Second Time Around

Suddenly, apparently oblivious to Ben’s ill temper, he chuckled heartily at his cleverness. Then he opened his arms wide and turned in a small slow circle like a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, the soles of his shoes tap-tapping lightly on the floor. With his eyes closed, he might have been in a trance. ‘I can see it now. Carnegie’s! That’s what we’ll call it and it’ll be the talk of the town.

‘People will come from far and wide. Ballymena, Ballymoney, Whitehead and Carrickfergus,’ went on Alan, reciting the local names like a prayer, the vowels hard, tight fists, so that ‘Bally’ became ‘Balla’ and ‘head’ came out as ‘heed’. ‘And from all the towns and villages up the coast as well. It’ll be great, Ricky.’ And he stopped spinning right in front of Ben and, smiling, opened his eyes.

Ben stared at him in horror. Every once in a while this happened. Ricky’s name would slip unawares from his father’s lips – the name of the child he wished was standing in front of him, not the one who was. Ben swallowed and tried to arrange some other expression on his face, something that would cloak the searing shock like a stage curtain. He pressed the palm of his right hand on his heart and felt its fierce, too-fast beat.

‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’ said Alan crossly, the smile fading to be replaced with a frown. ‘Can’t you visualise it?’

‘I … I can. But why “Carnegie’s”?’ said Ben, throwing the question to Alan like a bone to a dog, anything to deflect his beady-eyed scrutiny.

Alan exhaled loudly, his enthusiasm waning, it seemed, in the face of Ben’s lack of it. ‘Didn’t you notice the old Carnegie library across the street?’ he said irritably.

‘Ah yes. “Let there be light”,’ said Ben, quoting the motto at the entrance to the first library Andrew Carnegie ever built – in his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1883.

‘Huh?’ said Alan. The quote was most likely meaningless to him, yet Alan, who’d left school at fifteen, would not seek clarification. Whilst he made a big show of being true to his humble ‘school of life’ roots, he did not like his ignorance exposed. ‘Yes, well,’ he went on, ‘as I was saying, it’s not a library now – some sort of Arts centre or museum. Remind me on Monday to look into giving them a donation. Anyway, Carnegie’s has just the right overtones for our restaurant. Classy, elegant. It has an old-school ring to it.’

Ben couldn’t disagree with any of this and yet the fact that his father had proposed the name irked. ‘But don’t you think I should have some say in naming the restaurant? Especially if I’m supposed to be running the business.’

‘You are, Ben, you are,’ said Alan and he came over and placed a heavy arm across Ben’s shoulders. ‘Now, I know you’re nervous but don’t worry. I know you won’t let me down,’ he said, his words striking fear in Ben’s heart. He removed his arm. ‘Now, if you’ve got a better name for the restaurant, I’d like to hear it.’

Ben ventured, ‘Crawfords.’

Alan’s mouth puckered up like he’d just, unsuspectingly, bitten into a lemon. ‘God no, not our own name. It lacks class. And you’re forgetting the chain of bakery shops in East Belfast that go by the same name. Have you got any other ideas?’

Ben deliberated for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Carnegie’s is a good choice,’ he conceded, wishing he’d thought of it.

‘Good.’ Satisfied, Alan darted over to the table once more and pointed at the plan. ‘Now tell me about this. What’s that hatched area at the front of the restaurant?’

Ben stood beside his father and saw immediately what he meant. ‘That’s the waiting area.’

‘Waiting area?’ said Alan, wrinkling up his nose the way he did when he smelled something gone off.

Jennifer slipped back into the room from the kitchen and, ignoring them both, proceeded to measure the boarded-up front window. Ben said quickly, ‘Well, more of a bar area. Not that there’d be a bar as such, but a relaxing area where people could come in and order a drink while they look at the menu and wait for their table.’

Alan squinted before speaking, as if he was trying very hard to see merit where there was none. ‘It’d look pretty, son. But you do know what’s wrong with it, don’t you?’

Ben shook his head. If he knew, would it be on the bloody plan?

‘You don’t have room for it in a restaurant this size. You’d lose too many covers giving up this much footage. There’s room for another two tables at least here,’ he said, sketching out his vision with the tip of his finger. ‘And if people want a pre-dinner drink they can have it here, at their table.’ He tapped the paper hard three times with the tip of his index finger as if he was giving it and not Ben a good talking to. Ben, acutely aware of Jennifer’s silent presence as she went about her business, felt the colour rise to his cheeks.

