by Monica Ali
‘Lena,’ he said. It sounded like a sigh. He cleared his throat. ‘Whereabouts are you from?’
‘Whereabout,’ said Lena flatly, as though that were the answer she gave. She looked at the screen.
‘What country?’
The man laughed in an avuncular manner then kissed the girl on the neck. He was twice her age.
‘Belarus,’ said Lena.
Gabe reached for something to say. He looked at Lena. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘What’s it like?’
Lena twisted her lips; scorn for the entire country or, perhaps, merely for Gabe.
Gabriel tried again. ‘Which town?’
She ignored him. She plucked at the jumper, unravelling a thread or two.
‘How long have you been in London?’
She rested her chin on her knees. Her earrings, though they were gold, spoke only of poverty. Curling her toes, she attempted to grip the slippery-hard edge of the sofa, and to maintain her slovenly position, Gabe knew, she had to hold herself rigid as hell.
‘Were you living in the basement with Yuri?’
There’s that whole darn mess with Mr Hammond! If only there was a way to clear that up. You see, I walked in on Celia that day when Bobby was supposed to … The girl was walking around now, swishing the folds of her dress. Get on with it, thought Gabe, wanting, in spite of himself, to know what it was that Bobby was supposed to have done.
Enough, thought Gabe. ‘I said, were you …’
‘Mazyr. My town. Mazyr.’ Whatever quality it was that breathed life into words was missing from Lena’s voice. The words that slid from her mouth were stillborn.
Gabriel let his head fall back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling, wishing she would speak again. How could he get her to speak?
The television girl prattled. She explained everything, the whole darn mess.
Gabriel sat up. The tux man strode masterfully across the room to the ottoman where the girl had flung herself.
Lena giggled, watching it all end happily.
‘Yeah,’ said Gabe, ‘why do people watch these stupid shows?’
Lena rearranged herself, sitting properly and crossing her legs. She gave him a sideways glance that seemed playful but when she spoke it was in a petulant tone. ‘I think is good show. I like.’
‘How were—’
‘You say you will not ask question,’ said Lena, anger quickening her voice. ‘But all you do is asking. Ask, ask, ask.’ Gabriel saw how badly her fingernails were bitten, a ridge of crusted blood. ‘Are you a police? Do I ask you question? No.’
She was hardly in a position to ask questions. She had asked him one. ‘Go ahead,’ said Gabe. ‘Ask me. Anything you like.’
Lena drew up her shoulders. It was more a flinch than a shrug, as if the thought of finding out anything about him was disgusting. ‘What is name?’ she said.
‘Gabriel.’
‘Like angel.’
‘Yes.’ It was simple. He would talk to her and then she would talk to him. How could he have expected her to speak? She had not even known his name.
‘Whereabout,’ said Lena, shaping the word with care, ‘you are from?’
‘A small town in the north, Blantwistle.’
‘Oh, what is it like?’ she said without interest, turning his questions back at him.
I’ll tell her then, thought Gabriel. I’ll tell her what it’s like.
Gabe picked up the remote control from the coffee table. ‘My father says it’s … never mind. It’s small, it’s a mill town, was, I mean—’
‘What he is like?’
‘Dad? I don’t know. He’s just a normal … ordinary, you know.’ Gabe turned off the television. He had thought the room dark before, but it hadn’t been. Now it really was. There was only the light in the hallway and the ghostly shimmer of the windowpanes. The white coffee table held a faint luminescence; the rest of the furniture thickened the blackness in places, and Lena, swathed in black, appeared disembodied, a little pale streak in the air.
