Lunching at Laura's

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Yes,’ Laura said dully, staring at him with her face blank with the shock of it all. ‘Yes –’

  ‘I can give you a month,’ Hersh said, and went to the door. ‘I’m trying to be fair –’

  ‘Fair?’ shouted Angie. ‘Fair? You lousy, stinking –’ But Laura put a hand on his arm and he subsided.

  Hersh stopped by the door of the kitchen but he didn’t turn round. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing I can do. It’s a new – I have people on my back.’ Now he did turn and looked at them with miserable eyes. ‘Try to understand. I know it’s hard on you, but me – I stand to lose my job.’ He swallowed. ‘It’s a new – and I have to do it. It’s the law. I have to apply it, or –’ He shook his head and turned back and pushed on the door which swung wide. ‘If you start work within the month, I should be able to – it should be all right Within the month –’ And he let the door go and it swung to and fro so that his retreating footsteps came back to them in a rhythmic loud, soft, loud, soft pattern.

  There was a long silence between them and then Angie said, ‘Now what?’

  ‘I don’t –’ Laura took a deep breath again. It was strange how short of air she felt, as though someone were trying to stop her breathing. ‘I don’t know.’ She put both hands up to her face and again shook her head, holding onto her cheeks as though she feared her head would fall off. ‘I just can’t think –’

  ‘Money,’ Angie said. ‘You’re going to need money. We can get it done. Don’t fret you, Mizz Horvy. We can get it done. But it’ll take a lot of money. And I told you, I’ve got some you can have –’

  ‘No!’ she said loudly and then seeing the look of hurt on his face reached out and took his arm. ‘No,’ she said more gently. ‘You must see that, Angie. I can’t take your money. I have to get it the usual way. Borrow it from the bank, raise it the way other people do. I can’t get into personal loans. It just wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t be right to be closed down, either,’ Angie said stoutly. ‘So just you remember that money’s there if you want it.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ she said and patted his cheek and turned and went back into the restaurant. Another hour or so and they’d be arriving, today’s lunchers, the heart of the place, the customers she existed for, and she stopped as she reached the red tiled floor and looked round at the blue and white tables and the glitter of silver and glass and the green freshness of the creeper clad window and thought, close me down? How could they close me down? This place has been here for almost a hundred years. They can’t close me down –

  But clearly they could, and once more she took a sharp little breath in through her nose and went over to her little desk. There was no point in sitting and worrying. Better to get matters in hand. The sooner the better –

  By the time the first lunchers appeared in Little Vinegar Yard, she had set her wheels in motion. She had made telephone appointments with three builders to come and give estimates for the work, and had arranged to go and see her bank manager that afternoon. He had sounded grim on the phone, and her chest had tightened as she heard his noncommittal voice.

  ‘I have some problems with structural work,’ she had said brightly when he had asked what it was she wanted to come in about. ‘I don’t know yet to what extent, but I’ve had a tiresome visit from the Environmental people and –’

  ‘Structural work,’ the bank manager had said and she could almost see the distaste on his face. ‘Again? Very costly.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, desperately bright. ‘That is why I need to see you.’

  ‘The work on the stairs,’ he said. ‘That cost a great deal.’

  ‘I know, but you must agree that the income of the restaurant is such that –’

  ‘Well, we can’t discuss it now,’ he said dampeningly. ‘At four o’clock then. I can spare you half an hour,’ and he had hung up, leaving her listening to the buzz of the phone with her chest feeling tighter than ever.

  It had been a costly few years, she couldn’t deny. It had started with the tiling in the kitchen two years ago. The walls had needed treating for woodworm, because there were old timbers in them, and that had shown the need for rebuilding in places, for the building was indeed old and showing its tiredness. And all that had looked so good when it was finished and had given her so much pleasure that she had become perhaps a little over-enthusiastic.

  Looking back now as she sat in the restaurant waiting for her first customers she did a mental sum. The floor in here had come next with the laying of new red tiles because some of the old ones had been showing wear and though it had been a big bill, all the same it had been worth it. Or so she had thought at the time, cheerfully using up virtually all her own personal savings to pay for it.

  And then a customer had slipped on the stairs and though he’d not hurt himself, the banisters had shown they were less than secure when they had swayed under the impact, so she had set to work on that, borrowing money from the bank to do it. And it had been the right thing to do, she thought now, defensively. Suppose I hadn’t and someone else had slipped and the banisters had actually broken instead of just swaying the way they had? Couldn’t that have been much more costly in the long run? Bad for the restaurant’s reputation? Of course it could –

  You didn’t have to do the panelling in the Extras, her little voice whispered. That cost more than the kitchen tiling and the restaurant floor and the stairs all put together. You didn’t have to –

  ‘But I did,’ she murmured aloud. ‘I did,’ and knew she lied to herself. The panelling had been shiny with cracked old varnish and for all the cleaners’ efforts, grimy and sticky to the touch, and when the young man from the builders who were working on the staircase had shown her what lay beneath the dull cracked surface that had been there, in her memory, for ever and ever she had been completely captivated. He had set to work with a cloth and a scraping knife and a bottle of evil smelling liquid and uncovered wood of a rich glowing amber, with details on the carving she had never known were there under the thick layer of Victorian varnish, and she had at once agreed to have all three of the Extras done as well as the wall alongside the staircase. It had taken over nine months, but it had been worth it as yard after yard of the satiny wood reappeared to lift the place to a glow that made everyone feel good to be in it even if they didn’t know why.

