"Bob couldn't make it himself this once. So he asked me to stand in at the last moment
"And you never looked us up?" Jimmy said. "Lord, I wouldn't last one day if I didn't know about the people I was meeting."
Derek looked miserable. Tm sorry, Mr. Costello - I'm sorry, Jimmy. You're right. It was a courtesy and I did not have time. I didn't make time. I apologise. Can you tell me about yourselves? Now?"
"What do you want to know, Derek?" Jimmy asked.
Derek wondered what to ask them. "Do you have children?" he heard himself ask. He wondered why he had said it. Normally he never asked about people's families.
"Do you?" Cath asked in a level voice.
"Yes, just one son. He didn't follow me into the business, as I had hoped he would. I even had a room ready for him, but I'm afraid he didn't take to the accountancy business."
"Imagine!" Cath said. "And did he do all right on his own?"
"Very well. This is his restaurant, as it happens."
"Well, you must be delighted with him," Cath said, her eyes far away.
"And your children?" Derek asked. "Did they go into your business with you?" Again he didn't know why he wanted to know. He was not one for the personal question.
"No, we went into it for them, really," Jimmy said.
There was a silence. Derek knew that he must smile and be charming. Tomorrow he could rail at Bob O'Neill for landing him in all this so very ill-prepared. Today, he had to get these people on his side.
"So? Your actual day-to-day work?" he said, his face nearly splitting with a smile.
"Takes up about sixteen or seventeen hours of the twenty-four," Cath said, in a matter-of-fact way.
"Starting at six in the morning and ending at ten or eleven with a pint before closing time," Jimmy explained.
"But surely you don't need to work that hard?" he said, appalled.
"Oh, we do," Cath said.
"But Bob O'Neill told me that you were very financially secure." Derek was bewildered. "Why do you work so hard?"
"To forget," Cath said simply. "To take our minds off the children."
"The children?" He looked from one to the other.
"Bob didn't tell you?" They couldn't believe it.
"No, he told me nothing." Derek was ashamed.
"We had three children who died in a fire ten years ago. We nearly went mad, but someone told us that if we worked and worked it would make it better."
Derek looked at them wordlessly.
"So we did just that," Jimmy said.
"Hour after hour, year after year," Cath said. It wasn't great, of course, but I think it would be worse if we hadn't. We've no way of knowing, but I think I would have been worse if there had been time to think."
I suppose it gave you a comfortable lifestyle, anyway," Derek said. He didn't know how to sympathise. Better to look on the bright side.
They looked at him, speechless.
"What do you actually do for a living?" Derek asked eventually.
"Fund-raise," Cath said. "Didn't you know? Doesn't Bob tell you anything at all?"
"I'm beginning to think he doesn't," Derek said. "He told me you were very wealthy people."
"Worth a dinner?" Jimmy said. " "Worth a dinner, yes." Derek felt ashamed.
"And you didn't even know that we're leaving your firm?" Cath asked.
"No, not until I met you. No. And of course nothing is definite yet . .."
"He's an odd kind of partner then, Derek," Cath said.
"I don't really know the whole story," Derek blustered a little.
"We went to your firm because you were respectable and well thought of. If we could put your name on the bottom of our notepaper it gave us a bit of standing. People couldn't think we were just two yobbos .. ."
"I'm sure they wouldn't have thought ..." Derek began to protest.
Jimmy interrupted him: "Of course that's what people would say. Two poor, mad yobbos who can't see straight because of their own tragedy. Why should anyone give us money and believe that we'd spend it right? That's why we needed people like you. Or thought we did."
"Oh, but you do ..." Derek began again.
"No, we don't. We realised this. You see, we said to Bob that we thought the fees were a bit steep . . ." Cath said.
"Not that we thought you should work for free or anything, just because our work is for charity .. ." Jimmy said.
"But it turned out that he didn't really care at all about what we were doing. He just looked at a file and said there seemed to be a very healthy profit balance and he didn't know what we were complaining about." Cath was indignant.
"He said there are sort of fixed rates an hour," Jimmy said.
"Which there are, of course," Derek said. "But I imagine we could discuss ..."
"No, that's not it. You see, he didn't even care that we are a charity," Cath said.
"Oh, come come come ... of course he does. Of course the firm realised you were a charitable .. . organisation, but.. ." Derek said with a little laugh.
"You didn't," she said simply.
It was unanswerable.
Brenda Brennan was at their table supervising the serving of a second starter. She also handed Cath an envelope.
"Mrs. Costello, everyone in the kitchen was so impressed when they heard you were both here, they made an immediate collection for your children's fund. Every single person contributed."
"How did they know we were here?" Jimmy wondered.
Tm afraid we recognised you from television. Believe me, Mr. Barry was very discreet about you. Gave us no information at all about you, concealed your identity even." Her eyes were hard and cold.
Derek remembered how he had described his guests. He flushed darkly to think about it.
Jimmy got out a postcard and wrote a thank you note to the people in the kitchen. Cathy took a receipt book out of her big, shabby handbag. They counted the money and sent a receipt to the kitchen staff as well.
Two honest people maddened with grief over lost children, people who had now been ignored and patronised by his own accountancy firm. He longed to reach out and touch them and hold their hands, beg them to tell him what had happened the night their children died. He wanted to take out his chequebook and give them a donation that would stun them. He could have told them that not everyone has it easy. Take Derek's own life, for example. His wife had left him for a few years. She came back remote and distant. His son lived abroad and kept in very little contact. He felt he could talk to these odd people about it, and he would see they got not only vastly reduced fees, but that they also got a sponsorship as well.
These thoughts welled up, but Derek was a man used to thinking long and carefully before he spoke, so he said nothing. And he missed the moment where Cath had seen some softness in his eyes, and where Jimmy had thought for a second or two that Derek might not be a bad old skin.
Instead of speaking with his heart, Derek spoke with his
accountant's mind. And, as the three of them left Quentins to go back to the firm where they would pick up their papers and he would face the wrath of Bob O'Neill, Derek saw people from other tables smile at them and even clasp their hands as the Costellos walked with him. Nobody greeted Derek Barry, partner in the accountancy firm and father of the proprietor of Quentins.
The world had changed, and not for the better.
Laura Lynch was forty when her husband left home. There had been no row. He just said it had been an empty, shallow, one-way relationship. She had not grown or developed within the marriage while he had and bettered himself.
Laura had been so dependent, so lacking in get-up-and-go, so he could no longer stay in something that was making neither of them happy. And he left with a much younger colleague, who had no problem at all in getting up and going. He had been coldly and clinically fair in the division of property, and even given her some unasked for advice.