by Maeve Binchy
Frank came so rarely to Rosemary Drive these days. But still, every time they met each other it was as if the old days were still the same. They banged each other on the shoulders and laughed, and since Desmond never made anything of being on such a low rung of a ladder they had joined so long ago, Frank equally never made any reference to his own high position. Only at the marriage to Renata Palazzo had the real gulf between them become apparent.
Nobody else from Desmond’s level was at the wedding, everyone was many degrees above.
Deirdre had hated that wedding. She had been looking forward to it for months and even believed that she and Renata Palazzo would somehow become great friends. It had always been so unlikely that Desmond had never taken her seriously. Renata was years younger than they were, she was from a different world. Deirdre persisted in thinking of her as an Italian immigrant of her own age who would be shy and needing some kind of sisterly advice.
Desmond would never forget how Deirdre’s smile had faded at the wedding when the bright yellow dress and coat made in matching man-made fibre came up against the pure silks and the furs of the other women. She who had left the house so cheerily that morning had been sinking into the background even during the church service when an Italian opera singer was getting through ‘Panis Angelicus’ for the newlyweds. By the time they had arrived at the marquee and joined the line of guests waiting to be received she was tugging at her dress and his arm.
It had been a black day for her and her hurt had darkened the day for Desmond too.
But none of it had been Frank Quigley’s fault. Frank’s smile never lessened, not ever in the years since then.
You could always go to Frank. You didn’t have to say things in so many words. You could use code.
Where in the name of God was Frank today, this new black day when Carlo Palazzo was telling Desmond Doyle that he would have no office, no door, no telephone on a desk possibly?
Should he ask whether he could shortcut the whole thing for them by putting on one of the beige coats that the men who swept the shops put on, and getting down to work immediately with his bucket and pail and cleaning cloth, wiping the vegetable racks just after the doors closed? Would it perhaps be easier than waiting for half a dozen further slides? But then anger filled him too, he wasn’t a stupid man, he wasn’t a fool who could be passed over like this. He could feel his face working in a way that was beyond his control. To his horror he saw something like pity in the older man’s face.
‘Desmond, my friend, please,’ Carlo began uncertainly.
‘I’m all right.’ Desmond stood up behind his small desk. He would have strode across to the window so that the telltale tears in his eyes could subside. But his office wasn’t one for striding, he would have had to squeeze past the filing cabinet and possibly knock over the small table or ask Mr Palazzo to move his chair. It was too confined a place for grand gestures. Of course, come next week there would be no place for any gestures at all.
‘I know that you are all right. I just don’t want you to understand me wrongly. Sometimes even after all these years in this country I can’t make myself clear … you know.’
‘No, you make yourself very clear, Mr Palazzo, clearer than I do, and English is meant to be my native tongue.’
‘But perhaps I have offended you in something I said. Can I try to say it again? You are so valued here, you have been here so long and your experience is so necessary … it is just that circumstances change and there is an ebb and flow … everything is being … what word will I use …?’
‘Redeployed,’ said Desmond flatly.
‘Redeployed.’ Carlo Palazzo seized it and ran with it, not knowing he had already used it twice. His smile was broad. As if this word somehow rescued things.
He saw from Desmond’s face that it didn’t.
‘Tell me, Desmond, what would you like best? No, it’s not an insulting remark, not a trick question … I ask you what would you like best in work, what way would be the best way for things to work out for you today? Suppose it were possible for you to stay here, would that be your dream, your wish?’
The man was asking seriously, it wasn’t a game of going forwards and back. Carlo wanted to know.
‘I don’t suppose it would be my dream, no. Not to stay in this room as Special Projects Manager.’
‘So.’ Carlo looked for some silver lining desperately. ‘So why then is it so bad to leave it? What other place would have been your dream?’
Desmond leaned on the corner of the filing cabinet. Marigold had decorated the place a little with a few borrowed plants which she must have grabbed from the carpeted offices. Desmond hoped she hadn’t actually taken any of Carlo’s own greenery. He smiled a little to himself at the thought, and his boss smiled back, looking up eagerly from the chair in front of the desk.
