Lunching at Laura's

by Claire Rayner

  ‘The bank turned you down, so how? How on earth can you sort it out if you’ve got no money?’

  ‘There are other sources,’ she said. ‘Other banks. I’ll find someone somewhere. I won’t lose my restaurant.’ I won’t, I won’t, she shouted inside her head. It’s all I’ve got, all I’ve ever had and I won’t lose it. I can’t and I won’t. But for all the clamour of that inner shrieking she felt empty and frightened. She could lose it. She very nearly had.

  ‘You are the most obstinate bloody woman!’ Alex shouted down the phone. ‘You make me livid, you know that? Listen to me, Laura! I want to help and the best way I can is to persuade you to talk to Coplin. Yes, I’m using him and I don’t deny it – but he isn’t a fool. He knows bloody well what I am, and he doesn’t care. It’s you he cares about. All I’m asking you to do is see him. That’s all. Just let me bring him, and hear what he has to say. If he can’t help, fair enough. Give him the air. But if he can, take what he has to offer. Like I say, it’s wicked to waste. What would Grandma have said?’

  For the first time she managed a smile. ‘She’d have sent Cord packing, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t have let this happen. Oh Alex, how could I have been such a bloody fool? To have got myself into this sort of debt, and to have let that horrible man make such – to use me that way. How could I have done it?’

  ‘The way we all do, ducky. By doing your best and liking people. When you like people then you often do get shat on from a great height. Believe me, I’m an expert in that. But nihil illegitime carborundum. Never let the bastards grind you down and let me bring Joel Coplin over.’

  ‘Oh, Alex, do shut up!’

  ‘If you let me bring him.’

  ‘Anything! Just shut up!’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can flush him out. Don’t budge! Give me an hour!’ he said joyously and the phone clicked in her ear and wearily she cradled it and went back to the sofa to curl up in the corner, where she had been when it had trilled ten minutes ago.

  It had been, she thought, staring at the dead fireplace, the worst three days of her life. Thank God at least for Maxie and Angie who had kept the restaurant running smoothly even though she wasn’t there. She had hurried in once or twice to check on what was happening, and had gone late at night to do the ledgers, but that had been all. They looked at her anxiously whenever they saw her, the old waiters and dear old Angie, and that had made her feel worse than ever about the situation she was in.

  But the worst part of all of it was the sense of helplessness that filled her. She had, that first afternoon, been reasonably cheerful; the bank manager would be sensible once he realised what was going on, she had told herself, had to be. And she had sat herself in the man’s office and told him all about it.

  And discovered too late that she had told him too much. He listened to her account of the demand Philip Cord was making and shook his head gloomily.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Horvath, but I don’t think the bank can be involved in this. Oh no, definitely not. I had thought about your dilapidations before you arrived –’

  ‘Dilapidations?’ she had interrupted, hating to hear such a word attached to her precious restaurant. ‘It’s not dilapidated! It’s beautiful. That’s the point. There’s nothing wrong with it that –’

  ‘I mean the work that has to be done,’ the man said with careful emphasis. ‘I had been thinking about it and decided that I could hardly refuse your request, under the circumstances.’ He had smiled thinly then. ‘Since you already owe us a substantial sum it would make good financial sense to cover your immediate needs in order that the business might continue and prosper so that you could repay your debt. But this new development –’ He had shaken his head. ‘That puts a new complexion on it.’

  ‘Why?’ She tried to sound cool and businesslike, and knew she sounded desperate. ‘Why? It’s the same situation. You want your debt paid. I can only pay it if –’

  ‘If you own the establishment,’ he cut in smoothly. ‘And according to your cousin, Mr. Cord you say –’

  ‘He’s no relation of mine,’ she said fiercely. ‘He’s just married to my cousin.’

  ‘A minor point,’ he had murmured. ‘If he is right and the family Trust is one of those labelled trust-for-sale, then indeed you will have to sell. In which case there is no point in the bank underwriting expensive work, is there? The sale of your portion of the property should bring in enough to repay your debt without our risking any further of the bank’s funds. And the new owner may not require the work to be done. He may choose to use the premises in a different way.’

