Lunching at Laura's Read online

  So, they had eaten at the flat, Philip making dinner (he was an indifferent cook, and the steaks were tough and the spinach salad gritty but that didn’t matter in the least) and then sitting silently and contentedly twined on the small sofa, listening to Radio Three. The fact that they had so much time seemed to make them less eager for each other. There was none of the desperate grappling and hunger that had been so essential a part of their first lovemaking, the night after the Barbican concert, when he had taken her home to the flat and stayed until two in the morning. Last night they had been tranquil and quiet and gone to bed as offhandedly and contentedly as a long married pair. She had slipped into his arms with none of the shyness that had so bedevilled her on the three previous occasions they had been together and had lain curled up with him for a long time before, at last, gently and very slowly, he had begun to caress her.

  Now, standing against the door staring wide eyed and unseeing at Mucky’s shop across the way, she remembered that touch and her skin moved under her summer dress and her belly ached with desire. She had to take a deep breath to make the tide that had lifted in her sink down again and she smiled at Mucky’s shop, her wide eyes watching the way she had, last night, responded to Philip, almost feeling again the great glorious ending of it all when she had thought, just for a moment, that she was going to lose all awareness of who or what she was, and would for ever exist only as a sensation of such intense pleasure that it was agony.

  Joel, coming out of Mucky’s dim shop to stand blinking in the vivid sunlight, caught sight of her, a curving shape in a yellow dress with sturdy brown legs in ivory sandals and a smile on her face so wide and warm that it lifted his mood at once and he smiled back and came straight over to her.

  ‘Hello,’ he said and stood there waiting for the smile to widen even more, if that were possible. But she just stared at him, still with those glittering eyes, very dark beneath her curly hair, and then, slowly the glitter faded and the smile went too, gradually and yet so obviously that he thought absurdly, she’s a Cheshire cat –

  ‘Oh!’ she said blankly. ‘Er – Good morning.’

  ‘I remember now,’ he said and tried his own smile again, wanting to bring back to her face the look that had pulled him so sharply across the Yard. ‘You’re – Laura. I came here for lunch with City Television a few weeks ago, and I was introduced. I hope you remember, though there’s no reason why you should.’

  Her smile was quite gone now. She looked cool and business-like and her eyes had lost their darkness. They were just pleasant green eyes that looked at him with no more than polite interest.

  ‘A great many people come here for lunch. Forgive me if I don’t exactly recall –’

  ‘There’s no reason why you should,’ he said again. ‘It was a busy day, I remember. There were private parties going on all over the place.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she said then and now seemed for the first time to be giving him all her attention. ‘City – you all came on the same day as Anya Zsuzske’s birthday party. A busy day – I’d have remembered you otherwise. Did you want something? I’m afraid we’re already fully booked for lunch today –’

  ‘Oh, I’m not nearly important enough to come here for lunch,’ he said with a mocking note in his voice. He wanted to irritate her now. She had smiled at him with so much warmth and excitement that she had lifted his spirits wonderfully and now was treating him like some boring passer-by, and that rankled. ‘I’ve been warned that only the elite come to you.’

  She lifted her brows. ‘Hardly the elite. Just my regulars. But we usually manage to find room for people who want to try us. Perhaps for dinner one evening?’ She turned as though to go back into the restaurant, to her desk.

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I can’t make any such plans at the moment. Actually –’ He too had turned to leave and then came back. To be annoyed with her was really silly. He’d imagined that blazing smile or else had imagined it was aimed at him. And, he remembered now, he had other reasons to want to talk to her.

  ‘Actually, I’d love to some time. Not in the immediate future, though. I’m working on a project, you see, and it’s taking rather a lot of time.’

  ‘Oh?’ She looked over his shoulder towards the entry to the Yard that led out to the Dog and Duck side, and then at her wristwatch. The floor behind her was dry, and it was time to get the polish on, so that it would be finished in time for getting the tables ready for lunch.

