Maeve Binchy

by The Quentins (Lit)

  "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

  218

  I

  .. . perfect for entertaining. I don't do much of that ... as you can so all this suits me better."

  see

  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 ...

  She took the message on board. She told him about her plans for the next day. She had a small sum of money kept aside to buy gifts if her mission had been successful, and now it was, so she would go shopping.

  "Women love that," he said, almost wistfully. "I can't get a kick out of it myself, clothes are just to keep you warm and decent."

  "Oh, I won't be shopping for clothes. I'm talking about trinkets. You know the kind of thing ... joke clapper board for Nick and Sandy to show they're really in the big time now, some big paper sunflowers for my mother, a football hat for my father, a frilly nightie for Deirdre, a book of table decorations for Thanksgiving for Brenda and Patrick in Quentins. Oh, I've got another dog collar for Simon and Maud, like the one I gave you that horrified you so much."

  "It did not horrify me. It touched me to the heart," he protested.

  "Now, Derry, I want to leave this country while still continuing to respect your honesty," Ella laughed.

  "Then look at this." He opened his wallet and took out a Polaroid of a lopsided puppy with a hopeless grin wearing the twinkling, bejewelled collar.

  "You actually did put it on an animal! Aren't you just marvellous!" she cried.

  "That's not an animal, that's no ordinary dog. I'll have you know you're looking at Fennel."

  "Well doesn't Fennel look just fine in his new collar!"

  "He loves it, apparently. They tell me at the kennels he won't have it taken off. He pines until they put it back on. Maybe you know more about dogs than I do."

  "He lives at a kennel?"

  "He has to live somewhere. He can't live here. He followed me home one night. I couldn't leave him."

  "Maybe he belongs to somebody."

  "Fennel never belonged to anybody. He was born in some alley. His mother may have been killed. He lived by his wits until he found me. He's a survivor, Fennel. He found one of the few men in New York who would look him in the eye and then pay for him

  219

  to live in luxury for the rest of his life. I take him for walks in the park. We get some very odd looks, thanks to that collar ... but what do I know? Maybe the other dogs are drop-dead envious."

  "You're a very kind man, Derry King," Ella said.

  "And you're a kind girl, Ella Brady, going off to stores getting gifts for all your friends when your heart is broken," he said.

  Then everything changed a little, as if they had been old friends for ever.

  She helped him to make the salad and told him about Don quite calmly, from the very first day she had met him, right down to the letter that had been delivered to her parents" house.

  He asked questions that never seemed intrusive, but which carried the story along. "Did he seem sad when you were in Spain together?"

  "Yes, he did, sometimes. I didn't realise that it was "worry because he was preparing a hiding place. I thought it was because he wanted it to go on for ever ... the two of us there."

  "Perhaps it was that," Derry suggested.

  And then, later, she was telling him about the numbing shock of reading in the newspapers that he had left people without their life savings. Story after story unfolding of loss and deceit.

  "What was the very worst bit?" Derry asked.

  "At the start, the worst bit was the papers talking about him and his wife, this close couple which I knew they were not. That hurt a lot. But the very worst bit was my father trying to be brave. My poor, decent, hard-working father, who would never cheat anyone in his life, ending his career in disgrace because my boyfriend gave him some false leads. It was bad enough for him to know that I was having an affair with a married man, that alone was enough to upset him and my mother. But the other. That was unbearable. I literally could not bear to think about it, which was why Nick and everyone got me involved in this project, so that I wouldn't have to think any more."

  "And look what you did with it!" He was admiring.

  "Ah, that was due to everyone else, and now finally to you helping me. But what thanks do you get? A dog collar for Fennel. And here I am, sitting blubbing away about it, hour after hour."

  "No, you're not. In fact, you're remarkably calm."

  I am because he loved me. I know that now. For some months I thought that maybe I had only imagined it. Invented the whole thing for myself."

  220

  "But he's dead, Ella. You'll never see him again. Isn't that very bleak for you?"

  "It's a waste, a desperate waste. But it's what happened and we have to get on with life."

  "And when you get back

  Til be so busy with the Quentins project, I promise .. ." she smiled at him.

  "No, I don't mean that. You will have four major decisions to make about all this and quite soon."

  "Four decisions?" She was surprised that he was so precise.

  "One . . . whether you'll cash the bank drafts for your father. Two .. . whether you'll hand over the laptop to the authorities. Three ... if you do give it over, "will you erase the information about where his wife and family live? Four ... if you don't hand it over, what will you do with it, throw it away or hang on to it?"

