Lunching at Laura's

by Claire Rayner

  The nurse leaned over the body in the bed and began to pat the sagging old cheeks. ‘Mr. Boskett!’ she said. ‘Wake up! Mr. Boskett!’

  ‘It’s a French name,’ the old man said. ‘Bosquet – he won’t answer if you don’t say it right. It upsets him.’

  The nurse threw him a look of cold dislike and turned back to the patient and this time pinched his cheek. ‘Mr. Boskett –’ she said. ‘Wake up, Mr. Boskett!’

  The uneven stertorous breathing went on and there was no movement of the eyes and she straightened her back and reached up and twisted the pink cloth back into position and went rustling away, and the old man moved nearer and said softly. ‘Jean? It’s me, old chap. It’s Abner Coplin, old fellow. How are you?’

  The younger man moved forwards, one hand held out to stop the other, but then he stood still as the head on the pillow jerked slightly and then turned and the eyes opened wider.

  ‘I knew you was there,’ Abner Coplin said with satisfaction. ‘That nurse, you wasn’t going to answer her, were you? No. Nor would I.’ And he pulled the little stool that the younger man had been sitting on closer to the bed and sat down so that he could lean closer to the yellow face.

  ‘I told you!’ the younger man said suddenly excited. ‘When I phoned you. I told you, didn’t I? It was only after we got him here he went like that, all quiet.’

  The older man ignored him. ‘You wanted me, Jean. You wanted to talk to me?’

  The head on the pillow turned again, fretfully, and the eyes opened wider and the sound of the breathing changed, losing its rhythm. It was a few moments before either of them realised that he was trying to talk.

  ‘Take it easy, old fella,’ Abner Coplin said. ‘No need to get upset. We’ve got all night if you want it. Don’t you fret –’ And he began to pat the old man’s shoulder rhythmically, as one would pat a restless child.

  ‘He was talking before,’ the younger man said doubtfully.

  ‘Honestly, he was, Uncle Abner. I’d never have sent for you if he hadn’t, but I heard your name clear as you like, “Abner”, he said and then he said it again, and when I said I’d tell you, he was all right. I mean, he stopped being so agitated. So we brought him here and –’

  ‘Be quiet, Yves!’ Abner said. ‘Can’t hear a damn thing, the way you’re going on –’ And the younger man frowned and tugged at his tie to neaten it, clearly irritated.

  ‘Where’s your sister?’ the old man said then, and looked back over his shoulder. ‘Go and talk to her, leave me with your dad a bit. He wants to talk, and he can’t while you’re here. Don’t upset yourself. You know how it is, he’s an old man, got things to tell an old friend. Go and find Marie.’

  Yves frowned, opened his mouth and closed it again and then shrugged and pushed the screen aside. Beyond them the ward stretched dim and silent in the night and he straightened his tie again and went out, his back stiff with self-consciousness. His patent leather shoes glittered in the dimness and his very white shirt shone with an almost fluorescent brightness as he went on tiptoe past each humped red-blanketed bed towards the door at the far end.

  There was a nurse sitting in a pool of light at a table in the centre of the ward and she looked up at him as he reached her.

  ‘That person with your father – he’s a relation? Even when people are on the Danger List it’s only visiting for relations, you know,’ she said in a piercing whisper and Yves blinked at her.

  ‘Uncle Abner?’ he said. ‘Oh, he’s –’

  ‘Ah, his brother, is he? Then that’s all right,’ the nurse said and returned to her writing. ‘As long as no one else comes. Can’t have hordes of people rushing in and out in the middle of the night, can we?’

  ‘You said he was dying,’ Yves said.

  The nurse looked up at him, and her face was smooth and professional. ‘Even so,’ she said with an air of bright reasonableness. ‘We can’t disturb all the other patients, can we? No. But since he’s the brother, there’ll be no problems. Are you going now, then?’

  ‘No. I’m going to sit with my sister. She’s very upset, waiting outside, very upset. My father wants to talk to – to his brother.’ He smiled at her suddenly, enjoying telling lies to this hard faced young bitch. ‘Wants to be private with him. So I’m going to sit with my sister.’

