Erin Kaye - Second Time Around

Ben took a deep breath and tried to make the peace. ‘So, Dad, what brings you here?’

Alan rubbed his hands together, the way people do when they’re itching to get started on something. ‘I happened to be passing,’ he said and Ben smiled at the lie. Alan had been in Portrush and Portstewart earlier that day and Ballyfergus wasn’t on the way home – not unless you took the scenic Antrim coast road and more or less doubled the length of your journey time. ‘I wanted to hear what you thought of the place. And see how the plans were shaping up.’

So much for Alan letting go of the reins. Without waiting for an invitation he strode over to the wallpaper table and rested his knuckles on the flat surface, like a sprinter at the starting blocks. ‘So,’ he said, narrowing his eyes to focus more clearly – he was too proudly virile to don glasses in the presence of a stranger – ‘do you agree this place is a dump?’

Ben frowned. Alan had bought the place – snapped it up, he’d said – without consulting Ben. ‘It is now but it won’t be by the time we’re finished with it. Haven’t you always said –’

Without taking his eyes off the plans, Alan cut him short mid-sentence. ‘I’ve learned you something then.’ This peculiar verb misuse, widespread across the province, marked Alan out as an uneducated man. And, whilst he knew this, and was certainly clever enough to eliminate this verbal idiosyncrasy from his speech if he chose to, he never did.

Ben, angry, folded his arms across his chest. Why was nothing ever straightforward with his father? The question had been another one of his stupid tests.

‘Location,’ went on Alan, raising his eyes now, and one instructive finger, ‘is the most important thing, absolutely, always. Everything else can be changed. You have to look beyond the muck and filth and see what others can’t.’ Ben, who had heard it all before, made a swirling pattern in the dust with the toe of his old trainers. Jennifer, he noticed, glancing up, had disappeared into one of the loos.

‘Tell me,’ went on Alan, walking over to a window and squinting up at the sky like he was on the lookout for an aeroplane. ‘What do you see when you look out this window?’

‘An ugly car park?’ replied Ben, stubbornly looking the other way, refusing to play the game.

Alan roared with humourless laughter. ‘Depends how you look at it. That’s what you see,’ he said, and paused to let Ben know he didn’t think much of his vision. ‘Whereas I see an asset.’

He stopped, waiting, Ben presumed, for him to offer up what that asset might be. But he said nothing.

Irritation crept into Alan’s voice. ‘I see convenient parking for customers. An asset that will deliver customers right to this front door of ours.’

‘Right,’ said Ben insolently.

Alan, who must’ve forgotten about Jennifer, slapped a closed fist into the palm of the other hand. ‘You have to have vision, son!’ he cried, his tanned face suddenly taking on a reddish hue, though it was hard to tell if he was angry or excited, both emotions producing in Alan similar physical manifestations. ‘You can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

Suddenly, apparently oblivious to Ben’s ill temper, he chuckled heartily at his cleverness. Then he opened his arms wide and turned in a small slow circle like a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing , the soles of his shoes tap-tapping lightly on the floor. With his eyes closed, he might have been in a trance. ‘I can see it now. Carnegie’s! That’s what we’ll call it and it’ll be the talk of the town.

‘People will come from far and wide. Ballymena, Ballymoney, Whitehead and Carrickfergus,’ went on Alan, reciting the local names like a prayer, the vowels hard, tight fists, so that ‘Bally’ became ‘Balla’ and ‘head’ came out as ‘heed’. ‘And from all the towns and villages up the coast as well. It’ll be great, Ricky.’ And he stopped spinning right in front of Ben and, smiling, opened his eyes.

Ben stared at him in horror. Every once in a while this happened. Ricky’s name would slip unawares from his father’s lips – the name of the child he wished was standing in front of him, not the one who was. Ben swallowed and tried to arrange some other expression on his face, something that would cloak the searing shock like a stage curtain. He pressed the palm of his right hand on his heart and felt its fierce, too-fast beat.

‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’ said Alan crossly, the smile fading to be replaced with a frown. ‘Can’t you visualise it?’

‘I … I can. But why “Carnegie’s”?’ said Ben, throwing the question to Alan like a bone to a dog, anything to deflect his beady-eyed scrutiny.

Alan exhaled loudly, his enthusiasm waning, it seemed, in the face of Ben’s lack of it. ‘Didn’t you notice the old Carnegie library across the street?’ he said irritably.

‘Ah yes. “Let there be light”,’ said Ben, quoting the motto at the entrance to the first library Andrew Carnegie ever built – in his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1883.

‘Huh?’ said Alan. The quote was most likely meaningless to him, yet Alan, who’d left school at fifteen, would not seek clarification. Whilst he made a big show of being true to his humble ‘school of life’ roots, he did not like his ignorance exposed. ‘Yes, well,’ he went on, ‘as I was saying, it’s not a library now – some sort of Arts centre or museum. Remind me on Monday to look into giving them a donation. Anyway, Carnegie’s has just the right overtones for our restaurant. Classy, elegant. It has an old-school ring to it.’

Ben couldn’t disagree with any of this and yet the fact that his father had proposed the name irked. ‘But don’t you think I should have some say in naming the restaurant? Especially if I’m supposed to be running the business.’

‘You are, Ben, you are,’ said Alan and he came over and placed a heavy arm across Ben’s shoulders. ‘Now, I know you’re nervous but don’t worry. I know you won’t let me down,’ he said, his words striking fear in Ben’s heart. He removed his arm. ‘Now, if you’ve got a better name for the restaurant, I’d like to hear it.’

Ben ventured, ‘Crawfords.’

Alan’s mouth puckered up like he’d just, unsuspectingly, bitten into a lemon. ‘God no, not our own name. It lacks class. And you’re forgetting the chain of bakery shops in East Belfast that go by the same name. Have you got any other ideas?’

Ben deliberated for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Carnegie’s is a good choice,’ he conceded, wishing he’d thought of it.

‘Good.’ Satisfied, Alan darted over to the table once more and pointed at the plan. ‘Now tell me about this. What’s that hatched area at the front of the restaurant?’

Ben stood beside his father and saw immediately what he meant. ‘That’s the waiting area.’

‘Waiting area?’ said Alan, wrinkling up his nose the way he did when he smelled something gone off.

Jennifer slipped back into the room from the kitchen and, ignoring them both, proceeded to measure the boarded-up front window. Ben said quickly, ‘Well, more of a bar area. Not that there’d be a bar as such, but a relaxing area where people could come in and order a drink while they look at the menu and wait for their table.’

Alan squinted before speaking, as if he was trying very hard to see merit where there was none. ‘It’d look pretty, son. But you do know what’s wrong with it, don’t you?’

Ben shook his head. If he knew, would it be on the bloody plan?

‘You don’t have room for it in a restaurant this size. You’d lose too many covers giving up this much footage. There’s room for another two tables at least here,’ he said, sketching out his vision with the tip of his finger. ‘And if people want a pre-dinner drink they can have it here, at their table.’ He tapped the paper hard three times with the tip of his index finger as if he was giving it and not Ben a good talking to. Ben, acutely aware of Jennifer’s silent presence as she went about her business, felt the colour rise to his cheeks.