Lunching at Laura's Page 5

  ‘What do you mean, if she’s still here? No reason why she shouldn’t get a lease, is there?’

  ‘No, not if she can afford it. And is willing to wait for it of course. Building – it takes time. She may lose so much of her goodwill while the building goes up there’s nothing left to take a lease for.’

  Davriosh laughed at that, and pushed his now almost clean plate away, regretfully. ‘Forget it, Reggie. This one, lose her goodwill? Not as long as you’ve got an arse to sit on.’

  The small man looked directly at him for the first time, and for a moment Davriosh looked nonplussed. There was an air of offence about him and he remembered with a sudden uneasiness that he was an important client and said placatingly, ‘You should forgive the expression. But you know what I mean. She’s popular, is Laura. Very. No way would her customers leave her. They love her too much.’ And he began to whistle softly between his teeth, ‘Laura – footsteps that you hear down the hall at night – Laura, but she’s only a dream –’ and then grinned again. ‘It doesn’t exactly fit, but you see what I mean. She’s furniture around here.’

  ‘So she’ll get a lease,’ Preston said impatiently. ‘What worries me more now is getting her out in the first place.’

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ Davriosh said. ‘I don’t want you to think it will be. But I think I can do it. Given time.’ He stopped then and waved at Dan and, catching his eye, made coffee pouring gestures. ‘It’ll take time and it might take money.’ He looked quickly at the man he had called Reggie and then away, but he was sitting staring down at his hands which were folded neatly on the table cloth, and seemed not to have heard him.

  ‘More money?’ Preston said. ‘Why?’

  Davriosh shrugged. ‘There’ll be palms to grease, people to sweeten. You know how it is. These things take effort. Nothing comes from nothing.’

  ‘I understood you to say you could arrange this for us,’ the man Reggie said, and now he did look at Davriosh, very directly. His eyes were an odd pale green, with faint lines around the irises. Joe found them unpleasant to look at and his gaze shifted away.

  ‘I can, of course I can. I’ve done it before, I can do it again. There ain’t no one nowhere who won’t sell eventually.

  Like the man says, everyone’s got his price, her price. You just got to work out what it is. But it takes money is all I’m saying.’

  ‘Well, you can have it. Within reason. As long as you deliver as per our contract.’

  ‘I’ve got no contract.’ Davriosh sounded alarmed. ‘I signed nothing at all –’

  Reggie smiled again, the same creasing of his face that left the pale gooseberry eyes quite unlit. ‘I know, Mr. Davriosh. But an arrangement is for me an arrangement. I need no signatures. I make promises, and I keep them. I am given promises, and I expect them fulfilled. It’s a very simple way to do business.’

  ‘Yes,’ Davriosh said uneasily and leaned back gratefully as Dan arrived with coffee and the offer of puddings. ‘Got good mignon today, gentlemen,’ he murmured. ‘Or the liptauer? Very nice, very sharp and spicy – the best Angie did this week– I recommend.’

  ‘No more,’ Preston said brusquely. ‘Only coffee and brandies. No more food.’ And then as soon as Dan had gone, said sharply to the small man sitting once again contemplating his own folded hands, ‘Listen, Statler, let me be clear about all this. All we’ve agreed to do is try to get these properties cleared so that they can be bought up. No rough stuff, nothing nasty –’

  ‘Of course.’ He still looked at his hands. ‘What else could we agree?’

  ‘I just want it clear, that’s all. I’m no softer than the next man and I like to do good business but I know where to draw the line. None of this pushing people around, you understand? A little quiet talking is one thing. Being rough is another.’

  Now the other man did look up. ‘Do I look rough, Mr. Preston?’

  Preston looked at him and then swept one hand over his balding head, for a fine sweat had broken out on its gleaming expanse, but said nothing.

  ‘There’ll be a few problems, apart from Laura, you know,’ Davriosh said after a long pause, one that he seemed to find threatening suddenly. ‘I mean, there’s the old boy across the Yard, and there’s the adjoining properties –’ He giggled then, a little shrilly. ‘Glad it doesn’t involve the jazz club. I can tell you, that could get very complicated, Ronnie Scott’s and all –’

  ‘Of course not,’ Statler said. ‘Publicity.’

