Quentins (4 page)

“Nothing, Dee, just fussing, ruminating, being neurotic . . . that's all it is, honestly.”

“That's all it
ever
is, honestly, but you always tell me,” Deirdre grumbled.

“You've got such a great, uncomplicated way of looking at things. I'm envious.”

“No, you're not, you think I'm sexually indiscriminate, that I have a hard heart . . . come on, you're not envious.”

“I am. Tell me of your latest drama, whatever it was.”

“Well, I had a great session with that Don Richardson, you know, the consultant guy you see all over the papers.
Very
good he is too, insatiable nearly.”

Deirdre watched Ella's face. After a few seconds she was contrite. “Ella, you clown, I was just joking.”

Ella said nothing. She had both hands on her head, as if trying to clear it.

“
Ella!
I didn't, I never even met him, you silly thing, I was only on a fishing expedition to see if that's who you fancied.”

Ella took her hands away from her face.

“And it seems as if I was right,” Deirdre said.

“How did you know?” Ella's voice was a whisper.

“Because I'm your best friend, and also because you couldn't take your eyes off him when he came up to you at Nuala's do the other night.”

“Was that only the other night?” Ella was amazed.

“Will I get a half bottle of wine?” Deirdre suggested.

“Get a full bottle,” Ella said, some of the color coming back to her face.

The next Saturday the Bradys left Tara Road in the middle of the afternoon so that they could take a tour of Wicklow Gap before going to Holly's. Ella was determined to do it well if she was doing it at all. Give them a day and night out to remember. Oddly, Deirdre had seemed highly approving that she had refused the date with Don for Saturday night. To have agreed would make Ella too available. He would call again, mark Deirdre's words, she knew about such things. Ella had brought a flask of coffee and three little mugs and they stood in the afternoon sunshine to admire the scenery. There was bright yellow gorse on the bare hills, and some flashes of deep purple heather. Here and there thin, vague-looking sheep wandered as if
bemused that there wasn't mire-green grass for them to eat.

“Imagine, you can't see a house or a building anywhere and yet be so near Dublin, isn't it amazing?” Ella said.

“Like the Yorkshire moors. I was there once,” her father said.

Ella hadn't known that. “Were you there too, Mam?”

“No, before my time.” She sounded clipped.

“It's a bit like Arizona too, all that space, except it's red desert over there,” Ella said. “Remember the time you gave me the money for the Greyhound bus tour. When Deirdre and I went off to see the world.”

“You were twenty-one,” her mother remembered.

“And you sent us a postcard every three days,” her father said.

“You were very generous. I saw so much that I'll never forget, thanks to you. Deirdre had to work for the money and borrow some. I don't think she's paid it all back yet.”

“Why
have
a child if you can't give her a holiday?” Barbara Brady's lips were pursed with disapproval of those who didn't take parenting seriously.

“And what is money when all is said and done,” said Tim Brady, who had spent all his working hours, weeks and years, advising people about money and nothing else.

Ella was mystified. But she remembered Deirdre's advice about not killing herself trying to understand them, there was probably nothing to understand.

Holly's hotel was buzzing with people, most of them having driven from Dublin for dinner. But the Brady family had their rooms, time to stroll in the gardens, have a leisurely bath and then meet in the chintzy little bar for a sherry while looking at the menu.

“I must say, this is a marvelous treat,” her father said over and over.

“You are
such
a thoughtful girl,” her mother would murmur in agreement.

Ella told them that she loved looking at people in restaurants and imagining stories about them. Like that couple near the window, for example, they were drug pushers back in Dublin, just come for a nice respectable weekend to know what the other world was like.

“Are they?” Her mother was alarmed.

“Of course not,” Ella said. “It's only pretend. Look at that group over there—what do you think they are?”

Slowly her parents got drawn into the game. “The older couple is trying to get the younger ones to go halves in buying a boat,” said Tim Brady.

“The younger couple is telling the older ones that they're bankrupt and asking for a loan,” said Barbara Brady.

“I think it's a group-sex thing, they all answered one of Miss Holly's ads for wife-swapping weekends,” Ella suggested.

And they were all laughing at the whole crazy notion of it in this of all places, when Ella looked up and saw Don Richardson and his family being ushered from the bar into the dining room. He looked over and saw them at that moment. It would be frozen forever in Ella's mind. The Bradys all laughing at one table and Don at the door, holding it open for his father-in-law, his sons aged sixteen and fifteen, and his wife, Margery, who only lunched for charities and otherwise played golf. Margery, who was not large, weather-beaten and distant looking, but who wore a smart red silk suit and had one of those handbags that cost a fortune. Margery, who was petite, smiled up at her husband in a way that Ella would never be able to do since she was exactly the same height.

Ella's father was very engaged by the menu. Would smoked trout salad be too heavy a starter if he was going to have Guinness steak and oyster pie?

Ella wondered if she might possibly be going to faint. Was this a sign that since she had refused to go out with him Don decided to play the rare role of family man? Was this self-delusion of the worst kind? Did he think less of her for being with her parents? Or quite possibly more? Would he acknowledge her in the dining room? Ella ordered absently and chose the wine. It was too late now to ask if they could eat upstairs in the bedroom. She had to face it.

In the dining room they were quite a distance from the Richardson party. The two boys and their grandfather faced them, and the couple with the dead marriage had their backs to the Bradys.

