I met him again because of a broken umbrella. That is the ordinary truth of it. I was outside St Stephen’s Green on a wet Thursday evening, trying to force the spokes back into shape while the rain came at me sideways. Dublin rain has a personality when it wants to ruin you. It gets under your collar, into your shopping bag, and somehow into your mood.
I was late for the Luas, carrying a paper bag of books from Hodges Figgis, and annoyed with myself for buying things I did not need. Then a man beside me said, “You still fight with umbrellas like they owe you money.”
I knew the voice before I turned. Not clearly, not like a song remembered note for note, but like the smell of turf smoke from childhood. I looked up and there he was: Ciarán Doyle, older, greyer at the temples, with rain on his glasses and that same half-smile he used to wear when he was trying not to laugh at me.
Twenty years disappeared and arrived at the same time. I was twenty-two again, standing outside Grogan’s with a pint in my hand and a heart too proud to speak plainly. Then I was forty-two, soaked, divorced two years, and suddenly unable to remember what people normally say.
He said my name softly, as if testing whether he was allowed to. “Niamh.”
I said, “Ciarán. God. You’re real.”
We laughed, and that saved us. If we had not laughed, I think I might have cried right there on the footpath while shoppers moved around us and the traffic hissed along Grafton Street.
We had loved each other once in the reckless way young people do, all certainty and no skill. We met in college, in a queue for coffee, both broke, both pretending we weren’t. He wanted to be an architect. I wanted to write for newspapers. We spent two summers walking the city as if it belonged to us, from Rathmines to the quays, from second-hand bookshops to cheap seats at the cinema. We broke up over something small that grew teeth. A missed call, a jealous argument, his job offer in London, my refusal to sound heartbroken. Neither of us apologised properly. Pride packed our bags for us.
For years I told people, and myself, that it had been nothing serious. A young love. A lovely little mistake. But some people do not leave like others do. They remain in the corners of songs, in the shape of certain streets, in the silence after good news.
He pointed at the umbrella. “That’s finished.”
“So was I, about five minutes ago.”
He asked if I had time for a coffee. I said I had ten minutes, which was a lie. We went into a café near Dawson Street, wet coats steaming over the backs of chairs. At first we spoke like polite strangers: work, family, where we lived. He had come back from London after his father died. He had never married. I told him about my daughter, who was seventeen and believed I knew nothing about love, which in that moment felt entirely fair.
Then the small talk thinned out. He stirred his coffee for too long and said, “I wrote to you once. A letter. After I left. I never sent it.”
I looked at him. “I waited for one.”
That sentence sat between us like a third person. I had not known it was still inside me. I had not known waiting could survive so long, disguised as maturity.
He took off his glasses and wiped them with a napkin. “I was ashamed. I thought if you’d wanted me, you’d have stopped me.”
“I thought if you’d loved me, you’d have stayed.”
Outside
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