  ‘There is no different way to use it. It’s a restaurant. It always has been.’

  ‘Well, that’s as may be. I can only, regretfully, refuse your request.’ And he had pulled a pile of papers towards him to signal the end of the discussion.

  ‘Please, Mr. Carpenter,’ she had said, pleadingly. ‘Please try to understand. There is no way I’m going to sell, no matter what Cord says.’

  He sighed and pushed the papers away again, elaborately patient.

  ‘If the Trust is formulated as Cord suggested to you it is, then I’m afraid, Miss Horvath, you will have no choice. Your solicitor, I feel, is the person you should be talking to, not me.’

  And so the nightmare had gone on. She had hurried to her solicitor directly from the bank, insisting on being seen immediately, so urgent was the matter, and had been told bluntly that indeed Cord was right. If one of the co-owners of Halascz’s wanted to sell then under the terms of the original Trust as set up by Viktor and Maritza Halascz, the property had to be broken up so that each and every one of them could have the benefit in cash, if that was what they wanted.

  ‘And,’ Miss Jeavons, the tall and angular woman who had been Laura’s solicitor for years, but whom she hardly knew since she had so few occasions to deal with her, had been very firm on that point. ‘And you would be wasting your time and money to try to avoid that, Miss Horvath. It is quite clear. I have the documents here for you to study yourself, if you like.’

  ‘Then what can I do?’ Laura had sat slumped in the chair in front of the woman’s desk and stared miserably at her, waving away the proffered documents. ‘Do I have to part with my restaurant without a murmur?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. But you will have the money from the sale, of course. Can’t you start again, elsewhere?’

  ‘Elsewhere wouldn’t be my place,’ she had said sharply. ‘We’ve been there almost a hundred years. Halascz’s. A hundred years –’

  ‘I sympathise, but I’m not sure what I can suggest. Except perhaps that you see if you can raise enough money to buy out Cord and his wife? If you want to buy then he has to sell to you. As long as the price you can pay is at least the same as or better still, more than, any other offer on the table. That’s part of the terms of the Trust, too.’

  She had felt a flicker of hope then. ‘I could force him to sell to me?’

  ‘If the price is right,’ Miss Jeavons had said firmly. ‘It is my duty of course to the other owners to see that the best possible price is obtained for the property. They are entitled to that. So, if you can find some &pD;125,000 to &pD;130,000 then it may be possible –’

  ‘How much?’ she had said blankly.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ The woman had sounded genuinely regretful. ‘That’s the market value you know. A half million. You are holding a valuable piece of land there between you. All Soho is valuable of course, but that corner is particularly attractive.’

  ‘And you say I could start somewhere else,’ Laura had said bitterly and got to her feet. ‘So, if I have to sell, my share would be about &pD;125,000 and out of that I owe the bank about seventy five thousand and what with the legal fees and other costs, by the time the whole thing’s over, I wouldn’t have enough for a stall to sell pizzas let alone a new Halascz’s restaurant. And there’s no way I can find enough to buy the whole place.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Miss Jeavons had said yet again, and
Laura had snapped furiously, ‘Not as sorry as I am,’ and gone slamming out into Bedford Row, knowing she was unjust to blame the woman for the facts she had to impart but not caring. If killing the bearer of bad tidings would help, then kill she would, she told herself.

  But that didn’t help and her anger had dribbled away and she’d gone trailing back to the flat, dusty and untidy now, for she had neither time nor interest in keeping it looking so pleasant as it had been during those happy spring days when she and Philip had first been together, and tried to raise some money. She phoned everyone she could think of outside the family, feeling obscurely that whatever happened, she had to keep them out of it all, but drew dead cards everywhere.

  She rang those of her customers she knew were involved in money, bankers and finance company directors and insurance people, fishing oh so delicately for information and getting the same answer everywhere. Money was expensive these hard times, and what did she want it for? And she, knowing how imperative it was that none of the customers should know just how shaky their favourite restaurant was, for fear they might withdraw their allegiance and with it their custom, hedged and lied and slithered around the truth with all the skilled aplomb of a lifetime liar.

