Lunching at Laura's

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Of course he can,’ Davriosh said stoutly. ‘Of course he can.’ But he looked uneasy, all the same.

  15

  The phone rang just as he was settling Anya for the night. It was a complicated process, involving a series of carefully orchestrated heaves and pushes to get her from her great arm chair on to the high brass bed. For years he’d been trying to persuade her – had even begged her – to change to a modern low divan to make it all easier for both of them, but she wouldn’t hear of it, clinging to her familiar old bed with the tenacity she normally used only when dealing with food. It had been her marriage bed and had accommodated her for almost seventy years; she wasn’t going to be bullied out of it. So, the getting-into-bed ritual remained what it had been, a matter of prolonged sweating and puffing and grunting on the part of both of them. And tonight the phone had started shrilling just as they got to the stage where Anya was holding on round his neck and he was trying to get her to her feet.

  For a moment he contemplated dropping her back in her chair, and going to answer it. All his instincts were to run when the phone rang; it might just possibly be his agent, or a management with the offer of something good, even at this time of night; if he didn’t answer at once they’d give up, go away, ask someone else and he’d have missed his great chance –

  But one glance at Anya’s face made him abandon that idea; she hadn’t heard the phone of course, and to try to explain to her why she had to sit down again and wait to be put to bed would take up more time than finishing the job and then answering; so he redoubled his efforts, trying to speed the old woman to her place beneath the great feather cover, and succeeding only in making her grunt with irritation at being hustled and deliberately slowing down in consequence. And all the time the phone went on shrilling –

  He left her sprawled in the bed like a stranded whale, shouting despairingly into her ear. ‘The phone, Anya – I’ll be back in a minute – THE PHONE!’ and she lay there helplessly with her brushed cotton nightdress rucked up to show her surprisingly scrawny feet and legs and he ran to the other room.

  Even in his panic he felt again the shock of pleasure the room always gave him; it was his room, the one place in the big old flat he could regard entirely as his own domain and his own creation. In the dining room, in the sitting room his mother used, in her bedroom, it was all as it had been for years; heavy mahogany furniture, dull brown carpets, the walls and tables and shelves cluttered so thickly with bric-a-brac and mementoes of Hungary that the heavily patterned wallpaper was almost – mercifully – invisible. But here in this room where he slept and lived and dreamed his private hours all was elegance and charm; the black and silver furniture carefully and lovingly collected over the years from antique shops which specialised in art deco, the great swathe of silver curtains at the window, the bellying loops of black fabric that obscured the ceiling, the mirrors everywhere winking and glittering in the glow of the half dozen deco lamps scattered around, all cried their welcome to him and even as the phone shrilled he stood poised at the doorway for just a fraction of a moment to let the pleasure sink in. And then hurried across the thick pile of the scarlet carpet to pick up the phone from the table in the corner.

  It was a thirties telephone, a stick and separate earpiece affair, and he sank down on the black leather pouffe beside the chrome and glass table to sit hunched with the earpiece held hard against his head and the stick clutched so tightly in his other hand that his knuckles whitened. He always answered the phone like that; always believed that maybe, this time, it would be the big offer, the special offer, the magic breakthrough offer he’d waited for for so long a time.

  But it wasn’t. His face seemed to change in the soft yellow light as he listened, settled into tired lines as his mouth drooped and his eyes half closed. He looked suddenly as though he felt cold.

  ‘Oh,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Hello.’

  He listened as the small voice clacked in his ear, staring unseeingly at the facing mirrored wall in which his own reflection appeared and reappeared, as it was thrown back by the mirrors on the other side. His shape was outlined by reflections of itself, over and over again, and it seemed to him that the words that were being said in his ear reverberated in the same ominous way, and he took a deep breath and tried to cut in, tried to stem the tide of sound that was pouring into his head from the little trumpet of an earpiece.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘How can I? It’s just not possible – I’ve been thinking about what you said carefully and it’s just not possible –’

  But the voice was inexorable and he felt as well as saw himself shrink even lower on the pouffe, and he began to shake his head, slowly, over and over again, as though the voice could see him refusing.

  ‘I just don’t see that they’ll agree – why should they agree? They’ll think it’s crazy if I –’

  Again he was interrupted and again he listened, still looking cold and miserable.

  ‘But it’s no use saying that! They’d never believe that. They all know me – know I’m an actor, that acting’s all I ever cared about. If I were that sort of businessman wouldn’t I have shown it years ago? Of course I would! And –’

  Again he was forced to stop and listen for a while.

  ‘Yes. Yes. I see.’ He sounded less wretched now. ‘I suppose that would be – I can’t be sure, mind you, but I could try –’

  The voice seemed to change, become less threatening, for now he sat up a little more, and his face seemed to lift, too.

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean. And you’re sure that they’ll come to no real harm from it? I mean, why? Why are you so –’

  Now the voice talked for a long time, and he watched himself listening and after a while tucked the ear piece between his head and his shoulder to release one hand so that he could twitch at the black silk scarf he was wearing tucked into the neck of his dressing gown. It was a scarlet dressing gown of exactly the same shade as the carpet and against it his silver hair showed a rich deep gleam that lit his face which was lightly tanned from the regular sessions he had on the sunbed at the health club he went to every morning. He looked good tonight and as he listened to the little disembodied voice began to feel better, too.

  ‘I suppose you’re right, my dear chap. I suppose you’re right,’ he said at length. ‘It’s just that – I’m really rather stupid about these things, you know. Just an actor, not a businessman. But if this is going to be of help to you and can’t hurt Anya or any of the family – what?’

  He listened and then laughed, and now he was a quite different man from the one who had picked up the phone. He looked ten years younger, wise and amusing, charming and relaxed.

  ‘My dear fellow, how on earth do you expect me to know all that? I’ve never asked! I’m happy enough to have my own share – never attempted to sort out the facts about anyone else’s! All this is ancient history, and though one is of course as fascinated as any other man by one’s personal history, there comes a point where one is really dreadfully bored by the subject in general. Can’t you ask? Hmm? Oh, I see what you mean. I suppose not. Well I’m not sure what more I can do –’ And then his chin came up to tighten his jawline and he smiled as he listened.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ he said and now his voice seemed to have changed too, becoming deeper, a little richer. ‘You see? There’s no need to be unpleasant about things, is there? All you have to do with me is – well, all right, all right! Not another word, my dear chap. When?’

  He turned his head to glance at the curved silver clock that sat dead in the centre of the black marble fireplace and his smile widened even more.

  ‘That will be delightful. Hmm? Oh, heavens no! Bless her, once she’s asleep that’s it –’ His face changed ludicrously suddenly. ‘Oh. Ye Gods! Poor Anya! You rang and I left her – my dear chap, I must go! She’ll be in such a state – see you in an hour then! –’ And he hung the phone up with a clatter and thrust it onto the table and fled back to Anya.

 
; She had somehow managed to manoeuvre herself up the bed a little and now lay with her head on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling, her legs still partly uncovered, and he hurried over to the bed and tugged on the big feather quilt which was crumpled beneath her, in order to cover her.

  She turned her eyes towards him and said in her deep voice, ‘Paul?’ She pronounced it in the Hungarian way, Pol, and he smiled at her, liking the sound. It reminded him of his childhood when she had still been able to hear, though already her deafness had begun, and would sit and tell him stories as he sat curled up on her big accommodating lap, and his father would shout and complain at him for being such a baby, sitting on his mother’s lap at his age. She would hold him closer then, and murmur, ‘Never mind, Poly, never mind. Stay here with your Anya – Na ezt aztàn szèpen megsinàltad – you’re my beauty – never mind what your father says – stay here with your Anya – let him go with the others – let them be apya fia –’ And he would giggle at that, for he knew what that meant.

  They were chips off the old block. She would say it sneeringly, not liking her husband and his blustering, not much liking her older boys who were so similar too in so many ways, much preferring her Poly, who was so much like her.

  ‘Poly,’ she said again now. ‘Ennek mar féle sem trefa or ez trefànak màr sok –’

  ‘Darling Anya! You know I don’t understand when you speak Hungarian –’ he shouted, automatically lifting his voice to the level at which she was able to hear most of his words.

  ‘You understand when you want to,’ she growled, and turned her head away, and he came to the other side of the bed and bent over her, placatingly. She was annoyed and when she got annoyed she could work herself up into such a lather that she didn’t sleep. And tonight it was important that she went to sleep, for his sake as well as her own.

  ‘Darling, I’m sorry I left you.’ He spoke right into her ear, setting his lips against her thin old skin and pettishly she pushed him away; but she wasn’t as angry as she had been and he stroked her face with one hand and shouted, ‘I’m sorry, darling. It was an important call –’

  ‘Who was it?’

  He opened his mouth to speak and then stopped short ‘No one you know,’ he bawled and then as she turned her head to look at him said again. ‘No one you know,’ and patted her cheek.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she said as he began to haul the quilt out from beneath her and pull it over her. ‘I want some cholla. And coffee.’

  He stared at her, debating with himself. To refuse her might make her sulk, and could add to her still simmering irritation at having been left alone so unceremoniously. On the other hand, fetching the food, helping her with it, settling her again would take time and then maybe he’d arrive before she was asleep and –

  He leaned over her and shouted, ‘Anya, not coffee. Keeps you awake. Milk and cholla, all right?’ And she grinned at him so that her pudding of a face split wide and for a moment there she was again, his childhood Anya, jolly and big and funny and sharing titbits with him and laughing and teasing him and then laughing again so much that it drove his father and brothers out and left them in peace – and he grinned back and kissed her and hurried to the kitchen to fetch her snack.

  He watched her gobble the slice of sweet chocolate- and vanilla-flavoured bread, which he had spread with a little of her favourite honey, and shook his head a little. Her greed was touching rather than disgusting. She ate with all the relish of a naughty child and when she had finished licked her old lips with so much satisfaction and pleasure that it made him laugh aloud; but it worried him all the same. He was afraid, so very afraid that one day it would all overcome her, that her bulk would become more than her old heart could handle, and that she would die.

  That one day she had to die was a fact he tried very hard to forget. Ninety-one seemed somehow less aged than eighty-nine had seemed. That had been a bad year for him, her eighty-ninth. He was so frightened she wouldn’t get through it, but when she had, his spirits had lifted and had remained elated ever since. A number with a zero on the end and then with a one somehow seemed less than a number followed by a nine; it was illogical but there it was. She had passed ninety so there was no reason why she shouldn’t reach her hundredth birthday.

  And it was desperately important to him that she should. He had no one but his Anya; no one to care about, to fear for, to be angry with and irritated by. His brothers bored him, and he loathed them as much as he knew they despised him. Without Anya life would be intolerable, and watching her eat reminded him all too vividly of the way his father had died ten years ago, his face purple with the effort of breathing, his eyes bloodshot and frightened. He too had been a heavy eater, he too had been vast and ponderous, but he had not had his wife’s tenacity and pleasure in living. He had not had Paul to love him and care for him, so he had died too soon.

  Only eighty-five, Paul thought now, watching Anya gobbling her chollah. He was only eighty-five. Anya’s stronger than he was, better than he was, cleverer than he was. She’ll live for a long time yet – she must live for a long time yet – this whole family has good genes when it comes to long lives. His grandmother Maritza had lived to be eighty-eight, hadn’t she? And that had been in the old days when there was less good medical care about. And Uncle Istvan, he’d been – what was it? Almost eighty –

