Jim and Jan

You know, I didn’t believe in love at first sight until I met you.

I remember it so clearly. Charlie and I were hauling our luggage and Cockapoos into the caravan, sweating in the wool jumpers we’d put on when we’d set off from rainy Chester that morning. The Donegal sun was unusually intense for June, scorching the dazzling white sands of the wide beach that would be our home for a few days. We normally rented a house in town, but it was getting harder to find dog-friendly places. And I liked the idea of waking up to the salty tang of the Atlantic. 

You strolled past with an inquisitive Doberman who scarpered up to me and sniffed. You flashed a stubbly dimpled grin at me and called him away. I didn’t realise it at that precise moment, but something inside had already flipped.

We met properly later that day. I had taken our dogs for a long sunset walk along the shoreline. They sprinted joyfully as I trailed behind them, bare feet cooled by the lapping water. The late orange sun rested low over rolling dunes, casting a long shadow as I strolled along. 

Heading back from the beach towards our caravan, I gripped the leash tight as my dogs pulled towards you like a magnet. You sat, legs splayed, at our fold-down table, opening a can of beer that Charlie had handed you. 

“Jim, Jan, Jan, Jim,” my husband had mock-rapped by way of introduction. I learned that you were a mechanic from Belfast and owned the caravan behind us. You wore a black Stooges t-shirt and looked broad, if not particularly tall. Too-black hair with salt-and-pepper sideburns. You had a slight paunch, as most of us do in our sixties, but something about the strong set of your jawline and laughing blue eyes really attracted me. 

We stayed at the table and continued to chat as the sky faded to a dusky purple and pink ombre. We spoke about our retirement plans, which were imminent for all of us. About Donegal, which you and I knew well as we’d been visiting since we were children. It was easy to talk to you and I felt seen for the first time in years.

Charlie went to buy more beer from the little onsite shop. Alone together, our conversation became intimate astonishingly quickly. I can’t recall how it came it up, but I revealed to you that my twin sister had died when I was young. In response, you told me that you had lost your father as a child. It was something I almost never spoke of. In fact, the experience had been so painful that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it until decades later. My family had closed up at the time. No-one had told me that Sarah was sick, nobody mentioned her after she died beyond the most functional references. I pushed my grief into my gut for decades and that was that.

So it was unexpected that I should mention this to you, a stranger. But there was just something about you that felt so familiar to me. Perhaps our shared experience created an instant bond and this is why I felt so connected to you. I can’t think of another explanation for why I fell so hard. But that is exactly what happened.

I saw you again the next evening at the local pub. I wore makeup and Charlie commented that I looked nice. You wore the same Stooges t-shirt. We all sat on high stools around the bar, sipping Guinness, eyes on the big-screen TV that was showing a football game. There was less conversation than the previous evening and I felt a palpable tension. I was self conscious, afraid to speak or look at you in case I gave myself away. When you got up to leave you unexpectedly hugged me goodbye. The memory of that embrace will never leave me. War, firm, electrifying. I remember your scent. Soap and oil, tinged with rolling tobacco. Your stubble grazed my cheek.

The next day, Charlie left on a bike tour and I took the dogs to the beach with a book. When they barked, I knew without looking up that you were close. You sat down next to me on the large mandala print throw that I’d salvaged from a nativity play at the school where I taught. We secured the dog leads on sticks in the sand and watched as they sniffed each other. We were inches apart but I was keenly aware of the skin on my arm next to yours, tantalisingly close but never touching.

Our conversation was easy, free-flowing. Everything I like you also liked. We’d seen the same bands, read the same books. We had the same cultural references, being of a similar age and from working-class backgrounds. You were quick, funny and kind.

Sitting side by side, we gazed out across the sea for hours, vast and unknowable. There was nothing between where we sat until Newfoundland, Canada. You told me that many Irish people had emigrated there because of famine but ended up living in the same dire poverty they’d hoped to escape. While many moved on to North America, a significant number stayed put and accepted their lot. You asked me if it’s better to make the best of situations. Should we always aim for more or try to enjoy what we have? 