His father was right of course, as he was in every damn thing. When was he going to give up this charade? Acting like he knew what he was doing when he didn’t; pretending that he loved this job that he loathed.

‘Now, you’ll be needing somewhere to live down here,’ went on Alan, who always talked as though he was ticking items off an agenda.

‘Yes, I was thinking about that,’ began Ben.

Alan, impatient as always, interrupted. ‘Well, you don’t need to. It’s all taken care of. I picked up a flat last time I was down here,’ he said, the way someone might comment that they’d picked up a loaf of bread on the way home. Looking very pleased with himself he added, ‘You’ll need to get it furnished but I’m assuming you can organise that yourself.’

When he saw the look on Ben’s face he added, ‘You’ve enough on your plate just now with splitting your time between The Lemon Tree and this place. I knew you wouldn’t have time to go house-hunting. This way, it’s one less thing for you to worry about.’

‘You rented a flat without consulting me?’ said Ben, infuriated but not taken by surprise. Was there anything his father trusted him to do?

‘Of course it’s not rented,’ he snorted. ‘Rent is a waste of money. When you’re done with it, we’ll lease it out. Ballyfergus has a strong rental market.’

‘I’ll just be off then,’ said Jennifer’s voice and Ben swung round to find her standing by the door with her things in her arms. ‘Can I take the mood board?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Ben went to get it and Jennifer said evenly, and without moving from her position at the door, ‘Goodbye, Mr Crawford. It was interesting meeting you.’

‘Yes, goodbye, Mrs Murray. It is missus, isn’t it?’

‘Actually no. It’s Ms. Murray’s my maiden name. I’m divorced.’

Ben, reaching down to grasp the mood board, felt his heart leap. He had to remind himself that, divorced or not, she might yet have a partner.

By contrast, Alan received this news impassively with a vacant nod, his face utterly still. When it mattered, he knew how to keep his thoughts to himself.

Jennifer walked out the door Ben held open for her, the mood board wedged under his left arm. Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving great puddles on the tarmac. Wordlessly they walked past Alan’s bright red Porsche, carelessly abandoned across two parking spaces, to her car. She opened the boot and he flung the board in on top of a jumble of wallpaper books, fabric samples and a pair of muddy green wellies.

‘Any chance I could get copies of those Calico plans?’ she said.

‘Sure. I’ll send them over.’

‘Oh. I haven’t given you my card. You’ll need the address.’ She put a hand inside her jacket, pulled out a small sheaf of business cards and handed one to him.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about my father.’

She paused for some long moments as if wrestling with something inside and then said, diplomatically, ‘You don’t have to apologise for your father. Ever.’ Clever, because it could mean two different things, if you thought about it. Then she opened the driver’s door, and regarded him thoughtfully, her eyes the colour of the chocolate velvet on the mood board. ‘I’ll be in touch early next week,’ she said brightly. ‘Have a good weekend, Ben.’

He went back inside where Alan, never one to quit until he knew he’d well and truly won, picked up the conversation where they’d left off. ‘The estate agent happened to mention the flat to me when I was down looking at this place,’ he explained. ‘It’s a high-quality new build and a good location within walking distance of here – and I got a good price. Nobody can resist a cash buyer in this climate.’ He grinned, delighted with himself.

Ben folded his arms. ‘It’s one thing overruling me on the bar area in the restaurant. I accept that you’re right about that. But the flat will be my home, not yours. I am capable of finding somewhere to live by myself.’

Alan shrugged, utterly indifferent to Ben’s objections.

‘Don’t you see my point, Dad? I’m a grown man and you bought my home without consulting me.’

‘Ach, stop moaning, Ben. I don’t see what I’ve done wrong. I didn’t buy it, the business did. And it’s not your permanent home – just somewhere to kip for a year or so,’ shrugged Alan. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about the flat if I was you, son. You’re hardly going to see the inside of the place. If you’re going to make a success of this restaurant, you’ll be working day and night down here.’ He paused, picked something off the sleeve of his jacket and fixed his eyes on Ben. ‘You’ll not have time for much else.’

Ben swallowed and said nothing, his heart filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. He looked around the dilapidated room and tried to dredge up some enthusiasm. But the prospect of running this place left his heart cold. He could not spend the rest of his life working for his father. But how could he tell that to him? He’d given him hope, a reason to go on, after all their hopes were lost that night.

