The Road Home

by Rose Tremain

  “Lev . . .” Lydia bleated, as she scurried to his side, “don’t go so fast.”

  So he had to slow down. He had to tell himself to wait, to pay attention to Lydia. He couldn’t desert her yet again with no explanation and no warning. He let her put her arm through his once more. He felt her small hand clutching at his sleeve. She began talking to him about a piece of sculpture, resembling a twisted human torso, set out on a concrete plinth. She said she admired its “discomforting strangeness.” She longed, she said, to create something, to see part of herself expressed in some separate entity that would endure beyond her life. Because she could see, now, the way life gathered speed. Particularly in London. “At home,” she said, “every day was always the same and we had no hope of alteration, so time went very slowly. But here, my God, I feel it rushing on. Don’t you, Lev?”

  Lev nodded. Yes, it was rushing. Today it was. It was going to take him far, far from where he’d been. But what could he say about this to Lydia? Her hand was snug in the crook of his arm. She’d bought him a Christmas present. Together, like a fond couple, they were moving round Waterlow Park. The bolts of red cloth on the holly moved in the wind. The paired ducks called.

  “Well,” said Lydia, as they drank the foaming coffee, “I’ll describe to you my situation. I think many young women from our country live au pair in London, but now I can tell you that, for me, it’s not so good.”

  “No?”

  “No. Not at all. Perhaps I am not young enough. To me, English children are too little disciplined, too spoiled. They have everything in the world, but they treat everything the same: pick it up and throw it away. Pick people up, throw them away. Hugo and Jemima are their names. They call me ‘Muesli.’ ”

  “Muesli?”

  “It amuses them. Because of my face, my moles. Muesli.”

  Lev looked up from his coffee. He said nothing, because nothing appropriate would come to his distracted mind.

  “Well,” said Lydia, “I see that at least you’re shocked. It is shocking. I think so, too. I am thirty-nine and these creatures, Jemima and Hugo, are aged seven and nine, and they call me Muesli.”

  “You should tell them not to call you that.”

  “I have told them.”

  “Inform the parents, Lydia. Say you won’t put up with it.”

  “Yes? And lose this job, when any job was so hard to find?”

  “Well . . .”

  “You know I was very happy with Pyotor. My dear maestro. I miss him so much. As you saw, I did everything for him. We had such a good understanding. I kidded myself that that job would last forever. But, of course, nothing lasts forever. I had some beautiful luck, and now everything has gone to darkness. That is how it feels to me.”

  “Leave this family, Lydia. Find something else.”

  “Yes. I could. Except where can I go when it’s winter now? You remember what I warned you about English winters. How long they last. At least I have a warm room in the house, which is a very nice large house. I have a bathroom that is mine. I shouldn’t complain, really. It’s only that my old job was so lovely and now I’m with monsters. You see? And there is no culture in that house. Only TV and PlayStation games. All violent. I offer to read bedtime stories, but no, they laugh at me. They even tell me to F off. Can you imagine?”

  “That’s bad . . .”

  “But I see you are bored. Of course you are, because here I am complaining once more. Let’s drop this subject. It’s not nice at all. Talk to me about your life, Lev.”

  Lev blinked. His pulse was still racing. He found saying words an ordeal. He was dizzy with excitement and terror.

  “It’s okay,” he said flatly. “I was lucky with the room you found for me. I’m very grateful to you. Christy Slane is a good man.”

  “Yes? Tell me about him.”

  “Well. He has his troubles. But it’s too long a story to tell you now. I must go soon.”

  “Oh no. Don’t go, Lev,” said Lydia. “It’s Sunday, remember? Why don’t we order some lunch?”

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “We can just get a nice baguette with chicken. Or a salad.”

  “I’m not hungry, Lydia.”

  “Ah,” said Lydia with a smile, “but I remember this in the bus. At first you said you weren’t hungry and then, after a while—after not so long a time—I’m sharing my eggs and my rye bread and my chocolate, and soon it was all gone. You remember this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I shall call the waiter for the menu. It’s not expensive if we just have the baguettes.”

