‘No. But you say it is no good, the voucher. So it isn’t important.’
‘Not the point, El,’ he argues, threatening the air with his knife. ‘It is important. It’s the principle. You haven’t been here as long, but that makes no diff. I get a letter: “Ta very much and now please fuck off. Here’s twenty quid for your trouble.” You should have it an’ all. Same for all of us. We’re all in it together.’ The blade crunches through something and bangs on the wood, and again, and again. ‘Tell you what,’ he goes on, squinting at her over the tip of the blade, ‘you should have another chat with Mr C. Just say to him, “What the fuck’s going on here? How come they get twenty quid and I don’t?” Go on. Won’t get you anywhere, probably, but it’s the principle, El. That’s the point. Ask him what it’s about.’
‘I don’t like to –’
‘What’s he going to do? Give you a warning for rocking the boat?’ he laughs, with a sneer that makes her fold up the voucher straight away. ‘Can have it if you want,’ he tells her, blithely waving the knife. ‘Go on. You keep it. No way I’m using it.’
‘And I am not using it,’ she says, passing it back to him.
A smile of approval appears on Ian’s face. ‘Don’t blame you,’ he says. ‘Fuck ’em, eh?’ Satisfied that they are now in agreement, he resumes his work. For perhaps two minutes he manages not to speak, but from the regular little sighs, like steam released from a valve, she can sense that some grievance is building up in his mind, and sure enough he is soon complaining again, as he always complains, but only to her, as if he thinks they should understand each other because his life and her life are the same. He moans about the job he might be offered and moans that he might not be offered it, and he moans about the job he’s been doing at the Oak for a year or more, though it seems he hasn’t made any effort to find another one. Trying not to listen, she thinks of what she could say to Mr Laidlaw, of how she could get to speak to him, but she cannot help but hear Ian saying the name of Mr Caldecott and something about a bleeding heart, and how Mr Caldecott talks to them to make himself feel better, that’s all. He goes over to the stove, where he lifts a frying pan an inch from the hob and lets it drop. ‘Must have known about all this months back. Must have,’ he grumbles, shooting a squirt of washing-up liquid into the sink. She is going to tell him that he is wrong, but Mark comes into the kitchen and Ian goes quiet, as he always does when Mark is here, like a boy scared of his father.
She takes the menus from Mark and puts them on the tables, then goes back to what she was doing before. Not speaking, the three of them finish the preparations, in the atmosphere of concentration and care that Mark requires, as if they were making a meal at some special restaurant in Paris. Out in the garden, gathering herbs, she laughs out loud at the childishness of Ian and the seriousness of Mark, and while she is thinking of the foolish way they both behave she hears a car on the drive, followed closely by another. She waits for the doors to slam, counts to one hundred in English and returns to the kitchen, where Ian is on his own again. ‘Time to make a valuable contribution,’ he says to her, gesturing at the door to the dining room. ‘First out the blocks: Mr Shinyboy and one guest,’ he announces.
Through the porthole in the door she sees Mr Laidlaw, with an older man, who has thinning hair that’s slicked straight back, close to his scalp, and wears a suit that looks a size too big for him. The older man opens his briefcase on the table and passes some papers to Mr Laidlaw, then takes out some more documents, which he places between his knife and fork. He tugs his arms out of his jacket, turning one sleeve inside out, and hangs it on the back of the chair next to him, as Mr Laidlaw, reading the top sheet, makes a remark about it, to which the other man listens in the manner of someone taking instructions. They both leaf through their papers: Mr Laidlaw relaxed, turning over the pages as if he has seen them many times before and knows that everything is in order; his companion agitated, seemingly searching for an item he fears he has lost. Setting his papers aside, Mr Laidlaw takes the menu from its holder with a nice movement of his hand, as though removing a flower from a vase, and smiles at the top of the older man’s head, amused by his fretfulness. He says something, then the other man undoes his tie and flips the top button out.
