by Rose Tremain
“If you ask me, Jane Viggers was mental,” said Pansy.
“She had a scream on ’er, all right,” said Douglas. “Like a scream out of ruddy Psycho.”
“Mrs. Vig was no better,” said a faded, mousy woman, whose name was Hermione. “She once wrenched my arm.”
“Wrenched your arm?” said Berkeley.
“Yes. Wrenched it out of its socket. She was a Marxist.”
“Sadist, don’t you mean?” said Pansy.
Laughter round the table.
Lev wondered what it was they were all laughing at: the thought of colossal Mrs. Viggers advancing on Hermione’s meager arm? Misuse of the word “Marxist”?
“The Viggerses used to jack stuff from the kitchen . . .” This was Simone, who was going round with second helpings of rhubarb crumble.
“ ‘Jack’?” said Joan. “What’s that?”
“Tell you’re not streetwise, eh?” said Douglas. “It means nick. Steal.”
A respectful quiet greeted these delicious words.
“Really? Oh, tell us, Simone, go on.”
Simone spooned out crumble. Several pudding plates had been scraped clean. “Yeah,” she said. “I was gonna, like, mention it to Mrs. McNaughton, but I thought I’d be garrotted or somevin’.”
“Garrotted! Oh, I like that. What did they steal, dear?”
“Loadsa stuff. Used to be an electric whisk an’ a fruit press in that kitchen, but the Viggerses jacked ’em. Same fing wiv the scales. And, like, small stuff as well: cutlery, cruets, parin’ knives . . .”
“Knives!”
“Did you see them do it, Simone?”
“Well, I didn’t, like, see ’em right in front of me eyes. But I know they did it. Know wha’ I mean? Mrs. Vig had a hold-all type thing she brought wiv her. And I know that bag was stuffed wiv, like, goods. I’m not jokin’.”
“Well, all we can say,” said Berkeley Brotherton, “is good riddance to them. In the Navy, they’d’ve been drummed out a long time ago. Because they couldn’t bloody cook!” He brayed with laughter— hack-hack-hack-hack!—the laugh turning quickly to a wheezing cough. He spat phlegm into a handkerchief.
“Food’ll be better now, dear, will it?” said Joan plaintively, to Lev.
“Call ’im ‘Chef,’ ” giggled Simone.
“Oh, Chef. Yes, sorry, love. Chef. Will it get better now, like it was today?”
Lev was standing at the end of the table. He saw many faces turn to him. Silence in the room. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“You mean you’re not staying on?” said Berkeley.
Lev shook his head. “Just helping out today.”
“Damned shame,” wheezed Berkeley.
“Hear, hear,” said Douglas. “For once I agree with the captain.”
When lunch was over and the nurses had helped the residents out into the sunshine or back into their rooms, Lev left Simone to load the dishwasher and made his way to Ruby Constad’s room.
The voice that answered his knock was subdued. He found Ruby sitting in her armchair with a photograph album on her knees. She clutched it to her chest as Lev came in, as though he might have come to take it away from her.
“It’s Lev, Mrs. Constad,” he said. “I used to come here with Sophie.”
She peered at him. “Who is it?”
He came closer to her. Saw her face very thin and drawn, where, only a few months ago, it had been fleshy. Her once-beautiful eyes looked startled.
“It’s Lev,” he said gently. “I was here at Christmas. And one other time. I helped to cook the meals.”
Her look softened. She held out a frail hand. He put it to his lips and kissed it, saw Ruby smile.
“I remember you,” she said. “Always so galant.”
“I came to say, would you like me to bring you some lunch? I made a nice gratin . . . and a rhubarb crumble.”
“No, thank you, dear. I’m not hungry. I live on Matchsticks now. Would you like one?”
She picked up a box of chocolate twigs from beside her chair and offered it to Lev. He accepted a twig. Ruby said, “Pull up that stool. I’ll show you some old snaps.”
He sat beside her and she lifted the heavy photograph album toward him. “India,” she said. “Just before the war. That’s me here. It was a welcome pageant we made at our convent school for the viceroy.”
