Blenheim Orchard

by Tim Pears

  ‘You know my dream?’ Abdul asked. ‘I tell you, Ezra. Ten years ago I buy building for restaurant in Banbury. It need complete renovation, that cost money. To get money, I need to use Raj Cuisine as security. And if new restaurant fails, I lose everything. You see?’

  Ezra looked around the single-room restaurant. Was that why he’d never changed things here?

  ‘This place always make a bit of money,’ Abdul said, reading his mind. ‘Enough to see children through college. How I can take risk? You know, I don’t have one day off in twenty …’ Abdul gazed at the brown ceiling. ‘Twenty-six years. This what my dream: when children all gone, Abdul will be free. That what I’m saying. Then I can take chance, let someone run Raj Cuisine. I go to Banbury. Make new restaurant, Ezra. Menus, lighting, recipes: everything new.’

  Abdul’s face suddenly changed: it took Ezra a second to realise that he’d stopped grinning that facetious grin of his, because although the smile was gone and he was looking at Ezra with a serious expression, his eyes for the first time were open and clear.

  ‘Abdul make best Indian restaurant,’ he said, ‘in whole of Oxfordshire.’

  18

  By the River

  Through the last days of August, to Friday 5 September

  Ezra Pepin called an ABC taxi for the mile and a half journey from the Raj Cuisine to Blenheim Orchard. As soon as he got through the front door of the house he removed his shoes. He began to undo his trouser belt, when a gentle voice reproached him.

  ‘You’re late, Daddy.’

  Ezra looked up to find Hector sitting halfway up the stairs. He looked down again, unbuttoned his damp trousers, which flopped round his ankles. He stepped out of them. ‘I missed supper?’ He took off his jacket, and carried his damp suit and sodden leather shoes as far as the boy. ‘I hope you made sure no one threw my portion away, old fellow,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think it got as far as you having a portion, Daddy.’

  Ezra tossed his wet clothes up on to the landing above them, and sat on the soft blue carpet. ‘Don’t I depend on you to look out for me? You know we have to,’ he said. ‘We have to look out for each other, Hector, with these loopy women of ours.’

  ‘Sorry, Daddy.’

  ‘No, no, I’m joshing. Did you have a good day today? What did you do?’

  ‘I read mostly.’

  ‘Best thing to do in rainy weather. What did you read?’

  ‘Lots,’ Hector said vaguely, casting his mind back then suddenly brightening. ‘I read Kidnapped again. I haven’t read it in years.’

  ‘The Highlands.’

  ‘Daddy, don’t you think Robert Louis Stevenson is about the best in … I don’t know … the world?’

  ‘Incontrovertibly,’ Ezra agreed. He waited for reasons, or which book in particular Hector might consider to be supreme, but the boy’s emphatic declaration, and his father’s accord, seemed to settle it. ‘Well, I’d better get some clothes on.’

  Sheena appeared in the hallway below them. ‘There you are, Ez. Thanks for the call.’ She stared at him a moment. ‘Where’s your suit? Have you been gambling?’

  Ezra wondered whether it was his imagination, or had Sheena become funnier recently? ‘It got wet.’

  ‘You were out in this? Are you mad?’

  ‘I got caught.’

  ‘Well, remove those sopping socks and come and listen to this.’ As Ezra descended the stairs, Sheena advanced to the telephone answering machine. She pushed Play. The machine, a female, informed them, You have one message. First message, followed by a real woman’s voice, sounding thin and distant.

  ‘What a long time it is since I thought of suicide. I used to all the time, once, when I was younger.’

  Ezra, in his white shirt and red tie, his black briefs and wet socks, felt himself tremble, trying, as he anticipated Minty’s message coming right out with it, to suppress the tension.

  ‘I suppose it’s something you grow out of, isn’t it? You just become … I don’t know, accommodated to yourself. To your life. An accommodation. But now such thoughts have returned. Isn’t that awful?’ There was a pause. ‘I should be seeing someone …’

  The voice trailed away. Ezra wondered how anyone could be so stupid: Minty cracking up. How could it not have occurred to him? ‘What the hell’s all that about?’ he asked, keeping his voice as steady as he could.

