right who never turned up before the dates and proposals came to an end.
"Eileen," Mary Kate spoke loudly and imperiously at the desk, in her poshest accent, "do you think you could find me a book on cordon-bleu cookery?" She hoped she had pronounced "bleu" correctly. "I'm entertaining a dinner party for twelve next week and want to make something special. You know how it is when one's friends expect one to come up with new and exciting dishes all the time." That’il impress him, she thought; any man with money could do with a domestic goddess in the kitchen.
The librarian looked puzzled: she had not had a request for a cordon bleu cookery book in at least twenty years. "Let's see," she said amiably, leading the way to the Cookery section.
Eileen does not know much about cookery.
"Are any of these any good?" she asked: “'Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook'; ‘A Taste of Ireland'; Jamie Oliver's, ‘The Naked Chef'?”
"No, I don't think that's quite what I'm after, but I'll have a look myself. Maybe Mary Berry will have a nice recipe for a 'warm salad with pears and stilton'.
Mary Kate had just opened the book at page seventy and there it was ... but the man with the stocks and shares was not showing the slightest bit of interest, despite her beautifully enunciated vowels. Well, the way to his heart is not going to be through his stomach, she thought worriedly, heaving the big cookery book back onto the high unused shelf. I'm going to have to try something else.
Mary Kate looked him up and down. He was wearing trainers. Back to the desk she went with her loudest, politest voice. "Eileen, would you have a book on hill-walking in the Mournes? Now that I am retired from my senior position in the Civil Service and have a comfortable home and no husband to take up my time, I think I would like to take up hill-walking, if I could entice anyone to accompany me!"
Luckily, this library is empty apart from the three of us, she observed, glancing surreptitiously at the avid reader of the newspaper. A nice roaring fire and a pair of slippers would go with him nicely; she pictured a scene of perfect domesticity.
Eileen caught Mary Kate's wayward glance and began to feel that her library was being turned into a dating agency.
"Hill-walking ... mmm ... we don't get asked for that much. The local hill-walkers are mainly sheep-farmers, and they have no call to come in here and read books about it". She humped off to fetch a stool and once again sought out the highest, most irritatingly inaccessible, shelves.
"Mourne Country by E. Estyn Evans, published 1978. Will that do you? I don't suppose the mountains will have changed much since then."
Eileen handed the hardback to Mary Kate who opened it quickly at Appendix 4 and gushed, "Newcastle really is 'the best jumping-off place', isn't it?" She warmed to her theme. "Such beautiful scenery, wonderful walks, glorious forests and rivers and a fabulous new promenade - it must have cost millions of pounds. There is so much of the great outdoors to enjoy around Newcastle; I just love going out in my trainers and having a lovely long, energetic walk before a delightful lunch or afternoon tea in one of the more comfortable hotels or restaurants. You really can't beat it, can you?" but the librarian was away off to a corner with the stool and the man with the newspaper remained unaffected.
Mary Kate sat down beside him and opened ‘Mourne Country’ at Chapter 20- House and Hearth. This looks promising, she thought, picturing them sitting reading cosily together in his grand house, warmed by the glow of a huge roaring log fire and a couple of glasses of fine vintage port.
''Mourne, sweet Mourne, the place I was born in
There's no other country has charm for me.”
As she read the opening extract from a Mourne ballad, Mary Kate had another idea: he might be an intellectual.
"Eileen," she demanded urgently at the desk, do you have any poetry? In the evenings when I have eaten a delectable dinner that I have cooked myself, and am sitting at a glowing log-fire in my parlour, I often like to turn off my new 52 inch LCD HD satellite TV that has all the channels, including sport, and read a poetry book from my library. What can you show me today?" Glancing at the lone reader by the window she noticed that not even her mantrap of a television had prompted any reaction.
What kind of a man is he at all, she wondered, before adding, " I particularly enjoy love poetry. I am such a romantic at heart. Have you anything by the Romantics?"
"I've got the very thing to suit you." The librarian led the way to the meagre poetry section. "'The Long Embrace Twentieth Century Irish Love Poems'. Have a look at that."
Mary Kate grasped the book eagerly and opened it at 'The Net":
"Quick, woman, in your net,
Catch the silver I fling!"
A sudden movement in the corner of the library distracted her: he was rising out of his seat - getting away - putting a hearing-aid onto his ear; taking a walking-stick from the side of a bookshelf; limping off in his trainers!
"Eileen, the bunions are really playing me up today. I'm looking forward to going home with a fish supper when I collect the missus from the hairdresser's. I'll be putting my feet up later on to watch Coronation Street. I think I'll book us a cruise to shorten the winter ... reckon we can just about afford it."
Silently, Eileen returned his cheerful smile, and he hobbled out of the library, tapping his steel-tipped stick on the tiled floor and stepping stiffly over the puddle in the doorway.
Mary Kate read a bit more of W.R. Rodgers' poem:
"Open the haul and shake
The fill of shillings free."
She snapped the book shut, flung it onto the loosely-packed poetry shelf, walked quickly to the door, grabbed her umbrella, pushed it open in the pouring rain and marched to the bus-stop.
Maybe the bus will be empty and the driver will be that nice bachelor who grows spuds on his farm, hides bags of them in his cab - for fear of Ulsterbus inspectors - and sells them to his passengers. I didn't buy any when I was in the town today, so I could take two bags. Then he might help me off the bus and carry then up the wee path to my front door.
By the time she had reached the bus-stop Mary Kate was hoping there would be no other passengers on the Mourne Rambler so that she could sit up at the front and talk to the driver. She could tell him about her new TV, the great view of football matches there was on it, the lovely scones she had baked that morning and would be having for tea with home-made damson and sloe-gin jam.
Any mature man in possession of a decent job and a small farm must be in need of a wife with a pension she decided defiantly ... and not entirely without hope.
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