  He tried to close his mind to memories of the others who had not done so well, to Aunt Magda who had been well under sixty when she had died, the day before his own birthday. But he couldn’t succeed. He couldn’t help remembering how they had all spent his party at the restaurant weeping and then eating and then weeping again, just as he had to remember too Aunt Kati who had died when he had been a teenager. She had been under sixty, as well –

  He shook his head now, as though the movement would send the ugly frightening thoughts deep into the bottom of his mind where they couldn’t hurt him and took the tray from Anya and wiped her mouth and hands with the cologne-dampened chamois leather he always kept beside her bed for her in a little china bowl, and helped her turn on her side so that she could sleep. He had read somewhere that big people who slept on their backs sometimes stopped breathing when they were deeply asleep, and ever after he had insisted on making her lie in the proper way, and she let him, obedient as a child when he pushed pillows behind her back to keep her in position and allowing him to arrange her arm so that she didn’t crush it under her body and wake with pins and needles. All the time, as he fussed round her she watched him with those dark and intelligent eyes, loving what she saw and he caught her glance as at last she was settled and he reached for the bedside light switch.

  ‘Nice Poly,’ she murmured. ‘A csodàlàtos fiam. A nàgyszèru fiam. Nice Poly.’ And he smiled back at her. A wonderful son, her special wonderful son, he was, and never ceased to find delight in being told so.

  ‘Goodnight, darling,’ he said and bent and kissed her, but her eyes were already closed and he stood there and looked down at her as her breathing softened, deepened and became a light snore, and then switched off the bedside light. At once the small nightlight, which always burned on the corner bureau, throwing its weak gleams across the foot of the bed, sprang into view and he made his way quietly out of the room, tying the specially prepared thick bundle of fabric to the door knob to keep it open. She would hear nothing but he could hear her and that was what mattered.

  Now he could concentrate on himself, and as he washed up the plate and tray he’d taken from Anya’s room and checked that the old-fashioned kitchen was clean and tidy, ready for the daily woman’s ministrations tomorrow morning, he let his mind drift back over his telephone conversation.

  The trouble was, he understood so little of such matters as leases and freeholds. That someone should be interested in owning just the ground on which the family restaurant stood made little sense to him; that there might be interest in the place itself seemed very possible; he was well aware of the fact that it was a lucrative business. He had his own s
teady income to show for it, after all. But to own just the land? Why? He puzzled over that and then sighed softly. He had been assured that no one wanted to interfere with the business in any way. There was no interest of any kind at all in the restaurant, he had been told. None in the world. It was just a matter of freeholds and leaseholds. And if he helped with that, there’d be no harm done to anyone at all. Everything would go on as it always had, ticking over happily, with Laura content and everyone else content too. He and his Anya and the awful sisters-in-law and the Cords, everyone would be happy. It had all been explained to him. And yet still he felt that undertow of doubt. If only he understood it better –

  And if I refuse to help, then what? Will he really do as he seems to threaten he would? He’s never actually put it into words of course, Paul told himself now, slowly wiping a tea cloth over the same plate again and again, but still he seemed to threaten it – and though it shouldn’t matter, it did. He knew it shouldn’t, that he should be able to lift up his head and say to everyone, ‘The hell with you! The hell with all of you! I am what I am, and I don’t give a damn who knows it!’ But even as he thought it he felt the jolt in his belly that made him feel sick and dizzy with terror; after all these years of such care, of such watchfulness over every step, such careful choice of every place he went, every person he spoke to, to say, ‘I don’t give a damn’? He couldn’t do it. It was impossible. Not now. Not after so very long –

  And then the doorbell rang and he jumped physically and only just avoided dropping the plate. He put it back carefully on to the old dresser in the corner and hung up the tea towel equally carefully and switched off the light before going with a steady tread towards the front door. He paused for a moment at the door of his own room to take a reassuring and comforting look inside and smoothed his hair and tugged his scarlet robe straight as he saw his reflection in the mirror and then, with a relaxed and easy movement and with one hand tucked into the pocket of his robe, the thumb carefully arranged on the outside, opened the front door and stood there, smiling easily.