  ‘I doubt he’ll get much sense out of him,’ the nurse returned to her writing again. ‘He’s in a coma, after all.’ Yves looked down on the froth of white lace on the woman’s head and wanted to spit on it. But he went quietly down the ward and out through the big whispering double doors to the room where his sister sat, her back slumped and her face blank, waiting for her father to die.

  It was a long time before the old man reappeared, shuffling a little, to come and stand in the doorway of the little cold room where they sat, surrounded by the dullness of green and cream paint and shiny horsehair stuffed chairs. They had been sitting talking softly in a desultory fashion, feeling like strangers, as though when faced with the awful reality of death both of them were locked securely inside their own skins and couldn’t signal out, not properly. All they could share were platitudes and sillinesses; none of the fear of their own eventual deaths that was filling them, or the pushing, eager thoughts about the old man’s property. They were discussable matters but they had to lie lumpen and dead in the air between them. So when the old man stood there blinking at them from the doorway they both jumped to their feet to greet him with a little flurry of enthusiasm.

  ‘Sit down, Uncle Abner, sit down. You must be feeling dreadful – so tired. Time you were asleep, not sitting here with us this way –’

  ‘I’m not that old,’ Abner said sharply. ‘Your dad and I are old friends, but I’m the younger one.’ He blinked again and said pugnaciously, ‘Eighteen years the younger one. Seventy next month, I am. Not that old. Your dad – he’s eighteen years more than me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marie said and smiled at him. That made her look young again. Usually she looked a great deal more than her thirty seven years. ‘I remember, of course. But sit down all the same. How is he? Should we go in now?’

  Abner shook his head and came to sit down and as he folded his lanky shape into the high backed stiff chair he seemed, for all his protestations, to look as old as the man in the bed behind the screens. His face was drawn and greyish and his eyes seemed dull.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘He’s gone back to sleep.’

  The euphemism joined the unspoken words to lie heavily in the air and the three of them hovered there, still and silent; Yves in his natty suit and shiny shoes and eloquent tie and Marie in her rusty black widow’s clothes, holding her big bag awkwardly in both hands, and the old man in his crumpled grey raincoat.

  ‘Oh,’ Yves said and sat down again.

  The silence grew between them and then Marie said carefully, ‘It could go on like this a long time, couldn’t it? When Maman died, I thought then –’ Again the silence fell and then she said loudly, ‘I have to think about Simmy. He’ll wake up and if I’m not there –’

  ‘You go, Marie.’ Yves seemed to rouse himself. ‘I’ll stay here till morning. I’ll have to go then to open the shop of course –’ He stole a look at Abner then. ‘Did he say anything about the shop?’

  Abner had been sitting slumped a little forwards, his arms on his thighs and his hands dangling between his knees. ‘Mmm?’ he said and looked up.

  ‘Did he say anything about the shop, Uncle Abner?’

  Abner looked at him, his eyes dark in his lined face and seemed to be looking a long way through and beyond him and Yves said, ‘Uncle Abner?’ again, carefully, as though he were speaking to a child.

  ‘How old are you, Yves?’

  ‘Me?’ Yves was mystified. ‘What’s that got to do with anything? I’m thirty six, since you ask.’

  ‘Not married yet,’ the old man said and Yves went a rich and sudden crimson.

  ‘He’s got time,’ Marie said, quickly. ‘Like Dad. He didn’t get ma
rried till he was past fifty, Dad didn’t. Did him no harm.’

  ‘No,’ the old man said. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘What did he say about the shop?’ Marie was brighter now, her eyes losing their shuttered look. ‘Obviously he said something to you.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Abner said, not taking his eyes from Yves. ‘He said something.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it was private,’ Abner said and now he did look at her.

  ‘Private? What can be private? This is our shop, isn’t it? Our living –’

  ‘My living,’ Yves said swiftly. ‘Mine. You got your share when you got married. Your dot –’

  ‘Dad didn’t know then I’d be a widow so soon,’ Marie said and stared at them with her eyes even brighter now, almost eager. ‘He must have taken that into account when he – after Malcolm was killed, he must have taken that into account.’

