The Restaurant Page 20

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear it,’ he says. ‘You might call it good news, but we certainly don’t see it like that. We’re worried for you, Emily, both of us.’

  ‘There’s no need to worry, honestly.’

  But he will, and so will her mother, and so will everyone who recalls what happened, and there is nothing she can do about that.

  ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘I’m making bread.’

  And tomorrow is Saturday, and she’ll see him again – and now that everyone knows, they can meet wherever they want. No more secrecy, no more avoiding people who remember what happened. It’ll take a while, there will be awkward encounters, but in time people will forgive him, like she’s forgiven him.

  She kneads dough, and counts the hours till three o’clock tomorrow.

  Bill

  ‘BILL, THERE YOU ARE,’ MRS PHELAN SAYS, materialising as he’s taking off his jacket, before he’s had time to pull on his overalls. ‘We’ve had an offer of paint from that new place on the Dublin road – I sent them a letter last week.’

  He’ll bet she did. She’s coaxed free stuff from the most reluctant businesses in the town – and newcomers, eager to create a good first impression among the community, are particularly susceptible to her brand of pleading. ‘That’s good news. How much are they letting us have?’

  ‘Enough to give the outside a facelift. I told them you’ll be around this morning to pick it up.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘And I thought you might as well make a start on it today, as long as the weather’s staying fine. I’ve got a young lad to help you, a neighbour of mine. He’ll be here in an hour or so, after his paper round.’

  ‘Right.’

  He wonders how helpful a young lad who might never have lifted a paintbrush in his life will be, but he keeps quiet. Don’t condemn till you try – a great phrase of his mother’s, and often employed at the dinner table when Bill, a picky eater in his youth, was exhibiting a reluctance to sample an unfamiliar vegetable.

  It’s a good day for outdoor work, dry and calm. No sun, but no sign of rain clouds either. His kind of weather, always has been. He never was a fan of jetting off to places where the sun was waiting to scald you, never saw the attraction in laying yourself out on a beach like a joint of beef waiting to be roasted.

  He drives the minibus to the paint shop and meets the manager, who shows him the large tubs he’s set aside for the nursing home. ‘Cream,’ he said. ‘That’s what she asked for.’

  Same as before, Mrs Phelan playing safe. Bill would go for a new look if it was up to him – a sky blue, or maybe a bright yellow. Probably just as well it’s not his decision. He loads up and sets off again, choosing streets that will avoid the roadworks that held him up on the way. The new route takes him past the cemetery, and he thinks back to his encounter with Emily, and her question to him, and his response.

  And now, stupidly, he finds himself unable to return to The Food of Love. Stupid, because what does it matter if she’s with someone else, given that she was never going to be his? But it seems it does matter, this knowledge, this certainty, that there’s another man.

  Feels like months since he was at the restaurant, rather than just a couple of weeks. He misses her all the time, she’s caused a constant ache to lodge underneath his breastbone, but still he can’t bring himself to walk into the place again.

  He misses the others too, the friends he’s made there. He misses Heather’s confidence and quick wit, and Astrid with her quiet wisdom and her positivity. But maybe after all he was never really the right fit for the place. No matter how many times he went there it never became altogether easy for him, walking in alone. He always had to battle against that edge of anxiety, the self-consciousness that urged him to turn and bolt – and when no familiar faces were to be seen, and he found himself among strangers, there was the added challenge of keeping back what he couldn’t admit to, and making the rest sound interesting. If it wasn’t for Emily and the other two, he’d probably have stopped going there long ago.

  His mind turns to his other pressing concern, and again he gives himself a mental kick for ever having sent Christine to Astrid. What a monumental blunder that was. How mortifying that she had shown up unannounced at Astrid’s, and then failed to return as agreed. How could she have done that, knowing Astrid to be his friend? How could she have so little regard for him?

  She hasn’t been home since but she will, as long as her father is fool enough to go on letting her in, as long as he keeps enabling her. He won’t mention Astrid the next time she appears, and of course she won’t either. They’ll go on as they have done, as they’ll keep doing till he ends his days, or she does.

