The Little Old Lady Behaving Badly

by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

  “And we must taste every dish on the menu and ensure that the cooks and service cooperate smoothly before we open the doors to the public,” Anna-Greta put in.

  “Absolutely,” Brains agreed, immediately seeing the many opportunities to be able to go into the kitchen and discuss food and kitchen equipment with Betty.

  Christina looked thoughtful: “But how will we get people to come here, then?”

  “I know, the bonus lottery and health-care staff. After all, we have the addresses,” said Martha and she thought about all the people working in home care and hospitals who had emailed them. “We’ll invite them to some free evenings where they can try the food. And they will get their first bonus in cash on the way out. That way we won’t have to distribute the money.”

  “What a good idea,” they all said, and thus agreed to send out invitations so that they could fill the restaurant.

  The following day, the League of Pensioners sat with the list and emailed invitations to more than one hundred people in the first round. They all felt very excited and nervous because now their talents as entrepreneurs were to be tested. Only if they managed to run a profit-making restaurant, could they expand the activities to an entire Vintage Village.

  “You know what? The Silver Punk restaurant will be decisive for our future,” said Martha.

  “Hmm,” they mumbled in unison and nodded earnestly.

  32

  THE RED CARPET WAS ROLLED OUT, THE AROMATIC (FOREST MIST) candles lit, and on both sides of the gangplank stood large urns with a sea of flowers. A neon sign with the name SILVER PUNK RESTAURANT glowed up on the roof and declared that something new and exciting was happening here. Smoke came from the chimney and from inside the windows a mild greenish light spread. Up on the deck, the dressed-up senior gang was preparing to receive the guests. Martha, in a long dress and a fur stole, paced back and forth on the afterdeck while she looked toward the quay. Rake, in a black leather jacket, black trousers, red ruffled shirt and a scarf around his neck, held his hands behind his back and discreetly tried to see if there were any young girls on the quay, while Brains, in a slightly worn 1950s suit, dug in his pockets for his screwdriver. At the last moment something might not work properly, in which case he needed to be prepared. Anna-Greta was wearing a wide hat with a veil and she wobbled around on high heels in an attempt to look elegant but with the result that she was always just about to fall over.

  “Be careful of your thigh,” Martha shouted and Anna-Greta immediately grabbed hold of her walking stick which Brains had repaired, and twisted around so quickly that her heels made two deep holes in the red carpet. But then she remembered the yoga exercises.

  “Don’t worry, Martha, I do yoga with Christina. That gives you good balance, mark my words,” she said, not looking where she was going and falling over one of the flower pots. When she had got back on her feet, the flowers looked rather flattened and it took her a while to brush off her clothes. But then she threw her head back.

  “Yes, I forgot the yoga session this morning, and just look what that leads to!”

  Christina, in an elegant yellow two-piece, a warm shawl and red-painted nails, was rushing back and forth across the vessel and simply couldn’t keep still at all. She was so wound up that she could have screwed herself into the ceiling—if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was standing out on deck. After a while, they heard the sound of an approaching car engine.

  “See that car over there, they will be the first guests,” she said, her voice now a falsetto, and she pointed to the road where a blue Volvo was heading in their direction. She was so “high” that earlier that day Martha had even contemplated giving her friend something to calm her down, but then she remembered that Christina was adverse to pills, so she had given her a glass of carrot juice instead. Unfortunately, this was one of Christina’s “white weeks”—no alcohol at all—typical, because just now she could really have used a glass of cloudberry liqueur to soothe her nerves.

  “In the future I don’t think we will have so many flowers here in the entrance; instead we can send that money to Doctors Without Borders,” said Christina pointing at the large pots. “It will suffice to have flowers on posters or pictures.”

  “Now steady on, we’ll have to discuss that later,” Rake chipped in, being the flower-lover and garden expert, and he folded his scarf over an extra turn. “It would look stupid watering posters, you know.”

  “And how are things going with the food, Christina?” Martha wondered, having done her best not to interfere. However, she was now a little apprehensive; perhaps she ought to have asked about today’s dishes because there were strange odors coming from the kitchen. But before Christina had a chance to answer, there was suddenly a lot of noise on the stairs and Olof, the cook, turned up. He was round, ruddy, thin-haired and very short. He had worked in the restaurant business for forty years and after recently becoming a retiree he had taken on the job to keep in touch with his old profession. He was absolutely bright red in the face and waved the menu at them.

  “What the hell do you mean by this? Lentils and the water that the potatoes have boiled in! I thought we were going to serve people something tasty to eat, not forbid them from enjoying good food.”

  “But this is detox you see—” Christina started to explain but was immediately silenced.

  “It says here that the guests can’t drink coffee or alcohol, can’t have sugar, fish, meat, poultry or processed food. Are you all bonkers?” Olof threw the menu onto the deck, stomped on it and pulled off his apron. “If it’s going to be like that, you’ll have to find yourself another cook!”

  “Now, now, we’ll sort this out. We’re going to eat delicious, good food here,” said Martha placing herself between them. “That must be a little mistake.”

