Murray tucked his feet up and wrapped his arms around his legs. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
“Of course,” said Keiko. “Thanks for asking me.”
“I didn’t. I wouldn’t,” Murray said. “But I’ll take care of you now you’re here.” She smiled uncertainly at him. He shuffled closer to her and set his chin on his knees. “So,” he said. “What can you tell me about tea now? Have you been doing your homework?”
Keiko laughed and bent her head. She had indeed spent a good few hours scouring websites and explaining it to herself in the bathroom mirror.
“First of all,” she told him, “you must appreciate that the tea ceremony is not really about drinking tea…”
She was still laying out specks of detail when Mrs. Poole put her head round the door to summon them to lunch.
Rich smells were wafting from the kitchen and Keiko stopped dead in the dining room doorway, making Murray walk into her back. He steadied himself with a hand on her shoulder then left it resting there.
“It’s not…” she began, then swallowed and started again. “I mean-have you made milk and stomach soup?”
Malcolm looked back at her for a moment before understanding spread over him. “Oh, tripe!” he said. “No, tripe’s not really a Sunday lunch kind of-”
“God almighty, Malcolm,” said Murray, moving his hand down around Keiko’s shoulder to hold the top of her arm. “Jesus Christ!”
Keiko went to her seat with her head bowed, but when Mrs. Poole set a wide plate of dough-coloured liquid down in front of her, she could not help herself turning to check.
“Cream of mushroom,” Malcolm said, and she looked quickly down again, shaking out her napkin.
When Keiko and Murray were halfway through their soup, Malcolm placed his hands flat on the table and got to his feet, taking his empty plate away. After a moment the door swung wide and he came back in, carrying a dish at shoulder height, gazing at it as he paced towards the table and set it down. On it lay a squat roll of meat, bulging between laced strings, one end sliced thickly and fanned out in glistening slabs. Waves of steam curled off it, rising to settle on the glass droplets of the centre light, turning them misty. Murray left and came back with a tray of vegetable dishes and then slid into his seat to wait in silence with the women until Malcolm returned from a second trip. He put a long, shallow jug down at Keiko’s side and waved his hand over it, scooping billows of steam towards her face.
“Gravy,” he said and padded around the table to his chair. Keiko nodded towards the plate of meat.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Loin,” said Malcolm. “I boned and rolled it myself. Listen to this.” He picked up a spoon and tapped the meat three times. It made a spitting, rattling sound like a well-wrapped parcel. Malcolm beamed and tapped it again. “Crackling, see? Crisp as anything. Mind and don’t pour your gravy on it.” He slid a knife under one of the slices and lifted it towards to Keiko’s plate, stretching right across the table, his face bunching between his shoulders, holding the slice of meat steady on the blade with one pudgy finger.
Keiko thanked him.
“Crackling’s another word for skin,” Murray said. “You don’t have to eat it. You don’t have to eat any of it if you don’t want to.”
Keiko looked at Mrs. Poole and Malcolm, then back at Murray again. “It all looks lovely,” she said.
Mrs. Poole served herself with meat and gravy, potatoes and vegetables, and began to eat staring straight ahead. Murray, working with the delicacy of a watchmaker, excised the rim of fat and crackling from his one thin slice of meat. Malcolm, just as intent, loaded potato onto the back of his full fork and ran it round the edge of plate like a shovel until it was soused in gravy, then he lifted it to his mouth with his eyes shining.
When lunch was over, Murray took Keiko out into the back garden. She picked her way around its edge and looked at the last of the flowers in the neat strips of earth, feeling one cheek almost tingle under his gaze. Mrs. Poole, standing at the sink in the kitchen, watched her until the window steamed over and then bent her head to the full basin and began to work at the dishes with firm scouring strokes.
“What are these called?” Keiko asked, pointing to a cluster of pale fleshy-leafed plants with seed heads floating above them. Murray shrugged.
Malcolm opened the back door and stepped down onto the path. Leaning against the wall, he bunched his arms up in front of his face with his hands cupped and a second later a puff of smoke flared.
“It’s a sedum,” he said, taking a skinny cigar from his mouth and nodding towards the plant. He must have been watching them, seen her pointing. The sweet smoke drifted just as far as Keiko before it dispersed, and she leaned forward slightly to catch more of it. “Butterflies love them,” Malcolm added.
Keiko turned to share her smile with Murray, but he waved a hand in front of his face to blow the smoke away. Her smile faded.
“Dad used to be driven demented with the caterpillars in his lettuce,” Malcolm went on, “but he loved the butterflies so much he wouldn’t rip out the sedum.”
“He sounds like a lovely man when you speak about him,” Keiko said.
Murray turned right round and looked over the fence into the garden next door.
“Of course, it’s no problem now,” said Malcolm. “We don’t grow any veg now.” He pointed towards a patch of grass that Keiko could see was greener than the rest.
“Your father was the gardener, then?” she said. “You’re not? Even though you know the names?”
In the kitchen, Mrs. Poole had wiped a clear patch in the misted window and was watching the three of them, stuffing a cloth into a wineglass and screwing it round.
“Malcolm’s a butcher,” said Murray, turning back at last. “That just about sums it up as far as Malcolm goes. Not much of a one for lettuce, really.”
Malcolm said nothing. His little cigar stuck out of his face like a teaspoon in a bowl of pudding.
What am I doing here, Keiko asked herself, when none of them really wants me? Murray is not himself when he’s with them. I cannot eat enough to please Malcolm. And as for her …
“I’m a terrible guest,” said Keiko, looking up at the kitchen window. “I should be helping your mother.” She turned from both of them and walked away.
Mrs. Poole, grinding away at the glass, flinched and looked down as Keiko entered the kitchen. Then cradling the glass carefully in her hands, she turned away to let the broken pieces fall into the pedal bin, throwing the cloth and its danger of tiny shards in after it.
fourteen
Tuesday, 29 October
Dr. Bryant pursed his mouth in time with his breathing as he read, making his pale moustache bristle. Keiko looked away to his over-stuffed bookshelves, every volume well-worn and topped with a coxcomb of markers. At exactly head-height opposite the chair where she sat, where every visitor to the office must sit, was his own PhD thesis, Undergraduate networks and their effect on employment choices, and two editions of the book it eventually became: In with the in-crowd: student networks and the workplace. He cleared his throat and she turned in time to see him suck the ends of his moustache back down with a wetted bottom lip.
“Food,” he said. “You’re quite settled on that then? It’s going to be rather a straitjacket down the line.”
“I think passions run high around it,” said Keiko. If he knew she was thinking of Pamela Shand and her dairy crusade he would swallow his moustache. “Investment. Engagement. And since I’m keen to have the subjects return several times, I need to interest them.”
“The perennial problem,” he said, lying back in his chair. “The undergraduates do get sick of spending lunchtime in the lab and-as I’m sure you’ll appreciate-the staff projects come first.” Keiko inclined her head. “Of course, there was a time the typical Japanese student would have funding to pay subjects as part of their award, and nothing says it like cash as far as the first years go. They would let you drill into their skulls for the price of a pint. Still, I’m sure you’ll sort something out.” He bared his teeth at her.