  ‘For dilapidations,’ she said over and over again. ‘I want to make the place even better than it is –’

  ‘But don’t,’ they said, one after another. ‘Laura’s is lovely as it is, my dear. Don’t change a thing. Keep away from money. It’s far too expensive for you. Just go on as you are. It’s the only safe way to be –’

  And now she sat wrapped in her old dressing gown like a tired child, not knowing what to do next. The only person she had told of what was happening, of the way the bricks and mortar of her life were crashing in shards about her feet had been Alex, not because she had thought he could help, but because she had to talk to someone and he was the only person she could think of who could be trusted. For all his sometimes silliness and his selfishness and his glittering chatter, there was a good heart in Alex and she could surely rely on him to keep quiet and say nothing to anyone who shouldn’t be told, but, she now thought bitterly, even he lets me down. Nagging about that damned Coplin man. I wish I could crawl away and die. I wish I’d never heard of Philip Cord. I wish, I wish –

  The buzzer sounded on the entry phone and moving heavily she got to her feet and padded over to it.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Me, Laura!’ It was Alex’s voice. ‘Let me in.’

  ‘On your own?’ she said suspiciously. ‘Because I’ve changed my mind. Honestly, I couldn’t see anyone but –’

  ‘Oh, stop jabbering woman, and let me in! It’s peeing with rain out here and I’m getting sodden. Come on!’ And after a moment she grimaced and pressed the button. Even Alex couldn’t have got hold of the man so soon, after all.

  She opened the door of the flat and left it ajar and went back to her sofa, and again curled up in the corner as though making herself small would make her problems small too. She heard the footsteps behind her and didn’t turn her head as they hesitated and then the door clicked shut.

  ‘Help yourself to a drink, Alex,’ she said wearily. ‘And come and sit down, and don’t nag me for pity’s sake. I couldn’t handle it –’

  ‘I don’t want a drink, thanks. Unless I can get one for you? You look as though you need one.’

  She twisted in her seat and looked over her shoulders, wide-eyed with shock. Joel Coplin was standing by the closed door, looking tense and anxious as though he were poised for flight. The shoulders of his light summer jacket were sodden and his curly wet hair was plastered to his forehead.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It really is pelting down.’

  ‘Where’s Alex?’

  ‘I told him to come up but he wouldn’t. Just went. But I had to come even at the risk of annoying you. He told me you weren’t keen to see me, but I do want to help, I really do. So please, may I come in and get dry?’

  29

  It was altogether more than she could handle. She had for a moment considered throwing him out; had actually jumped to her feet and stepped forward to push him physically out of the door, but then, suddenly aware of the shabbiness of her comfortable old dressing gown beneath which she was wearing nothing at all had collapsed back into the corner of her sofa.

  ‘Go away,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone. Go away.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ he said. ‘Eventually. Is the bathroom through there? Because I really would like to get dry. No, don’t bother.’ He smiled charmingly as again she moved to get up. ‘I’ll find it,’ and coolly he walked past her to the door that led to the little inner lobby of the flat and her bedroom and bathroom.

  She stared after him and heard the taps running and the soft pleasant sound as he began to whistle between his teeth, and tried to be angry. What right had this damned man to come and march into her flat this way, and use her bathroom and whistle in it? But she had used up so much of her emotional energy already that there was none left to feel any anger and she watched him as he came back in, now in his shirt sleeves and towelling his hair so that it stood up in a spiky damp crown, and opened her mouth to tell him again to go. But he spoke before she could.

  ‘I’ve left my jacket over the hot towel rail,’ he said. ‘It’s a light one so it shouldn’t take too long to be wearable again. Look at this – wet right through to my shirt! Is that one of those artificial fires? Good! You won’t mind if I switch it on, will you? I really do loathe being soggy like this.’ And he crouched in front of the fireplace and fiddled in his pocket for matches and with the minimum of fuss found the gas tap and lit the flames.

