In the Kitchen (21 page)

'The family firm?'As she said it she looked self-conscious, as if she had mentioned something inappropriate, something that might make him head for the door.

He should ask her to marry him. Have done with it. It was on his list to do.

But how could he ask her now, this instant, with Lena infesting his couch, his bed? 'Charlie,' he said, 'look ...'

'I was thinking of teacher training,' said Charlie, a little too quickly, too brightly. 'Thought I might look into being a classroom assistant, see if it's going to be my thing.'

'Can't see it myself ... but if you want.'

'I'm good with kids,' she said, and then hurried on, fearing, it seemed, that she had compounded her mistake. 'And, you know, sometimes you have these moments – that make you think about stuff. So yesterday, I was sitting on the tube, I was only going three stops up to the dentist. One minute I was fine, I was watching this woman eating a bag of crisps. She was reading a book and eating and the crumbs kept gathering on her chest and I was thinking she's going to brush them off now, now, now, but she never did. And the next minute I was, like, what if there's a bomb? It's a thought that pops up and you expect it to pop itself right back down, but this time it didn't. I'm sitting there thinking, what if there's a bomb?

'And I'm only going three stops. So I'm thinking, why didn't I just walk, it would have been so easy. Getting really annoyed with myself. Then it gets worse, I start looking around to see if anyone in the carriage could be the one with the bomb. Looking for dark skin, beards, big coats, and I'm pretty disgusted but I'm doing it, can't kid myself about that.

'Thing is, it's ridiculous. What are the chances? What kind of statistic are we talking about? But it invades us. We've been invaded, not by anyone, just by a nightmare.'

'This is when you thought you'd like to try teaching?' said Gabe. 'Must have had quite a fright.'

She pretended to laugh, a skittish, airhead giggle. 'Yeah. I'll say that in my interview. No, that was a bit later. Actually, right then I had the weirdest mix of big and tiny thoughts. It was like, if I'm going to die right now have I been doing the right things – have I been living enough? And then if I live I have to start doing all the right things straight away, choose better, be smarter, know what I really want. Do you know what I decided? Sitting there, terrified by this non-existent bomb? I decided I was going to upgrade my fish oil tablets – go for the more expensive kind, the Omega 3 mix. If I got off the train in one piece I'd go straight to the chemist. Because I always think about it and never do, so it became like this huge, important thing, something worth staying alive for' – she was really laughing now, hair swinging over her face – 'so that was my moment, my epiphany, my blinding light. Some people see God in their moments of crisis, but not me, not people like me – we get consumer insight, that's what we get.'

Gabe stretched his legs and twirled his empty glass. 'Hey, don't knock it. We don't want you ending up as a nun. Did you say there's another bottle somewhere?'

'It's here. I'm opening it.' But she kept her hands in her pockets. 'There's always this stuff hanging over us, isn't there? The way the media is today. We get it all the time. And it's really huge – all the terrible poverty, terrorism, climate change.'

'I suppose. But it's been the same for every generation, there's always something, a big threat. At least we didn't have to live through the war, and then there was the Cold War after that.'

'I don't know. In a funny way I think I'd have preferred it. It was more collective, but our things just make us turn in on ourselves.'

'The enemy within,' said Gabe. He'd get a ring, that's what he'd do, though with the money for the restaurant and the money for Lena he'd have to work out how much he could spend.

'Yes,' said Charl
ie.
'No, not Islamist cells in Birmingham, that's not it. I mean, we don't know who the enemy is, not with any clarity – and we can't be sure it's not us.'

'It's not me. I promise.' All this anxiety. This wasn't the Charlie he knew.

And she'd got things back to front. It wasn't bomb fear that gave her single-woman-going-nowhere fear. It was the other way round. Once he'd proposed she'd stop dwelling on this stuff.

'Somewhere in the backs of our minds,' said Charlie, 'there's this nagging doubt – that we're our own worst enemies. What a horrible thought.'

'The war on terror making more terrorists?'

Charlie sighed. 'I suppose. We can always try blaming everyone but ourselves for global warming and third world sweatshops but, you know ...' She trailed off. She picked up the bottle and the corkscrew. 'It's all bitty and blurry and muddly. You know, in a proper war, or even in the Cold War, there's a really clear enemy and it all makes sense, like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end and you know what you want the end to be, but now we don't have a good story, the plot's all over the place.'

