The Mistletoe Matchmaker

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  Cassie laughed and quoted some stylist who’d said that a hairdresser’s chair was the same as a therapist’s couch. ‘Anyway, I’ve always been a meddler. I’ve got matchmaking in my genes!’

  Bríd, whose back teeth were still almost welded together, said nothing.

  After they’d eaten, Aideen decided she’d go upstairs, shower and put on a dressing-gown. She might as well be as comfortable as Bríd, she said, if they were going to have to go through more lists for the Winter Fest.

  Cassie, who had plans to go out, said she’d do the washing-up, if Bríd would dry. The last thing Bríd wanted was a girly chat at the sink, but Cassie was already stacking plates and rattling knives and forks.

  ‘It’s no problem, I’ve half an hour to kill. And, anyway, if there’s two of us, we’ll whip through it at speed.’

  With no option, Bríd smiled, and went to get a tea towel from the drawer.

  To begin with, it all went fine. She told Cassie again how great the pasta had been, and asked about the paprika and herbs. That got the plates washed and dried and the cutlery dripping on the drainer. Then, as they moved on to the pots and pans, Cassie mentioned the drink she’d had the other night with Dan. ‘That time he and I went to Moran’s, after the committee meeting?’

  As soon as Bríd had come in, Dan had jumped up to get her a drink. Earlier on, at the meeting, their eyes had met across the table. It was one of those secret looks that made her long to be alone with him, and she’d known that he’d go home with her that night. Having exchanged it under the eyes of all those po-faced committee members had made it kind of funny and extra sexy, so she’d turned up at the pub in a great mood.

  And they’d had a good time. She’d even been glad that Cassie was there, because that kept the conversation general. It had been an easy, relaxed evening followed by a great night’s sex, and none of the intense emotional stuff that she’d carefully been fending off.

  Now Cassie pushed her fringe out of her eyes with a soapy forearm. ‘Is Dan okay?’

  Bríd’s eyes narrowed. ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, I just thought he might be bothered about something. He didn’t say he was but I wonder if he is? It wasn’t just that night in Moran’s either. I met him again yesterday and he still seemed kind of troubled.’

  At that moment something snapped inside Bríd. To her horror she heard her voice sounding over-loud and pompous. ‘You know something, Cassie? You really need to mind your own business.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. You may not have noticed, but you’re not a relationship counsellor. You’re a hairdresser. And you don’t belong here, you’re just passing through. So don’t imagine we’ve all been sitting waiting for someone to come and fix us. We’re just fine. I don’t need your advice, and nor does Aideen. And nor does Dan – just in case you’ve been making any plans.’

  Cassie looked more amused than angry. ‘Making plans? What does that mean?’

  ‘Take it any way you please. I’m just warning you. Back off.’

  ‘Oh, my God, you think I fancy him!’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘It’s what you mean.’

  Actually it wasn’t. Bríd was just furious with Dan. What was he at, making strangers feel she was neglecting him? Because that was what it amounted to. He’d said something to Cassie – or, okay, he hadn’t said anything, but he’d been going round with that hangdog look he kept wearing lately – and now Cassie was accusing her of being unsympathetic. Or insensitive. Or both. And she knew she was being unsympathetic. She didn’t need a cocky Canadian hairdresser pointing it out.

  Slamming the wet tea towel down on the work surface, Bríd suddenly realised she was eaten up with guilt. And she’d been so busy resenting it that she hadn’t asked herself why. The fact was that she probably did love bloody Dan Cafferky. And now she’d have to deal with what that meant.

  Still, better for Cassie to think she was suspicious than to know that she’d hit a nerve.

  ‘Well, I can tell you this anyway – you’re wasting your time if you fancy your chances with Dan.’

  Cool as a cucumber, Cassie glanced round to check on the kitchen, before turning back and meeting her eyes. ‘You know what, Bríd? You’re right. That would be a waste of time. Because, as it happens, I’m perfectly fine with my own guy. He’s a grown-up.’

