Quentins Read online

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  "They're waiting for you," Kit said cheerfully.

  "Please, Kit, don't come at me with profound wisdom. Not today."

  Kit was not at all put out. "It's all right, Martin. I've given them coffee and your apologies. I told them you'd had a power breakfast you couldn't cancel. Actually it might work to your advantage." She smiled at him reassuringly.

  Martin squared his shoulders and began his morning.

  He wasn't to know it, but other people's mornings were difficult too. His son Jody had paced and paced around a small bed-sitting-room rehearsing over and over the speech he would make at lunchtime in Quentins Restaurant. Would it come out as he intended it to? The more often he said it, the less likely it seemed.

  In the restaurant, under the watchful eye of Brenda Brennan, the Breton waiter Yan was polishing the cutlery on each table with a soft cloth and having a bad morning. There had been a letter from home with vague mentions of his father going to Concarneau to have tests in the hospital. Nobody said what the tests were for. Should he go home and find out? It would be useless to telephone, they would only tell him not to waste his hard-earned money.

  Kit Morris was not having a good day either. It didn't help that Martin was behaving like a spoiled child. She had her own problems. Like how the future was going to work out for her elderly mother. She was no longer able to cope on her own. It would be coming to live with Kit or going in to a home. There were no other options, her married brothers had made that clear. Kit needed some time to think it through. She had been going to ask Martin for a few days" leave. But today was not the day to ask him.

  Martin sat at his table in Quentins, drumming his fingers. One of his colleagues had driven him there. The man had patronisingly urged Martin to have a good relaxed lunch, noting that he was on a fairly short fuse today. So now he was fifteen minutes early and of course that boy would be late as he always was. Martin went over the meeting in his mind. The people had been very cagey, they had not said yes or no to the pitch that had been made. They would let him know later in the day. Most things had gone well. What he needed was a good stiff drink. The waiter, foreign of course, didn't manage to catch his eye. The boy did look over once, but his eyes were vacant, so Martin clicked his fingers to attract his attention. Something happened to the boy's face then. A

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  veneer of coldness came over it. It was so deliberate that Martin could not believe his eyes. The young pup was not even going to acknowledge him. This was not good enough, it simply was not. This was a top-class restaurant with standards. He clicked his fingers again and the boy's face was like stone. Martin felt a nerve beginning to tic in his forehead. He stood up and was just about to approach Brenda Brennan to complain in the most forceful of tones when there was a sudden power cut. Every light in the place went out. In a dark, heavily curtained restaurant on a wet, overcast day, it was astonishing the effect it caused. The place seemed to be in complete darkness. For a moment, Martin thought that he had been having a blackout and was greatly relieved to hear fellow diners gasp, laugh and make remarks about the incident.

  Holding the table for support, he eased himself back into his seat. Brenda had organised her troops with candles on every table within minutes. She moved amongst them all, assuring everyone that they cooked by gas as well as electricity. So there would be no problem and she insisted that everyone have a drink on the house by way of an apology.

  "That's if you can get anyone who will serve you one," Martin grumbled.

  I beg your pardon, sir?" Brenda Brennan was startled.

  "Well, that Latin Lover over there seems to have been stricken with deafness and blindness even at a time when the lights were on," Martin said.

  "Yan is one of our best waiters, so you do surprise me, but let me please serve you, sir. What would you like?"

  He saw her speaking to Yan while the boy tried to explain something. He was being very definite about whatever it was he was saying. Martin couldn't hear, but he saw Brenda seem to console him and place her hand on his arm. And then she was back with exemplary speed with his vodka and he tried to relax. Eventually the waiter approached to leave him the menus. Martin had not yet succeeded in relaxing.

  "Oh, I see you've noticed me at last," he said.

  "I'm sorry, sir," he said.

  "Don't even try to tell me that you didn't see me," Martin began.

  "No, sir, I did see you. I am sorry for not coming over."

  "And why didn't you?"

  "You made this sound with your fingers." Yan did that click.

  "Yes, because I wanted to get you to see me."

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  "I trained with a maitre d"hotel who said we must develop a diplomatic blindness if such a thing happened, and not to serve the p erson. Ever. But Mrs Brennan, she has just explained this is not the policy here, so I apologise."

  "Things like that might work in France . . ." Martin began.

  "I am from Brittany, sir," Yan said. His face looked pale and anxious. Possibly Brenda had threatened to sack him. The boy did not look well.

  "Are you all right?" Martin asked unexpectedly.

  "Thank you for asking me. Just I'm a little worried in case my father might be ill and if I should be beside him."

  "Are you close to your father?" Martin asked.

  "No, he is far away in Brittany," Yan explained.

  "I meant, can you talk to him, do you like each other?"

  "No father can really talk to his son, no son can really talk to his father, only the very lucky ones. But I care very much, yes."

  At that moment, Martin saw his own son being shown to the table. The familiar surge of annoyance filled him. Joseph ... or Jody as he insisted on calling himself . .. wore a torn anorak and grey faded sweater underneath. He looked so shabby, so out of place, yet his smile was confident and happy.

