Minding Frankie

by Maeve Binchy

  His hair looked soft and silky, and she longed to reach across the table and run her hands through it. She had the most absurd wish to have his head on her shoulder while she stroked his face. She must shake herself out of this pretty sharpish and get back to the business of designing a look and styling a logo for his new company.

  “What will you call the new place?” she asked, surprised that she could keep so calm.

  “Well, I know it’s a bit of an ego trip, but I was thinking of calling it Anton’s,” he said. “But let’s order first. They have a really good cheese soufflé here. I should know—I made enough of them in my time!”

  “That would be perfect,” Lisa said. This could not be happening. She was falling in love for the very first time.

  Back at the office Kevin asked her, “Any luck with Golden Boy?”

  “He’s very personable, certainly.”

  “Did you give him any outline and our rates?” Kevin was anxious there would be no gray areas.

  “No—that will come later.” Lisa was almost dreamy as she thought of Anton and how he had kissed her cheek when they parted.

  “Yeah, well, as long as he understands it doesn’t come free because he’s a pretty boy,” Kevin said.

  “How do you know that he’s a pretty boy?” Lisa asked.

  “You just said that he was personable and I think he was the same guy that my niece had a nervous breakdown over.”

  “Your niece?”

  “Yes. My brother’s daughter. She went out with a chef called Anton Moran once. Nothing but tears and tantrums, then she drops out of college, then she goes to face him down about it all and he’s gone off cooking on a cruise ship.”

  Lisa’s heart felt like lead. Anton had told her of his wonderful year onboard a luxury liner.

  “I don’t think it could have been the same person.” Lisa’s tone was cold.

  “No, maybe not … probably not …” Kevin was anxious for the least trouble possible. “Just as long as he knows he’s getting nothing for free from us.”

  Lisa knew with a terrible certainty that there would be a lot of trouble ahead. Anton had barely the money to cover the deposit on his premises. He was relying on outstanding restaurant reviews to meet the mortgage payments and the expenses of doing the place up. He had given no thought whatsoever to the cost of a graphic artist and a campaign.

  The site for the restaurant was perfect: it was in a small lane just a few yards off a main road, near to the railway station, a tram route and a taxi rank. He had suggested a picnic. Lisa brought cheese and grapes, Anton brought a bottle of wine.

  They sat on packing cases and he described his great plans. She hardly took in any of them as she watched his face. His sense of excitement was contagious.

  By the time they had finished the cheese and grapes she knew that she would leave Kevin and set up on her own. Perhaps she could move in with Anton, work with him—they could build the place together—but she must not rush her fences. However hard it was, she mustn’t look overeager.

  Anton had mentioned very little about his private life.

  His mother lived abroad, his father lived in the country and his sister lived in London. He spoke well of everyone and badly of no one. She mustn’t ask him about Kevin’s niece. She must hassle him about nothing. She knew that he was totally right—this place was going to be a huge success and she wanted to be part of it and in at the very start.

  She gave a sigh of pure pleasure.

  “It’s good, that wine, isn’t it?” he said.

  It might as well have been turpentine. She couldn’t taste it. But she mustn’t let him know at this early stage that she was sighing with pleasure at the thought of a future with him.

  It would be lovely to have someone to tell—someone who would listen and ask, What did you do then? What did he say to that? But Lisa had few close friends.

  She couldn’t tell anyone at work, that was for sure. When she left Kevin’s studio she wanted no one to suspect why. Kevin might become difficult and say she had met Anton on his time and that he had stood them the glasses of champagne that had clinched the deal.

  Once or twice he had asked her if “Anton pretty boy” had got any further along the line in his decision-making. Lisa shrugged. It was impossible to know, she had said vaguely. You couldn’t rush people.

  Kevin agreed. “Just so long as he’s not getting anything for free,” he warned several times.

  “Free? You must be joking!” Lisa said, outraged at the very idea.

  Kevin would have been astonished had he known just how long Lisa had spent with Anton and how many drawings she had shown him to establish a logo for his new venture. At that moment she had concentrated on the colors of the French flag, and the A of Anton was a big curly, showy letter. It could not be mistaken for anything else. She had done drawings and projections, shown him how this image would appear on a restaurant sign, on business cards, menus, table napkins and even china.

  She had spent every single evening with Anton—sometimes sitting on the packing cases, sometimes in small restaurants around Dublin, where he was busy seeing what worked and what didn’t. One night, he did a shift at Quentins to help them out and invited Lisa to have a meal there at a staff discount. She sat proudly, looking out from her booth, grateful that she had met this man who was now quite simply the center of her whole life. Then and there she had definitely decided to leave Kevin’s office and set up business on her own.

  She would shortly leave the cold, friendless home where she lived now, but would wait until Anton suggested that she move in with him. He would ask her soon.

  The whole business had been brought up for discussion. As early as their fifth date he had made the first move.

  “It’s a great pity to go back alone to my narrow bed …,” he had said, his voice full of meaning as he ran his hands through her long hair.

  “I know, but what are the alternatives?” Lisa had asked playfully.

  “I suppose you could invite me home to your narrow bed?” he offered as a solution.

