The Road Home

by Rose Tremain

  “Okay,” she said. “That will be nice, to see you at last. How are you getting along with Hamlet?”

  Lev didn’t want to tell her that he’d hardly opened the book, that it was lying under his bunk at Belisha Road, alongside empty Silk Cut packets. Instead, he said, “Hamlet is difficult for me. My progress is very slow.”

  “Well, I think you should persevere, Lev. You may recognize something of yourself in the character. See you tomorrow.”

  He bought her some flowers—freesias, yellow and purple. Although it was almost spring now, these freesias had no perfume. But Lev thought, That doesn’t matter, because Lydia will pretend they do. She will say, “Oh, Lev, what a lovely scent!”

  And sure enough, when he gave the flowers to her, she pressed them to her face. “Beautiful!” she said. “I didn’t expect these. Now I remember that my first judgment of you was correct: you’re a thoughtful man.”

  In the dimly lit barracks of the Highgate Café Rouge, they ordered the chicken baguettes Lydia had wanted the last time. She also insisted on ordering two shots of vodka, and when these were brought to the table, she said, “Some of the waiters here are from our country. That thin one is from Yarbl.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I come here alone sometimes, on my day off. I drink hot chocolate. I talk to the waiters—just to hear our language, to escape from being Muesli. Like us, these people send money home. But this life in North London is soon going to be over for me. So I shall tell you my news. Are you prepared for a shock?”

  “Yes,” said Lev.

  “Very well. I’m going away with Maestro Greszler.”

  “Going away? Yes? Going where?”

  “Wherever he goes. First will be Vienna, next month, in April. Then Australia. After that New York. Then Paris. Sometimes we shall be back in London, and then I shall call you and say hello.”

  “Well, that’s great, Lydia. I know you loved that job with Greszler.”

  “It’s more than great.”

  “But why does he need you in Vienna? You don’t speak German.”

  “Well, I do, a little. But you see . . .” and here Lev saw her pale face bloom with a sudden flush of pink “. . . he wants me not only for the translating.”

  Lev drank his vodka. Lydia was fanning herself with her paper napkin. “I told you it was a long story. But I’ll make it short. I should have mentioned to you before, when I was working in London with Maestro Greszler, how he very often tried to kiss me, but I would never let him. He has a wife at his home in Jor. A wife and three children, and now grandchildren. I thought I shouldn’t allow myself to be touched by such a man, who could never be mine. But since his leaving, I’ve been getting letters from him—two or three a week—telling me he’s fallen in love with me and wants me to be his mistress and go with him all over the world.”

  “His mistress?”

  “I expect you’re going to remind me that he’s old —”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “And that he suffers from constipation.”

  “No.”

  “But I don’t care, Lev. I’ve put away my scruples about everything. Even about his wife. I’m someone in need of love and I can love Pyotor Greszler, despite all these things. He tells me he’s still virile. He says he makes love to me in his dreams.”

  She was flustered and smiling, like a girl. She looked around for the waiter from Yarbl, to order a second shot of vodka. She laughed a hectic little laugh.

  “Oh, Lev,” she said, “I hope you don’t look down on me—to become the mistress of a famous man, to be a kept woman. But, you know, my life here since Pyotor went away has been so bad, I feel I’ve lost all my pride. I am just Muesli now: a slave to spoiled English children. And I can’t go on like this. I would die.”

  “You don’t have to justify it, Lydia. I’m sure hundreds of women would like to have a life with Maestro Greszler. He’s a genius. And if he loves you . . .”

  “Well, what is love when you are seventy-two? I don’t know. But I’m going to take my chance. I’m almost forty. I’ve always longed to see the world. I think, when I get to New York City, I may die of wonder! And with Pyotor, we’ll be in the best hotels, the best rooms. My God, I sound worldly. I must have caught the English consumer disease! But never mind the hotels and so forth. When I think of my dear maestro, it’s with great tenderness. I never pulled away from his kisses out of revulsion. It never bothered me to help him with his bowels . . .”

  The vodka was warm inside Lev. His old admiration for Lydia returned to touch his heart. He said gently, “When you’re not traveling with Greszler, where will you live?”

