Quentins (19 page)

“You're okay, really?”

“Really I am.
And
I can't wait to meet Derry King. I bought him a jeweled dog collar, by the way.”

“I ask myself over and over if we did the right thing, sending you to New York,” Nick said.

Harriet rang to know had she survived.

“Yes, just about. Sorry for laying into your booze so heavily.”

“Not at all. It's just that . . . I don't know, those dog collars are a bit tacky. You know, if you really
do
want to impress him, that might not be the right way to go.”

“Thanks, Harriet. I'm meeting him tomorrow. I'll see how it goes.”

“Anyway, who am I talking to someone like you . . . you're well able to look after yourself.”

“I wish.”

“I recognized you as that money broker's girl, the one they thought he had run off with.”

“Oh, you did.” Ella's voice was dull. She often wondered if people recognized her. Now that the months had gone by, very few remembered her, but of course she had to meet someone who did.

“Only because a mate of mine, a real nice woman, Nora O'Donoghue, she lost her wedding money to him.”

“I know Nora. She works in the kitchen of Quentins sometimes. She's very nice.”

“She lodged with my sister once in Mountainview and she's getting married to this teacher. Apparently he was giving Latin lessons to Richardson's sons. . . anyway, they lost their savings . . . that's why I'd remember.”

“A lot of people lost their savings, my own parents did,” Ella said.

“And no one knows where he is?”

“Well, we think he's in Spain. He must have been setting up a different name and home when I was with him. It all seems so long ago.”

“You know, I half wondered when I saw you if he was out here. New York would be a good place to hide, and maybe you were coming out to meet him. And I said to myself it might be dangerous for you.”

Ella felt a sudden shiver of fear. It was probably the hangover, she told herself firmly. But two people within five minutes of each other warning her on the telephone was hard to take.

“No, truly, Harriet. He's long gone out of my life.”

“So good luck with the film anyway, and remember what I said. Think carefully about the dog collar.”

“Good luck, Harriet, and thanks for everything.”

“There'll be other fellows, there always are.”

“Oh, I'm sure of it. It's just that I'm not ready for one yet.”

“They turn up when you least expect them.”

“Did someone turn up for you, Harriet?”

“The nicest fellow that ever wore shoe leather. Married to a right bitch. She pushed him too far one day and he came over to me with a suitcase. That's ten years ago.”

“And why isn't he here with you?”

“He's terrified of planes and big cities.”

“And what'll he do while you're here?”

“He'll cook grand things like chicken pies and spaghetti sauces and label them and put them in the freezer. And he'll talk to his pigeons and he'll go and have a pint with his son, and he'll be at the airport in a van to lift me and the bags home.”

“Good luck to you,” Ella said.

“And to you, Ella, and you know that no one blames
you
for that bastard. But I'd love it all to come out about your family and everything . . .”

“One day,” Ella promised as she looked over at the laptop computer on her desk.

It was such a lovely day. No blustery wind to blow her new hairdo away, so she went for a long walk down Fifth Avenue.

New York was full of energy. Ella felt a new spring in
her step as she walked. She stopped at St. Patrick's Cathedral and longed to have enough faith to pray to God and ask Him that the meeting with Derry King go well. But it wouldn't be fair. And it wouldn't work anyway because God knew that she didn't mean it.

So instead she told God that if He still happened to be listening to sinners, and there were no strings attached, she'd like to remind Him that thousands of films got made every year and it wouldn't upset anyone if theirs was one of them next year.

She looked at florist displays. She read the menus on windows. She admired the uniforms of doormen. She strolled through the atrium of office blocks. She watched the office workers coming out in the street to smoke or grab sandwiches in a deli. She wondered what it would be like to work in this huge, exciting city, where nobody seemed to know anyone like people did in Dublin, where you were always nodding at people and saluting each other.

A tall man passed by and looked at her appreciatively. Ella felt alarmed. Suppose Harriet had been right about New York being a good place to hide. Possibly Don
was
in this city. She might meet him at the end of this block, at the next traffic light. But she must not give in to silly fears. This is the way madness and weakness lay.