Through the glass in the door Eloni watches Mr Laidlaw. She looks at the grey-blue fabric of his shirt, at the immaculate jeans and plush suede shoes, at the tiny metallic phone beside his hand, no bigger than a cigarette lighter, and as she looks she is seized by the memory of her last night in London, of looking through the windows of the restaurant on the night she ran away. The windows were round, like portholes, like this window, and in the middle one a menu was displayed, under a spotlight, like a work of art in a museum. It was late, past midnight, and there were only two people in the restaurant, a young man and a young woman. The young man raised a hand to summon a waiter, who bent down to hear his request and nodded coldly, as if agreeing to grant a favour. His girlfriend, a lovely girl but with dishonest eyes, looked right at her. She looked at her as if she were a beggar, and made her so angry she wanted to go in and tell them what had happened to her, to stand in the middle of the room and shout out what had happened. The young man took out his phone and when the waiter came back, bearing the bill on a saucer, he was still talking. With contempt he threw a credit card onto the saucer, as if it were nothing. She wanted to hoist her skirt, to hold it up for the girl to see the bruises and the blood, but she did nothing. She walked away. Shaking with hatred and fear she walked away, and kept on walking, all night, walking westward, leaving everything behind.
She comes out of the kitchen, her pen and notebook ready in her hand, reminding herself that Mr Laidlaw has been kind to her, that he might help her, and before she reaches his table he sees her and smiles, pleased that she is here, it seems.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘How’s it going?’
‘I am good, thank you,’ she says, standing to the side of Mr Laidlaw’s companion, who was making a note in the margin of a list of some sort, but now has stopped, his attention fixed on the line where the tip of the pencil has stalled. He does not look up, and mutters, as if annoyed by her, ‘Two Bloody Marys.’
Mr Laidlaw gives her a small shrug, asking her to excuse the other man’s rudeness. ‘Could we have two Bloody Marys?’ he says. ‘And then we’d both like the chicken. With a glass of the Alsace pinot noir. This one,’ he says, pointing to the wine on the list. She reads the name and lets her eyes stray to the tiny turquoise buttons on his cuffs. ‘A glass each. And a bottle of still water. That OK with you, John?’
‘Huh?’ the other man grunts, scribbling a calculation.
‘A bottle of still water OK with you?’ Mr Laidlaw repeats.
The man writes a number in large numerals and draws a circle round it. ‘Fine,’ he says, and goes back to studying the figures. You would think he wasn’t aware that she is standing beside him, and at no point during the lunch does he acknowledge that she is there. ‘Of course, of course,’ he replies to Mr Laidlaw, talking across her arm as she puts his plate in front of him. She puts down a glass of wine for Mr Laidlaw, who thanks her, and for the older man, who seems to see the glass but not the hand that put it there, saying to Mr Laidlaw, ‘Leave it to me. Not an issue.’ His rudeness almost provokes her to ask if everything is all right, just to see how he would react if she spoke to him, but she takes encouragement from it, too, because it is a sign of Mr Laidlaw’s status, of his influence, that a man so bad-mannered should talk to him with such deference.
But whatever it is that the bad-mannered man is going to do for Mr Laidlaw, it is taking a long time to discuss. Their table has long been cleared and everyone else has left the dining room, but still they are talking. Very soon she will have to go, having had no opportunity to talk to Mr Laidlaw on his own. On a page of her jotter she writes: ‘Can I talk to you please, it is about work. Eloni (the waiteress).’ Watching from the kitchen, she sees him count banknotes onto the table and put a five-pound note u
nder the vase, and then the two of them go out into the hall, still talking. Half a minute later she follows them. The older man is counting the lights around the walls, it appears, and ticking them off on a list, while Mr Laidlaw picks at a flake of marbled paint above the writing table. She goes up onto the balcony, where she busies herself with a duster around the marble head of Prince Albert, watching. Troubled by something on his list, the older man shows it to Mr Laidlaw, who wanders off towards the Randall Room, followed by his companion. Quickly, before they can come back, she goes down the stairs to the reception desk, to put her note with Mr Laidlaw’s room key, but first she looks in the register and finds no reservation in Mr Laidlaw’s name for tonight. It occurs to her that she could leave the note under the windscreen wipers of his car, but his silver car is not there, though underneath the ivy there is a blue sports car which might be Mr Laidlaw’s. It is almost certainly Mr Laidlaw’s, she thinks, but it’s possible that the old Mercedes is his. Calculating that she can delay for another five minutes, she wanders into the garden, keeping an eye on the blue car. The time passes, and just as she has decided that she cannot wait any longer, that she must put the note in an envelope and give it to Annie to give to Mr Laidlaw, however embarrassing that may be, she sees Mr Laidlaw and the other man step out from the porch, walking towards the blue car. They talk for a minute or two, shake hands, and before she can do anything the older man is returning to the hotel and Mr Laidlaw is opening the door of the car.