It felt pointed. I said I didn’t know.

The next morning, Charlie and I left to tour the west coast for the rest of the week. I was irritated to leave, even though I’d organised the trip. We took off in the car, dogs in the back, driving along what the tourist board calls the Wild Atlantic Way. Another fiercely hot day; the endless emerald green of the landscape was startling. At various turns I’d glimpse the ferocious ocean below, rhythmically exploding in a white fizz on the rocks.

I was unusually quiet on that trip. Luckily, Charlie seemed oblivious to the fact that I couldn’t focus on him. All I could think about was you. I would casually ask him questions about you, gently probing to flesh out the faint outline of the character I already had in my mind. His answers were always short and unsatisfying. He knew as little about you as I did, really. But I knew that he liked you and, as a lawyer, Charlie is often a good judge of character.

He suggested texting you to join us. I agreed, shrugging with affected nonchalance. On the day you were going to meet us in Rossknowlagh, I was fizzing with anticipation. I applied a hair mask, two face masks, and shaved my legs. When you contacted Charlie to say that you couldn’t make it after all I was utterly crushed. 

Why didn’t you come? Were you afraid of what would happen between us? Did you find it just as difficult to be near me? Were you being respectful of my marriage? Of Charlie?

On the evening we returned to the caravan site I felt nervous as we approached, replaying over in my head the witty greetings I would give you. But your caravan was dark, no sign of life. Deflated, I left my bags with my Charlie and told him I’d take the dogs for a walk on the beach.

This was to be our last night in Ireland. Home to Chester tomorrow. 

The beach was deserted as I strolled along the waters edge. I watched as a sailing boat held its course east toward a sandy inlet. The swell was high and it was veering dangerously close to the land. At the last moment it tacked, turning 90 degrees and out towards the horizon.

/

Jim stayed hidden. Peeping out behind the grubby blind on his caravan window, he could just about make out the silhouette of her short tight curls against the moonlight. She’d been hovering out there for hours and he knew she was waiting for him. He wanted to walk to the pub and, not for the first time, wished there was a back door on this tin can hovel.

He turned back to the faded, frayed floral couch, swept a pile of papers to the floor and sat down heavily with a grunt. He lit up a Mayfair, lay back and wondered how he always got himself into these situations. 

He’d offered a beer to her husband the other day when he saw him tinkering with his bicycle out front. Being honest, he was also looking for a companion to normalise what had become an increasingly all-day drinking habit. A beer alone at 11am smells a bit wrong. But with a new friend? It’s just good manners to offer a jar, especially in Ireland.

The husband, Charlie, was decent enough craic. One of those upbeat urban active types, zipping around in the kind of tight fluorescent Lycra that Jim suspected to be slightly fetishistic. It always seemed to be fellas of a certain age wearing all this gear, and Jim didn’t see why you needed to be trussed up like Jane Fonda just to ride a bike. But each to their own. Charlie was a good sort and Jim enjoyed hearing his stories about the ne’er-do-wells he represented in court.

The wife, Jan, had joined them after a time. She was pleasant enough, though more reserved than her husband. Slight and pale, she had drab mousy hair styled in a cropped perm that reminded Jim of some footballers in the 80s. Her eyes were large and bulging. When she fixed them on Jim he could see the whites all around her pale blue irises. It gave her a stare that could feel quite intense. 

Jim and Jan were the same age, but she seemed much older to him. Or he felt younger. In his mind, he was still 35 and kept no mirrors around to tell him otherwise. So, Jan’s eye wrinkles and patches of grey hair belonged to older ladies like the teachers he remembered from his schooldays. And she was, in fact, a teacher. She even had a schoolmarmish way of speaking that made his balls shrivel when she scolded him for dropping his ash on the table. 