  37

  IM AFTER MAKING SCONES U CD BRI%G A POT OF JAM

  Sitting at her kitchen table, Mary Casey pinged her text into the ether and immediately typed another:

  NOT RHUBARB

  Laying the phone down, she looked at the scones that were cooling on her wire rack. You’d think, after baking scones all these years, she’d remember how many her recipe would yield. Yet here she was again, with nine of them needing to be eaten. Louisa liked a nice fruit scone with a cup of tea of an afternoon, but Louisa was slim as a sally and never came back for seconds.

  Still, having Pat over for morning coffee would put paid to a fair few of them anyway. Pat had never been much good at the baking. She made a decent jar of jam, though, so long as it wasn’t rhubarb. The way that Pat added ginger to rhubarb jam was only woeful. And the way she wouldn’t be told was far worse.

  Mind you, if she was no hand at scones, Pat had always been good at dressmaking. Better than Mary herself, though it wouldn’t do to admit it, because if you gave Pat an inch she’d take a mile. Of course, she’d never had the figure that Mary had and, back at school, she’d been flat as a board, right up till they’d done their Leaving. She was good at running up frocks that made the best of what she had, though. Not that it made much difference in the end. She’d got no great catch in Ger Fitzgerald.

  Back when they were girls, she and Pat used to spend whole weekends cutting out and sewing. Mary had had a treadle sewing machine. It had a wooden stand, and a base made of curly ironwork. There was a long box at the side, where you kept the bobbins, and the bits and pieces you fixed to the foot to do things she’d never quite got a grasp of. It had come with a book that would tell you what they were. Pat had the whole thing mastered, of course, but that was no great wonder if you had to dress as carefully as she did.

  Standing up from the table, Mary went to get a cloth from the sink. No matter what way you put your scones on a rack, you always got crumbs falling onto the table beneath it. Lifting the rack by its wire rim, she gingerly swiped the crumbs aside and folded them into her J Cloth. Then, having set the rack down again, she shook the crumbs into the sink and ran the tap to dismiss them.

  Tom had never cared for a fruit scone. The day that she’d first seen him, she’d known that they’d be married, and he’d always said he’d felt the same way about her. She and Pat had gone to a match and he’d been centre-forward. She’d seen him before in Crossarra, where an old, bad-tempered cousin of his had kept the post office; but he wouldn’t be round Lissbeg, except after school.

  The day after the match, he was hanging round the horse trough with a crowd of other fellows from the Brothers’. Pat didn’t want to cross the road from the convent gate, in case they’d be seen. But Mary didn’t give a hoot for old Benignus. There was no harm in talking to a fellow bang in the middle of Broad Street. Anyway, she’d always been the nuns’ pet, and the bishop was her mam’s uncle.

  Tom was going out with Nuala Devane at the time. They weren’t doing a steady line – or, if they were, it ended pretty quickly. Nuala’s dad had the dancehall in Sheep Street and her mam sold tickets at the door. You’d see Nuala herself selling red lemonade through a hatch at the end of the hall. Her eyes were always on Tom when he and Mary were dancing. All the girls used to be looking at Tom, though he never seemed to notice. It never bothered Mary, not even when she spotted Pat was one of them. What else would they do but look at him and envy what was hers?

  Tom was different to the other fellows, the way he’d be quiet and gentle. He was always off doing jobs for his aunt Maggie – setting her spuds, and doing her shopping, and
keeping her company round in her shed of a house. That house in its sloping field gave Mary the shivers. It was wild old-fashioned, and Maggie Casey was an old besom with hardly a penny to bless herself. So Tom wasn’t there by her fire for what he could get. He said she was lonely.

  The first time Mary complained about the time he spent round in Maggie’s place, she’d thought she’d have him toeing the line at once. It was the shock of her life when she’d found that he wouldn’t budge. But, having lost a battle, she’d known better than to start fighting a war. Instead she’d bided her time and, when Hanna was old enough, she’d taken to sending her round to give Maggie a hand. That was how Maggie had ended up leaving the house and the field to Hanna, and people probably thought that had been Mary’s plan from the start. The truth was that she’d no interest in an old bothán on a cliff or who’d fall in for it. But if Tom didn’t need to go fussing round Maggie he’d stay at home minding his wife.

  It was the same thing with Ger Fitz.

