Lunching at Laura's Read online

  ‘Thanks Angie. That was marvellous. Anya adored her liver.’

  ‘Didn’t she just,’ Angie said complacently. ‘I knew she would.’

  ‘I’m grateful to you for working so hard –’ she said, needing to let him see how she felt about him, but he looked at her and frowned.

  ‘How d’you mean, grateful?’ he said pugnaciously. ‘Like I don’t always? It’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘Of course you do. It was just that, today, it was a heavy load for you. Roasting geese on top of all the usual stuff and –’

  ‘Listen, when I’m too old to do my job properly, then you can be grateful. Right now I’m well able to cope. You don’t have to go making no allowances.’

  ‘I’m not making any allowances. Just trying to say I appreciate your efforts. It was a good lunch we had.’

  ‘Sure it was. Isn’t it always? For everyone? The day it ain’t, you can talk about it, about whether I’m too old. Till then –’

  ‘No one said anything about being old, Angie, for God’s sake! I was just saying I enjoyed my lunch and so did everyone else.’

  ‘That you can always say. Any time, Mizz Horvy. Any time at all. Just don’t come out with stuff about grateful. I don’t need it. Listen, you want anything out? I’m just going for some cigarettes.’ She shook her head. ‘No thanks. I’ve got to go to the night safe, and I thought I’d go home for a while. Get a few things sorted out –’

  ‘You do that. You’re looking tired,’ he said and grinned at her. ‘Looks like you’re the one’s been overdoing it a bit. See you tonight –’ And he went, letting the door swing imperiously behind him and she watched him cross the yard and go straight into Mucky’s shop.

  Daft old devil, she thought, her affection for him still well in evidence but tempered now with exasperation. If he doesn’t stop whingeing on about his age, he’ll drive everyone potty. Sixty-five – not that old; why be so conscious of it? And then she remembered how she felt about the way time was running through her own fingers, and how dispirited she felt when she contemplated her own thirty-five years, and grimaced. Perhaps Angie had a point in being so prickly about the subject and then she grimaced again and went purposefully to fetch her coat. Time she went home to Morwell Street and the odd jobs that awaited her there. Staying here and thinking a lot of rubbish about how old people were would get her nowhere.

  ‘Well, how old are you, then?’ Kati asked and tilted her head so that the curls on each side of her face swung against her cheeks. She liked doing that. It made her feel nice. It was the only nice thing about not being allowed to put her hair up, having those curls to swing at people. It was interesting the way people behaved when she did it; the way Mr. Bosquet was behaving now, looking at her with his eyes a bit more round and dark than they usually were.

  ‘This is not a question a little girl should ask a grown person,’ he said reprovingly and again she tilted her head and laughed at him. It was a new way of laughing she had been practising, low inside her throat so that it sounded sort of bubbly.

  ‘I’m not a little girl, though, am I? You said I wasn’t. You said I was shaping up to be a very special lady. Didn’t you say that? I remember, so you can’t say you didn’t say it. You said it last week –’

  ‘Tu es une petite diable,’ he said softly and then laughed. ‘And now tell me you know what that means.’

  She pouted. ‘Course I don’t. I can talk English and I can talk Hungarian, if I have to – I don’t want to though. It’s horrible, Hungarian is – but I can’t talk French. Don’t want to. I’m English now. I’m not French and I’m not Hungarian. I’m English.’

  ‘Of course you are Hungarian. You live here in England like the rest of us, but you are as Hungarian as your Poppa’s paprika.’

  ‘Poppa’s paprika, Poppa’s paprika,’ she sang, and then giggled. ‘Poppa’s poker, Poppa’s poker, that’d be better.’

  ‘You are a very rude and naughty little girl,’ he said and leaned across his counter and pinched her cheek. She didn’t move, just sitting there and staring at him, her eyes wide, and liking the way his fingers stayed on her cheek after he relaxed the pressure of his pinch. Being here with him like this was more fun than anything else she could think of, and she giggled softly, forgetting to use her special new laugh and he took his fingers away from her face as though, suddenly, her skin had burned him. Really, being with him was so much fun, much better than being at home across the yard.