  ‘He did,’ Abner said. ‘Right after your Malcolm was killed, God rest him, he told me, he’d taken it into account. He was insured well, wasn’t he? Malcolm?’

  Marie looked guarded suddenly. ‘Well enough. What’s that got to do with –’

  ‘What it’s got to do with me is I got your father’s will.’

  ‘You – what did you say?’

  ‘I got your father’s will,’ the old man said wearily. ‘He made it a long time ago. Kept adding bits, taking away bits, but the last one he made was when he had that pneumonia. It’s the same one now that he made then. It was after your Malcolm died, God rest him, Marie, so he knew what he was doing.’

  ‘What was he doing?’ Yves said, and his smooth round face looked pale and hopeless suddenly, and he smoothed his hand over his glistening head and then wiped the brilliantine from his palm on to the very white handkerchief he took from his pocket.

  ‘Looking after you,’ Abner said gently. ‘He’s left the shop to you, for your lifetime. After that it goes to Simmy.’

  Marie took a sharp little breath in through her nose. ‘To Simmy?’

  ‘To who else? His only grandson.’

  ‘I’m his only daughter –’ Marie said, and her voice had risen now to a sharpness that was quite new. She looked alert and eager and far from the drooping tearful creature she had been.

  ‘A comfortable widow,’ Abner said. ‘He said to me, a comfortable widow. In your lifetime you’ve got the pension from the army, the money from his family and the house. For your life, right? Jean told me you were all right. And you’re a young woman. You could marry again. And if you did, and you have more children another man won’t care for Simmy the way his own grandfather would. So he said, the shop to Yves and then to Simmy.’

  ‘Marry again!’ Marie said bitterly and lifted her chin. ‘Is it likely? I ask you, is it likely? Men like Malcolm – there aren’t a lot of men like Malcolm. All of them killed in the war, men like Malcolm.’ And she stood there, her small dark eyes glittering at them from her white face and they gazed back at her and saw what she meant them to see; a plain woman, with a sharp meandering nose and a broad chin that unbalanced her face, and a muddy complexion that seemed to have no life in it at all and after a moment Yves said awkwardly, ‘When you come out of mourning, Marie, feel better, get some new clothes –’

  ‘New clothes!’ she said, and her disgust was even greater. ‘What difference would that make? Even if I could get them – who’s got coupons for clothes? Who gets married with clothes? I’m going home to Simmy. He’ll wake up. Let me know if anything – I’ll be back in the afternoon, if I can get someone to look after Simmy.’ And she went, letting the green painted door swing behind her so that a great wave of hospital scented air, rich with carbolic and ether and ailing people, come washing coldly over them.

  They sat on for a while and then Abner said carefully, ‘Did he ever talk much to you, your father? About himself, I mean?’

  Yves lifted his head and looked at the other man and his face was smooth, carefully clear of expression.

  ‘You know we never got on,’ he said after a long moment.

  ‘Him and me – we never got on. Not after my mother died, especially. He never talked to me much, before, but after – We ran the shop, that was all.’ His eyes glazed over and he seemed to be staring back down the long corridor of the years. ‘Pity, really. He wasn’t so bad, I suppose.’

  ‘He’s not dead yet,’ Abner said sharply.

  ‘Might as well be,’ Yves said. ‘You know as well as I do – a man his age, a stroke like that. Do you want him to live?’

  ‘No,’ Abner said after a moment. ‘He’s too good a friend for that.’ His eyes filled with tears suddenly. ‘I’ll miss him. A good friend. We talked a lot.’

  ‘You talked for me, eh?’ Yves said and smiled, a little crookedly. ‘No, don’t feel bad. It wasn’t your fault. Nor mine. Not even his, really. We just didn’t get on. He seemed to like other people better than me, and other people’s kids. Always did. I remember, when I was little, the way he used to be with the other kids in the Yard. Ask those Hungarians, always coming over they were. The mother and the kids – my mother hated them, you know that?’ He grinned, suddenly reminiscent. ‘She said they were peasants.’

