Maeve Binchy - Quentins

"Ah, now, Scan, don't go discouraging Derry. This is his work, his business. You wouldn't like it if he were to go telling you how to paint a house," Michael said.

"I wouldn't mind if he had anything interesting to say." Sean was honest.

And that night, Derry told Ella all this. How the brothers had opened up his eyes about so many things. Filming wasn't his business, he assured them, selling was his business, creating needs for people, then filling them. That's what he was good at. He had spent time in their business and told them about ways they could expand. Sell paint as well as doing the job. Set up an advisory service after hours, in the evenings or Saturday mornings. Draw in the young couples, give them colour charts, do and don't lists. Make them your friends. You weren't doing yourself out of a market. There were two different worlds, those who painted and those who didn't.

And then, he said to Ella, he had listened to them as well. And understood what they were saying. He had grown to love Quentins, there was a possibility that a fly-on-the-wall would destroy it and the hard-working people there. He felt clear in his head about it. Now the only problem was to explain all this to Ella and to everyone else. He was amazed at how easy that turned out to be.;. The only person who was confused and annoyed in the end was Deirdre. "For week after bloody week I've been talking, sleeping, dreaming, breathing this documentary. It was going to be the making of everybody. And now suddenly, out of a clear blue sky, I'm meant to be overjoyed that it is not happening. No, Ella, give me some sense of being something rather than a nodding dog."

"You, a nodding dog, Dee! Please!"

"No, I'm serious. It's all ludicrous. What happens when you go back to teaching, your man goes back to America, your other man goes to gaol, Firefly Films become rock groupies, Quentins misses it out on immortality? Where's all the joy in that?" Deirdre was great when she grumbled. Which was never for long.

"Listen, cheer up. You're invited to a big party to celebrate."

"God, what a mad crowd you are. Celebrating! Anyone else would be in mourning."

"No, Dee, you eejit, it's for lots of things . .. the new company, Kennedy and King. Berry's going in with his cousins. It's for Aidan and Nora's wedding party. It's for Nick and Sandy's new contract. It's for my getting exactly the job I want, part-time teaching, and I'm going back to university to do a doctorate as well, and it's for my father going to have a job as a financial adviser in Kennedy and King. And for so many other things ... if you can't celebrate all that, then you're only a miserable old curmudgeon."

Deirdre threw her arms around Ella. "I never saw you so happy. So that maybe is a reason to get a new party frock. Will there be anything there that I could get my nails and teeth into?"

"Lord knows, there might be," said Ella. "It's shaping up as a very unusual party." "Yes, Mrs. Mitchell. I know it's inconvenient. Perhaps you could choose another night."

"But my daughter-in-law ... well, my ex-daughter-in-law, tells me she's going to Quentins on Saturday night . .. tomorrow."

"But as I'm sure she told you, it's a private function, Mrs. Mitchell."

"Well, I had thought there might be exceptions for regular clients."

"No, we have had this notice on the tables for three weeks, Mrs. Mitchell, and in the newspaper."

Brenda came off the phone and rolled her eyes up to heaven. "Amazing how Cathy didn't kill that one dead. She's the most trying woman in Dublin."

The next call was from Nora's mother. "I don't know what you're thinking of to imagine that I and my family are going to a surprise party for Nora. I never heard such nonsense, and at her age. And at such short notice."

"We had to keep it at short notice in case they heard about it." Brenda's eyes rolled further around in her head.

"But I thought that this ceremony was going to be in a bookshop. That's what Nora said, and we wouldn't have gone to that either," Mrs. O'Donoghue sniffed.

"We so much hope you'll be here tomorrow. It will be a great feast and every woman wants her mother there at a wedding party."

"Huh, as if it were a proper wedding."

"It will be a marvellous wedding. I'm one of the witnesses. So can I hope you all will come, or is this a definite no?"

Nora's appalling mother didn't want to rule herself out of what was being described as a feast. "I can't say yes or no."

"Well, we hope that's a yes. Meanwhile, not a word of any of this to Nora and Aidan."

Brenda knew that the old bat would try to ring them and spoil it, but it was impossible now; Nora was staying in Quentins for the night and Aidan was at his son-in-law's house. Mrs. O'Donoghue would not be able to find them now, no matter how hard she tried. Maud and Simon were told that Hooves, their dog, could not come to the party no matter how rejected it made him feel. He had a collar the same as Derry King's dog had in America, but even that didn't get him in. They were warned by Cathy that two songs was the maximum, and could they be love songs?

Simon thought of "Please, Release Me, Let Me Go". But that was not suitable for a wedding, apparently.

Neither was "Young Love, First Love, is Filled With Deep Emotion", which they knew, because the couple were not in the first flush of youth.

"Love," Cathy said. "You must know some song about love?"

They said they would do some research.

"Nothing to be sung without consulting me," Cathy said. "That's an order." Scan and Michael Kennedy were the first arrivals. They were trying out the canapes and looking at the banners on the wall. The menu was engraved for Aidan and Nora as it should be with wedding bells attached, but there was a banner for Kennedy and King too, and one for Firefly Films, and one for Ella's degree.

The sign writer had been busy tonight.

At the piano, two earnest-looking blond children sat beside an

old man as he picked out the notes of a song and tried to teach it to them.

"We'd better write it down, Muttie," the boy said.

"Everyone knows the words," the old man protested. "They"re not words you'd be able to write down like, they're not in English."

"Then why are we singing it?" the girl asked.

"Because Cathy says they must love it. She said it was a pity you didn't know it but you will if you concentrate."

They concentrated heavily. Derry came in a car to collect the Brady family.

"We're not really much for parties," Tim protested, but Ella noticed he had dressed up smartly all the same.

"Can't have a party without my financial adviser there. I might revert to my father and get drunk and silly," Derry said.

Ella smiled at him. He was able to make a remark about it, a joke even. At last.

"We wouldn't miss it for the world, Derry," Ella's mother said.

Ella looked at the streets around her as they drove to Quentins. This was her world. There was no other and there never would be again. Patrick made an appearance at the party in full chefs gear. "Brenda is with them. She's taking the little party, just Aidan, his daughters and the son-in-law, down to Holly's for afternoon tea and they think they're going to the bookshop afterwards."

"Wouldn't they be afraid Nora would get a heart attack when she finds the place closed?"

"No, don't worry." The Registrar was a kind man. He knew when he saw a party of only six people, a bride and groom tending towards middle age rather than extreme youth, that a ceremony of great dignity was called for. He looked from one to the other and stressed the importance of the day and the decision they were making in front of all present.

They thanked him profusely and asked him to join them for afternoon tea in Holly's. He was often invited to join the festivities, but never accepted. Today for the first time he was tempted. They were so touchingly happy, it made him blow his nose quite a lot. They had obviously travelled a long road to get to this day.