The Restaurant Read online

  That was six and a half years ago. She dropped out of school, so she didn’t do her Leaving Cert. She’s twenty-four now and still living on the streets. I’ve seen her begging. It is not a sight any parent should see. The first time I saw her I approached her, but she left without giving me a chance to speak, so now if I come across her I walk on by. I have no idea what else she does to make money, and it’s probably best that I don’t. She turns up at the house every so often, and I feed her and wash her clothes and let her have a shower.

  Day and night I feel haunted and guilty. I am broken-hearted that her life has become so hard. I’ve failed her as a father, and I’ve failed her mother too. Is there any advice at all you can offer me, any wisdom you can share that might help us out of this purgatory?

  Regards,

  John

  Emily

  WHEN EMILY FEENEY WAS TWENTY-FIVE SHE TOOK from their packaging two white nylon stockings that had cost a scandalous twenty-seven euro. She lifted the first and shook it out, and unrolled it slowly and carefully up her leg. She did the same with the second, wondering how long it would take for their elasticated tops to become an irritation.

  She fastened around her wrist the silver charm bracelet she’d owned since her twelfth birthday (something old) and put on a sleeveless ivory dress made of silk (something new) that fell like liquid to her ankles. She attached her grandmother’s drop earrings (something borrowed) to the lobes of her ears. She pulled taut a garter bought for her by her bridesmaid (something blue) to bring it slowly up her leg without once making contact with the stocking. She stepped into shoes whose thin satin straps fastened with mother-of-pearl buttons, her insides all the time fluttering as wildly as bunting on a gusty day. It’s here. It’s come. This is it.

  She touched hair that had been gathered up and pinned into place earlier that morning by a stylist from the salon where Emily worked as a receptionist. The stylist had sprayed it to keep it from wandering: it felt stiff and unfamiliar now to Emily. She dotted on perfume and touched up her lip colour for the umpteenth time. When all her preparations were complete her father Patrick, home with her mother Dol from Portugal for the occasion, drove Emily and her bridesmaid to the church in a rental car.

  Her mother, slim and tanned, stood waiting at the church gate in her lavender dress with its matching coat. She approached the car as it pulled up. ‘Drive around,’ she told Emily’s father. ‘Don’t come back till I call you.’

  ‘Isn’t he here yet?’ Emily asked, but her mother stepped back as she waved them away with her silver clutch bag, and didn’t answer. It was half an hour after the ceremony should have begun, which was when Emily had been advised by her married friends to arrive. You need to be fashionably late, they’d said, but he’ll be nervous, so don’t leave him waiting too long.

  Her father skirted the perimeters of the town for twenty minutes as Emily’s bridesmaid talked about hangovers and punctures and traffic jams, and Emily looked through the car window at houses and hedges and playing fields, and told herself that nothing at all was wrong. It was a blip, no more. They’d laugh about it this evening, when they were husband and wife. She’d say she’d been fit to kill him for nearly giving her a heart attack; he’d sweep her up and twirl her around and tell her for the thousandth time how sorry he was, and he’d swear never to keep her waiting again as long as he lived.

  Any minute now her father’s phone would ring, and it would be her mother summoning them back to the church. This time tomorrow Emily would be on the plane to France, sipping Prosecco because Champagne gave her heartburn. She’d let it slip to the friendliest member of the cabin crew that they were on honeymoon. It might be announced over the intercom; they might get a round of applause from the other passengers.

  And all the time she was thinking this, all the time she was forbidding her mind to go elsewhere, something cold and hard was lodged behind her throat, butting up against every breath she took, and her bridesmaid held her hand so tightly that her engagement ring pressed painfully against its neighbouring fingers.

  Eventually her father pulled in to the side of the road and phoned her mother. Well, he said, and there was a long pause while he listened, and, Right, he said then, and it was clear by the careful way he said it that Fergal hadn’t shown up. He ended the call and started the car without looking at Emily. We’ll go home, he said, and wait there, and she knew she wasn’t getting married that day.