“You've got to have courage,” she said aloud suddenly.

“Right on, lady,” said a man at a newsstand who was the only one who had heard her.

Ella hugged herself. She liked New York, she was as safe here as anywhere. She would walk until she was too tired to walk a step farther, and then she would take a taxi back to her hotel.

She slept for fourteen hours and got up feeling better than she had felt for years.

“I thought you'd be older,” Derry King said as they shook hands in the foyer of the hotel.

“I thought you'd be older too,” Ella said with spirit. “But here we are, babes in a big business world, so can I offer you coffee?”

He smiled.

He had a good smile for a square-built man with a very heavily lined face. She knew to the day how old he was, and yet he didn't look it. Forty-three-year-old New Yorkers wore their years better than Dubliners of the same age.

“I'll drink coffee, sure. Do you want us to talk here, or should we talk in your suite?”

“We are a small outfit, Mr. King. I have a bedroom, not a suite. I think we'd be much happier here.”

“And I'd be happier if you called me Derry. Young I may be, and indeed feel, and I prefer the first-name thing.”

“Fine, Derry. I brought you a present,” she said.

“You did?” He was surprised.

“I heard you loved dogs, so I got you a nice dog collar.” She produced it from her handbag.

“It's horrific! Where on earth did you get it?” he laughed.

“It's not horrific. It cost me five dollars from a dealer who comes to New York every year to buy really tasteful gifts for the Christmas market back home,” Ella said defensively.

“You and I are going to get on fine, Ella Brady,” he said, and her churning stomach settled down.

He was right. They would get on fine.

“D
o you think she's seriously going to give him a dog collar?” Sandy asked Nick.

“Nothing would surprise me,” he said gloomily.

“Of course, it may work out very well. He may fall in love with her.”

“Jesus, I hope he doesn't. He has a wife called Kimberly who owns half the business.”

“Does Ella know that?” Sandy sounded fearful now.

“Oh, definitely, she's read the file. But the presence of a wife didn't exactly stop her before, if you know what I mean.”

The man who came to ask the Bradys about renting a flat on Tara Road was very polite. He admired their garden residence, as he called it, and said he loved a place with photographs. It made a house into a home.

“Is that your daughter, and isn't she a very handsome girl?” he asked, looking at a picture of Ella.

“That's right,” Barbara said.

Ella had told her to be cautious, and she would be, but this well-dressed man couldn't be in any way sinister. He was so courteous and he wanted an apartment for a colleague who was coming over from the U.K. in a few months' time.

“Does she live with you?” He was still looking at the picture of Ella.

“Oh, yes, in and out.”

“And is she here at the moment?”

“No, she's gone off . . . the way they do at that age.”

“Has she gone abroad, do you think?”

Ella's mother was frightened now. This was no courteous man looking for an apartment for a colleague. It was someone looking for Ella.

“Do young people ever tell you where they're going these days?” She laughed nervously.

“Oh, I know, but doesn't she have to work? I think you said she was a teacher.”

They hadn't said Ella was a teacher.

“She does a bit of this and a bit of that . . . it's easier to get time off.”

“Maybe she went out to the sun, to Greece or Spain?” the man suggested. “Lots of people go out there in September.”

Barbara Brady directed her firmest gaze on her husband. “She didn't say anything about going to the Continent to me, did she mention it to you, Tim?”

“Not a word,” he said. “Somewhere down in Kerry or West Cork, she said. It could be that she's got herself an extra little job. She ran into a spot of bad luck earlier in the year, and she's desperately trying to gather some money together.”

“So anyway, to go back to the flat . . .” Barbara began.

But the man had lost interest in the flat on Tara Road.

“Will you have lunch with me, Deirdre?”

“No, Nuala, thanks, but I can't.”

“You didn't even wait to hear which day,” Nuala complained.

“I can't
any
day. There's a crisis at work. We're all on short lunch hours,” Deirdre lied.