  So now she was not only bereft of her own cash reserves, but was in debt too. The restaurant was taking money, of course, a great deal of it, but three quarters of the income had to go out to pay the others their shares and repaying all that had to be found from her own was going to take time.

  I should have gone to the others, she thought now, staring down at the sheet of paper on which she had started to make notes of how much she owed. It was to their benefit too. I should have made them contribute; it was all part of the upkeep of their property, after all. It all enhanced their value of their holding. But she knew why she hadn’t, and it was no use being angry with herself now.

  She had been childish, that was the thing. Wanting to feel that the restaurant was hers, all hers. To have asked her cousins to pay towards the repairs would have been to admit to herself even more obviously that the restaurant wasn’t her special place. That though it bore her name as far as all its customers were concerned, though she ran it, though none of the cousins would actually dream of stepping in and ousting her, only a quarter of the equity was hers. And that hurt.

  The plan she had been nursing deep at the back of her mind to raise enough money one day to buy them all out had to go. The work in the kitchen would have to be done – and remembering how much it had cost to have the tiling put in in the first place her eyes prickled with tears – and then and only then, when she had paid for that, and paid back the debt she already carried, then would she be able to start to save to buy the family out. Till then she had to go cap in hand to the bank manager and to anyone else she could get money from. It was a galling state to be in and as her fir
st customer at last arrived she tucked her sheet of scribbles into her pocket and went to meet them. Work first. Worry afterwards –

  When he appeared, the place had settled to its usual two thirty buzz when everyone was fed, apart perhaps from a sweet course and coffee, and were comfortably wined, and at first she didn’t notice him. She had heard the door open and felt the soft blast of summer air as someone came in but she had been standing talking to Alistair Balfour from City Television and his two guests, letting him play his usual game of heavy flirtatiousness – it was always his way of showing off to people he brought – and had not looked round. But then she had moved away from the table as Maxie brought coffee and glasses of Tokay and had turned and there he was and her face went white. She felt it happen.

  ‘I have to talk to you, Laura,’ he said and smiled. ‘Sorry to drop in like this, but it is important. And I knew I could get you here.’

  ‘Won’t it do later, Philip? I’m very busy right now.’ She was proud of herself, of her smile, even if it was too bright, of her voice even if it was too casual. No one could possibly have known how she was feeling. ‘I said all I wanted to say in my letter.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ He seemed to dismiss the painfully written note she had sent to him as totally unimportant. The note she had spent so long in writing and yet which had been so bald and dull when she had finished it. ‘I’ve decided that I must stop seeing you,’ she had written neatly. ‘I am not happy about the situation. I’m sorry.’ And had signed it with just her initials. ‘I’m not here about that. You’re right, of course. The time has come to stop all that. But that doesn’t matter now.’

  She stood and looked at him standing there in the middle of her restaurant, with her customers around her, and stared at him. ‘Is that what you came to say? That it doesn’t matter?’

  ‘You said yourself it had to stop –’ he said, and smiled. The same smile that had made her head explode with excitement once. ‘It’s business I’m here to talk to you about. Ah! They’re leaving.’ He indicated a table against the window with an inclination of his head. ‘I’ll sit there and wait for you.’ And calmly he walked across the restaurant, murmuring apologies to other people as he brushed against the chairs, and settled himself at the discarded table.

  Maxie came over, frowning until he recognised him and then cheerfully cleared the dishes and replaced the cloth with a clean one and brought him a drink, and she stood there and looked at him and tried to control the dizziness that filled her. He looked the same, yet was so unbelievably different. The warmth that had seemed to come to her from him had changed to a chilliness that made her actually shudder. The amusement that had seemed to be a part of him now felt like the most edgy of malice and she blinked as one of the customers called her and turned away, grateful for the distraction.

  Most afternoons there were one or two customers who lingered after the general exodus that happened around three o’clock, but today there were none and by quarter past three when the restaurant was empty and Maxie and Miklos and Janos went off gratefully to have their coffee break before cleaning up, she was standing at her desk when she had finished entering the last of the cheques and bills with her head down, waiting for him to speak. She felt quite unable to trust her own voice.

  ‘Business,’ he said then, and she lifted her head to look at him. ‘Now it’s strictly business, Laura. It’s all turning out better than I hoped, so the sooner we settle this the better. Will you come and sit down, please?’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ she said and folded her hands on her ledger and sat there, as straight as she could. It wasn’t easy.

  ‘I did think I was going to have to persuade you to sell to me, Laura,’ he said, and leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. It wasn’t easy to see his face; the green light from the creepers behind him shadowed it too well. ‘But as things turned out, I don’t need to. You really shouldn’t have been so sharp with Aunt Dolly, you know.’

  ‘What?’ She was startled into speech. ‘Aunt Dolly?’