He saw the couple again later when he went to the pub. It was a fairly uneventful night, watching his team lose 2-3. Some of the site regulars were there, the ones who, like him, came to their caravans every summer. They’d had a messy one the night before. Live folk band, drinking, jokes and loud stories until dawn. Tonight the friends felt a bit delicate, so sat in companionable silence, nursing their pints.

Jan had been fixing him often with her big googly eyes. It was starting to unnerve him. He drank more quickly than usual as a result, and was a bit unsteady by the time he left. Going out the door, he tripped into her and masked it with a bear hug by way of goodbye.

The next morning, Jim was dragged out of sleep by the sharp sunlight burning through the window. He had a raging hangover. Hair of the dog was the best solution. He was on holiday, after all. He fished out one of the bottles of red wine from the bed’s ottoman drawer, still wrapped in the cheap white plastic bag from the grocery shop. Ripping off the screw top, he picked up a glass tumbler from the shelf above his head and filled it almost to the top. He winced as he gulped the vinegary liquid, but his head almost immediately felt better. He lay under the crumpled, yellowing sheets and continued to swig while he watched the day get going through the window.

A few hours later he was woken up by the sound of his dog scratching the door. He fished his Stooges t-shirt from under a dirty towel and pulled it awkwardly over his head, then stepped unsteadily into a pair of red board shorts. After attaching the dog collar to the leash, he opened the caravan door to leave, then turned back. He put another wine bottle into the grocery bag, locked up and took off up the beach.

It was an offensively hot day and he felt sticky almost immediately. The shrieks of children pierced his head as they played a raucous game with an inflatable unicorn. His dog was pulling him along excitedly and he already felt exhausted as he trudged along. The sand stung as it rubbed into the open cuts on his feet.

He didn’t notice Jan until she was a few feet in front of him. She was perched on a psychedelic Grateful Dead-style beach throw that looked very un-Jan. One arm was wrapped around her white sparrow-like legs while the other held a paperback book. She wore a bright orange strapless bathing suit and a sarong with moons and stars all over it. The dogs barked and she looked up as Jim’s shadow loomed over her. He flopped down next to her, exhausted by the exertions so far.

He would have been happy to leave the dogs to their own devices and fall asleep on the throw. It smelled fresh, like lavender. But he raised himself on one elbow, greeted Jan like an old friend and asked her what she was reading. She wittered on for a while about Irish migrants and the famine while he shut his eyes and felt the hot sun on his face. After a while, he could feel the presence of the wine bottle serenading him through the plastic bag. He counted down a few minutes then asked her if she fancied a little sunshine glass. He was surprised when she said yes, and they passed the bottle between them as he tried to keep the conversation going for as long as the wine would last. She was irritatingly slow with her turns, holding the bottle for ages without drinking. 

The following days were a blur of day-drinking with his caravan buddies and nights spent hopping between the three bars close to the beach. Everywhere was lively, with crowds up from Dublin and over from Belfast. Mostly jovial; a couple of arguments, maybe one punch-up. 

He woke up one morning with a black eye and no memory of how he got it. Scrolling through his text messages, he saw that he’d inexplicably agreed to meet Charlie in Rossknowlagh. He texted him an excuse. He saw another message from someone called Sinead. She was going kayaking and would he like to come? Like fuck he would. He vaguely remembered a redhead from the pub who had tried to come back to the caravan with him. Someone must have gave her his number for a joke. They knew he wasn’t interested. Not since his divorce a few years back. Beer, wine, good time. That was it for Jim.

He blew his nose on his t-shirt and pulled his pillow over his head, hoping to fall deeply asleep before the hangover kicked in.

/

I didn’t believe in love at first sight until I met you.

I sink into the memories of us every night as I lie in bed. Delicious and devastating. I replay over and over what you asked me, that day as we sat staring out across the sea. Is it better to accept what we have or risk something better? 

I think I know my answer now, Jim