Carlo had a big kind face. He didn’t look shifty, he was the kind of Italian who always played the kind uncle or indeed the loving grandfather in a film.
It was Carlo’s dream to be a grandfather many times over, to have a lot of little grandsons with half-Irish and half-Italian names running in and out of that huge white house. Children to leave his share of Palazzo to. Did Desmond dream of grandchildren too? He didn’t know. What a dull man he must be not to know his own dream when he was asked it by this big straightforward man.
‘It’s so long since I allowed myself to have a dream I suppose I’ve forgotten what it was,’ he said truthfully.
‘I never forgot mine, I wanted to go to Milano to work with the fashion,’ said Carlo. ‘I want to have the finest craftsmen and stitchers and designers all together and to have my own factory with the name Carlo Palazzo.’
‘You have your own name over your work,’ Desmond said.
‘Yes, but it is not what I wanted, not what I had hoped, I only have a little time in what I would have loved. My father he told me I must go into the food business, with my brothers, with my uncles, not playing with clothes like a ladies’ dressmaker, he said.’
‘Fathers don’t understand,’ Desmond said simply.
‘Your father … did he not understand perhaps?’
‘No, my father neither understood nor didn’t understand, if you know what I mean. He was always an old man. When I was ten, he was old, and it wasn’t just that I thought it, he looks it in every picture. He only understood sheep and hillsides and silence. But he never stopped me, he said I was right to go.’
‘Then how do you mean fathers never understand?’
‘I didn’t understand. I did all this for my son. I wanted him to have as good an education as possible, I didn’t understand when he left.’
‘Where did he go?’
It had never been admitted outside Rosemary Drive. Never beyond the walls.
‘He ran away, he ran back to the sheep and the stones and the silence.’
‘Well, you let him go.’ Carlo didn’t seem shocked that Desmond’s son had run off uneducated to the back of beyond.
‘But not with a good grace.’ Desmond sighed.
Carlo was still puzzled. ‘So did you want a life of high education?’
For some reason the small eager face of Suresh Patel flashed into Desmond’s mind, his dark eyes feverish with the wish to heap degrees and diplomas on his family.
‘No, not a high education. Just a place, I suppose, a place that was mine.’
Carlo looked around the featureless office, which he probably remembered as being even more featureless over the previous months without its injection of borrowed plants.
‘This place? It feels so important?’
Desmond had somehow come to the end of the road.
‘To be honest, Mr Palazzo, I don’t know. I’m not a man of very strong opinions. I never was. I have ideas, that’s why I suppose Frank and you thought I’d be good here. But they are personal ideas, not corporate ones, and I’m inclined to get a bit lost whenever there’s redeployment and the like. But I’ll manage. I’ll manage. I’ve always managed
before.’
He didn’t sound frightened now or self-pitying. Just resigned and practical. Carlo Palazzo was relieved that the mood, whatever it had been, had passed.
‘It’s not going to happen overnight, it will be in two to three weeks, and in many ways it will give you more freedom, more time to think about what you really want.’
‘Maybe it will.’
‘And there will be a title of manager, it hasn’t been quite worked out yet but when Frank gets back I’m sure …’
‘Oh, I’m sure he will,’ Desmond agreed readily.
‘So …’ Once more Carlo spread his hands out.
This time he was rewarded with a half smile and Desmond stretched his own hand out as if to shake on something that had been agreed between two men of like mind.
Carlo paused as if something had struck him.
‘Your wife? She is well?’
‘Oh yes, Deirdre’s fine, thank you Mr Palazzo, blooming.’
‘Perhaps she might care to come some evening to have … to have a meal in our house with us, the family, you know, Frank and Renata and everything … You were all such friends in the old days … before any of this … that’s true, yes.’
‘That is very kind of you Mr Palazzo.’ Desmond Doyle spoke in the voice of a man who knew that no such invitation would be issued.
