Of course their names are not Sean and Maire, but they are from the south-west of Ireland and they are out in Cape Town on a holiday. And when they arrived at their hotel they were asked did they want to make a booking for St Valentine's Day. Special dinner.
"Ah, we'll sort that out later," said Sean.
After all, it was January 24th - three full weeks before the saint's feast day. This was serious advance-planning that was being called for. "Touting for extra business, looking for a quick buck," Sean said to Maire on that first night. "That'll be it, believe me."
And Maire said "fine", and that's all she said. The hotel didn't tout for business in any other way. It let them bring wine into their room, it pointed out a cheap laundromat, it let them make sandwiches out of the breakfast buffet.
But the following Saturday it asked them again. "Made your plans for St Valentine's Day?" And Sean, who by this stage had got a sun tan and was thinking in rands, not punts, thanked them politely but said there was no real rush. And then they began to read the papers.
Page after page showed the restaurants that are completely booked up for February 14th. They watched the talk shows at night on television, heated debates . . . is it all too much, this Valentine fuss, or is it wonderful and symbolic?
Does it mean that 364 days a year your loved one does not think about you, but that's OK if there's one day that the loved one does make a fuss?
The flower shops all over town have had huge warning notices up urging people not to leave it until the last minute. The South African phone service, Telekom, has huge ads showing empty flower-buckets outside florists, and giving the grim reminder "Phone First". Everything seemed to be referring to the day. Slimming machines were offered at 10 per cent off if you ordered them before The Day. Building societies were offering 16 per cent Home Loans on any love nest where the paperwork was done in time for St Valentine. There were so many heart-shaped Valentine balloons, paper flowers, teddy bears, gold-wrapped chocolates, satin and sequinned offerings in the newsagents that Sean and Maire could barely find a picture of Table Mountain to send to annoy the folks back home in the rain.
Saturday night would be their last night. Sean did not want to be wandering the streets of Cape Town, his nose pressed against windows where lovers or pretend-lovers were toasting each other in sparkling wine at £2 a bottle and them unable to get anywhere to sit down. He booked.
"All right, yes, a Valentine special," he said awkwardly. He had never sent a Valentine to Maire. Not in 39 years of marriage. It wasn't the way for them, or their kind. They were people who worked hard and got on with it.
Not fancy words and poems and flowers. Irishmen of his class, his age, didn't go in for that sort of thing. That was for romantic-novelists, card-manufacturers, flower-sellers, confectioners, restaurant owners. They were the people who made the money out of it. Didn't Maire know he was fond of her? They had been married nearly 40 years, raised a family. You don't have to say these things with lots of red and white decorations for them to become real, Sean believes. And had Maire ever sent him a Valentine's Day card, did he think?
Well, in the past when the children were at a silly age she might have thrown an old Valentine on the table and they all had a laugh and wondered who it might be from . . .
And I asked Maire on her own would she have liked Valentines at all over the years, and she said she would of course - like any human. But Sean wasn't made that way and it would be like asking for people to do something completely against their nature. He was a good man to her. He'd give her money to buy one for herself if he thought she was fussing over it.
But oddly, for the first time he was looking around him out there where waitresses and shopkeepers and barbers and deck-chair attendants were all talking about the feast day. He had actually said to her that maybe sending a card was a cultural thing - like wearing shamrock on St Patrick's Day. So she wouldn't be surprised if the man she fell in love with in 1958 when Mick Delahunty's band was playing, might well buy her a card this year. It wouldn't continue at home, but it was different in the southern hemisphere.
And love is in the air all over the place, not only for the Feast Day. This week Nelson Mandela's handsome face smiles out of every paper as he clasps the hand of Graca Machel, widow of the Mozambican President. He has now spoken publicly of his love for her, how they talk every day on the telephone and how she has changed his life. Commentators on all sides seem to be full of indulgence and delight about it all, even though weddings have not actually been mentioned. Even Archbishop Desmond Tutu harrumphs only mildly about it and though he has to point out to the President about being a role model for young people, there has not as yet been any serious thundering from pulpits. And then there's the other marvellous love story that's all over the papers. The tale of David and Caroline Dickie. He is 80, she is 70. They only met recently at a party in England and confided to each other that their children were plotting to put them into old people's homes against their wills. So they came out on a holiday to South Africa and got married.
According to the way it's told here, their children still don't know. David is English and used to work in Kenya. Caroline is originally Irish, a teacher, and used to work in Zambia. They both look radiant, barefoot on a sandy beach under a caption saying "Saved By The Wedding Bells".
They are going back to England to face the music today, and if I had the energy and the time I'd find them and go with them myself just to see the St Valentine's Day surprise a lot of people are going to get when they find out.