  He’d been in an accident. Not a serious one, nothing that threatened his life, just bad enough that he couldn’t contact her. She’d get a call later on from one of the hospitals. He wanted you to know, they’d say. He’s fine, he’ll be absolutely fine, but he can’t talk right now. She felt another stab of pain from her squeezed ring: she eased her hand from her bridesmaid’s and regarded the small perfect diamond he’d bought for her.

  I’m sure there’s an explanation, her bridesmaid said. I’m certain, Em.

  Shh, Emily replied, and Gran’s earring was cold against her neck as she turned to look up at the pale grey sky, and she wished she could disappear.

  When they got back to the house there was a white envelope on the hall floor, with her name and no stamp on it.

  Emmy

  I’m so sorry. I can’t do this. I’ll regret hurting you all my life. I won’t ask for forgiveness as I don’t deserve it, but please try to forget me.

  F xx

  He must have been waiting somewhere until the coast was clear. He must have watched her drive away to her wedding with her father and her bridesmaid. She imagined him walking up the path, slipping the envelope through her letterbox while she joked with her bridesmaid about pairing her up with the best man, in blissful ignorance of the calamity that was about to unfold.

  She read and reread the letter that told her nothing, that explained nothing. I can’t do this? Why not? Why couldn’t he? She sat through the storm that followed, as first her father and then her brother promised to hunt Fergal down and kill him. She listened on the phone later that evening to his mother’s tearful assurances that he’d said nothing to her, that she’d been as much in the dark as Emily.

  He left for the church before me, she wept. You must believe me, Emily. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t there when I arrived, I was sick waiting for him to show up. I came home to a letter, just like you. He’s gone away, he’s gone to Canada. He’s left the two of us, Emily.

  If he was already gone to Canada this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, a last-minute-nerves kind of thing. This had taken planning. He had to have bought an air ticket, had to have packed his passport and his belongings. She pictured him sneaking from the house the previous night with his suitcase, slipping it into the boot of his car after his mother had gone to bed. While Emily was thinking about the seating plan and the photographs, he was calculating what time he’d need to be at the airport.

  She endured the rumour that spread through the town not long afterwards, and that her bridesmaid eventually shared with her: that he’d gone to Canada to be with Therese Ruane. Therese who’d been his girlfriend before Emily, Therese who’d finished with him and emigrated to Canada a month before he’d walked into the salon where Emily worked, and asked to make an appointment for a cut. Therese who’d returned to spend last Christmas with her parents, who’d bumped into him and Emily one evening. I hear you’re getting married, she’d said, looking at him instead of at Emily. Congratulations.

  Rise above it, Gran said, when Emily’s parents had returned to Portugal, and Daniel had forgotten about his promise to kill Fergal, and her friends had got tired of asking her to come out to the pub with them, and Emily finally felt safe enough to let out the tears. Rise above it, my darling. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t allow him to make you bitter. And don’t judge all men by him: you were just unlucky this time. The next will be better, wait and see.

  But Emily had already decided that there would be no next. She’d learnt her lesson: hearts were better off kept in their owners’ possession
and surrendered to nobody. She’d stay single, and eventually she’d sleep through the night like she used to, and one day she might even experience happiness again, or something approximating happiness. She would mend her heart as best she could, and keep it safe.

  She said nothing of this to her grandmother, who’d been complaining of backache, and who had taken to staying in bed till noon, and who still looked worn out at the end of a day. Gran would only argue, she’d try to dissuade Emily, and Emily’s mind was made up.

  The backache turned out to be cancer of the spine, which had been quietly spreading its shoots to other parts of Gran’s body. By the time it was discovered, three months after Emily’s aborted wedding day, it was too late for anything but morphine – and just weeks later, Gran floated away without a fuss.

  And as she had promised, she left the hat shop and the apartment above it to Emily.