  “No. I don’t want to eat.”

  “I shall pay for you, Lev. It will be my treat.”

  “No! I have to leave.”

  She heard the firmness in his voice and looked at him foursquare. He thought that this was how she would look at the children who called her Muesli, with her brave stare, with her eyes very wide and blue. And then she would give up on them and turn away, as she did now. She bent down to where her bag sat at her feet and pulled out an oblong package, carefully wrapped in shiny paper, and handed it to him.

  “Well,” she said, “I am quite hungry, but never mind. Here is your present. Merry Christmas, Lev.” Her voice was fragile and quiet.

  Lev reached over and took it. He wished he’d bought something for her: a scented candle, a vial of bath oil . . . something. A cheap gift for her would have rescued the moment, made him seem less selfish and uncaring.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You can open it now, if you want.”

  So then he thought, If I unwrap it, I can thank her again and then I can leave. Opening the gift will bring the meeting to an end and allow me to escape. He looked at it in his hands. On a gift tag were the simple words: To Lev from Lydia.

  “Wouldn’t you like me to save it for Christmas Day?” he asked.

  “No. Open it. Why not? Then I will see whether you like it.”

  He began to tear off the paper. Lydia brought out a small hand- kerchief and blew her nose. She said, “You may think it a strange present—not what you were expecting.”

  “I wasn’t expecting anything.”

  “But you will see why I thought it appropriate. I think you will see . . .”

  It was a paperback copy of Hamlet. Lev opened it and read in English: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Act One.

  “Oh,” he said. “Thank you, Lydia. I once saw some Russian film of this, but I have never read it.”

  “No. I didn’t expect you had, Lev. Who has read Hamlet in Auror? But this edition has very thorough notes to help you understand. If you turn to the back, you will see there are notes.”

  “I expect I will definitely need them . . .”

  “And I think for us, who are exiles, or whatever you like to call it, this play has very much meaning. You may see this as you read. Because Prince Hamlet, you know, he is cast out. Or, rather, he casts himself out, so that he can make things right in the place that he’s left behind.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. And all the time he is haunted by the past. You will see.”

  He thanked her again. He put the book into his anorak pocket. He didn’t know what more to say. He pulled out some money to pay for the coffee and set it down on the wooden table.

  He was away now. Away from Highgate. Coming up into the frosty air from Kentish Town tube station. Running along Rossvale Road. Door numbers flying past. Her street. For why shouldn’t a man choose happiness? Didn’t he, didn’t everybody, have the right—no matter if his wife had died, no matter if he’d told himself that this was the thing he’d never do again—to make a bid for a new beginning?

  It had begun snowing. The whirling snow was soft and cool on Lev’s face. He hoped it would fall all night, coat the city with silence, wall him up in the room he was running to, bring him a soft, purple-white dawn, like the dawn that broke that morning long ago when he and Rudi drove the Tchevi home . . .

  Now here h
e was: 5 Rossvale Road. A bell to ring. Then a wait to endure. Then her voice on the intercom. Her voice that had a little choke in it, which, now he thought about it, had always affected him: the voice that was going to set him free.

  “It’s Lev,” he said.

  He’d run so hard, he could barely breathe. He was giddy with running, with wanting, with hoping.

  The intercom was silent. But then he heard the buzz of the door release. He pushed the heavy door open and stood in a small hall- way, carpeted blue, strewn with unopened junk mail. He caught sight of himself in a mirror: his color high, his hair wild, his eyes shining like jet. He wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to smooth his hair.

  He looked up the narrow stairs. Sophie had come out of her flat on the first floor and stood, in her doorway, looking down at him.

  She was wearing a tracksuit and her feet were bare. In her hand was a newspaper or a magazine. Lev began to climb the stairs. Sophie didn’t move, but when he looked up at her, he saw a slow smile dimple her cheeks, as though she’d been waiting for him, waiting calmly and without fuss, in the knowledge that sooner or later he would arrive, that in the end he would need no persuasion, that waiting was all that was required of her.