Something bleeped in Alan’s coat pocket and he pulled out his mobile. ‘Ach, shite, that’ll be Cassie,’ he said referring to his new wife who, at forty-one, was twenty years his junior. He read the text message, and diamond cufflinks sparkled as he consulted the flashy Rolex on his wrist. ‘Bloody woman doesn’t give me a moment’s peace.’ Ben smiled and Alan said, grimly, ‘Wait till you’re married. You’ll know all about it.’

‘That’s not likely to happen any day soon,’ said Ben cheerfully, who’d come to see his break-up with Rebecca as a lucky escape.

‘Pity,’ said Alan.

Ben laughed outright at this. From what he could see, matrimonial bliss had eluded Alan. He was on to his third beautiful wife and, from where he was standing, none of his marriages had delivered up their promise of happiness.

‘What’re you laughing at?’ growled Alan.

‘Dad, come on. You’re hardly one to be dishing out advice about marriage.’

Alan speared him with his gaze, his eyes like lasers. ‘Maybe not. But you don’t want to leave it too late. Your mother tells me that you and Rebecca have split up.’

‘That’s right.’

He shook his head, sadly. ‘You need your head examined, Ben. You’ll not find a better looking girl anywhere. And what was wrong with the one before that? Emma, wasn’t it? She was a stunner too.’

Ben looked at his father in astonishment. If appearance was his criterion for a happy marriage, no wonder he’d gone so far wrong in its pursuit. ‘We weren’t suited, Dad.’

‘Well, they both seemed like very nice girls to me,’ he insisted obstinately. ‘By the time I was your age, you know, I was married. And by the time I was thirty, I had a kid on the way.’ At this, they both looked at the dust on the floor. The kid, safe then in his mother’s womb, was Ricky. The child that had broken all their hearts.

‘Steady on, Dad,’ said Ben, forcing a hollow laugh. He held up the palm of his hand to his father. ‘Marriage. Babies. What’s brought all this on?’

Hell bent on his own agenda, it seemed Alan didn’t even hear the question. ‘You’ve got to find the girl and get married before you even think about having children. You don’t want one of these high-flying career women. And don’t be getting some wee girl up the spout.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Ben.

‘No, listen, son,’ said Alan, and there was no mistaking the earnestness in his voice now, as he finally honed in on the crux of the matter. ‘You should be thinking about your future. Your children will be heirs to the entire Crawford fortune. And you want them to be legitimate.’

Ben took a step back, reeling from this burst of insight as if it were a physical blow or a mighty explosion in his face. It had never occurred to him until this moment that, as Alan’s only surviving child, his children would be absolutely crucial to Alan’s dreams. He wasn’t running a business – he was building a dynasty. Without grandchildren, there was no future.

‘What if I don’t want kids?’ Ben blurted out.

‘Don’t be stupid. When you get to a certain age, everyone wants kids,’ he said in a voice that brooked no opposition. ‘And everyone wants grandchildren.’

I don’t, he wanted to scream. But he simply stared, struck momentarily mute by this awful understanding.

‘So, this Jennifer Murray,’ said Alan lightly, and he glanced slyly at Ben with those beady eyes that missed nothing. ‘What made you hire her?’

‘Jennifer?’ said Ben stupidly. What had Jennifer got to do with a discussion about grandchildren and heirs? ‘Because I think she can do a good job.’ Unintentionally, his inflexion rose at the end of the sentence, making it sound more like a question than a statement.

‘I see. So how did you find out about her?’

‘I hired her son, Matt, first and he introduced us. When I heard Calico were going under, I asked her if she was interested.’

‘Sounds like you did them both a big favour, Ben,’ he observed quietly, talking in the measured way he reserved for occasions when he was particularly irked by something. ‘I hope I’m wrong. I hope that your motives were purely professional.’

He opened his mouth to tell his father otherwise but Alan, with words as precise as the swift, ruthless cut of a chef’s knife, silenced him.

‘She’s a pretty woman, Ben, I’ll grant you that. And I can see the attraction,’ he said, as if piling Jennifer’s positive attributes, like recipe ingredients, on one side of a pair of old-fashioned scales. ‘But she has grown-up children, son.’ He fixed Ben with a hard stare, lowered his voice. And then he tipped the scales against Jennifer, in his mind anyway, with the heavy weight of the truth.

