The Road Home (46 page)

“Yes,” said Lev. “Sure I will.”

“Oh, will you
really?
That is so kind of you. We shall pay you properly, of course. I really am so grateful.”

“It’s fine. How many for lunch, Mrs. McNaughton?”

“Well. Let me see. Sixteen residents. We lost Mrs. Hollander. So very sad. Such a . . . leading light. D’you remember her, Minty Hollander?”

“Yes. The Christmas-cracker game.”

“That’s it. Always loved to monopolize the games here. But nobody really minded. And we lost her so suddenly. I know everybody misses her.”

“Yes. I think so.”

“But there we are.
Let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.
”

“What did you say?” said Lev.

“Oh, just quoting from
Hamlet.
”

“Hamlet is talking to the grave-maker, yes?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Where did you learn that, Lev?”

Lev, standing in the sunlight, knew there was a smile on his face. Not only had he recognized the line, but now he felt as if he’d suddenly understood why Lydia had given him the play to read: she wanted to show him that words written long, long ago could travel beside you and help you at moments when you could no longer see the road.

“A friend taught me,” he said.

“Well. Very good. Anyway, Lev, I’m so relieved you can do Sunday. I immediately thought of dear Sophie, but unfortunately she’s busy with some art exhibition.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I didn’t think art shows happened on Sundays. They never used to, but I suppose times have changed.”

“I think so.”

“Well, Lev, if you get here at about nine-thirty, that should do well. The residents like to eat at one. Then, if you can come to see me during next week, we’ll settle your fee. Does that sound fair?”

“Yes,” said Lev. “Quite fair. One more thing, Mrs. McNaughton. What am I going to cook?”

“Right. Well, a roast of some kind. That’s what we always have on Sundays. Lamb?”

“Okay. Lamb. I’ll bring some herbs.”

“Herbs? Oh yes. Fine. But they like things plain. Don’t forget this is England, Lev.”

“No. I never forget.”

Lev put his phone away, turned and looked down one more time at Kowalski’s yard, imprinting it forever on his mind. Then he walked away.

The kitchen at Ferndale Heights stank of burned-on grease, of the familiar turd smell of boiled cabbage.

Lev opened all the windows, cleaned the cooker hob, tugged out a roasting pan, and scoured this till his fingers bled. Then he began peeling potatoes.

His young, black helper arrived silently and stood at the door, clutching a clean folded apron to her body. Lev turned and saw her. She was sixteen or seventeen, with a frosting of acne across her cheeks and hair straightened into a wiry halo.

“I’m Simone,” she said.

He shook her hand, saw she was suspicious of him, of his
foreignness,
so he began straightaway—as G.K. would have done—to give her tasks, telling her to finish the potatoes, wash and save the peelings for stock, then start on the carrots. Then, in front of her startled eyes, he took down all the packets of gravy granules, stock cubes, and instant mash and threw them into the trash bin.

“In this kitchen we make real food,” he said. “You agree, Simone?”

“Wha’ever,” said Simone. “You’re in charge, man.”

“Today I’m chef. So here’s what we make to go with the roast lamb: a potato and onion gratin, a nice
jus,
peas, a carrot purée . . .”

“Wha’ I call you then? Chef?”

“Yes,” he said. Couldn’t resist it. “You call me Chef.”

The joint was huge, blood-smeared, slippery from its vacuum pack. Lev rinsed and dried it. Went to the bag he’d brought with him, containing a bundle of rhubarb, and took out a head of garlic and some fresh rosemary. Saw Simone turn and watch him as he conjured up these new ingredients.

“You got, like, a
kit
there? A chef’s kit?”

“Yes. I know this kitchen.”

“Shi’, innit?”

“It’s shit. But today we make it better.”

Lev produced the rhubarb, then a nutmeg, cloves, butter, and cream from his bag. Simone shook her head. “Ma Vig didn’t know nuvvin’ about cookin’,” she said. “Dunno why she
got
this job, because she didn’t deserve it.”

“No. Lucky for everybody she’s gone.”

The worn white space soon began to smell of the fragrant lamb, the pungent gratin. Lev began squaring off butter and flour for a crumble, while Simone washed and chopped the rhubarb. He saw that the girl worked slowly, but with care. When he showed her how to caramelize an onion, then put the stock, made from the odds and ends of vegetables, in the onion pan to make a
jus,
he got from her a snuffling, delighted laugh. “Wicked!” she said. “I’m gonna show my mum this.”

