Quentins (26 page)

The emptiness of the last four months had been filled by something strange, like a curious sense of peace.

And eventually the formalities were all done. Ella had booked the Thursday night plane home. “I'm going to miss our suppers,” Derry said.

“Me too, but you won't come to Ireland and continue them, so what can we do?” she said.

“So if tonight's going to be the last night, then let's make it in my place,” he said.

“That would be great.” Ella was pleased. She wanted to see his duplex apartment that she had read about long before she met him. Full of paintings by young people. Many of them now valuable since the artists had been on the way up. Some of them by people who had never made it. But Derry King bought what he liked, not what he thought would appreciate in value.

Kimberly, too, seemed sorry she was leaving and asked her for a last lunch.

“You even get to meet Larry,” Kimberly promised. “And that's not given to every looker that comes across my path.”

“Oh, I'm not a looker,” Ella laughed. She meant it too. Since she had come to New York she realized how unglamorous she looked, so shabby and ungroomed.

“Oh, you
are
a looker, Ella Brady,” said Kimberly, and she meant it too. So much so that Larry was going to join them only for a cocktail.

He was handsome with longish dark hair and a designer suit, sunglasses that he took off at once, very assured and confident. Slightly showy, with large gestures holding Kimberly away from him so that he and everyone could admire her gray silk outfit. Then a long, admiring look at Ella and a light stroke of her long blond hair.

“Perfect,” he said as if he had been asked for an opinion by a judging panel. “Just perfect.” And then to the waiter: “Am I not the lucky man, having cocktails with not one but two beautiful women.”

“Very lucky gentleman,” said the Chinese waiter, who had taken in the whole situation at a glance and knew that the lady in gray silk would be the one with the credit card.

Larry spent thirty overexcited minutes with them. He told them about various dramas and screaming matches back at the showrooms. How this buyer had threatened to burn the place down unless she got her order, and that designer had said he was leaving for the islands before he had finished his spring collection.

“Which islands?” Ella asked with interest.

“Oh, who knows, who cares, Ella. He won't go there, it's only a cry for attention,” Larry explained.

He asked nothing about Kimberly's morning, which had been spent meeting their advertising agency. He asked nothing about what Ella was doing with her long blond hair and Irish accent in New York. But he was very excited about a reception they were going to later. It was an art exhibit and it was so far uptown they were thinking Albany. But they
had
to go, and Kimberly must leave time to go home and change, and if she was tempted to eat pasta carbonara for lunch, then she must remember the zipper of the new dress was notoriously sticky and had to be fastened so maybe she might think twice about carbonara!

And he was gone, with a flurry of good-byes, secure in the knowledge that everyone in the bar saw him go.

“Isn't he something else?” Kimberly said proudly.

Ella struggled to agree.

“Very different from Derry, as you can see,” Kimberly said.

“Oh, indeed, yes, totally.”

Ella had just been thinking that and wondering what kind of madness had made Kimberly King attracted to Larry. Maybe being a part of the fashion world appealed to her. But to give up Derry King, with his
crinkly smile and his ability to understand what you were thinking before you said it . . . for this guy. A man who looked at himself in mirrors, for God's sake. It was beyond comprehension.

“Larry makes me feel young again, you see.” Kimberly answered the question Ella had not asked aloud.

“He's full of excitement, isn't he, and totally gorgeous-looking.” Ella hoped there was enough enthusiasm in her voice to match the look of adoration there had been in Kimberly's eyes when she spoke to Larry.

“He certainly keeps me on my toes. I had indeed been thinking of pasta before he reminded me of the new dress.” Kimberly gave a little giggle and picked up the menu to choose the salad with no dressing that she ordered instead.

“I'll have the same,” Ella said.

“No, you like your food, have what you like,” Kimberly pleaded.

“I'm having dinner with Derry tonight. I'll have plenty then,” Ella explained.

“Where's he taking you?” Kimberly had a huge interest in good restaurants, although she had rarely eaten three hundred calories' worth of food in any of them.

“At his place. I'm looking forward to seeing it.”

“Well, be prepared for a two-hour tour of child art first. He's kept all kinds of rubbish as well as the valuable stuff. Oh, and remind him to call the takeaway early on. Often he leaves it too late.”

“You and he are wonderful together. Kind of jokey, but no bitterness.”

“What's to be bitter about? Derry's a great guy. He gave me half of everything. That's how I set up the business with Larry. And he's so practical, he said there was no use trying to hang on to me if I wanted to go. I would have done that for him, too, if he had been the one to fall in love with
someone else. It's crazy to try and kick life into something that's over.”

Ella thought of Margery Rice. Suppose she had thought like that? Would everything have been different? She could have had half of what Don had. More. She could have let him go. Don would not have taken all those risks. He would have been alive today. And he and Ella would have been together. For one moment Ella almost told Kimberly the whole story.

She was a good listener. Her perfect face was alert and interested but not eager. If Ella wanted to talk, she would have had a sympathetic audience. She was tempted. But then she decided against it. It was her last day in New York. Tomorrow she would go back to Ireland and whatever was going to happen now. All the decisions that had to be made. About bank drafts in a safe deposit account. About the knowledge of where Don's family lived. It would take a lot of working out. An emotional lunch was not what she needed just then.

“I'll never be able to thank you both for such solidarity. It was exactly what I needed.” She was closing the door very politely.

