‘And now you think you’ve found it?’
‘Just in the last couple of days it’s looking like I have.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rasher walked down the covered passage, turned left, and realised he’d been there before. There was a row of wheelie bins at the far side of the yard beside a long stretch of grating. Back in January, he remembered, when the weather had been awful, he’d slept behind those bins, warmed by a constant stream of air from below. He’d had two nights of relative comfort and safety before a bloke came out one morning and drenched him in freezing water by hosing down the bins.
He wasn’t certain if the bloke had seen him lying there in his sleeping bag or if it had been an accident. Anyway, he’d known better than to get up and ask. Wide awake and shivering, he’d kept his head covered, hoping your man hadn’t noticed him, and as soon as he’d got a chance, he’d scuttled away. There’d been no point in taking the sodden sleeping bag so he’d spent the day scavenging for another, and managed to find one, wadded in a dark doorway, just before it got really cold that night. His clothes had dried as he’d walked the streets, but by nightfall he was still shivering all over. It was the following morning that he’d woken up with flu.
There was a big double door saying ‘STAFF ENTRANCE’ not far from the bins. Rasher pressed the bell by the notice, like he’d been told to, and waited for a voice on the intercom to tell him to come in.
He hadn’t known what you’d wear to be interviewed at a place called The Royal Victoria, but the Khan one had said a kitchen porter just needed to be clean and neat. Rasher had decided off his own bat that a hoodie would give the wrong impression so he’d worn a shirt with his jeans. The whiter-than-white trainers looked like a couple of searchlights after he’d gone at them with a nailbrush, and he was wearing a brand-new pair of socks, the second in the pack of two he’d got from Martin. The jeans were still far too big but he’d hitched them up with a belt.
Mindful of the need to look super-scrubbed, he’d gone a bit mad at the shaving and ended up giving himself a cut. Still, there was a bottle of aftershave called ‘Edge For Men’ in the washbag he’d got from Martin, so he smelt good. Fergal had used some foul goo with a name like ‘Wolf’ or something, and, no matter what bathroom stuff Mum had bought for him, Dad always smelt of the pharmacy. Edge For Men was good, though. Kind of spicy and discreet. According to the Khan woman, it was made by Edge of the World Essentials, the crowd she worked for. They’d given a box of samples to Martin who, by the sound of things, was the best blagger on God’s green earth.
The intercom buzzed and a foreign-sounding voice told Rasher to come in. He was met inside by a guy about his age, and taken upstairs and along a corridor to a room where the guy gave the door a knock. It opened and Rasher went into a room that seemed awfully bright. The corridors had had dim strip lighting, but here there was a desk in front of a big window, with a woman sitting behind it on a chair. She was wearing a black uniform suit, and a shirt with what his mum had always called a pussycat bow.
When Rasher came in the woman walked round the desk to shake his hand. This would have been unexpected except that the Khan woman had warned him it might happen, and told him what was needed was a firm, assured grip. He had a feeling his hand was a bit too sweaty for assurance but Pussycat Bow looked him up and down and indicated a chair. They sat down opposite each other, and Rasher attempted to look bright without seeming too eager.
The next chunk of time was a blur. She asked questions and he must have answered them but, afterwards, he couldn’t remember a thing he’d said. It must have been okay, though, because she stood up eventually and said she was sure he’d fit in with The Royal Vic’s team ethos. Rasher said he hoped so, and wondered if it meant he’d got the job.
‘Right. Well, I’ll take you down to the kitchen to meet our chef, Anton. And I suppose you’d like to see the accommodation.’
He followed her down a bunch of other corridors and waited while she opened a door and stood back to let him go in.
‘As I said, our kitchen requires two porters and in the off-season there’s normally only full-time work for one. But, obviously, we’re going into our high season now, and I understand that live-in is your preference?’
Rasher said it was.
‘Good. You’ll probably have as many hours as you choose to work. I mean, overtime and night work if you want it. And this would be your room.’
