Lunching at Laura's Read online

  He had to stop himself then; letting his imagination run away was no way to make a good documentary. It was fact he was after, not sentimental surmise, he told himself sternly. Look honestly at what you’re seeing; don’t fantasise. And he did and saw that this was by no means a place where poor people scratched inadequate livings. These stall holders were prosperous and sleek, and taking and making a good deal of money, he decided, and their customers were anything but poverty stricken.

  Stall after stall was piled high with exotic and often expensive fruits and vegetables; richly golden pineapples jostled elegant layered green artichokes, lychees and rosy plums and passion fruit and Chinese gooseberries sat side by side with crumpled walnuts and glossy pecans, hazels and almonds, and everywhere tomatoes and onions and peppers, carrots and turnips and great green cabbages spilled their colour into the narrow grey street.

  And as if that wasn’t stimulation for the senses, the scents of them all tumbled around in the air to assault his nose with excitement; the sharp tang of lemons and the sweeter richness of oranges, the bite of spring onions and garlic mixed with the oily reek of car engines and the heavy flowery scents of the women shoppers who were sauntering from stall to stall, teetering on their high heels and dickering, beady eyed with suspicion, with the stall keepers as they filled their bags with food. Money flashed and tinkled into the capacious leather bags many of the stallholders kept firmly at their sides and everywhere there was a sense of busy self-satisfaction. Berwick Street was doing what it generally did so well – moving money and goods from one person to another very briskly indeed.

  He lingered by a stall where the display was particularly elegant; fruit had been piled in geometric structures with screws of blue tissue paper between each red apple, and sprigs of plastic grass had been arranged perkily between the rows of oranges, while the whole was fronted by a sheet of artificial grass of an unbelievable green. The stall holder, a good looking man with his hair cut flat across the top of his head to give him the fashionable aggressive look was tumbling apples into a bag from the back of the stall for a fur-coated woman who was standing alongside Joel.

  ‘Not those,’ she said sharply, standing on her toes to peer over the display. ‘I want these –’ and she pointed to the apples in the front. ‘None of your bruised rubbish from the back for me, thank you very much.’

  At once the man threw the apples out of the bag back on to the stall and folded his arms. ‘Lady, I don’t pull down my display for no one. The stuff at the back here’s the same as the stuff at the front. You take it or leave it –’

  ‘Then I’ll jolly well leave it,’ she said loudly and turned and went and the stallholder shouted after her, ‘Gawdelpus, lady, wouldn’t like to be your old man! What d’you feed ’im on? Rice?’ And he guffawed loudly and a couple of the stall holders across the narrow street joined in his catcalling and whooped loudly after the woman who was stamping furiously away across the littered tarmac, clearly mortified with embarrassment.

  ‘That’ll show ’er,’ the stall holder said with great satisfaction. ‘That one – comes down ’ere from bleedin’ Mayfair, togged up like a tart on the toot, dickers to the last ’a’penny and then grizzles if you don’t give ’er the best you got. ’Igh time she was sent on ’er way. Right, Guv, what can I do yer?’

  ‘I’ll have some of those strawberries,’ Joel said. ‘Strawberries in February – where do they come from?’

  ‘Not South Africa,’ the man said promptly. ‘You a Jew or an Arab?’

  ‘Neither,’ Joel said, startled.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ the man said cheerfully and thrust the brown paper bag with its punnet of scarlet berries at him. ’Then I can tell yer the truth; Brentford Market, mate, that’s where they’re from. If you’d ‘a’ bin a Jew, I’d ‘a’ said they was Israeli, if you’d ‘a’ bin an Arab I’d ‘a’ said they was Tunisian – they’ll believe anythin’, they will – an’ – if you’d bin anyone else I’d ‘a’ said the South of France. Bleedin’ politics – what’s they got to do with what you puts in your belly, I ask yer?’

  ‘Do people worry a lot about politics when they buy from you?’

  ‘An’ the rest! That’ll be eighty pence mate – ta – yeah, they go on an’ on about it. There’s them as won’t buy Spanish on account of it used to be Fascist and them as won’t buy Greek on account of – I forget what on account of – and them as won’t buy Californian on account of the grape pickers. Me, I’ll sell anything, on account o’ meself. Anythin’ else, guv?’

  ‘How long have you been running this stall?’ Joel had picked out one of the strawberries and started to eat it. It didn’t taste of anything very much, but it was cool and pleasant on his tongue.

  ‘Since the old man ’anded in ’is lunch pail,’ the man said. ‘Last ten years, on me own. What’s to do with you?’

  ‘I’m – I’m interested in local history. The way families keep businesses going. That sort of thing. Did your father start the stall?’

  ‘Nah –’ the man said cheerfully. ’’E got it from ’is dad, and ’is ’ad it before ’im – yes, lady. What’ll it be, then? Seventy pence a pahnd, lady, and worth twice that. Go lovely they will with a nice bit of lamb – fresh in this morning, flown special from the fields o’ France.’ And he winked at Joel as he served the woman who had joined them.

  Joel lingered, eating his strawberries because that was easier than carrying the bag away with him, and watched as the man served several more customers, and then blinked as, when the last one went, the man said to him belligerently, ‘Well? What else d’you want? You got somethin’ to buy, then buy it. Otherwise don’t go cluttering up my displays.’

  ‘Sorry if I’m bothering you,’ Joel said. ‘It was just general interest – I meant no harm.’

  ‘You bleedin’ tourists – never do mean no ’arm.’ The man turned his head and spat neatly into the gutter. ’But you don’t ’arf clutter the place up. All right for you Americans, but some of us got to earn a livin’ in this town.’

  ‘Canadian,’ Joel said and smiled at him. ‘And actually I’m not a tourist – I work here. That is why I’m researching local history. It’s part of my job –’

  The man looked blank suddenly, every bit of animation leaving his face. ‘Oh, yes?’ he said woodenly. ‘Then I hope you get all you want. Good afternoon sir.’ And he turned his back with some ostentation and started to fiddle with a box of fruits behind him.

  Damn, Joel thought. I’ve sent him to earth. I’ll have to press the usual button. ‘I’m a television director. Doing research for a film,’ he said, and at once the man turned back and looked at him and then beamed.

  Jesus, but it was depressing the way that bloody television opened every door and crumbled every defence. You ought to be more wary, not less, he wanted to shout at the man. You ought to withdraw even further into your shell, because television people are a bloody sight more dangerous than the tax man or the police or whoever else it was you thought I represented. If I were unscrupulous I could destroy you with a camera and a half hour in an editing channel. But he just smiled and said, ‘I hope you can help.’

  ‘Anything you need, squire, I’m the geezer for you,’ the man said and lifted his chin and shouted across the street, ‘Watch it, you lot! This week I’m Sam Price, apple king of Berwick Street and surrounding parts, next week I’m Sammywell Price o’ Dynasty – television ’ere I come!’

  ‘That’ll be the bleedin’ day,’ one of them called back, while another set one hand behind his head in an exaggerated model’s posture and the other on his hip and minced up and down in front of his heaps of potatoes and onions and cried in a high piping voice. ‘Oh, Mr. Producer, can you make me a star too?’

  At first Joel was irritated, feeling he’d do better talking to Price on his own but then as several more of the stallholders came wandering over through the few customers in the street, for it was the time of lull before the home going office workers descended to collect
their shopping for their evening meals, he changed his mind. The more people he talked to the more likely he was to get the sort of facts he needed, and he squashed the now empty strawberry punnet inside its paper bag and tossed them among the rest of the garbage in the gutter, and put his hands back in his pockets.

  ‘Right, mister, what is it you want? I don’t do no naked scenes,’ Price said and winked at his now sizeable circle of friends who were listening with broad grins on their faces.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ Joel said easily. ‘I was hoping for a bit of that. Brings in the customers a treat.’ He grinned round at them all and then reached into his breast pocket for his small notebook and a pencil. ‘Still we can’t have everything.’

  ‘Mind you, it’s amazing what that Sam’ll do for money,’ one of the others said. ‘Offer ’im a dollar, mister, see what you get.’

  ‘A sight that’ll send the customers screaming,’ someone said and there was a general laugh. Joel was feeling better by the moment. They were a friendly crowd who clearly all knew each other well, and might well have at their fingers’ ends just the sort of information he needed.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ he said. ‘I want to do a documentary about Soho. The people who work and live here – but not just the ones like you who are here today. It’s the ones who had fathers and even grandfathers who were part of the place.’

  ‘Won’t mothers do?’ one of the men said. ‘There’s more than a few of us only ever had mothers. We was too poor to have fathers.’ And there was another general laugh.

  ‘Uncles, aunts or cousins,’ Joel said promptly. ‘It’s history I’m interested in. Who came here from where, how the district grew, how it changed people –’

  ‘I could tell you some tales,’ one man said. He was standing leaning against the pole that supported the stall beside them, and Joel looked at him. He was a small man with a face as wrinkled as the walnuts piled behind him and was wearing a large flat cap pushed back on his head. He looked as though he was never within doors, he was so tanned and leathered. He could be any age, Joel decided. Fifty? Sixty? More?

  ‘Seventy-three years I bin livin’ ’ere,’ the man said obligingly as though he had heard the thought. ’And my old dad, ’e was the same as me – stayed young and lovely.’ And he cackled, revealing a mouth quite innocent of any teeth. ‘Died young ’e did. Only eighty-seven.’ And he shook his head with great melancholy while his little black eyes glittered with laughter and Joel picked up the cue and shook his head even more sadly.

  ‘Terrible, terrible,’ he said. ‘A man in his prime. How about your grandfather?’

  ‘Well, o’ course, ’e was a sensible man. Kept all the old ways, didn’t ’e? Drank a bottle of wine a day all his life and smoked all ’e could get ’is ’ands on and never let the priest get near ’im till ’e passed ninety-five. Now that’s what I call sensible. Doing my best, I am, to follow in the old man’s footsteps. It’s like a duty, ain’t it?’ And again he laughed and winked and the other men laughed too.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Joel asked.

  ‘Vittorio Bonner,’ the old man said. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’ Joel held out his hand to be shaken. ‘Joel Coplin.’

  ‘Glad to meet you,’ the old man said and someone on the other side said, ‘Coplin? Used to be a family called Coplin over at Frith Street. My old dad’s auntie, she was a Coplin. Married one of ’em.’

  ‘Bookshop?’ Joel said as casually as he could.

  ‘Can’t remember that,’ the man said, and frowned and Vittorio Bonner pushed forwards, clearly annoyed that someone else had taken the attention away from himself.

  ‘Not really a bookshop it wasn’t,’ he said. ‘More a sort of magazine place. That and papers and odds and ends. I knew ’em. Shut up and went away they did, years ago – before the war, I think. Or not long after.’

  ‘Nice people?’ Joel asked, working even harder at being casual.

  ‘Not as nice as us Bonners,’ the old man said and cackled and Sam Price, who had moved away to serve a customer, now came back and shouted at him, ‘Your lot, mate? Biggest bleedin’ thieves unhung they was, and well you know it.’

  ‘Yeah, but nice,’ the old man said and grinned again at Joel.

  ‘Now, my family,’ Sam Price said. ‘They really was a right bunch of villains. Cut your throat for fourpence and hang you out to dry for another ’a’penny. Wicked, dead wicked.’ He sounded proud.

  ‘So, listen, these Coplins – they anything to do with you?’ the man who had claimed a Coplin aunt said. ‘It’s not that common a name I don’t suppose. Plenty of Caplans around, but Coplins, that’s different.’

  ‘My parents emigrated to Canada from here forty years ago,’ Joel said carefully.

  Vittorio Bonner nodded. ‘Then that makes it after the war they went,’ he said in a matter of fact way. ’Told you, didn’t I? Daft, really. Should ‘a gone before, if they’d had any sense,’ and again he laughed, opening that black hole of a mouth unappetisingly, and went back to his stall over the road at which a customer had halted.

  The other men had begun to drift away too and Joel said with a sudden surge of anxiety. ‘Doesn’t it surprise you, then? That my family came from here and here I am all this time later?’

  Sam Price shrugged. ‘Happens all the time, mate. So all that about a television documentary was flannel then? You ain’t doing no research for the television? You could have said you was lookin’ for your people. We get used to it. You Americans do it all the time, come looking for your roots and that.’

  ‘Canadian,’ Joel said and then shook his head. ‘You’re wrong. I didn’t come here on my own account. I am making a programme.’ Liar, he thought. Liar. Who are you trying to deceive? ‘I’m with City Television. It’s just – it’s only a coincidence my own family being –’ He stopped because again Price was more interested in his customers than in him and after a moment he put his notebook back in his pocket and turned and went, moving dispiritedly up the market towards the Shaftesbury Avenue end. He’d buggered that up good and proper. No one would help him now; he was just another inept tourist making a pest of himself. He’d have to find another way to get his research started. Spend the evening at his desk in his small flat in Holloway making a plan, properly. To just wander around talking to people in this vague fashion was daft. He’d have to be much better organised than that.

  He had almost reached the end of the market when he heard the footsteps thudding behind him; and he turned to see the man who had told him about his Coplin aunt.

  ‘Ere, Mr. Coplin!’ he called and stopped puffing at Joel’s side. ‘You straight about this television programme you’re doing?’

  ‘Straight up,’ Joel said.

  ‘An’ if we ‘elps, you’ll put us in your programme?’

  ‘I’ll try to,’ Joel said cautiously. ‘Can’t promise of course –’

  ‘Good for business, you see. I reckon anything that brings people in has to be good for all of us. Daft, people are. Just say television to them and they all go on like bloody dogs, the way their tongues hang out, pant, pant,’ and graphically he mimed an eager dog, his tongue lolling from his mouth and his hands held drooping at shoulder height. Joel grinned. This man was so vivid and so excitingly alive it was impossible not to find pleasure in his company.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I get uptight about it, the way people behave when I say I’m a television director. As though –’ He shrugged.

  ‘Yeah. As though you was magic. Well, you needn’t worry about me. I don’t get excited about nothing but Arsenal. But anything what’s good for business is good for me. Listen, you want to know about the Coplins, you ought to talk to old Mucky.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mucky,’ the man said and turned to go back to his stall, and called back over his shoulder. ‘Bosquet, his name is. Got a tobacconist’s in little Vinegar Yard. His lot was friends of your lot, as I recall. You ask him.’

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  ‘What happened?’ the old man said, and stood beside the bed staring down at the face on the pillow. It was a crumpled old face seeming to glow with a look of health in the soft light from the light over the bed, which was swathed in a pink cloth. But the eyes were half open, showing a rim of milky blue iris and the mouth hung lax as the breath moved noisily between the parted lips. It was a very sick face, in spite of the pinkness.

  The old man looked away, up at the brass plate over the bed which read ‘In Memoriam, Annie Zunz’ and studied it as though it was of greater importance. ‘What happened?’ he said again.

  The man sitting beside the bed shrugged, his shoulders, elegant in handsome grey Prince of Wales checks, moving with an air of distaste. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was out trying to do some buying, left him to keep an eye on the shop. When I came back – a couple of hours, no more – I couldn’t find him. Then I looked behind the counter and there he was –’

  He looked gloomily at the face on the pillow and his own face seemed unnaturally smooth in contrast. ‘Doctor said it was a stroke.’

  ‘Terrible thing,’ the old man said. ‘Terrible.’

  There was a little silence and then they both moved, like startled children, awkward and stiff, as a nurse came importantly through the screens. She ignored them both and went to the bed, and with a quick twist of one hand pulled aside the pink cloth over the light. They could see the pillowed face more clearly now, and it no longer looked healthy. The skin was yellowish and parchmenty and the eyes looked even more dead than they had under the pink glow. The younger man shifted his feet and turned away, but now the old man seemed less anxious and better able to look.