She begins to hurry across the grass towards the gate. Behind her the car’s engine coughs and roars, and settles into a sound that’s like a thick liquid boiling under a loose heavy lid. She hears the gravel popping under the tyres, right behind her, as she steps onto the path. Out of the corner of her eye she can see a grey-blue sleeve hanging on a blue door. ‘Want a lift?’ he asks her, in a tone that does not suggest that he knows she was hoping he would speak to her.
Mr Laidlaw is leaning across the empty seat, his hand resting on the handle of the passenger door, smiling at her from under the low roof. ‘No, thank you,’ she intends to say, but instead she frowns, as if she had not heard properly.
‘Could you use a lift?’ he asks her.
The door springs open a small distance, letting out a perfume of new leather. ‘Thank you,’ she says.
The seat is so low it is like lying in a deckchair and the leather of the seat is as soft as ladies’ gloves. The same cream-coloured leather covers the door and the dashboard, all of it without a mark. Holding the clasp of the seat belt, she looks for the place where it fastens, but she can’t work it out. ‘Here,’ says Mr Laidlaw, in a way that doesn’t make her feel foolish, putting a finger on a slot between the seat and the leather-covered ridge that runs between them. ‘You’re only my fifth passenger,’ he tells her. ‘One week old,’ he explains, patting the ridge as you would pat a horse’s neck. Without slowing, he guides the car one-handed between the gates. Behind her head, metal shrieks against metal.
‘It is nice,’ she replies, raising her voice.
‘Thanks,’ he says, as though responding to an unexpected compliment.
‘Thank you for the tip. And before. It is very kind,’ she tells him.
‘Not at all,’ he says, and it does not sound like ‘nod a dall’.
Trees begin to flicker at the edge of her vision; reflected leaves rush over the shining blue metal towards her; greenery flows in a torrent overhead. The dial says they are doing more than sixty miles an hour, yet he accelerates, changing gear with a motion like throwing dice. The watch slips on his wrist, uncovering a band of whiter skin.
‘You finished for the day?’ he asks, turning to look at her, as if this speed were slow.
‘I have another job. One for the day and one for the evening.’
‘That’s tough,’ he sympathises, then a chirruping starts, from a tiny phone that sits in a bracket by the gearstick. ‘Anthony, hi,’ says Mr Laidlaw, opening his mouth in a mimed scream. Anthony begins to talk in a rush, in sentences that don’t make sense, about ‘blueskying’ and ‘being on the same page’ and ‘thinking out of the box’. Braking for the traffic lights, Mr Laidlaw interrupts him. ‘I’m with you on this, Tony, but I’ve got to call you back. Can’t talk now. Five minutes, OK? I’ll call you back.’
‘Make it ten,’ suggests Anthony.
Mr Laidlaw stabs the keypad with a stiff forefinger. ‘Make it never,’ he tells the dead phone.
The car comes to a halt. The engine gargles and boils, and Mr Laidlaw fiddles with a button on a cuff, keeping an eye on the red light. This is the chance to talk to him, and she must talk to him now, because in a minute she will have to get out. She tells herself that she will ask him as soon as the car starts to move again, but the car starts moving and she doesn’t speak. The newness and the power of his car makes it impossible to speak; his handsomeness makes it impossible; the expensive shirt, the jewel-like turquoise buttons, the heavy watch with its three small dials – it all makes it impossible for her to ask him. She can picture the girls who work for him: girls who look like the girls in advertisements for make-up, or like the girl who stared at her through the restaurant window. She looks at her hands, at the grooves of cracked skin around the nails, and they seem old.
The amber light comes on. ‘So where am I dropping you?’ Mr Laidlaw asks.
The thought of her room causes a cold grip of shame. ‘It is very near. By the post office,’ she lies, seeing the sign of the post office ahead. ‘There,’ she says, pointing to a street which is not the one she lives in.
He turns the car into the street and pulls in where she asks him to, in front of a house that has three bells by the door, like somewhere she might live. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Here we are.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’
His hand rises towards her and hovers in midair, offering a handshake. ‘So goodbye – it’s Eloni, right?’
‘Eloni, yes.’