‘Her child-bearing years are over.’

Chapter 7

David drove Lucy back to Belfast on Sunday night despite her protestations that a bit of rain wouldn’t hurt. It was mid-September now and the weather had taken a sudden autumnal turn. The temperature had plummeted and the rain battered the car in wind-buffeted sheets.

‘So how did things go between you and your mother this weekend?’ asked Dad, both hands coiled lightly around the steering wheel as if taking his driving test for the first time.

‘Good,’ said Lucy, thinking guiltily of the bag in the boot full of laundered clothes (a peace offering from her mother) and further supplies of canned goods. The weekend had passed off peaceably, but it had left Lucy with a sour taste in her mouth. While she had succeeded in extracting money from her father, the victory had come at a price. Things between her and Mum were quietly strained, even more so than usual. Neither had mentioned the quarrel of the previous week, but Mum didn’t need to say a word for Lucy to know exactly what she thought. Her thin lips and toneless civility conveyed more disappointment than any words could. Once, when watching TV, she’d caught her mother staring at her so sadly, she had to get up and leave the room.

‘No more arguments over money then?’ said Dad, as he pulled into the outside lane, feeding the steering wheel through his hands like a rigid, circular rope. He glanced over and smiled conspiratorially. Lucy returned the complicit smile he expected, but she felt bad. She knew in her heart that winning didn’t make it right. At first, she’d been filled with rage by her mother’s refusal to give her more money. But later she’d thought, with grudging respect, that her mother had been right.

‘No, money wasn’t mentioned,’ she said, hiding her shame by staring out the window at the watery view of floodlit, low-rise industrial buildings backing onto the motorway. Some were clothed in bright graffiti, the talented handiwork of kids who should’ve gone to art college but never got the chance.

After the fallout with Mum the week before, Dad had been like putty in her hands. Through tears, with nothing left to lose, she’d confessed how much money she needed. And to her surprise, he’d pressed a big wad of crisp twenty pound notes into her palm. He did not ask a single question, so pleased was he to gain the upper moral hand, as he saw it, on Mum. As she’d closed her fingers over the money, the feeling of relief was so intense, she’d thrown her arms around his neck and sobbed once more.

‘Now you just let me know any time you’re short, love,’ said Dad, bringing her back to the present. ‘University should be the best time of your life. I don’t want you to be worrying about money. Or missing out.’

‘Thanks.’ Dad had always been greatly concerned that Lucy didn’t ‘miss out’. What he actually meant was ‘I will give you whatever it takes for you to fit in.’ He’d pushed her to do ballet and drama classes because that’s what the other, pretty girls in her class did. As a teenager, he made sure she had the trendiest fashions and the latest gadgets (You want to be cool, don’t you?). He’d nagged Mum into taking her to the best hairdressers in Belfast, in the failed hope that they could do something presentable with her thin, greasy hair. And he quizzed her about her social life, wanting to know where ‘all the kids hung out’ and who ‘her mates’ were. To please him, she’d talked about the popular girls at school as if they were her friends. Sometimes she was tolerated on the fringes of this ‘in crowd’; more often than not, told to get lost, or worse. It must’ve been clear to her father from a very early age that she was different. But, terrier-like, he persisted in his mission to transform her from ugly duckling into swan. He was a conformist.

The car accelerated away from the lights at York Street, joining the two-lane Westlink that skirted the city centre and connected eventually with the M1 on the south side of the city. ‘So how’s the studying going?’ said Dad.

‘Great,’ she lied.

‘You’re a bright girl, Lucy,’ Dad said confidently. He had never so much as brushed shoulders with self-doubt. ‘If you put in the work, you’ll be fine.’

Lucy gnawed the nail, already bitten down to the quick, on her right thumb. She’d lied about her first-year results. Mum and Dad were under the impression that she was on track for a two-one, maybe even a first. But the way things were going, she’d be lucky to graduate with a third, or worse. And there was always the awful possibility that she’d flunk altogether.

In choosing Applied Mathematics and Physics, she’d thought she was making a logical choice. In a world where popularity was decided on something as capricious as appearance (and a whole shed-load of other, shifting criteria, too subtle for Lucy to comprehend) maths was a solid bedrock of evolving logic and reasoning. She buried herself in numbers that appeared to deliver unequivocal answers.