  "Dad, I'm so sorry I'm late. The buses were full because of the rain, and I was so anxious to get here because . . ."

  "It's all right, Joseph. Give the waiter your order for a drink. It's free because the electricity has failed."

  "Has it?" Jody looked around in amazement. He said, I didn't even notice."

  Martin looked very impatient. The boy was showing himself to be almost an imbecile.

  "Please, Joseph, get some grip on reality," he began.

  "But Dad, I was so excited coming to see you to tell you the great news, great, great news."

  "You've got a job?" his father asked.

  "I've always had a job, Dad," Jody said.

  If you call sweeping up leaves a job."

  "It's gardening, Dad, but that's not the point. The point is that . .." Jody stopped, hardly able to speak for the magnitude of what he was going to say. "The point is, Dad, I spent two whole mornings wondering how to tell you and now I wonder why, why was I rehearsing it?"

  "Rehearsing what?"

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  "I saw you, Dad, as I came across the room, talking to the waiter.. ."

  Jody indicated Yan, who had not left but was looking from one to the other as if he were at a tennis match. "And you looked so kind and concerned, like an ordinary person not a great businessman ... so I said to myself, why do I have to wait until it's a good time to tell you? We are going to have a baby, Jenny and I... we are so excited, I can't tell you how pleased and happy we are. Imagine, a son or daughter of our own. A new person!"

  The hint of tears was in his eyes, the eagerness that had never died. The optimism that even his father's cool dismissive attitude had never managed to quench shone out of him.

  At that very moment Brenda came over with an envelope for Martin. "Your secretary delivered it by hand. She said she knew you "would not like to be disturbed by the telephone."

  Kit had chosen this moment of all moments to bother him with some office business. He barely looked at it but tried instead to think of a response to his son. Before Martin could speak, Yan had taken Jody's hand. "Mes felicitations ... I mean, my congratulations,
what a wonderful piece of news. You must be happy, you and your wife."

  "Jenny and I aren't married . .. we never saw the need . .." Jody began.

  "No, no ... in French it is the same word, wife and woman."

  "So it is," Jody said, but his eyes were on his father. "Do you want to open your message from the office, Dad? It might be important," he said humbly.

  Martin was almost too choked to speak. "Nothing is as important as this," he stammered eventually. "I'm so very pleased for you both, and for me, and maybe . . . maybe . . ." his voice broke, ". .. maybe there's even a way your mother might know."

  "Of course she does," Jody beamed.

  Yan stood back as if he expected the two men to stand up and embrace ... and with one movement they did. Something they had never done before. Almost embarrassed, they sat down and looked at each other.

  "Now, please, Dad, open the message. It's making me nervous," Jody said.

  Kit had written to say that they had got the corporate contract and she had taken the liberty of ordering champagne to celebrate with the American partners. "Everyone is so pleased, Martin," Kit

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  wrote. "You've made this place much more like a family than a workplace. Well done from all of us."

  Martin felt almost weak as he read these words.

  What had he been thinking of to want to change Kit?

  She was utterly essential to the office the way she was.

  Thank God he had said nothing to her, it would have been unforgivable.

  Jody talked on about names and plans and how he would look after the baby as much as Jenny would.

  "I wish I had done that with you," Martin said slowly.

  "I asked Mother about that, but she said you had far too short a fuse for minding a child," said Jody, who didn't seem to have an ounce of resentment in his body.

  "When I say goodbye to the people in the boardroom this evening, can I come around to you and Jenny to celebrate?"

  Jody looked at him in amazement. His father had never been to his flat. Perhaps the short fuse wasn't as important for grandfathers.

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  Serious Celebration

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  When Maggie Nolan did so well in her Leaving Certificate, her father said it was something that called for a Serious Celebration. The Nolan family were going out to have dinner in a hotel.

  This had never happened before. They had never even been in an ordinary restaurant, let alone a hotel restaurant. Other people went to the Chinese or the Italian - the country was becoming cosmopolitan. Well, some of it was.

  But not the Nolans.

  There was never the money to spare. There was so much to pay for and so many calls on their time. Mrs Nolan's mam lived with them, for one thing, and Mr Nolan's dad had to have his dinner cooked for him and taken over to his flat every day.

  Mr Nolan worked in charge of the bacon counter at one of those old-fashioned grocery stores that people said were on the way out. He was very happy and well-respected there but, of course, if the store really were on the way out, it would be hard for Mr Nolan to get another job.

  Mrs Nolan worked as a cleaner in the hospital. She was very popular with the nurses and with the patients, but the hours were long and tiring, her veins were bad, and she hoped she would be able to continue working until all the children had been accounted for.

  Maggie was the eldest of five. The others were all boys who wanted to play for English soccer teams. They had no interest in

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  their studies and were utterly amazed that their big sister had got enough marks in exams to make people talk seriously about her going to university. They were even more amazed that their father was going to take them to the big posh hotel where nobody they knew had even been inside the door.

  But he kept saying Maggie's marks would mean nothing unless there was a Serious Celebration.