‘That will be good, we will enjoy that.’ Carlo Palazzo spoke in exactly the same voice.
Marigold held the door open for the great chief Mr Palazzo. He looked at her with a vague and pleasant smile.
‘Thank you, thank you … um.’
‘I’m Marigold,’ she said, trying to iron out her Australian accent. ‘I’m lucky enough to work for Mr Doyle. There have been several important calls, Mr Doyle, I told them that you were in conference.’
Desmond nodded gravely, and waited until the footsteps were gone for Marigold to hiss at him, ‘Well, what happened?’
‘Oh Marigold,’ he said wearily.
‘Don’t “Oh Marigold” me, didn’t I make you look good? Didn’t you hear me? Bet he thinks a lot more of you now. Saying I was lucky to be working for you.’
‘I expect he thinks you’re sleeping with me,’ Desmond said.
‘I wouldn’t half mind.’
‘You’re possibly the nicest girl in the world.’
‘What about your wife?’ Marigold asked.
‘Oh, I don’t think she’d like you to sleep with me, not at all.’
‘I mean isn’t she the nicest girl in the world, or wasn’t she once or what?’
‘She’s very nice, very nice indeed.’ He spoke objectively.
‘So no chance for me then.’ Marigold was trying to jolly him along.
‘Palazzo’s not the worst. That’s a great Irish expression for you, to say a man is not the worst, it’s grudging praise.’
‘He didn’t give you the bum’s rush then?’ Marigold’s face lit up.
‘No, he gave me the bum’s rush all right.’
‘Aw, shit. When? Where?’
‘Soon, a week or two when Frank gets back.’
‘Frank’s not away,’ Marigold said furiously.
‘No, but you know, we say he’s away.’
‘And where are they sending you?’
‘Here and there, roving apparently.’
‘Is there any good in it, any good at all?’ Her eyes were tender, her big handsome face concerned, and she bit her lip at the unfairness of it all.
He couldn’t bear her sympathy.
‘Oh, it’s all right, Marigold, there’s plenty of good in it. I don’t see this as anything we should fight them on the beaches for, do you …?’
He looked around the office and made a theatrical gesture with his arms.
‘But roving?’ She seemed upset, he had to reassure her.
‘It’s more interesting than sitting here and seeing nothing at the end of it. I’ll roam up and see you from time to time, you’d brighten my day.’
‘Did they say why?’
‘Redeployment of resources.’
‘Redeployment of balls,’ Marigold said.
‘Maybe, but what’s the point?’
‘You didn’t do anything, they shouldn’t take your job away.’
‘That could be it, perhaps I really didn’t do anything.’
‘No, you know what I mean, you’re a manager for God’s sake, you’ve been here years.’
‘There’s still going to be a manager’s title, of whatever sort … We don’t know yet, we’ll know later …’
‘Later, like when Frank gets back.’
‘Shush, shush.’
‘I thought you two were meant to be such friends.’
‘We were, we are. Now please, Marigold, don’t you start.’
She saw, sharp and quick, Marigold, and impulsively she said it.
‘You mean you’re going to have all this with your wife tonight, is that it?’
‘In a way, yes.’
‘Well, consider me a bit of a dry run.’
‘No. Thank you, I know you mean well.’
She saw the tears in his eyes.
‘I mean very well, and I’ll tell you this: if your wife doesn’t understand that you’re one of the best …’
‘She does, she does.’
‘Then I’ll have to go round to your house and tell her she’s got one beaut guy and I’ll knock her head off if she doesn’t know it.’
‘No, Deirdre will understand, I’ll have had time to think about it, explain it properly and put it in perspective.’
‘If I were you I wouldn’t spend any time rehearsing, ring her up, take her out to lunch, go on, find a nice place with tablecloths and buy a bottle of grog, tell her about it straight, there’s no perspective.’
‘Everyone does things they want to in the end, Marigold,’ he said firmly.
‘And some people, Dizzy, do nothing at all,’ she said.
He looked stricken.
Impulsively she flung her arms around him. He felt her sobbing in his arms.