Lev saw a faded picture of young girls wearing ankle-length dresses, lined up across a stage, bending their bodies in strange contortions. Remembered now what she’d told him and Sophie: “We made the word WELCOME in girls.”
“See the O? I’m one half of it. The left half, there. My hair was dark then.”
Lev looked from the girl in the picture—so willowy and strong, so intent on being one half of a beautiful O—to Ruby, beside him, lined and emaciated in her heavy chair. He told her she looked lovely, that the welcome tableau was very clever.
She turned the page, pointed to a photograph of a smiling nun. “Sister Benedicta,” she said. “She was my favorite nun. She taught me about books. We used to read the poetry of Thomas Hardy and A. E. Housman in her room. Her spirit was wonderfully gentle.”
“Did you see her again?”
“No. I don’t know what became of her. I did go back to India in the late 1970s, after my husband died, but the convent school was closed. The buildings had become what they called a garment factory. I went in, even though I wasn’t supposed to. I shall never forget the noise of that place, and the sight of so many women working at wretched sewing machines. As though one sewing machine isn’t terrifying enough! And God knows how many hours they had to put in, poor souls. I remember thinking, I am never going to buy a garment again!”
Ruby closed the album and asked Lev to tell her how he was getting on without Sophie. He lit a cigarette. No way could he tell the old lady that he still had erotic dreams about Sophie, could still get hard just thinking about the plump softness of her arms. So he took a different tack. He began to explain that the loss of Sophie had been buried underneath another loss—the coming disappearance of his village under the waters of the Auror dam.
“Oh, Lev,” she said, “I never heard of such a frightful thing. To drown people’s homes! Goodness me, it almost makes one long for a viceroy, or somebody of that ilk, to sit those unfeeling, petty bureaucrats down and say, ‘No. That is completely beyond the pale!’ ”
Lev smiled. He told her quietly that the coming of the dam had led him on to his wild idea of starting a restaurant—“The first one in my country where the food will be truly good.”
“Oh, a restaurant!” exclaimed Ruby. “How excellent. You must definitely do it. What kind of restaurant will it be?”
“Well,” said Lev, “not so large. Fifty covers or so. What I imagine is: everything very clean and simple. Wooden floor. White tablecloths. Nice simple glassware. Perhaps a small bar. Some leather chairs here, in the bar area. Maybe a fire in winter . . .”
“Oh yes, a fire. Because your winters are cold. Good idea.”
“On the walls, some nice color. Maybe ocher color. And old photographs—like yours in your book—of our country in the past.”
“Photographs. Very good. To remember the past. It’s important for us all. But also, Lev, I’ve just thought, if a customer’s waiting for somebody to arrive, who’s late or something, she can just swivel around and have a look at the photographs, instead of sitting and staring at nothing and feeling like a self-conscious twit.”
“Yes. I didn’t think of that.”
“What about your staff? You must pick carefully. No Mrs. Viggers!”
“No, no. I want all my staff and especially my waiters very smart. You know? Efficient and polite—not like in old Communist restaurants. Everybody happy to work there, to be part of my dream . . .”
“I think it’s brilliant, Lev,” said Ruby. “I can already imagine it. I can imagine everything.”
She was smiling, and Lev noticed that a thread of color had returned to her sunke
n cheeks. He put out his cigarette and said, “Ruby, now let me go and get you some food. You must eat.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “But I just don’t feel like eating anymore. I’m sorry. I would if I could. Perhaps when I’m better—if I ever am better—I’ll go on a wild adventure to your country and come and have a meal in your restaurant and look at all the pictures on the yellow walls, while I’m waiting for my food to arrive.”
22
The Last Bivouac
AN ENVELOPE ARRIVED, addressed in Ina’s writing, but containing no letter or message of thanks for the money Lev kept sending, only a crayoned picture, made by Maya. It was a drawing of water, colored blue-green, with bright fishes swimming along and sea horses nodding in a line. At the top of the page, where the water ended and a blank white sky began, sailed a houseboat like Noah’s Ark, but the ark was smaller than the sea horses and its decks were empty. Bare words were scribbled badly in one corner of the blue-green sea: “To Pappa from Maya.” Nothing more. No love, no kisses.
