The Road Home

by Rose Tremain

  They entered Ruby Constad’s small room, which was inhabited to its four corners by antique furniture and framed oil paintings, china ornaments and tarnished silverware. The bed was tidy, topped with an old-fashioned eiderdown covered with green brocade. A commode chair was pulled up close to it.

  Sophie laid her guitar against an ornate fire screen that had no fire to screen. “Ruby,” said Sophie, “this is my friend Lev.”

  Ruby Constad had taken up the box of plums and, with a fleshy hand that trembled slightly, offered it to Lev. She said, “I don’t know who sent these. Do take one. People send things wrongly addressed. Or the staff muddle everything up. They were probably really destined for Minty Hollander. Most things are.”

  Lev obediently took a sugary plum. He didn’t particularly want to eat it, but there seemed no other thing to do with it, so he bit into it.

  Ruby turned to Sophie and asked, “What did you call him?”

  “Lev,” said Sophie.

  “Lev? Is that foreign, or short for something?”

  “Lev’s come to England to work. We work together at the restaurant I told you about. GK Ashe. D’you remember?”

  “GK Ashe is the most peculiar name for a restaurant I’ve ever heard! Why didn’t he call it something sensible, like Wheeler’s?”

  Sophie giggled. “Things have moved on, Ruby,” she said. “Restaurants have different kinds of names, different kinds of food.”

  “What kind?”

  “Modern food.”

  “I used to like Wheeler’s. Oysters. Dover sole. We used to think those were quite modern. Do you like the plum, Lev?”

  “The plum is good,” said Lev. “Thank you.”

  Ruby Constad examined Lev’s features. He felt hot in the over-furnished room and tugged off his scarf. He saw Ruby’s attentive eyes gazing up at him.

  “Well,” she whispered to Sophie, “he’s quite a dish.”

  Sophie giggled again. She put a hand on Lev’s arm. “Ruby thinks you’re handsome,” she said, “and so do I.”

  “Yes?” said Lev.

  He heard the two women laughing. The sound filled the room. He smiled at the childish joy he heard in it. Ruby put down the box of plums and began to forage under the pillows on the bed. She pulled out an envelope and handed it to Sophie.

  “Now,” she said. “This is for you. For being such a dear darling to a fat old woman. For brightening all our Sundays.”

  Lev saw that Ruby’s eyes were suddenly brimming with tears. But she snatched a handkerchief from her cardigan sleeve and wiped them away.

  Sophie looked down at the envelope. “Ruby . . .” she began.

  “Now, don’t make a fuss and twaddle. Buy a new coat. That sheep’s rag of yours looks well past its sell date, or whatever they call it. Go on, open up the card.”

  Ruby turned to Lev as Sophie began opening the envelope. He saw a check drop out of a Christmas card and Sophie bend to pick it up.

  “In here,” said Ruby to Lev, “we’re all past our sell dates. Berkeley Brotherton is ninety-three.”

  Sophie was staring at the check. She crossed to Ruby and put her arms round the wide bulk of her. “It’s far too much,” she said.

  Ruby laid a kiss on Sophie’s scarlet hair. She said to Lev, “Sophie is the dearest girl.”

  “I agree,” said Lev.

  “She’s much nicer than my daughter. Alexandra never sings to me. Never helps me with the crossword. Never makes me laugh.”

  Ruby invited them to sit down in her cluttered room. She installed herself on the commode chair. Lev perched on a low stool. “That’s a Kashmiri stool,” said Ruby. “I brought it back with me from India. Most of the silver is Indian, too.”

  “Yes?”

  “I expect Sophie told you I spent my youth in India—before Independence, when we had the viceroy and everything. I was in a welcome pageant for the viceroy at my school. We made a tableau. We made the word WELCOME in girls across the stage. I was one half of the O. I’ve never forgotten being half of an O. I sometimes think, That’s all your life has amounted to, Ruby Constad, being half of something. So silly, the things that remain with you, eh, Lev? Tell me what you remember.”

  “Well, I can remember . . . My father used to tell me there were wood sprites in the forest behind our house, and —”

  “Wood sprites? My goodness! I don’t think we have them in Britain. What did they look like?”

