Quentins (40 page)

“I wouldn't mind if he had anything interesting to say.” Sean was honest.

And that night, Derry told Ella all this. How the
brothers had opened up his eyes about so many things. Filming wasn't his business, he assured them, selling was his business, creating needs for people, then filling them. That's what he was good at. He had spent time in their business and told them about ways they could expand. Sell paint as well as doing the job. Set up an advisory service after hours in evenings or Saturday morning. Draw in the young couples, give them color charts, do-and-don't lists. Make them your friends. You weren't doing yourself out of a market. There were two different worlds, those who painted and those who didn't.

And then he said to Ella, he had listened to them as well. And understood what they were saying. He had grown to love Quentins, there was a possibility that a fly on the wall would destroy it and the hardworking people who worked here. He felt clear in his head about it. Now the only problem was to explain all this to Ella and to everyone else. He was amazed at how easy that turned out to be.

The only person who was confused and annoyed in the end was Deirdre. “For week after bloody week I've been talking, sleeping, dreaming, breathing this documentary. It was going to be the making of everybody. And now suddenly, out of a clear blue sky, I'm meant to be overjoyed that it is
not
happening. No, Ella, give me some sense of being something rather than a nodding dog.”

“
You
a nodding dog, Dee! Please!”

“No, I'm serious. It's all ludicrous. What happens when you go back to teaching, your man goes back to America, your other man goes to jail, Firefly Films becomes rock groupies, Quentins misses out on immortality. Where's all the joy in that?” Deirdre was great when she grumbled. Which was never for long.

“Listen, cheer up. You're invited to a big party to celebrate.”

“God, what a mad crowd you are. Celebrating! Anyone else would be in mourning.”

“
No
, Dee, you eejit, it's for lots of things . . . the new company, Kennedy and King. Derry's going in with his cousins. It's for Aidan and Nora's wedding party. It's for Nicky and Sandy's new contract. It's for my getting exactly the job I want, part-time teaching, and I'm going back to school to do a doctorate as well, and it's for my father going to have a job as a financial adviser in Kennedy and King. And for so many other things . . . if you can't celebrate all that, then you're only a miserable old curmudgeon.”

Deirdre threw her arms around Ella. “I never saw you so happy. So that maybe is a reason to get a new party frock. Will there be anything there that I could get my nails and teeth into?”

“Lord knows, there might be,” said Ella. “It's shaping up as a very unusual party.”

“Yes, Mrs. Mitchell. I know it's inconvenient. Perhaps you could choose another night.”

“But my daughter-in-law . . . well, my ex-daughter-in-law tells me she's going to Quentins on Saturday night . . . tomorrow.”

“But, as I'm sure she told you, it's a private function, Mrs. Mitchell.”

“Well, I have thought there might be exceptions for regular clients.”

“No, we
have
had this notice on the tables for three weeks, Mrs. Mitchell, and in the newspaper.”

Brenda came off the phone and rolled her eyes up to heaven. “Amazing how Cathy didn't kill that one dead. She's the most trying woman in Dublin.”

The next call was from Nora's mother. “I don't know what you're thinking of to think that I and my daughters
are going to a surprise party for Nora. I never heard such nonsense and at her age. And at such short notice.”

“We had to keep it at short notice in case they heard about it.” Brenda's eyes rolled farther around in her head.

“But I thought that this ceremony was going to be in a bookshop. That's what Nora said, and we wouldn't have gone to that either,” Mrs. O'Donoghue sniffed.

“We so much hope you'll be here tomorrow. It will be a great feast and every woman wants her mother there at a wedding party.”

“Huh, as if it were a proper wedding.”

“It will be a marvelous wedding. I'm one of the witnesses. So can I hope you and Helen will come, or is this a definite no?”

Nora's appalling mother didn't want to rule herself out of what was being described as a feast. “I can't say yes or no.”

“Well, we hope that's a yes. Meanwhile, not a word of any of this to Nora and Aidan.”

Brenda knew that the old bat would try to ring them and spoil it, but it was impossible now; Nora was staying with the Brennans for the night and Aidan was at his son-in-law's house. Mrs. O'Donoghue would not be able to find them now, no matter how hard she tried.

Maud and Simon were told that Hooves, their dog, could
not
come to the party no matter how rejected it made him feel. He had a dog collar the same as Derry King had in America, but even that didn't get him in. They were warned by Cathy that two songs maximum, and could they be love songs.

Simon thought of “Please Release Me, Let Me Go.” That was not suitable for a wedding apparently.

Neither was “Young Love, First Love, Is Filled With
Deep Emotion,” which they knew because the couple were not in the first flush of youth.

“Love,” Cathy said. “You must know
some
song about love.”

They said they would do some research.

“Nothing to be sung without consulting me,” Cathy said. “That's an order.”

Sean and Michael Kennedy were the first arrivals. They were trying out the canapés and looking at the banners on the wall. The menu was for Aidan and Nora, as it should be, with wedding bells attached, but there was one for Kennedy and King too, and one for Firefly Films and one for Ella's degree.

The sign writer had been busy tonight.

At the piano, two earnest-looking blond children sat beside an old man as he picked out the notes of a song and tried to teach it to them.

“We'd better write it down, Muttie,” the boy said.

“Everyone knows the words,” the old man protested. “They're not words you'd be able to write down, like they're not in English.”

“Then why are we singing it?” the girl asked.