  The premises had been unoccupied since Gran’s return to her marital home three years earlier. I should let it, she’d say every so often, it’s a shame to have it lying idle like that – but it had never happened, tenants had never been sought for it. It took Emily almost a year after Gran’s death to return to it, to turn the key in the back door lock and walk through the dark, dusty rooms with their boarded-up windows, and wonder what came next.

  She wasn’t looking for her own place: she was perfectly content living with Daniel. She could do what Gran had never got around to doing, and put it up for rent. It would need a little work, a little renovation to make it liveable again, and then she could simply hand it over to someone else and collect the rent each month.

  But even as the thought occurred to her, it felt like the wrong thing to do. Gran letting it was one thing, but now it had become Gran’s parting gift to her, and passing it on to a tenant would feel ungrateful, like she didn’t really want it.

  So she must do something with it herself – but what? She was trained for nothing. After school she’d gone straight to work at the salon, thanks to the older sister of a classmate who worked there. She could operate a cash register and take appointments over the phone. She could put magazines into neat stacks and make coffees and teas if called upon, and she didn’t object to sweeping hair from the floor when the place was busy.

  It wasn’t exactly an extensive skillset. It didn’t equip her to run her own business, any kind of business.

  ‘Open a bakery,’ Daniel said. ‘You like to bake, and you’re good at it’ – but Emily thought of the hours she’d spend producing the loaves and cakes and whatever else, and the other hours she’d spend selling them, and she dismissed the idea. It was true she loved to bake though: maybe she could find some way to incorporate it into a business idea.

  Maybe she could find a chef, and open a restaurant. She could bake, the chef could cook. That might work.

  She walked through the place again. The problem was the size of it. It had been ideally suited to Gran’s little hat shop, with never more than half a dozen people in it at any given time, but a restaurant was out of the question. The back room would make an ideal kitchen, but the front space only had room for three or four tables at the most, and they’d be cramped at that. It wouldn’t do.

  Unless she had a single table in the centre of the room, one long table – or maybe a round one. Yes, round was a more sociable shape, and might fit better into the given space. She stood at the door, trying to picture it, trying to decide how many chairs would fit around her imaginary table. A dozen, she thought, or thereabouts. Twelve or fourteen diners she could accommodate at the most – which was all very well if she was guaranteed a large booking every time she opened, and no good at all for smaller gatherings. No good for individuals, or couples, or families of three or four.

  Hang on though. Did they have to know one another, the people who came in to eat her food? Couldn’t they become acquainted over the course of the meal? Couldn’t she feed those who would have nobody to eat with otherwise, people like herself who for whatever reason found themselves alone at mealtimes? Couldn’t she open a place that offered company and companionship as well as food?

  Over the following days and weeks she thought about it, and the notion began slowly to form and grow. She could keep it casual, with no reservations; people could simply drop in, and sit wherever they wanted. She could open for lunch and dinner, say two hours at lunchtime, three in the evening. The menu could be simple: two or three choices, no more. It could change daily, but the weekly menu could remain unaltered for a month, say, so, over time, people would come to know what to expect and be reassured by this.

  And the food on offer could be the best of comfort food, the kind that cheered as it satisfied. What was more gladdening, more heartening, than a bowl of nourishing homemade soup served with freshly baked bread? What could lift spirits like a roast stuffed chicken, or pasta in a rich, creamy sauce? She could offer food made with love, food that solitary hearts hungered for.

  And she’d stay open at weekends, which could be the toughest time for people with no other halves. She could close on a couple of the weekdays instead, say Monday and Tuesday, when most people didn’t think about going out to eat.

  The more she thought about it, developing and fine-tuning the idea, the more substance it took on, and the more eager she became to do it. She’d have to find a course to teach her how to run a small business. She’d have to find the finance to get the place renovated, and then she’d have to source the right chef, someone who’d embrace the thinking behind her idea. She’d have to hunt down a big table, and equip a proper kitchen, and stock up on lots of crockery and cutlery and the like.

