Lunching at Laura's

by Claire Rayner

  ‘What has he offered you?’

  ‘That’s between me and him,’ Evelyn said and tried to look dignified. ‘Business, you know. My affair and his. None of yours. You deal with him yourself.’

  ‘I don’t want to. I don’t trust him. I want to know how he’s got legal hold of Ilona’s share, and what right he has to try to –’ She swallowed then, making herself control her anger. ‘Aunt Evelyn, maybe I can pay you more than he’s offering. I want the restaurant to go on as it always has. I don’t think Philip will keep it that way, do you? You want it to be the same, don’t you? It’s a traditon.’

  ‘Tradition?’ Evelyn said and then suddenly sat up very straight and seemed to shout it. ‘Tradition? What do I care for tradition? It was tradition in the old country a father found a husband for a daughter, gave a dowry, did it right, but what good do that ever do me? It was a tradition people loved each other, so they said, but who ever loved me? No one ever loved me –’

  Laura had sat in the smelly over stuffed little room and looked at her and couldn’t argue. Evelyn sitting in her armchair looking like a heap of old clothes was so singularly unlovable that to argue with her was not possible. The malevolence in her eyes, the twisted shape of her mouth with its smudged lipstick running up the lines that scored the upper lip, the thin unwashed hair pulled across the bumpy old skull, all looked so depressing and so repellent that Laura felt her hands tighten into fists, and hated herself for being so uncharitable. Aunt Evelyn was a disappointed woman; she had been ill-served by life and she needed all the care she could get from her family. To feel as she did, Laura told herself, was wicked and wrong. And frightening, too, because maybe, one day, if I’m not careful, that could be me. Could I be a lonely spinster, unloved and unwanted by everyone the way she is? The thought had made her feel sick and cold.

  She found Dolly’s flat at last and she stood poised, her hand ready to press the bell under the elaborate gothic lettering which read, ‘Flat Nine M, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Halascz.’ It hadn’t worked, none of it, with Aunt Evelyn. She had gone away leaving the old woman stubborn and triumphant in her refusal to budge. How much Cord had offered her Laura didn’t know and what he’d promised her to get her to sell she didn’t know. All Evelyn would say, over and over again was, ‘It’s mine. I can do what I like with it. I’m the only one entitled, really. It’s mine.’

  Only an eighth, though, Laura told herself now optimistically. Only an eighth. Perhaps, if I can persuade Aunt Dolly to sell to me, we can cancel out Evelyn’s involvement? And she pressed the bell hard.

  The door opened with such speed that for a moment Laura suspected that someone had been standing behind it, watching her through the spyhole she had seen in the middle of the door. But it wasn’t Dolly who stood there. It was a round woman in a blue nylon overall who looked at her sourly and said, ‘Yiss? Pliss?’

  ‘Mrs. Halascz?’ Laura said and stepped forwards, and the woman said, ‘To see,’ and closed the door in her face, leaving Laura once again filled with anger. Bloody family, she thought furiously. Bloody family!

  But then the door opened wide and Dolly was standing there her arms wide.

  ‘My dear Laura! Such a treat to see you! So lovely of you to come over like this – I see you so rarely! I can’t tell you how delighted I was you called – really delighted – do come in. You look a little peaky, my dear! Are you working too hard? Time you found a nice man to marry and settle down with. Someone to look after you. Don’t want to get like poor Evelyn, do you? Have you seen her lately? Dreadful, isn’t it? Really gone to seed. Now, a little drinky, hmm? A little schnapps, just what a girl needs –’

  She was wearing a long housecoat in heavy rose brocade that exactly matched the curtains and cushions which were scattered over the long low white leather sofas, of which the room had three. There were glittering chrome and white leather chairs and tables and the carpet was a huge and very thick, washed Chinese, also in shades of rose, and obviously very expensive indeed. Over the fireplace was a six foot high portrait of Dolly, wearing black and pearls, which was so overwhelming in its glamour that Laura could hardly look at it. Altogether the room looked like a Tottenham Court Road shop window, it was so ferociously tasteful, and she felt very intimidated as she sank into the sofa into which Dolly had pushed her before going to a table laden with crystal decanters to fetch her a drink.

