One night by accident he found out. There was such a bad mood in his family home, with his mother retiring to bed and his father sighing and saying he would go to his club, that Quentin had left quietly.
He didn't think that either of them were really aware that he had left. He went to a cafe called Mick's on a corner where he often bought chips on his way home from the cinema, but had never sat down to have a meal.
Beans on toast, fried eggs and chips, two sausages and a spoon of mashed potatoes and peas. That was the choice at Mick's. The place smelled of cooking fat, nobody wiped down the tables, the lino on the floor was torn and yet something about the place itself was enchanting. It was very handy to get at on a corner of a busy street but a little oasis when you went into its cobbled courtyard and closed the door. It was as if the world slowed down there.
Quentin saw Brenda the waitress and her husband Patrick, a serious guy, deep in conversation over their beans and toast. Then he saw Tobe with his plate of sausages, egg and chips.
Tobe waved him over. "If you're not meeting anyone ...?"
"No, indeed, I'd be happy to have your company." Quentin sat down with the older man and they talked about this and that. Neither asking the other what they were doing there.
"See you tomorrow at Haywards," Tobe said.
He paused for ten seconds to greet Brenda and her husband, enough to show them he had noticed them but not enough to intrude on what looked like a very private conversation.
So the weeks went by, and every now and then they met in Mick's for eggs and beans, and Quentin said what he would do with this place if it was his and he had a backer, and Tobe said that his visit was nearing its end and he was going back to Australia.
Quentin told him how his parents would be so much better in two small separate establishments, but that neither of them would budge. Tobe told Quentin that for forty years in Australia he had wondered about his Irish family. Now that he had discovered them he would waste no more time, not one second, wondering about them, they simply weren't worth it.
"You can't have spent much time with them, Tobe. Weren't you in Haywards all day and at Mick's Cafe all night?"
"I saw them all right, and I didn't like what I saw. Have you made your plans to travel, Quentin?"
"Yes, I have got as far as enquiring the price of off-peak travel, it's still very dear. But Tobe, are you changing the subject away from your family? I'll probably never see you again after next week when you go back. I'll go mad wondering what you said to your family and they to you. Can't you tell me?"
"Not yet. I have something to think through. But I'll tell you next week, in Mick's. Would Thursday be all right, do you think?"
At Mick's on Thursday Tobe looked different, more together somehow. "Come on, Quentin, my treat. We'll lash out and have beans and egg and sausages."
It was hard to put a finger on it, but it was as if Tobe had suddenly taken charge. "It's been a great pleasure meeting you. It made my visit to Dublin worthwhile and helped to clear my thoughts. Will you come and see me in Australia in a few years" time?"
"Look, Tobe, I'm having difficulty getting the money to go to Italy or Marrakesh, for heaven's sake. How could I get to Australia? Even if I do want to see the purple and orange sunrises."
"You'll be able to afford it," Tobe said, quite calmly, as if he knew it would happen.
"Oh, I wish," Quentin said, pushing his hair back from his face.
And then Tobe told him the story.
Beginning with his name, which was Toby Hayward.
He was the cousin who didn't fit in, the remittance man who got an allowance as long as he stayed out of the country and far away. He had come back to see the Haywards, but since they didn't know him, he thought he would observe them a bit first. He had seen nothing in their store that he liked, nothing except Quentin. Tobe had done well in Australia, better than any of the Haywards had ever known. It wasn't their business, so he hadn't told them.
And now that he had seen haughty Harold in the restaurant, and arrogant George Hayward in the furniture department, sour and prissy Lucy Hayward in the silver department, he realised they were not people he wanted to be involved with.
Quentin, on the other hand, a boy with a dream who wanted to run a restaurant. Now that was something different. That was what he could pay back to Ireland, the land where he had been born. Quentin would come to a solicitor tomorrow morning with him and then be in a position to buy Mick's Cafe that afternoon.
"This doesn't happen in real life," Quentin said.
"But you believe me, don't you? You believe I have the money and I'm giving it to you. I'm not out of the funny farm or anything."
"Yes, of course I believe you want to do this, and I know I would do the same myself if it were me, so I understand. But it won't work, Tobe."
"Why not?"
"Your family?"
"Don't know I'm home. I'm just the shabby old person they move from section to section of their store."
"They might feel they have a prior claim . . . family money."
"No, I made this money. I worked and invested, and I worked day and night and invested more."
"Maybe you should give it to a charity."
"I've given plenty to charity. I'm just giving you enough to buy this place."
"Maybe Mick won't sell." Quentin was afraid to let himself believe it would happen.
"How much do you think would be a fair price, Quentin?"
Quentin told him.
"Give him half as much again, he'll sell, he'll run out of the place."
"And then?"
"And then you'll call in sick to Haywards tomorrow and we get the money organised."
"This doesn't happen," Quentin said for the second time.
"Mick, could you come over here for a minute, mate?" Tobe called.
And Mick, who was tired and wanted nothing more than to be able to take his wife and handicapped daughter down to the country to live, was summoned to the table to hear the news that would change his life.
Brenda and her friend Nora had been inseparable during catering college. They made plans for life, which varied a bit depending on what was happening. Sometimes they thought they would go to Paris together and learn from a French chef. Then they might set up a thirty-bedroom hotel in the countryside, which would have a waiting list of six months for people trying to come and stay.
In reality, of course, it was slightly different. Shifts here and there and a lot of waitressing. Too many people after the same jobs, plenty of young men and women with experience. Nora and Brenda found it hard going at the start.
So they went to London, where two things of great significance happened. Nora met an Italian man called Mario who said he loved her more than he loved life itself. And Nora certainly loved him as much, if not more.
Brenda at the time caught a heavy cold, which turned into pneumonia, and as a result lost her hearing for a time. She regarded this deafness as a terrible blow. She, who could almost hear the grass grow, before her illness.
I was never sympathetic enough to deaf people," she wept to the busy doctor who gave her leaflets on lip-reading classes and told her to stop this self-pity, her hearing would return in time.
So Brenda went to the classes, mainly much older people, men and women struggling with hearing aids.
She learned how to practise on a VCR machine. You watched the news with the volume turned down over and over until you could guess what they were saying, and then you turned it up very high to check if you were right.
Miss Hill, the teacher, loved Brenda as she was so eager to learn. Brenda learned to study people's faces as they spoke, trying to make sense of what she couldn't hear. She understood that the hard letters to hear were the ones in the middle of a word. Most people could read the word "pay" or "pan", for example, but it was much harder to see a hidden consonant like an l or an r in the middle of a word. Tray" or "plan" were much more difficult to work out. You had to do that from the meaning of the sentence.