And there were so many other ways of making money. The sharp-eared witnesses who were meant to have heard everything said that Don Richardson had called out over and over: "I did it all for you." This was hard to interpret.
Some of the feature writers said that he may have been calling out to his beloved wife who, it was understood, was still in Spain but expected imminently in Ireland. Some thought to stand at her husband's side. Others thought to answer charges.
Since the long-planned dinner in Quentins was postponed until everyone was calm enough to deal with things, everyone seemed to assume that Ella would go back to the hotel with Derry.
"I don't suppose there's a way you'd like to try the bed tonight?" he said.
"Jesus, no, Derry. I've been through enough today without considering that side of things," she said.
"I didn't mean in bed with me in it, I meant you have the bed with me on the sofa."
"Oh, I see," she said. "Sorry."
And for some reason they found this very funny, and laughed all through the ordering of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs.
They played a game of chess as they had often done. They talked not at all about Don Richardson, where he would be tonight and what would happen to him. They didn't talk about Quentins either. In fact, they hardly talked at all.
And by the time Ella lay down on the sofa, which she insisted felt like home to her now, her eyes looked less frightened and her voice sounded much less shaky.
"I don't want to delay you in Dublin, Derry. We really will get down to work tomorrow."
"I'm in no hurry to leave. There's a great deal to be done here," he said as he kissed her lightly on the forehead and spread a rug over her.
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But America?" she said drowsily.
"Will survive for a bit without me," Derry King said.
What could have happened in that week that made everyone change their minds about the documentary? And where did it start first?
Possibly in the kitchen of Quentins.
Blouse Brennan was going through the boxes of fruit. Expertly he was dividing them into the areas where they would be needed: limes and lemons at the bar, fresh berries over at the pastry table so they could be dusted with icing sugar and added at the last moment to desserts.
"I bet you they'll film you doing that, Blouse. You look very graceful," Brenda said admiringly.
Blouse reddened. "They won't have me in their pictures," he said.
"Of course they will, Blouse, and out in the vegetable garden and with the hens, aren't you the most colourful part of it all?" Patrick reassured his brother.
But Blouse didn't respond to the flattery. "I didn't think it would be nice to be in it as, well, I don't want people looking at me."
"They'll be nice people, you know most of them, Nick and Sandy and Ella," Brenda pleaded.
"No, I don't mean them."
"Well, Mr King was in here, and he was the nicest man you could ever meet."
"No, I mean real people, outside people looking at it. People like Horse and Shay back home. The Brothers who taught me, fellows who work on the allotments. I don't want them seeing me and knowing my business," Blouse said, flushed and upset.
They knew not to let him get more distressed.
"Well, there's no question of you being in it if you don't want to, Blouse," Patrick said.
It would be a great loss, but it's your choice, no question of that," Brenda agreed.
"Thanks, Brenda, Patrick ... I don't want to let you down or anything."
"No way, Blouse," Patrick said through gritted teeth.
Or it could have been in Firefly Films. They got the offer they had
dreamed of from the day they started: to film one of Ireland's greatest rock bands all the way through from composing and rehearsing the songs up to a huge rock festival. They would be made if they could do it, but they would need to start almost immediately.
Nick was about to refuse. They were committed to Quentins.
Sandy said they should stall them for a week, a lot could happen in a few days and Derry King could easily change his mind.
Or it could have been Buzzo. He said he couldn't be seen in the film because nobody at school knew he worked here, and that his brothers would take any money off him if they knew he had it.
And Monica said that her husband, Clive, though the greatest darling who ever walked the earth, had been having second thoughts about their telling their love story. People were odd in the bank, no sense of humour. They might think less of Mr Clive Harris if they knew he had read books covered in brown paper about how to be attractive to the opposite sex. Regretfully, they would have to pull their story out.
Someone had told Yan the Breton waiter that if this film was successful, it would be shown everywhere, even in his homeland. Then his father would hear him saying for all the world to hear that they had not got on well as father and son. It was a very enclosed community. In his part of Brittany, people didn't air their problems in public. A million pardons, but he wouldn't be able to contribute.
And then Patrick Brennan finally had his annual checkup. He did all the stress tests on the treadmill and the exercise bikes. Then he sat down, still sweating mildly, to talk to the counsellor as part of the checkup.
"It's a stressful job, running a restaurant, of course, but once we get this documentary out of the way, we should be fine. We"ve promised to take time off together, delegate more."
"When will that be?"
"Oh, a few weeks" time, I gather. It will be hell keeping the show on the road until then, but we have to do it."
"Why, exactly?" asked the counsellor.
Brenda's friend Nora O"Donoghue was in the kitchen chopping vegetables. Brenda looked at her affectionately. She was such a handsome woman, with her piebald hair and her long, flowing clothes. She had no idea that she was striking and wonderful. Even
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there, as she washed the vegetables in a sink, laid them out on cloths to chop and dice, she looked like some happy goddess from a classical painting.
"I wish you'd stop that and come and talk to me, Nora."
