Quentins (7 page)

“I don't know. What
is
going on?” she said.

“You tell me, I've been straight up all the way. You're the one playing games.” He looked very angry.

They were still on the doorstep.

“You have
not
been straight. You didn't tell me you were taking your wife to Spain.” Ella let the words tumble out.

“I took ‘my wife,' as you call her, nowhere!” he shouted.

“Your wife is what she is,” Ella cried.

“I don't care. I will go the distance here on the doorstep, but on mature reflection, as they say, you may prefer to do it indoors,” he said.

Wearily she opened the door.

He marched into her sitting room as if he owned it and sat down. “Okay, Ella, tell me,” he began.

“No, you tell me, you said you were going to Spain on business and then I hear that you took your wife.”

“And how do you hear this, Ella?”

“It's not important, you did take her.”

“I did not
take
her, she decided to come at the same time, she owns half the house.”

“But you didn't tell me that she was going.”

“I didn't bloody know until she said she was going, and anyway, it's not important. I don't have to tell you, you agreed to accept that we lived separate lives. You told me you agreed, that you believed that.” He looked bewildered and upset.

“Huh,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“I don't know,” Ella said truthfully.

“You said it, so you must know. What do you mean? What are you asking me?”

There was a silence.

“What do you want to know?” he asked again.

Another silence and then she spoke. “Did you sleep with her? Do you still have sex with her?” Ella's voice was low.

Don Richardson stood up. His face was working, she had never seen him so upset. “I'm sorry, Ella, I'm really sorry. I thought I had made it all clear, I really thought I had come and told you the whole situation outside your school that day.”

“Yes, but . . .” she began.

“And I thought you said that you understood.”

“I thought I did but . . .”

“But you don't understand at all, you actually think that I could love you and have sex with Margery, you really do think that, don't you?”

“I think it's possible, yes.”

“Then you and I, we haven't much more to talk about, Ella, my angel, have we?” he said sadly.

“Do you?” she asked.

“Do I what?”

“Do you have sex with her?”

“Good-bye, Ella,” he said, moving toward the door.

“So it's yes,” she said in a heavy tone.

“It's no actually, but it doesn't matter. I won't stay
where there's such suspicion. Someone must have hurt you very badly somewhere along the line to make you feel hurt and anxious like this.”

“Bullshit, Don Richardson, nobody hurt me before, nobody touched me before, I never loved anyone before. There's no mythical villain. You tell me it's a business trip and then I hear your wife is with you, what's so abnormal about being upset? Don't make me into some kind of freak.”

“And how exactly did you hear, might I ask?” His voice was ice cold.

It was the end. Ella knew it. “Not that it matters, but I called your house, and I was told that the lady of the manor was in Spain.” Another silence.

“Thanks, Ella, thanks for everything, thanks for coming to spy at the fund-raiser, thanks for calling to check on my family's movements, thanks for jumping to conclusions and most of all thanks for not believing me when I say I love you. I'm sorry—but then, what exactly am I sorry for?”

She looked at him in horror as he stood there, saying good-bye.

“
Why
should I apologize for being utterly honest from the start, telling you the score, telling you the truth, coming to meet your parents, calling them to say I was worried that you didn't answer your phone. Are these the actions of some kind of shit? No, I think they're what a man who loves you might do.

“But you know better. You have some different standard. I truly hope you find what you're looking for. You
are
a lovely girl, Ella. An angel, in fact, and I'll always wish you well.”

He was nearly at the gate when she caught him, held his arm and pleaded with him to come back. People walking their dogs on the leafy road saw the blond girl in floods of tears pleading with the tall, handsome man.

“I'm sorry. Forgive me. I want just one more chance. I'm such a fool, Don, it's only because I love you so desperately. I'm just afraid to believe you love me. Come back, please, please.”

And if anyone had continued looking they would have seen the man leading her back into the lighted hall with his arm around her.

“Does all this mean he'll be moving into your place now?” Deirdre asked some days later.

“
Of course not
, don't be silly,” Ella said.

“Why is it so silly? It would save the rent on the place in the financial services area.”

“But he has to say he's somewhere. He can't say he's here,” Ella said as if it were totally obvious.

“No, of course not,” Deirdre said, confused.

“Why can't he say he's shacked up with Ella if it's a dead marriage?” Deirdre asked Nick.

“Don't ask,” Nick said. “I've found it much easier not to bring up cosmic questions like that.”

T
he pattern of their life began then, at least three and sometimes five nights a week together. Ella saw no other friends in the evening because she was never sure whether Don might suddenly be free.

There were lunches, of course. Deirdre would voice the questions that Ella never spoke aloud. “Is he going to leave her for you? He's practically
living
with you, for God's sake.”

“He can't leave because of his father-in-law. I
told
you that.”

“Ricky Rice lives in the modern world. He's heard of divorce, he knows Don isn't in the family nest every night.”

“Why rock the boat? We're fine as we are.”

“And your parents, what do they think?”

“They're fine with it.” Ella shrugged.

