Caricature Valentines

Valentines Day, 14 February, fell on a Monday this year and the cosy family restaurant was already mostly filled up with diners as I was shown to my seat about three minutes before my booking time of 7 o'clock in the evening. I gave the waiter my drinks order, thanked him and added quietly that I could seat myself, thanks. He nodded silently and left me two menus. I sat with my back to the wall and put the heavy plain Italian brown bottle bag, I had been carrying by its white twisted thread handles, placed at the empty place setting opposite me on the tiny table, which was set intimately for two, and leaned against it a large C4-size white card envelope. I had arrived first and alone.

I glanced around the room, suddenly feeling a little claustrophobic after almost exactly two years of lockdown, relieved only by brief spells of relaxed regulations about meeting people in public places until they were lifted completely recently. It was exactly two years to the day that I last sat at this, once our favourite regular table. By regular I meant about once a month on average, a date night always booked well in advance to secure this particularly favoured spot.

The restaurant appeared to be packed tonight with tiny two-person tables, appropriate to the occasion, but after almost two years of pandemic restrictions and social distancing, it felt ... slightly uncomfortably crowded rather than intimate and I guessed that I had become conditioned to isolation both by the restrictions and having worked from home alone for so long.

The waiter returned with a bottle which he uncorked and poured a sample into a glass for me to taste. I nodded my approval and asked him to pour only a half glass before he left me alone once more.

Out of what must be twenty-five to thirty or so small tables in this part of the restaurant, only three or four tables were empty, one of them right next to mine, to my left. At a glance, without examining too closely, I thought my table was the only one that had a single person sitting at it. I had of course booked for two and, before I even thought that Lydia was running late as usual lately, I heard the quiet beep from my mobile phone, indicating a message received. I pulled it from my suit jacket pocket and pressed the button to light it up. The time immediately flashed up: "19:01". I always use the 24 hour setting on my phone and digital clocks. I've been a freelance feature writer now for almost eight years but as boy and man for fourteen years I was a Fleet Street daily newspaperman, starting as copy holder, and responsible for small ads and being general gopher, then junior reporter, senior reporter and sub-editor, mostly on the late afternoon and evening 'lobster' shift and, while words and facts are important, in daily newspapers the deadlines are absolutely paramount.

As I stroked and tapped the screen to get to my messages, in my peripheral vision I couldn't help but notice the empty table next to me on the left being occupied, the lady of the happy couple brushing past me in a three-quarter coat and long dark blue dress to get to her seat by the wall.

That made me smile, for only the second time today. Well, not smiling warmly, I was long past doing that, but it was a chilly February night in our neck of the woods and my wife's seat of choice (if she had arrived on time) would've been the wall seat where I now sat, plumb in front of the radiator.

No, I didn't smile for Lydia, I hadn't even see her this morning as she left for work early for a strategy meeting apparently. I only smiled for my kids as I dropped them off to school, kissed them and told them to be on their very best behaviour tonight. I wondered if I would be able to do the same. I had arranged for Lydia's parents to pick them up after school and keep them overnight, leaving Lydia and I to celebrate our anniversary without having to worry about Sam and Katie.

As I said, the tables were quite close together and, as the lady passed close by me through the narrow gap between, I caught a whiff of her lovely perfume. It smelt nice, rich and alluring as it first struck the senses, but turned light and flowery as it lingered long on the palate. It was a smell that would awake emotions and could probably delight whoever was with her, well, forever.

'Lucky bastard!' I thought, taking my eyes off my phone screen to glance briefly at the seat diagonally opposite, where the new arrival's partner was to sit, but the seat was empty. I could only see the back of the departing maître d, Joe Junior, the fresh-faced son of the owner, hurrying off to welcome the next couple standing at the entrance to the room. It looked like the lovely-smelling lady was waiting on her beau just as I was waiting on my rather tardy wife, my wife of ten years exactly to the day.

We always came here to this very table, or at least this table position. Sometimes a different table would be here as we had demanded, to sit four or six with high chairs where needed, on high days and holidays, although recently only when government restrictions allowed. Here is where we had our first date together, Lydia and I, where I proposed marriage to her and where she accepted, and where we celebrated all our family birthdays and anniversaries, including today's anniversary.