  Lydia put down her vodka glass and patted her hair. “He’s already thought about that. He is so very considerate. I’ll live in Yarbl, with my parents. He is going to help us with money, for a new refrigerator for Mamma, and for me a small car so that I may sometimes drive to Jor to see him.”

  “Do you know how to drive, Lydia?”

  “No. But I’ll get lessons. You don’t think I can master this?”

  “I’m sure you can. I’m sure you will be a very good driver. Have you told your parents yet?”

  “Yes. Except not the mistress side of it. They need never know about that. Only that I’m going to be Maestro Greszler’s assistant on his concert tours. They’re very proud. They’re already telling their friends about it.”

  Lev reached for Lydia’s hand and brought it to his lips. Her face was close to his, radiant and warm.

  “It was you, of course,” she said, “who reminded me of what I could feel for a man, Lev. I know you never had any feelings for me, but that doesn’t matter. No, don’t say anything. I’ll never forget our journey. Will you? It was the most important journey of my life, and I made it with you.”

  At work, that evening, Lev’s concentration was bad. His head was full of his own language. His mind kept conjuring images of Lydia in her new life: Lydia wearing a fur coat and high-heeled shoes, walking into some smartly decorated hotel lobby on Greszler’s arm; Lydia in Greszler’s dressing room, administering stomach powders, fixing his white tie, allowing him to whisper to her some secret, preconcert endearment; Lydia in a king-size bed with her elderly lover, his flowing hair soft and copious on the crisp white pillowcase . . .

  The chefs, including Sophie, screamed at him: “Asparagus, Lev! Leeks, Lev! Salad leaves! Mushrooms! Fennel! Where’s my okra, Lev?” At one moment, he found G.K.’s face suddenly close up and shouting, “What’s the matter with you tonight? Don’t you know who’s in? Didn’t word get to you who’s in?”

  “No, Chef.”

  “Howie Preece. Okay? Table three, with the noisy party of nine. Howie fucking Preece, right? Get it? So move your arse. Start focusing up.”

  “Sorry, Chef. Who is Howie Preece?”

  “Oh, that’s great!” exploded G.K. “I’ve got one of the most famous young artists on the planet in my restaurant and I’m employing staff who don’t even know who he is!”

  G.K. hurled a ladle away from him, and it bounced and clattered on the tile floor near Vitas’s feet. Vitas let out a shriek. G.K. snapped his fingers. “Pick that up, Nurse. Now!”

  Vitas wiped his hands on his sodden apron and hurried to rescue the ladle. He made to offer it back to G.K., who snarled, “Don’t be stupid, Vitas. Fucking wash it!”

  G.K. pirouetted back to his station, his shoulders taut with anger. Lev returned to his preparation of button mushrooms, which tormented him by bouncing and jumping out of his fingers. At his back, he could feel Sophie’s eyes glued to him. Suddenly she replaced G.K. at his side and whispered, “Don’t screw up, Lev. Not tonight.”

  Lev tried harder to concentrate then. Usually he prided himself on keeping pace with the chefs, even preempting their demands by listening to the orders as Jeb and Mario called them out, stacking them up in his mind in the correct sequence and selecting the right vegetables before the chefs even asked for them. He was slow tonight, he knew, n
ot only because he was daydreaming, but because of the vodka he’d drunk at lunchtime. He hoped G.K. couldn’t smell alcohol on his breath. He longed for the service to end. He felt tired and sexy and sad. Images of Marina laid themselves in strange configurations over images of Lydia in his weary mind. He knew that only making love to Sophie would be able to console him and bring him back to himself.

  The hours felt long. Though most of the clientele had gone by eleven-thirty, the party at table three kept right on ordering more wine, puddings, and coffees. G.K. peered through at them, his eyes lingering greedily on the artist, Howie Preece. On a whim, he ordered Damian to offer them free champagne. “Call it a loss leader,” he whispered to Damian. “I want Preece and his friends back in here on a regular basis. Serve two of the ’05 Mumm with the chef-proprietor’s compliments, and then I’ll come through and say some charming how’s-yer-father, right?”

  “Will do, Chef. And you know, they’ve had four bottles of the ’96 Château Margaux.”