Lev paused in his work, went to the door to smoke, and looked out onto the Ferndale grass. Pigeons had colonized it and waddled over it, clucking and murmuring. Straight into Lev’s heart came his old longing for Sophie. He imagined her sitting right there among the birds, arms round her knees, the sun on her hair, smiling at him. Then remembered her singing on Christmas Day,

Somewhere over the rainbow,

Way up high . . .

and all the residents of Ferndale stilled by her voice, soothed into dreams of the past, breaking into clapping and cheering when the song ended.

Lev stubbed out the cigarette, came back into the kitchen, and asked Simone, “Did you ever work Sundays with a chef called Sophie?”

“Yeah?” She said it like a question: “
Yeah?
” Then she added, “She was nice, right? But she don’t come ’ere anymore. She got, like, some famous boyfriend, innit?”

Lev recognized most of the Ferndale residents: Berkeley Brotherton, Pansy Adeane, Douglas, Joan, the trembling and jerking Parkinsonian contingent, some of the wheelchair brigade . . . There were three or four new faces. But Minty Hollander was gone. She’d been their star, their diamond-dripping duchess who’d once worked with Leslie Caron, who bossed them all into obedience with her silvery vowels and her obstinate, flirtatious charm, and now she’d left them.

Perhaps it was a relief to them that she’d died. They were certainly quieter without her, less quarrelsome, it seemed to Lev. And when he and Simone began to serve up the lunch, they fell into silence, staring down at their plates, taking their glasses on or off to squint at the unfamiliar-looking food. Then they began to eat, and after a moment Pansy Adeane said, with her mouth full, “Who made this potato thing?”

“Chef made it, Mrs. Adeane,” said Simone.

“Well, it’s lovely. Tell the chef, dear. Far better than our usual muck.”

There was no sign of Ruby Constad. Her place had been laid at the table, but the chair was vacant. When Lev asked Berkeley Brotherton where she was, he replied, “No idea. Moping in her room, I wouldn’t wonder. Bloody children never visit her, selfish creatures.” Then one of the day nurses, tying a napkin round Berkeley’s ancient but proud neck, interrupted and said, “Mrs. Constad’s not taking lunch today. Lunch is not obligatory.”

Lev and Simone circled the table, helping the two day nurses to cut food for those who couldn’t manage to do it, sometimes lifting a shaking hand holding a spoon toward a gaping mouth or a tongue held out, as though to receive a communion wafer. Lev knew that some of the residents remembered him and some had no idea who he was. During the complicated High Mass of their Sunday meal, conversation was muted until the topic of Mrs. Viggers and Jane began to surface.

“If you ask me, Jane Viggers was mental,” said Pansy.

“She had a scream on ’er, all right,” said Douglas. “Like a scream out of ruddy
Psycho
.”

“Mrs. Vig was no better,” said a faded, mousy woman, whose name was Hermione. “She once wrenched my arm.”

“Wrenched your
arm?
” said Berkeley.

“Yes. Wrenched it out of its socket. She was a Marxist.”

“Sadist, don’t you mean?” said Pansy.

Laughter round the table.

Lev wondered what it was they were all laughing at: the thought of colossal Mrs. Viggers advancing on Hermione’s meager arm? Misuse of the word “Marxist”?

“The Viggerses used to jack stuff from the kitchen . . .” This was Simone, who was going round with second helpings of rhubarb crumble.

“ ‘Jack’?” said Joan. “What’s that?”

“Tell you’re not streetwise, eh?” said Douglas. “It means nick.
Steal.
”

A respectful quiet greeted these delicious words.

“Really? Oh, tell us, Simone, go on.”

Simone spooned out crumble. Several pudding plates had been scraped clean. “Yeah,” she said. “I was gonna, like,
mention it
to Mrs. McNaughton, but I thought I’d be garrotted or somevin’.”

“Garrotted! Oh, I like that. What did they steal, dear?”

“Loadsa stuff. Used to be an electric whisk an’ a fruit press in that kitchen, but the Viggerses jacked ’em. Same fing wiv the scales. And, like, small stuff as well: cutlery, cruets, parin’ knives . . .”

“Knives!”

“Did you see them
do
it, Simone?”

“Well, I didn’t, like,
see
’em right in front of me eyes. But I know they did it. Know wha’ I mean? Mrs. Vig had a hold-all type thing she brought wiv her. And I know that bag was stuffed wiv, like,
goods.
I’m not jokin’.”