  They both nodded, absurdly in time with each other, and then aware of the effect laughed, though Statler’s eyes still seemed uninvolved in what the rest of his face was doing. ‘Look,’ he said, and leaned forwards, suddenly confidential and friendly. ‘Look, I must reassure you. I’m no villain out to rape the city or the good people who live in it. None of this dramatic stuff, believe me. You mustn’t think all property developers are villains, you know. Men like you, with your experience – you should know better! All I want to do is take this block of ramshackle old places and put something beautiful and lasting in their place. I’m the first to understand the importance of environment, of people’s lives and homes and jobs –’ He smiled at them and they looked back at him, doubtfully, puzzled by the change in him. The remote chilly figure of the first part of lunch had vanished behind the friendly reasonable man who sat and smiled at them now and Preston said carefully, ‘Yes – yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘So, there it is, you see. Nothing at all alarming, hmm? Just an arrangement made between us, and which we’ll carry out sensibly, hmm? No need for contracts on paper. We have binding contracts on our words as businessmen –’

  ‘As businessmen,’ Davriosh said and laughed. He had swallowed all his double brandy quickly, and since he had inflicted the most punishment on the two bottles of wine that had accompanied their food he was looking flushed and glittering now. ‘Such businessmen! Tarts and tricks, hey? Tarts and tricks –’ and he looked at Preston and winked, but Preston ignored him and looked instead at Statler.

  ‘It’s not only the owners of the properties who’ll need to be considered,’ he said. ‘There’s the Trust.’

  ‘The Trust?’ Statler said. ‘Who or what do they trust?’

  ‘Nobody,’ Preston said promptly and Joe Davriosh laughed. ‘They’re the Vinegar Trust. Those people I pointed out to you when we got here. They went upstairs to one of the private rooms as we got here. An old Italian woman – her husband started a business forty, fifty years ago selling theatre costumes, ballet shoes, you know the sort of thing. She and her son, they’ve been busy in it since Adam was a nipper. She’s been the boss since the old man died but now she’s retiring. Going to the country to live with her daughter and her kids, so someone else has to take over.’

  ‘You know a lot,’ Davriosh said, staring at him. ‘You sound like an old girl in a launderette, the way you gossip –’

  ‘It’s relevant information. The Trust can be – well, a nuisance or an asset. It depends. They meddle a lot, that’s for sure. I’ve had ’em on my back for years. Years,’ he added feelingly and then grimaced. ‘Not that I blame ’em. I hate my business as much as they do. The girls are enough to make you sick, the way they carry on, and the punters are worse. It’s a lousy stinking business however you look at it and I hate it.’

  Davriosh blinked owlishly at him. ‘So why stay in it?’

  ‘Because it’s a bloody good living. Bloody good. But as soon as I can get a better one, I’ll be out, believe me. Sex is dead, anyway. The way everyone’s going on it’ll be back to net curtains on the piano legs this time next year. There’ll be no market any more –’

  ‘If you believe that you’ll believe anything,’ Statler said. ‘What do you mean, the Trust have been on your back?’

  ‘They want the sex shops out, the strip shows closed, all the girls got rid of. You know what these people are. Keep it the way it always was, they say, as though there weren’t always girls on the game round here, and spielers and robbers and Chri
st knows who else. But there it is, they make a nuisance of themselves. And they could make a nuisance of themselves to you too.’ And he shot a malicious little glance at Statler and then grinned at Davriosh. ‘You’d better be warned.’

  ‘I’m warned,’ Statler said and looked at Davriosh. ‘Do you know these people?’

  ‘I told you, I know everyone. Everyone.’ And he looked round the restaurant. ‘I could tell you who everyone was at each of these tables and a lot more about ’em than they’d like you to know. Take over there – the feller with the tie pin? You see the one? If that diamond was any bigger he’d get a crick in his neck. He’s the biggest –’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to know,’ Statler said, and looked prim. ‘I’m interested only in my own affairs. If this Trust could be a nuisance then I need to know it can be dealt with.’