  ‘Mmm. I’m doing a – oh, a sort of social history. I want to know what it was like for families living and growing and developing in this area, over the last hundred years or so. Families like yours.’

  She looked directly at him now and there was a thin line between her brows. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Dammit, why does everyone look so suspicious when I say that?’ he said angrily, letting his earlier irritation at her return, and mix with the dispirited way he’d been feeling when he’d come out of Mucky’s shop. ‘All I want to do is make a good film, and the way everyone reacts you’d think I was some sort of detective and everyone had a guilty secret to hide! Have you got a guilty secret?’

  ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said coolly and stepped aside to go round him. ‘And if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and find my workmen. It’s getting late –’

  ‘No, please – let me explain.’ He put his hand on her arm and she looked down at it, and then with a very deliberate movement of distaste pulled herself away.

  ‘I don’t think there is anything to explain,’ she said frostily and stepped forwards just as the three workmen came in through the archway, laughing and gossiping. She looked at them and called brusquely, ‘Joe! It’s high time you got this job finished! It’s ten o’clock and we’ve got a full list of bookings getting here in under three hours. Please, let’s have some speed on it –’

  ‘Now, come on, Miss Horvath! When did we ever let you down? Been doin’ your floors this past ten years and gone, and never once done ’em anything but perfect. And quick. Come on, you two idle buggers – get on with it –’ And he winked at Laura and Joel and pushed his men past them into the restaurant.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was offensive,’ Joel said, not enjoying having to apologise but knowing he had to, if he was to carry his researches any further. It was getting more and more important that he did. ‘My name’s Joel Coplin. Does that mean anything to you?’

  She looked at him, her brows raised again in that slightly supercilious way. ‘Should it?’

  ‘I’d hoped so. My great grandfather was a friend of your family’s. Or so Mr. Bosquet says.’

  ‘Who?’ She seemed startled.

  ‘Over there,’ Joel jerked his head. ‘The old man in the tobacconist’s. Mr. Bosquet.’

  She smiled at last, and though it wasn’t as it had been when he’d first seen her from the doorway it was at least friendly. ‘Oh, Mucky! D’you know, I forgot that was his name. Isn’t it ridiculous? Known him all my life and only ever called him Mucky. Like everyone else.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Mucky. He’s the cleanest and most dapper old man I’ve ever met. It’s been a long time since anyone wore spats, but there he is, and a suede waistcoat too, the whole shebang.’

  ‘What else would you call someone like that?’ she said with great reasonableness and again the smile lifted her round face. ‘As far as I know he’s never been called anything else, except by his own family. And even they say Mucky sometimes. Simmy does.’

  ‘Simmy?’ Joel said hopefully, knowing who he was, but hoping to make her relax even more and forget her earlier suspicion of him completely. But she became cautious again and shook her head.

  ‘Forgive me, but I really have a lot to do, Mr. Coplin, you say?’ She had gone in through the door but now came out again and looked at him with her lips pursed. ‘Coplin –’ she said again in a considering voice.

  ‘Alleluja. You’ve remembered,’ he said. />
  ‘Not really. But I do know my grandfather had a friend – what did you say your grandfather’s first name was?’

  ‘I didn’t. My father’s name was Samuel and my grandfather was David.’

  She pushed her lower lip out even further and thought, and then shook her head. ‘No, sorry. I thought for a moment – but no.’

  ‘My great grandfather was Abner. Mr. Bo – Mucky remembers him. He said he thought you might. Not remember him yourself, of course. You’re much too young. But you might remember that he was a friend of your family. Istvan, Mucky said. That was the one my great grandfather knew.’

  ‘Uncle Istvan,’ she said and her face changed and settled into heavier lines. Joel remembered a phrase he’d come across in a historical novel and liked; ‘she has a speaking countenance,’ he thought.

