A Place for Us (4 page)

“Then, Peter, I must bid you farewell for now, yet not forever,” she said, though this too came out all wrong. He had walked toward the revolving doors, not even saying good-bye. She hobbled toward the entrance, and as she did she glanced down at the invitation, and the strangeness of it struck her again. Ma wanted them all back.

Why? Was it Dad? Was it about Daisy?

And Florence suddenly realized, though she had not considered it until this very moment, that she knew why.

Joe

J
OE
T
HORNE LEANED
his weight on the smooth oak bar, crossed his arms, and looked around him. Midmorning, midweek, he would have hoped the pub would be, well—not crowded exactly, but at least hosting a few old regulars with a pint, maybe a couple of early patrons for lunch. But no. The eponymous tree outside cast only gloom into the room. It was too early in the season for a roaring log fire. The bowls of sweetly salty pork crackling that Joe himself had roasted and stripped that morning stood on the bar, untouched. The barrels were full, the glasses gleaming.

And the place was empty.

Sheila Cowper, the landlady, appeared in the doorway of the snug. “Don’t stand there with your arms folded, Joe,” she said briskly, whipping him lightly with a tea towel. “No one’ll want to come in if they look in and see you growling at them like an angry bear. Go and cut up that bread like I asked you an hour ago.”

“Oh, what’s the point?” said Joe gloomily, though he obeyed her, stomping back into his tiny kitchen.

He took a newly baked loaf of sourdough, weighing it in his hands. Joe loved bread, loved its smell, its texture. He loved the springy smoothness of newly formed dough, how you could thump the base of a freshly baked loaf, hard, and get a pleasing drumlike sound, how homemade bread had love and care baked into it, like a new life. Joe started cutting slim, even slices, his strong fingers working the knife.
Who am I making this for?
he found himself wondering.
What is the point?

Six months ago Joe had left Yorkshire, Jamie, and home to come and work for Sheila. She’d spent fifteen years in London working as a
manager in various restaurants and had returned home to Winter Stoke the previous year with some cash in her pocket, and the dream of rejuvenating the Oak Tree. She wanted to make it the best place to eat in Somerset, at the same time turning it back into a proper local pub. “Better than the Sportsman in Whitstable, better than the Star at Harome. I want it to get a Michelin star,” she’d told him, and he’d found his heart beating faster. He believed this woman, and though he’d never met her before he was sure she could do it. And Joe, with his training and his track record, had been a shoo-in. At the interview he’d made her pork belly with fennel, accompanied by homemade char siu buns and a cabbage rémoulade, and sea-salted caramel threesome—ice cream with popcorn, toffee pot, and compote with marshmallows. He was a bit over sea-salted caramel himself, but it was all the rage, and he’d known from their phone conversation that she’d like it. Joe could pretty much tell what people wanted to eat.

It was because he trusted Sheila that he’d taken the job. He couldn’t turn it down, it was too good an opportunity to miss and it was time to leave Yorkshire. If it wasn’t for Jamie he’d have done it years ago. He’d been there all his life apart from his training. Yes, his restaurant had a Michelin star, but he’d learned all he was going to there. The head chef was a psychopath, the old cliché, and it was a joyless place to work, more about assemblage and timings than baking with care, making food with love. Joe cooked to make people happy, not to hear them faint with admiration over his use of nasturtiums in salads or sumac-flavored sorbets or any of the other silly things you had to do these days to be a “hot young chef,” whatever that meant.

Joe didn’t want any of that. He wanted to work in a place rooted in the community. He wanted to see old blokes chatting about their experiences in the war over a pint, to have lonely people come in for a read of the paper and a friendly face. A place for dates, anniversaries, weddings, funerals. Family. In his mind’s eye he saw this happy group of punters round the bar, perhaps even singing songs of an evening, while Joe served up delicious, lovingly prepared meals, food that’d bring people together, make them happy. And Joe’s food was the best there was. . . .

But it wasn’t working out that way, not at all. Six months on, everyone still went to the Green Man at the other end of the high street. The Green Man had Sky Sports, velour carpets, and piles of cigarette butts by
the door that no one ever seemed to sweep up. It served pickled onion crisps and rancid old pasties, and there was a fight most Saturdays. It was a dump. But it seemed that the residents of Winter Stoke and the surrounding countryside would rather take their chances there. The Oak had been closed for so long it was hard to change habits.

Sheila had a few months left, still, but if things hadn’t picked up by Christmas she’d as good as told Joe they’d each be out of a job. She’d have to sell, and Joe would be cast out into the metaphorical snow, and he’d have to go back to his mother’s in Pickering. The way things were going here, especially in the last couple of weeks, that didn’t seem too bad a prospect. He missed home, his mum and sister, more than he’d thought he would. Most of all he missed Jamie.