  But one thing will change. From now on he’s vowed to stop asking her to let him find help for her. She’ll never agree, he knows that now. The people who told him otherwise are wrong. This is her life and it won’t change, and the sooner he acknowledges that, the better. He’ll accept their occasional interactions, pitiful episodes as they are, and he won’t look for more.

  ‘This is Eoin,’ Mrs Phelan says when he gets back to the home. The boy is lanky, with longish hair the colour of a conker, and a face dotted with freckles. Mid-teens, by the look of him. ‘Just finished Transition Year,’ he says, in reply to Bill’s question.

  Bill hands him a pair of overalls. ‘Any idea what you want to do when you leave school?’

  ‘Doctor,’ he says, the word accompanied by a bashful grin as he peels off his leather jacket and climbs into the overalls. ‘If I’m smart enough,’ he adds, buttoning up. ‘Something in healthcare anyway.’

  Ambitious – and must have brains if he’s considering a career in medicine. ‘You ever painted before?’ Bill enquires.

  ‘Yeah. I helped my father do our house a few months ago – and I’ve painted my room a couple of times.’

  Good, not a complete novice then. They start on the prep work, taking wire brushes to the old flaking paint, Eoin staying on the ground and Bill up the ladder. No great loss to anyone if Bill takes a tumble, but a future doctor needs to be kept safe.

  The morning passes while the sun slides in and out of clouds, and the rain holds off. They chat, when they’re in earshot of one another.

  ‘Where’s your paper round?’ Bill asks, and Eoin names a few streets, and one is familiar.

  ‘Do you deliver to a woman called Astrid? I’m pretty sure she lives on Cedar something.’

  ‘I don’t know first names, only last.’

  What’s her last name? Bill can’t recall it. ‘She’s over ninety, a little frail but mentally very sound. She’s Austrian, although she’s lived here for years.’

  ‘That sounds like Mrs Carmody in number twelve. She’s nice. She always gives me biscuits or stuff when she’s paying me.’

  Carmody. It rings a bell. He wonders how she is, and if she’s found someone to do what Christine couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

  ‘You got kids?’ Eoin asks later.

  ‘Daughter. She’s a gardener.’ How quickly the lie comes, how easily it slips out. ‘She’s moved out of home, but she comes back every now and again for dinner.’ The almost-lie, the nearly truth. He wonders suddenly if this boy, who seems pretty level-headed, has ever been offered drugs. Maybe it’s a rite of passage for kids now; maybe they all get a chance to take the wrong path. Equal opportunities.

  He wonders if there would have been a different outcome if he and Betty had had a son instead of a daughter. Would a son have coped better when his mother died? Would he have said no if someone, some scumbag, offered him something at the back of the bicycle shed, or wherever she’d taken the first step on the road to hell?

  Enough, enough. He prises the lid from a tub of paint as Eoin sweeps up the flakes. ‘You got brothers and sisters?’

  ‘I have a little brother, and one sister. She works in the cinema. She lets me in free when her boss isn’t around.’

  ‘Handy.’

  He and Betty used to go every Fri
day or Saturday night without fail. James Bond they liked, and Woody Allen. Bill loved the old black-and-whites, Laurel and Hardy, anything with Bette Davis or Victor Mature, all the early Hitchcocks. Betty was mad for a musical. Bill didn’t share her enthusiasm: he thought it took the good out of a story when someone suddenly burst into song. Still, they went along to whatever was on offer until Christine arrived. They resumed when she was six months old, and they finally felt able to trust a babysitter to keep her alive till they got home.

  At twelve, the lunchtime bell rings. ‘Grub’s up,’ Bill says, and they down tools and head to the dining room, where they’re served the roast chicken and carrots that’s being dished out to the residents. It’s not so bad, Bill has found. He’s getting used to it. The meatloaf on Wednesdays is a bit bland, but salt helps – and why not take it when it’s free, and he’s entitled to it?

  Glad you finally decided to join us, Mrs Phelan said when he first put his head around the dining-room door. She sat him at the staff table with Julie and Jean who clean the rooms, Maurice the secretary, Cathy the treasurer, Olivia the receptionist, and Maurice’s nephew Andy, who comes on Mondays and Thursdays to pare corns and cut toenails, and generally attend to the ailments of ageing, tired feet.