  ‘Now, why, I ask myself, why?’ Dolly chattered, ‘Here am I begging you for years not to make strange, to come and visit your old cousin, to come to our parties, meet some of the lovely men Steven knows, and what happens? Nothing! Yet here you are all of a sudden ringing me up the first thing in the morning when I haven’t even dressed yet, begging to come and see me –’

  ‘Not first thing, really, Aunt Dolly,’ Laura protested, stung by the accusation of selfishness. ‘I mean, it’s well past eleven. I’ve already been – I mean, it’s past eleven.’

  ‘My dear, you called at nine, and said it was absolutely urgent you see me – and now it’s eleven! But at last you’re here. Well, now, settle down and tell me all about it. What can I do for you?’

  Laura sat and looked at the narrow bony face and the snapping dark eyes under the perfect make up and hesitated. She’d handled Aunt Evelyn all wrong, been much too direct. Would it be wrong to do the same with Dolly? Strategy, she thought. I need a strategy, and felt a little surge of warmth as she remembered Joel’s voice saying the same word.

  ‘It’s hard to sort out, Aunt Dolly,’ she began and then, seeing the watchful look in those boot button eyes knew she was wasting her time being tactful. That would seem to this sharp, smart lady to be deviousness. Better to be just herself, say what she had come to say and see what happened.

  ‘It’s the restaurant, Aunt Dolly. You’re happy with the income you get from it?’

  Dolly pursed her lips judiciously. ‘Satisfied? Hard to say.

  I don’t think about it much.’ She smiled and flicked a glance round her luxurious room, taking in the great sweep of window clad in fine net and the expensive ornaments on the small tables. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to depend on it, of course. Thank God, your cousin Steven’s in a nice line of business. But I suppose it’s very nice.’

  ‘You think I run it well, the restaurant? You said so when you were last there. For Anya Zsuzske’s birthday party. Do you remember?’

  ‘Very nice, dear.’ Aunt Dolly looked down at her glass. ‘Very nice. So?’

  ‘So you don’t want it to close?’

  ‘Are you thinking of closing it?’ Aunt Dolly looked at her now, her eyes wide and limpid, or as wide as such small eyes could be, and Laura felt her chest tighten. This bloody woman, she thought. She knows why I’m here and she’s already decided. Oh hell, she’s already decided.

  ‘You know I’m not. Philip Cord is.’

  Aunt Dolly shook her head. ‘He didn’t say that to me.’

  ‘Then why else is he trying to force me to sell?’

  ‘To get some money, I imagine, dear. It’s what we all need, isn’t it? Money?’

  ‘I do,’ Laura said bitterly. ‘For the restaurant. I have to do some major work in the kitchen. But why should Philip Cord want to close the place when it brings you all such a good income for no effort? Look, I’ve got notes here, last year’s figures of all the dividends you all had –’ She dug into her bag and pulled out the paper she had prepared. ‘You see? Nineteen thousand last year – that was what you had. Aunt Evelyn had the same and Paul and Ilona had &pD;38,000 each –’

  ‘My dear,’ Aunt Dolly murmured. ‘I really don’t want to hear about everyone else’s private affairs! I’m only interested in my own. And yes, I got nineteen thousand last year from Steven’s gift to me. He’s so good – but the tax situation – it’s dreadful, isn’t it? I don’t see nearly as much for it as I should, you know. Not nearly what I should.’

  ‘You’ll see even less if you sell your share to Cord,’ Laura said sharply.

  Dolly got up and went b
ack to the drinks trolley. ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ she said sweetly. ‘It all depends on your financial nous, doesn’t it? On how much I can get for what I have to offer. I’m only a housewife, of course –’ She turned and looked round her room again and smiled, so that her eyes almost disappeared into her pouched cheeks. ‘But I have a little commonsense, and it does seem to me I could do quite well for myself with a little capital to play with. I have so many ideas, starving for want of a little air, you know. Capital is air.’ And she nodded gnomically as though she had said something infinitely wise and came back to sit beside Laura.

  ‘But you wouldn’t sell my restaurant from under me just to get some air, would you? You can get capital in other ways, if you want it. Why take my restaurant away?’