“Are you annoyed with me about something, Dee?”

“No, I'm annoyed about having to eat into my lunch break. Why would I be annoyed with you, for God's sake?”

“You seemed pissed off when I asked you where Ella was. It's just that I have to know. Frank keeps going on at me. He says it's the one thing I might be expected to know, and I don't even deliver on that.”

“Real charmer Frank turned out to be,” Deirdre said unsympathetically.

“No, they're frightened. His brothers too, all of them.”

“I thought they got their money back in a brown paper bag.”

“That was just a little to show that they
could
get it back, if . . .”

“If what?”

“I suppose if they played ball . . .”

“And handed Ella over, is that it?”

“I don't think it's quite like that.”

“So it's just as well that neither of us knows where she is, then. Isn't it, Nuala.” Deirdre was brisk.

“You know, Dee.”

“I wish I did.”

“Advise me. Help me,
please
.” Nuala was desperate.

“I don't suppose it's the kind of thing you'd get the Guards in on,” Deirdre said.

“Not really. Frank and his brothers always steer clear of police and lawyers,” said Nuala.

Patrick and Brenda Brennan were going to bed. It had been a long, busy night. “I ask myself, do we
need
this documentary? Every table was full tonight,” Patrick said.

“I know, I've thought that too. We'd have to consider expanding.” Brenda was frowning.

“Which would change it all.” Patrick frowned too.

“Still, it's not meant to be just an advertisement.” Brenda cheered up. “It's more like a history of Dublin, isn't it, as seen through the changes in one place.”

“Now you're beginning to sound just like young Ella Brady,” he said, yawning.

“I wonder how she's getting on out there,” Brenda said as she sat at her dressing table and took off her makeup.

She couldn't hear what Patrick said, since he was under the comforter and mumbling into the pillow.

“I do hope she's all right. She's been through a really terrible summer,” Brenda said to herself as she creamed away the last traces of the stylish makeup that always took ten years off her age.

Derry King was right. They did get on well together. Ella told him no lies, and exaggerated no aspect of Firefly Films.

“What's in it for me?” he had asked early on, and she had tried to tell him as truthfully as she could. He would be part of something fresh and new, made with high production values, which could well win prizes at film festivals, that would be shown on television in many lands.

“How is it new and fresh?” he wanted to know.

“It's not going to be full of shamrockery,” she said, and he had laughed.

“What's that?”

“Oh, you know, the how-are-things-in-Gloccamorra, top-of-the-morning approach. There's nobody doing leprechaun duty on this movie.”

He was interested. “Warts and all, then?”

“Well, yes . . . we'd want to make fun of everything pretentious,” she said.

“Give me an example.”

“Patrick's very funny about the way Irish people often pretend they know things when they don't, like they don't want to look foolish. He says that you should never drink the second cheapest wine on the menu. It could be any kind of old rubbish, because it's the one people go for so they don't look cheap or shabby by buying the very cheapest on the list.”

Derry was smiling at her. “And he'll say all this?”

“Certainly.”

“Not afraid of losing his clientele?”

“No, he'll walk a fine line. You'll like him when you come over. I'm actually amazed you were never in Quentins when you were in Ireland before,” Ella said.

“I was never in Ireland,” Derry said flatly.

“I'm sorry?”

“I was never there,” he said, and though his smile did not leave his face, his eyes looked hard. “And I never intend to go.”

Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather had lost only a small sum when Rice and Richardson had gone to the wall. Compared to others, they had been very lucky. Only an outstanding bill for seven hundred euros. One catered function unpaid for.

It was the one afternoon a week when Maud and Simon were in to polish what were called Tom and Cathy's treasures, and to discuss in detail the forthcoming baby. What would it be called? Where would it live? Would it be grown-up when Tom and Cathy finally got around to getting married? Could they teach the baby to do step dancing?

It was almost a relief when the bell rang in the front office and they could escape the children's questions for a few minutes. It was someone inquiring about brochures and price lists. He was a well-dressed man who didn't seem to have any precise
instructions about what he wanted. There was something about the vagueness of his request that made them suspicious.

