The Road Home (27 page)

“No!” she giggled. “No!”

“You started this,” he said. “Now you punish!”

“No, Lev! The water’s freezing! Christy, help me!”

He loved the feeling of her struggling with him. Though he could have lifted her up immediately, he let her whirl and fight. He could smell the salt sea and the perfume of her body and was a youth again, a blithe idiot, full of joy. His hand went under her skirt and he bunched the flesh of her arse in his hand and lifted her high.

“Put me down, Lev! Put me down! If you drop me in the water, I’ll kill you! I’ll die of fucking frostbite!”

She was yelling, but laughing all the while. Lev walked with her into the sea and the cold waves began eddying round his ankles and soaking into his shoes and socks. He could feel the iciness of them, biting on his skin, like sherbet.

“Lev! You’re crazy!”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m crazy. Crazy for you.”

“Put me down!”

“You know I’m crazy for you?”

“I know, I know. Go back.”

“I don’t think you know how crazy . . .”

She had to cling to him to keep from falling. He wanted to kiss her, but he was afraid to become more aroused than he already was, so he turned and ran with Sophie, testing his own strength, feeling the power in his limbs. He could see Frankie jumping up and down, waving her thin arms, and Christy holding the pink rucksack and, farther along the beach, a line of smart little painted huts, from which children, dressed in startling colors, ran to and fro, and he thought how wonderful a thing it was for the world to seem so bright in winter.

He set Sophie down and she cuffed his head. “Nutter,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

“Look at that, Frankie,” said Christy. “Now his trousers are waterlogged. What a fine example to set!”

“I want to go in the sea!” said Frankie. “I want to go in the sea!”

“Jesus,” said Christy. “Now look what you’ve done, Lev. The sea’s cold, Frankie. Cold as snow.”

“I don’t mind. I want to go in it!”

“No, no, look at the state of Lev’s shoes. You don’t want to get yours like that.”

“Yes, I do. Yes, I do!”

“Okay, okay,” said Christy, throwing down the pink bag. “We’ll go in the sea, but take your shoes and socks off first, and I’ll do the same. Did anybody bring a towel? Sophie?”

“No. Only this madman had the idea of getting soaked.”

“Never mind. Sun’ll dry us. Shoes off.”

Christy and Frankie sat down on the sand and took off their shoes and socks. Already, the color in Frankie’s cheeks was high and strands of her wispy hair had broken from their band. She waited obediently as Christy rolled up the bottoms of her pink trousers, then stood up. For the first time that day, she reached for her father’s hand.

“Okay,” he said. “Here we go. Guess this is the way we do things at Silverstrand. Hold tight!”

Lev watched them run toward the water, both of them thin and nimble and moving fast. When they reached the sea, they let out high-pitched yells of shock and delight. Christy began to jump over the wavelets as they broke and Frankie did the same, and water sprayed all around them, catching the sunlight, and after a moment or two, Lev saw that they jumped in unison, like children playing a skipping game.

Lev dug his feet into the soft sand to dry them. Sophie stood laughing as she watched Christy and Frankie. “It’s bloody February!” she said. “We’re all mad as hatters.”

Behind the beach huts, installed on a piece of vacant ground, there was a winter fair, and it was here that Christy led them next. The place was small and almost deserted. Stall holders sat about on plastic chairs, blinking in the sunlight, surrounded by their own litter of dented Styrofoam cups and sweet wrappers and old cigarette packets. A sign advertising
FREDDO THE FIRE-EATING FIEND
lay forgotten and half hidden in the dead weeds of summer. The cotton-candy machine was taped up with the message
OUT OF ORDER
. But tinkly music was playing, and in the middle of the ground stood a children’s carousel, set up with miniature cars, airplanes, spaceships, and tanks. Frankie ran immediately to this and Christy paid for her ride. She was the only child on the carousel, but the young attendant stood watchfully at the center of the machine, turning like a figure on a music box while, above it, seagulls shrieked in the blue air.

Christy, Lev, and Sophie stood in a line, smoking, while Frankie went round and round, sitting proudly in a miniature fire engine with, on her head, a plastic fireman’s helmet. She waved to them like royalty, her hand stiff and flat. But there was a smile on her narrow face, and Christy said at last, “She’s happy now, or am I wrong? She’s having a good time, isn’t she?”