Lev showed the picture to Christy and Jasmina. Christy said, “Look how nicely she’s done the fishes.” Jasmina said, “Perhaps that’s what your mother’s told her—that you’re going to live in an ark when the flood arrives.”
Lev propped up the picture on his windowsill. Stared at it. Tried to imagine what was in his daughter’s mind. Remembered the way she had talked to the chickens and goats and the sparrows bathing in the dust and thought, desolately, Who or what will she talk to in an apartment in Baryn?
Then he went to see Mrs. McNaughton to collect the money she owed him, but instead of leaving when she handed him the check, he told her he’d be willing to work full-time at Ferndale Heights if she hadn’t yet found a replacement for the Viggerses. Mrs. McNaughton put her hands together in an ardent prayer steeple and said, “Oh my goodness, Lev. How wonderful. That’s exactly what I was going to beg you to do!”
He’d worked it out. He’d go to Ferndale at nine in the morning and stay till three or four, after serving a hot lunch and preparing the cold suppers. Then he’d get to Panno’s at five. Work till twelve or one. Be home and in bed by two. Get up at seven. Be out at Ferndale again by nine. The hours were long, sure, but that’s all they were: hours. He could get through them. He told himself that none of them would be as arduous as a single hour in winter at the Baryn lumber yard. And he’d survived those for almost twenty years . . .
Mrs. McNaughton said Ferndale could pay him £17 an hour. With his heart pounding, he refused this offer. Reminded her this was a head chef’s job and asked for £20. Watched her hesitate, then relax and agree. With her efficiency-conscious smile, she told him she knew Ferndale was lucky to get him.
He’d done the sums. If he worked six hours at Ferndale Heights seven days a week at £20 an hour, he could earn £840: £650 after tax. The money he made at Panno’s—about £216 a week in cash— would, if he was careful, be enough for him to live on and pay rent to Christy. Getting £20 an hour at Ferndale, he could save in the region of £2,500 per month. He had only to work for four or five months to save the impossible-seeming £10,000.
The thrill of this—the realization that, after all, he needed no government help, no expensive loan, no benefactor, but could make the money himself by balancing two jobs instead of one—made him breathless.
His first and only impulsive purchase was a set of chef’s whites. He put them on and looked at himself. He put on the toque. Didn’t care that a toque was, of itself, a ridiculous thing, that he’d once heard G. K. Ashe deride it as “wanker wear.” He paraded himself for Christy and Jasmina, and caught them smiling.
“We’re not laughing,” said Jasmina.
“No, not at all,” said Christy. “We wouldn’t laugh. We’re just dazzled by the sheer snow-whiteness.”
Lev tried to explain to them that he thought the elderly residents of Ferndale Heights might like to see their chef dressed in this old, elegant way, that theirs was a shrunken, altered world, but now, in his white-clad being, he was going to remind them they were being cared for.
“I see it,” said Christy. “I think that’s capital, don’t you, Jas?”
“Yes,” said Jasmina. “They’ll think they’re at the Ritz. Shame Miss Minto, or whatever her name was, isn’t there to appreciate you.”
The ache in his back sometimes reminded him of the time when he’d been knocked into the ditch by the hay cart. It got him late at night, when, trudging the tables at Panno’s, he found himself longing for heat and sleep. But this was nothing. Only an inevitable part of the decision he’d made. He swallowed painkillers and carried on. And, slowly, the kitchen at Ferndale Heights was being transformed. Lev and Simone had cleaned out every cupboard and drawer, scoured away all the smears and detritus of the Viggerses’ long habitation.
“You know, they was, like, sluts, wasn’t they?” commented Simone, as she soaked and chafed pans, scraped grease off shelves, bagged up stale packets of custard powder and soup granules. “They could of infected the whole place.”
It was infected. This was what Lev felt. Infected with neglect, with indifference. It reminded him of the shabby restaurants where he and Marina had gone, vainly hoping for a good meal and finding only this residue of past things, this same absence of care.