  ‘She phoned you this morning. Wanted to come and see you. But you refused.’

  ‘What if I did? What’s that to do with –’

  ‘Everything. I’d made her an offer, you see, and she wanted to talk to you about it. But you decided not to talk to her, so –’ He shrugged. ‘So she accepted me.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’

  He gave an elaborate sigh to show how patient he was being. ‘I want this restaurant, Laura. I want to buy it. I have Ilona’s share, of course. No problem there. I am about to get Paul’s share. No problem there either. Not at all.’ And he laughed suddenly, the same bubbling joyous sound that had made her so happy when she had used to hear it. Now it made her feel cold again. ‘He’ll do what I tell him to.’

  ‘What do you want it for?’ It seemed so banal a question but it was the only one she could think of.

  He shook his head regretfully. ‘Can’t tell you that, my dear. I just want it. You might as well sell to me, hmm? The others are going to, so you can’t stop me.’

  ‘I can,’ she said and lifted her chin. ‘I can and I must.’

  Again he shook his head. ‘I know the terms of the Trust, Laura. If one of us wants to sell the rest have to agree.’

  ‘We don’t! No one can force me –’

  He got to his feet and came across the restaurant to stand beside her.

  ‘Yes, you can be forced. The Trust is quite clear. Do you think I haven’t checked it all very carefully? If one of the owners wants to break up the Trust and sell the others have to agree. And I am for all practical purposes an owner and I want to sell. So, what are you going to do about it, except agree? You might as well. You actually can’t do anything else.’

  28

  ‘I don’t see why you won’t let him help,’ Alex said, his voice distorted by the phone. ‘He’s a knowing sort of chap and –’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with him,’ Laura said and shifted the phone to her other ear. Her head was beginning to ache. ‘It’s a totally family affair.’

  ‘And the bank’s affair and the Environmental people’s affair and everyone else’s as well. At least he’s got no axe to grind.’

  ‘Everyone has an axe to grind.’

  ‘Not like you to be so cynical, dear heart! Believe me, he hasn’t – and I think –’

  ‘Even you have,’ she said wearily. ‘You’re only pushing him at me because you want to keep on his good side. You think he’ll give you some work.’

  There was a little silence and then he said, ‘Ouch.’

  ‘So please, don’t go on about him. I’ll cope on my own.’

  ‘You’re so wasteful, Laura,’ Alex said. ‘Throwing love away – it’s wicked and wasteful.’

  ‘What?’ She was startled.

  ‘The man thinks the sun rises and sets in you, do you know that? He wants to help you and God knows you could do with a good deal of that right now. I’m no use to you – too stupid to walk upright when it comes to money, always broke – and you know as well as I do that no one else in the family will be much better. They’ve all got feelings about it, haven’t they? If you talk to Timmy he’ll get agitated about Paul – you know how stuffy he can be – and start making trouble for the poor bastard, and you said you don’t want that –’

  ‘Of course I don’t. Even after – have you talked to him again?’

  He sounded disgusted. ‘Of course I have. I’ve told him over and over again – he doesn’t have to put up with Cord’s leaning on him this way. Just stand up to him – we’re on his side, it won’t make any difference what Cord says about his sex life –’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘The same as last time. Just shook his head, went green, wouldn’t say anything but that he had no choice – he was selling his share to Cord. I did my best, ducks, I really did.’

  ‘I know,’ she said dully. There’d been little hope in her it would be otherwise. ‘I wish he wasn’t so mise
rable.’

  ‘I wish you weren’t. Please, Laura, see Coplin. Like I said, who else can you talk to? Paul’s brothers? Same thing. More upset for him. Ilona? That’ll do you a lot of good, and I don’t think. Aunt Dolly and poor old Aunt Evelyn? Hardly –’

  ‘You’re wrong there,’ she said suddenly, staring at the wall as she held the phone even more tightly against her ear. Her hands were tingling with tension and it was getting harder to keep herself from bursting into tears. It was all such a mess, and she was so tired, so very very tired. It seemed to have been years since she had slept and the fatigue was thickening her body so that it seemed as though it weighed too much to move, even almost to breathe. ‘I think I will talk to them. I might be able to persuade them to turn him down.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say his name. Him. Philip Cord. And she’d believed she loved him and that he loved her. It was a sickening thought, literally. She felt her gorge rise and swallowed hard.

  ‘Sooner you than me. But, please, Laura, don’t be stubborn. Think about Coplin’s offer. As he says, he’s an outsider so he can be sympathetic without being emotionally involved and he’s an experienced researcher. Good at digging out facts.’

  ‘What use is that to me? What sort of facts do I want dug out?’

  ‘Who’s behind Philip Cord, for a start,’ Alex said promptly.

  ‘Why should there be anyone behind him? He’s on his own, isn’t he? Trying to get the restaurant from me –’ Now her throat did close up and the little sob that escaped her, made him say quickly, ‘Oh, damn it, Laura. Let me come round!’

  ‘No.’ She managed to get her voice back. ‘No, I’ve already told you. It was good of you to phone, but I want to be left on my own for a while. I’ll sort it out, one way or another.’