"Listen, I'm doing three hours" work for your husband, if not for you. Come and talk to me here while I work."
Brenda pulled up a chair. "Do you mind them filming you doing this?" she asked.
"They wouldn't want me, for God's sake, a mad old woman."
"Oh, they would, Nora. You look lovely. I was just thinking it. Would you mind?"
"Not at all, if it's any help to you and Patrick. I'd be honoured."
Brenda looked at her with a lump in her throat. What a generous-spirited person she was. She didn't care if her mother and awful sisters, if the students in the Italian class she taught, if Aidan's colleagues, saw her scrubbing vegetables in a kitchen. What a wonderful way to be.
"You're tired, Brenda."
"Which means, You're ugly, Brenda."
"No, it means, You're worried, Brenda."
"All right, I am worried. Worried sick about this documentary and that we get it right."
"You don't need to do it," Nora said.
"If we are to amount to anything, then let us leave some kind of legacy after us."
Nora carefully put down her short, squat, but very sharp knife and laid her hand on Brenda's. "You? Amount to anything? Legendary, that's what they call you two already. How much more do you want to amount to? You've been giving legacies into people's lives and will continue to do so for ever."
"You're kind to think we amount to a lot, Nora, but I don't see it that way. I thought this would sort of define us in a way."
"Brenda, you have each other and all this marvellous place. In the name of God, woman, don't you have enough?"
Ella ran into Mrs Ennis, the school principal, in Haywards Cafe.
"I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you," Mrs Ennis said.
Ella was surprised. She had left Mrs Ennis slightly in the lurch by leaving the school so quickly. Then Mrs
Ennis, too, might have regretted her indiscretions about her own private life which she told to cheer Ella up.
"I was going to ask you, did you want any part-time work? I did try to call you, but none of your phone numbers worked."
"Oh, I went into hiding for a while," Ella admitted.
"But I gather from what I read in the papers that you're out now," Mrs Ennis was matter-of-fact.
"Yes, that's right, I am."
"Does teaching still interest you? You were good. The girls liked you."
"I did like it, very much. It was more solid than anything else, in a way."
"But maybe solidity isn't enough."
"I think it is now. But I have to make a film documentary first."
"How long would that take?"
"A few weeks, Mrs Ennis. I won't be part of the editing."
"What's it about?"
"It's about a day in the life of a restaurant."
"Why?" Mrs Ennis asked baldly.
Ella looked at her for a moment. "Do you know, I'm not quite sure why. A dozen reasons along the line, partly as therapy for me at the start, I know that. Then a lot of other people got drawn in." She seemed confused, thinking about why they were doing it.
Mrs Ennis was brisk. "You know where we are, Ella. Ring us within a week if you'd like to come back to us. We need you."
"You're very kind."
"And the other business? All right about that?"
"Oh, yes. It's as if it all happened to someone else, not me."
"Good, then you're getting better," Mrs Ennis said.
Ella hadn't talked to Derry properly for three days. He was with his cousins morning, noon and night.
"You haven't had a fight with him?" Barbara Brady asked.
"You couldn't fight with Derry," Ella said. She remembered his ex-wife Kimberly saying something similar.
When he rang later that day, he asked to see her. "We have to talk, Ella. Can we have dinner at Quentins?"
"Will I get Nick and Sandy to come?"
"No, just you."
It turned out that he had been eating there every evening with his cousins. Scan and Michael knew the place already and had come for special treats.
"I'm sorry you're going to turn all this into a sort of circus," Scan had said bluntly as he looked around him.
"What do you mean?" Derry wondered.
"Well, when you have all these people appearing on television, they'll become celebrities and folks will come in to gawp at them. They won't be able to get on with their job like they did before. Before they became actors, I mean."
"Ah, now, Scan, don't go discouraging Derry. This is his work, his business. You wouldn't like it if he were to go telling you how to paint a house," Michael said.
"I wouldn't mind if he had anything interesting to say." Sean was honest.
And that night, Derry told Ella all this. How the brothers had opened up his eyes about so many things. Filming wasn't his business, he assured them, selling was his business, creating needs for people, then filling them. That's what he was good at. He had spent time in their business and told them about ways they could expand. Sell paint as well as doing the job. Set up an advisory service after hours, in the evenings or Saturday mornings. Draw in the young couples, give them colour charts, do and don't lists. Make them your friends. You weren't doing yourself out of a market. There were two different worlds, those who painted and those who didn't.
And then, he said to Ella, he had listened to them as well. And understood what they were saying. He had grown to love Quentins, there was a possibility that a fly-on-the-wall would destroy it and the hard-working people there. He felt clear in his head about it. Now the only problem was to explain all this to Ella and to everyone else. He was amazed at how easy that turned out to be.;.
The only person who was confused and annoyed in the end was Deirdre. "For week after bloody week I've been talking, sleeping, dreaming, breathing this documentary. It was going to be the making of everybody. And now suddenly, out of a clear blue sky, I'm meant to be overjoyed that it is not happening. No, Ella, give me some sense of being something rather than a nodding dog."
"You, a nodding dog, Dee! Please!"
"No, I'm serious. It's all ludicrous. What happens when you go back to teaching, your man goes back to America, your other man goes to gaol, Firefly Films become rock groupies, Quentins misses
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out on immortality? Where's all the joy in that?" Deirdre was great when she grumbled. Which was never for long.
"Listen, cheer up. You're invited to a big party to celebrate."
"God, what a mad crowd you are. Celebrating! Anyone else would be in mourning."
"No, Dee, you eejit, it's for lots of things . .. the new company, Kennedy and King. Berry's going in with his cousins. It's for Aidan and Nora's wedding party. It's for Nick and Sandy's new contract. It's for my getting exactly the job I want, part-time teaching, and I'm going back to university to do a doctorate as well, and it's for my father going to have a job as a financial adviser in Kennedy and King. And for so many other things ... if you can't celebrate all that, then you're only a miserable old curmudgeon."
Deirdre threw her arms around Ella. "I never saw you so happy. So that maybe is a reason to get a new party frock. Will there be anything there that I could get my nails and teeth into?"
"Lord knows, there might be," said Ella. "It's shaping up as a very unusual party."
"Yes, Mrs Mitchell. I know it's inconvenient. Perhaps you could choose another night."
"But my daughter-in-law ... well, my ex-daughter-in-law, tells me she's going to Quentins on Saturday night . .. tomorrow."
"But as I'm sure she told you, it's a private function, Mrs Mitchell."
"Well, I had thought there might be exceptions for regular clients."
"No, we have had this notice on the tables for three weeks, Mrs Mitchell, and in the newspaper."
Brenda came off the phone and rolled her eyes up to heaven. "Amazing how Cathy didn't kill that one dead. She's the most trying woman in Dublin."
The next call was from Nora's mother. "I don't know what you're thinking of to imagine that I and my family are going to a surprise party for Nora. I never heard such nonsense, and at her age. And at such short notice."
"We had to keep it at short notice in case they heard about it." Brenda's eyes rolled further around in her head.
"But I thought that this ceremony was going to be in a
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bookshop. That's what Nora said, and we wouldn't have gone to that either," Mrs O"Donoghue sniffed.
"We so much hope you'll be here tomorrow. It will be a great feast and every woman wants her mother there at a wedding party."
"Huh, as if it were a proper wedding."
"It will be a marvellous wedding. I'm one of the witnesses. So can I hope you all will come, or is this a definite no?"
Nora's appalling mother didn't want to rule herself out of what was being described as a feast. "I can't say yes or no."
"Well, we hope that's a yes. Meanwhile, not a word of any of this to Nora and Aidan."
Brenda knew that the old bat would try to ring them and spoil it, but it was impossible now; Nora was staying in Quentins for the night and Aidan was at his son-in-law's house. Mrs O"Donoghue would not be able to find them now, no matter how hard she tried.
Maud and Simon were told that Hooves, their dog, could not come to the party no matter how rejected it made him feel. He had a collar the same as Derry King's dog had in America, but even that didn't get him in. They were warned by Cathy that two songs was the maximum, and could they be love songs?
Simon thought of "Please, Release Me, Let Me Go". But that was not suitable for a wedding, apparently.
Neither was "Young Love, First Love, is Filled With Deep Emotion", which they knew, because the couple were not in the first flush of youth.
"Love," Cathy said. "You must know some song about love?"
&n
bsp; They said they would do some research.
"Nothing to be sung without consulting me," Cathy said. "That's an order."
Scan and Michael Kennedy were the first arrivals. They were trying out the canapes and looking at the banners on the wall. The menu was engraved for Aidan and Nora as it should be with wedding bells attached, but there was a banner for Kennedy and King too, and one for Firefly Films, and one for Ella's degree.
The sign writer had been busy tonight.
At the piano, two earnest-looking blond children sat beside an
old man as he picked out the notes of a song and tried to teach it to them.
"We'd better write it down, Muttie," the boy said.
"Everyone knows the words," the old man protested. "They"re not words you'd be able to write down like, they're not in English."
"Then why are we singing it?" the girl asked.
"Because Cathy says they must love it. She said it was a pity you didn't know it but you will if you concentrate."
They concentrated heavily.
Derry came in a car to collect the Brady family.
"We're not really much for parties," Tim protested, but Ella noticed he had dressed up smartly all the same.
"Can't have a party without my financial adviser there. I might revert to my father and get drunk and silly," Derry said.
Ella smiled at him. He was able to make a remark about it, a joke even. At last.
"We wouldn't miss it for the world, Derry," Ella's mother said.
Ella looked at the streets around her as they drove to Quentins. This was her world. There was no other and there never would be again.
Patrick made an appearance at the party in full chefs gear. "Brenda is with them. She's taking the little party, just Aidan, his daughters and the son-in-law, down to Holly's for afternoon tea and they think they're going to the bookshop afterwards."
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