  But then her face smoothed, and she said politely, ‘Yes. My Uncle Istvan had a great many old friends. He’d spend hours sitting there with them. In the corner –’ And she turned her head and looked into the restaurant where the three men were busily at work on the floor, making it shine a rich ruby red. ‘But I can’t remember them all. Though the name Abner – it’s an unusual one. And perhaps –’ But then she shook her head decisively. ‘Really, you must forgive me. I’ve got a lot of work to do and though it would be nice to stand and talk to you –’

  ‘Entrancing though it is to wander through a garden of bright images are we not enticing our minds from another subject of almost equal importance?’ Joel said with an edge to his voice and she lifted her hands and clapped them together like a child.

  ‘Kai Lung!’ she cried. ‘Oh, do you like them too? Aren’t they the best books in the world?’

  He had turned to go, feeling defeated, but now whirled back to stare at her. ‘You too? I thought everyone but me had forgotten them.’

  ‘Not me! I loved them – read all of them when I was a child. I’ve still got them all. The Wallet of Kai Lung, and Kai Lung’s Golden Hours and Kai Lung Unrolls his Mat and –’

  ‘I’ve still got mine. I brought them with me. Left a lot of books in Canada of course, but those I brought –’

  ‘But I thought you said – your grandfather was a friend of my family? I don’t remember anyone from Canada.’

  ‘They went there after the war. My parents. I was born there.’

  ‘That explains the accent.’

  ‘Oh. What did you think it meant?’

  She paused and then said with a little rush, ‘I thought it might have been a pose.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, there are so many of them. Busy chaps trying to raise money for films all talking big about the stars and millions of dollars, and sitting here counting up the bill and praying they can manage it – they usually have phoney American accents of that sort. I get rather used to them.’

  ‘That’s me put in my place,’ he said trying to look amused but finding it a little difficult. He was accustomed to the way people outside the television business sneered at it, even while they were fascinated by it, but this was a new insult.

  She reddened, clearly aware suddenly of how rude she had sounded. ‘Look, I mean no harm. It was just – anyway, what can I do for you? Not now. I really must leave this garden of bright images –’ The smile flickered over her face again. ‘But perhaps if you wanted to come back –’

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘Look, let me lay it on the line, as we television people say. I want to make a film about Soho and I thought I’d use the families which have been here for ever as the plot of the story. My own – I can’t get much help from them, because they’re all dead. My parents, I mean.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said and without thinking put out her hand to touch his arm. ‘That’s awful. People think it doesn’t matter once you’re an adult, but it does, doesn’t it? I miss mine dreadfully. My parents died in the same year. Only two or three years ago. I still miss them.’

  ‘My father died when I was seven, so I can’t pretend I miss him. But Ma died last year and I do miss her. Like the very devil. I feel rather a fool for that.’

  ‘Don’t. For my part, I think people who love their families are much nicer than the other sort. The modern ones who don’t care tuppence for anyone but themselves.’

  ‘That’s very kind.’ He smiled at her and she seemed to become aware of her hand on his arm for the first time and pulled it away.

  ‘So you want to talk to me about my family?’ she said after a moment. ‘For your film?’

  ‘Yes, please. And not just for that, though it is important. Work’s always important. But it’s not the only thing.’ He lifted his chin and looked round the Yard, at the little huddle of buildings pressing down on the small sunlit square in which they were standing and the grey bricks of the walls and the glittering windows with their splash of daffodils, and shook his head. ‘It’s for me too. I’m not sure sometimes who I am. Or what I am.’ He looked back at her. ‘That sounds stupid, but – it’s just working in television. It makes you feel shaky. It’s not pinned to anything, you see. It’s just images. Nothing real.’

  ‘I sometimes think it’s only images that are real. What happens inside my own head is sometimes much better, much more real, than what happens outside me.’ She was leaning against the door jamb again, apparently quite free of her earlier anxiety to get back to work.