  “Bingo!” said G.K., punching the air. “That I totally like.”

  Lev had finished his work, but he didn’t want to leave without Sophie, so he went to his old station to help Vitas. As they worked, Vitas whispered to him, “Don’t tell the boss, but I’m quitting soon. Friend of mine, Jacek—the one who got me my mobile phone—has heard about a job coming up in the countryside, picking vegetables. Good money. So I’m taking that. And we live for free.”

  “Live for free how, Vitas?”

  “Caravan. Luxury motor home. Me and Jacek sharing. Jacek is fixing it and I’m definitely going to go.”

  “I think it’s a shame,” said Lev. “You’ve got on top of the job now. You should stick it out here.”

  “No. I hate it. I told you. I hate that man. I’d like to cut his balls off and salamander them and throw them to the dogs.”

  They washed up in silence for a while. Then Lev said, “How is your dog, Vitas? Have you heard?”

  “Heard from my dog? No. Didn’t you know? Dogs in our country are very backward: they haven’t learned how to write letters. But what I am going to do, with Jacek: we’re going to steal a dog and keep it in our motor home. It will be ours. That way I’ll forget Edik—until I go home.”

  “What will happen to the dog you steal when you go home?”

  “Who can tell, comrade? What will happen to any of us when we go home?”

  The pans were almost done. Lev set another cycle for the glass washer and began to wipe down the draining tops. When he turned, he saw Sophie. She’d put on clean whites and her mouth was newly scarlet with glossy lipstick.

  “Lev,” she said quietly, “I’m going through into the restaurant with G.K. I know Howie Preece, through Sam and Andy. G.K.’s asked me to help with the chat-up thing.”

  Lev stared at her, at her shiny mouth. He felt his heart suddenly beat faster. “No . . .” he said.

  “Told you, got to do it, Lev,” Sophie hissed. “Don’t make a fuss. Just accept it. See you tomorrow.”

  Waiting for Lev at Belisha Road was an envelope in Ina’s writing. She’d spelled London “Lodnon” but the letter had arrived just the same. Inside there was a drawing of children skating, done by Maya. The children all wore fur-trimmed anoraks, like the one Lev had bought for Maya on the Holloway Road. Their feet were huge in their brown skating boots.

  Lev lay down on his bunk bed and smoked and held the drawing close to his face. He tried to recognize which child was Maya and he thought how quickly children’s faces altered and how, when he saw her again, Maya would no longer be the daughter he held in his memory. On the other side of the drawing was a message:

  Dear Pappa,

  I hurt my nose. I fell down on the ice. My nose has gone blue.

  Lili is crying. I wash her diaper. Love from Maya XX

  Rose Tremain

  Lev closed his eyes. The cigarette burned low in his hand.

  In his mind, it was the night of Marina’s thirtieth birthday. He and Marina were eating goose and roast potatoes and drinking red wine under a big apricot moon, with Rudi and Lora. On the table on Rudi’s porch, red candles flickered in the nighttime summer breeze, and on Marina’s feet were the red shoes Lev had given her, which had brought tears of joy to her eyes.

  Folk music was playing—from an old battery-operated cassette machine Rudi had picked up at the flea market in Glic—and when the food was gone, all four of them got up to dance. The moon went down and they danced on. The candles went out and they kept dancing under the stars. Rudi poured more wine. They danced with their glasses in their hands. They drank toasts to Marina’s long life, and Lev kissed her mouth and tasted the wine on her tongue and told her he would love her until he died. They began their famous tango, and he heard the click and stamp of Marina’s new red shoes on the wooden floor of the porch and saw her slim, brown legs kick out. And she called out to the dark night that she wanted a child. She told the whole village of Auror.

  Dogs barked and night birds shrieked from the hills.

  She was as drunk as a tsarina, but she didn’t care. Rudi and Lora began stumbling about, trying to clear the dirty plates and dishes from the table. “Give her a child!” shouted Rudi, as a waterfall of cutlery tumbled onto his shoes. “Tonight we’re not mortal, comrade. We’re beyond mortal. Give her an immortal child!”