  “Ah, but I live with my parents, you see. That kind of thing couldn’t happen,” she said.

  “Unless you were to get your own place, of course,” he grumbled.

  “Or we were to explore your place?” Lisa said.

  But he didn’t go down that road. Yet.

  When he brought the matter up again it was in connection with a hotel. A place thirty miles from Dublin where they might have dinner, steal some ideas for the new restaurant and stay the night.

  Lisa saw nothing wrong with this plan, and it all worked out perfectly. As she lay in Anton’s arms she knew she was the luckiest girl in the whole world. Soon she was going to be living and working with the man she loved. Wasn’t this what every woman in the world wanted?

  And it was going to happen to her, Lisa Kelly.

  “I always knew you would fly the coop one day,” Kevin said. “And you have been restless for the last couple of weeks. I guessed you were planning something.”

  “I was very happy here,” Lisa said.

  “Of course you were. You’re very good. You’ll be good anywhere. Have you decided where to go yet?”

  “On my own,” Lisa said simply.

  “Not a good idea in this economic climate, Lisa,” Kevin advised her.

  “You took the risk, Kevin, and look how it paid off for you.…”

  “It was different. I had a rich father and a load of contacts.”

  “I have a little savings and I’ll make the contacts,” Lisa said.

  “You will in time. Have you an office?”

  “I’ll start from home.”

  “The very best of luck to you, Lisa,” he said, and she managed to get out before he asked her was there any news of Anton.

  Kevin, however, knew all about the place Anton had in Lisa’s life and the reason for her move. He had spent a weekend in Holly’s Hotel in County Wicklow and Miss Holly, forever anxious to give her customers news of o
ne another, mentioned that one of his colleagues, Ms. Kelly, had stayed there the previous night.

  “With a very attractive young man. Most knowledgeable about food, he was out in the kitchens talking to the chef.”

  “Was his name Anton Moran?” Kevin asked.

  “That’s the very man.” Miss Holly clapped her hands. “He even asked us for the recipe for our special orange sauce that the chef makes with Cointreau and walnuts. Normally Chef won’t tell anyone, but he told Mr. Moran because he was going to cook it for his parents.”

  “I’ll bet he was,” Kevin said grimly. “And did they share a room?”

  Miss Holly sighed. “Of course they did, Kevin. But that’s today for you. If you tried to apply any standards these days you’d be laughed out of business!”

  Kevin thought of his niece, who was still in fragile health, and he shivered a little for what might lie ahead for Lisa Kelly, one of the brightest designers he had ever come across.

  Lisa wondered were there other homes in Dublin like hers, where the communication was minimal, the conversation limited and the goodwill nonexistent. Her parents talked to each other in heavy sighs and to her hardly at all.

  Every Friday, Lisa left her rent on the kitchen dresser. This entitled her to her room and to help herself to tea and coffee. No meals were served to her unless she were to buy them herself.

  Lisa wasn’t looking forward to telling her parents that shortly there would be no salary coming in, and therefore the rent would be hard to pay. She was even less enthusiastic about telling them that she would be using her bedroom as an office. In theory, they might offer her the formal dining room, which was never used and would have made a perfectly presentable business surrounding. But she knew not to push things too far.

  Her father would say they weren’t made of money. Her mother would shrug and say they didn’t want strangers traipsing in and out of the place. Better do it little by little. Tell them about the job first, then gradually introduce the need to bring clients to the house as they got used to the first situation.

  She wished over and over that Anton was less adamant about their living arrangements. He said that she was lovely, the loveliest thing that had ever happened to him. If this was so, why would he not let her come to live with him?

  He had these endless excuses: it was a lads’ place—he just had a room there, he didn’t pay for it, instead he cooked for the lads once a week and that was his rent, he couldn’t abuse their hospitality by bringing in someone else. Anyway, it would change the whole atmosphere of the place if a woman were to come into it.

  He had sounded a little impatient. Lisa didn’t mention it again. There was no way she could afford a place to live. There were new clothes, picnic meals and the two occasions she pretended to have got hotel vouchers in order to spirit him off for a night of luxury. All this had cost money.

  Once or twice she wondered whether Anton might possibly be cheap? A bit careful with money, anyway? But no, he was endearingly honest.

  “Lisa, my love, I’m a total parasite at the moment. Every euro I earn doing shifts I have to put away towards the cost of setting the place up. I’m a professional beggar just now, but in time I’ll make it up to you. When you and I are sitting in the restaurant toasting our first Michelin star, then you’ll think it was all worthwhile.”

  They sat together in the new kitchen, which was coming to life under their eyes. Ovens, refrigerators and hot plates were springing up around them. Soon the work would begin on the dining room. They had agreed on the logo and it was being worked into the rugs that would be scattered around the wooden floors. The place was going to be a dream, and Lisa was part of it.

  Anton was only mildly surprised that she had left Kevin. He had always assumed that she would one day. He was less enthusiastic, however, about the notion that she might move into one of the spare rooms in the new building.

  “I could make a bed-sitter out of this room and my office out of that one.” Lisa pointed out two rooms down the corridor off the new kitchen.

