Quentins (14 page)

They looked at him in amazement. It was all coming together. Thanks to Blouse. And it was arranged much more speedily than anyone could have believed.

Patrick managed to call and see Horse Harris before they left the town with every stick of furniture on board a huge rented van.

“Glad there are no hard feelings,” Horse said with the horrible smile of a man who knew he had beaten the slightly simple Blouse Brennan and his smart-ass brother.

“None at all, Horse,” said Patrick, giving him a handshake that could have broken every finger in Horse's hand and a twist of the wrist that could have and did twist the muscle.

Horse had no grounds to complain.

Blouse worked hard on the allotment. He drove there every day in the old van that had belonged to his parents. He learned about new vegetables that had never been part of his life back home. He had two dozen Rhode Island reds who laid big fresh eggs and he was planning to get two dozen more.

Some evenings he helped behind the scenes in the restaurant. Blouse never minded what he was asked to do. Take out the rubbish, stack the dishwashing machines. He moved out of Patrick's house and got himself a little place near the allotment so that he could keep an eye on the hens. He had a lock on their coop at night, but it was nice to be near them.

A young, businesslike woman called on him one day. She said she was Mary O'Brien, and she had been given his address by Ms. Brennan in Quentins. She was anxious to do an article in a magazine about keeping hens and growing vegetables and she wondered if she could discuss the finer points with him.

They sat and talked, and he stroked the feathers of the hens as he spoke, and he picked out seedlings to show her how they should be planted.

Mary said she hadn't enjoyed herself so much for
ages, and now could he show her where to get the bus back to the office.

“Don't you have a car?” Blouse thought she was a smart kind of person who would definitely be driving an office car and changing it every eighteen months.

“I'm afraid to drive. I've tried lessons, but I always panic,” she admitted.

“Ah, no, it's very simple,” Blouse explained. “When you panic you just indicate and pull in, that's what I always did for years and I drive now as if I had wings.” He gave her a lift back in his battered van, and pretended he was anxious now and then.

“I don't like the look of that big bus bearing down on me. I see a place on my side, so I'll indicate and move in until we catch our breath and then we can go.”

Mary O'Brien looked at him with amazement. “Would you teach me to drive?” she begged.

“Oh, no, I'm not qualified. I'm only an eejit. You have to go to a professional, they wouldn't want a half-wit like me to be taking away their living.”

She shook his hand and said she'd send a photographer out to his allotment. “You're no eejit, don't put yourself down. I really hope I'll see you again,” she said.

Blouse felt terrific. He knew she meant it. “If you got a nice driving teacher, maybe he'd let me sit in the back of the car as a kind of support,” he said.

“I think that wouldn't be a problem,” said Mary O'Brien.

They were loath to part.

“You'll be famous after this article, Blouse Brennan. Self-sufficiency guru, they'll call you. Well, I'll call you that anyway, and then other people will.”

“Imagine,” he said.

“Oh, by the way, about your name . . . your brother said your real name was . . .”

“I'm happy with Blouse,” he said quickly.

“I think you're right. If I had a name like that I liked, I'd keep it,” Mary O'Brien said wistfully.

“I'll give you a ring when the photographer has been and gone,” said Blouse Brennan, who had never had his picture taken professionally and never telephoned a girl before in his life.

B
renda had been very sure that she would conceive quickly. Her mother had given birth to five daughters and there were hints that there would have been many more had not great abstinence been practiced. Her two sisters had what were called honeymoon babies, and apart from her friend Nora in Italy, everyone else she knew had children. In fact, there were times when she feared that pregnancy might come too early and leave her unable to cope. In those years she had thought about it from time to time. But now with the eighteen-hour days they often worked at the setting up of Quentins, in those early, exhausting months dealing with builders, planning the layout of the kitchens and the dining area, the setting-up suppliers, it was the furthest thing from their minds.

When it got a little calmer, after the opening of the restaurant when Quentin had gone away with an easy heart to Morocco to leave them totally in charge, Brenda began to think about it all again. They had been many years married now, both of them apparently fit and strong.

“About us having children?” she began one evening when they were sitting with mugs of tea in the kitchen they had insisted on having in their upstairs flat. Even though they would live over one of the best kitchens in
Dublin, they didn't want to go down there if they needed a scrambled egg.

She saw Patrick's eyes light up and he reached for her hand. “Brenda, no?” There was such hope in his voice and face.

“No, sadly no.” She tried to keep her own voice light and not to dwell on the sense of loss she had just noticed.

He got up to try to hide his face. “Sorry, I just thought when you said about us having children,” he muttered away from her.

She sat still. “I know. I want it as much as you do, Patrick. So don't you think we should talk?”