  Tom had loads of friends. There were the lads in the GAA, and the crowd he’d hung round in school with. And Mary had always loved the way he was popular. People didn’t just envy her because of how he looked, or how he treated her: he was a good man, and everyone knew it, and Mary was proud to think that she’d been his choice. She’d told him so before he died, because she’d wanted him to know it. But that had been in the ambulance, on the dreadful rush to the hospital, and she wasn’t sure that he’d heard her because he’d been in so much pain.

  Anyway, Ger Fitz was the one friend that she hadn’t been sure about. The fact was that he was another Maggie Casey, needing care and taking up Tom’s time. Most of the time he’d never utter a word but he’d always be talking to Tom. You’d see his face sometimes, when Tom wasn’t looking, and you’d know how much he depended on him because he had no one else.

  She could see from the start how that would go on after she and Tom were married. Ger would be turning up all the time, wanting a hand or looking for Tom’s advice. And, to make things worse, she knew that Ger had kind of fallen for herself. The thing was that she and Pat and Ger and Tom used to be a foursome. And, though they’d had great craic together, things had got tricky at the end.

  Mary straightened the wire rack that she’d put down slightly crooked. Moving it caused a couple of spots of flour to fall onto the table, so she licked her finger, picked them up and rubbed them away on her hand.

  Having found Tom, she’d known that she’d never want another fellow but, back then, it had felt strange to think that her bed was made. She hadn’t set out to chat up Ger Fitzgerald. She’d hardly looked at him, really. But she’d known he was looking at her. And what harm was there in that?

  What she didn’t know was whether Tom or Pat had ever noticed. But what if they had? Mary had always had lads looking at her. Even now, if she put her mind to it, she knew she could turn heads. Not that she’d be running round at her time of life like she needed a man. That would be pure indecent. These days she’d settle for a bit of companionship from the likes of Louisa and Pat. And, anyway, no one on earth could replace Tom.

  Still, she hoped to God that Tom hadn’t noticed the way Ger used to look at her. It was the sort of thing she thought about now and she lying alone in the bed.

  It was good, in a way, though, that Ger had got fond because, otherwise, he’d never have married Pat. Mary hadn’t fixed it, of course. How could she? But she’d known that that was what would happen as soon as she’d accepted Tom. And she was glad of it. It was a case of killing two birds with one stone. You wouldn’t want poor Pat left on the shelf when she and Tom were married. And with Ger married there was less chance he’d be hanging around poor Tom.

  And that was how it had worked out. Mind you, it seemed to have driven Ger right back into himself. No one could call him a bad husband, but Pat can’t have had much fun in her life with him sitting there like a block.

  Still, what would Ger Fitz have to say for himself that you’d want to be listening to anyway? And wasn’t she herself there, like always, if Pat wanted to talk?

  38

  Because everything in Carrick was on a scale that was smaller than Cassie was used to, she found it charming. Shay took her to some really cool restaurants, and a couple of his friends from work played Irish traditional music and knew all the pubs where the landlords were happy for people to start up a session. When Cassie mentioned that in number eight Bríd dismissed the music as ghastly stuff that was only played in tourist traps. Cassie liked it, though. One of Shay’s friends was seriously good and played a mean accordion. The other had explained to Cassie that all you needed to play a bodhrán was an inherent sense of rhythm. It became pretty evident that that wasn’t so but, if you got the right seat and enough players were crowded round the table, laughing and talking and playing, you could have a fun night.

  And it hardly mattered where they went because everything was fun with Shay. They saw a play that turned out to be deeply boring, but the jokes he’d whispered under his breath had nearly made her laugh out loud. He’d found her an app she hadn’t even thought of looking for, which gave her masses of facts about Finfarran’s history. He took her to the cinema in the Omniplex, and to the Aquadome, and taught her a showy butterfly stroke that she hadn’t known before.

  A couple of times they drove for miles on the long roads east of Carrick, where flocks of grey Canada geese grazed in the marshy fields. The first time they went that way they found a pub that looked like it hadn’t had an update since the 1950s. There was a roaring fire in a back parlour, where there were chintz armchairs and a round oak table; and Shay ordered hot whiskeys with brown sugar, lemon, and cloves.