  When he reached her, she pulled him gently inside the flat and closed the door. He leaned her against the wall. He bunched her bright curls in his hand. Now he wanted to tell her everything that he was feeling, but he felt the words float away. He put his mouth on hers. Her breath was sweet as caramel.

  10

  “Pure Anarchy in Here . . .”

  ON CHRISTMAS MORNING Lev woke up in Sophie’s bed and saw that the sun was shining outside the white-curtained window. He placed a kiss on Lenny, the lizard tattoo. She woke and mumbled, “Lenny thinks you’re really tasty.”

  Lev stroked her face, oily with sleep. He said, “I would like to be Lenny. In your skin always.” She smiled and took his hand and kissed the dark hair on his wrist, then stroked her top lip with it, as though it were fur. And he thought, Yes, this is true, this is what I want now: to be indelible in her, never erased. Because he was astonished by her. And this astonishment hardly left him.

  When, during their work hours, he looked at her, he felt his heart lurch. He wanted to take her in his arms right there, in front of all the chefs. Through his long shifts at the sinks, he listened for the sound of her voice. His longing for the night was profound. When he looked at his own reflection, he saw a young man, his eyes wild with dreams.

  He had to tell Rudi about her. He called early on a Sunday morning, while Sophie slept, and said, “I think I’m in love now.”

  He heard Rudi’s cuckoo clock strike seven. Then Rudi said wearily, “I knew there was something.”

  Lev told Rudi that it was all unexpected and had taken him by storm and that he barely knew how to think about it or how to behave.

  “Well,” offered Rudi, “isn’t it like riding a bicycle? Doesn’t it come back to you?”

  “Does it?” said Lev. “I don’t know. It’s not like it’s come back exactly. It’s like it’s something new.”

  “Yeah?”

  “With Marina it was beautiful,” said Lev, “but it went so . . . deep. There was always . . . there was always something angry about it, something dark or difficult. This time it’s innocent.”

  “Am I following you, my friend? I’m not sure I am.”

  “It doesn’t matter. How can you describe love, anyway? But it feels . . . I don’t know . . . uncomplicated. You know?”

  Rudi yawned and said, “Uncomplicated is good. Uncomplicated I like. Try to keep it that way. You’re probably not ready for anything else. What’s her name?”

  “Sophie.”

  “Sophie? She’s not Russian, I hope.”

  “No, she’s English. She works in the restaurant. She wants to be a chef.”

  “Okay,” said Rudi. “Well, we all have our dreams.”

  A silence fell. It was like Rudi didn’t want to talk anymore about Sophie, so Lev asked, “How’s the Tchevi?”

  “Don’t ask. I’m in transmission hell, Lev. I still haven’t got the fucking belts. I’ve had to send off to some place in Germany for them. Postage alone is going to cost me a ton. And meanwhile, the car keeps bumping into things. I told you, I keep denting the fenders, because the Tchevi doesn’t understand which fucking drive she’s in.”

  “I’m sorry, Rudi.”

  “I mean, if she falls apart, what am I going to do? I’m going to have to get back into gray stuff. And that gives me such bad dreams, I’m afraid to fucking sleep.”

  “What about the horoscopes?”

  “The horoscopes? Yeah, well, actually they’re okay. We’ve got a little clientele now—or Lora has. It’s a sheer precipice of bullshit, Lev. I feel dizzy when I think what lies we tell. But, hey, we have to stay alive, don’t we?”

  “Yes. We have to stay alive.”

  There was another silence, in which Lev could hear the clock ticking above Rudi’s telephone table. After a moment, Rudi said, “Listen, I’m happy for you, Lev. Really, I am. Very happy. Send me a photograph of Sophie and her birth date and Lora can work out your horoscopes, see if you have a future.”

  A future.

  Lev didn’t want to consider this. He’d come alive in the present. That was enough.

  And now, on Christmas Day, Ina had her American wire cutters; Maya had her doll; and he had Sophie.

  It was more than enough.

  He made love to Sophie very slowly, with the soft morning light falling on them, and they slept again for a while. Then they got up and made breakfast side by side: a Spanish omelet, bread, and coffee. While they ate, Lev stared at all the colors of red and gold in Sophie’s hair and at her mouth on the rim of the heavy green coffee cup. He thought how much he would like to take her dancing.