  “This one’s the cold room and that’s for linen and china,” he said impatiently.

  “Well, eventually, but I have to have somewhere to work and we agreed that I should help with the marketing as well …,” she began, but he started to look cross again so she dropped it.

  It had to be home.

  The reception was more glacial than she had expected.

  “Lisa, you are twenty-five years of age. You have been well educated—expensively educated. Why can’t you find a place to live and work like other girls do? Girls with none of your advantages and privileges …” Her father spoke to her as if she were a vagrant who had come into his bank and asked to sleep behind the counter.

  “Even poor Katie, and Lord knows she never achieved much, she’s at least able to look after herself,” Lisa’s mother said witheringly of her other daughter.

  “I thought you’d be pleased that I was going out on my own,” Lisa said. “I’m even thinking of taking some classes, on starting your own business and the like. I’m showing initiative.”

  “Mad is more like it. These days anyone who has a job holds on to it instead of throwing it up on a whim,” her father said.

  “And no rent for the foreseeable future,” her mother sighed. “And you’ll want the heating on during the day when there’s no one else at home. And you want businesspeople filing in and out of this house. No, Lisa, it’s not on.”

  “If we were to let your room to a stranger, we could get a proper rent for it,” her father added.

  “What about the dining room? I could put shelves and a filing system into it …,” Lisa began.

  “And ruin the lovely dining room? I think not,” her mother said.

  “Why don’t you forget the whole idea and stay where you are … in the agency,” her father suggested, his tone slightly kinder as he saw her distressed face. “Do that, like a good girl, and we’ll say no more about any of this.”

  Lisa didn’t trust herself to speak anymore. She walked quickly to the front door and left the house.

  She didn’t care about money. She didn’t mind working hard, and even though she hated self-pity she did begin to feel that the world was conspiring against her. Her own family were so unsupportive and her boyfriend impervious to any signals and hints. He was her boyfriend, wasn’t he? He had mentioned no other woman and he had said she was lovely. Admittedly, he hadn’t said he loved her, but being lovely was the same thing.

  Lisa caught sight of herself in a shopwindow: she looked hunched and defeated.

  This would never do. She brushed her hair, put on more makeup and held her shoulders back and strode confidently along to Anton’s, to the place where a great restaurant was about to rise from the rubble and confusion that was currently there.

  Later she would think about where to live and where to work. Tonight she would just drop into the gourmet shop and buy some smoked salmon and cream cheese. She wouldn’t weary him with her problems. She would hate to see that impatient frown again on his handsome face.

  To her great annoyance there were eight people there already, including her friend Miranda, who had been the one to introduce her to Anton in the first place. They were sitting around eating very gooey-looking pizza.

  “Lisa!” Anton managed to sound delighted, welcoming and surprised at the same time, as if Lisa didn’t come there every evening.

  “Come on in, Lisa, and have some pizza. Isn’t Miranda clever? She found exactly what we all wanted.”

  “Very clever,” Lisa said through her teeth. Miranda, who looked slim like a greyhound but who ate like a hungry horse, was sitting on the ground in her pencil-slim jeans, wolfing down pizza as if she had known no other food. Some of the men were people who shared Anton’s flat. The other girls were glamorous and suntanned. They looked as if they were auditioning for a musical.

  None of them was broke, in debt, with nowhere to live and nowhere to work. Lisa wanted to run away and go and cry somew
here, big heaving sobs. But where could she go? She had nowhere, and this, after all, was where she wanted to be.

  She slipped the smoked salmon and cream cheese into one of the fridges and came to join them.

  “Anton has been singing your praises,” Miranda said when she looked up momentarily from the huge pizza she was devouring. “He says you are a genius.”

  “That’s going a bit far.” Lisa smiled.

  “No, it’s the truth,” Anton assured her. “I was telling them all about your ideas. They said I was very lucky to get you.”

  These were the words she had wanted to hear for so long. Why did it not seem as real and wonderful as she had hoped?

  Then he said, “Everyone is here to give some ideas about marketing, so let’s start straightaway. Lisa, you first …”

  Lisa didn’t want to share her ideas with this cast. She didn’t want their approval or their dismissal.

  “I’m last in—let’s hear what everyone else has to say.” She gave a huge smile at the group.

  “Sly little fox,” Miranda whispered, but loudly enough to be heard.

  Anton didn’t seem disturbed. “Right, Eddie, what do you think?” he began.

  Eddie, a big bluff rugby player, was full of ideas, most of them useless. “You need to make this place a focus for the rugby set, somewhere people would lunch on the days of an International.”

  “That’s about four days a year,” Lisa heard herself say.

  “Well, yes, but you could host fund-raisers for various rugby clubs,” he said.

  “Anton wants to make money, not give it away at this stage,” Lisa said. She knew she sounded like someone’s nanny or mother, but honestly …

  A girl called April said that Anton could have wine appreciation classes there, followed by a dinner serving some of the most popular choices of the evening. It was so ludicrous as a moneymaker that Lisa hardly believed anyone would take it seriously, yet they were all eager and excited.

  “Where’s the profit?” she asked icily.