It was much the same size as the one in the halfway house. Everything was a bit older, though, and more solid. The window, which was really big, overlooked the yard and the wheelie bins, and the grating where he’d once slept. Literally a case of coming up in the world. There was a bed with built-in shelves and drawers beside it, a wardrobe against the other wall, a table and chair under the window. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that the door had a lock.
‘It’s grand. Very nice.’
‘So, let’s take you down to meet Anton.’
They went down in a lift that was a bit scruffy, with marks on the walls where things had been banged in and out. As they emerged, Pussycat Bow showed him the staff lounge. It had sofas and armchairs and a big telly, all slightly knackered-looking. Peering through the doorway, Rasher thought about his mum’s front room with its two-seater couch and footstool, and matching lounge chair. Last time he’d seen it, the couch had had a huge stain on the cushions, where he’d chucked Fergal’s curry the day he’d gone berserk.
He’d never spoken to anyone about what had happened that day. He didn’t plan to, either. Just thinking about it made him cringe – worrying about Mum and half wishing the bastard Fergal had left her, then panicking that, if he had, she’d be left all alone. In his first few months on the streets he’d kept having nightmares about her sitting on the stained couch with no one there to mind her. That was another reason he’d gone hitching down the country. Just to get away. He’d soon found that you couldn’t run from nightmares. All the same, he knew he couldn’t go home while he was a minor. Because the chances were that, if he did, he’d end up in care.
He still couldn’t fathom the Khan woman. Sometimes she came across like a social worker, and Rasher would sit there waiting for her to start asking personal questions. She hadn’t done yet, though. Instead she’d talked about daft things like herbs. She’d told him that, when she’d volunteered in the Lissbeg garden, she’d read a book in the local library, written by some nun. ‘It’s a history of the garden. Not old, because the convent is only Victorian and the book seems not to have been written until the garden was well established. It shows all the beds and the layout, though, and what used to be planted there before it got overgrown. With drawings and diagrams and notes. We used it as a manual when we restored the garden. The woman who got the project going was a lay sister in the convent.’
Rasher had got half interested. ‘What’s a lay sister?’
‘She’d worked in the garden and the kitchens.’
‘Like a chef?’
‘More like a servant, I think. Nuns needed a dowry to be accepted into the order. If you had no money you entered the convent and worked.’
‘Did she cook, though?’
‘Yes. And she grew food. She was very knowledgeable.’
‘And she read it all up in a library?’
‘I doubt if Sister Michael ever spent much time in a library. She was given the book when they put her to work.’
‘So how come the garden got all overgrown?’
‘Well, the school and the convent closed. Sister Michael and another elderly nun were the only two still in residence. They were given a retirement flat there when it still belonged to the Church.’
Rasher reckoned it was just as well that the place had shut down. He’d heard plenty about care homes run by nuns, and what went on in them. Priests and brothers, too, all beating the shite out of kids. It was part of the reason he’d stayed as far away as he could from Social Services. You’d never know what might happen to you if you
found yourself in the hands of the Church or the state.
It seemed like Mrs Khan had got on with Sister Michael, though, so he didn’t comment. And maybe the poor old nun was a decent skin. Actually, by the sound of it, she’d been shoved around a fair bit herself. Maybe not actually beaten but, chances were, treated like shite.
All the chat about convents had got him nervous, so he’d doubled back to talking about the book. ‘Is it still in the library?’
‘Yes. You should come and see it sometime.’
Rasher had shrugged. All he knew about public libraries was that, generally speaking, you weren’t thrown out if you sheltered in one from the rain. They were warm, too, and, at the end of a day, they threw out loads of newspapers, so they were good places to find something to put between you and the street.
Pussycat Bow had a confident walk, like she’d left school as a head girl and was on her way to becoming Head of Everything. You could tell they were approaching the kitchen by the great smell and the deafening clatter. There was a sanitiser on the wall by the door, reminding Rasher vividly of the hospital.
