"Would it have been worth it if we had a child or even the prospect of one, do you think? Would it have made sense out of a day from hell like today?"
"You know it would."
"No, I don't. We would have been just as tired, even more so."
"You know what I mean. There would have been some sort of purpose to it all. Something at the end."
"And there's nothing now, no purpose in anything, is this what you're saying?"
"You're picking a row, Brenda. It's far too late."
"You're right. Why don't you go on up to bed?"
"Aren't you coming?"
"In a while. Please go on up."
Patrick dragged himself to the door and climbed the stairs.
Brenda looked around the place where she had soldiered since 7 a.m. Twenty hours. She walked thoughtfully over to a mirror they had put strategically for staff to give themselves a quick glance before going into the dining-room. Skin and bone, he had said. Aged twenty years, he had said.
She wrote a short note to Patrick. I'm sorry, but I don't feel like sharing a bed with you tonight. Not if you think I'm old and sad and wretched-looking. Not if you see no hope, no purpose in anything. I'm going to a friend for the night, or what's left of it. But whatever I am, I am a pro. I'll be back tomorrow, 12 noon for the photo call Mary has arranged, and for my lunchtime shift. I don't feel the need to say anything about this to anyone, so you needn't either. Brenda She left it on the table beside where he slept in a deep sleep, arm thrown across to her side of the bed as he had done for years. She took her coat, a change of clothes and some washing things, and let herself out into the early morning of Dublin City.
She took a taxi to Tara Road where Colm ran a restaurant. He was a recovering alcoholic, a man who slept lightly. He too lived over the premises. They had always joked about being rivals, but his restaurant -in its green suburb catered to an entirely different clientele from Quentins" city-centre trade.
She rang the bell and he answered in a wide-awake voice. "Brenda Brennan? The very person."
"Colm, could I have a bed for the night, what's left of it?"
"Sure. Will you have tea and toast or do you want to sleep straight away?"
"Tea and toast will be fine," she said.
He never asked her what it was about and she went to bed half an hour later in Colm's spare room, where she slept until 10 a.m.
"Do I look skin and bone and twenty years older, Colm?" she asked at a breakfast of melon, champagne and orange juice, and a freshly baked pastry.
"No, and only an overtired husband in a blind panic over his restaurant would have said that. Are you going back to him?"
"Of course I am. I'm a professional."
"And you love him?" he pleaded.
"Maybe."
"No, definitely," he said.
"Anyway, Colm, could you get me a taxi, and know you are the truest friend anyone ever had?"
The taxi came in five minutes. Eleven minutes into the journey the taxi was hit by a large truck. It came from the side where Brenda was seated. The blow to her head knocked her unconscious at once. She knew nothing at all after the impact. Brenda had never been late for anything. Patrick began to be seriously worried. She had said she would be back. He knew that she would. He wondered what friend she had gone to see. He wished that he hadn't been so sharp-tempered. Why could he not have given her a hug and said that when the world settled down they would talk? Brenda was never moody. She wouldn't make a scene like this on such a very important day.
When she hadn't turned up for the photo call, he became seriously alarmed. He had tried to reassure everyone else, insisted that Blouse and Mary be included in the pictures as well as the newly recruited staff. He said there were a million last-minute things that each of them had to see to.
They served a lunch short-handed, every moment he expected to see her come in to the kitchen and slip her coat off. But lunch was over, and there was still no sign.
The afternoon didn't bring her, either. He was now getting really worried. By six o"clock he was ready to call the Guards. They were not helpful. A domestic incident at 4 a.m.! They were sympathetic, but they had better things to do with their time. Most missing people came home, they said. Try her friends, they suggested.
He had no idea who to call. He slapped the food on to plates for the dinner with no idea what he was serving.
She would not have left him like this. In hospital, they searched for any identification which would tell them who the dark-haired woman was. All they had was a set of keys and some bank notes in her pockets, a change of clothes in an overnight bag. No hint at all about whom they might contact.
During dinner Patrick went upstairs again. He saw Brenda's handbag on the floor beside the dressing table. She had gone away without anything. It wasn't possible that she had gone away to kill herself. He didn't want to involve Blouse and Mary. Blouse was so simple and innocent. But by eleven o"clock that night he had to tell them.
He was sitting crying in the kitchen and they demanded to know why.
"We'll call the hospitals," Mary said.
They took six of the major places and tried two each.
Blouse found her on his first go.
"Long, straight, dark hair usually tied up in what is called a French pleat," he said, proud of having got it all together.
Patrick wondered if he would have been able to give such a good description. He grabbed the phone. "Is she alive?" he sobbed. "Thank God. Thank God."
She had come round for a moment, spoken in a garbled way of Patrick and Quentin but they had no idea what she meant. They were letting her sleep now.
Blouse got out of the van. Patrick sat inside holding his head. Had he really said to this wonderful, strong, loyal woman that there was no hope, no purpose in anything? Could he have driven her out in to the night because she couldn't bear to lie beside him? The only thing that mattered was Brenda, he knew it somewhere inside. Why could he not have admitted it, and said it to her? Please, please God, may there be years and years ahead when he could tell her.
He sat by her bed all night and stroked her thin, pale cheek. He half-remembered people telling him about the accident and the taxi and the truck. She had been on her way home to him and this had happened.
Then at dawn she woke and he laid his head on her chest and sobbed as if his heart would break.
There was no concussion, very little bruising, just great shock. She had been lucky. The taxi driver had been lucky. Everyone was all right.
I think I'll make it for the party after all," she said.
"You're everything in the world to me, Brenda. You're enough, do you hear what I'm saying? You're more than enough. I love you so much, we have huge hope, a huge future together, you and I." Everyone was there that night at the anniversary party of Quentins, which was as glittery a do as Dublin had seen for a long time, and they would always remember one particular moment.
It was when Patrick Brennan took his wife's hand in his and held it very tight. He looked around the crowd and lowered his voice slightly.
"Brenda and I have a wonderful baby to rejoice over with you tonight. The baby is one year old and we have all of you here to celebrate the fact we have a restaurant which survived a year and where we hope to make friends and strangers alike welcome and happy with us. It's not as wonderful as a real christening with a real baby, but for us it's everything that a real christening is, with a sense of fulfilment and hope and a future ahead of us all. So will you drink to our baby, Quentins, and wish us all well in the adventures that the rest of life will bring to everyone in this room?"
Even hard-bitten media people and professional first nighters were silent as Patrick Brennan kissed his thin, elegant wife Brenda. As the years went on, people said that Brenda Brennan never cried, they must have imagined it. But those who were there knew that they hadn't imagined it. And it wasn't only the Brennans who had cried. Everyone in the room seemed to have been affected, too.