  "No wonder you did well in business, Derry. You have a very sharp mind. You can get down to the bones of something in seconds."

  "Yes, but those are, as you say, just the bones. You have many other things to think about. It seems that you have good friends. They'll help you."

  "I'll keep you informed, Derry."

  "You don't need to. There's something sacred about confidences, part of that is you need never follow up unless you want to."

  "That's true, but part of a confidence, if it is to be sacred, means that the listener must give as well as the talker."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I've told you my whole heart and life story," she said.

  "You know mine." He tried to be light.

  I don't, really. What is so terrible out there that you can't face visiting the country where your father was born? He's dead and as you said to me about Don, you'll never see him again."

  "We're not talking the same planet here, Ella."

  "I know it's not bleak for you and a wast
e, like it is for me. For you it's probably a good thing, because you can only hate him and what he did in retrospect. But he had to be born somewhere, and he happened to be born in my country, and that, whether you like it or not, makes you part-Irish."

  "You don't understand."

  "Well, tell me then."

  And slowly he told her. The life of disappointment that this big

  221

  square man had lived. The blame that he sent in every direction. Towards his native country for not giving him a living back in the early 19605. To his new country for not giving him streets paved with gold as he had been led to expect. Towards his gentle, hardworking Canadian wife because she looked wistfully backwards to the peace and tranquillity of her country home. Towards his three sons who were never good enough for him, and then too good for him. Derry told the stories of the beatings and how his mother would neither leave him nor report him. His mother believed that if you said "for better or worse", then it was easy to stay when it was better, the only testing ground was when it was worse. And that was when you really did have to stay.

  His face was sad and twisted when he spoke of her. "She preferred to stay in that run-down place, that place where he disappeared for days, where he had burned her with a saucepan of hot soup."

  "Maybe she was just afraid to go back to her own small town in Canada."

  "She'd have had nothing to fear there. She would have had peace, respect, roots .. . far away from all he had put her through."

  It was clear to Ella that this woman must have had some happy times with her husband. It had not all been misery. There must have been times of hope .. . hope that they would turn a corner. She wished that she had Derry's clear mind, that somehow she could reduce it all to four main points. But it was more complicated than that. It was a lifetime of hatred and regret.

  "So I have no wish to set foot in Jim Kennedy's birthplace and see all the great sights he talked about when he was drunk."

  "Jim Kennedy?" she asked.

  "My father. You don't think I kept his name, do you? He gave me nothing else. Why should I take his name? I changed it when I was old enough. And amazingly you are old enough to change your name quite early in life. I've called myself Derry King since I was fifteen. Since the day I went out to work."

  "We were asking Ella what you'd call the baby when it gets born," Maud said to Cathy Scarlet.

  "Were you, now? And did she know?" Cathy smiled.

  "She said we were trying to get her mind off all the equations," Simon said.

  "And was she right?"

  222

  "Sort of, but we were wondering. We've thought of some great names ourselves."

  Tm sure you have, but it's an oddly personal thing, Simon. Tom and I will think nearer the time."

  "You'd want to think soon," Maud said reprovingly. "You never know the day or the hour."

  "Well, we know vaguely the day and the hour, and it's not for another two months," Cathy said. "But the day and the hour that Ella is coming here again for a lesson is in two days" time, so I hope you've done all those problems she left you."

  "Her head got mended very quickly," Simon grumbled.

  "I don't think it was broken at all, to tell you the truth," Maud agreed with him.

  Cathy wondered whether to tell them to go easy on her when she came back. The girl had had terrible news while she was away. But that wasn't the kind of information anyone would ever put in Maud and Simon's direction. Ella would be worse off if the twins had been warned to treat her gently.

  Ella's mother couldn't sleep. And she couldn't talk to Tim about it, either. Only the three of them knew the contents of the letter. Ella had said nothing on the telephone about Don's offer to give back what he had taken. Tim said he couldn't take those bank drafts to clear up his own and his clients" debts. It wouldn't be fair. There were too many other demands on the assets of Rice and Richardson. But if Ella cashed them and gave him the money, then he would have to take it. Barbara Brady prayed that she would manage to keep out of it, as her husband had pleaded that she should. It was just so hard looking at his frailty and realising that it was in Ella's power to sort all that out.

  "I wish he'd come over with her, could you credit him having an allergy to coming near the place," Nick complained.

  "Ella says she has pages of notes," Sandy consoled him.