“Brilliant time,” said Sophie.

Christy touched Lev’s sleeve. “Shame Maya couldn’t be here with us,” he said. “D’you have these merry-go-round kind of things at home?”

“Yes,” said Lev. “But I must say more beautiful than these military cars: nice painted horses and other animals, made of wood. Very old-fashioned. The Communists never got so far as these to break them.”

“That’s interesting,” said Christy.

“Perhaps a fair is very proletarian already, no? Not worth bother to destroy that.”

“Could be, could be.”

“In Baryn, the fair was a nice place. We used to go there. Even grown-ups like this place very much. You eat roasted sunflower seeds and you can hear a folk band and shoot at tin birds. Long ago there were prizes, but now there are no prizes.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because what has anyone to offer for a prize? A piece of coal? Some wild flowers? But I used to shoot the tin birds just the same.”

“Did you hit them?” asked Sophie.

“Yes,” said Lev, putting his arm round her shoulders, “my father taught me. We used to practise on real birds, in the woods, before the woods were cut down.”

“Practise on real birds?” said Sophie, pulling away from Lev. “That’s barbaric.”

“No,” said Lev. “I was joking. We killed them to survive.”

The ride slowed to its end, and Christy lifted Frankie out of the fire engine and returned her little helmet.

“Good kid, innit?” said the attendant.

“Aye,” said Christy. “She is.”

She was looking all around her for the next treat, the next excitement. She spied a hot-dog stall and led them toward it, and Christy bought dogs with onions and mustard, and they sat on an iron bench eating them. A seagull landed at their feet and snapped at their crumbs. Frankie began pulling off hunks of her bun and throwing them to the bird.

“Don’t do that, sweetheart,” said Christy. “You said you were hungry. So you eat it.”

Lev said to Frankie, “The first food I ever had in Britain was a hot dog.”

“Why?” said Frankie.

“Why?”

“She means ‘where,’ ” said Christy. “Don’t you mean where was it, Frankie?”

“Yes,” said Frankie.

“Well, Frankie, it was by the river. In London. I watch the big tourist boats. I think, I am alone forever . . .”

“Why?” said Frankie.

“Oh diddums,” said Sophie. “Isn’t that heartbreaking, Christy?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And then you met us: a Celtic plumber and a size-fourteen wannabe-chef, born in Godalming! Bet you never saw
them
coming!”

Christy chuckled. Lev blinked. He knew that Sophie had said something he should probably be laughing at, but he didn’t know what it was. Sometimes his understanding of English failed him, failed him suddenly without warning, like a spasm of deafness. He stared at the seagull, cramming its sharp beak with the dropped food. He was aware of Frankie staring at him, as the remains of her hot dog went cold in her hand. He sensed that something fundamental about the day had changed, but couldn’t quite recognize what it was.

“Sun’s gone in,” said Christy, looking up at a gray-white sky. “What about a visit to the lifeboat museum?”

13

The Pitch of It

A TEXT FROM Lydia came to Lev’s mobile:
Important news. Meet me in Café Rouge Highgate for lunch Sunday?

Lev called her to say he’d promised to go to Ferndale Heights on Sunday, and Lydia said disconsolately, “Well, you’ve been avoiding me for a long time. So carry on. I’m used to it by now, Lev. Perhaps you’ve got a girlfriend. But don’t worry. Soon I’ll be gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes. Don’t you want to know where I’m going?”

“Where are you going, Lydia?”

“It’s a long story. I can’t tell it on the phone. If you don’t want to meet me, you may never know it.”

Lev began to say that he was working long hours, had no time . . . but the silence he heard now, at the other end of the phone, was so reproachful, it made him feel mean. He told Lydia he’d meet her at noon in Highgate the following day.

“Okay,” she said. “That will be nice, to see you at last. How are you getting along with
Hamlet
?”

Lev didn’t want to tell her that he’d hardly opened the book, that it was lying under his bunk at Belisha Road, alongside empty Silk Cut packets. Instead, he said, “
Hamlet
is difficult for me. My progress is very slow.”

“Well, I think you should persevere, Lev. You may recognize something of yourself in the character. See you tomorrow.”