“Because Cathy says they must love it. She said it was a pity you didn't know it, but you will if you concentrate.”

They concentrated heavily.

Derry came in a car to collect the Brady family.

“We're not really much for parties,” Tim protested, but Ella noticed he had dressed up smartly all the same.

“Can't have a party without my financial adviser there. I might revert to my father and get drunk and silly,” Derry said.

Ella smiled at him. He was able to make a remark about it, a joke even. At last.

“We wouldn't miss it for the world, Derry,” Ella's mother said.

Ella looked at the streets around her as they drove to Quentins. This was her world. There was no other and there never would be again.

Patrick made an appearance at the party in full chef gear. “Brenda is with them. She's taking the little party, just Aidan, his daughters and the son-in-law down to Holly's for afternoon tea and they think they're going to the bookshop.”

“Wouldn't they be afraid Nora would get a heart attack when she finds the place closed?”

“No, don't worry.”

The Registrar was a kind man. He knew when he saw a party of only six people, a bride and groom tending toward middle age rather than extreme youth, then a ceremony of great dignity was often called for. He looked from one to the other and stressed the importance of the day and the decision they were making in front of all present.

They thanked him profusely and asked him to join them for afternoon tea in Holly's. He was often invited to join the festivities but never accepted. Today for the first time he was tempted. They were so touchingly happy, it made him blow his nose quite a lot. They had obviously traveled a long road to get to this day.

They drove to Holly's and got a great welcome. Photographs were taken in the garden under the huge trees. Tiny sandwiches, and little cream cakes. Everyone was very relaxed. But the bride had her eye on her watch.

“We must be in time for the bookshop,” Nora said.

Brenda was delaying them. “Ah, don't worry. It will start without us . . . they'll know we're on the way.”

“How many will there be altogether?” Aidan's
daughter Brigid asked. She was in on the whole thing and thought it was so cool. In fact, total cool.

“There will be fourteen altogether. I'd have loved to have asked more, but you know . . .” Nora said.

“It's the fourteen important ones anyway, and the others will understand. Don't start fussing, Mrs. Dunne.” Aidan looked at her with great affection.

“Oh, God, you put the heart across me, Aidan. I thought your first wife had materialized down here in Wicklow.”

Nick, Sandy and Deirdre arrived together. They had been firmly instructed by Brenda to move among the guests, talking and introducing. There were people from a lot of different worlds here tonight, and they needed someone to keep them together. Brenda would have done it effortlessly, but she was needed elsewhere.

Nick, Sandy and Deirdre got their first drink and began doing their duty, began moving around and bringing the little groups together. Getting names and giving them.

“Aren't you a very lovely person. Are you an actress or a film star?” a man asked Deirdre.

“No, I'm not. I work in a lab and I'm as cross as a bag of weasels,” Deirdre said.

“And what has a gorgeous girl like you cross?”

The man was well dressed, bristly hair like Derry King's. Of course it must be one of the painter cousins.

“Are you Sean or Michael?” she asked.

“I'm Sean. Imagine you having heard of us.”

“Everyone's heard of you. I'm Deirdre.”

“And what's upset you, Deirdre?”

“I paid four hundred euros for this dress and I look like the wrath of God in it.”

“You do
not
, you look lovely.”

Deirdre moved and examined herself in the mirror. With a very disappointed face.

A woman with the most amazingly brassy hair came over and watched her. “It needs a scarf draped over it, something that picks up the color,” she said.

“A lot of use that is to me to know that now. It looked fine in the shop.”

“Bet they draped a scarf over it for you?”

“They did, as it happens. I'm Dee, by the way, Ella's friend.”

“I'm Harriet, Nora's friend, and Ella's too. We met when she was going to America.”

“Oh, yes, she told me about you. You sold her a dog collar.”

“I can sell you a scarf now if you want one. Just wait and I'll get you a selection. I checked my bag in the cloakroom.”

In minutes Deirdre was transformed.

“I'll leave you now. He's one of the best catches in Dublin,” Harriet whispered.

“Who?” Deirdre felt disconnected with everything.

“Sean Kennedy, rolling in money and he's drooling over you.”

“I'm really meant to be mingling,” Deirdre said.

“I'd say you've mingled enough,” advised Harriet.

When they saw the notice on the door, Nora felt the tears coming down her face. “Oh, Aidan, isn't that desperate.
What
could they mean, unforeseen circumstances.”

“They were so sure?” Aidan's face was bleak. “And what did they do with the wine and the canapés?”

“Does it say anything else?” Nora wept.

Then they found a second note.

“It says the Dunne reception has been transferred eight doors down the street.”

“Which direction?” she sniffed.

“It says to Quentins,” Aidan said.

They looked at the others, who were beaming with delight.

“But we can't go to Quentins, not on a Saturday night. No, Carissima Brenda, even for a wedding. We can't do that on you.”

Now Brenda had tears in her eyes.

“I've a feeling it's going to be perfectly fine,” she said, and led the newlyweds eight doors down the road to Quentins.

Brigid Dunne had run ahead, and when they came in the door, a man at the piano struck up with “Here Comes the Bride,” and after that everyone they could ever have wanted to see at their wedding appeared, to hug them.

Nora's hair was a triumph and her lilac-colored dress with the dark royal purple chiffon sleeveless coat looked astounding. Harriet had got an immense bargain for her somewhere. No one would know how immense, not even the man whose lorry it was meant to have fallen off.