But her judgement had proved flawed. Now in second year, she struggled to keep up, and the more she studied maths the more she came to realise that it didn’t have all the answers. It was no less fickle than the friendship of her peers. No amount of calculus or geometry could answer the questions that preoccupied her mind, nor ease the iron grip of isolation.

Driving south, they crossed the junctions at Divis Street, where the road widened out to three lanes. Not long now. Lucy felt the muscles in her stomach tighten. Dad rested his elbow awkwardly on the narrow sill and asked, ‘So, any boyfriends in the picture, Lucy?’

Lucy jolted and looked at him in astonishment. Did he know her at all? Was he blind? No man – or boy – had ever so much as looked at her. ‘No.’

‘Oh, come on, there must be someone,’ he teased.

‘Honestly Dad, there’s not,’ she said firmly and folded her arms across her chest.

He glanced over and said chirpily, as if her single status was something she actually had control over, ‘No, you’re quite right. You don’t want to be tying yourself down just yet. Plenty of time for settling down later. Meanwhile just enjoy being young, free and single.’ He grinned happily, content in the knowledge that Lucy was having the time of her life at uni. She couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in his face if she owned up to being what she was – a social outcast, a freak.

At the Broadway roundabout they turned onto Glenmachan Street, eventually joining the Lisburn Road heading north, back towards the city centre. They were almost there. Lucy put a hand on her stomach, hard as a nut, and took a deep breath to quell the nausea.

On Eglantine Avenue she racked her brains for a way to get into the house without him coming too. Too soon, they turned into Wellington Park Avenue, lined on both sides with gardenless Victorian terraced houses. Dad pulled up outside a red-brick house with bay windows on the ground and first floor – and peeling white paint on the windowsills. Lights blazed in every window. Her heart sank – everyone must be back already.

‘Here we are then.’ Dad turned off the engine and took the key out of the ignition.

Lucy quickly unclipped her seat belt and cracked open the car door. ‘Oh, don’t bother getting out, Dad. There’s no need for both of us to get wet, is there?’

He gave her an indulgent smile and, completely ignoring her, put his hand on the door handle. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lucy. Your bag weighs a tonne. I’ll carry it in for you.’

He got out of the car to open the boot and Lucy had no choice but to follow him. While he’d seen the house, she’d so far managed to avoid him meeting her housemates.

When he ran up the path with the bag she grasped its handle and tried to wrench it out of his hand. ‘I can take it from here, Dad,’ she said firmly but he simply pushed past her with, ‘Don’t be silly, Lucy. Let’s get out of this awful rain.’

She stumbled into the hall and watched in horror as he dumped her bag on the sticky floor – she was the only one who ever cleaned anything in the house – and headed straight for the lounge from which pounding music, and the sound of female voices, issued forth.

‘No!’ she cried out, desperately. ‘Don’t leave my bag there. It’s in the way. Let’s take it upstairs.’

But though he must’ve heard her, he paid no heed. He disappeared into the lounge. She crept to the door, moving silently like a cat, and peered into the room. Four of them were there, in the process of preparing to go out, competing sounds blaring from someone’s iPod docking station and the TV. Fran was putting make-up on in front of a magnifying mirror balanced on top of the slate mantelpiece, the only original feature left in the house after its butchery of a conversion. Vicky, swaying her hips to the music, held a pair of hair straighteners in her hand. Bernie knelt in front of the coffee table, measuring Tesco Value vodka into a pint glass. A rag bag assortment of glasses, made cloudy by too many cycles in the dishwasher without dishwashing tablets, salt or rinse aid, littered the dusty coffee table, along with a carton of cranberry juice. The girls never went out without getting pole-axed first.

They all stared when Dad, looking like a lecturer in fine brown cords and an open-necked checked flannel shirt, appeared in their midst. His hands were shoved into his trouser pockets, his arms holding back the tails of the suit jacket he wore over everything.

‘Hi,’ he said, raising his big hand in a friendly greeting. Then, realising they could not hear him over the din, he shouted. ‘I’m David. Lucy’s Dad.’

Someone turned the music off and Bernie, blonde hair tied up haphazardly on top of her head like an untidy nest, got off her knees and said, all friendly like, ‘Hi ya. What about ye?’ No one touched the TV control so the rest of the conversation took place against the sound of Dancing on Ice.