"What kind of change do you mean? Architecture or something?"
"No, I don't think everyone will go for that," Nick said.
"Well, what then? The growth in Irish self-confidence?"
"Yes, but we can't just make a film saying everyone's becoming more confident. Lord, just look at those confident faces passing by . . . there has to be something that binds them together, some theme."
"And if we found one, what do we do next?"
"Go to New York and sell it to this fellow there who has a foundation. The King Foundation, to help young people in the arts. If we made this film, Ella, and won a prize at the Festival, we'd be made. Made, I tell you. Something that gives a picture of Dublin changing . .. Can you think of anything that sort of sums it all up?"
"Sorry to ask, Nick, but would there be money in it? You know we're cleaned out."
"I sort of heard," he said, looking away.
"So is there?"
"Yes, there would be, if we got the right idea."
"And -when would it need to be done?"
"We need to be ready to pitch in three months" time."
"That would work out all right. I could work during the day, once we get school holidays from here in two weeks from tomorrow."
"Do you have any ideas at all?" he asked.
She was silent for a moment. "Quentins," she said eventually.
"What do you mean?"
"Do a documentary about the restaurant, the changes in people's aspirations, their hopes and dreams, since it was founded about forty years ago."
"It's never been there that long."
"Well, it was a totally different kind of cafe in the sixties and early seventies, until Brenda and Patrick took it over. It was really only watery soup and beans on toast before then, you know."
"I didn't know that."
"Well, that's what people wanted then. And look how different it all is nowadays. You could tell the stories of the kind of people who come there .. . how it's all changed since the days when it was full of people with suitcases tied with string come in for tea and a couple of fried eggs before they took the emigrant ship."
"It was never like that, surely?"
"It was, Nick. They have pictures of it all up in their bedroom, a whole history waiting to be told."
He didn't ask how she had been in the Brennan's bedroom. Nick was very restful sometimes. But he didn't buy the idea. "It would just be a plug for them. It would be like a commercial for the restaurant."
"They don't need it. Aren't they full all the time? No, it wouldn't be done like that ... it could be a series of interviews with people remembering different times . .. you know .. . oh, all kinds of things - the way First Communions have changed, stag party dinners, corporate entertaining. It sure tells the story of a changing economy better than anything I know."
He was interested now. "Other restaurants are going to be full of grizzles and complaints about why -we didn't pick them."
"Deal with that when it happens, Nick."
He looked at her admiringly. "You're very bright, Ella," he said.
"Where did it get me?" she asked.
"You asked about money," he said, changing the subject. "Well, this is what I suggest. If you help me develop this and sell it to Derry King, I'll pay you a proper wage for five weeks. Suppose I said eight hundred euros a "week?"
"That's four thousand euros. Fantastic," she said, delighted.
"What do you need it for so badly?"
"To do up the garden shed for my mother and father, because thanks to my lover, they are going to have to leave their own house."
He laughed first and then stopped. "You're bloody serious," Nick said, shocked.
"Yes, I am."
I can give it to you now, tomorrow."
"No, you can't, Nick."
I can. Let's say I can get my hands on it easier than you can."
"You're not to go into debt."
"No, but we've got to get the Bradys a henhouse or whatever to live in." He grinned at her.
Wouldn't it have been much easier if she had loved Nick, Ella thought.
They made an appointment with the Brennans the next day. Nick and Sandy and Ella sat in the kitchen of Quentins at five o"clock and told them about the project. Brenda and Patrick were doubtful at first. They listed their reservations. It would be too much upheaval, it would get in the way of their main business, which was to provide food. They didn't need the publicity. Perhaps some of the customers might not like to be interviewed.
Slowly they were worn down. Soon they began to think of the positive side of it. In a way, it would be some kind of permanent proof of what they had done. It would be exciting to be considered part of the history of Ireland. Customers who didn't want to be interviewed need not be approached. They had huge amounts of memorabilia. Both of them were magpies who collected things and refused to throw them away. And then the most compelling reason of all ... Quentin would surely love it.
"Quentin?" Ella said. "You mean, there really is a living person called Quentin?"
"Oh yes, indeed there is," said Patrick Brennan the chef.
"Yes, he would," Brenda said slowly. "It could be a sort of monument to him."
"Could you tell us some of the stories about the place?" Ella asked, and a s she turned on the tape recorder she realised that for the past hour and a half she had not thought about Don Richardson once. The pain that was like something sticking into her ribs was not nearly so sharp. Still there, of course, but not like it had been earlier.
Quentin Barry had always wished that he had been called Sean or Brian. It was hard to be called Quentin at a Christian Brothers school in the 1970's. But that was the name they had wanted, his beautiful mother Sara Barry had wanted, she who had always lived in a dream world far more elegant than the one she really lived in.
And it was what his hard-working father Derek wanted too. Derek, who was a partner in Bob O'Neill's accountancy firm. He had always seen the day when his son's name would be on the notepaper too. That had been very important to him. Bob O'Neill had no son to succeed him. If people saw the name Quentin Barry on the office paper as well as Derek's, they would know who was important.
Since his earliest days, Quentin knew that he was going to work in his father's firm. It was never questioned. He even knew which room he would work in. It was across the corridor from his father's. At present, it was a storeroom and his father was keeping it that way until it was time for Quentin to take over.
The other lads at the Brothers didn't know what jobs, if any, they would get when they left school. A few of them might go to university. Some might go to England or America. There would, of course, be a couple of vocations to the priesthood or the Brothers.
Quentin used to pretend that he too had a choice in it all. He said that he might be a pilot or a car mechanic. These were things that sounded normal and masculine. Not like his name, not precious, like his lifestyle as an only child with a mother who looked like a film star and talked very fancy when she drove by school to collect her son in a cream-coloured car.
Sometimes Quentin felt able to tell his mother about his doubts about his future career. "You know, Mother, I might not be a good accountant like Dad is," he would begin nervously.
"Quentin, my sweet one, you are twelve years old!" she would say. "Don't get involved in the awful world of business until you have to."
He loved to help in the home, choosing fabrics for the sitting room, making table decorations for dinner parties.
His father frowned on this kind of activity. "Don't have the lad doing girly things like that," he would say.
"The lad, as you call him, likes to help, which is a blessing since all you do is sit down, put your elbows on the table, and eat and drink what's put in front of you."