Sometimes when Joe thought about Jamie he was almost ready to pack it in and drive back that night to Yorkshire. Like when he thought about his crazy, curly blond hair, the dark little smudges he got under his eyes when he was tired or upset, the little red birthmark above his lip, and the things he said that cracked Joe up. “I’m going to live on the moon when I’m older, Dad. You can come and visit me in the long whooshing tube I’ll have built by then, all right?”

The more Joe tried not to think about his son, the worse he felt. He knew now that looking at pictures of him on his phone didn’t bring him closer. Sometimes it just made him sadder. He was supposed to see him once a month, but often it didn’t happen: Jemma had booked a holiday to Turkey, Jamie’s best friend had a birthday party, a school outing would be getting back too late for Jamie to travel all the way down to Somerset, or for Joe to pick him up and take him to his mum’s in Pickering, which was what he sometimes did. The thing was, Joe knew it wouldn’t ever get better, because Jamie wouldn’t ever live with him full-time, of course he wouldn’t, he had to be with his mum. But Joe missed him, as though there were a clamp on his heart that made him wince when he thought about him, pepper in his nostrils that made his eyes water, dry bread in his throat that made him swallow, bow his head, say a prayer for him and whatever he was doing. Playing in break time? Drawing at one of those little tables, messing around with toy dinosaurs on the floor, dancing to “Telephone,” that Lady Gaga song he’d made up all the actions to?

“Joe? Joe!” Sheila’s voice penetrated his train of thought.

“I’ve nearly done it.” Joe blinked, wiping his forehead on his arm. “Nearly there.”

“No. Not that. Mrs. Winter’s here for you.”

He flinched, instantly recalled to the present
.
The knife slipped, and he pushed it away, against his knuckle. It fell onto his left hand, sliding across his finger and cutting open the flesh. Everything seemed to happen almost in slow motion: Joe felt and, most disturbing of all, saw the flash of hard white bone beneath, watched almost with disinterest as the long thick line suddenly turned red, and his hand started to throb, black-red blood gushing out—and there was so much of it, dripping crimson onto his kitchen whites.

Sheila yelped. “What’s—oh, Joe, dear, what’ve you done?”

Joe held up his dripping finger. He wrapped a cloth around it. Now it really hurt. He smiled, feeling slightly stunned. “Stupid idiot. I’m sorry. You gave me a fright. Mrs. Winter . . . she’s in the bar?”

“Sure, but it’s okay, I’ll tell her—”

“No.” Joe tightened the knot on the cloth. “Don’t turn away anyone who’s come in, much less one of that lot.” He followed Sheila into the pub.

“Hello, Joe,” said Martha Winter. “Lovely to see you.” She glanced down at the bloody cloth. “My goodness. What have you done to your finger?”

“Nothing. Perk of the job.” The finger throbbed again, an aching thrum. “How can I help you?”

“You’re sure you’re all right?” He nodded, and she looked at him a little quizzically. “Well, I wanted to talk to you. I wondered if you’d be able to do the food for a party we’re having in November. It’s drinks on the Friday, so I’d need canapés for about fifty.”

Her husky, accentless voice was soothing. “Right, then.” Joe started mentally calculating how much canapés for fifty would cost. “I can do that.”

Martha cleared her throat. “And then lunch on the Saturday.” She paused. “That’s the main event.”

“How many on the Saturday?”

“Just family. Seven of us. I think.”

The Winters were kind of famous round these parts. Joe had always
imagined there were loads of them. He said curiously, “I thought there were more of you than that.”

“There were, around twenty of us,” Martha said. “But I’ve murdered them all and buried them in the garden.”

“Makes the catering easier,” Joe said, and they both smiled, shyly, at each other.

“David says you’re a wonderful chef.”

“He’s a nice man.” David Winter came in sometimes for a whiskey. Joe liked him a lot. He was one of the few people around here Joe had actually had a proper conversation with.

“He’s a very nice man and he takes his food seriously.”

“I know that,” he said. “I’ve never seen someone eat a pie that fast.”

A shadow crossed her smiling face; she said, “Anyway, he says I need to hire you right away for this party. He thinks you’ll be off soon.” She leaned forward on the bar with her elbows. “Give us a chance, won’t you?”

Joe stiffened. “I never—I’m liking it very much here, Mrs. Winter.”

“Don’t go all formal on me again, will you?” she begged. “I only meant I know how hard it is. When I first came here I didn’t know anyone. I was just a mouthy Cockney and I thought it was the back end of beyond. An awful place.”

He didn’t believe she’d ever been a Cockney. “You’re from London?”

“Yes, Bermondsey. But when the war came I was evacuated, and . . .” She waved her hand. “Never mind. I know what you’re going through. We’re nice people round these parts. Give it time.”

Joe’s head spun, the finger throbbing so hard he felt it might suddenly burst. “Yes, of course.” He tried to concentrate, and picked up a pen from the bar, holding it uselessly in his right hand. “I’d better do you a quote.”