  She wondered if people would take to the idea of eating in a communal setting, and striking up conversations with strangers. Had it been tried elsewhere? She’d never heard tell of such a place, never come across one in her travels. She asked her friends what they thought, and they all had differing opinions, some more positive than others, so in the end she decided she wouldn’t know until she tried.

  She felt it was worth a try.

  Of course, there was also the question of financial survival. She wondered if a venture so small could earn its keep. With such limited seating, even if the place was full every day, it was hard to see it as a money-maker. She thought of all the outgoings, the ingredients for the dishes, the chef’s wages, the rates she’d have to pay, the insurance and utility bills and whatnot. It seemed miraculous that a restaurant operating on such a limited scale could possibly cover all that, let alone make a profit.

  To survive, she’d probably need another job. Something she could do in her own time, something that would slot into the hours the restaurant was closed. But again, with her lack of qualifications and narrow set of skills, where on earth was she to find something like that?

  And then, quite by chance, it found her.

  I’m in a fix, her uncle said, ringing from the next town over where he lived and worked. One of my regulars has gone out on sick leave, and I need someone to fill in for her. I was wondering if you’d be interested.

  Doing what? she asked, and he told her. You could work from home, he said, as long as you met your deadline. It will probably only be for a couple of weeks.

  It wasn’t something she’d ever thought of doing. Never once in all her growing up years had the notion of choosing such an occupation crossed her mind. There was responsibility going with it, a lot of responsibility – but her uncle seemed to have confidence in her, and it was just a temporary thing, so she crossed her fingers and said yes. And she found, once she started, that she quite liked it.

  And a couple of weeks turned into several, and eventually her uncle told her that the employee she was covering for wouldn’t be back. Will you stay on? he asked, and Emily said she would, because the job had grown on her, and had become important to her, and her uncle seemed to think she had a flair for it. You’re a natural, he told her. They love you – the feedback is great.

  And in the meantime she learnt how to run a business, and he
r parents gave her the money to do what renovations and installations were necessary, and when the workmen moved out, she and her brother and a few friends painted walls and sanded floors, and scoured charity shops for chairs and lamps and paintings, and tablecloths and crockery. She visited a Men’s Shed in the town and got a retired carpenter to fashion an oval table, which an architect friend had told her would be the most efficient use of the space.

  After that she found Mike, fresh out of cookery school, and she hired him because he brought a slice of homemade pizza to his interview – blatant bribery, he admitted – and because he seemed to get the thinking behind the kind of restaurant she was planning. Together they devised a simple weekly menu, something to get them through the first month.

  And finally, her heart in her mouth, more than two years after the wedding that never was, she opened The Food of Love. They started by offering dinners only, one tentative step at a time. On the first evening three people showed up, two of whom left after reading the minimalist menu. Hey, don’t beat yourself up, the third said. You’ve just opened, it’s gonna take time – and I’m tickled that I’m your very first customer. Which one of those main courses should I go for?

  So Emily rang her two best friends, whom she’d asked to stay away in case there wasn’t room for them. They arrived within ten minutes and made the acquaintance of the restaurant’s one and only diner, Heather from America, over bowls of beef tagine with fruity couscous and thick Greek yogurt.

  Listen, Heather said, setting down her fork, communal dining isn’t for everyone. We got it in San Francisco so it’s no big deal for me, but it’ll take time to catch on here. Just keep putting the word out, and the ones you’re aiming at, the ones who need you, will find you.

  Emily could have hugged her.

  And half an hour later, after thirty minutes of waiting and wishing and hoping for more diners, Daniel looked in with his girlfriend of the day, Just to see how you’re doing, they said, and they ended up staying for chicken pie, which Heather from America asked to sample too – because I gotta see if it’s as good as the tagine – and declared to be very good indeed. And Emily tried not to be disappointed that on her first night of business she had precisely one paying customer – whom, in the end, she didn’t charge, because how could she take money from the very first person who’d put her faith in the restaurant to feed her?