“No, Ella, they are not. Nobody's fine with their little girl being the plaything of a tycoon.”

Ella pealed with laughter. “I don't know why I have you as a friend. You try to unsettle me and you use ludicrous phrases. ‘Plaything.' ‘Tycoon.' For heaven's sake. You're so old-fashioned, so utterly disapproving.”

Deirdre took a sip of wine and spoke in a rare serious moment. “Actually, no, I'm not. I'm envious, if you must
know. I'd really love to be as absorbed and obsessed as you are.”

Ella said nothing for a moment. It wasn't like Deirdre to be so utterly honest. It demanded a similar honesty in response. “Well, okay, if you must know, it's not at all fine with my parents.”

“How could it be?” Deirdre was sympathetic.

“Well, it
could
be if they allowed themselves to move into this century. Dee, if they just looked at the calendar and checked that it's not nineteen twenty-something.”

“They're no worse than anyone else of their generation.”

“Oh, but they are, even at school they don't go on that way.”

“Well, you hardly tell the nuns you have a lover that lives in half the week.”

“There are hardly any nuns left, only a few old ones doing the accounts or the garden or something.”

“But isn't it called a convent?” Deirdre protested.

“Oh, they're all called convents, but that's not the point. Some of the staff are ancient, but they don't go round frowning and fretting.”

“Do they know, though?” Deirdre persisted.

“They don't
not
know. They don't ask, they don't mutter and have suspicions.”

“Well, they aren't your parents.”

“But they're in this century. It's all changed. You know when we were at school they used to say ‘Ask your mummy and daddy this' or ‘Tell your mothers and fathers that.' We don't say that anymore. It's just not relevant. You can't assume that everyone has one daddy and one mummy at home.”

“So what
do
you say?” Deirdre was interested.

“We say: ‘Ask them at home.' Can they have a dictionary, an atlas, sheets of graph paper. Whatever. Even the geriatric teachers accept that it's not magic happy families for everyone these days.”

“Still, you can't blame people for wanting the best for a daughter,” Deirdre said. She was worried about her friend.

“If I had a daughter, I'd want her to be happy, not respectable. That's the best anyone can have, to be happy, isn't it?”

When there was no reply, Ella spoke again. “Deirdre! It's what you just said a minute ago! You said you envied me because I was so happy.”

“I said obsessed,” Deirdre said.

“Same thing,” said Ella.

Don brought some clothes and arranged them neatly in Ella's closet. He used Ella's washing machine and ironed his own shirts. Sometimes he ironed her things for her too. Ella's father wouldn't have done that in a million years. “Why not. I'm at the ironing board anyway,” he would say with a grin that melted her heart.

Every two weeks or so she invited her parents for a meal in her flat, always on a night when she knew he would be busy elsewhere. She didn't even have to ask him to move his clothes from her closet and his electric razor from her bathroom shelf. He just put everything into a suitcase and covered it neatly with a rug. It was never mentioned, even when he was unpacking the case, when he would return late that night after her parents had left.

He always sounded interested in them and what Ella had to report. He remembered everything she told him. Even small, unimportant details. That her father liked seedless grapes because he was afraid of appendicitis. Don would buy some when her parents were expected. He remembered that her mother liked a particular perfume and he bought it in the airport in time for her mother's birthday.

“I'd like to meet them socially, you know,” he had said more than once.

“I know, Don, and they'd love you, but it's easier this way,” she would say.

“Is it all easy and happy for you, Angel?” he asked.

It was happy, yes, but easy, no. They asked too many questions.

“Ella, your father and I wouldn't dream of interfering in your personal life.”

“I know you wouldn't, either of you. What about more Greek salad?”

“But we do wonder: Do you have enough friends and go out? I mean, if you are going to live in this kind of monastic seclusion here in this flat . . . then why don't you live at home and save the rent?”

“What your mother is saying, Ella, is that we'd love you to have a home of your own.”

“And I
do
, Dad, and we're in it, having supper,” she said, eyes too bright.

“Your father and I were just hoping . . .”

“Oh, we all live in great hope. Look, I'll clear this away. I have a lovely cheese and grapes. No seeds, Dad. No pips.”

It was getting harder and harder. She wished they
could
just meet Don. Socially. Without any statement being made.

It happened on a Sunday not long after that. Don had gone out to Killiney for the day. Margery's father had taken his grandsons out shooting. They had some pheasant and they were going to cook them.

“Savage kind of thing to do, going out killing small birds for fun,” Ella had commented.

“I agree with you. I never go shooting, as you may have noticed.” He held his hands up in surrender.

“You haven't time,” she laughed at him.

“Even if I had. Anyway, they say they're shooting them for food, and they
are
eating them,” he said as an excuse.

“Okay, peace, peace. I don't suppose that the chicken that ends up in the coq au vin for Sunday lunch enjoyed it all that much either. Will you be late? I ask only because I was going to take my parents for an Irish coffee in that new hotel downtown, in case you think I'd abandoned you.”