  ‘Your mother was more French than anyone in France,’ Abner said and grinned too. ‘And the longer she lived here the more French she got.’

  ‘A snob. A terrible snob,’ Yves said fondly and his eyes filled with tears and he shook his head. ‘It was bad enough with him before she died. After, when I had no one –’ And he took out his handkerchief again and fastidiously but without any embarrassment, dried his eyes and patted his nose. ‘Still, I mustn’t talk ill of –’

  ‘He’s not dead yet,’ Abner said again but not sharply now. There was resignation in his voice.

  ‘What was it he wanted so badly?’ Yves said after a long silence. ‘When I found him he was in such a state – kept on about you, on and on. Not till I told him you’d come to the hospital to see him did he go like that –’ And he jerked his head towards the door. ‘It must have been important, he got so upset.’

  There was another pause and then Abner said carefully, ‘Not that important – just something he wanted to get off his chest. Confession and all that – you know how old men are.’

  ‘No,’ Yves said with a little edge of spite in his voice. ‘I’m not that old. Thirty-five isn’t that old.’

  ‘You know how fast that thirty-five years has gone?’ Abner said. ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. The next thirty five’ll go in half, a quarter the time and then you’ll be where I am. Seventy. Remember I told you.’

  ‘What did he want? It was more than just talking. It was urgent. I know urgent when I see it.’

  The door opened with a sharp impatient sound and the nurse put her head round. ‘Mr. Boskett? I think you’d better come now. I’m afraid your father is moribund – he will pass away very shortly.’

  ‘Die,’ Abner said loudly. ‘He’s going to die. Not pass away, die.’

  The nurse ignored him. ‘You can stay for a few minutes if you come now, but I’m afraid you have to go then. The day staff will be here at seven thirty and you can come back, but soon the patients will be waking, so you’ll have to go.’ She looked at her watch and pursed her lips. ‘Almost half past four, I really must get going.’ And she vanished and Yves went to the door to follow her back to the ward.

  ‘So you can’t say what he wanted?’ he said to the old man as he stood there, holding the door knob.

  ‘It’s not, important,’ Abner said. ‘Trust me, Yves. It’s not important. Just something from years ago. Before you were born. Not important.’

  He watched Yves go, and sat there in the silent cold room and stared at the blackness of the window. Who could say what was important? Who could ever say? It had been important once, long ago. It was important still to the old man in the bed in there, sliding out of life as fast as he decently could. But important now?

  Abner Coplin shook his head at the dirty black window and said
aloud, ‘Not important.’ Certainly not important enough to upset so many people over it. He’d told the old man he’d sort it out so that he could die happy, and so he would. By saying nothing at all about it to anyone. Ever.

  12

  ‘Do you know,’ Laura said, ‘you never did tell me what it was you wanted to talk to me about.’

  He tilted his head at her in a way she now knew was characteristic of him. He would never say as others did, ‘What did you say?’ or, ‘What do you mean?’; he would just tilt his head into that alert birdy posture and look at her, and it made her smile now, as it always did.

  ‘After Anya Zsuzske’s lunch, you told me there was something you wanted to talk to me about. And you still haven’t.’

  He smiled, lazily, and reached for the bottle in the ice bucket beside them and refilled both their glasses. ‘Yes I did. I wanted to tell you what I was sure that no one else ever told you. That you do a marvellous job, and I for one appreciate it if no one else does.’

  The glow that seemed always to be there within her these days intensified, reaching her neck and cheeks, and she bent her head to stare into her glass of wine.

  ‘Thank you kindly, sir, she said.’

  ‘All right, I get the message. No more praise. It makes you uncomfortable and you’d really rather I bit my tongue, thanks all the same. It makes you blush to be admired and so on and so on. It shouldn’t, of course. If you’d been treated all along as you ought to have been, then you’d be able to accept a compliment as your just due and relax and enjoy it. As it is –’ He shook his head. ‘As it is, I’ve got to work hard to make you change your view of yourself. Are you enjoying this?’

  ‘Mmm?’ She looked up at him, startled, and he was still smiling and she liked that and smiled back, not caring any more whether or not he could see the pink on her cheeks.