  ‘Search me,’ Sheena shrugged.

  ‘When did she leave it?’

  ‘Half an hour ago. While we were eating.’

  ‘Did you call her back, darling?’

  ‘No. I thought maybe you might know something about it.’

  ‘Me?’ Ezra frowned. ‘Why me?’

  ‘To do with that work you offered her?’

  ‘Oh. Right. Of course. Though unlikely. Sheena, she’s not on medication, is she? Prozac or something? That she might have run out or taken too much of?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘You’re more likely to than I am. Women talk, right? Maybe you should call her, darling.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ez, don’t pull that gender crap on me.’

  ‘I just thought because she’s more your friend, isn’t she?’

  ‘You two,’ Sheena mocked, ‘are the ones who party together now. Who go out dancing.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ Ezra asked. ‘Shall we just leave it?’

  ‘Might be best.’ Sheena pushed Play again, and then Delete.

  ‘She’ll probably ring tomorrow to apologise,’ Ezra said.

  ‘If she even remembers leaving the message. Wait. Have you been drinking whisky?’

  ‘Wait. Have you been eating food?’

  ‘There’s a plate for you in the fridge.’

  ‘Come and talk to me while I eat?’

  Sheena looked at her watch. ‘Louie,’ she said. Ezra looked through to the sitting-room. His younger son was in a state of deep hypnosis, staring at his video of Mulan for approximately the fifty-seventh time. ‘You can have ten more minutes, sweets,’ she called. ‘Then it’s straight to bed.’

  Ezra put the plate of lasagne in the microwave. He found the bowl of green salad, and poured on some more dressing.

  ‘Ugh, I don’t know how you can eat it like that,’ Sheena grimaced. ‘Swimming in oil.’

  ‘Guess what happened today,’ Ezra said. ‘Well, you won’t guess, but I’ll give you a clue: I got a raise.’

  ‘What do you want me to guess?’ Sheena asked. She pulled the cork from the opened wine bottle on the table with her fingers, and poured herself as well as Ezra a fresh glass of Rioja.

  ‘How much,’ he said. ‘It’s a new job, though. I mean, the same kind of work, but much more interesting.’

  The microwave pinged. Ezra brought his plate to the table, took a bite, and murmured his appreciation.

  ‘I didn’t make it, Ez,’ Sheena pointed out. ‘M & S. Look, you know I don’t like riddles.’

  ‘Well, okay, I’ll tell you: from now on we receive four times my old salary.’

  Sheena stared blankly at her husband for some little while, as if waiting for him to say, Only kidding! Funny, eh? He added nothing. ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Crazy, isn’t it?’ Ezra munched his salad.

  ‘Why would someone pay you such a vast amount of money?’ she asked. ‘What for?’

  ‘It’s the chap I tried to tell you about before,’ Ezra said, while thinking that Sheena didn’t need to find it quite so baffling that he might be thought worthy of a high-flyer’s wage. ‘The new Chief Executive. He’s put together a small team for a major development –’

  ‘But Ezra,’ Sheena interrupted. Her expression suggested puzzlement and frustration both. ‘We had it all worked out. Home Holidays is doing so well you could soon give up your job entirely. But I mean, I don’t know, I won’t be able to take that much money out of the company. We were budgeting for you to leave Isis Water when I’m bringing home half that.’

  ‘I know,�
�� Ezra nodded. He took another forkful of mince and pasta and béchamel sauce, and followed it with lettuce, cucumber, avocado. ‘It’s marvellous, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s “marvellous” about it?’ Sheena asked. ‘And please try and keep your mouth closed when you’re eating. For God’s sake.’

  Ezra swallowed his food. ‘We can pay off the mortgage,’ he said. ‘Move to a bigger house if we want. Chalfont Road, maybe. With our combined salaries. We can do what we want, darling.’

  ‘That’s true, I suppose. We can send Blaise to the High School in time for her GCSEs.’

  ‘Well, wait a minute.’

  ‘And Hector can go to St Edward’s.’

  ‘Hang on.’