“I didn't think that's how you got children, by talking,” he said in a slightly mutinous way. He didn't usually have a tone like that. She decided to ignore it.

“No, I agree with you, but we do a fair amount what does get children as well and it's not working, so I wondered, should we go and get ourselves looked at, if you know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean,” Patrick Brennan said. “And I'm not crazy about the sound of it.”

“Me neither, a lot of legs in stirrups and things,” Brenda said. “But if it works, then it will have been worth it.”

“When you think of what you read in the papers, half the country seems to get pregnant after one drunken fumble on a Friday night,” Patrick grumbled.

“So will I make an appointment for us with Dr. Flynn?” Brenda asked.

“Does he see us both together, do you think?” Patrick wondered.

“Probably for a chat, I'd say, and then he sends us off for tests.”

They both thought about the whole undertaking ahead with no pleasure at all. They didn't book the
appointment that week, because it was the week the inspectors were coming to check the ventilation. Nor the next, because there was the huge excitement that Blouse Brennan and Mary O'Brien announced they would marry. Nor the week after, as there were several intense social visits with the O'Brien family, who had to be convinced that a man called Blouse was the right match for their daughter.

And then there were the meetings with Quentin's accountants, with the bank, and with lawyers. Even the meeting with the sign painter, who was coming to put their name up, took far longer than it should have. It was in heavy gold paint on very dark rich green: a huge Q in front and a hanging sign with the name on the side. They looked at it in disbelief. The whole word ran into one; the painter had put no apostrophe after the name.

“But we showed you, Brian, look at the drawings, we agreed.”

“I know, it's a mystery all right.” Brian scratched his head.

“Brian, we could have had really good painters like the Kennedy brothers and instead we took you to give you a start, and what happens? We're the laughingstock of Dublin, that's what. We can't spell the name of our own place. That's what people will say.”

Brian saw the two upset faces looking up at the sign. “I'll give it to you for nothing. Can't be fairer than that, can I?” he asked.

They asked Quentin on his weekly phone call.

“I was never one for punctuation. I'd prefer it the way your painter did it,” he said.

So week after week went by without Brenda and Patrick Brennan thinking they had the luxury of an hour or two to visit the doctor about something that was not after all a serious illness.

And often at night, after their long, busy days, they reached for each other in their big double bed with the white lace curtains around it. If they thought that maybe the whole matter would right itself before they needed to discuss it with Dr. Flynn, neither of them said anything about it at all.

Blouse and Mary had a small wedding and a week's honeymoon on an organic farm in Scotland. They came home full of further ideas of what they could grow. Blouse was a married man now. No more living in a shed up beside the allotment. No indeed. They had transformed the small room at the back of Quentins, taking in other storerooms, and made the whole thing into a perfect little apartment.

Mary got herself a regular column in a newspaper, where she became highly respected as an adviser on growing your own vegetables in a small space. She even appeared on television programs as an expert on the subject. Her wonderful red curls bobbed and her eyes danced as she spoke of her husband, Blouse, without any self-consciousness about the name but with huge pride in the man.

Blouse grew more confident every day, and on no day did he seem more happy and self-assured than on the day he told Patrick and Brenda that they were expecting a child. Four months married, and now this great news.

Patrick and Brenda managed to show their enthusiasm and hide their jealousy until they were alone that night in their bedroom. They tried to be generous but it was hard. The sense of unfairness was all around them. Although they sat side by side, there was a huge gulf between them. Their shoulders didn't even touch.

“It will be all right,” Brenda said.

“Of course it will,” Patrick said.

“I'll ring Dr. Flynn tomorrow,” she promised. “To wave his magic wand.”

When they got into bed, she put her arm around him. At bad times they were a great consolation to each other. So often making love had washed away the cares and anxieties of the day.

But not tonight.

“I'm tired, love,” he said, and turned on one side, away from her.

Brenda lay awake all night looking at the walls covered with pictures and memories. Even though her limbs were aching with fatigue, she couldn't find any sleep.

Dr. Flynn was pleasant and technical and made them feel that he was not sounding overly intimate when he asked questions about whether full penetrative intercourse had taken place. He then sent them both to a hospital for a series of tests and asked them to come back in six weeks.

It was a strange time in their lives. They made love only twice, and a third time, when it had seemed likely. Patrick said there was no point, as it was the wrong time of the month for Brenda, nothing would come of it.

And during all this time, Mary patted her small bump proudly and Blouse talked about the responsibilities of fatherhood ahead of him.

Every woman Brenda met seemed to be talking about children for good or evil. Either they were such darlings and so wonderful that the women couldn't bear to go out to work and leave them. Or else they were as troublesome as weasels, snarling and ungrateful, and if their mothers could get rid of them legally, they would.

And Brenda listened and smiled.

The only person who understood was her friend Nora, miles and miles away in Sicily. Nora, who could
never tell the village that she loved Mario. Even though many of them may have suspected. Sometimes people then said to Signora, which was what they called her, not Nora, that she was lucky to be childless, not to have the problems they had. But Nora would sit at her window and watch Mario playing in the square with his boys. How she yearned for a little dark curly-haired baby of his to hold in her arms. She longed with such an ache that she nearly convinced herself he might leave Gabriella and his other children and stay with her if she were to produce a baby for him.

But fortunately she had never tested the theory.

Brenda wrote to Nora as she could write to no one close. “He doesn't love me as me anymore,” she wrote one night as Patrick slept on deeply on his side of the bed. “He will consider touching me only when I am meant to be most fertile. The tests showed that there is nothing preventing us conceiving. I ovulate normally. Patrick's sperm count is normal. They keep telling us we're not ready for fertility drugs yet. Patrick just keeps wondering how old do we have to get. I don't know anymore, Nora, I really don't. You keep hearing of people having eleven embryos with fertility drugs. Then, Mary and Blouse will have their baby next week. And I have to be glad and delighted and thrilled. I feel so mean-spirited not to be.”

Patrick didn't want to talk about it. “What do you mean, how do I
feel
about Blouse being able to father a child when I'm not. How do you
think
I feel?” Patrick snapped.

“I didn't put it that way.” Tears of hurt sprung in Brenda's eyes.

“It's what you meant, though, Brenda. The fool of the family is able to get his girl pregnant but you can't say the same for the elder brother.”

“I will not have you speak of Blouse that way, Patrick.
You never did before. You never let anyone else do so. He told me you used to go to his schoolyard and fight battles with anyone who made such a remark, and now you're doing it yourself.”

He felt ashamed; she could see it, his head hung down. “I'm sorry. I don't know what came into me.”

“What came into you is what's in me too, a longing, a longing to have a child of our own, no wonder it unbalances us, Patrick.”

“You're not unbalanced about it. You're very calm,” he said.

“No, that's my way of coping, pretend everything's normal and it may become normal.”

“I'm sorry, Brenda. It's hard on you too. I'm not trying to excuse myself for anything. It's just sometimes when I'm as tired as a dog at the end of a day I wonder what it's all for.”

“All what?”

“All the hard work. What are we doing it for, exactly?”

Brenda thought they were doing it for themselves, for each other, for the shared dream. But she knew she must speak very carefully. “I know, I feel the same,” she said slowly.

“You do?” He seemed surprised.

“Well, of course I do, Patrick. What do you think I feel?”

“It's just that last month you said . . . when we realized once more that it hadn't happened . . . you said maybe, just maybe, it was all for the best for the moment.”

“What would you have preferred, that I would have opened my mouth and howled out from the bathroom in front of everyone, the suppliers, the customers, Blouse and Mary, anyone else passing through, that yet again we had failed to make a child? Should I have
sobbed and upset everyone? You tell me, so that I'll do it right next month.”

He put his arms around her and she cried into his chest for about fifteen minutes before her shoulders stopped shaking. Then he held her away from him and he looked at her tear-stained face. “Come on now, put on your face for both of us, brave Brenda Brennan,” he said, and kissed her for the first time in a long time.

Mary and Blouse had a little boy. They called him Brendan Patrick. He was perfect.

Brenda went in to see him every day. His little fingers tightened over hers. He smiled sleepily up at her. He would stop crying when she held him. She was good with children. One day she would have one of her own.

She rang Dr. Flynn and said yes to any fertility drugs available, including experimental ones. He urged caution and waiting. She said there wasn't any question of that anymore.

She kept the smile of welcome and delight about little Brendan Patrick nailed to her face. She was sure that nobody saw in her face the yearning, the longing for her own child. Then one day her lip-reading skills showed her a conversation between Blouse and Mary.

“Isn't it great that Brenda loves him so much,” Blouse was saying.

“Yes, but I think we shouldn't boast about him so much,” Mary said.

“Boast? Doesn't she admire him and talk about him just like us?” Blouse was astonished.

“It's just that she might have wanted one of her own,” said little Mary O'Brien with the red curls and the perfect new baby.

There were reasons why the drugs didn't seem to suit. High blood pressure, allergies, contraindications. Test
tube and in vitro had a very long waiting list. Brenda never really understood what each problem was because the shroud of disappointment was so great, and the hard lines of Patrick's face more firmly etched.

Dr. Flynn tried to explain it to them. He got the feeling he was talking to two brick walls. He talked about resuming and keeping up the active, happy sex life they had told him they had before. He mentioned adoption tentatively. Very often this was a wonderful thing not only in itself but it had the additional side effect of leaving the parents more relaxed and therefore having a successful conception.