The anniversary date was romantic to us for more than the single reason that it was St Valentine's Day, the patron saint of lovers. It was also the day we married, on Tuesday 14 February 11am 2012 at the local Registrar's Office. We were both 29 at the time and Lydia's biological clock was ticking loudly. We didn't know at the time, or at least I didn't know, that Lydia was already pregnant with our boy Sam. She only told me on our wedding night that she was a week late for her period, but that hadn't occurred to her until that morning, what with all the stress leading up to the wedding and not having seen me before the ritual began, to pass on the possible news until we were alone afterwards. Not that I wouldn't have 'done the right thing' if it was not our wedding night, I had wanted to marry Lydia long before I asked her, anyway. We were living together by then, had been a couple for exactly five years and the wedding had been planned for many months. For me, at the time, Lydia was 'the one'.

She may have been 'late' at that time ten years before, but she was rather late all the time now.

She was definitely late for our eighth wedding anniversary, two years before. I was here, waiting for her on my own, staring at that brick wall, forewarned by a similar 'running late' message on an older phone, and I had hung on waiting until 9 o'clock that night, until I had to relinquish the table, leaving a roomful of selfish lovers with my tail between my legs as I made the lone walk of shame on Valentine's Day. I had insisted on paying the approximate cost of a meal for two at the front desk before leaving. Joseph, the restaurant owner, was apologetic about asking me to leave but it was Valentine's Day and all the tables were booked for the next session. This turned out to be only five or six weeks before the first lockdown began.

I had met Lydia at a late January wedding, fifteen years ago, when we were both about 24. I knew the groom as a college friend, she had gone to school with the bride. I was working unsociable hours on afternoons through to well gone midnight at the newspaper most nights and I actually had no girlfriend or many opportunities to attract one.

Lydia was studying hard to be a lawyer and concentrating on her bar exams, so she also came alone to the wedding. During our conversations we discovered we both lived in the same town and both daily commuted to London for work. My 'weekend' on my shift pattern was Tuesday and Wednesday back then and she suggested we got together in a couple of weeks' time on the Wednesday. We checked our diaries and we set the day as the 14th February and at this family restaurant venue, where I'd never actually eaten before. Lydia explained that she had been a waitress here during school and college holidays and even weekends before that while still at school.

If that date goes well, she told me, we can exchange telephone numbers and take it from there.

I only noticed the significance of the date when I got home. Then I thought it must have been a hoax, a first date by strangers on St Valentine's Day? Get real, she was a good looking girl and I was an ordinary bloke, so she was obviously pulling my chain. I assumed she was just having a bit of fun at my expense, and would probably tell the bride when she got back from honeymoon. She had told me that she'd book the table, so at least the hoax wouldn't cost me in my pocket. But then as the date began to loom and was only a few days away, I wondered if there was a possibility that she was genuine. If she was genuinely interested in me, and I left her hanging, my name would be mud with my old college mate and never have a chance with this dish again. And, if she was stringing me along for a joke, it would cost me nothing to come along at the right time and if she didn't show up within say 10 minutes, I would bow out and the restaurant could still cover that table without too much hassle.

When I arrived on time and spoke to the maitre d that evening, asking if there was a reservation for Lydia Davies, I got a "Certainly, sir, she is waiting for you," and there she was, looking pretty as a picture and absolutely good enough to eat.

As I said before, I have always worked with deadlines and used to being resourceful and getting things done in a timely manner. I thought a 'be my Valentine' card for a very first date would be both too tacky and embarrassing for us both, so I had a word with the studio overseer in the print room and one of the country's leading daily cartoonists knocked out a brilliant cartoon design and the print room colour printed me a "Be Ny Next Year's Valentine" card, with a caricature of me with heavy chains around my chest held in place by a huge padlock and throbbing heart behind all that metal, and a brilliant caricature of Lydia, her features taken from one of the wedding photos, holding a blazing acetylene torch and an open hinged welder's helmet on her head, captioned, "Unlock my heart but please don't melt it!"