“Great idea. They'd like that,” he said. “No, I won't be late, as it happens, and I'm too arrogant to think you'd abandon me,” he said.

In the new hotel she was pointing out some of the features to her parents, the paintings of politicians on the walls, the very expensive carpeted area that had been closed off from the public by a silk rope, when she saw Don. He had come in by himself. He was looking for her, he was going to engineer a social meeting with her parents. She sat back and let it happen.

“We
did
meet in Holly's, didn't we? How are you both?” He looked from one to the other with pleasure. “And, Ella, great to see
you
again.”

She smiled and let him carry the conversation. Had they ordered? No? Good, then let him get them something. What about an Irish coffee?

Her parents looked at each other in amazement. That's exactly what they were going to have. How had he guessed?

Ella wondered what would happen if she said he had guessed because she had told him about it in bed that very morning. Nothing good would happen, so she didn't. She watched him move the conversation from himself to getting her parents to talk. He was alert and attentive to everything they said.

Ella watched him objectively. She let her mind wander. It was
not
an act, he did like these people just as he had liked the people at the fund-raising dinner, just as he liked the people in Holly's hotel, at Quentins and presumably everywhere. It was a wonderful gift and he used it well.

She tuned in again as he was talking to her father.

“I agree with you entirely. You can't ask people to buy stock that you would not buy yourself. That way you lose your integrity.”

“But, Mr. Richardson, you wouldn't believe how greedy and impatient young people are these days. The old, safe options aren't good enough . . . they want something fast, something
now
, and I have a terrible time urging a bit of caution.” His face looked sad and complaining, as it often did of late.

Ella heard Don speak in a slightly lowered voice. “It's the same for
all
of us, Mr. Brady. They all want the new car, the boat, the second home . . .”

“Ah, but it's different for you over there in Rice and Richardson. You have high fliers going in to you, people who already
have
money.”

“Not so. We get all sorts of people who hear that we're good. It's a lot of pressure to be good every week. You're talking to someone who knows about it.”

Don Richardson was making himself the equal of her timid father.

“I think that every Monday morning,” Ella's father said sadly.

“Well, speaking about tomorrow, let me share something with you that I'm going to do myself first thing in the office . . .”

The voices were really low now. Ella heard mention of a building firm that just
might
be going to get a huge contract. It would be the nearest thing to a safe bet that they could offer to their demanding high flier.
“If it's only a might . . . ?” Ella heard her father say fearfully.

“I wouldn't steer you wrong.” His warm voice was so strong and reassuring. Don wouldn't steer anyone wrong or lie to them. It wasn't in his nature. Please, may Dad be strong enough to take his advice. If Don said these builders were going to get the contract, then he knew they were. Don knew everything.

Naturally, the builders got the contract. And amazingly, her father had actually passed on the tip and he was much more highly regarded in his company than before. Her father told her happily that it had been a real act of kindness of that man to give him the word. And Ella forced herself not to sound too pleased.

Her mother said that the partners in the law firm where she worked couldn't believe that Rice and Richardson had recommended them to do some work. Nothing complicated, just run-of-the-mill testamentary and probate work. It had done her no end of good. People used to think that it was almost time for her to retire, but not anymore. Ella said it was only her mother's due.

Nick told Ella that Don Richardson must have a filing system in his head. At least twice a week they got a call from someone saying that Don had given them the name of Firefly Films. It was like a seal of approval.

And finally, the last citadel fell, and Deirdre said she liked him. “You don't have to tell me this, Dee. I'll survive even if you don't,” Ella said with a laugh.

But no, Deirdre wanted to make her position clear. She had been in a trendy nightclub and Don had come up to her. “Very far from all your domestic fronts tonight,” Dee had said to him.

“I know you disapprove of me, Deirdre, and in many ways I respect you for looking out for a friend. All I can
say is that I love her, but I wouldn't be helping anyone or anything by leaving Margery and the boys now. Ella knows everything there is to be known.”

Deirdre looked almost embarrassed. “I believed him, Ella. I bloody believed him. I even believed him when he told me he was entertaining people from Spain and they had insisted on coming to the nightclub. He does love you. You
do
have everything.”

“Not everything, Dee. Not the home and the babies,” Ella said.

“Don't worry about it. Women can have babies at sixty these days,” Deirdre had said cheerfully. “You have over thirty years before you need to start getting broody.”

As the months went by, Ella felt she had known no other life. Soon those boys would grow up and Don and Ella could think again seriously. But now? It was all fine, so why upset what was working well?

Don's part of the study was as tidy as he was. He used a cell phone and got in the habit of moving out into the hall when he answered a call. The reception was better and he didn't interrupt the television or the music that they listened to. He had a few books on the wall shelves, and business magazines in the rack, but everything else was in a small laptop.

“Suppose you lost it?” she teased him once. “Suppose we had burglars, or it was snatched from you in the street?”

“Backup,” he said simply. “House rule: we copy every single thing from that day's transaction onto a disc every evening.”