'That's not so bad, is it? You said that film was rubbish because it had too much plot.'

'I did. But I was probably wrong. Anyway,' she said, approaching with the bottle and an exaggerated sashay, 'I had a little moment and it passed. Normal service has resumed.'

'But you're serious about the teaching idea?'

'Me, honey?' She put on her breathy, jazz-set voice. 'Who, me? Can you picture it? Chained to a classroom every day? I like my freedom too much. I like saying yes or no to a gig.'

He ran a bath for her, adding a block of bath salts that he'd carried in his coat pocket all day. When they dissolved they released dried rose buds that floated to the surface, and he said he would come and scrub her back when things in the kitchen were under control. I'll have to go away more often, she said, if this is what I get.

Emptying the shopping bags, Gabriel lined up his ingredients – couscous, garlic, root ginger, coriander, a jar of harissa sauce, a tin of chickpeas, and lamb chops. Dad, he thought, would hate this meal. He'd have the lamb chops, grilled, some boiled potatoes on the side. Gabriel sighed and broke the garlic bulb. It would be a lot less fuss.

Mag's café every Friday lunchtime, dinner as they called it; that was Ted's weekly treat. He took Gabriel once and they had chicken pie with chips and baked beans and steamed jam pudding with custard. It tasted like heaven.

They'd been at Rileys and Gabriel must have been sick of going there by then.

Maybe not, maybe that came later. There came a time when he refused to go.

Wide-eyed still that day, yes ... now it was coming back, they had been in the warp room and it blew his little mind. The room was long and low and two, three times the size of the school hall, with three vaults across the ceiling, northern lights, the same as the weaving sheds. He walked slowly up and down the length of the creel, drinking in the rainbow colours of the multitude of spinning cones as though he were visiting the crown jewels. An enormous, elongated spider's web vibrated across the machinery, as the yarn wound on to the drum.

'Lovely when there's a coloured job on.'

'Dad,' said Gabe. 'It's cool!'

'Come up here, by the cylinder. This is Hattersley's latest. Best make in't world is that.'

'How's it work, Dad? What's it do?'

'First things first,' said Ted. 'This beauty's what you call a warp machine.

Rileys've took the section warping road, but there's many in this town won't know what a section warper is.'

'Is Rileys' way the best way, Dad?'

'There's some as says so, aye.'

'So the yarn comes through here,' said Gabriel, putting his hand up, 'and then ...'

Ted pulled him back. 'Watch out. There's fingers been lost before now. Man's been scalped on this machine.'

'Is it dangerous, Dad?'

'Can be,' said Ted. 'In me father's time, yer granddad, the warpers wore ties and this one time he heard a scream and came running.' He bent down, his face level with Gabriel's, and rolled his eyes. 'And there's the warper, got his tie caught, there he is goin' round and round on t' beam.'

They went for a brew in the tacklers' room and Mr Howarth was there, checking the form. 'Pick a number,' he said, 'any number, one to thirty, go on, lad.'

'Twelve?' said Gabriel. He hoped he'd got it right, though there wasn't much to go on and really it didn't seem fair.

Mr Howarth ran his finger down the page in his newspaper. 'Piper Marie, hundred to one, you've picked a blimmin' donkey there.' He raised his voice and called, 'Bill, Bill, give me a number, quick, make it a good 'un.'

In the corner, a pile of clothes stirred and Gabe saw that they contained an old man, his chin resting on his chest. 'What? What? Come again.'

'Number, Bill, for the gee-gees. Be my lucky charm.'

The man's head lifted and Gabriel stared at the geological wonders it revealed, the ridges and crevasses and potholes. 'Bugger off,' said the ancient, 'I'm on a break.'

'Dad,' whispered Gabriel, nudging Ted, 'when's he going to retire?'

'Retired about a century ago,' said Mr Howarth, 'did Belthorne Bill.'

'Why's he still here then?' Gabriel whispered.

'Deaf as a post,' said Mr Howarth. 'Bill, you deaf or what?'

'Aye,' said Belthorne Bill, 'I'll have a cup.'

'Fifty-odd year he worked here,' continued Mr Howarth, folding his paper.