  The next time they went there it was lunchtime, and they sat in the same parlour, eating bacon and cabbage. Cassie had wrinkled her nose when Shay ordered it, but it turned out to be piles of wafer-thin slices of delicious ham interleaved with tender, buttery cabbage, and served with roast potatoes so good that they kept asking for more. In the end, the landlady had laughed at them, and said they’d better leave room for a bit of pudding. It was lemon cake, served with thick cream as well as homemade custard, and afterwards they’d tramped for miles on the chilly, windswept marshes, and driven back to Carrick actually feeling hungry for tea.

  Shay always seemed to get the best table in a restaurant, and complimentary drinks would often appear at the end of a meal. He laughed when Cassie mentioned it, and said that being a guard never hurt. People got to know you, even if you didn’t belong to a place, and, yeah, there might be perks involved, but the bottom line was that good policing meant knowing your community.

  ‘So you’re not from round here?’

  ‘We moved a lot when I was a kid because of my dad’s job. My parents live in Limerick now.’

  He had no great plans for where he’d end up physically but he’d worked out a proper career plan because that was the only way to get ahead.

  ‘Is it hard to get promotion?’

  ‘Competitive as hell. The trick is to drive the interviews yourself by getting the right stuff down on your application.’

  ‘And how do you know what that is?’

  ‘I ask my dad.’ Shay grinned. ‘No, that’s not true. It’s pretty straightforward. But I won’t bore you with it.’

  But actually he’d gone on about it a lot. According to his dad, the key to a successful application was to focus on Context, Action, and Result. ‘Summarise a problem you’ve faced in your current job. How you proceeded. What was the outcome. Get it down. Keep it concise. Stick to your plan when you’re interviewed. Make sure to sell them what they want.’

  ‘Wow. Talk about focused. You’re going to end up as a chief superintendent or something.’

  ‘Not me. I’m no careerist. Just a guy who wants to get on.’

  Cassie liked that. He had his future planned, but he wasn’t driven. And he didn’t talk about the minutiae of his work. The bodhrán guy had cornered her in the pub once and given her a list of
the most common incidences of rural Irish crime. Fortunately, Shay had rescued her. Blowing on the nape of her neck, he’d kissed her tattoo and told his mate to shut up. ‘Cassie isn’t interested in thefts of farm equipment and diesel. She doesn’t want to hear the story of our boring, plodding lives.’

  But the next time that they’d been alone, he’d told her something pretty exciting. He’d been working as part of a team that was keeping an eye on a criminal gang.

  ‘Why not just arrest them?’

  ‘Because now’s not the time.’

  ‘You’re just trying to sound mysterious.’

  ‘Okay. If that’s what you want to believe.’ Shay flashed his eyebrows at her. ‘It’s a big deal, though. The right stuff to be involved in if you want to make your mark.’

  Cassie had frowned. ‘And should you be telling me about it?’

  ‘Nope. Which is why I know you’re not going to pass it on.’

  She’d liked that, too, because it showed she was trusted. Though, later on, she’d realised that what she’d really liked was the fact that he’d wanted to impress her.

  Later still, she wondered why she hadn’t found it pathetic that a man his age and in his position would go round showing off. But that was after he’d taken her to the Royal Victoria Hotel.

  It was late afternoon and she’d driven to Carrick and left her car parked by the county library. Walking into town, she’d seen Shay coming towards her. They’d arranged to meet in a café when his shift was over, but now he took her by the shoulders instead and pointed across the street. ‘Have you ever been into the Royal Vic?’ Steering her through the traffic, he led her up shallow steps to a hotel entrance where double doors opened into a perfect Victorian reception hall, full of velvet upholstery and dark, carved chairs.

  The lounge bar was dark, too, with half-drawn blinds and huge brass ceiling fans. There were brass vases of holly on tall mahogany stands, wreathed in garlands, and immensely discreet fairy lights twinkling among the bottles on mirror-backed shelves. As Cassie and Shay walked between the heavy crimson curtains that were looped back in the doorway, a barman appeared and ushered them to a table.