‘My father,’ said Gabriel. He wanted to tell her. But what? Why did she come to him, anyway? Had she come to him? One look they had exchanged in the catacombs, what could one look mean? How much? Did she look at him, then, the way he thought she had? They had only seen each other for a second or two, the rest he had made up, invented now, tonight, because he was – what? – lonely? Was he lonely? Had he been lonely? Or was that something he had just now begun to feel? Was she making him lonely? It didn’t make any sense. He was feverish. He couldn’t think straight. He would take some more aspirins. ‘My father,’ he began again, ‘is a bit set in his ways. Of course, he’s of an age when. What I mean is he’s always been like that. Knows what he likes and likes what he knows. Lot of men are like that, especially in Blantwistle, ha ha, maybe in your town too. Same place, same street, same friends, same job …’ He ran on and on, scarcely knowing what he said. ‘Doesn’t have any idea what it’s like for us, you and me, floating, I don’t know, not that we’re the same, I’m only trying to point out, when you have to make your own way … Sorry, I don’t feel very well.’ He tipped forwards, head in hands, and blew hard. Why was he talking like that?
Lena rose and switched on a lamp. She ran a finger over the shade. ‘I stay here, two, three days, I clean for you. OK?’
‘You don’t have to clean,’ said Gabriel. He was shuddery, as though at the end of a crying jag. She was only a pot-washer. An illegal one, most likely, she didn’t want to talk to the police. ‘I have to ask you about Yuri.’
She looked sullen.
‘It’s either me or the police.’
‘I have do nothing. Is it my fault he drink?’ The end of her nose went red.
Gabriel drew strength from her discomfort. ‘So tell me what happened,’ he said.
‘Yuri have go for shower. He take long time but I don’t think nothing. I go to sleep. I wake up—’ She bit her lip. ‘He is good man, Yuri. If I can help – but no way for helping him.’ She bent her fingers so far back it was painful to watch.
‘So you ran away? Why?’
Lena pulled a face.
‘But you lived down there, with him?’
She made a sound that could have meant ‘yes’, could have meant ‘no’.
‘Why did you come back that day?’
She pulled her skinny shoulders up to her ears and let them slump again.
‘Not good enough,’ said Gabe. He stood up. ‘That’s not good enough.’ She shrank as though she were afraid of him. He felt cruel, but he did not care. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘spit it out.’
‘Money, I leave some money. Some little bit I save.’
‘And? Did you get it?’ said Gabriel, unsure where to take the interrogation next.
‘How?’ said Lena, her eyes blazing in her hard little face. ‘How? I go and you are there!’
So that was the look she had given him. He was there. He was in the way. The shock of understanding made him laugh. Her eyes were bright and threatened to spill but he could only laugh and he was sorry, but he couldn’t help it at all.
He made up a bed on the sofa. Lena perched on the edge of the chaise longue, her small flat body like a shadow that had slipped underneath the door. Gabe plumped the pillow. ‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘All set.’ His tone was brisk but the sight of her filled him with pity. She looked so dreadfully alone.
‘Lena,’ he said, ‘tell me where you hid the money. I’ll get it for you.’
She jumped up as though he had proposed to rob her and then she tried a smile. ‘Back wall, count bricks from corner, four from right, seven up. That one is loose.’ She stepped close and touched him, laying her hand on his chest. ‘You are good man,’ she said.
Finally, thought Gabriel, she was beginning to understand. ‘I only brought you here to help you. I don’t know what else you were thinking, but you should put it out of your mind.’
She patted his chest weakly and scanned his face and searched his eyes. Whatever it was she was
looking for she seemed to have found. Abruptly, she withdrew.
Gabriel waited in the bedroom until he heard the toilet flush and the opening and closing of the bathroom door. When he passed the sitting-room door she was undressing in the lamplight with her back to him. For a few moments he watched her. He focused all his charity on the pathetic ridge of her spine.
In the bathroom he stood before the full-length mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a mess, stubble on his cheeks and chin. He tried to see what Lena had seen. He had changed into his jeans and fleece after service but still there was something of the kitchen about him and Gabe couldn’t decide what it was. A tall man, big in the shoulders, strong in the jaw. He looked as if he were preparing to push something or someone out of the way. Perhaps he had been too rough on Lena; he should have let her take her time. It wasn’t as if her answers would help Yuri – they were only a formality and he understood why she wished to avoid the formality of the police.