  ‘Who else is there in it?’ Davriosh said to Preston, apparently completely forgetting his claim to know everything about everybody.

  ‘I’m not sure at present. They haven’t been after me so much this past few months. Not since I sorted out the licences for the shops – used to be Leo Levy, the tailor chap, you know? His dad’s been in Dean Street a long time. Oh, yes, and Olaffson from the fish shop and a chap called Malplackett and –’

  ‘Malplackett?’ Davriosh sat up straighter and slowly smiled. ‘Then that’s all right. O.K. Reggie. No need to worry. I can deal with the Trust if I have to.’

  ‘Good.’ Statler once again produced that sudden brilliant smile. ‘No more business! At least, no more about mine. Tell me, Preston, about these girls of yours. Now, there’s a business that really fascinates me! How do you first get into it? How do you organise it? And how –’ And his voice dropped as the three of them leaned closer and began to talk and laugh so loudly that Laura, coming down for a swift check that all was well before returning to her family party reassured herself that there was nothing to worry about after all. They were just the usual three men swopping dirty jokes after a fine lunch and good wine had mellowed them. It was nothing more than that.

  And she went back upstairs after sorting out the first of the bills that were ready for payment, contented and comfortable. All was well at her restaurant today, just as it was every day and always would be. It was a comfortable feeling to have.

  5

  There were twenty seven people in the third Extra, so even though it was the largest of the rooms, it was crowded. People were sitting more closely together than was ideal and had to jockey to get room to work their elbows as they ate, but it didn’t seem to matter. They all appeared to be so content to be together that they were good tempered about their discomfort; which was a remarkable way for so large and so very Hungarian a family to be, Laura thought as she came back into the room and looked round at them all. She had such vivid memories of so many family parties when parents had bawled and wept at children, and adult children had spoken witheringly to parents, and brothers and cousins had almost come to blows and sisters-in-law had attacked each other with such barbed tongues that you could almost see the sparks fly between them, that this peaceful scene was really unusual.

  Her lips quirked then as she saw how carefully Dolly and Evelyn had distanced themselves from each other. Those two couldn’t help but argue when they were within hearing distance of each other, so it was surprisingly kind of them to try to keep the peace for Anya Zsuzske’s party in this way. She must tell them both, separately of course, how much she appreciated that.

  She slipped into her place between the old lady and her own youngest brother, Alex and neither paid her any attention. Anya Zsuzske was too busily engaged in gobbling duck’s liver and lecso (she had an incredible appetite for one of her age, and there were some of the irreverent younger members of the family who maintained that the only reason the old girl had lived so long was that she couldn’t bear to die before her next meal was due) and Alex was busily talking to his young cousin Sammy Hallash, Steven and Dolly’s son.

  Laura frowned a little at that; the boy was so very young, so very good looking and so clearly dazzled by his handsome actor cousin. She’d have to speak to Alex about that; his private life was his own affair, of course, and as merely a sister she had no right to make judgements about his choice of partners, but there was no way she was going to let him start any sort of episode with young Sammy. The boy was really very naive under his veneer of knowingness, and much too vulnerable. And anyway, the thought of what his mother would do and say if she discovered that Alex was getting too friendly with her precious boy didn’t bear thinking of. Everyone knew Alex was gay – he had always been at some pains to make sure they all knew it, announcing his sexual preferences so publicly and so often that his cousin Richard Balog had said dryly that he had come out like a shell from a repeater anti-aircraft gun and still was, and they were reasonably tolerant of them. But that tolerance would be sorely stretched if he involved Sammy in his affairs.