  ‘Oh, yes. What happens in your own head – I quite agree! But television doesn’t happen inside your own head, does it? It happens in someone else’s and then gets shoved into yours. It’s an assault, in a way –’ He stopped and smiled down at her, a little shy suddenly. ‘I was just trying to say that I feel the need to sort out who I am. What I came from, you know? That’s why I’m doing more than just research for a programme. I’m doing research for me.’

  ‘Looking for your roots?’

  There was no hint of mockery in her voice but he felt embarrassed at the corniness of what he had said and that made him a little brusque. ‘Not at all. I’m just interested, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said mildly. ‘Needing to look for roots. I never left mine. They’re still here, but I know what you mean all the same. I sometimes think it’d be good to go to Hungary, find the village where my great grandfather came from, back in the nineties. Almost a hundred years ago, now, but I still think I’d like to go.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘Not sure what I might find there,’ she said and laughed, suddenly awkward and a little shy. ‘Heavens, this really won’t do! I’ve got a restaurant to run here. Angie’ll be out in a moment and after my blood –’

  ‘Angie?’

  ‘My chef. Rules me with the proverbial rod of iron. Look, I’ll help if I can. With your film and with your – with the rest of it. But it’ll take time. It always takes time to remember. Come and have dinner here one night? It’s all right – my guest. I can talk to you then. Ring up and let me know which night suits you –’ Now she did go inside, picking up the door stop as she went so that she could close the door behind her.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and stood there looking through the glass at her and then lifted his hand in farewell and turned and walked away.

  He had a lot to think about; Mucky’s very suspicious rejection of him and the way he had been hustled out of the little tobacconist shop, and then this Laura’s odd swings of mood, first brilliantly smiling at him and then hostile and then friendly and then –

  Behind him he heard the restaurant door rattle and she called his name and turned and looked back from the shadow of the archway to where she stood in the sun, looking as bright as the daffodils above her head.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was a little rude,’ she called. ‘I was a bit – I’m sorry!’ And she looked at him for a long moment and then lifted her hand uncertainly and turned and went back into the restaurant, closing the door behind her with a little snap, leaving him staring at the empty Yard and wondering how soon he could take up her invitati
on. Tonight? Tomorrow? He’d try. Suddenly it was very important indeed to talk to this odd woman, and to do so as soon as he possibly could.

  14

  ‘Item four on the agenda,’ Leo said, and looked over his shoulder hopefully at the door; but there was no sign of anyone arriving with the tea tray and with a small sigh he returned to his papers. ‘Our newsletter –’

  ‘What newsletter?’ Mrs. Capitelli said, immediately on the offensive again. She’d reacted like that to every item that had come up for discussion this morning, aggrieved, aggressive and suspicious. ‘We don’t have a newsletter. We’ve never had a newsletter. What is all this about newsletters?’

  ‘I decided we should have one.’ Leo too took on what was becoming a familiar stance; pugnacious, patronising and weary. ‘I have the right, you know, as Chairman. You should have done it when you were Chairman, but you chose not to, and that was entirely your right. Now I’ve chosen to do otherwise. Edward? Perhaps you’d care to report?’

  ‘Gladly, Mr. Chairman,’ Edward said, and began to hand out piles of duplicated sheets, stapled together at one corner. ‘These are the drafts for your approval. If you’re happy I’ll get quotes for printing. I don’t propose the committee should vet every issue, mind you. That would be much too tedious for you all. I just want you to read it regularly. But you should check just this first one, before we print, so that you all know exactly what Leo had in mind. I thought the concept rather good. I hope you all agree –’

  The tea tray at last arrived, carried into the overheated and cluttered room by one of Mrs. Capitelli’s many plain daughters and at once the old woman got to her feet and began to fuss with cups and milk jugs, much to Leo’s patent relief, as the rest of them leafed through the papers in a half hearted fashion, one eye cocked eagerly on the cups as they were handed out and the other on the tray of paper-wrapped amoretti that were being handed round after them.