Quentins Page 3

  "My friend Nuala is married to Frank, the youngest brother," she said.

  "Some small city. Imagine you knowing that catering couple as well. Anyway, Angel Ella, now tell me about your lunch."

  She told him about the elderly teacher who was afraid they would all get radiation from the microwave, and the sports teacher who had lost his front tooth biting into a hard French roll. She told him about the Third Years sending up a petition about school uniform being a danger to girls as they were maturing, since it made them objects of ridicule. None of these things had happened today because Ella had been racing around getting her flat cleaned and her body prepared for what might lie ahead. But as stories they were real incidents from other lunchtimes in the staffroom, and they made him laugh. And with Don Richardson it was going to be important to keep him laughing.

  If you wanted to be his friend or whatever there would be no place for moody.

  No place at all.

  He drove her back to her flat.

  "I enjoyed this evening," Don Richardson said.

  "Me, too." Her throat was tight and her chest constricted. D she ask him in? They were free agents. Or was it sluttish? Ar why should it be sluttish for the girl, not the man? She would wait and take her timing from him.

  "So, since I have your telephone number, maybe we can go again, Angel Ella?" he said.

  "Yes, please." She kissed his cheek and got out of the car while she still had the strength to do so. He waved and turned the car.

  She would not spend any time wondering would he drive eleven miles south to Killiney and the dead marriage or one mile north into the city to the bachelor pad.

  She let herself into the flat and looked accusingly at the vase of expensive fresh flowers she had arranged before she had left. "Fine lure you were to get him back here," she said. The flowers said nothing.

  Maybe I should get myself a cat or a dog, something that might grunt at me when I come back here alone, Ella thought. But then she might not always be coming back here alone.

  It was her father's birthday next day. Ella had bought him a gift voucher for a hotel in Co. Wicklow. An old-fashioned place with a big, rambling garden. When she was a child, they sometimes drove down there for Sunday lunch. He used to point out the flowers to her and she would learn the names. Ella remembered her mother smiling a lot there, sitting and pouring out afternoon tea in the garden.

  Maybe it would be a nice peaceful place for them to go and stay. The voucher covered dinner, bed and breakfast. It could be taken up any time in the next month. Surely they would like that?

  They loved the idea, both of them. Ella felt tears at the back of her eyes to see such gratitude.

  "What a wonderful gift, just imagine it," her father said, over and over.

  Ella wondered why had he never thought of such a thing himself if it was so great. Her mother was delighted too.

  "The three of us all going down to Holly's and staying the night!" she said.

  20

  Ella realised with a shock that they thought she was going with them as well.

  "So when will we go?" Her father was excited now like a child. "A Friday or a Saturday?" she suggested. She couldn't ruin it all now by explaining that she hadn't meant to come with them. "You choose," Father said. Don wouldn't ask her out on a Saturday, that would surely be

  family time.

  They fixed to go the following Saturday. Just as Ella was about lr call the hotel and make the booking her mobile phone rang.

  "Hallo," Don Richardson said.

  She noted that he hadn't said his name. It was arrogant in a way to assume that she knew who it was. But she was no good at playing games.

  "Oh, hallo," she said pleasantly.

  "Is it okay to talk?" he asked.

  "Oh, it's always okay," Ella said, but she got up and moved out towards the spiral steps down to the garden at the same time. She gave an apologetic shrug to her parents as if this were a duty call

  she had to take.

  "I wondered if you'd like to have dinner Saturday?"

  She looked behind her into the sitting-room. Her parents were examining the brochure for Holly's as if it were some kind of map of a treasure trove. She could not cancel it now.

  Ella held on to the wrought-iron rail. "I'm so sorry, but I've just arranged something, literally in the last few minutes, and it would of a bit difficult, you see, to . .."

  He cut her off.

  Never mind, it was on the off chance, there'll be other evenings."

  He was about to go. She knew she must not begin to burble at mi", but she was so very anxious to keep him on the line. I wish I didn't have to . . ."

  But you have," he said crisply before she could cancel her parents" outing and go with him wherever he suggested. "So catch y ou again." And he was gone.

  All during dinner her heart felt like a stone. And later, she helped her mother with the washing up and they had the most extraordinary conversation.

  "Ella, you couldn't have done anything that would please your

  father more, it's just what he needs. He's been very pressured at work."

  "Then why didn't you take him to Holly's, Mother?" Ella hoped

  her tone was not as impatient as she felt inside. Her mother looked at her, amazed.

  "But what would we have done there together, just the two of us looking at each other? We might as well just stay here looking at each other if there was to be just the two of us."

  Ella looked at her mother in shock. "You can't mean that, Mam?"

  "Mean what?" Her mother was genuinely surprised.

  "That you don't have anything to talk about with Dad."

  "But what is there to talk about, haven't we said it all?" Her mother spoke as if this were the most glaringly obvious thing in the world.

  "But if that's the way it is, why don't you leave him, why don't you separate?" Ella stood with the dinner plate in her hand. Her mother took it away from her.

  "Oh, Ella, don't be ridiculous, why on earth would we want to do that? I never heard of such nonsense."

  "People do, Mam."

  "Not people like me and your dad. Come back inside now and we'll talk about this great visit to Holly's."

  Ella felt as if a light warm woollen blanket had been put over her head and was beginning to suffocate her.

  She went to the cinema with Deirdre and for a drink afterwards. They talked normally as always. Or so Ella thought. Then Deirdre ordered another drink and asked Ella, "They're serving sandwiches. Do you want one?"

  "What?" Ella said. "Oh, yes, whatever."

  Til get you one with mouse's dirt and bird droppings in it, then," Deirdre said cheerfully.

  "What?"

  "Oh, good. Welcome back, you're awake again," Deirdre laughed.

  I don't know what you mean."

  "Ella, you saw none of the movie, you haven't said a word to me, you've bitten your lip and shuffled about. Are you going to tell me or are you not?"

  She had told Deirdre everything since they were thirteen, but she couldn't. It was odd, there was too much to tell and too little. Too much in that she had fallen in love with an entirely wrong man and that her own parents" thirty-year marriage, which she had always thought was very happy, was fairly empty. And yet too

  22

  4ed

  JS

  at

  tat,

  little to tell. To Deirdre it would all be simple. She would say that Ella should go for the man, married or not. Take what she wanted and not get hurt. And Deirdre would say that everyone's parents had rotten marriages, it's just the way things were.

  "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 .. . com
e 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 held her head on one side and 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 colour 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 a thin vague looking sheep wandered as if bemused that there wasn't more 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 marvellous 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

  24

  I

  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 for ever 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 w ore a smart red silk suit and had one of those handbags which 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 had 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 and it was the two teenage boys and their grandfather who faced them, the couple with the dead marriage had their backs to the Bradys.

  Ella's parents were still playing the "let's imagine" game about

  25

  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 hand-holding 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 H known he would, there they were all laughing again. Ella felt a H touch of hysteria. She wanted to stand up and scream to the whole restaurant that at best life was just one ludicrous, hypocritical

  facade. 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," he 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 in Tara Road. One house there had sold for a fortune recently.

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

  26

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

  "But you don't live there any more," 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 some day 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 used to live in Tara Road? 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 an estate agent."

  "Not any longer." Her father spoke gravely. "Apparently he and his partner got into a lot of funny business," he 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.