He bought her some flowers—freesias, yellow and purple. Although it was almost spring now, these freesias had no perfume. But Lev thought, That doesn’t matter, because Lydia will pretend they do. She will say, “Oh, Lev, what a lovely scent!”

And sure enough, when he gave the flowers to her, she pressed them to her face. “Beautiful!” she said. “I didn’t expect these. Now I remember that my first judgment of you was correct: you’re a thoughtful man.”

In the dimly lit barracks of the Highgate Café Rouge, they ordered the chicken baguettes Lydia had wanted the last time. She also insisted on ordering two shots of vodka, and when these were brought to the table, she said, “Some of the waiters here are from our country. That thin one is from Yarbl.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I come here alone sometimes, on my day off. I drink hot chocolate. I talk to the waiters—just to hear our language, to escape from being Muesli. Like us, these people send money home. But this life in North London is soon going to be over for me. So I shall tell you my news. Are you prepared for a shock?”

“Yes,” said Lev.

“Very well. I’m going away with Maestro Greszler.”

“Going away? Yes? Going where?”

“Wherever he goes. First will be Vienna, next month, in April. Then Australia. After that New York. Then Paris. Sometimes we shall be back in London, and then I shall call you and say hello.”

“Well, that’s great, Lydia. I know you loved that job with Greszler.”

“It’s more than great.”

“But why does he need you in Vienna? You don’t speak German.”

“Well, I do, a little. But you see . . .” and here Lev saw her pale face bloom with a sudden flush of pink “. . . he wants me not only for the translating.”

Lev drank his vodka. Lydia was fanning herself with her paper napkin. “I told you it was a long story. But I’ll make it short. I should have mentioned to you before, when I was working in London with Maestro Greszler, how he very often tried to kiss me, but I would never let him. He has a wife at his home in Jor. A wife and three children, and now grandchildren. I thought I shouldn’t allow myself to be touched by such a man, who could never be mine. But since his leaving, I’ve been getting letters from him—two or three a week—telling me he’s fallen in love with me and wants me to be his mistress and go with him all over the world.”

“His mistress?”

“I expect you’re going to remind me that he’s old —”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“And that he suffers from constipation.”

“No.”

“But I don’t care, Lev. I’ve put away my scruples about everything. Even about his wife. I’m someone in need of love and I can love Pyotor Greszler, despite all these things. He tells me he’s still virile. He says he makes love to me in his dreams.”

She was flustered and smiling, like a girl. She looked around for the waiter from Yarbl, to order a second shot of vodka. She laughed a hectic little laugh.

“Oh, Lev,” she said, “I hope you don’t look down on me—to become the mistress of a famous man, to be a kept woman. But, you know, my life here since Pyotor went away has been so bad, I feel I’ve lost all my pride. I am just Muesli now: a slave to spoiled English children. And I can’t go on like this. I would die.”

“You don’t have to justify it, Lydia. I’m sure hundreds of women would like to have a life with Maestro Greszler. He’s a genius. And if he loves you . . .”

“Well, what is love when you are seventy-two? I don’t know. But I’m going to take my chance. I’m almost forty. I’ve always longed to see the world. I think, when I get to New York City, I may die of wonder! And with Pyotor, we’ll be in the best hotels, the best rooms. My God, I sound worldly. I must have caught the English consumer disease! But never mind the hotels and so forth. When I think of my dear maestro, it’s with great tenderness. I never pulled away from his kisses out of revulsion. It never bothered me to help him with his bowels . . .”

The vodka was warm inside Lev. His old admiration for Lydia returned to touch his heart. He said gently, “When you’re not traveling with Greszler, where will you live?”

Lydia put down her vodka glass and patted her hair. “He’s already thought about that. He is so very considerate. I’ll live in Yarbl, with my parents. He is going to help us with money, for a new refrigerator for Mamma, and for me a small car so that I may sometimes drive to Jor to see him.”

“Do you know how to drive, Lydia?”

“No. But I’ll get lessons. You don’t think I can master this?”

“I’m sure you can. I’m sure you will be a very good driver. Have you told your parents yet?”

“Yes. Except not the mistress side of it. They need never know about that. Only that I’m going to be Maestro Greszler’s assistant on his concert tours. They’re very proud. They’re already telling their friends about it.”

Lev reached for Lydia’s hand and brought it to his lips. Her face was close to his, radiant and warm.