  "And the whole thing about your man has died down," Nick said thoughtfully.

  "He was never my man, thank God," Sandy said.

  They sat easily together in the huge apartment, looking out at the lights of New York. Their conversation was as intense as either of them had ever known, yet there were no tears or signs of upset. At

  223

  no stage did they reach out to console each other. At no stage did they feel they had to backtrack on what they said, explain or apologise.

  "I got us green figs as dessert .. . "would you like those?" Derry said.

  "Love them, thank you," Ella said.

  They had drunk very little wine. She noticed that he rarely had more than one glass throughout an evening. The reaction to his father must have been very deep-seated.

  "Cream with them?" he called from the kitchen.

  "Please."

  She thought suddenly of Kimberly's handsome Larry telling her not to eat a fattening pasta. Possibly Derry had never served figs and cream to his beautiful wife. She wondered, had he been able to talk to her like they had talked together tonight? But she could ask him anything.

  "Did Kimberly help you over any of this?"

  "Immensely," he said. "You can see how good she is with people, and how smart. She said it was holding me back as a person, and she's right, of course. She even went to Ireland to find my roots for me, but I handed them back to her. I prefer the hate, you see. I don't want Jim Kennedy to be an ordinary, decent man who took to the hard stuff. I did all I did, and denied myself so much, just because he was a monster."

  She listened to him and was silent for a moment. I see - you don't want him to be normal, with normal relatives who work hard like you do. You don't want him to have an ordinary background. You want him to have come straight out of the pit of hell, all steaming and hissing."

  "Something like that," he agreed ruefully.

  They finished the figs.

  "It's really your story we should be telling in a movie, isn't it," she said with a smile.

  "Oh, no, they don't make movies like that. They make them where the son goes home and everyone loves him and drinks themselves senseless and dance s jigs. Then the guy goes to his father's birthplace and weeps and begs his dead father to forgive him for not talking to him more. That's what would sell."

  I wish you were coming back to Dublin tomorrow with me, in many ways. Not for you but for me," Ella said suddenly.

  224

  "You do? Why do you say that?" He was gentle as he always was, interested but not invasive.

  "It's funny. I've only known you for just over a week, and yet I feel very safe talking to you. When I step off the plane in Ireland, I'm back in a land where anything could happen, anything did happen. I have to go to a city where I know Don Richardson will never walk or breathe again. That's hard. All these decisions you identified ... I have to make them but I may do it all wrong. It would be much easier if you were there. That's all I'm saying, I suppose."

  "Very well," he said.

  "What?"

  Til come with you," Derry King said simply.

  "You can't, not just like that?"

  "But you just asked me to." He seemed surprised.

  "Yes, but why?"

  "If you have to face all that and get through it, then surely I can face a few old memories," he said.

  And he took away the plate that had held her figs and cream before it fell on the floor.

  225

  Chapter Eleven.

  It had never occurred to Ella that Derry King's office would have booked him first class to Dublin and neither of them discovered t
his until they were at Kennedy airport in New York. "Dumb of them not to check," he said, and went to change.

  "No, please, you must have your comfortable seat," Ella begged him. It was quite bad enough that he was coming to Ireland on a whim without him turning up with backache and stiff legs from travelling at the back of the bus.

  But he wouldn't hear of it. "It's only a few short hours. It would be highly antisocial and, alas, first class is full, or we'd upgrade you," he said.

  Ella began to panic. What would she talk to him about for six hours, knowing all the time that he could have stretched his legs out in comfort and watched a movie of his choice?

  They heard the over-hearty laughter of a group on the other side of the departure lounge. They were rather red-faced and might have had a couple of cocktails to speed them on their trip. Ella listened to them carefully and then identified American, rather than Irish, accents.

  "Yours, I think," she said to Derry.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You have me so sensitive and quivering now about the Irish being loud and drunk that I'm very relieved to say that those people over there aren't my lot, they're actually yours."

  226

  I

  "Oh dear, that's a pity. I thought that we might keep score and tick them off," he mocked her.

  He was easy company on the plane as he had been everywhere else. Talking some of the time, reading a magazine or even sleeping a little. When the trolley passed along the aisle selling duty-free goods, the stewardess asked, "Do you want to wake your husband in case he wants to make any purchases?"

  Ella didn't correct her about the relationship. "No, he doesn't want any, nor do I, thank you."

  She would have bought Deirdre a bottle of duty-free gin, under normal circumstances. But these were far from normal times.