Maeve Binchy - Quentins

"He's just a friend, Mam, a quiet friend without much to say for himself. Can't anyone of your sex-mad older generation realise that people in their twenties can be friends these days?"

At supper, Patrick Brennan brought flowers to her mother and sat down to have chicken and ham pie. And from the moment he came in the door, he never stopped talking. He praised the lightness of the pastry and flavour of the sauce. He admired the cushion covers which Mrs. O'Hara had embroidered. He begged to see the wedding albums. He asked Mr. O'Hara where he got fresh vegetables and told him of a cheaper place. And when they were all worn out trying to get a word in edgeways, he told them all, her two younger sisters included, that he loved Brenda but up to now had no prospects and no hope of being able to make a home for her. But suddenly on the canal bank he had got enlightenment and he realised it was a matter of any old job in catering until they had a home and could go and build their dream. The O'Haras were astonished at him. Brenda was dumbfounded. When he left, they said he was a very nice fellow indeed, gabby though, very over-talkative, hyper almost. Hadn't Brenda said he was quiet?

"I got it wrong," Brenda said humbly. In weeks he had found them a job together, Patrick as chef and Brenda as front-of-house manager. "You despise this kind of place," she said. "What does it matter, Brenda? A month's salary and we'll have our bed-sitter," he said. "We can have it now, from my savings," she said. They found one that day, and they practised passion and desire that night and found it fine. They were married very shortly after that, a simple wedding with just cake and wine. It was a beautiful cake made and iced by Patrick and much photographed. There was a series of jobs, none of them really satisfactory, none of them giving scope to what they thought the}" could do. But they had no money, no one to back them, to set them up in a place where they could make their mark.

And as time went by there was no sign of the daughter they had spoken of, or the son. But they were still young and perhaps it was better that they didn't have to worry yet about raising a family.

They worked in a place which only served food smothered in batter. In another where there was after-hours drinking and people wanted omelettes way into the night. They tried to take over an office canteen but were given so little money, it was impossible to present decent food. Finally, they were in a place where they realised that tax avoidance and cutting corners were going to have it closed down. This last place began to break their hearts. Particularly since the management was supercilious and snobbish and made the guests feel uneasy.

"We'll have to leave here," Brenda said. "If you saw how they humiliate people in the dining-room."

"Don't let's go until we have somewhere else," Patrick begged.

The very next night Brenda saw the nice boy Quentin Barry, whom she often met when doing extra afternoon shifts at Haywards. He was with his mother and had chosen a quiet table far across the room from her.

It was a quiet night. She had served her tables. Quietly she took off her shoes as she stood behind a serving table with its long tablecloths hiding her indiscretion from the restaurant. Her shoes were tight and high and she had been on her feet since 8 a.m. It was bliss to be in her stockinged feet.

She looked across at the mother and son talking. Very alike in blonde and handsome looks, but not in manner. Mrs. Barry was fussy and very self-conscious. Quentin was gentle and a listener. But not tonight. He was telling his mother about something that seemed to astonish her.

Automatically, Brenda tuned in. She didn't have any sense of eavesdropping, to her this was as if they were speaking at the top of their voices.

"You only get peanuts, working as a waiter," Sara Barry was saying.

"I got enough working there to keep myself for several years." Quentin was quiet.

"Yes, but you can't buy a place, Quentin. Be serious, sweetheart. You're not the kind of person who can buy a place and make a restaurant out of it."

"It's not very smart now. In fact, Mick's Cafe, well, it's very down at heel, but if I get the right people

"No, darling, listen to me. You know nothing of business. You'd be bankrupt in a month .. ."

Til get people who would know, people who were trained, who would do it right."

"You'd tire of it every day. The anxiety ..."

"I wouldn't be there. I'd be travelling."

"I feel quite weak, Quentin," Sara said.

"No, Mother. Don't feel weak. I just wanted you to know how happy I am. I haven't been happy for a very long time. You used to tell me I was the love and the light of your life. I thought you'd be pleased to know I am so happy."

Brenda then for the first time realised she was in a private conversation and looked away. She put on her shoes, walked to the kitchen on unsteady feet.

"Patrick," she said, "could you pour me a small brandy?"

"You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"I've seen our future," she said.

And in a matter of days it was sorted out.

It would be their future to turn Mick's Cafe into the restaurant they had always dreamed of.

"What will you call it?" they asked Quentin.

"If you don't think it's too arrogant, I think my own name," he said shyly. "And now can I ask you one thing, how did you hear I was buying Mick's place? I know he didn't tell anyone, and I didn't tell anyone. So it's a mystery," he smiled.

Brenda paused. "I don't put it on my CV. It's not a nice quality. But I lip-read. I heard you telling your mother." She looked down.

"It's a good quality to have when you run a restaurant," Quentin said. "I bet we'll be glad of it through the years."

Blouse Brennan No one could remember why he was called Blouse Brennan. No one except his big brother Patrick. Blouse was a bit slow at school, but he was very willing so they didn't make fun of him. The Brothers liked him, Blouse was always there to do a message, run down town and get them a pack of cigarettes, and the shopkeepers never minded giving them to Blouse though he was well underage, because you'd know they weren't for himself.

The other boys decided that Blouse was not to be tormented because of his brother Patrick. Patrick was built like a tank and you'd be a foolish lad to take him on. So Blouse lived a fairly peaceful life for a guy who couldn't play games properly, who stumbled over his shoes and couldn't remember more than two lines of poetry no matter how long he studied.

When Patrick left school to serve his time in a hotel, Blouse worried. "They might beat me when you're gone next term," he said fearfully.

"They won't." Patrick was a man of few words.

"But you won't be there, Patrick."

Til come in once a week until they understand," Patrick said. And true to his word, he was there on the first day of term walking idly around the schoolyard, giving a cuff here, a push there to establish a presence. Anyone who had even contemplated picking on Blouse Brennan had a severe change of mind.

Patrick Brennan would be back.

Patrick came home every weekend and always took his brother out for a run. The boy could talk to him in a way he didn't talk at home. Their parents were elderly and distant. Too absorbed in making a living from the smallholding with its few animals and its rocky soil.

"Why do they call me Blouse, do you know, Patrick?"

"Sure, they have to call you something, they call me Pillowcase at work." Patrick was shruggy about it all.

"I've no idea how it all came about," Blouse said sadly.

Patrick knew that it had all started when the lad had been heard calling his shirt his blouse years back and some of the kids picked up on the name.

For some reason it had stuck. Even the Brothers called him that, and half the people in the town. His mother and father called him Sonny so hardly anyone knew that he had been baptised Joseph Matthew Brennan. Patrick worked very hard in the hotel business. He rose from scullery helper to kitchen hand, he did stints as a porter and at the front desk, and went to do a catering course where he eventually met a girl called Brenda and brought her photograph home for inspection.