  "Will it be just the three of you - Mam, Dad and Maggie?" they wanted to know.

  "A family celebration," he insisted.

  "Will Grandma come?" they asked.

  Grandma Kelly was inclined to take her teeth out in public. The money would not extend to Grandma, it was explained firmly. Grandpa Nolan said that he wouldn't cross the door of such a place on principle. He said this before anyone had invited him, without explaining what the exact principle was.

  But that still meant seven people going to a preposterously expensive hotel.

  "We can't do it - it's ludicrous, Mam," Maggie said. Her mother looked tired after a long day pushing a heavy, awkward cleaning trolley around the wards.

  "Listen, child, we are so proud of you, and what has your father been in there slicing bacon for, year after year, if he can't take his family to a posh place when the eldest turns out to be a genius?" Maggie's mother's eyes were bright as they shone in her weary face.

  So this stopped the discussion. There could be no more protesting.

  Maggie went to her room.

  She was eighteen. She knew that the celebration dinner would cost a fortune, maybe two weeks of her father's wages. He would have to borrow from the Credit Union at work. Maggie would have much preferred them to have had chicken and chips and for her father to have given her fifty pounds towards books for university.

  But she listened to her mother. This Serious Celebration at the best restaurant in Dublin would give some meaning to a lot of lives. Not only her father's - her mother, too, would like to walk around the ward mentioning casually what "was on the menu at the dinner party last night.

  Her two difficult grandparents would rejoice as much as if they

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  had been there. Her four younger brothers would think it was a great adventure. And if they could perhaps be persuaded not to peel the potatoes with their nails ...

  Mr Nolan made the reservation.

  "Did they need a deposit?" Maggie's mother wondered.

  "Indeed they did not. They asked for a phone number and I gave them the bacon counter extension," he said proudly.

  The boys became very annoyed about the amount of washing and scrubbing and clean shirts involved in it all. Maggie's mother said that she had told the matron where she was going and the matron had kindly lent her a stole. Maggie's father had told the general manager where he was going and the general manager had insisted that he would phone ahead and offer them a cocktail before dinner with his compliments.

  And eventually the evening arrived.

  Maggie had not thought a great deal about it because there was so much else to think of, like the fees for university and how to fit in her studies with all the hours that she would have to work earning the money. The night out in the posh restaurant, the Serious Celebration, was only one more crisis along the line. Since the Nolans didn't have a car they took two buses to get there. Mr Nolan had the money in an envelope in his inside pocket. He patted it proudly half a dozen times on the journey. Maggie felt an urge to cry every time she saw this but she kept cheerful and said over and over that she couldn't believe they were all going to this restaurant. Her friends would be so envious, she said over and over. And she was rewarded by her mother hitching her borrowed stole higher, and her father saying that the general manager was altogether too good to arrange the cocktails.

  They arrived at the door and the place seemed enormous and intimidating, nobody wanted to be the first up the steps.

  They felt nervous and out of place once in the restaurant. Mr Nolan wondered, should they have the cocktails in the lounge or at the table? Maggie, who thought that the boys might do less damage if corralled into just one destination, was in favour of the dining-room, but her mother thought that Mr Nolan might like to see the lounge as well.

  There was endless confusion when Mr Nolan mentioned the general manager's name. There had been no message about cocktails. Apparently nobody had phoned ahead with any such order.

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  "Just as well, Da, we'd have all been on our ear if we had them," Maggie s
aid, and tried not to watch the waiter wince as he overheard her remark.

  They decided to study the menu and bypass the cocktails.

  The menu was in French.

  "Can you translate it for us, please?" Maggie said to the scornful waiter.

  She was maddened "with grief that the Serious Celebration was somehow going to be dimmed.

  The waiter translated, under duress; Maggie remembered what everything was. She decided that her father was going to have the steak, her mother the chicken, and that she and the boys would have well-done lamb chops. Nobody would have any starters, she said, but they would all have dessert, she promised the sneering waiter.

  The boys were so shocked and overawed by it all that for once in their wild lives they agreed with her.

  She had never felt so angry and upset in her whole life. The look on her parents" faces was like a knife sticking into her. They were embarrassed and ashamed - after all their borrowing and planning it had not been a good idea.

  "This is something I will always remember, Mam, Dad," Maggie said truthfully. She would remember it every day of her life, when she was a high-flying lawyer, when she was confident enough to know every dish on the menu and to be known with admiration by every one of the hotel staff here.

  "Maybe it wasn't quite . . ." Dad began.

  Maggie felt faint, quite literally, as if she were going to fall over. He had wanted so much for this outing to be a success for her. The more she protested, the worse it was going to get, and the more pathetic she would make him seem.

  A waitress "was setting up the table with the appropriate cutlery. An elegant, groomed woman, aged around thirty, she wore a white lace collar and she was probably as horrible, snobbish and dismissive as the rest of them. Maggie burned with rage at it all.

  But this woman somehow managed to catch her eye with a look of understanding. This woman seemed to know it was a special occasion.