  “I don’t know. The ghosts of dead people who have suffered. My father used to say, ‘They can become birds, become women.’ ”

  “Oh dear. I wouldn’t like a sprite suddenly to become a woman. It could put you in a confusing situation.”

  Lev smiled. “Yes. But I think they only became women in my father’s mind.”

  “I see. In your father’s mind . . .”

  “I never saw any wood sprite. I used to look and search. Like for a four-leaf clover. But I never found.”

  Lev looked up to see the two women smiling approvingly at him.

  Ruby reached out and took Sophie’s hand. “Darling,” she said, “how nice that you brought Lev to see me.” Then she turned back to Lev. “Sophie once brought another man, a gymnast. He offered to perform a backflip-flop-over, or something, but I had to say, ‘No, I really don’t think we’ve got the space for it in here.’ ”

  Lev and Sophie helped in the kitchen, preparing sprouts, chopping and roasting parsnips, rolling sausages in bacon, while the turkey was cooking. Sophie made a bread sauce scented with cloves. Lev manufactured a bouillon from onions, potatoes, and sprout stalks. He then put the jar of gravy granules back into the cupboard and made a dark and fragrant jus—as he’d watched G. K. Ashe make it, using the bouillon, a splash of wine, and the caramelized residue in the roasting pan. The two South African girls filling in on Christmas Day gaped at this jus. “Wow,” they said. “That smells gorgeous. You guys saved us. We’re skeleton staff.”

  When everything was ready, Lev made his way to the dining room, where the residents were now gathered, supervised by Mrs. McNaughton, the director of Ferndale Heights.

  Of the seventeen inmates, five were in wheelchairs. Many of them struggled to control Parkinsonian jerking and trembling. Beside each place setting, a single Christmas cracker had been laid. The elegant woman known as Minty picked up her cracker, waved it around in her thin, jeweled claw of a hand, and announced, in a voice not unlike the Queen’s, “I just want to say . . . listen everyone . . . I just want to remind you that last year the cracker-pulling was completely uncoordinated. We have to pull the crackers after the turkey. That way, the gifts don’t fall into the food. All right? Did everybody hear?”

  “Minty,” said an ancient man, wearing a new Fair Isle sweater over a frayed checked shirt, “if we pull the crackers after the food, we could, in some cases, be waiting until nightfall.”

  “I mean,” said Minty, “after the bulk of us have finished.”

  “You mean ‘the bulk of us has finished.’ ‘Bulk’ is a singular noun.”

  “Shut up, Berkeley,” said Minty. “You’re a bloody singular noun and an irritating one at that.”

  There were pockets of laughter round the table. Lev heard a hearing aid whine. “Hush,” said Mrs. McNaughton sweetly.

  “I’m pulling my effin’ cracker now,” announced one of the wheelchair occupants. “I’m not bein’ dictated to by Mrs. High-and-Mighty. We’re all equal in here.” She offered one end of it to her neighbor, a man whose features reminded Lev of his father’s, in their gravitational pull toward melancholy.

  “Naff off, Joan,” he hissed.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll pull it me blinkin’ self.”

  “Joan!” shouted Minty. “Tut-tut!”

  “It’s your fault for drawing attention to the ruddy crackers, Minty,” said Berkeley.

  “All I want is a little bit of order on Christmas Day,” bleated Minty. “Otherwise it’s pure anarchy in here.”

  The woman, Joan, took her cracker in bo
th hands and began to pull. The cracker crumpled and stretched but didn’t burst.

  Sophie arrived at Joan’s side. “Joan,” she said gently, “we’re serving up the meal in a minute or two. Do you want me to pull the cracker with you now, or do you want to wait?”

  “I just want to pull it when I want to pull it, not when someone else says I can.”

  “There’s always trouble at mealtimes,” said the wheelchair man, Douglas.

  “She’s not making trouble,” said Sophie.

  “Just because Miss Araminta once worked with Leslie Caron . . .”

  “I liked Leslie Caron,” commented another woman.

  “On to your Waterloo,” whispers my heart,

  Pray I’ll be Wellington, not Bonaparte . . .

  “Singing’s for later!” snapped Minty.

  “Here she goes again,” said Joan, beginning to wrestle once more with her cracker.

  “Let’s for God’s sake get the food,” said Douglas.