“I believe you know Ella Brady,” he said out of the blue.

“Yes,” Tom said, giving nothing away.

“Slightly,” said Cathy, making sure that she was even more distant. They knew where Ella was, but that it had to be a secret.

“Would you have any idea where she is now?” he asked politely.

“None at all, I'm afraid,” Tom said.

“Not a clue,” Cathy said.

“Now, that's a pity . . . I've been asked to give you some money for a debt that was overlooked. Inadvertently, of course. Around seven hundred euros, I think.”

Tom and Cathy looked at each other, astounded. “You're from Rice and Richardson?” Cathy said, stunned.

“No, alas,
I'm
not, but let's say I'm a friend of one of the people involved, and he felt bad that there had been this misunderstanding and shortfall.”

“I'm sure he did,” Cathy said.

The man opened his billfold. “He asked me to get it to you personally. He's not a man who likes to leave bills unpaid.” The man paused as he laid the seven notes on the small table. “And he'd be very grateful if you could ask Ella to call him at this number.”

“Well, this is great to get the money,” Tom said. “But we don't have any idea where Ella is.”

“So if one depends on the other,” Cathy began, “then we shouldn't take the money.”

“No, keep it. It might remind you of where she is.”

“We know where she is,” came a clear voice. Tim and Cathy looked in horror at Maud.

Was there a possibility that Ella might have been so foolish as to mention anything to those children?

“Go back to the kitchen, Maud,
please,
” Cathy begged.

“You don't know anything about Ella's whereabouts,” Tom said.

Simon was stung by the unfairness of this. “We do know,” he said mutinously.

“And where is that, exactly?” The man was interested.

“She's gone to hospital,” Simon said triumphantly.

“She's having a piece of her head put back on,” Maud added. “It will take two weeks, altogether.”

The man looked at Tom and Cathy as if for confirmation. They both shrugged.

“Could be, I suppose,” Cathy said.

“Quite possible,” Tom agreed.

The man turned and left without saying a word. As he went down the cobbled lane they saw him pause and take out his cell phone.

“I guess he's calling Spain,” Cathy said.

“Is that where the hospital is?” Simon said. “I thought it might be in America, from something Ella said.”

Tom let his breath out slowly. “And why didn't you share that view with the gentleman when he was here?”

“I wasn't sure. It's just she said something about spending her last dollar on something, but I wasn't
sure
. It could have been just an expression.”

“It could,” Cathy said, holding Tom's hand in relief.

“Will you be mating again when the baby is born?” Maud asked.

“Probably. If we have the energy,” Cathy said.

“Does it take a lot of energy?” Simon was interested.

“Back to the kitchen, everybody,” Tom suggested.

From the corner of the road, the man phoned Don Richardson. “I'm not having much luck, Don. Nothing from the filmmakers, her parents, the dentist and his wife, and nothing from the caterers.”

He listened for a while and then nodded. “All right. Plan C, then, as you say.”

Ella looked at Derry King openmouthed. “You're never going to Ireland!” she said, astonished.

“Not if I can help it, no.”

“Then what are you doing, talking about making a movie there?”

“I'm not making it, you are.” He spread out his hands to show how simple his argument was.

“But what have we been talking about if you don't . . . if you never intend . . . I'm sorry, Derry. I don't understand.” She looked hurt and annoyed.

“I don't have to
love
Ireland to invest in a movie about it. Anyway, from what I see, it's not a hymn of praise to the place . . . it's showing up all its weaknesses, all this new money, greed, so-called style.”

“We didn't say that . . .”

“Well, that's what it came over like, people imitating Europeans.”

“But we
are
Europeans!” Ella cried.

“No, you said it was warts and all . . . just a minute ago.”

“Derry, there's something very wrong here.” She looked down at her notes. “I've been talking to you in this coffee shop for hours and I must have been giving you completely the wrong message.”