  ‘Because it isn’t yours, dear,’ Aunt Dolly said with infinite reasonableness. ‘It’s ours.’

  Laura was silent, and then took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m sorry. We’re talking at cross purposes here. Look, let me put it on the line, Aunt Dolly. I want to keep the restaurant. Very much. I can go on earning with it, make a lot of success. And anyway, I want to keep it. I may sound silly, but it’s the tradition of it all I care about as much as anything. Great grandfather, almost a hundred years ago – it would be wicked, wicked to let it go now. So, what do you want to sell your share to me instead of to Philip Cord?’

  ‘How much have you got?’ Dolly said promptly, and grinned as Laura reddened. ‘Philip, you see, has access to capital and you haven’t, have you? He explained it to me so well. And I’d be mad to turn down a quarter of a million pounds for the sake of –’

  ‘He’s offering you a quarter of a million for an eighth share? He can’t be! The whole site isn’t worth more than –’

  ‘It’s worth what someone is willing to pay for it,’ Aunt Dolly cut in. ‘And that’s what I’m asking for my share. If you can find it, then dear, by all means. I don’t want to be unkind to a woman on her own. I look at poor dear Evelyn and I think – well, dear, I’d put you first if you could raise the capital. I truly would. Dear Philip –’ She grinned then, showing her teeth and giggled. ‘He’d never forgive me! But there it is – he’d still have access to Ilona’s share, of course, so –’

  Laura had got to her feet and had pulled her coat around her. She was near tears again of fury and disappointment and needed to get out, as fast as she could, but now she stopped and stared.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Mmm? Oh, that Philip will never forgive me –’

  ‘That he has access to Ilona’s share.’ She sat down again, suddenly. ‘Do you mean he doesn’t actually have control of it?’

  Dolly looked sideways at her and then giggled again, but it wasn’t as triumphant a little sound now. ‘Well, married couples you know, and she was always so jealous. But he says he can make sure she does what he says and he is her husband, after all! So I dare say he’ll be all right. If he gets mine and Evelyn’s as well, and Paul’s –’ Again her eyes slid away. ‘Poor Paul. Well, one way or another, Philip will have control, won’t he? So I might as well sell to the man with the power. I’m sorry, dear, knowing how you feel, but there – if you sell too, then you’ll have your money and you can start again somewhere else.’

  ‘Why does everyone want me to start again somewhere else? I won’t. It’s the here and now Halascz’s that I want. The place that’s been here from the beginning. Where else could I be that would be better?’

  ‘It’s to be quite a development, I understand,’ Aunt Dolly said and again Laura stared at her.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? That’s what it’s all about. There’s a consortium – such a lovely word, isn’t it? – a consortium which wants to put a building there on the site. They say they can get planning consent for ten stories and a penthouse, imagine! But even if they can’t the site is still worth a great deal. So, there you are, dear. I’d be mad not to go along with Philip, wouldn’t I? Seeing he’s working with this consortium.’

  31

  The post came just after nine in the morning in her corner of Soho and she had got into the habit of arriving half an hour earlier these days in order to be waiting for it. The silence from Philip Cord had been ominous, and she expected it to be broken any day. Each time the postman came whistling into Little Vinegar Yard, sorting the letters in his hand as he came, her throat tightened with fear. Would this be the day when an official letter would arrive telling her that the fight was over and that she had to part with her restaurant? But this morning as she stood waiting in the Yard, the postman gave her just estimates from the builders for the kitchen work, and a letter from Hersh confirming in pompous civil service language what had to be done.

  She stared down at the sheet of white paper headed only ‘Memo to Miss Laura Horvath, from Mr. C. Hersh’ and wanted to crush it into a ball in her hands and throw it away, but that would not have helped her at all, and she folded it neatly with deliberate fingers and lifted her chin to take a deep breath of the fresh morning air before taking her letters back to her desk.

