He could not find this place repulsive at first glance. He had to see it as a gracious city.
Derry was pleased to see some colour return to her face. She had looked very pale as they had landed. It was a series of hard things for a girl to have had to face over a period of four months. The loss of the man she considered her true love, the financial ruin of her family. And then the second loss of the suicide. Not easy for her to come back, but at least she had friends in this place. She would survive.
i They made arrangements for her to pick him up at his hotel that night for an early dinner.
"This is a beautiful street," he said when they came to Tara Road.
"Yes, but I'm round at the tradesmen's entrance these days," she said with a bright little smile.
"Not for ever, Ella," he consoled her.
"Well," she shrugged.
"Shall I take the car up the lane, Madam?" the chauffeur enquired.
"No, it would get stuck, I'm afraid. Just leave me at the corner, if you don't mind."
The chauffeur was about to carry her case but she wouldn't hear of it.
"See you tonight at six, Derry." She ran off before anyone could say more, down the narrow lane behind the big houses of Tara Road to where her parents would be waiting, up already for hours, and peering out the windows of what used to be the garden shed. Ella couldn't sleep. She tried, but it didn't work. Her mother had gone to work, her father sat at the kitchen table moving papers around him. The huge, paper sunflowers looked cheerful in the window as she had known they would. She looked across at the house where her parents had lived since their marriage until this summer. She remembered Derry King saying that this situation would not be for ever. Maybe a man thought differently, in that he would work and scheme and slave to get it all back. While Ella would lose it all and more on top of it if she only thought she could see Don just once more. She wished she could sleep because she felt a great weariness and sense that life was going to be so empty from now on, it didn't really matter what happened. In his hotel room, Derry King paced up and down. He had a stiff neck from the plane journey. His eyes felt heavy. In theory, he should be able to sleep. In the past, when he had criss-crossed the United States to go to conventions, meetings, sales conferences, his ability to snatch sleep had been legendary. He would wake refreshed and ready for everything.
But it was different here. These were the streets that Jim Kennedy had walked when he was young. This was the land that had not given him a living or an understanding, the city he had fled to find a better and brighter life. Jim Kennedy would not have been welcome in a hotel of this calibre. He would not have been allowed past the door. But those small bars they had passed on the journey from the airport, places with family names over the door, that would have been his territory. And in the telephone directory there were people who could tell Derry about it all.
But he didn't want to ask and learn. He didn't know what he wanted to do. For years he had steeled himself against useless regrets and time wasting, wishing himself elsewhere. There had been too much maudlin "if only" in his father's conversations. Derry King would be no part of it. He would spend no time wondering why he had decided to come to this place. Nor wishing that he had stayed where he was and taken Fennel for a three-hour walk every day in Central Park. He was here now and he would make the best of it. And if sleep would not come, then he must go out and walk in that park across from his hotel. Brenda Brennan's friend Nora was working in the kitchen. She knew that the American was in town. The one who would provide the money to make the film about Quentins.
"Will he sneak in to have a look at the place, do you think?" Signora asked as she expertly cleaned and diced vegetables that Blouse Brennan produced triumphantly in ever-more earth covered trays.
"No, I think he's too smart for that," Brenda said thoughtfully. "He'll have to meet us sooner or later, so he doesn't want to be unmasked as someone having a private peek."
"That's true, but I bet he has a private peek through the window sometime today, don't you?" Signora said.
"Oh, definitely," Brenda laughed.
Patrick Brennan looked at them. Women's friendships were amazing. Brenda and Nora O'Donoghue had been so close since they had all met at catering college. Even the years Nora had spent in Sicily didn't seem to have broken it, they wrote each other long letters all that time. It didn't matter that one of them ran the restaurant and the other was scraping vegetables in it. They were still equals. Still like girls, giggling over whether a rich American would come and peek in the window. Patrick wished that men had friendships like that, where there were no secrets, where nothing was hidden. "Would he be the kind of fellow that would fall for me, do you think?" Deirdre asked in the cafe at lunchtime.
Ella had begged her to have a quick lunch and they were having a sandwich near Deirdre's work.
"No, I don't think he would. He's too interested in work, more work and art and brooding and more work and homeless dogs to have any time for you," Ella said.
"Hey, I could be interested in all those things too if I wanted to," Deirdre protested.
"Well, your powers are extraordinary, Dee. We all know that... and what do I know? When you meet him, you might start to sing arias at each other."
"And will I meet him?"
"Of course you will. I'm just trying to work out where. It can't be Quentins. That has to be formal and work and everything ... we haven't room to swing a cat at our home these days, otherwise I'd have a Sunday lunch for him to meet my friends ..."
"I could have a Sunday lunch in my place if you like," Deirdre offered.
"Would you, Dee? And we could ask Nick and Sandy." Ella was pleased.
"Your parents could come, and Tom and Cathy," Deirdre said.
"Oh, Dee, what would I do without you?"
"Nuala is back in town, but I think not, don't you?" Deirdre said.
"I think very much not." Ella was reflective.
"Sorry for bringing her up," Deirdre said. "But you might just run into her or Frank of the one-track mind."
"Now that Don's dead, do you think he'll shut up about it all, and let him rest in peace?"
"Are you asking me for an honest answer?"
"Of course I am."
"Then I don't think that people like Frank and his brothers would let anyone rest in peace while they think that someone owes them a sum of money."
"Oh well, welcome back to the real world, Ella," she told herself ruefully.
"You never left the real world, Ella! You're terrific to cope with all that's being fired at you. Truly you are."
"No, you're right, I'll survive."
I'm only babbling on because I honestly don't have the words to tell you face to face how sorry I am about what Don did. It's a nightmare for you, and I just want you to understand that I know this." Deirdre's eyes were full of tears.
"Let's think of what we'll eat on Sunday," Ella said. She could cope with anything but sympathy just now. Tom and Cathy were delighted with the invitation to lunch. Something they didn't have to cook and serve themselves. It was heaven. But there was a problem which they had to work around.
"Deirdre, we'd just love to come to lunch, and we'll bring you a really luscious dessert from the freezer," Tom offered.
"You don't need to do that. I'd love it, but you don't need to . . ."
"We do."
"Why?" Deirdre was suspicious.
"Because we're going to ask you if we can bring the twins. We"re meant to be looking after them that day. Muttie and Lizzie are going on an outing. We said we'd take the kids. They're so mad and awful really we thought if we gave you a roulade and a pavlova it might sort of make up."