She laughed when she opened the envelope and saw the card, signed by "an admirer who wants to get to know you better".

We found out quite quickly that we were relaxed with each other and during the evening we arranged to date, then became exclusive and after a couple of months of passionate courting we moved into my small flat together as a couple. A couple of years later we committed to each other by exchanging engagement rings, but it was another three years before we married and started looking for a family house in our home town.

We were both committed to our careers, by then I was a sub-editor as well as writing regular weekend feature articles and I knew it would be years before I became a fully-fledged editor. So, once baby Sam was about two years old, Lydia wanted to get back to work as a lawyer specialising in corporate law, so I went freelance writing and did the whole house-husband stuff besides.

Our youngest, Katie, was a 'whoops!' baby, unplanned but loved equally as much as Sam, and Lydia only had a couple of months with Katie before going back to work. As far as Katie is concerned she is Daddy's girl and I've been father and mother to her all her six years of age. Sam is easy going and resilient in his reliance on family life.

Lydia was happy about returning to work immediately after Katie, happy to get her junior partnership. More recently, Lydia doesn't appear to be happy with me anymore.

Last February we were in the middle of that lockdown and everywhere was closed, so we, no, I had Chinese takeaway delivered to our door and I left Lydia's untouched portion in the fridge when I retired to bed alone. Work, she said, the same excuse, that even then was getting old. Apparently as a lawyer specialising in mergers and acquisitions there's always a vital prospectus to prepare or fresh takeover rebuttal that needs all the legal minds in the firm to be focused on until the wee small hours several times a week.

This year I had booked the table from 1900 hrs through to closing time some weeks before and had already prepaid an estimated bill for up to four average al a carte meals and drinks with Joseph when I dropped in here weeks ago. He protested that that was unnecessary, I was an old customer and he reminded me that Lydia had bussed tables there as a student for four years some 15 to 20 years ago, so he said that leeway between his restaurant and my family was somehow justified, but I insisted on him accepting my payment.

***

I was unused to this view of the restaurant, with my back to the wall, though I could see why it was Lydia's favoured seat. It was a good position even without the benefit of the radiator in a cold winter, I thought. You could see everyone coming into this part of the restaurant, see the bar area beyond and even the front entrance to the restaurant. All I ever saw from my facing seat was my dinner guest and the brick wall behind. No wonder my wife made this our favourite table.

The message, I remembered to look at the message that had beeped on my mobile.

'Sorry hon still @ work l8 60mins', the message said more to me than words. Even the 'l' and '8' meant two less key taps devoted to me and more of that precious time on whatever else she was doing in preference.

I smiled for only the third time of the day at the message, a smile without humour. I hadn't reminded Lydia this morning of the date and time of the meal, or even mentioned our anniversary since last year.

Now I was here, sitting like a lemon, all alone and Lydia was busy somewhere else.

Even, apparently, on St Valentine's Day and on the occasion of our tenth wedding anniversary, she had somewhere else to be instead.

Tin is the tenth. The gift for a tenth anniversary, along with diamonds, or the colours silver or blue. That reminded me that the woman sitting alone at the table next to me wore a blue dress. I could still faintly smell her perfume, or maybe just the memory of it. It was nothing at all like any of the ones my wife had preferred down the years. Different tastes lead to different choices, I suppose.

I wondered idly if the woman in blue, temporarily sitting alone, was here celebrating a similar anniversary, on a date with her boyfriend, husband, lover, or that she simply favoured blue tonight over what ever wardrobe selection she could choose from.

I had little appetite this night, but I put my mobile phone down on the table and picked up the menu. I thought I would try a starter, if only to soak up the odd couple of sips I'd taken from the half-glass of wine that I had the waiter pour me from Lydia's favourite bottle of Chianti. It wasn't my usual tipple, but I wasn't in the mood for anything more substantial. Maybe later at home, I'd make a sandwich, and maybe have a beer.

"Looks like we've both been stood up," came the husky female voice from the table next to me, slightly louder than the background chat, so it invaded my cold veil of solitude like a hot knife.