  It was nice they had all come again this year, she thought, as she let her gaze move along the animated chewing faces. It would have pleased her father to see them all here at his table. And then her brows creased a little, and it was almost as though Dolly had heard her thought and had cried at her down the long room, ‘Our table, Laura, ours –’

  Because of course, there were other shareholders in the restaurant, even though it bore her name and she did all the work. The matter of the ownership and the rates due to the others from the place had always been one of deep interest to all of them, even those who had sold or given away their inherited portions of it, and she drew a sharp little breath in through her nose as she saw Dolly lean back to speak imperiously to the waiter who had been serving extra vegetables to her husband Steven beside her. Damn the woman, always behaving as though she were in charge of the place; damn her, damn her, damn her, and Laura caught the waiter’s eye and lifted her brows at him and he, for all he was a casual, knew where his duty lay and immediately abandoned Dolly to come to her, and Laura allowed a shaft of pleasure to shoot through her as she saw the scowl that Dolly immediately produced.

  She sent the waiter for more liver for Anya Zsuzske, who had cleaned her plate and was now sitting looking at its emptiness with obvious disappointment on her vast and sagging old face, and smiled at Dolly who pointedly looked away and Laura sighed, annoyed with herself for giving in to her moment of spleen. So silly, really –

  And yet it wasn’t. Didn’t she work all the hours God gave and a great many more besides to make the place what it was? Wasn’t it her efforts, her expertise, her total dedication that gave the others so much money? And she let the numbers run through her head as they so often did.

  On her average takings of &pD;2,000 a day, that brought in &pD;600,000 a year, and with a profitability of over 25% that left net profits after tax and all her overheads of between &pD;150,000 and &pD;160,000 a year for the rest of them. Which meant that Ilona Cord got up to &pD;40,000 and Paul Balog got the same, and Dolly and Evelyn Hallash shared the quarter due to their branch of the family, while she herself, of course, took the last &pD;40,000, for she had bought the whole of the Horvath share from her brothers Alex and Timothy, when their father had died. It had cost her all she had and an overdraft besides, but she had felt the need to own as much as she could of the restaurant, and it had been worth the financial effect. It was starting to pay off, too, for her overdraft had been shrinking steadily, though all the repairs and renovations she had had to do last year had made it rather large again.

  Never mind, she thought now, never mind. It was worth getting all the work done, and in a few years she’d repay all the debts if they went on being as financially effective as they were now, and she looked at the richly glowing panelling and smiled with pleasure at the sight of it.

  Taking it all round, they do well, Paul and Ilona and Evelyn and Dolly, she thought, since they do nothing to earn what they get each year, and also own their shares of this beautiful place, and she looked again at Dolly and tried to stifle her deep
and almost instinctive dislike of her. It wasn’t just her bony face with the sharp black eyes, and careful makeup, or the expensively dressed lean frame that she was clearly so proud of, for she always looked at Laura’s neat roundness with an obvious sneer on her face. It ran more deeply than that. Perhaps if her husband hadn’t indulged her so much she wouldn’t be so unpleasant? Perhaps if he had bought his sister Evelyn’s share of the inheritance that had come to the three of them, as well as Daniel’s, when Daniel had gone through that bad patch with his dress factory and had needed cash in a hurry, Dolly wouldn’t be so obviously jealous of her sister-in-law?

  Not that Evelyn was all that much easier to get on with; that a woman should become so sour and so touchy just because she was unmarried seemed to Laura to be arrant nonsense, but there it was. Hungarian all the way through to her middle, in spite of having been born and reared in London, Evelyn saw herself through the eyes of the old country and the old people, and so regarded herself as a total and humiliated failure because she was a spinster – and now she was well into her fifties that seemed an irremediable state – and behaved appallingly to everyone as a result. The rivalry between her and her sister-in-law was as much her fault as Dolly’s –

  Laura pulled her attention away from them. Her great uncle Istvan’s family had always been the least likeable of them all, which was odd, remembering what a nice old man he’d been. She could recall him so clearly, sitting night after night at her father’s corner table downstairs, talking interminably about horses and dogs – for he had been an inveterate gambler – and laughing up at her when she had come to bring them another bottle of Tokay, and she was sad, suddenly at the loss of him. He had died some three or four years before her father, and yet still she missed them both.

  On the far side of Anya Zsuzske Paul leaned forward solicitously as the waiter arrived and brought her another big plateful of food and he said anxiously, ‘Laura, are you sure she should? I mean, she’s already had the stuffed pancakes, you know. Surely we shouldn’t let her have any more –’