  She’d warned him it wouldn’t be a “normal” Christmas Day, because she was committed to spending most of it at Ferndale Heights care home, with the old people. She explained that few of the full-time staff wanted to work Christmas Day, so she’d volunteered for a six-hour shift. She’d said to Lev, “For some of the residents, they know it could be their last Christmas.”

  Lev had asked her what she’d do there and she told him that she’d help prepare a Christmas meal and then they’d play games and have a singsong. She said, “They’ll all get squiffy on Asti Spumante and float backward in time, but I don’t care. When you’re old, nobody touches you, nobody listens to you—not in this bloody country. So that’s what I do: I touch and I listen. I comb their hair. I play clapping games with them. That’s a laugh and a half! I hear about life in a postwar prefab or in some crumbling stately pile. I play my guitar, and sometimes that makes them cry. My favorite person there is a woman called Ruby. She was brought up by nuns in India. She can still remember the convent school and her favorite nun, Sister Benedicta—every detail, every feeling.”

  Lev had said he would come with her to Ferndale Heights, help with the meal and wash it up. When he said this, Sophie put her arms round his neck and said, “I knew you were good. Hardly anybody is good. But you are. I saw it in your face.”

  They washed up the breakfast. They showered and got dressed, and Sophie put on makeup. She said the residents of Ferndale Heights were cheered up by the sight of shiny hair and nice lipstick and the smell of perfume. Lev wore his old leather jacket, because Sophie liked him in this garment and told him he looked sexy wearing it.

  They walked hand in hand along Rossvale Road, going toward the tube station, staring in windows at Christmas trees and paper streamers and fake snow. Sophie carried her guitar in a canvas case. The sun put a shine on the black-painted railings and on the last plane leaves clustered in the gutter and on people wearing new knitwear and on dogs in new collars and leads.

  A flower seller stood in the cold outside the driveway to Ferndale Heights. He wore fingerless gloves and a woolly hat pulled low over his brow. On trestles behind him, among buckets of tall roses
and carnations, there was a clutch of poinsettia plants and Lev had to stop and stare at them.

  “Okay, mate?” said the flower seller, clapping his hands together to warm them.

  “Yes,” said Lev.

  “Take a nice Yuletide offering to your relative?”

  “Sorry,” said Lev.

  He walked on, hurrying to catch Sophie up.

  Ferndale Heights stood at the end of a quiet road in East Finchley, looking out over a vale of roofs. It was a three-story red-brick building with metal window frames. The brick was stained black in places where overflow pipes had dribbled down the walls onto a concrete path. Green lawns had been laid out around the path. Heavy-shouldered yews dripped the last of their poisonous berries onto the grass, where a few pigeons wandered.

  “On fine days,” said Sophie, “it doesn’t look bad. There are worse places to die.”

  Inside, the smell reminded Lev of the hospital where Marina had lain for so long: urine and disinfectant mingled, stale coffee, the faint suggestion of some recent, unidentifiable burning. Sophie took his hand. The place felt quiet, as if the residents were all slumbering, and Lev thought about Christy lying alone in Belisha Road, dosed up with his sleeping pills, keeping his room dark all day until darkness fell again.

  Sophie led him down a corridor where each door had a name plate beside it: Mrs. Araminta Hollander, Capt. Berkeley Brotherton, Mrs. Pansy Adeane, Miss Joan Scott . . . From some of the rooms came the sounds of small afflictions: the clearing of throats, coughing, a voice crying softly into a telephone.

  Lev and Sophie stopped in front of the last door, this one propped open, as if in anticipation of their arrival. Sophie knocked. The name beside the door was “Mrs. Ruby Constad.” They heard slow feet shuffling forward, then Lev saw a large woman, with curly gray hair and eyes that were still almost beautiful in the colorless dough of her face, standing before them. Round her neck was an ancient string of pearls. “Sophie dear,” she said. “Merry Christmas! Come in and sit down. Someone sent me some crystallized plums.”