‘They’re clearing up after lunch service, so I’m sure Anton will have a moment to meet you.’
She clicked into the kitchen on her neat little heels and Rasher followed, his new trainers making sucking sounds on the flooring.
Clearly, Saira Khan had been right when she’d said that a kitchen porter was very low in the kitchen pecking order, so low that Anton hardly seemed to see Rasher was there. He nodded and shook hands okay, but he looked right through him, and it was left to Pussycat Bow to announce that she knew Rasher was going to become a valued member of the team.
Anton turned and let a roar at a guy who was scrubbing pots in some way that didn’t come up to standard. Then he looked through Rasher again and asked if at last they’d managed to pull in someone who didn’t balk at a night shift. ‘You are going to be live-in, aren’t you?’
Assuming that at this stage he’d got the job, Rasher said, yes, he was.
‘Good. At least I can kick you out of bed if you start rolling in late on Monday mornings.’
Having roared at the pot-scrubbing guy again, Anton suddenly clapped Rasher on the shoulder. ‘Don’t panic, man, you’ll be fine. Things just get a bit loud round here if people don’t step up to the mark when they’re needed.’
‘Right. Well, that won’t happen with me.’
‘Good. Then I’ll see you when I see you. When do you start?’ He went charging off across the kitchen without waiting for an answer, which was just as well because Rasher hadn’t a clue. Pussycat Bow smiled wanly and said that was all right, then. And a few minutes later, Rasher was back in the yard, with an envelope in his hand containing a roster, and the feeling that all that had just happened was part of some weird dream. He supposed he ought to get back to the house and tell Martin about it but, as he made his way back along the passage, he decided he’d cross the street first and take a proper look at the front of The Royal Victoria. You’d never know, there might come a time when he’d have his own celebrity chef television show, and be interviewed about where he’d begun his career.
Grinning at the thought, he stuck the roster into his pocket, and glanced round to check the traffic. But, just as he stepped off the pavement, a hand grabbed him by the shoulder. Even before he saw the uniform, Rasher knew it was Nugent. The big, bland face with its pale, piggy eyes glowered down at him and his stomach creased in fear.
For a minute he thought he was going to be hustled back down the passageway, accused of trespass or trying to burgle the hotel. But it seemed that the sergeant already knew that Martin had fixed him an interview because, instead, Nugent shoved him against the railings and hissed in his face, ‘Respectable now, are we? Clean as a whistle and off the streets with Father feckin’ Martin watching your back? Well, just remember this. If there’s one thing I hate more than a lousy, stinking beggar, it’s a dirty whinging scrounger getting a leg up from a priest. There’s decent people up and down the length and breadth of this country that never got a handout in their life. Never asked for it and wouldn’t get it if they did ask. Because of the likes of you.’
He stepped away from Rasher, brushing his hands together as if to wipe off contamination. Then he leaned in again, and the weight of him made Rasher’s legs shake.
‘So you think you’ve fallen on your feet now but, trust me, I’ll be watching you. All I need is a reason to move and you’ll wish you’d never been born.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Brian sat on his living-room floor, thinking he wouldn’t miss this impersonal flat he’d chosen to live in simply because it was close to the council offices. Moving out was going to be easy, physically as well as emotionally. He’d come to Carrick with few possessions, and accumulated hardly any since he’d been here.
Looking round the bare room, with its desk, television, and large, expensive armchair, he realised that the bulk of what he owned amounted to marks on paper and canvas – stacked portfolios of drawings, photos and sketches, and ridiculous numbers of books, which were also piled up on the floor.
In the first few years in his boring council job he’d walked endlessly, photographing Finfarran’s beauty from every possible angle, until the walls of his rented rooms were lost under shots of majestic mountains and glorious sunsets. Eventually, when the last square of magnolia paint had disappeared under yet another study in scarlet and gold, he’d taken the photos down and lived surrounded by hundreds of pinholes, like constellations of tiny black stars. The shots of the mountains had appeared sterile, and it seemed to him that the scents and sounds central to the experience of a sunset had been lost in his efforts to stop it slipping away. So, telling himself that the exercise had been pointless, he’d thrust most of the photos into the bin.