'Can't grudge him a place in the corner and, aye, I'll mek 'im a brew. Take a good look at 'im, son, that's a living legend you got sat there.'

Bill, it turned out, came from over the hill, in Belthorne, a distinguishing mark in Blantwistle when migrants from such distant lands were practically unknown. He walked the seven miles to work and back every day and was famed for his stringent timekeeping and for never having a day off sick. One winter, when the snow had fallen marvellous deep overnight and all the roads were closed and half the mills were sleeping in a hypothermic daze, Belthorne Bill had taken a shovel and cleared a path over the hillside, yard by freezing yard, clocked in with a touch of frostbite and said he was sorry for being late.

'Tell you what,' said Mr Howarth. 'Yer dad and Bill, much alike, very much a pair.'

Gabe looked at Ted. He looked at the crumbling man.

'Don't you know what I'm talking about? Best of British, that's what they are.'

Charlie pressed her body up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

The head of garlic was still in his hand.

'Hey, I thought you were going to join me. The water was getting cold.'

He turned round and kissed the top of her head. 'Sorry. Look at me. Useless. I haven't done a thing.'

'Should we get a takeaway?'

'Would you mind?'

'I've got five places on speed dial, how could I mind?'

'I keep thinking about the mill, about Rileys. It's a shopping centre now.

Hadn't thought about it in years.'

'Thinking about your father, you're bound to, now that he's ... you know.'

'God, you smell good,' he said.

She pulled her head away. 'Are you all right, Gabriel? It's so awful about your dad.'

She was wearing a red kimono. The silk felt like a balm. 'I'm all right,' he said, automatically, but as he said it he decided it was true. 'Worried about Dad, of course, but I'm fine.'

'You know I'd like to meet him. If you're not ashamed of me, that is.'

'I know, I know,' said Gabriel, 'but I thought I should see him first on my own. You said it yourself – can't say much on the phone. And I've planned it in already. I'm going up tomorrow on the train.'

CHAPTER TEN

BETWEEN EUSTON AND WATFORD, THOUGH THE TRAIN WAS CROWDED, he managed to change seats three times. The first time he was getting away from a malevolent child with swinging feet and an oblivious mother, then there were the mobile phone abusers, and just when Gabe thought he was safe in the 'quiet carriage', the stink of catering food packages unwrapped at his table forced him to beat yet another retreat. He'd found, so he thought, a haven at the end of the train when a woman boarded at Watford and quickly set about colonizing his space.

She wore a tweed suit and good strong shoes and had an equally sturdy face. As she talked at him, the clink of fine china in her voice, Gabriel thought you don't see many like her any more. She was empire-building stock, no doubt about it; she was Jam and Jerusalem, God and Golf, Gin Rummy and Croquet Lawn.

And she talked and she talked until Gabriel staged an uprising, reaching overhead for his bag and explaining he was getting off at the next stop. 'But that's not for another hour,' said the woman. Gabe nodded and staggered away, the train rolling side-to-side beneath his feet.

He squatted at the end of the next carriage, his back against the luggage rack, and closed his eyes. There was only the thunder of the track. There was only the dark space behind his brow.

When he'd gone back to Kennington in the morning Lena was standing by the long living-room window, leaning against it, as though she wanted to push herself through the glass.

'I've got to go home,' he said, 'just for a couple of days. My father – I told you. I'm sorry, but it's something I've got to do.'

She didn't turn round. The only sign of life was her breath steaming up the pane.

'There's a set of spare keys. Look, I'm leaving them here. But maybe it's best if you stay in.' He didn't know why he said that. Why should she not go out?

Still she made no response.

'Sorry,' said Gabe. 'We'll sort out everything when I'm back. You'll be here, won't you, when I come home. Won't you? You'll be here.'

Lena rolled round so that her back was to the glass. Gabriel felt a touch of vertigo. He wished she would step away.

'Two, three months I hide,' said Lena. 'In cellar, in flat – what is difference to me?'

'Hiding? In the basement with Yuri? What were you hiding from?'

Lena gave a slovenly, lopsided shrug. 'What is difference?'

'You had to hide the fact that you were down there? Or you went down to hide from someone? From what? From who?'

She melted against the glass, her eyelids drawn insolently low.