Ella's parents were still playing the let's imagine game about people. The two women over there were planning a shoplifting spree, her mother thought, or they were discussing putting their father into an old people's home. Ella's father thought they had hacked into a computer and made a fortune and were wondering how to spend it.

“What do you think, Ella?”

She had been thinking about the body language of Don and Margery Richardson as they sat together easily. They were not stroking each other or handholding, but they didn't have that stiffness that couples often have when there is a distance. Like her own parents had. Every night except tonight, when they seemed to be very relaxed.

“Go on, Ella, what do you think they are?”

She glanced briefly at the two retired women who obviously treated themselves out to a meal and a gossip twice a year.

“Lesbians planning which of them should be inseminated this time,” she said, forgetting she was talking to her parents rather than to Deirdre. To her surprise, they thought it was very funny, and when Don turned around
slightly to look for her as she had known he would, there they were, all laughing again. Ella felt a touch of hysteria. She wanted to stand up and scream to the whole restaurant. That at best life was just one ludicrous, hypocritical façade. But you'd need to be a brave person to lose control at Miss Holly's. Ella thought that he
would
say hallo, stop by the table and say something smooth and pleasant. Just be prepared for it and behave accordingly. Nothing glib or too smart.

Her father removed his glasses and seemed pleased to be able to identify at least one of the fellow diners. “My goodness, that's Ricky Rice, of Rice and Richardson Consultants,” Tim Brady said.

“Oh, do you know them, Dad?” she asked, her mouth hardly able to form the words.

“No, no, not at all, but we all know of them. Dear Lord, do
they
have clients?” he said, shaking his head with envy.

“How did they get such great business, do you think?” Her mother was peering over at the table.

“Know all the right people apparently.” Her father shrugged, his face defeated and sad.

Ella was determined to raise the mood. She asked them about property prices on Tara Road. One house there had sold for a fortune recently.

“Didn't you do well to buy a house there, Dad?” she said.

“We wanted a place with a nice garden for you to grow up,” her mother said. “And wasn't it marvelous? Still is, of course.”

“But you don't live there anymore,” her father said.

“No, Dad, not full-time, but I'll come back and see you as I will always do while you're there, or wherever you are.”

“What do you mean, wherever we are?” Her mother sounded very anxious.

Please, please, may he not look around again now and see them all frowning and anxious. “I meant, Mam, that someday you'll want to sell Tara Road and buy a smaller place, won't you? Won't you?” She looked from one to the other eagerly.

“We hadn't ever thought . . .” her father began.

“Why should we leave our home?” her mother said.

“You know that guy Danny Lynch who lives in Number Twenty-five? He says this is the time to sell.”

“Well, he left his wife and children—he's no role model,” her mother said.

“No, but he
is
a real estate agent.”

“Not any longer.” Her father spoke gravely. “Apparently he and his partner got into a lot of funny business,” her father said very disapprovingly.

“
And
anyone who would cheat on his wife like he did isn't worth listening to on any subject,” Ella's mother said.

There was a movement two tables away. Ella saw him stand up. She knew he was coming over. Make them laugh, she told herself.

It was a tall order. She had about thirty seconds.

“Don't mind me, Deirdre says that I'm obsessed by property. That's another game I play, I pretend houses aren't what they seem to be! Apart from Holly's hotel here being the wife-swapping center of Europe, I think Mam's law office is money laundering big-time. And wait till I tell you what I think Dad's firm is up to—” She stopped just as he arrived at the table. It had worked, they were both looking at her with eager smiles to know what she would say next.

“Hallo, I'm Don Richardson. We met at Frank and Nuala's party this week.”

“Oh,
that's
right. Don, these are my parents, Tim and Barbara Brady.”

His handshake was so firm, his tone so warm, she felt
nothing but gratitude to him. He was being so genuinely pleasant to two strangers. He was not speaking to this couple as a man who was about to seduce their daughter, betray his wife. She saw him as someone who had come to rescue the conversation. She explained it was her father's birthday, he explained that it was a celebration because his son had scored a winning goal in a match. In the few short moments that he stayed he managed to discover the name of and praise her father's firm. He even knew of the office where her mother worked when it was mentioned and said they were highly respected lawyers. And then he was gone.

They spoke of him admiringly.

“Very hardworking man. That's why he got where he is. People used to say it was all his father-in-law, but the firm was nothing until he got into it,” her father said.

“And very easy with people too,” her mother said.

Ella felt it was foolish to be as pleased as she was that they liked him. And she felt very pleased indeed at the way he smiled at her as he left the dining room. She knew he was going to call her soon again. But she hadn't known that he would call her at midnight.

“I hope I didn't wake you,” he said on her cell phone.

“No. I was reading, there's a kind of window seat here, I was actually looking at the shapes of the bushes and flowers more than reading.”

“Bushes? Flowers? Where are you?” He sounded confused.

“How quickly men forget. I'm in Holly's, we met there about four hours ago.”

“In Holly's?” He sounded very disappointed.

“Don, you know I am. Is this is a game?”

“If so, I've lost,” he said.

“Where are
you
?” she asked.

“I'm parked on your road. I was hoping you'd ask me in for coffee.”

“So your son's celebration is over?”

“And your father's continues?”

“That's life, I suppose.” She was smiling now. He was outside her door back in Dublin. He had not gone back to his Killiney home with the wife in red silk. His ties to his home must be very loose, as he had said. He had driven all the way in to Dublin on the off chance of seeing her. He
must
fancy her.