‘Simon,’ he says, and he smiles at her again, showing flawless teeth.
She brushes a hand on his, then reaches across herself to take hold of the lever on the door. Feeling the lock disengage, she blurts: ‘I have a question. Can I ask you?’
‘Sure. Fire away,’ he says. He turns off the engine and twists in his seat to look straight at her, leaning forward into the sunlight, so a triangle of shadow appears beneath one cheekbone. His face is as handsome as a mask, his features so regular that she doubts his sincerity, yet she is excited by his attention, and embarrassed by it. She looks up and down the street, in case people might be walking past and see them talking. ‘Ask,’ says Mr Laidlaw. ‘Go ahead.’
She takes a breath, as if about to dive into water, and says, ‘I need work. I know that it is not possible, at the hotel. There is no more work there, I know this. But Mr Caldecott said you have somewhere, in Manchester, and I would like to live in Manchester. Do you think it is possible? If you need someone to work for you in Manchester –’
‘You want to live in Manchester?’ he laughs.
‘There are people there I know. Do you have a job for me?’
‘Well, that’s not quite how it operates. It’s not really me who says yes or no.’
‘But you have somewhere in Manchester?’
‘Yes. But I don’t run it. Another person does the hiring. My manager, not me. You understand? I can’t say if there’s a job or not.’
‘But you have a manager, like Mr Caldecott is the manager.’
‘Yes.’
‘So you could ask the manager if there is work.’
‘Well, yes. I could –’
‘And you know other people who need someone to work for them, sometimes. Not your manager. Other people at other places there. You could ask them?’
‘Can’t say I have too many contacts in Manchester. In London, yes. A lot of contacts there, and I have three places in London. Better prospects there. Far better.’
‘Not London, no. It must be Manchester.’
Bemused, he scratches at the bridge of his nose, narrowing his eyes against the sun, or perhaps thinking hard, perhaps thinking that he’s to blame a little for the end of her job at the Oak. ‘It’s just bar work, you know?’ he says, watching a small dog trotting across the road.
‘Any work is OK. I work in a bar, I meet people. It would be good for me.’
‘But it’s not the sort of thing you emigrate to Manchester for. It’s the sort of job you do for a couple of months, then you move on. It’s pocket money. You see what I’m saying?’
‘So I will have two jobs, the same as here.’
‘Why not stay here? Get another job.’
‘There is nothing here. I have tried. The hotel is closing. When it is closed I have one job and I have not enough money. I must go to a city. But not to London. I hate London, very much. I want to live in Manchester,’ she says, forcefully, because otherwise she will start to cry.
‘OK.’ From a compartment in the dashboard he takes a small black notebook with a pen attached that’s as slim as a nail. He writes a number, tears out the page and gives it to her. ‘My office in London,’ he tells her. ‘Give them a call, towards the end of the week. I’ll see what I can do. Can’t make any promises, mind. For all I know, there are twenty people in the queue. But I’ll ask. That OK?’
‘Thank you. I understand.’
‘OK,’ he says, and as he puts the notebook back in the compartment she sees him take a glimpse at his watch.
‘Thank you,’ she says, opening the door.
‘Sure,’ he says, ducking to smile goodbye as he starts the car. Halfway through the turn he slows down to wave. She waves to him, and when the car has gone she wipes her eyes and walks back up the street.
Putting down the magazine, Kate watches her son as he plays at the table. He has set the lid of the box upright in order to read the instructions printed inside and is frowning at it, holding a piece of the model between finger and thumb while he tries to find its match in the diagram. Precise as his father, he has laid the parts of the model systematically around the chassis, with the bodywork and trim on one side, the mechanical bits on another. He discards the troublesome piece, replacing it neatly amid the machinery, and picks up another one, an oval of silver plastic, which he checks against the lid. Patiently he works out where it fits, then presses it into place, with such delicacy it’s as though he were touching something that’s alive. He lifts what he’s put together so far, turns it to examine it from all angles, gives the wheels a spin and returns the half-built model to its place amid the pieces that remain to be assembled. Leaning forward on crossed arms, he studies the diagram again. He is so self-possessed, so thoughtful and calm, so fully himself, and as she watches him she feels a pride that has a pain of loss within it, because with each month that passes he is moving away, and too soon he will have almost left, as Stephanie has almost gone.
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