EVERYWHERE he goes people want to hear his story.
'How did it happen?' they ask. 'And where?'
'And what did you do?'
Wide-eyed, Jimmy Hayes shakes his head.
"I'm 75 now," he says. "And they all want to hear about it, calling it a dream come true. Some of them cry when I tell them - the young ones especially.
"Everyone asks the same kind of questions... how it happened? You know, when I think about it I have to pinch myself just to make sure it is real. Sometimes I don't think it is, it still feels like a dream..."
"Did I tell you about the note," he adds excitedly. "This note went through four sets of hands, came all the way from Liverpool before it got to me. I was in a restaurant in Mitchelstown, just sitting there, looking at the name written down; stuck for words.
"'What's wrong with you?', they asked... Sure I hadn't seen or heard the name in 54 years. I had thought about it many times, weeks beforehand would you believe and there it was written on this scuffed-up piece of paper - Mary Kelligar, my first girlfriend.
"I didn't know if it was a message from the past or a wind-up."
They were sweethearts, Jimmy Hayes and Mary Kelligar. It was 1957 and Jimmy was working on the oil refinery in Whitegate near Middleton, Co. Cork. Every day heavy tankers loomed large in the bay edging along the dock like the crawl to afternoon break.
"At about 2.30pm we'd have one hour for dinner and as soon as the siren went off we'd race like hell to the canteen door," he says. "Mary was always inside by the window, watching me. The other workers used to rib me. They'd ask why I got preferential treatment. I was 18 and Mary was 16. She was petite with shoulder length brown hair.
"Yes, she did capture my heart, even though at the time I would have denied it. When you are young you are carefree, nothing bothers you. You are not fully aware of your feelings. I must have loved Mary deep down then though I didn't know it at the time."
He remembers a song in the music charts - A White Sports Coat by Marty Robbins. He remembers, because most days he'd travel from Whitegate to East Ferry to visit Mary, he'd be wearing his own white sports coat.
"Her dad would know I was due to visit and would do a little dance around the cottage floor singing that song. They were lovely people. I remember Mary telling me her dad would say to her: 'Look after Jimmy, he has lost his father.'
"My dad had died in 1959, the same year I finished in Whitegate."
They used to on the beach for hours on end, Jimmy and Mary, talking, holding hands, laughing, looking out to sea wondering where the boats were bound for; about the future... where they'd be...
They both used to come back from England on holidays. Jimmy had settled in Oxford, Mary in Liverpool - it was the early 1960s and their road had split.
Jimmy left Ireland following an offer of work in Oxford. They still kept in touch but contact was a seldom kind of wonderful.
He remembers his ham-fisted attempt at a proposal. It was poorly prepped, but the sentiment was sincere.
"Mary had moved to Liverpool herself at this stage. I said before I went back down to Oxford, consider yourself unofficially engaged," he jokes. "We'd had a misunderstanding. We hadn't really seen each other since I'd left.
"I got home and after a few days I rang Mary. I then said to her: 'Don't you want me anymore?'"
On one occasion, Jimmy remembers returning to Ireland on holidays and seeing Mary dancing with another man. Stung, he turned on his heels and left without saying a word.
"I just gave up too easily," he says. "Even just to have said hello! That in itself might have led to an opening and then who knows?
"I probably said to myself - 'Jimmy, move on, there are plenty more fish in the sea.' But all I know is that over the years I never forgot Mary. Many years visiting Ireland again on holidays I made a point nearly every time I was there to visit the East Ferry. 'Perhaps I might catch a glimpse of Mary', I thought."
Once, with heavy heart he went back to the old cottage where her father used to dance a jig to the white coat song. He asked a neighbour were there any of them around - you know, the Kelligars, Mary Kelligar?
"But he said he never heard of her. That was only about three to four years ago."
Life's lonely gear was starting to drive Jimmy hard. He'd been married twice. The first marriage didn't work out and he lost his second wife three months after they wed.
He'd felt the grind before, but now it was more acute. He was 75, in the autumn of his life, a life, filled by three children, grandchildren and all that glues that together.
But solitude was an uncomfortable bed fellow.
One night he knelt down and in an act of sincerity and mock theatre he asked God to send him a companion. He even pushed it a bit asking him to send someone else, someone like... Mary.
"I said how about Mary Kelligar... it was a million to one shot. The law of attraction... what else would you call it?"
So six weeks later he is sitting in a restaurant of his hometown in Mitchelstown and his first cousin calls him over to pass on a message.
"I was so amazed by the name on the note I thought it was a windup. I couldn't believe it," he says.
'Are you going to contact her?' they asked.
"I told them I didn't know."
Jimmy waited until the end of the holiday. When he got home he took out the note and looked at the number. He lifted the receiver and typed in the digits, recognising it to be Liverpool by area code.
The phone rang and rang.
He left a message then sat down in the quiet of the room and waited, just him and anticipation.
"Can you imagine the excitement when the phone rang," he says.
'Hello'
'Yes!'
'Jimmy?'
'Yes!'
'Is that really you?'
'YES!'
'...REALLY?'
They talked about everything. They talked about the note. Mary told him about a holiday with her son Andrew in Ireland. The previous Easter they had gone back to East Ferry, where else, and when Andrew returned to work in England he told his colleagues where he had been.
They spoke about his mum's place and Garryvoe and Mitchelstown...
'Mitchelstown, my mum's first boyfriend came from Mitchelstown,' said his colleague.
Andrew had rang Mary, his widowed mum, to tell her about the conversation. He asked could he give her details to the woman with connections in Mitchelstown.
'You never know, he might still be about, Jimmy.'
"The woman's name was Maureen and she has a cousin Mamie Cleary in Mitchelstown and my first cousin Delia Tobin lives in Mitchelstown," adds Jimmy.
Three weeks after the phone call they met for the first time in 54 years. Jimmy travelled up to Liverpool, the years lifting with every mile.
The memories flowed, vivid and wonderful. So much time had passed but still, it felt the same, better in some ways.
Mary told Jimmy that she was booked to go on holidays to Ireland with her son but was no longer sure about making the trip. He encouraged her to go... then unknown to her he went and booked to return himself.
Jimmy door stepped her holiday and walked back into her life. They went to the same beach again, laughed, talked, held hands, sat watching the boats in the bay wondering excitedly about the future, all over again.
"People say to us 'it's a miracle'; 'It's meant to be'; 'Tell your story'.
"They say you should never look back but I have, and look at what has happened. I'm a teenager again. It's destiny... me and Mary Kelligar."
Jimmy Hayes still lives in Oxford but is currently planning to move back to Ireland with Mary. The story of Jimmy Hayes and Mary Kelligar will feature on Coming Home documentary, produced by Cathal Kenna, which will air next year.
Copyright The Irish Post.