He would help her because he felt sorry for her, though – Yuri aside – hers was a familiar story and usually you had to steer clear. Not that he’d get sucked in. He’d find the money she mentioned, maybe make a few calls, get her a job within a day or two and then she’d be moving on. Though if it came out and the police, officially, were still looking for her, what would that mean for him? He laced his fingers together on top of his head and rested his forehead on the mirror, watching his breath steam steadily up.
Charlie would know what to do. He’d call her. She would want to help. He wished she were here now, he wanted to bury himself, let go of everything and lie down with her and see nothing but the hollow of her neck.
He splashed water on his face, picked up his toothbrush and wondered if Lena had used it. Lena, his charitable cause. He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back out of his eyes. Why did he think he looked like a chef? It was funny. If he’d spent his life in an office, would he look any different now?
He couldn’t sleep and he was so hot that he was sweating. He stared at the cast-iron radiator that squatted fashionably low beneath the bedroom window, wondering if it was still on, though really he knew that it was not. At school, Gabe used to sit on one just like it at break time with Michael Harrison. ‘Come ’ere, come ’ere,’ Michael would squeak at any passing girl. ‘No, get right close, I want fut tell you something.’ He waited until she was close enough that she would jump away when he spoke again. ‘Gabe’ll give you ten pee if you let him cop a feel.’ They did it over and over, sat there, warming their bums and cracking up. In those days if it was funny once, ten times was ten times as much fun.
He picked up a book from the bedside table. The Universe in a Nutshell. It was ridiculous how people bought all these science books, Stephen Hawking books, and never read them. Gabe seemed to have become one of those people but only because he didn’t get time to read. He glanced at the cover and turned the book over and read the blurb, which he had looked at so many times he almost had it by heart.
He had to open the restaurant before Dad was too ill to travel. He would check with Jenny how long that would be. Get Dad to the opening. That was something he had to do. Get the restaurant on its feet, he’d be working all hours, Charlie would understand. They’d move in together. The restaurant would be going. They’d be living together. They’d have a kid. Good, he thought, good. Go to sleep.
He switched off the light.
He ran over it again. Get Dad to the opening. Get the restaurant on its feet. Move in with Charlie. Have a kid. Dad. Restaurant. Charlie. Kid. Tick them off, cross them out. Tick, cross, tick, cross.
He turned on his side and turned on his front. He flipped the pillow over.
It was Mum who should have been at the opening. Did he think Dad would even care?
Fuck it, he was awake. In a minute he’d get up and make a cup of tea.
In a minute he was asleep.
In his dream he descends to the catacombs and drifts in a phosphorescent light, a jellyfish glow on the walls, guiding him deeper and deeper still. He is afraid to touch anything and keeps his hands in his pockets, and lets the light pull him, lure him, pull him, until he comes to the place. The body is where he left it. He crouches to look at it carefully, beginning with the toes. Yellowing nails, a bunion, dry skin on the heel. Dense hair on the calves that peters out on chicken-skin thighs, and moving along to the genitals, don’t miss anything out, a patch of eczema by the groin. The scrotum is hard and shrivelled, but the penis – he has to look at it – is soft and horribly long. Appendix scar on the stomach, leading to a chest that is, slightly but definitely, concave. He has to look at the face but he cannot. He closes his eyes and – gagging, retching – feels it with his hands.
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE KITCHENS WHERE GABE HAD SERVED HIS LONG AND varied apprenticeship, violence was not unknown, or, indeed, uncommon. He had been poked in the ribs, kicked in the shins, and – once – squarely up the arse. The chef at the Brighton Grand, an ex-trucker with a sweet little dog-fighting hobby, was a hair-puller, an ear-twister, a ball-grabber and was, Gabe sincerely hoped, locked behind bars by now. In his time he’d dodged a plate or two and taken one full force on the back of the head. There was that incident with the pan of boiling mussels and Gabe had witnessed still worse. These days, though, forget it. You had to mollycoddle them all.
Victor was at his station, filling and rolling trout paupiettes. His white coat was half unbuttoned, his right leg vibrated and his mouth puckered busily, as if limbering up for a quick knee-trembler against the wall.