“Well, all we can say,” said Berkeley Brotherton, “is good riddance to them. In the Navy, they’d’ve been drummed out a long time ago. Because they couldn’t bloody cook!” He brayed with laughter—
hack-hack-hack-hack!
—the laugh turning quickly to a wheezing cough. He spat phlegm into a handkerchief.

“Food’ll be better now, dear, will it?” said Joan plaintively, to Lev.

“Call ’im ‘Chef,’ ” giggled Simone.

“Oh, Chef. Yes, sorry, love. Chef. Will it get better now, like it was today?”

Lev was standing at the end of the table. He saw many faces turn to him. Silence in the room. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

“You mean you’re not staying on?” said Berkeley.

Lev shook his head. “Just helping out today.”

“Damned shame,” wheezed Berkeley.

“Hear, hear,” said Douglas. “For once I agree with the captain.”

When lunch was over and the nurses had helped the residents out into the sunshine or back into their rooms, Lev left Simone to load the dishwasher and made his way to Ruby Constad’s room.

The voice that answered his knock was subdued. He found Ruby sitting in her armchair with a photograph album on her knees. She clutched it to her chest as Lev came in, as though he might have come to take it away from her.

“It’s Lev, Mrs. Constad,” he said. “I used to come here with Sophie.”

She peered at him. “
Who
is it?”

He came closer to her. Saw her face very thin and drawn, where, only a few months ago, it had been fleshy. Her once-beautiful eyes looked startled.

“It’s Lev,” he said gently. “I was here at Christmas. And one other time. I helped to cook the meals.”

Her look softened. She held out a frail hand. He put it to his lips and kissed it, saw Ruby smile.

“I remember you,” she said. “Always so
galant.
”

“I came to say, would you like me to bring you some lunch? I made a nice gratin . . . and a rhubarb crumble.”

“No, thank you, dear. I’m not hungry. I live on Matchsticks now. Would you like one?”

She picked up a box of chocolate twigs from beside her chair and offered it to Lev. He accepted a twig. Ruby said, “Pull up that stool. I’ll show you some old snaps.”

He sat beside her and she lifted the heavy photograph album toward him. “India,” she said. “Just before the war. That’s me here. It was a welcome pageant we made at our convent school for the viceroy.”

Lev saw a faded picture of young girls wearing ankle-length dresses, lined up across a stage, bending their bodies in strange contortions. Remembered now what she’d told him and Sophie: “We made the word
WELCOME
in girls.”

“See the O? I’m one half of it. The left half, there. My hair was dark then.”

Lev looked from the girl in the picture—so willowy and strong, so intent on being one half of a beautiful O—to Ruby, beside him, lined and emaciated in her heavy chair. He told her she looked lovely, that the welcome tableau was very clever.

She turned the page, pointed to a photograph of a smiling nun. “Sister Benedicta,” she said. “She was my favorite nun. She taught me about books. We used to read the poetry of Thomas Hardy and A. E. Housman in her room. Her spirit was wonderfully gentle.”

“Did you see her again?”

“No. I don’t know what became of her. I did go back to India in the late 1970s, after my husband died, but the convent school was closed. The buildings had become what they called a garment factory. I went in, even though I wasn’t supposed to. I shall never forget the noise of that place, and the sight of so many women working at wretched sewing machines. As though
one
sewing machine isn’t terrifying enough! And God knows how many hours they had to put in, poor souls. I remember thinking, I am never going to buy a
garment
again!”

Ruby closed the album and asked Lev to tell her how he was getting on without Sophie. He lit a cigarette. No way could he tell the old lady that he still had erotic dreams about Sophie, could still get hard just thinking about the plump softness of her arms. So he took a different tack. He began to explain that the loss of Sophie had been buried underneath another loss—the coming disappearance of his village under the waters of the Auror dam.

“Oh, Lev,” she said, “I never heard of such a frightful thing. To drown people’s homes! Goodness me, it almost makes one long for a viceroy, or somebody of that ilk, to sit those unfeeling, petty bureaucrats down and say, ‘No. That is completely beyond the pale!’ ”

Lev smiled. He told her quietly that the coming of the dam had led him on to his wild idea of starting a restaurant—“The first one in my country where the food will be truly good.”

“Oh, a restaurant!” exclaimed Ruby. “How excellent. You must definitely do it. What kind of restaurant will it be?”