  “Mistake? Are you calling healthy food a mistake? Oh no!” protested Christina. “We’re going to have close-to-nature products here.”

  “We’re not going to eat those weird things, I mean like algae and lentil casserole?” Brains feared the worse. “I want proper food!”

  “Calm down, everybody, that menu is for one of our special evenings. For people who want to try something new or start on a diet,” said Christina. “Today we are having something else.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” Martha muttered and her heartbeat went back to its normal rate.

  “Now listen, what about this? Why not charge one thousand kronor for a lentil casserole?” said Anna-Greta waving her walking stick enthusiastically. “The lesser the amount of food we serve, the more we can charge for it. Do you follow me? What a brilliant business idea, and besides, the guests will lose weight.”

  “The bone marrow and bean restaurant. Yohoo!” Rake called out.

  “Well, all of you are as nutty as a fruitcake,” shouted the cook, glaring at the League of Pensioners and pointing at his forehead repeatedly with a fat index finger. “Food is there to be eaten. It must be good and you must feel satisfied afterwards,” he growled. “And your damned detox evenings—you’ll have to arrange those yourselves, just so you know.”

  “But Olof, dear me,” said Christina. “I’ve said that we will serve food that appeals to all tastes.”

  “Tastes? Don’t you dare maintain that that slop has any taste. It’s just horse pee, fucking disgusting. And what are those weird bags you have in the kitchen? Birdseed?”

  “Oh, you do exaggerate. Sesame seed is so nourishing—” Christina protested but she was cut off yet again.

  “You’ll have to prepare the bird food yourselves. For this evening I’ve made some proper food. The guests will get lasagna pies with a pine nut crust, grilled perch, beefsteak with onions and meatballs with mashed potatoes. There’s got to be some order here!”

  “Meatballs? Thank God for that. Then everything is under control.” Rake sighed with relief and even Martha could breathe a little easier. She had wanted to go down into the kitchen herself to see what they were up to, but had restrained hersel
f. If you’ve delegated, then you must not meddle. And besides, Brains—who had offered to discreetly check things—had looked in on the kitchen several times during the day and had seemed very pleased. He had claimed that everything was under control. Olof put his chef’s hat on.

  “Right, then. I’d better be getting back to my pots and pans,” he said and hurried off. Martha watched him leave. Opening a restaurant was much more complicated than she had imagined. Permits, staff, deliveries and lots of guests. Dearie me, what have we got ourselves involved in, she thought. But now there was no going back. The guests were already on their way.

  One after the other, they filed in, hung up their coats in the coatroom and were shown to the tables by Rake. To her delight, Martha discovered that Christina’s complicated forest decoration seemed to work. The guests managed to make their way along the narrow, winding forest paths without bumping into bushes and tree trunks. Some guests looked inquisitively at the dating table above which hung a large sign: “SPEED DATING,” while others were curious about the raised VIP lounge and the stage with the handwritten sign announcing: “KARAOKE WITH A TWIST.” But they all looked happy and expectant, because they had never seen anything like this before. When they were all seated, Martha addressed them.

  “I would like to give you a heartfelt welcome to our newly opened restaurant Silver Punk. It is for us elderly who don’t have so many dating places, but is also open to others. As you might guess from the name, we welcome young people too. Different generations must have a place where they can meet and mix with one another.”

  A happy murmur went around the tables, followed by some hemming and hawing and scraping by a walking stick or two, after which Martha went on to describe the dating table. She encouraged those who were widows, widowers or just single in general to sit there, before she informed everybody about the bonus lottery. She leaned forward and picked up a green paper bag with a red heart on it. Those who had received a personal invitation via email would be given one of these goody bags to take home with them, she said, and patted the bag a bit more. Then she asked Brains, Rake, Christina and Anna-Greta to come up onto the stage, lined them up in a row, and raised her hands like a conductor. After which they all started to sing “The Merry Month of May” and a pleasant atmosphere spread through the restaurant. (It was admittedly the wrong season, but the song sounded so good sung in parts with their different voices and it included the word “Welcome” several times.)

  Finally, Martha called upon head waiter Christina to speak, and she described the menu, ending up by cutting a green ribbon of intertwined flower leaves which had been symbolically hung up between two chairs beside the kitchen. Then the cook and the service staff came into the dining area, introduced themselves and were applauded. When the redheaded Betty made her entrance, Brains gave a broad smile and Martha noticed. She looked from one to the other and raised her eyebrows.

  After this introduction, the inaugural evening was underway. Rake and the others handed out the menus, the guests ordered their dishes and soon the noise level became higher. Martha went around the tables and made sure that everybody was satisfied and thought that this was exactly like how it was at a real restaurant, except that it was their own. She immediately felt extremely proud that she wasn’t one of those people who just talked, but she actually turned her dreams into reality. And if only this worked out well, they would be able to continue with their Vintage Village. But that meant that the restaurant must make a profit because the bank robbery money wouldn’t go far. Christina’s interior decoration had cost a fortune and having staff was expensive too. But the League of Pensioners were not going to pay “shadow economy” cash wages, and the tax and benefits were expensive.