‘Take it off,’ said Benny, pointing to his ears, but Victor was lost in the groove.
‘Seafood frittata for the lunch special,’ said Gabe, continuing his tour of the fridges. ‘What else do we need to push?’
‘Rabbit stew,’ said Benny. ‘Two portions. Three quail.’
Victor scraped out the last of the salmon mousseline, picked up the bowl and headed towards the sinks.
‘Watch out,’ said Gabriel as Victor tried to pass him. He stuck out his foot. The entire brigade was in today, on split shifts, in preparation for the Sirovsky launch. The catcalls went up as Victor went down, hitting the roof as he hit the floor. Gabe walked round to help Victor to his feet, and unfortunately trod on his hand. ‘You see why it’s dangerous to use iPods in the kitchen? Didn’t hear me when I said to watch out.’
Victor acknowledged the cheers with a grin but when he looked at Gabe there was a new wariness written on his cocky little face. ‘Sorry, Chef,’ he said.
‘Apology accepted. Now get your buttons done up.’
They had to dance on their toes today and that was the truth. He wasn’t taking a bullet for anyone. The kitchen was on red alert, every last piece of artillery pressed into action, the munitions piling up all around. Sauces and stocks cooled on the windowsill, the fridge-tops, the floor; trays of rissoles, samosas, black bean cakes formed barricades; every flat surface was now in the front line, including the bin lids which formed staging posts between the commis and their chefs de partie.
He had all his best men on the party menu, including Nikolai and Suleiman. Gabriel watched Nikolai adding fines herbes to his spätzle mix, working the dough with his surgical white hand. Really, he thought, taking a moment, there was no better place to be.
Yesterday evening had passed in a dream, less real than the one in his sleep. It amused him now to think of it, the way the fever had messed with his perceptions, the way the cheap TV melodrama scripted his thoughts. Hadn’t he been imagining Lena explaining ‘the whole darn mess’?
In the morning he’d left Lena on the sofa watching television. Everything had snapped back together, the fever gone.
‘It’ll be late when I get back,’ he said. ‘There’s stuff in the freezer. Use the microwave, you won’t starve.’ Looking out of the window, he regarded the carnival of traffic, three red buses, slow as floats. London, love it, was crazy. He could lock her up here for a month and no one would know.
&nb
sp; Lena chewed what was left of her nails. ‘You don’t forget,’ she said, meaning the money.
‘Excuse me, Chef, could you taste for me?’ Suleiman held up a slotted spoon with a dim sum. ‘I steamed a test batch. Is it right?’
The embryonic pink of the pork mince seemed to pulse through the translucent skin. In his mouth, the soft explosion gave way to hot salty soy and a ginger tang. ‘Yes,’ said Gabe, ‘it’s good.’
Suleiman nodded anxiously. He had a way of peering, as though over the top of an invisible pair of spectacles, searching for the missing detail. ‘The gorgonzola custards – did you try?’
‘I’ll do it now.’ The flavour palette was not enough to describe it. He dug another spoonful from Suleiman’s little ramekin. It wasn’t baked cheese; it was peat, moss and pinecones, a roaring hearth on a frost-cracked day. ‘Awful,’ said Gabe. ‘Terrible.’ He laughed.
‘I surmise that you are joking,’ said Suleiman, gearing up his most industrious smile.
‘You’ll go far,’ said Gabriel. At least as far as the new restaurant. He’d definitely take Suleiman with him, maybe a few of the others as well.
Continuing his troop inspection, he came to Damian, dicing carrots for mirepoix. The boy chewed his tongue as usual; he’d choke on it one of these days. There was something scurfy about him, though he kept his chef’s whites clean enough. Ten to one he was a bedwetter. He needed to toughen up.
‘What do you call these carrots?’
‘Who?’ said Damian. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you, what do you call them?’
Damian put his knife down. ‘Carrots, Chef, just call them carrots.’ He jerked as if Gabe had hoisted him on a gibbet, which, in a sense, he had.