‘I’m such a loudmouth,’ she was saying.
‘Hush, hush.’ Her hair smelled lovely, like apple blossom.
‘I was trying to cheer you up, and look at what I ended up saying.’
Her voice was becoming more normal. Gently he released her and held her from him, looking admiringly at the lovely Australian, the same age perhaps as his own Anna or a little older. The daughter of some man out on the other side of the world who had no idea of the kind of jobs this girl was doing and how she entered into them with all her heart. He said nothing, just looked at her until she sniffed herself to some kind of calm.
‘Great if the old greaseball had come back and found us in a clinch, would have confirmed everything he suspected.’
‘He’d have been jealous,’ said Desmond gallantly.
‘He would in a pig’s eye, Dizzy,’ she said.
‘I’m going out, I think,’ Desmond said.
‘I’ll tell them you’re practising roving if they ask,’ she said, almost grinning.
‘Don’t tell them anything,’ he said.
That was what he always said.
He phoned Frank from a call box near one of the entrance gates.
‘I’m not sure if Mr Quigley’s available, can I say who wants him?’
Long pause. Obviously a consultation.
‘No, I’m very sorry Mr Doyle, Mr Quigley’s away on business, was this not told to you? I believe Mr Palazzo’s secretary was to let you know …’
‘Sure, I just wondered was he back.’ Desmond was mild.
‘No, no.’ The voice was firm, as if speaking to a toddler who hadn’t quite understood.
‘If he calls in tell him that … tell him.’
‘Yes, Mr Doyle?’
‘Tell him nothing. Say Desmond Doyle rang to say nothing, like he’s been saying all his life.’
‘I don’t think I quite …’
‘You heard me. But I’ll say it again.’ Desmond
said the words again and felt some satisfaction at the sound of them. He wondered was he perhaps going mad.
It was the middle of the morning and there was a strange sense of freedom about walking out through the big Palazzo gates. Like a child being sent home from school with some kind of sickness.
He remembered at the Brothers years ago how he and Frank had mitched off for the day. Nobody knew that word over here, skived is what they called it. They had told the Head Brother that they had inhaled a bag of chemicals in the schoolyard and that their eyes were red and they were choking. They managed to persuade him that the cure would be fresh air.
Desmond could still recall thirty-five years later that freedom, as they ran and skipped over the hills, liberated in every way from the small classroom.
One of the things they had found lacking then was any way of finding people to play with. Everyone else was sitting resentfully in the classroom. They had felt the lack of a gang and had gone home earlier than they would have thought likely.
It was somehow the same today. There was nobody that Desmond could ask to come and play. Nobody to buy a bottle of grog for as Marigold had suggested. Even if he were to take the train in to Baker Street and go to Anna’s bookshop she might not be free. And she would be alarmed, it was so out of character. His only son who had been lucky enough to recognize some kind of freedom and run for it was far far away. His other daughter away in her convent would not understand the need that he had to talk, the great urgency to define himself somehow.
It was a poor totting up of twenty-six years in this land that he could think of no other person in the whole of London that he could telephone and ask to meet him. Desmond Doyle had never thought of himself as a jet-setter but he had thought of Deirdre and himself as people with friends, people who had a circle. Of course they were. They were going to have a silver wedding anniversary shortly and their problem was not looking for people, it was trying to cut down on numbers.
What did he mean that he had no friends, they had dozens of friends. But that was it. They had friends. He and Deirdre had friends and the problem had nothing to do with redeployment or managerial titles, the trouble was a promise made and a promise broken.
He had sworn to her that night so many years ago that he would rise in the business, he would be a name for the O’Hagan family in Ireland to take seriously. He had said that Deirdre would never go out to work. Her mother had never gone out to work, and none of Deirdre’s friends who married back in 1960 would have expected to go and look for a job. Ireland had changed since then, had become more like England. Mrs O’Hagan’s nose, which seemed to turn up very easily, would not turn today if a young woman went on for further education or took any kind of work to help build a family home.
