Maeve Binchy - Quentins

"Of course they will, Blouse, and out in the vegetable garden and with the hens, aren't you the most colourful part of it all?" Patrick reassured his brother.

But Blouse didn't respond to the flattery. "I didn't think it would be nice to be in it as, well, I don't want people looking at me."

"They'll be nice people, you know most of them, Nick and Sandy and Ella," Brenda pleaded.

"No, I don't mean them."

"Well, Mr. King was in here, and he was the nicest man you could ever meet."

"No, I mean real people, outside people looking at it. People like Horse and Shay back home. The Brothers who taught me, fellows who work on the allotments. I don't want them seeing me and knowing my business," Blouse said, flushed and upset.

They knew not to let him get more distressed.

"Well, there's no question of you being in it if you don't want to, Blouse," Patrick said.

It would be a great loss, but it's your choice, no question of that," Brenda agreed.

"Thanks, Brenda, Patrick ... I don't want to let you down or anything."

"No way, Blouse," Patrick said through gritted teeth. Or it could have been in Firefly Films. They got the offer they had

dreamed of from the day they started: to film one of Ireland's greatest rock bands all the way through from composing and rehearsing the songs up to a huge rock festival. They would be made if they could do it, but they would need to start almost immediately.

Nick was about to refuse. They were committed to Quentins.

Sandy said they should stall them for a week, a lot could happen in a few days and Derry King could easily change his mind.

Or it could have been Buzzo. He said he couldn't be seen in the film because nobody at school knew he worked here, and that his brothers would take any money off him if they knew he had it.

And Monica said that her husband, Clive, though the greatest darling who ever walked the earth, had been having second thoughts about their telling their love story. People were odd in the bank, no sense of humour. They might think less of Mr. Clive Harris if they knew he had read books covered in brown paper about how to be attractive to the opposite sex. Regretfully, they would have to pull their story out.

Someone had told Yan the Breton waiter that if this film was successful, it would be shown everywhere, even in his homeland. Then his father would hear him saying for all the world to hear that they had not got on well as father and son. It was a very enclosed community. In his part of Brittany, people didn't air their problems in public. A million pardons, but he wouldn't be able to contribute.

And then Patrick Brennan finally had his annual checkup. He did all the stress tests on the treadmill and the exercise bikes. Then he sat down, still sweating mildly, to talk to the counsellor as part of the checkup.

"It's a stressful job, running a restaurant, of course, but once we get this documentary out of the way, we should be fine. We"ve promised to take time off together, delegate more."

"When will that be?"

"Oh, a few weeks" time, I gather. It will be hell keeping the show on the road until then, but we have to do it."

"Why, exactly?" asked the counsellor. Brenda's friend Nora O'Donoghue was in the kitchen chopping vegetables. Brenda looked at her affectionately. She was such a handsome woman, with her piebald hair and her long, flowing clothes. She had no idea that she was striking and wonderful. Even there, as she washed the vegetables in a sink, laid them out on cloths to chop and dice, she looked like some happy goddess from a classical painting.

"I wish you'd stop that and come and talk to me, Nora."

"Listen, I'm doing three hours" work for your husband, if not for you. Come and talk to me here while I work."

Brenda pulled up a chair. "Do you mind them filming you doing this?" she asked.

"They wouldn't want me, for God's sake, a mad old woman."

"Oh, they would, Nora. You look lovely. I was just thinking it. Would you mind?"

"Not at all, if it's any help to you and Patrick. I'd be honoured."

Brenda looked at her with a lump in her throat. What a generous-spirited person she was. She didn't care if her mother and awful sisters, if the students in the Italian class she taught, if Aidan's colleagues, saw her scrubbing vegetables in a kitchen. What a wonderful way to be.

"You're tired, Brenda."

"Which means, You're ugly, Brenda."

"No, it means, You're worried, Brenda."

"All right, I am worried. Worried sick about this documentary and that we get it right."

"You don't need to do it," Nora said.

"If we are to amount to anything, then let us leave some kind of legacy after us."

Nora carefully put down her short, squat, but very sharp knife and laid her hand on Brenda's. "You? Amount to anything? Legendary, that's what they call you two already. How much more do you want to amount to? You've been giving legacies into people's lives and will continue to do so for ever."

"You're kind to think we amount to a lot, Nora, but I don't see it that way. I thought this would sort of define us in a way."

"Brenda, you have each other and all this marvellous place. In the name of God, woman, don't you have enough?" Ella ran into Mrs. Ennis, the school principal, in Haywards Cafe.

"I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you," Mrs. Ennis said.

Ella was surprised. She had left Mrs. Ennis slightly in the lurch by leaving the school so quickly. Then Mrs. Ennis, too, might have regretted her indiscretions about her own private life which she told to cheer Ella up.

"I was going to ask you, did you want any part-time work? I did try to call you, but none of your phone numbers worked."

"Oh, I went into hiding for a while," Ella admitted.

"But I gather from what I read in the papers that you're out now," Mrs. Ennis was matter-of-fact.

"Yes, that's right, I am."

"Does teaching still interest you? You were good. The girls liked you."

"I did like it, very much. It was more solid than anything else, in a way."

"But maybe solidity isn't enough."

"I think it is now. But I have to make a film documentary first."

"How long would that take?"

"A few weeks, Mrs. Ennis. I won't be part of the editing."

"What's it about?"

"It's about a day in the life of a restaurant."

"Why?" Mrs. Ennis asked baldly.

Ella looked at her for a moment. "Do you know, I'm not quite sure why. A dozen reasons along the line, partly as therapy for me at the start, I know that. Then a lot of other people got drawn in." She seemed confused, thinking about why they were doing it.

Mrs. Ennis was brisk. "You know where we are, Ella. Ring us within a week if you'd like to come back to us. We need you."

"You're very kind."

"And the other business? All right about that?"

"Oh, yes. It's as if it all happened to someone else, not me."

"Good, then you're getting better," Mrs. Ennis said. Ella hadn't talked to Derry properly for three days. He was with his cousins morning, noon and night.

"You haven't had a fight with him?" Barbara Brady asked.

"You couldn't fight with Derry," Ella said. She remembered his ex-wife Kimberly saying something similar.

When he rang later that day, he asked to see her. "We have to talk, Ella. Can we have dinner at Quentins?"

"Will I get Nick and Sandy to come?"

"No, just you."

It turned out that he had been eating there every evening with his cousins. Scan and Michael knew the place already and had come for special treats.

"I'm sorry you're going to turn all this into a sort of circus," Scan had said bluntly as he looked around him.

"What do you mean?" Derry wondered.

"Well, when you have all these people appearing on television, they'll become celebrities and folks will come in to gawp at them. They won't be able to get on with their job like they did before. Before they became actors, I mean."