  ‘If we’re really going to have all this money. I mean, let’s not pretend that Cherwell’s not a lot rougher than Hector would like.’

  ‘Sheena, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘We’d need to talk. I thought we both wanted our children, I mean, it’s the principle.’

  ‘But that’s precisely …’ Sheena grimaced. ‘What do we want, Ezra? That’s what you really need to give a little thought to. What do you want?’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to come to the launch of this new project. A huge party, it should be a lot of fun.’

  ‘Oh no. Not more of that corporate hospitality. I told you after the last time I really didn’t want to –’

  ‘This is different, darling,’ Ezra interrupted. ‘On September the 6th at the –’

  ‘The 6th? Well, that settles it. Jill and I are presenting our new site to the good people of Cheltenham. We’ve got our own launch.’ Sheena replenished their glasses. ‘We’re having to work hard to get them excited, actually. It’s a bit worrying. They’re the first town yet that hasn’t responded eagerly.’

  Ezra polished off the last blob of lasagne on his plate, and filled his mouth with red wine.

  ‘I’d better take Louie upstairs,’ said Sheena. Her chair scraped on the terracotta tiles. She went through to the sitting-room, and negotiated with their youngest son beside the television, working her way towards shutdown. She managed to mute the TV without provoking outrage.

  Blaise came into the kitchen from the hallway. ‘Dad,’ she said, louder than she needed to unless she intended Sheena to hear, too. ‘I’ll come with you to your launch if you’d like me to.’

  Time during those next couple of weeks seemed to lose its sense of flow; was composed instead of disconnected acts. Work was frantic, because on top of the project itself Ezra was involved in organising the launch. Sending out invitations, writing speeches. Conferring with a PR company creating an AV presentation, and with a professional entertainments organiser. So many Arab performers were to be brought over from Paris the company might as well have chartered a plane and flown everyone from England across the Channel, for a party in the heart of Barbes.

  Minty left no more messages at the Pepins’ home, but she fractured Ezra’s working days with repetitive versions of the same forlorn conversation. He was sympathetic, sensible, and kept her at bay. At home, meanwhile, there was an entirely new kind of tension in the house, a brooding realignment of territory and interest. Sheena paid Blaise to childmind Louie full-time through the school holidays; Ezra wasn’t sure whether his wife was working more hours than ever at Home Holidays as an expression of her unreasonable resentment at his salary increase or because, as odd asides and irritations suggested, the business wasn’t going as well as it had. Perhaps the idea of Home Holidays had reached the crest of its commercial wave.

  ‘We have to compete with other eco alternatives and cheap air fares,’ Sheena complained. ‘Is that fair? And what’s worse is that people seem to be using us to have a summer holiday at home, but then taking a long-haul vacation in the winter.’

  Sheena was more than happy to work, convinced that Cheltenham’s resistance was a blip. The thing was to press on, to have the company grow organically. It was almost time, she suspected, to think in terms of a European expansion; the trouble with that was it would be beyond Jill’s expectations or, indeed, abilities. But not hers. Oh, no. Sheena was convinced that what had stretched her so far was only the beginning of what she was capable of.

  Did Jill realise this, at some level? There was a new tension in the cramped office, too, though maybe Luigi was the cause. He continued his camp flattery of Jill, but there was also, Sheena sensed, an authentic sexual hunger coming from him. It was aimed in her direction. As if she gave out without wishing to the scent of her own uncomplicated desire, and certain men picked up on it.

  Blaise and Akhmed took Louie on expeditions. Swimming in the lido at Hinksey, playing football in University Parks. Louie looked like a tiny chaperone to a teenage couple, as if only because of his presence they never held hands. Blaise was beginning to tell herself that she wouldn’t need to say anything: Akhmed surely accepted now that nothing more would happen; he seemed content with friendship, didn’t he? Sometimes Hector hung out with them, too. After the pulverising storm, the heatwave returned, as if climatic dissent had spent itself in one riotous night, a bold but fruitless interruption to the long hot summer of 2003. One afternoon Akhmed and Hector spent hours trying to fly a huge kite on the Meadow.