I looked up and around to my left. Although the lighting was low, neither my candle or hers was yet lit, her open face, dark brown eyes and soft dark wavy hair down to her shoulders and framing her face was that of a true beauty.

"Sorry," I said, "I was miles away."

"Was that wishful thinking?" she asked softly, now that she had my attention, a small smile hovered uncertainly but invitingly on her lips, drawing me into a conversation.

"Maybe," I shrugged. I glanced momentarily at my phone and back to,her again. "She's still at work ... she says, running late, she says. I'm not so sure if she'll even make it tonight. Last time ..." I hesitated. Too much information to a stranger, one looking forward themselves to a nice romantic dinner more than I was? Then I thought, to hell with it, I had bottled this up for too long and tonight.... I leaned over and said quietly, "Last time she never made it at all."

"Last time? What? Last week or whenever?"

"Last year. No, sorry, not last year. Actually two years ago. Because, you know," I said, she nodded, shaking those lovely soft curls, ringlets, I noticed that her dark brown hair was set in loose bouncy ringlets. "So, this time, this day, two years ago, was our eighth. This year, tonight, is another anniversary, our tenth anniversary."

"Blimey, ten that's ... aluminium?"

"Tin, as in a tin of beans or biscuits or maybe cling peaches in syrup." I was actually thinking 'a can of worms,' but that was a degree of intimacy too far with a stranger, however young and beautiful she was, or looked.

"Or tomato soup," she added with a sad smile, probably full of some of her own unhappy memories, "comfort food. I think of tins in the larder as comfort food. Something to open up when things aren't going so well, like baked beans on toast or alphabet spaghetti. Sorry, I didn't mean to ..."

"That's all right. I guess she's otherwise occupied tonight," I said.

"What is she, a doctor or a nurse?" she asked, "For some professions their work is vitally important, and staffing's another matter, you know, sometimes the relief shift can't come in or not all,can come in and those left behind have to keep everything going. You know, life or death situations can be more important even than, you know."

"No. She's a lawyer."

"Oh? Oh, right."

"Scum of the earth, right?" I tempered what I said with a smile and a shrug of my shoulders, making light of it. She's a stranger, passing time with a lonely old man while waiting for her young man, or woman. She doesn't need to hear the shit I've had to live with for a couple of years. "She made junior partner three years ago and well, the workload absolutely took off, so she tells me."

She looked nice, the stranger sitting next to my table, a kid really, looking forward to a meal out tonight with her beau. No need to bother her with my problems. I wasn't really looking to share my misery, just concentrating on mentally preparing myself to moving onto the next stage.

"Well," she countered, "at least she's not a school headmistress."

"Oh, is that what you are?" I asked.

"Sort of," she said, "pre-school, I'm the proprietor, or should that be proprietress?, of pre-school children."

"Not as bad as a secondary modern school headmistress then, you've probably got lots of sweet children aged three and four, a nice age for kids if I remember."

"True, they are sweet bit we start with 2-year-olds but I do have specialist staff that love the babies," she laughed, more to herself than anything. "I must admit I do love the 'littlies' too, and hate handing some of them back to their parents at the end of the day."

"Oh god," I interjected, "I remember the terrible twos." I did, with a vengeance, not so much for Sam, but Katie was a nightmare, needed her Mum and Mum was still trying hard to get the offer of the junior partnership when Katie needed her over her father.

"They're not so bad," she laughed, "at least we can hand the troublesome few babies back at the end of the day. And we always make sure they sit quietly for a snack, then lunch and then they get their heads down for quiet time, and they do mostly drop off for at least a while."

'So you can get the kettle on then?"

"Absolutely, tea and bickies for the staff, essential 'me' time," she laughed. "So, I take it that you have young children?"

"Two, Sam 9 and Katie 6. Actually they went to a pre-school locally, from ages 3 to 4, the one held at the Baptist Chapel. That your pre-school?"

"No, mine is the Ferny Glen Pre-School in Home Farm Road, within the retail units on the old farm by Westgreen Park."