  And as if that wasn’t enough, Johan Tanto, the Weasel, had suddenly raised the rent. When they had decided on the barge, they had been so keen that they hadn’t read the small print in the contract. With the kitchen equipment, water and electricity, the rent had become thirty percent higher than agreed, and at the end of the year he was doubling the rent.

  Martha realized that the Weasel was unreliable and could raise the rent whenever he wanted, so it would be better to buy the barge. Together with Anna-Greta she went through the city’s register of boats to see what a barge like theirs could be worth so that they could put in a bid. That was when they discovered something strange. Barge A39T was not owned by the Weasel at all, but by Stockholm City. So he had rented out the city’s property and taken the money himself and, of course, that meant that the tenants could be evicted at any time! That decided the issue.

  With a firm grip of her wheeled walker, Martha had gone to the relevant department at City Hall and put in a bid for the barge. She explained that she wanted to invest her savings in a healthfood restaurant and she also promised that she would ensure that the barge would be removed at her own cost if—God forbid—it were to sink. The officials in City Hall had long had problems with old boats that had sunk by the quays so they did all they could to support the old lady, and shortly afterwards Martha had become the owner of the barge.

  But the Weasel and his acquaintances had started threatening them. In veiled terms they had described what would happen to people who didn’t pay protection money. Martha tried to repress the unpleasant feelings this gave rise to. No, she wasn’t going to let those thoughts disturb her now. This evening she was going to have fun.

  33

  DURING THE EVENING CHRISTINA’S MOOD IMPROVED. ADMITTEDLY, Olof, the cook, was a bit difficult to handle and he pinched Betty’s bottom a little too often, but he cooked wonderful food and the guests seemed to be enjoying themselves. Christina, in her yellow outfit, floated between the tables, smiled and asked the guests if the food tasted good. As the hours passed, she became all the jollier and forgot she was having a white week with no alcohol. When Olof got out a bottle of champagne and poured drinks for the staff, she quickly took a glass and toasted. She loved the light bubbly drink from France and on an evening like this one couldn’t help but celebrate. After one glass she realized that she should give all the guests free champagne, and after two glasses she realized it was good form to go around and toast all the guests.

  Champagne bottles were put in buckets of ice and it wasn’t long before Christina turned up with her glass, toasted the guests and entertained one and all with appropriate literary quotes. Indeed, she was in an excellent mood and she rounded off the quotes with various words of wisdom, one after the other.

  “If you want something you’ve never had, you must do something you’ve never done,” or “Doing nothing also means doing something,” she recited and smiled sweetly before moving on to the next table. She worked her way systematically from the bow to the stern, and when she had got halfway she started mixing up all her literary quotes, confusing children’s classics with patriotic poetry. Then she started singing too; a song about walking in the forest was just right in these surroundings, she thought. She became all the jollier and more exhilarated for each toast.

  When she had got halfway through the dining area she realized she had forgotten the sound in the loudspeakers. So she discreetly took Brains to one side, dragged him across to the sound system over behind the bar, and gave him the list of bird songs that she had compiled. They were sound files and were streamed and that was a bit new for him, but after a few attempts the beautiful song of a blue tit filled the dining room and the illusion of forest and nature made Christina shut her eyes in delight. It all went well until Brains accidentally used the sound file with mating calls for birds. When that started, a horde of noisy seagulls gathered up on deck and it took a while before he realized what had caused it. (Luckily, most birds were in South Africa or even further south at this time of year, otherwise the restaurant might have ended up as a paradise for lustful birds.)

  “Oh Brains, you are wonderful,” said Christina when he had got the sound files properly sorted, and she raised her champagne glass yet again. “A toooast to you!”

  Martha,
too, went among the guests—but with a glass of nonalcoholic bubbly in her hand—and did what she could to keep the joyful atmosphere at a high level. A stylish lady with a white hat and a flowery dress had sat down in one of the stalls together with a younger woman. The lady in the dress was in her nineties and her hands shook. The younger woman helped to cut up the food on her plate.

  “Welcome to our restaurant,” said Martha.

  “Thank you,” said the lady. “It is so exciting here!”

  She pointed at a fox which could be glimpsed just to her left. The animal—in Martha’s opinion rather moth-eaten—had been given a red rosette in honor of the day and looked really rather peculiar sticking its nose out behind a tree trunk. Martha took a deep breath. Oh goodness, if she had seen that in time, she would at least have removed the rosette.

  “Yes, the head waiter, our Christina, is clever at decorating and has had total freedom. She wanted to do something different,” Martha explained. “And the animals teach us a lot about nature. But the plan is to change the interior now and then.”

  “How bold,” said the lady. “But I don’t know if I can come here so often. The council home care service won’t let us go out any more.”

  “What did you say?”

  “The council and the firms they contract are cutting down on everything and if my daughter didn’t help me sometimes, I would never be able to leave my apartment. But Anne-Marie here is so kind. Besides, she works in nursing too and she understands what it is like for us elderly.”

  The daughter nodded, smiled at Martha and cut up the lasagna into small portions for her mother. The old lady’s hands still shook and she probably had Parkinson’s. When she had finished eating, she wiped her mouth with the green napkin and went on: