Tina's Victory

Tina came round to tell me properly, face to face. I'm not really face to face with tina because she is so much taller than me, with her large deep brown eyes and deep brown hair. She even dresses in deep brown most of the time. All deep and moody and emotional - she is an actress. No-one knows that.
Every now and then there is a phonecall from Dublin and she hares off, loaded with suitcases and strange packages. Of course the brown clothes stay back here in Connemara - it's red and maroon velvets for auditions.
Her room is empty for a week. Then she reappears as if nothing has happened (it often has), and does not talk about it. One summer she was to and fro like a yoyo, all dole money spent on travel expenses. Some film, or something secret in the pipeline.
Then you're sitting in thepictures and she suddenly says,
"Yes, I'm in this one. In a minute I walk right across the terrace and speak to HIM," and as sure as fate, there she is up on the screen. Her face is filling up the entire screen, her ears hitting both Exit signs and the camera closes up on the smiling brown eyes. And here she is, in real life, sitting gloomily chomping on popcorn and moaning that the rain has got into her shoes.
"And there's a pain creeping up my shoulder as well," she whispers, while her screen self meanders into a drawing room, glass in hand, part of a stylish dinner-party.
"I usually play the maid. This one was a breakthrough, " she mutters.
I am telling you this to fill in the background, so that you realise we are dealing with quality here.Tina knew dame Peggy Ashcroft and John Thaw and worked with the R.S.C. She even toured Turkey and Chile with a play once. Because of all these diverse locations, boyfriends seemed to disappear more quickly for her even than the rest of us who stayin the same place all the time. There was no regular money either - one minute she was down th pinching sugar from cafes, the next it was new gold earrings and taxis everywhere.
Tina had come round especially to tell me that she had fallen for a truck-driver.
"I went into the CoffeeHouse, and he was already sitting there, when he looked across and smiled at me. We started talking naturally, as though we had been friends already, you know how it is. He said he was new here, his job had changed." She looked up at my damp, blotched ceiling."He's forty, his parents are both alive and he's been here three weeks. He was asking when the other waitress would be back on duty , he seemed to know her. It was so rainy, he'd spent most of the afternoon there. I'm smitten, " she said."he's got lovely hands, lovely."
I nearly fell off the edge of the bed. in bedsit houses this is very easy to do. "How do you know so much about his hands?" I said, flabbergasted, "This is very quick work!"
She looked pained. "He shook hands with me as I left."
"Why did you leave , then?" This was breaking one of the primary rules,i.e. hang around and find out more. Tina was perplexed.
"Oh, I'd sort of run out of things to say.Plus I'd said something wrong. He was talking about the pubs and I said i didn't really drink, and he said, well, no-one would stop him drinking. Things sort of went flat after that. he probably thinks I'm an ex-alcoholic and can't get into pubs now." She picked at a bit of nailpolish that had started to crack. Then she smiled broadly. "You'll never guess what I did next."
"No," I said glumly. Tina was now off-limits and was certainly behaving very strangely. I leaned across to the one chair where she sat miserably."When I can't go to sleep in the middle of the night, after redesigning the corner shop and rehanging their door so you can even get into it in the first place, and then restocking all their shelves with things we might all actually want to buy, I go through a list of all the mad people I know. You're now very dangerously near to being about number twenty-five. I'll be including you at two'oclock some morning soon."Although this sounded funny, I also meant it. This had no effect on Tina. She was in her own world.
"I got as far as the Market Bridge and then I turned back, walked right back into the Coffee House again and wrote my phone number on a serviette and gave it to him."
Now she was destroying public prpoerty. This was a woman who never carried a biro around with her as far as I knew. I was the organised one with notebooks and biros.
"What did he say?" I asked, missing out all curiosity about the logistics, like him still sitting there and her never having a handbag or a biro.
"He just said something like 'Right, then', but he didn't make too much fuss about it. Then I walked home. For some reason I just had to do it."
"Just because you've got no regular boyfriend, that's no reason to be giving out your phone number round all the cafes round town." (I had to exaggerate in order for her to get the gist of the idea.)
"Oh, I had to do it." For the first time I could see the woman who played Miss Julie and Electra and Lady Macbeth. The humble girl from the West had suddenlt combined with all the great dramatic roles. the poor truck driver didn't know what he was missing.
I gave her the full inquest service. Was he married? Where was his wife?Any children? Where was he staying? She did not even know where he worked? These were important questions. All men should have a log-book, just like their cars. Tina only went on and on about how good-looking he was and how all the women in the cafe had obviously fancied him.I tried to emphasise the obvious. Nice women don't pick up men in cafes. "
And another thing. Good-looking truckdrivers. That Yorkshire Ripper, wasn't he a lorry-driver too - he wouldn't have looked that bad in a dark cafe, sitting on his own. And think of how all of that ended up." You'll do anything to save a friend a friend from themselves.
A day later she gusted round, splattering rain all over the little rug. I used up the last of the coffee granules, swirling hot water round the bottom of the jar. "No, it's not really that bad, " I reassured her. "There's some real stuff at the back of the cupboard somewhere. I remember screwing up the packet and just throwing it in. Here it is. Now, tell me what's going on."
"I've seen him again. This time he was in Dooley's Cafe, having a real meal, late this afternoon. I only saw him from the road as I was going past. It was pouring rain."
"And you didn't go in?"
"How could I?" There was no answer to this. I sighed.
"You could have gone in and eaten a meal as well. They do proper dinners there, real Sunday roasts every day. The garda all go in there, that must be a good sign, ever man's wearing a blue shirt. But you really didn't think of going in?"
"No."
Up to now the worst thing I'd imagined would be that Tina would get a part in an episode of a soap on T.V.As neither of us had televisions, since mine blew up,this would have meant trailing round from one back-street pub to another, trying to persuade a barman to change the programme to T na G or some other station. But I had neverthought she would go mad. we went through all the main firms that would use lorries and where the industrial estates were.it was strange that he was around in the afternoons.
"Must do night-runs, " Tina said sagely, already in the truck-driving world.
"But are you really going to get into a relationship where he won't even know what R.S.C. means, or the Royal Court, or Stratford? All he will be wanting will be Sunday roasts and so on."
Tina looked serious. "I would do quite good roasts, if the situation was right. But I think he was after that waitress. The goodlooking one, you know." I nodded, not wanting to point out that I never went in there. "He's had my phone number two days and not a ring yet."
"Well, go and sit round at the cafe. You can't sit in waiting for the phone."
"I've got a mobile now, " she said proudly. One round to Tina. Her first victory all this week. We went over meeting one and none-meeting two and I said there would have to be another meeting, surely. Tina gave me one of her deep brown looks. Next day it poured rain, winter deluges beginning. Tina phoned mid-afternoon.
"I'm going to give it one more try. I'm going to go round every cafe in town. By the time I get it over with, there'll be so much caffeine in my system I won't sleep for a week." This at least was progress. I had to admit I encouraged her. Perhaps there was too much encouragement. Saint Jude had definitely been mentioned at some time. Fate does twist things so cleverly and prayers can sometimes be answered as if by mirror-writing.
By being in so many cafes, especially the Coffee House, Tina was sitting there when someone did not turn up for their shift and the one remaining waitress had an athsma attack. She just rolled up the brown sleeves and started washing up and collecting plates and cups. By the end of the week Tina had a three sessions of a couple of hours each, all illegal, with more to come. Ironically it was all because of the complications of the lorry-driver and the waitress. "She went off and moved in with him, apparently. At least ithey think it was him. He never appeared again - and the goolooking waitress leaves. it's got to be him."
So there she is, tall and serene, a waitress in maroon velvet, surrounded by the rootless and randy. Trading phone number for phone number, knowing everyone in town. It happens sometimes at weddings, they comfort the grieving mother with 'it's not so much that you've lost a daughter as gained a son-in-law', and the woman goes on sniffing into a lace hanky... Here I am, sitting with a dogeared Irish Times, the crossword already ruined by a previous customer and I think, it's not that I've lost a friend, I've gained a coffee bar.