  ‘It took about twenty goes to get it to stay in the air,’ Hector told his parents at supper that evening. ‘But once we did, we let all the string out, and there must have been some proper wind up there. We both had to hold the spool. When Akhmed let go I got lifted into the air.’ If he made it sound like too much fun they might miss the point. ‘It was dangerous, Dad,’ he said, frowning. ‘I mean, I wasn’t scared, but one time I got carried about thirty feet.’

  Most days, though, Hector read and mooched about the house, the summer holiday like a long, tedious weekend.

  ‘Are you not seeing Jack today?’ Ezra asked him in the kitchen, before setting off for work, on the Monday before the launch.

  ‘He might come round. I’m not going over there, Daddy.’ Hector studied his jam-covered toast, before taking a bite from it. ‘His mum’s weird,’ he muttered between munches.

  ‘Minty? What do you mean, weird?’

  Hector swallowed. ‘She stares at me.’

  ‘Stares?’

  ‘As if she’s looking for something.’

  Ezra studied his son. It was undeniable: Hector had inherited his brown eyes, the shape of his nose, his mouth.

  ‘Yes,’ Hector said. ‘Just like that, Daddy. Jack says it must be the menopause.’

  Ezra lifted his briefcase. ‘I doubt that, Hector.’

  Blaise stomped blearily down the stairs.

  ‘Blaise knows what I mean,’ Hector said. ‘She saw Minty in Summertown.’

  Ezra rested one hand on the kitchen table. ‘She spoke to you?’ he asked.

  Blaise stumped around the kitchen to the fridge. It looked like she’d forgotten how to walk smoothly, and might require the first part of the morning to retrain her limbs. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Ezra swallowed. ‘What did she say?’ he asked.

  Blaise carried a milk carton to the sideboard. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  She opened the cupboard where the bowls were kept. ‘Nothing.’

  Ezra looked outside. There was obviously something. What did Blaise know? It struck Ezra how brown the grass on the lawn had become this dry summer. He’d not noticed before. He shook his head. ‘See you later,’ he said, and made for the door.

  Later that same morning Ezra was called into Klaus Kuuzik’s office. He brought the CEO up to date on preparations for the launch, and made to leave.

  ‘Oh, Ezra,’ Klaus said. ‘I almost forgot. I received a letter. You might be interested. Have a look.’

  Klaus passed over a white envelope. There was no stamp. Ezra discerned nothing from the neat, slow handwriting spelling out Kuuzik’s name and that of the company. He withdrew a single sheet of white paper. He unfolded it and saw t
he signed name at the end of the typed letter: Blaise Pepin. The surname eerily resembled the way he wrote his. A childish imitation. Genetic recapitulation. Ezra looked up, aghast, at Klaus, who smiled and, nodding benevolently towards the letter trembling in Ezra’s hand, said, ‘Yes. Read it.’

  The words on the page jumped and floated in Ezra’s nervous vision. Letters disassociated themselves from those around them, embarrassment causing him to suffer from some novel dyslexic condition. He told himself that Klaus and he were friends and colleagues as well as chief and indian. Klaus had, moreover, three daughters himself: whatever was in this letter he might understand. Ezra closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and read.

  Dear Mr Kuuzik,

  Thank you very much for showing me Isis Water’s plans in the Middle East (not to mention the delicious pastries.)

  I do not understand why you want to expand your company’s interests into that region. You must know about the problems in Palestine. These problems won’t be solved by global capitalism. They will only be solved by a just political settlement.

  I understand that money must flow. But not why every business has to grow. If capitalism depends on eternal growth, then where will it end? It will eat up everything.

  I suppose I should talk to my father, but we do not really discuss his work at home.

  With great respect, Mr Kuuzik, I ask you: please don’t sell your water in Palestine. Remain in Europe.

  Yours sincerely,

  Blaise Pepin

  Ezra scrutinised his daughter’s letter to his boss, trying to process its content; hoping to decipher its meaning. Was she oblivious to her father’s position? Did she simply want him to look stupid, was that the point? Was she determined just like her mother to embarrass her family while making crass political statements? And at such a young age! So precocious!