  “Douglas is right,” said Mrs. McNaughton briskly. “Douglas is right. I shall say a grace and then we’re going to serve up.”

  Joan reluctantly put her cracker down. One of the wheelchair residents gave in to a violent nodding. Mrs. McNaughton began to intone, “Thank you, O Lord, on this day of your Nativity . . .”

  “It’s not the Lord’s nativity,” interrupted Berkeley. “It’s his son’s.”

  “Oh, put a sock in it!” said Pansy.

  “Strictly speaking, Berkeley’s right,” said Ruby suddenly. “Having been brought up a Roman Catholic —”

  “I’m going to begin grace again,” said Mrs. McNaughton. “Can we have quiet?”

  “But religion’s got itself into a frightful muddle in this country . . .”

  “Ruby? Can we have quiet for the grace?”

  “Because nobody knows what they believe anymore. They believe bits of this and bits of that, and meanwhile the Millers of Islam —”

  “Mullahs, you stupid cow.”

  Mrs. McNaughton stood up and clapped her hands. “My word!” she said. “Just because it’s Christmas, there’s no need to start behaving like children. Now. ‘Thank you, O Lord, on this blessed Christmas Day, for giving us food and wine, for bringing us warmth in the midst of cold, company in the midst of solitude, and for blessing us with your perfect love. Amen.’ ”

  For a moment nobody spoke. Mrs. McNaughton and Sophie began to go round, straightening wheelchairs, tucking napkins into collars, pouring water into plastic tumblers, cheap red wine into glasses. Joan picked up her cracker again and began to bite it.

  Lev returned to the kitchen, carved the turkey, and started to plate it up. Once again, he tried to imitate the chefs at GK Ashe, laying out six plates, arranging the meat and stuffing very carefully in the center of each. He showed the South African helpers how to place the roast potatoes, sprouts, and parsnips attractively round the meat, keeping the bread sauce and the jus simmering while they did this, then spooning it on, keeping the spoon low, so that nothing dripped on the plate rim. The South Africans now stood waiting to take the plates through to the dining room, noting the care with which Lev worked.

  “You a chef?” one of them asked.

  “No,” said Lev.

  He began on the next six plates. The food smelled good. Lev put a piece of turkey skin into his mouth. It was crispy and succulent. He watched his hands arranging and spooning. He thought of his mother’s hands threading delicate shards of tin onto copper filament, picking up the beautiful new wire cutters, made in America, admiring them as she worked . . .

  Now the residents were eating mince pies and drinking the Asti Spumante. The crackers had been pulled and paper hats put on. Douglas announced that he felt sick and had to be wheeled away by Mrs. McNaughton, a plastic bowl on his knee. Two of the company had fallen asleep in their chairs. From one end of the table came the unmistakable stench of urine, mingled with the aroma of the flaming brandy poured over the mince pies. While Lev and Sophie washed up plates and pans in the kitchen, they heard the barter begin for the cracker gifts.

  “Berkeley,” said Minty imperiously, “you’ve got no use whatsoever for that sewing kit. I’ll swap it for my dolphin key ring and the joke about polar bears.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “I can’t do better than that. We only had one cracker each.”

  “You’ve got to trade, Araminta. You’ve got to talk up your wares, like in a souk. Have you forgotten the bloody rules?”

  “I know the thing you all want is the miniature Woods of Windsor talcum powder,” declared Pansy Adeane, “but that happens to be mine and I am not ruddy well swappin’ it!”

  “I don’t want the talcum powder,” said Berkeley.

  “What will you swap for the sewing kit, then?”

  “Nothing. I like the sewing kit.”

  “You’re a man,” said Minty. “Men can’t sew. But a lovely dolphin-shaped key ring —”

  “If you’ve been in the Navy, you can sew,” said Berkeley. “I could sew before you were born.”

  “I’m willing to trade this exceptionally useful Bambi stapler for the Woods of Windsor talc,” Lev heard Ruby offer.

  “Nobody’s getting the effin’ talc,” said Pansy.

  “Think of what a stapler can do,” said Ruby.

  “It can shut Minty’s mouth, for starters!” said Berkeley.

  There was a ripple of laughter as Ruby asked, “Would you prefer the Bambi stapler to the sewing kit, Berkeley?”

