He took a deep breath and with his mind made up, stepped forwards and pushed on the door.
Paul was just coming out of the bathroom drying his hands on a small towel and his face froze into a mask of anger as he saw Joel standing there. The face against the pillow, however, looked quite different. The eyes were very dark in the sagging old face and, Joel thought, very intelligent, and he grinned at her and said loudly, ‘I’m pushing in where I shouldn’t. I’m Joel Coplin, and I wanted to talk to you, Mrs. Balog.’
Paul stepped forwards, his mouth open to speak, but the old lady was before him.
‘Coplin?’ she said and her voice seemed to rumble as it came out of the great bulk of her. ‘Coplin. Abner Coplin’s son? Or grandson more like, looking at you –’
Joel grinned ever more widely. ‘Great grandson,’ he shouted. ‘My grandfather was David, and my father was Samuel.’
She managed to nod her great head, buried though it was in her pillows. ‘Ah well, I dare say I am forgetting some of them now. Great grandfather, hmm? What’s your name?’
‘Joel.’
‘Always did go in for these bible names, the Coplins,’ the old lady said and snickered. ‘I told him once, Abner, I told him, if your lot behaved as well as they’re labelled, they’d be all right. But there, who could be that good? Abner and David and Samuel – I ask you!’ And again she snickered.
‘I’d like to talk to you about the old days, Mrs. Balog,’ Joel said loudly and she cocked an eye at him and said irritably, ‘Don’t whisper, boy. You’re whispering and mumbling.’
‘I’d like to talk to you,’ he said even more loudly, but careful not to shout. His great uncle had taught him how to speak to the deaf. Shouting never helped. It was clarity of diction that was needed. ‘About the old days.’
‘Talk to me about the old days?’ She turned her head and looked at her son who was still staring at Joel with his face rigid and expressionless. ‘You hear that, Poly? He wants to talk to me of the old days.’
‘You don’t have to, Anya,’ Paul said loudly. ‘If it makes you tired and you want to rest – you don’t have to.’
‘Want to rest? I’ve got a million years to rest. I won’t even have to turn over, I’ll rest so well. Dead soon, I’ll be. Plenty of rest then.’
‘Don’t talk that way, Anya,’ Paul said, but he spoke automatically, not taking his eyes from Joel.
‘Sit down, Abner’s boy,’ she said then and patted the bed beside her. ‘Talk about the old days, eh? This is something I can do. It’s the only thing I can do –’ And with a sudden pettish movement she slapped both hands on the bed on each side of her. ‘Useless old fool.’
‘Don’t talk too much, Coplin. She’s a lot frailer than you think,’ Paul said, and there was no appeal in his voice, but Joel knew it was there all the same. ‘Don’t make her tired.’
‘You don’t mind then, after all?’
‘What can I do whether I mind or not?’ Paul said bitterly. ‘You’ve walked in here and she’s seen you. I have no more to say in the matter. She’s Anya, you know. I don’t tell her what to do – I can only tell you.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘Don’t – I don’t want her upset. She doesn’t have to know – don’t tell her about me. That I’ve lost my share of the restaurant –’ His face began to crumple then, and Joel looked down at his hands, wanting to protect the man from his own weakness. ‘She gave it to me, all those years ago, to keep me safe, she said. And now – now I’ve – just don’t tell her.’ And he walked clumsily past Joel and out of the room and closed the door behind him, leaving Joel staring at the old woman in the bed who gazed back gravely.
‘He’s upset,’ she said after a moment and then said something in a language Joel couldn’t understand, and he tilted his head enquiringly.
‘He’s upset,’ she said again. ‘He doesn’t want you to talk to me.’
‘He’s worried it will make you tired,’ Joel said, speaking as distinctly as he could and she said sharply, ‘You don’t have to shout. I can hear you. It won’t make me tired. What’s tired about talking? It’s more tired to lay here with nothing to do, nothing to work for, nothing but remembering all day. This makes a person tired.’
Joel nodded and came across to the bed and perched on the edge of it. ‘I know. It’s always easier to talk, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said and wriggled her bulk a little so that she was sitting more upright. ‘Give me that over there.’ She jerked her head at the tallboy behind him and obediently he went and fetched the biscuit tin she was indicating.
‘And there, in the cupboard. Tokay,’ she said and grinned wickedly. ‘After dinner, he lets me have it, most nights. Today I have it in the afternoon, because I have a visitor. Talking and Tokay – a special day!’
He fetched her the decanter and the glass he found beside it and then, still following instructions, went to the bathroom where he found a toothglass which she insisted on using herself.
‘You’re the guest,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Guests get the best. I was brought up this way. Take the good glass.’
So he did and turned the handsome piece of old crystal between his fingers and grinned at her and she grinned back and again jerked her head, and he obeyed the instructions, filling the glasses till the glinting amber winked in the afternoon sunlight.
She had eaten several of the small sugary biscuits and was drinking her second glass of Tokay before she spoke again.