  Anytime you need a pedicure, he said to Bill, don’t be shy, that’s what I’m here for – and Bill, who’d never had a pedicure in his life, and who could never envisage a situation where he might feel the need of one, thanked him and said he was grand for the moment.

  ‘Are you eating that?’ Eoin enquires, and Bill surrenders his untouched bowl of stewed prunes and custard, thinking of Emily’s warm chocolate tart with its crushed nut base and drizzle of berry sauce, or the glory of her gooseberry and pear cinnamon crumble.

  It’s approaching five o’clock when they finish the first coat. ‘You did well,’ Bill says, as they shake out dust sheets and peel off overalls. ‘You coming back tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll be here after my paper round again. Una said two or three days.’

  A teenage boy calls her Una. Bill needs to get over himself. As he ties the laces on his shoes, a car horn sounds outside.

  ‘That might be my dad,’ Eoin says. ‘He was bringing some people to the airport. He said he’d pick me up on the way back.’

  ‘You head off so. See you in the morning.’

  After rinsing the brushes and roller heads, Bill goes to the day room for the piano session. By now Gloria is well enough to be wheeled in for the proceedings, where she makes a valiant attempt to accompany Bill like before. Her voice has sadly diminished – even when Bill plays as quietly as he can she’s barely audible – but her face is alight, and everyone chimes in heartily when the choruses come along. Buoying her up, it sounds like. Willing her to keep going.

  It’s gone six by the time he turns in at his gate. Nobody waits for him by the front door: he feels the usual mix of relief and disappointment. A shower, he thinks, to rinse away the grubbiness left behind after a day of painting. A bite to eat, and a quick trot around the block with Sherlock after that, followed by a read of the paper he picked up as usual on his way to work and brought home unopened, his flick through it after lunch missed today because of Eoin being around.

  He steps into the hall, giving his customary whistle. Nothing happens. No eager tapping of claws across the kitchen floor, no scratching on the door.

  He hangs his jacket on the banister. ‘Sherlock?’ he calls. Nothing.

  He enters the kitchen and sees no dog. Fearful now, he steps into the utility room – and there is Sherlock, lying in his bed, giving a small whine at the sight of Bill, but making no effort to rise.

  Bill crouches. ‘What is it, boy? What’s wrong?’ He lifts paws and runs his hands along the animal’s flank, searching for signs of injury that he doesn’t find. He feels the scalp-prickle of anxiety.

  Sherlock is ten, or thereabouts. Not a thoroughbred, far from it: he came to them as a rescue dog, when Betty got her diagnosis. Sherlock was her idea. I think we should get a dog, she said. I think it would be good for me – and Bill, wanting to do everything for her, ready to put himself in her place if he could, drove the three of them to the animal-welfare place, and there they picked out the scrawny little pup that had been found, trembling and terrified, on the side of a busy road.

  It was only after Betty’s death, when the anger and grief took up what felt like permanent residence inside him, when he and Christine started to draw further apart instead of closer, that he understood who the dog had really been for.

  ‘OK,’ he says, pulling a bath towel from the laundry basket. He bundles Sherlock into it and lifts the whining animal as gently as he can into his arms. The vet is open from six till eight on weekday evenings. May as well just go, instead of trying to describe symptoms over the phone. Hopefully it won’t be too busy.

  It’s busy enough. A resigned-looking Alsatian sits silently by its owner’s chair; a yapping terrier strains on its leash towards a cat that regards it disdainfully from the safety of its carrier. A pair of black-and-white pups huddle together in another carrier: hard to see where one ends and the other begins.

  Bill checks in at the reception desk and takes a chair next to a small girl. Sherlock slumps on his lap, letting out an occasional whine. He’d outgrown his carrier within a year, and there never seemed a need to get another. Up to this, he was well enough to walk on the lead to the vet’s for his shots. Up to this, he was never sick.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Bill murmurs, stroking the dog’s ears. ‘You’ll be OK, fellow.’ You’d better be OK.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  He glances up. The child, no more than four or five, is regarding Sherlock dispassionately. The woman accompanying her, presumably the mother, is distracted by her attempts to control the yapping terrier.