  “No, I bloody wouldn’t. I can mend all my pockets with this.”

  “You mean, make yourself tighter than ever with money?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Language, language . . .” said Mrs. McNaughton.

  “I’m putting the talc in my pocket.”

  “I’m not giving away the ruddy sewing kit.”

  “I’ve got no use for a stapler.”

  “What use is a key ring if you’ve no longer got a car?”

  “That polar-bear joke was crap, anyway.”

  “Somewhere over the rainbow . . .”

  They paused in the argument. Sophie had come back into the room, taken up her guitar, and begun to sing.

  “. . . Way up high . . .”

  The residents of Ferndale Heights put down the cracker gifts and seemed instantly to forget them. They tried to still their tremors and their coughs, stop their stomachs gurgling.

  “. . . There’s a land that I heard of . . .”

  Mrs. McNaughton folded her hands on her chest.

  “Once in a lullaby . . .”

  Lev came back into the dining room and, standing quietly with the Asti bottle, watched all eyes turn to the singer. Sophie’s voice was melodic, effortless. And he thought how, when you looked at Sophie, what you saw first was her softness and her dimpled, little-girl smile, and then when you got to know her, you began to feel her confidence.

  When the song was over, Berkeley Brotherton was drying his eyes on a table napkin, as was Ruby Constad. Clapping broke out and three cheers for Sophie. Then Minty stood up. Her cheeks flushed with the wine, her blue-veined hands ablaze with the diamonds her beauty had bought her long ago, she began to sing, in a quavery soprano:

  Some enchanted evening,

  You may see a stranger,

  You may see a stranger

  Across a crowded room . . .

  Almost everybody seemed to know this song, and they began to join in, swaying to the melody, waving their arms, trying to follow and keep in time together.

  It was dark when Lev and Sophie left Ferndale Heights. As they walked away, Sophie said, “I hate to think of them lying all alone in the night.”

  “Well,” said Lev, “I know. But it went good. Meal good.”

  “Meal very good. Everybody enjoyed it.”

  “Douglas felt sick.”

  “Oh, he ate too much, that’s all. He had a huge second helping. Said it was the best bread sauce he’d tasted s
ince 1957.”

  Lev smiled as they walked on toward the tube. “Nice singing,” he said. “And Ruby, she loves you so much.”

  “She’s had a difficult life,” said Sophie. “Her husband left her for someone else. Then he died. She was about fifty. On her own since then. She hardly sees either of her children.”

  “They don’t come to visit?”

  “Now and then. Selfish pigs. About once a year. You know she gave me a hundred pounds?”

  Lev put his arm round Sophie and held her close to him. “We can go shopping,” he said. “Buy beautiful dress for you.”

  “Nah,” she said. “I’m going to save it. Definitely. I’m saving it up, like a little squirrel.”

  When they got back to Sophie’s flat, they lay down and slept. Sophie’s back was turned to Lev and his arm lay along her thigh.

  The evening came on silently.

  It was near to eight o’clock when Lev woke. He looked over at Sophie. It occurred to him how strange and lovable it was that young women seemed to sleep without making a single sound.

  He dressed and lit a cigarette and went to the living room and sat down by the dark window. On his mobile, he dialed Belisha Road, but the phone wasn’t picked up. He wondered whether Christy was still in bed or in the pub. He remembered with a smile that Christy’s gift to Frankie—bought with his groceries at the Camden Town Sainsburys—had been a purple ballet dress with a spangled bodice and a spangled tiara for her hair.

  Lev smoked for a while, staring out at the night. Few cars went up or down the road. Blue tree lights blinked on and off in the window opposite. The faint sound of laughter came from the pub on the corner. Lev picked up his mobile again. His phone bills were large, but he was keeping pace with them—just. He dialed Rudi’s number.

  “Comrade,” said Rudi, “greetings from the home front. I’m the worse for fucking wear! But pay no heed. Ina and Maya are here. Lora cooked your mother’s bad-tempered cockerel, but it was stringy. All those months of shagging the hens had worn it out!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But never mind. We washed it down. We’ve had a nice time. Lora was sent some wine from one of her horoscope clients. And it was fucking good. Talk to Maya . . .”