  She sat and looked down at her lap for a moment; at the dark green plaid dress which she so much hated and the yellowish calico pinafore over it which she hated even more and the thick black stockings and the heavy boots she could see swinging against the side of the mahogany counter, and felt a great wave of misery. It was horrible to be Kati Halascz. It was the worst thing in the world to be and she felt her eyes fill with tears and she sniffed hard, making her nostrils close, so that the tears went to the back of her throat and she could swallow them.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to upset you!’ he said, alarmed, and came round the counter to stand in front of her and pat her head awkwardly. ‘You are not a naughty little girl, at all, of course you are not. You are a nice little girl, Kati. You must not cry –’

  She felt better at once. When she got upset at home her mother just snapped at her and her father took no notice. They only paid any attention when Zsuzske whined; they always fussed over her, the horrible thing. Now, with another baby around, it would be even worse. They’d ignore her, Kati, even more or just go on and on at her to do things for them. They never patted her head if she started to cry. They just told her to be her age and that meant doing what they wanted. It never meant being fussed over the way Zsuzske was fussed over, and the way Mr. Bosquet was fussing over her now.

  It was really much nicer to be here with him than at home with all of them and she lifted her eyes to him, feeling the tears trembling on her eyelashes but not feeling unhappy inside any more at all, and she smiled at him and he smiled back, his eyes looking round like a fish’s, again, and she felt even better. He was a lovely man, Mr. Bosquet.

  ‘You still haven’t told me how old you are,’ she said. ‘I told you how old I am. You ought to tell me how old you are.’

  ‘It’s different for the grown up people,’ he said, awkward again.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When you’re young every new year gives you pleasure. You want to be old, a grown up person. But when you are grown up, suddenly you feel different. You want it to be 1899 for ever. It was like everyone last year wanting it to be 1900 and not 1899 any more. New and shining, a new big number. You are still fourteen, fifteen, inside, so you want to stay fourteen, fifteen outside, the way you are. You don’t want to say, “I am forty-two –”’

  ‘Is that how old you are?’ She looked a little awed. ‘That is old, isn’t it? Two years more than Poppa –’

  He went a sudden dusky red and went back behind the counter and though she wasn’t sure quite what she had said wrong, she knew she’d said something she shouldn’t, and immediately set to work to make things comfortable again. It was important to keep Mr. Bosquet nice to be with now that home was so awful. And would get worse, with that horrible, hateful baby in it. All they talked about was Magda, Magda, Magda, when they weren’t talking about Zsuzske, Zsuzske, Zsuzske. She turned her body round and pulled up her feet so that she was sitting right on the counter, her arms encircling her knees, and tilted her head and said softly, ‘Mr. Bosquet – do you think I could come here and work for you?’

  ‘Eh?’ he peered at her and then went on fiddling with the tobacco he had gone back to chopping when he had returned to his side of the counter. ‘Work for me? Doing what?’

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Something. Anything. I want to work and get wages. Don’t want to go to school any more. I don’t have to, you know. Now I’m fourteen, I could stay at home or go out to work, Momma says I should stay at home and help her with the babies and Poppa says I have to go to scho
ol but I don’t want to do anything they say. I want to work. I want to put my hair up and wear proper skirts and shoes, not these horrible boots and I never want to wear a pinafore again, not ever, and be a lady in a shop. Your shop. I could talk to the people who come in and give them their tobacco and talk to them and you could sit in your room at the back and have your feet on the fender and be very comfortable. Wouldn’t that be nice? You said to me you wanted to sit and read your paper from Marseilles but the customers kept on coming –’

  The door of the shop opened with a little ping of the bell fastened above the lintel and she turned her head to see one of the porters from the Italian restaurant in Old Compton Street, a big man with a very shining, bald head. He looked at her and then at Bosquet and grinned.