  ‘Sherlock,’ Bill says.

  ‘Is he sick?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Is he going to die?’

  ‘Well, I hope not.’

  One of the surgery doors opens. A woman appears with a poodle sporting a bandaged foreleg, and a cone around his neck. The Alsatian is summoned in.

  ‘Our dog ate my dad’s medicine,’ the child pronounces, again exhibiting no evidence of concern.

  ‘Did he?’ Medicine. Could mean anything.

  ‘Mum is afraid he’ll die.’

  ‘Who – your dad?’

  ‘No, the dog. His name is Ollie.’

  ‘Oh.’ He regards the madly yapping Ollie. ‘He seems OK to me.’

  ‘But he still could die cos of the medicine. Dogs aren’t supposed to eat people’s medicine.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  The main door opens. Bill turns instinctively – and in she walks, the sight of her, so unexpected, causing somersaults within him. Pale blue coat, jeans, blue shoes, hair loose and tumbling. Holding the handle of a carrier in which a plump grey cat crouches. Of all the vets in all the world.

  She spots him on her way to the desk. He doesn’t miss the beat that passes before she offers him a tentative smile. ‘Hi Bill,’ she says. She never hesitated before: her wide, happy smile came readily and easily, every time he walked through the restaurant door. He lived for that smile, and now it’s diluted, and wary, and he only has himself to blame. She’ll be wondering why he’s stopped coming to eat in the restaurant. She’ll be uncertain of his reaction now.

  ‘Long time no see,’ she says.

  He must make some response. The best he can manage is a blurted, ‘I’ve been busy.’

  The smile, the half-smile, stays in place. ‘Let me check in,’ she says. He follows her to the desk with his eyes. I’ve been busy. Sweet Jesus.

  ‘Your face looks funny,’ the child announces loudly. Heads swivel to check out his funny face. He feigns deafness and turns his attention to Sherlock, who gives a feeble lick to his hand. ‘Good boy,’ he murmurs, willing the girl to direct her attention elsewhere.

  Emily returns and takes the vacant seat next
to him. ‘It’s good to see you, Bill.’

  He gets a whiff of the scent he remembers. ‘You too.’ He wonders how she can be here at this hour – and then he remembers it’s Tuesday, and the restaurant is closed. Her right hand rests on the carrier: she wears a silver ring he hasn’t seen before, a small pale blue stone set into the band. From behind the second surgery door comes a sudden yowl, and the sound of something steel clattering to the floor.

  The blasted child is still hovering, crouching to peer into Emily’s carrier. ‘Is your cat sick?’

  Emily shakes her head. ‘No, he’s just here for his shots.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Something to stop him getting sick.’

  Short silence.

  ‘Our dog ate my dad’s medicine.’

  ‘Oh dear. I hope he’ll be OK.’

  ‘His name is Ollie.’

  ‘That’s a good name for a dog.’

  ‘What’s your cat’s name?’

  ‘Barney.’

  ‘My friend is Barney. He’s a boy, not a cat. A crayon got stuck up his nose, and Mrs Furlong had to pull it out. Her face got all red.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  Bill listens to the exchange, stroking Sherlock’s ear. From the corner of his eye he can see Emily as she leans slightly towards the child, pushing curls behind a shoulder. Her hip is inches from Bill’s.

  He loves her. That hasn’t changed. That remains a fixed and immovable state of affairs. He’s a fool for love.

  The first surgery door reopens. The Alsatian looks no less resigned. The noisy terrier is summoned in, along with mother and child. Almost immediately, the second surgery door opens to let out a man with a ginger cat in a carrier, and the entwined pups are brought in. Bill is next in the queue. He and Emily are left alone in the waiting room, apart from the receptionist who’s tapping at her phone and taking no notice at all of them.

  ‘What’s wrong with your dog?’ Emily asks.

  ‘I don’t know. He was out of sorts when I got home from work.’

  ‘Poor thing.’ She reaches across to lay a hand lightly on one of Sherlock’s forelegs. ‘Is he old?’