  At once the room lifted in mood; the dust and untidiness seemed to fade from sight as the light of the fire made the ceiling seem lower and more cosy, and the windows, which had been filled with the pallid lilac of the late summer evening, darkened to a richer blue. And though she hadn’t felt cold till now – she hadn’t been aware of any physical sensation at all – she shivered a little and lifted her face to the faint warmth that came across the hearthrug to her.

  ‘I know you’re not supposed to like these things if you’re sophisticated and trendy, but I adore them,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you do too.’

  ‘What?’ It seemed so absurd a thing to say; as though they were sitting here as a couple of casual acquaintances making conversation for the sake of it, with nothing more on their minds but the minutiae of social behaviour.

  ‘I’m told they’re too kitsch to be taken seriously. That either it’s all high tech and no fires at all or country cottage cosy and real logs. For my part, I like these.’ He stretched his hands to the blaze, still sitting on the hearth rug. ‘They burn and burn and give heat and light yet they never consume themselves. They just look the same all the time. Like me.’ He looked over his shoulder at her. ‘When I get involved with people and ideas and things I never stop burning, in a sense. It just goes on and on and stays the same.’

  ‘Please go away,’ she said, her voice high and thin. ‘I know my brother Alex brought you here, but he had no right to. I’m tired. I’ve got a lot to cope with and I can’t, I really can’t, really and truly can’t –’

  It was dreadful. Quite the most dreadful thing that had ever happened. She who had never been a weeper, and yet who had cried so much this week that she would have been entitled to think she had no more tears left in her, to be so uncontrolled, so overwhelmed by her own feelings that she could burst into floods of tears in front of a complete stranger. Yet that was what happened, and she sat there with her face as crumpled and wet as a baby’s and could not stop, could not speak, could do nothing but sob.

  She did not see him move, nor heard him. One moment he was sitting there on her rug talking nonsense about her fire and the next he was beside her and holding her firmly so that the tearing sobs that had been making her whole body heave seemed less painful and more contained. He said not a word; made none of the crooning ‘there, th
ere’ noises so many people seemed to think necessary to comfort a weeper; he didn’t rock her, didn’t stroke her. He just sat solid as a tree trunk against which she could lean and held on to her till the storm had blown itself out.

  She subsided into deep shuddering breaths and then, to her even greater embarrassment, began to hiccup, and now he did move, letting go of her for a moment to slap her hard on her back and she gasped and cried, ‘No!’ and again he put his arms round her and held on, and she closed her eyes, not knowing what else to do.

  But it was better now. The hiccupping had stopped, she realised with a momentary shock of surprise, and she could breathe normally and she moved experimentally and at once he let go and left her and went back to the hearth rug and picked up the towel and started to rub his wet hair again, as though the explosion of tears had never happened.

  ‘Er – thank you,’ she said, experimentally. Her voice sounded husky, but it was there and that was a comfort.

  He said nothing to that. He just smiled at her and set down his towel. ‘I think that’ll do now. I’m as dry as makes no matter.’

  ‘I don’t usually do things like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Cry like an idiotic child.’

  ‘Don’t you? You should. It helps a lot. I cried like that when my mother died. It made a lot of difference. For the better.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was nonplussed. She had quite liked this man when she had first met him; had found him pleasant and interesting, but no more than that. He liked the same writers she did – or at least one of them – and he talked sensibly.

  But that had been all there was to it; a casual meeting in Little Vinegar Yard and then that evening at the restaurant talking about his film. No more than that apart from the unpleasant time when he had talked of Paul’s problems. Yet she had wept all over him, and here they sat together as comfortably and as at ease with each other as though they had known each other for years. It was very odd.

  He was thinking much the same, sitting beside the fire and its eternal flames and trying not to show just how good he felt. She was in trouble, deep and frightening trouble and to let her know that he had found so much pleasure in holding her while she wept would be insulting at the very least. He had no right to rejoice in being with her when the only reason he was here was her misery. It was a paradox of a situation and he didn’t know quite how to handle it.