‘So, you want to talk about the old days. About your grandfather, and your father, and all the rest of them. A good family, the Coplins. Friends to all of us, one way and another –’
‘I want to talk about them, yes. And about your family, too. About the restaurant, and the way it was shared out between you all –’
She laughed suddenly, a rich bubble of laughter that seemed to rumble deep inside her belly and she made an expressive little sound with her lips too, that sent crumbs scattering onto her bedcovers.
‘Poor old Poppa,’ she said. ‘My mother – my mother, the things she did. She made up her mind we were to have it, you know. The three of us –’
‘The three of you.’
‘The sisters,’ she said and reached for another biscuit, scrabbling in the tin box as eagerly as a child. ‘Me and my sisters.’
‘And your brother. What about him?’
‘My brother?’ She looked at him with her face crinkled as she concentrated and he thought – oh, no. Don’t let her tire too soon. Don’t, don’t let her wander off – and controlled the impulse to prompt her with words and sat silently looking at her.
‘Anya,’ she said suddenly. ‘You didn’t know my mother, did you?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Strong, my mother was. Strong,’ the old woman said and shook her heavy old cheeks so that again the crumbs flew from her lips. ‘She knew how to make Poppa do what she wanted.’ She laughed then, the same bubbling chuckle that seemed to reverberate somewhere deep inside her. ‘But not all the time. He got his own way too sometimes.’
‘Did he?’
She paid him no attention, staring at him but seeing something quite different. ‘Oh, Poppa, he wanted to be a gentleman so much. He wanted to have horses and be a gentleman, my Poppa –’ Her eyes focussed then and she looked at him shrewdly. ‘But you’re too young to remember him.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘You should have known him. Funny and nice and – funny.’
Again the old eyes softened into a glaze. ‘But we were girls and girls weren’t the same to him. Not like boys. All the time he told us that. Girls aren’t like boys.’
Once again the look in her eyes changed and she sharpened and he thought – it’s like watching the sea. The waves come up, urgent and busy and purposeful and then they fall back and disappear into a rattle of shingle and don’t know where they want to be. And then another wave comes and the purpose comes with it –
‘So it was good Anya was there
, wasn’t it? If she hadn’t been he’d have given it all to him, you know that?’
He said nothing, just lifting his brows at her encouragingly and once again the wave receded and left only the tumble of the shingle, as she closed her eyes and for a moment he feared she had gone to sleep; but then suddenly she opened them again and looked at him and once more she was alert and clearly aware of what she was saying.
‘So, tell me what you want to know, I’ll try to remember. I like to talk of the old days. I don’t get the chance often. It’s good to talk. If you don’t talk about it, it all shrivels away and then there’s nothing left. All that time you’ve lived and nothing left to show for it.’
‘Yes,’ Joel said. ‘It’s good to talk. Talk to me about the things your mother and father did for you. For you three girls and for your brother. For Istvan.’
‘Brother,’ she said and laughed, and there was a bitterness in her voice. ‘I never had a brother.’
He frowned and shook his head. ‘Istvan, Mrs Balog,’ he said very distinctly. ‘Don’t you remember Istvan? Your brother?’
‘Of course I remember Istvan,’ she said pettishly. ‘All of us had to remember him. All the time, we had to, Poppa saw to that. The only Halascz. How could we forget?’
‘Then why do you say you don’t have a brother?’
She pushed the tin of biscuits away, suddenly, and folded her hands on her belly and looked at him closely. ‘You won’t tell anyone?’
‘Tell anyone what?’
‘What happened. It has to stay in the family, you see. What else can you do but keep such a thing in the family? Them you can tell, because they know. But no one else. You promise?’
‘Of course I promise. Just the family.’ Whatever it was it was important. She had a flush over the places where her cheekbones would have been if they had been visible beneath the fat that blurred her old face, and her eyes now were as sharp as pins. ‘Just tell me all about it.’
And she did.
34
Zsuzske had been playing with the baby all afternoon, and was getting tired of it. She wasn’t a nice baby, who laughed and played like Mary Garcia’s baby brother in Frith Street. He was nice, but Magda was a miserable baby who grizzled and had a nose that ran all the time and who smelled nasty. But Anya had said she must play with her, so she did. It was better than making Anya shout.
The noise that had been so loud and horrible all morning and which had stopped now started again, and Zsuzske put her hands over her ears. It wasn’t like crying and it wasn’t like shouting and it wasn’t like shrieking. It was like all of them together and it hurt her chest when she heard it. It made it feel tight as though she had on the baby Magda’s vest instead of her own.
There were footsteps then, and she sat and thought about going out of the room to see what was happening. They’d told her she mustn’t, no matter what, that she had to stay in the sitting room and look after the baby Magda, but the baby had gone to sleep all of a sudden, lying down in the middle of the bricks and dolls and falling fast asleep, so there was no reason why not.
Quietly she moved away from the rug by the fire and the toys and the baby, and went on her hands and knees to the door. She didn’t have to crawl like that; she was six now, and it had been a long time since she had crawled the way the baby did. She couldn’t even remember what it had been like to do it, but she had the feeling now that it was the safest way to go.