  ‘Got a new ’elp, John, ’ave yer? Goin’ posh are we, all Freiburg and Treyer, like?’

  Kati scrambled down from the counter with a great display of thick, black, woollen stockings and went running round to the other side of it ‘Oh, Mr. Bosquet, do let me serve him, please, let me? What will it be, Gian? Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you. I know where he keeps all sorts of things – I bet you I can get it for you!’

  ‘A half ounce o’ cut Navy shag,’ Gian said promptly and she whirled to look along the drawers behind the counter, reading each little brass label with silent movements of her lips, and bending her head so that the shadows thrown by the gaslight behind her didn’t obscure them, and then she crowed delightedly and pulled out one of the drawers.

  ‘Here it is – cut Navy shag – no please, please Mr. Bosquet – let me do it! I can do it, you watch!’ And she reached for the little scoop that was tied to the side of the counter and released the hook that held the scales so that the pans swung free.

  The two men watched her, grinning. Bosquet, now relaxed and leaning on the counter comfortably, seemed quite to have forgotten what she had said about his age, and smiled in a proprietorial way as, with careful and rather elaborate movements, she picked up a scoop of the dark fragrant shreds that filled the drawer she had pulled out, and set it in the pan of the scales against the half ounce weight. She dropped in a few more shreds to make sure the brass arrow pointed exactly centre, and then reached for a sheet of blue paper to wrap it in.

  The two men began to laugh then, the big kitchen porter in his dirty apron and heavy canvas trousers, tied at the knees with string, and the dapper Mr. Bosquet, in his tightly fitted black coat and high starched collar, and she peeped up at them from beneath her lashes and then, with the tip of her tongue showing between her teeth – not that she needed to use her tongue that way when she concentrated, but she knew it made people smile – she tried to fold the paper into the sort of triangular bag she had seen Bosquet make many times.

  She failed hopelessly, as the thick blue paper sprang out of her fingers and she made a little moué and shook her head and again tried to make it work, and Bosquet smiled and leaned forwards and then, moving a little self consciously, came closer so that he could stand behind her and reach over her shoulders.

  ‘You do it like this, little Miss Butter Fingers,’ he said and took her hands in his and moved her fingers for her, so that the paper was folded and then folded again and made into a cone with a twisted end.

  ‘You see? Now you slide in the tobacco, so –’ And he reached for the brass pan of the scales and held her hand as she tipped the contents into it. ‘You see? Now you bend over the top, so, and you give it to Gian. And you say to him –’

  ‘I know what to say!’ she said breathlessly and lifted her head and tilted it backwards so that her curls swept along his face, for he was still standing with his arms around her from behind and his hands over hers. ‘I know! Don’t tell me what to say, I know!’ And she leaned forwards and held out the screw of blue paper to Gian and said triumphantly, ‘That’ll be a penny ha’penny, please, sir!’

  The other man laughed and held out the money which he had ready in his hand. ‘Cheap at the bleedin’ price,’ he said. ‘What with the show thrown in.’ And he laughed again even more loudly, as Bosquet, seeming suddenly aware of how he was standing pulled away and came round to the front of the counter. ‘So you ’ave got yourself a new bit of ’elp, then, Bosquet?’ he said. ‘Goin’ to be a big operator, are you?’

  Bosquet laughed, uncomfortable again. ‘This child – she has nothing better to do than come here and waste my time. So I teach her a little. Why not? Her parents should be grateful I look after their children when they are busy. There is a new baby there – you know how it is. I like to be useful to my neighbours. It makes for happy working, hmm? Good neighbours –’

  ‘Yeah,’ Gian said and stuffed his little poke of tobacco into his pocket. ‘Yeah – neighbours,’ and went away, winking at Kati as he did, and she stared back at him, blankly, the way a child would and he looked at her, boredom appearing on his face now. ‘’Bye, Bosquet – see you soon. Don’t do nothin’ I wouldn’t do –’ And the door pinged closed behind him.