Later he’d realised that what he’d really lost was shared experience. Life with Sandra, his wife, had been all about togetherness, so nothing had made sense without her presence, and no other human relationship could compensate for her absence when she’d died.
Confused, grieving, and resentful, he’d ignored offers of friendship from colleagues in the planning office, where he was overqualified for his job and most of the people he’d worked with had been younger than himself. Ironically, the age gap had added to his problem in ways that hadn’t occurred to him when he’d chosen to take the post. The last thing he’d wanted was to be reminded of what he’d lost, but in seeking to escape from painful memories, he’d surrounded himself with colleagues whose main focus was finding love, getting married, and having kids.
None of this had been clear to him until he’d met Hanna. Prickly, difficult, and resentful of what life had thrown at her, she’d somehow jerked him out of his own self-absorption. To begin with, he’d been moved by nothing more than empathy, but before long, to his amazement, he’d found himself deeply in love.
In one of his portfolios there was a charcoal drawing he’d made more than a year ago. Getting up, he fetched it and took it out onto the balcony. He’d sketched it from a photo he’d taken of Hanna on their first ramble on the mountain. Softening the little wrinkles round her wide-set eyes with his thumb, he’d drawn her straight, uncompromising eyebrows, unconsciously adding the crease that appeared between them whenever she was troubled. This wasn’t the open, laughing Hanna he now loved to spend time with. It was the reserved, thoughtful Hanna whom he’d first learned to love.
Shared experience had returned to his life since they’d found each other. But this time it was different, informed by what Hanna called his reticence, something which, until now, he’d felt no pressing need to examine. Why should he? He hadn’t needed to. In the twenty years or so since Sandra’s death, if he’d thought about his reserve at all, he’d dismissed it as a habit arising from circumstance, and one that, if it was damaging, could hurt no one but himself. But that was before Hanna.
Whenever he was alone in the flat he was conscious of her distant presence. Now, only a few
miles away, she was probably working in her garden or sitting on her bench above the ocean, drinking a glass of wine. That jealously guarded space of her own meant so much to her that sometimes he wondered if she thought of him at all when they were apart. Though that, he told himself wryly, wasn’t the worst of his troubles. Not now, when she might be thinking about her ex-husband.
And why should she not? Like Sandra and himself, Hanna and Malcolm had shared a life that belonged to them alone. Brian knew how deeply she’d loved Malcolm and how, even though she’d moved on, the bond between them endured because of their shared love for Jazz. Was Hanna’s intense sense of privacy linked to that past life and those painful memories? If so, he, of all people, had no right to complain.
His finger moved across the paper, smoothing the crease he had drawn between her eyebrows. Her eyes were nothing like Sandra’s. Her grave expression had nothing of his wife’s brilliance, and the silver threads in Hanna’s dark hair made Sandra, as she existed in memory, seem unnaturally young. Sandra had been young, though – younger than he was – and fragile as a fledgling bird by the time she died. Nothing of her was real now, and nothing they’d made or done together had ever seemed real without her. This was why he had cut all ties with the past. Or nearly all. Some ties came with responsibility.
Leaning on the balcony rail, holding the drawing, Brian remembered the day he and Hanna had gone for that walk on the mountain. In his first shot he’d captured a moment of stillness, her face composed and her grey eyes closed. The click of the camera’s shutter had jerked them open and, in that moment, he’d taken the photo from which the sketch had been made. Somewhere in the field above them a lark had been tossing and singing, and far below on the beaches the waves were like turquoise silk. He’d known then that he didn’t want to lose her, and the perfect trust in her eyes when she’d looked up into the camera lens had pierced him with a hidden stab of guilt.
The Month of Borrowed Dreams Page 15