“What I’d like,” Lev told Simone, after a couple of weeks, “is to introduce choice into the lunch menu. Two main courses. Two puddings. Everyone can choose. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” said Simone. “But tell that to Ma McNaughton, she’ll have a seizure.”
“Why?”
“Cost, Chef. Know wha’ I mean? Choice is too whatsit—too wasteful.”
“No,” said Lev. “Not if we make menus. Give out the menus one, two days before. Everybody decides. Tells us their choice. Then we know how many chickens, how many fish and so on for the suppliers. Should be no waste.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Yeah? Dunno why not. But she’ll say no.”
Mrs. McNaughton didn’t say no. She said she’d run what she called “a limited experiment for one month.” She cautioned Lev to balance the more expensive ingredients with cheaper ones each day.
When he told Simone, she said, “Right. Well, I’d better write out the menus, man. Your spellin’s atrocious, innit?”
“Yes,” agreed Lev. “You write. You give them to Mrs. McNaughton for the computer. Make every choice sound nice.”
Simone took the task home, came back with a formula she’d said she’d worked on with her mum and written out in a slow, careful hand. She showed it proudly to Lev.
YOUR MENU FOR WEDNESDAY
Wickedly lovely free-range chicken breasts
stuffed with mushrooms, shallots, and herbs,
served with a totally brilliant jus
or
Chef’s fantastic fish gratin with
zero bones and non-crap crumb
and
Choice of non-frozen broccoli or beans,
or both if you want
—
Crème brûlée jacked by Chef from a
recipe at GK Ashe
or
Watermelon sorbet with no black
seeds or rubbish in it
Lev changed nothing before he took Simone’s menu to Mrs. McNaughton. Mrs. McNaughton put on her glasses. Lev saw a smile spread across her face. “Well,” she said, “I’ll let it go. We’ll explain to everybody that Simone wrote it. There may be a few rumblings, but in the main I think it’ll amuse them. And everything that amuses them I see as moments of light in their darkness.”
So then it became one of the highlights of the residents’ day: reading out the lunch menus. The more extreme the language, the more the ancient occupants of Ferndale Heights liked it. It was as if the language already gave the dishes savor. As the weeks passed (and the costs remained stable and the month’s “experiment” was conveniently forgotten), the wording became wilder. At lunchtime Lev might h
ear Berkeley Brotherton announce, “I’m having the ‘bloody delicious vegetarian sausages with the non-packet-shit mash,’ ” or Pansy Adeane say sweetly, “Oh Lord, I can’t remember what I was havin’, Lev love. I think it was the ‘totally non-bull-shitting Guinness-marinated Irish stew,’ or was that Thursday?”
Lunchtime was noisier now. People ate more, talked more, lingered longer at the table. “If you ask me, it’s a ruddy miracle,” Lev heard Douglas observe one early afternoon. “We eat better here now than down the pub.”
“We do,” said Joan, “but you can bet it won’t last.”
“Why won’t it last?”
“Nothing does. Nothing good does.”
“Well,” said Douglas, “sufficient unto the day. The non-packet-shit mash might well outlive us.”
Only Ruby Constad played no part in any of this. Word went round Ferndale Heights that she had stomach cancer and would soon have to be moved out.
“Moved out where?” asked Lev.
“To a . . . whatever it is they call those damn places,” said Berkeley Brotherton. “The last bivouac.”
Ruby lay in her bed, staring at her furniture. Sometimes she listened to an old tape of Gregorian chant. Her frail hand would hold out the box of Matchsticks toward Lev, but he noticed that even these she couldn’t eat anymore.
One day he found two middle-aged people sitting silently beside her. “These are my children,” said Ruby quietly. “This is Noel and this is Alexandra.”
They didn’t move from their chairs or hold out their hands, only nodded at him. It was hot in the room, but he noticed that the son, Noel, was still wearing his lightweight overcoat. The daughter, Alexandra, had a gray waterfall of hair and wore a long denim skirt and sandals. The flesh of her legs was pale and dry.