  ‘Time you went home,’ Bosquet said after a moment. ‘Your Momma, she’ll be looking for you.’

  ‘She don’t care about me. Only when she wants something done,’ Kati said. ‘Can I, Mr. Bosquet?’

  ‘Can you what?’

  ‘Work here. I’d like that. I did that all right, didn’t I? I’d soon learn how to do the paper. I’d make some ready in advance so I didn’t have to keep the customers waiting –’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re too young. Anyway, your father’d never let you work here. He wants you to go to school.’

  She made that little face again, and once more tilted her head. ‘He’ll give in. If I go on enough.’ She nodded then, knowingly. ‘He always gives in in the end to everything. That’s how Momma does it. Goes on at him, you see. I’ll go on too, if you say I can work here.’

  He looked at her, at the way the gaslight glinted on her dark hair, making it look tinted with dark red, at the round smoothness of her face and the way her pinafore pulled over her bodice. It was too small for her; time they gave her other clothes to wear –

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  She clapped her hands delightedly and then turned with a little jump so that she was facing the curtained doorway that led to the inner room where he lived. It was getting darker outside now and they could both see the firelight from the inner room flickering over the red plush of the curtain, and could hear the little clattering sound as a few coals fell in the grate and the flames leapt a little higher.

  ‘Come on! I’ll make you some tea and some toast at the fire. You’ll see what a good helper I am, and then you’ll tell Poppa I’m going to work with you. It’ll be lovely, you’ll see!’ And she went into the room literally skipping, and after a moment he moved slowly to the door of the shop and reached up and pulled the little bolt that held it. It was gone six now; he had every right to stop and have tea if he wanted it, didn’t he? Every right –

  And moving even more slowly and a little heavily now, he went round the counter and into his little sitting room, with its big wooden table in the middle and the wide divan in front of the fire that doubled as his bed at night, and looked at Kati, who was crouching by the fender holding a piece of bread on a long fork to the glowing coals. Her face was shining in the firelight and she turned and looked at him and smiled and the round eyes glittered a little and seemed to laugh, and he sighed and came in, slowing pulling the curtained door closed behind him.

  8

  The flat felt both stuffy and empty, she thought, as she let the door swing shut behind her, and she stood there in the tiny hallway, her head up, breathing in the air of the place. It smelled of beeswax and furniture polish and the lily of the valley bath salts she favoured and the daffodils that were wilting in a low bowl in the sitting room and, faintly but not unpleasantly, of cat litter and after a moment she moved into the small kitchen and set the brown paper bag from the grocery shop on the work surface. />
  It was quite absurd to be so melancholy, she told herself as she stood there and stared sightlessly out of the window. Below in the thin afternoon sunshine, the narrow garden lay drooping and dispirited, but there was a faint flush of green on the privet hedges at each side and she knew that somewhere down there in the cold earth the first bulbs were showing their spikes. Soon it would be March and then the winter would really feel over; there was no need to be so low in her spirits. Everything was fine; the restaurant had never been so popular, the staff never so easy to deal with, today’s busy time had run as smoothly as a hot knife going through butter and Anya Zsuzske’s party was over safely for another year. What was there in all that to make her feel as she did? As though her own life were as half used and empty as this flat, as though she too was little more than a shell which had a function but no real soul, an existence but no true life of its own –

  ‘This is bloody ridiculous,’ she said aloud and went to the glass-fronted door that led out to her small fire escape and opened it. The cat had been sitting on the top step and it turned its ruffed head and looked at her scornfully as she called softly, ‘Come on, Scatty – I’m back. You can come in and warm up if you like –’ and then stretched and yawned and with a supercilious flick of its tail went past her and into the kitchen to slide its sinuous shape into the small space beside the cooker which was its favourite spot.

  ‘Idiot,’ she said to it as it writhed itself into a comfortable position and then settled with its eyes wide and unwinking to stare at her from the darkness. ‘It’s not as though it’s specially warm there. I haven’t lit the damn thing for ages –’