Kimberly understood. “Sure, well, we were there if you needed us, still are.”

“I know one thing I did want to talk to you about, if it's not indiscreet. Is Derry really dead set against going to Ireland? It would be marvelous for us if he came.”

“Utterly. His father was a wife beater and a drunk and an all-round bad guy. And Derry simply blames it on his being Irish.”

“So it's really deep. I won't try anymore.”

“I wish you would try. It's exactly what he needs, to go there, to get the monkey off his back, or whatever the expression is.”

“You think it would help?”

“It might make him normal. That's his problem, you see, these demons he has about Ireland. It was part of our difficulties, part of everything for him. He had to damn a whole country because of his father.”

“But why did he choose an Irish project to support?”

“He thought it was going to send the place up, make it all look very foolish.”

“But he doesn't now. I explained all that the first night.”

“He's honorable enough to go along with something once he's into it, in order to be fair. He wouldn't raise your hopes, get you over here and then because of his prejudices pull the plug. But you asked why he chose it in the first place, and I told you. He thought it was going to be a hatchet job.”

“He seems so calm and in control.”

“And he
is
calm and in control. He looked after his whole family. He raised his brothers, they adore him. He wanted to get his mom a nice home back in Canada, where she grew up, couldn't understand that she had lived so long in New York that she was a New Yorker now.”

“So she didn't go?” Ella asked.

“No, she had all her friends in the neighborhood, she even had some happy memories of her husband, Jim. Derry couldn't see any of that. His father is his one blind spot. He can't go into an Irish pub, hear Irish music, says they glorify drink and violence. He's never going to change unless he got back there to Ireland and saw they were all as normal as anyone else. Just getting on with their lives.”

“Have
you
been to Ireland, Kimberly?” Ella asked suddenly.

“Why do you ask?”

“Just the way you said that made me think you had.”

“You're right. When we were having our problems first I went there. I even went to see his relations.
Perfectly ordinary people. I didn't tell them about Derry, just asked around a bit. He has two cousins started as house painters, run their own business now. They are the image of him in many ways. But he'll never get to know them.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Tried to, but no use. Then I met Larry, so I had other things on my mind.”

“How long have you and Larry been married?” Ella asked.

“Eighteen months. I hope it lasts.” She laughed a very brittle laugh.

“You are very hard on yourself, Kimberly. He adores you. Anyone can see that.”

“Aha, I wish I had your faith and optimism.”

“Oh, but he does. You saw him. And so does Derry. He looks at you as if he still loves you a lot.”

“No, Derry doesn't love me. He's my great friend. He looks out for me. He keeps a quiet eye on some of Larry's worst extravagances. He doesn't think I know. And I care for him too as a friend. Were you and this Don Richardson friends?”

“What?”

“I know you loved him, but were you friends?”

“No, no, he went away and left me. He wasn't a friend in that sense. But he still loved me, he wrote to me to tell me that the night before . . . the night before it happened.”

Kimberly looked as if she were struggling to find something to say. Ella rescued her. “It's all right. Everything changed then. I can do anything now that I know he really loved me.”

“I can see by your face that's true,” Kimberly said truthfully. Ella's face did look serene and calm. Whatever this guy had said to her, she believed it and it was doing her good.

The tour of the artwork was leisurely. They walked, glasses of wine in hand, while Derry King explained about the young people and their sense of vision. Some of the artists were from inner-city schemes, where their brothers and neighbors were mainly into gangs and drugs, yet they saw beauty in everyday life.

And Derry King didn't send out for takeaway either. Instead, he took Ella into his state-of-the-art kitchen and said he was going to make a stir-fry in a wok. He had asked the butcher to cut up the meat into tiny strips, the vegetables were chopped and prepared too. “It's probably not so much making it, more as assembling it,” he said apologetically.

“Oh, no. I'd definitely consider it was making it,” Ella reassured him. “You went to the butcher's yourself, and you don't have a fleet of staff serving it.”

“Did you expect that?” Derry still had the habit she had noticed the first time she met him of asking simple, direct questions that made you reveal much more about yourself than you intended to.

“Well, I suppose I know you're very wealthy. This is an extremely classy building. I suppose I thought people opening your door for you and cooking your meals might go with the territory,” she admitted.

“Is that what you'd have?”

“No! I'd hate it. If I had a place like this, I'd well look after it on my own, no matter how much money I earned.” She stared around it admiringly.

“I do have a team that comes in three times a week when I'm not here. They clean and iron, and I have to admit that today I called them and asked them to do the vegetables. Was that cheating?” He had a very infectious smile.

“I bet they're mad about you,” she teased.

“Oh, I doubt it. One more job in a long day of hauling cleaning stuff around Manhattan.”

“You're probably their only client who has that much sympathy for them.”

“I have admiration for them too. They saw a niche in the market and went for it.”

“Did you find them, or did Kimberly?”

“I did. Kim liked to have someone live in. It was a different kind of life, kind of place entirely.”

“So you and she didn't live here, then?”

“Lord, no. Kim thinks this isn't a home. She thinks it's a school project room. No, her place, and indeed our place when we were together, was a matter of one drawing room opening into another . . . perfect for entertaining. I don't do much of that . . . as you can see . . . so all this suits me better.”

And then it was as if he had very politely pulled down a shutter. It was as if he were saying, This is as far as you are going to go today, Ella Brady, no more personal questions . . .