  So then he was lying with Marina in Rudi and Lora’s back room. An oil lamp flickered on the whitewashed wall. A patchwork coverlet, smelling of mothballs, covered them, but they were naked except for the red shoes, which Marina had kept on. Lev could feel the high heels digging into the flesh of his arse, and the touch of the shoes reminded him, as he made drunken love to his wife, how easily wounded was his human form, how agile and marvelous and alone.

  Lev stubbed out his cigarette and returned to staring at Maya’s picture. She had been born eight and a half months later. Was she conceived on that famous night—his tango-girl, his apricot moon-girl, his girl of the summer stars? He and Marina often amused themselves by trying to work this out, but they knew they would never really know the answer.

  Lev dozed in the silent flat. His mobile was by his bed, but it didn’t ring. He woke and imagined Sophie still drinking and talking with animation to Howie Preece and his party. It was after 3 a.m. He fell into a dream of skating. On the shimmering ice, his skates made no sound.

  When he got up, Christy was there, making breakfast. Christy said, “I thought you wouldn’t be here. I thought you’d be with Miss Sophie. Then I heard you snoring.”

  When Lev mentioned Howie Preece, Christy said, “Ah, that fella. I was taken to see a piece of his work once. It was a model of the double helix constructed out of old tennis balls. The frayed condition of the balls was meant to indicate the fragility, ha-ha, of human DNA. I just kept wondering how he came by all those balls.”

  “Well,” said Lev, “to G.K., and to Sophie, I think, he’s very important.”

  “Okay, but I doubt he truly, objectively, is. He has ‘concepts.’ You can see his mind doing it. He could be sitting on the toilet when it happens. He’s understood all right that the word begins with con. So he thinks up any old supposedly serious thing. Like, say, double helix/tennis balls/mortality. Eureka! Gets some badly paid studio assistant to make the feckin’ object. Doesn’t even get glue on his hands. Just twiddles his thing and waits for the check. To me, he’s the embodiment of everything that’s half-baked about this country. Nobody’s using their feckin’ eyes anymore. You’ve got a clutch of emperors walking around without a stitch and nobody’s noticing. And in times of stress or extreme penury, this can royally piss me off.”

  They sat drinking tea and eating bacon sandwiches. The sun came and went from the window. Christy stared at it and said, “The thing I loved most about our day at Silverstrand was that jumping about in the freezin’ water. That was the best moment.”

  Lev reminded Christy that there had been other good moments: playing clock golf and letting Frankie and Sophie win; going back to t
he beach as the sky cleared again and the sun went down, and shimmying stones across the low breakers; watching some riders on white ponies come galloping along the sands . . .

  “Sure, you’re right,” said Christy. “It was all in all a beautiful day. Why does the brain keep on selecting things out, keep on and on with all that measuring and comparing? I’ve never known why I’m so prone to it either. Haven’t the first clue.”

  Lev was silent for a while. They both lit a Silk Cut. When Christy had fetched the tin ashtray, Lev said, “You think Sophie really likes me, Christy?”

  “Right,” said Christy, crossing his thin legs in their faded jeans, “here comes one of the Big Questions once again. So, let’s consider. But listen to me, fella. How would I know whether she does or doesn’t? If anyone here’s going to know, it’s you. So what do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lev. “This is why I ask. Sometimes I think yes, sometimes no . . .”

  “Well,” said Christy, “I’ve been trying to use me eyes. Sophie’s a bonny girl. She has a heart, unlike Angela, who has an old rotting watermelon where her heart should be. And she obviously likes whatever you do in bed, or she wouldn’t stick with that. But as to love, how am I meant to fathom it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “All I’d say is, don’t assume there’s a bright and starry future.”

  “Assume?”

  “Don’t count on anything. English girls, like I once said, they’re fickle as the tide, Lev. Perhaps, even now, she’s in the sack with that bag of frayed DNA, Preece.”

  She told him, no, she knew she was a flirt, but she was his girl now, Lev’s girl, so why didn’t he just forget all about it? It was late on Friday night, and she lay stretched out on a rug in front of her gas fire, wearing a turquoise bra and a G-string. She uncoupled the G-string and knelt on all fours and said, “Fuck me like this. Like the bitch I am.”