But you have," he said crisply before she could cancel her parents" outing and go with him wherever he suggested. "So catch you again." And he was gone.
All during dinner her heart felt like a stone. And later, she helped her mother with the washing up and they had the most extraordinary conversation.
"Ella, you couldn't have done anything that would please your
father more, it's just what he needs. He's been very pressured at work."
"Then why didn't you take him to Holly's, Mother?" Ella hoped
her tone was not as impatient as she felt inside. Her mother looked at her, amazed.
"But what would we have done there together, just the two of us looking at each other? We might as well just stay here looking at each other if there was to be just the two of us."
Ella looked at her mother in shock. "You can't mean that, Mam?"
"Mean what?" Her mother was genuinely surprised.
"That you don't have anything to talk about with Dad."
"But what is there to talk about, haven't we said it all?" Her mother spoke as if this were the most glaringly obvious thing in the world.
"But if that's the way it is, why don't you leave him, why don't you separate?" Ella stood with the dinner plate in her hand. Her mother took it away from her.
"Oh, Ella, don't be ridiculous, why on earth would we want to do that? I never heard of such nonsense."
"People do, Mam."
"Not people like me and your dad. Come back inside now and we'll talk about this great visit to Holly's."
Ella felt as if a light warm woollen blanket had been put over her head and was beginning to suffocate her.
She went to the cinema with Deirdre and for a drink afterwards. They talked normally as always. Or so Ella thought. Then Deirdre ordered another drink and asked Ella, "They're serving sandwiches. Do you want one?"
"What?" Ella said. "Oh, yes, whatever."
Til get you one with mouse's dirt and bird droppings in it, then," Deirdre said cheerfully.
"What?"
"Oh, good. Welcome back, you're awake again," Deirdre laughed.
I don't know what you mean."
"Ella, you saw none of the movie, you haven't said a word to me, you've bitten your lip and shuffled about. Are you going to tell me or are you not?"
She had told Deirdre everything since they were thirteen, but she couldn't. It was odd, there was too much to tell and too little. Too much in that she had fallen in love with an entirely wrong man and that her own parents" thirty-year marriage, which she had always thought was very happy, was fairly empty. And yet too little to tell. To Deirdre it would all be simple. She would say that Ella should go for the man, married or not. Take what she wanted and not get hurt. And Deirdre would say that everyone's parents had rotten marriages, it's just the way things were.
"Nothing, Dee, just fussing, ruminating, being neurotic .. . that's all it is, honestly."
"That's all it ever is, honestly, but you always tell me," Deirdre grumbled.
"You've got such a great, uncomplicated way of looking at things. I'm envious."
"No, you're not, you think I'm sexually indiscriminate, that I have a hard heart .. . come on, you're not envious."
I am. Tell me of your latest drama, whatever it was."
"Well, I had a great session with that Don Richardson, you know, the consultant guy you see all over the papers. Very good he is too, insatiable nearly."
Deirdre held her head on one side and watched Ella's face. After a few seconds she was contrite. "Ella, you clown, I was just joking."
Ella said nothing. She had both hands on her head as if trying to clear it.
"Ella! I didn't, I never even met him, you silly thing, I was only on a fishing expedition to see if that's who you fancied."
Ella took her hands away from her face.
"And it seems as if I was right," Deirdre said.
"How did you know?" Ella's voice was a whisper.
"Because I'm your best friend, and also because you couldn't take your eyes off him when he came up to you at Nuala's do the other night."
"Was that only the other night?" Ella was amazed.
"Will I get a half-bottle of wine?" Deirdre suggested.
"Get a full bottle," Ella said, some of the colour coming back to her face. The next Saturday the Bradys left Tara Road in the middle of the afternoon so that they could take a tour of Wicklow Gap before going to Holly's. Ella was determined to do it well if she was doing it at all. Give them a day and night out to remember. Oddly, Deirdre had seemed highly approving that she had refused the date with Don for Saturday night. To have agreed would make Ella too available. He would call again, mark Deirdre's words, she knew about such things. Ella had brought a flask of coffee and three little mugs and they stood in the afternoon sunshine to admire the scenery. There was bright yellow gorse on the bare hills, and some flashes of deep purple heather. Here and there a thin vague looking sheep wandered as if bemused that there wasn't more green grass for them to eat.
"Imagine, you can't see a house or a building anywhere and yet be so near Dublin, isn't it amazing?" Ella said.
"Like the Yorkshire Moors. I was there once," her father said.
Ella hadn't known that. "Were you there too, Mam?"
"No, before my time." She sounded clipped.
"It's a bit like Arizona too, all that space, except it's red desert over there," Ella said. "Remember the time you gave me the money for the Greyhound Bus Tour? When Deirdre and I went off to see the world."
"You were twenty-one," her mother remembered.
"And you sent us a postcard every three days," her father said.
"You were very generous. I saw so much that I'll never forget, thanks to you. Deirdre had to work for the money and borrow some, I don't think she's paid it all back yet."
"Why have a child if you can't give her a holiday?" Barbara Brady's lips were pursed with disapproval of those who didn't take parenting seriously.
"And what is money when all is said and done?" said Tim Brady, who had spent all his working hours, weeks and years, advising people about money and nothing else.
Ella was mystified. But she remembered Deirdre's advice about not killing herself trying to understand them, there was probably nothing to understand.
Holly's Hotel was buzzing with people, most of them having driven from Dublin for dinner. But the Brady family had their rooms, time to stroll in the gardens, have a leisurely bath and then meet in the chintzy little bar for a sherry while looking at the menu.
"I must say, this is a marvellous treat," her father said over and over.
"You are such a thoughtful girl," her mother would murmur in agreement.
Ella told them that she loved looking at people in restaurants and imagining stories about them. Like that couple near the window, for example, they were drug pushers back in Dublin, just come for a nice respectable weekend to know what the Other World was like.
"Are they?" Her mother was alarmed.
"Of course not," Ella said. "It's only pretend. Look at that group over there - what do you think they are?"
Slowly her parents got drawn into the game. "The older couple is trying to get the younger ones to go halves in buying a boat," said Tim Brady.
"The younger couple is telling the older ones that they"re bankrupt and asking for a loan," said Barbara Brady.
"I think it's a group sex thing, they all answered one of Miss Holly's ads for wife-swapping weekends," Ella suggested.
And they were all laughing at the whole crazy notion of it in this of all places when Ella looked up and saw Don Richardson and his family being ushered from the bar into the dining-room. He looked over and saw them at that moment. It would be frozen for ever in Ella's mind. The Bradys all laughing at one table and Don at the door holding it open for his father-in-law, his sons aged sixteen and fifteen, and his wife Margery who only lunched for charities and otherwise played golf. Margery, who was not large, weather-beaten and distant-looking, but who wore a smart red silk suit and had one of those handbags which cost a fortune. Margery, who was petite, smiled up at her husband in a way that Ella would never be able to do since she was exactly the same height.