‘Ac-tu-ally’ — Mitchell wagged his finger — ‘what I really need is a mousetrap, because there are rodents in this kitchen.’
He glanced at Kitty Finch when he said ‘rodents’.
Kitty dropped her slice of beef on the floor and leaned towards Nina. ‘Horseradish is not made out of horses. It’s related to the mustard family. It’s a root and your father probably eats so much of it because it’s good for his rheumatism.’
Joe raised his thick eyebrows. ‘Whaat? I haven’t got rheumatism!’
‘You probably have,’ Kitty replied. ‘You’re a bit stiff when you walk.’
‘That’s because he’s old enough to be your father,’ Laura smiled nastily. She was still puzzled why Isabel had been so insistent that a young woman, who swam naked and obviously wanted her middle-aged husband’s attention should stay with them. Her friend was supposed to be the betrayed partner in their marriage. Hurt by his infidelities. Burdened by his past. Betrayed and lied to.
‘Laura congratulates herself on seeing through people and talking straight,’ Joe declared to the table. He squeezed the tip of his nose between his finger and thumb, a secret code between himself and his daughter, of what he wasn’t sure, perhaps of enduring love despite his flaws and foolishness and their mutual irritations with each other.
Kitty smiled nervously at Laura. ‘Thank you all so much for letting me stay.’
Nina watched her nibble on a slice of cucumber and then push it to the side of her plate.
‘You should thank Isabel,’ Laura corrected her. ‘She is very kind-hearted.’
‘I wouldn’t say Isabel is kind, would you, Nina?’
Joe rolled another slice of bloody beef and pushed it into his mouth.
This was the cue for Nina to say something critical about her mother to please her father, something like, ‘My mother doesn’t know me at all.’ In fact she was tempted to say, ‘My mother doesn’t know I know my father will sleep with Kitty Finch. She doesn’t even know I know what anorexic means.’
Instead she said, ‘Kitty thinks walls can open and close.’
When Mitchell whirled his left forefinger in circles around his ear as if to say, crazeee she’s crazeee, Joe reached over and violently slapped down Mitchell’s teasing pink finger with his tight brown fist.
‘It’s rude to be so normal, Mitchell. Even you must have been a child once. Even you might have thought there were monsters lurking under your bed. Now that you are such an impeccably normal adult you probably take a discreet look under the bed and tell yourself, well, maybe the monster is invisible!’
Mitchell rolled his eyes and stared at the ceiling as if pleading with it for help and advice. ‘Has anyone ever actually told you how up yourself you are?
The telephone was ringing. A fax was sliding and grinding its way on to the plastic tray next to the villa’s fact file. Nina stood up and walked over to pick it up. She glanced at it and brought it to her father.
‘It’s for you. About your reading in Poland.’
‘Thank you.’ He kissed her hand with his wine-stained lips and told her to read the fax out loud to him.
LUNCH ON ARRIVAL.
TWO MENUS. White borscht with boiled egg and sausage. Traditional hunter’s stew with mash potatoes. Soft drink.
OR
Traditional Polish cucumber soup. Cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and mash potatoes. Soft drink.
KINDLY FAX YOUR CHOICE.
Laura coughed. ‘You were born in Poland, weren’t you, Joe?’
Nina watched her father shake his head vaguely.
‘I don’t remember.’
Mitchell raised his eyebrows in what he imagined was disbelief. ‘You got to be a bit forgetful not to remember where you were born. You’re Jewish, aren’t you, sir?’
Joe looked startled. Nina wondered if it was because her father had been called sir. Kitty was frowning too. She sat up straighter in her chair and addressed the table as if she was Joe’s biographer.
‘Of course he was born in Poland. It’s on all his book jackets. Jozef Nowogrodzki was born in western Poland in 1937. He arrived in Whitechapel, east London, when he was five years old.’
‘Right.’ Mitchell looked confused again. ‘So how come you’re Joe Jacobs, then?’
Kitty once again took charge. She might as well have pinged her wine glass three times to create an expectant silence. ‘The teachers at his boarding school changed his name so they could spell it.’
The spoon Joe had been polishing all through supper was now silver and shiny. When he held it up as if to inspect his hard work, Nina could see Kitty’s distorted reflection floating on the back of it.
‘Boarding school? Where were your parents, then?’
Mitchell noticed that Laura was squirming in her chair. Whatever it was he was supposed to know about Joe had totally gone from his mind. Laura had told him of course, but it hadn’t sunk in. He was relieved Kitty Finch did not take it upon herself to answer his question and sort of wished he hadn’t gone there.
‘Well, you’re more or less English, then, aren’t you, Joe?’
Joe nodded. ‘Yes, I am. I’m nearly as English as you are.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go along all the way with that, Joe,’ Mitchell asserted in the tone of a convivial customs official, ‘but, as I always say to Laura, it’s what we feel inside that counts.’
‘You’re right,’ Joe agreed.
Mitchell thought he was on to something because Joe was being polite for a change.
‘So what do you feel inside, Joe?’
Joe peered at the spoon in his hand as if it was a jewel or a small triumph over cloudy cutlery.
‘I’ve got an FFF inside.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘A fucking funny feeling.’
Mitchell, who was now drunk, slapped him on the back to confirm their new solidarity.
‘I’ll second that, Jozef whatever your surname is. I’ve got an FFF right here.’ He tapped his head. ‘I’ve got three of those.’
Laura shuffled her long feet under the table and announced she had made a trifle for pudding. It was a recipe she had taken from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course and she hoped the custard had set and the cream hadn’t curdled.
SUNDAY
Hemlock Thief
The beginning of birdsong. The sound of pine cones falling into the stillness of the pool. The harsh scent of rosemary growing in wooden crates on the window ledge. When Kitty Finch woke up she felt someone breathing on her face. At first she thought the window had blown open in the night, but then she saw him and had to shove her hair into her mouth to stop herself screaming out loud. A black-haired boy was standing by her bed and he was waving to her. She guessed he was fifteen years old and he was holding a notebook in the hand that was not waving. The notebook was yellow. He was wearing a school blazer and his tie was stuffed in his pocket. Eventually he disappeared into the wall, but she could still feel the breeze of his invisible waving hand.
He was inside her. He had trance-journeyed into her mind. She was receiving his thoughts and feelings and his intentions. She dug her fingernails into her cheeks and, when she was sure she was awake, she walked towards the French doors and climbed into the pool. A wasp stung her wrist as she swam to the half-deflated lilo and pulled it to the shallow end. She wasn’t sure if the spectral vision was a ghost or a dream or a hallucination. Whatever it was, he had been in her mind for a long time. She plunged her head under the water and started to count to ten.