  The door of the restaurant stood propped open behind her and she could hear one of the kitchen boys singing tunelessly as he crashed among the big pans he was scouring and the hiss of the big water urns that were turned on first thing every morning ready for the preparation of vegetables. There was a smell of fresh coffee in the air, and of bleach from the washing-up and the beeswax polish the morning cleaners used on the panelling of the staircase, and the outside smells as well; petrol and fresh fruit and vegetables from the stalls and bacon being fried at the little cafe out in Dean Street and her eyes smarted with the pleasure it all gave her; so richly familiar, so much a part of the fabric of her life, and now so threatened.

  But she had to be strong. She knew that now; knew that curling up and crying helped no one. She had to stand up and keep on going – and she smiled a little crookedly as the silly pat phrases came into her head and she heard Joel’s voice in her memory saying, ‘Keep on telling yourself you can win. It doesn’t matter how silly you feel talking to yourself – you just do it. It makes all the difference –’ He was right. It did.

  She turned to go in and start the day’s work and then stopped as a couple of men came toiling through the archway into the Yard from Frith Street. They were carrying timber and a placard held so that she could not see the front of it, and she paused and watched, puzzled. This couldn’t be a builder for her work, could it? Of course it couldn’t. She hadn’t accepted any of the estimates yet. Nor, whispered her inner voice, nor have you found the money to pay for it, either.

  The men stopped and the first of them peered at the order sheet in his hand and then looked round and catching sight of her called, ‘Boskett, miss? Would that be you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘No,’ he said as he looked over her shoulder at the restaurant. ‘Says ’ere it’s a tobacconist. Sorry to ’ave bothered you. It’s this side we’re after – come on, Sam!’ And he jerked his head at the other man and they moved across the Yard to the front of Mucky’s shop.

  Still puzzled and with a sense of foreboding growing in her Laura watched as the first man tried the door and finding it locked, knocked hard. There was no response and after another moment the man knocked again, harder and stepped back to look up at the front of the building.

  ‘Lives ’ere, does ’e?’ he asked, returning to look at Laura. ’Lives over the shop, like?’

  ‘Yes –’ Laura came over to stand beside the man. ‘What are you here for?’ From this vantage point she could see the front of the placard and her brows snapped down hard as she stared at it.

  ‘Acquired for Clients of J. Davriosh,’ it read, in scarlet letters on a white ground and there was a telephone number and that was all.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said sharply. ‘What does this mean?’

  ‘What it says, lady. Sold ’n’t it? Got to board it up to keep out the vandals like, and put up the pla
card. That’s what we’re ’ere for.’

  ‘But you can’t be,’ she said and stared at him. ‘There must be some mistake. Mucky’s not – he would have told me, if –’ She stopped then and took a deep breath. ‘Look, leave that stuff there, will you? I’ll find out what’s going on. It’s all right. He’s a good friend of mine. I tell you what – come over into my kitchen. Time you had your second breakfast, hmm?’ And she smiled winningly at the man.

  ‘Second – well, all very irregular, really, but – seein’ we can’t get no answer.’

  He banged on the door again, but not very enthusiastically. ‘Seein’ you know ‘m.’

  ‘Neighbours, you see. Only two businesses here in the Yard. Known each other for ever,’ she said, gabbling a little.

  ‘Right then, Sam. Put that stuff down there and we’ll avail ourselves of this lady’s kind offer then.’ And the two men grinned at her and followed her across the Yard with alacrity.

  She settled them in the kitchen with young Fred, commanding him to make toast and coffee for them – a prospect which made them beam – and then went back to Mucky’s shop. Upstairs the windows were as blank as always, the net curtains flat and still against the glass, but she stood there and tilted her chin and called, ‘Mucky! It’s only me. They’re in my kitchen. Come down and let me in.’

  There was no response, not so much a twitch of a curtain, but she knew her Mucky and stood there patiently waiting, and after a minute or two she heard the scratching of bolts being drawn, and moved closer to the shop door as it opened a crack and Mucky peered out.

  ‘Quick, let me slip in,’ she murmured and pushed on the door and he yielded and at once she was in and bolting the door again. She peered through the sliver of glass beside the drawn doorblind but the Yard was empty. It was only just past eight thirty and the first of Mucky’s regular customers wouldn’t be arriving for a while yet, so there was time to talk. And she turned to look at him.