At the door she sat up on her heels and thought for a while. The horrible noise had stopped now, and there were grown-up voices and it sounded as though they were on the other side of the bedroom door, the bedroom she usually shared with Kati and the baby, but which they hadn’t let her sleep in last night, making her sleep in Anya’s bed, and slowly she turned the knob of the door and eased it open. They’d think it was an accident as long as she didn’t open it wide. They’d think she’d just happened to notice it was open and had come to close it, like a good girl should. If she did it carefully and slowly –
Now the door was open, even only a little bit, it was easier to hear what was going on and she stayed there, still crouching so that she sat on her heels, and listened hard. Behind her the baby snored a little and the fire crackled, but that was all.
Outside in the Yard it was quiet and there was no one. Why should there be? It was Sunday, the dead day, the one she usually liked because the restaurant was closed and Poppa was upstairs here and sometimes let you play on him, and listen to his big watch from the Old Country.
‘Give it to me,’ she heard her father’s voice so loud that she shrank back, afraid he was going to come out of the room and find her, but the other door stayed firmly shut and she went on listening. ‘I want to see for myself – let me see –’
‘Poppa!’ That was Kati, thought Zsuzske. That was her voice. She sounds funny, as though she’s been crying. ‘Poppa, give him to me!’
‘A boy,’ Poppa was saying, and it was as though he was singing. ‘A boy, a boy, at last a boy! Chucheke, let me look at your little tassel – look at that, Maritza! Will you look at that! He’s got little balls like a Turk, this boy, this Halascz!’
Anya’s voice then, high and loud and no words she could understand. Anya angry and shouting and Zsuzska shrank back and began to close the sitting room door. Anya shouting was dreadful.
But before the door was closed she heard Poppa again, laughing and happy and then Kati said something in that strange new voice of hers; maybe she had a cold? Zsuzske hadn’t seen her since yesterday, and she didn’t have a cold then but they’d said she wasn’t well today and she must look after the baby and be good, so maybe it was because Kati had a cold?
Suddenly, almost before she realised what was happening, the bedroom door opened and in a great wash of terror she let the door go, leaving it open and scuttled over the floor on her knees and threw herself down beside the baby Magda and closed her eyes. They’d catch her, catch her listening and then Anya would shout even more and – she closed her eyes tightly and as the door opened threw up one arm to cover her eyes. They wouldn’t see her eyes wobbling and wouldn’t know she was really awake.
‘Hush, you fool!’ That was Anya. ‘The little ones are asleep, thank God. Listen, give him to me – you must be mad, taking him like that. He ought to be with her – give him to me –’
‘It’s too dark in there to see him properly,’ Poppa said and laughed again. ‘Look at him! A great lump of a boy – oh, Maritza, such a lump of a boy! Why didn’t we have such a one, eh? Never one like this before, a right little Halascz, will you look at the balls on him –’
‘You’ll wake the little ones, you fool. Shut up!’
‘They got to see him, ain’t they? Their new baby –’
‘Their new baby what?’
There was a little silence then and moving as though she was really fast asleep, Zsuzske turned over, making the sort of soft noises the baby Magda sometimes made when she turned over in her sleep. She arranged herself carefully so that she could open one eye and look through the crack of space beneath her arm and above her nose that she had left there. Now she could see what was happening.
Poppa was holding a bundle. That was what it was, a baby bundle. It was like she was a very little girl again, a hundred years ago, when Poppa had fetched her and Kati from over the Yard where they had been playing at Mr. Bosquet’s, and Anya had been in bed and had her hair down instead of pinned up and had looked as though she had just woken up.
‘This is your new baby sister,’ Anya had said, her voice all bright the way it was when she wanted Zsuzske to eat her dinner and Zsuzske didn’t want to. ‘This is your new little sister.’
‘Another lousy little sister,’ Poppa had said in a growl and then Anya had started to cry and Poppa had shouted and then Kati had taken her outside and she had cried too. There had been a bundle like that then. A baby bundle called Magda. And here was another one.
Zsuzske lay there with her arm over her face, and just a small peeping spa
ce under it and over her nose, and thought about that. It was a hundred years ago, the last time, but she remembered and it had been different then. They had told her about it before it happened, that was what was different. This time they hadn’t.
She thought for a little while and then sat up and rubbed her eyes a lot, to show she’d really been asleep.
‘Anya?’ she said. ‘What’s that?’
‘I told you you’d wake them!’ Anya said and pushed on Poppa’s shoulder. ‘Take it back to her.’
‘Poppa, what have you got there? Is that another baby?’
‘Oh, my little Zsuzske, they didn’t forget you when they handed out the brains, eh? You see, Maritza? You can’t keep this one in the dark. Show her her new baby! See, Zsuzske? A little boy! We got a little boy now!’
Zsuzske looked at Anya who was standing behind Poppa and looking over his shoulder. Her face was strange. Flat and dull and strange.
‘Where’s Kati?’ Zsuzske said, not knowing why she asked because she knew where Kati was. She was in the bedroom. She’d been making all those horrible noises. She didn’t know why she was asking, but she knew it was an important question.
Poppa looked at her and then over his shoulder at Anya, who leaned forwards and took the baby bundle from him. Because Anya was shorter than Poppa, Zsuzska could see now, and she went close and stood on her tiptoes and stared at the baby inside the bundle.
Lunching at Laura's Page 34