“You’re left-handed? Oh dear, that’s bad,” she said. “So am I, so’s David. All the best people are. My granddaughter Cat, too. She lives in Paris.” She added, suddenly, “You’d like her. She’s coming back for this party. At least, I hope she is. I haven’t seen her for a very long time.”

He tried to nod and winced; the pain was really bad. She was right. No. Left! It seemed funny suddenly. “That’s nice for you. What were . . .” He blinked; a throb of exquisite pain from his finger ran through his body. “Excuse me.”

“Joe, it does seem to be bleeding rather a lot,” Martha said. She took his hand, and the feeling of skin, of her warm flesh holding his, was almost intoxicating. Her green eyes stared at him appraisingly, and he felt quite light-headed. “I think we’d better take you to Bill’s office, just to be sure,” she said.

“No, I don’t want—uh, don’t worry,” Joe gripped the rail of the bar firmly in his strong hand, but everything was rocking suddenly. He swallowed. “I’ll be right as rain, I just need to—”

Martha swam before him. The floor seemed to be rising up, his eyes unbearably heavy. Something was pressing down on his head, and as he sank down he saw her face, shaken out of its calm, her mouth open in a small O, before everything, slowly, went black.

Cat

A
LWAYS LATE.
A
LWAYS
needing to be somewhere else. Cat hurried out of the Marché, past the endless cyclamen in gaudy reds, the knotty geraniums with their fading flowers, the bushes with zesty, citrus-colored berries. Working at the flower market you were always aware of the changing seasons: every year she dreaded the arrival of winter, standing outside all day and slowly freezing to death. But in the first week of September it was still summer; the tourists were still jamming the tiny streets of the Île de la Cité, moving so slowly they might be zombies, heads down, eyes fixed on their phones.

Cat strode across the slim pedestrian bridge at the foot of Notre-Dame, weaving her way in and out of the crowds. The usual troupe of jazz musicians on the bridge was playing a wistful, lilting version of “There’s a Small Hotel.” She slowed down for a split second. It was one of Gran’s favorite songs. She’d sing it in the evenings, wandering round the kitchen, mug of tea in hand. Gran was always singing.

“Hello, English girl!” one of the musicians called as she hurried past them. Cat rolled her eyes. All these years here and
English girl
,
when her French was probably better than theirs. But in Paris you were Parisian, you were French, not that you went around yelling about it, that would be so very, very
outré
, but there were certain things, a particular finesse, an attitude to life . . . Cat consoled herself with the knowledge that she passed for French these days. She was slim, French-girl slim, not through effort: she just didn’t eat very much. Her dark gray eyes were partly hidden by her treacly brown-black mane of hair. She was wearing the only expensive thing she owned, a pair of glossy red Lanvin ballet flats, which Olivier had bought her, back when things were still good between them.
She had tried to sell them on eBay a few months ago; she’d finally got so desperate she had to have the money, and it was ridiculous to have shoes worth £300 when she couldn’t afford a sandwich at lunch. But there was an olive oil stain on one shoe, a remnant of a Luke-based accident, and the buyer had rejected them when Cat, eternally honest, had pointed this out. She was glad, for they were beautiful: a glossy coral red, they made her happy in a way she hadn’t thought possible. Like all fashionistas, even lapsed ones, Cat despised the handbag culture, the stamping of labels on everything:
Look, my sunglasses say GUCCI in huge letters, therefore I must have money.
But looking down at these beautiful red shoes always made her smile, even if it was a particularly bad day and the smile merely a tiny one. It surprised—and cheered—her, to discover this capacity for pleasure still existed within her. She thought it must have been entirely stamped out.

Cat strode quickly along the main street of the Île Saint-Louis, her rangy frame weaving nimbly around the shuffling crowds gaping in at the windows of the
boulangerie
, the
fromagerie
. She could see them queuing up for Berthillon, the old-fashioned
glacier
with its gleaming marble tabletops. Cat loved Berthillon, she knew it was hopelessly touristy to do so, but sometimes when she was in particular need of a treat, when the fog settled over the two little islands and the bleakness of her situation seemed particularly acute, she would wish more than anything that she could just run over the bridge at lunchtime and order a tiny cup of molten black chocolate, served with yellow cream in a smooth little silver jug. But finances didn’t stretch to that, hadn’t for over a year now since Olivier’s money stopped altogether.

She popped into the convenience shop around the corner from the apartment, to buy vermouth. It was eye-wateringly expensive—but this was the Île Saint-Louis, of course it was eye-wateringly expensive, and it was for Madame Poulain.
No expense spared
was very much Madame Poulain’s motto, though she kept track of everything she gave Cat to the nearest cent, and nothing was bought for Madame Poulain that Cat might share. This was made very clear, always had been: Cat shopped at Lidl or Franprix. She smiled as she waited to pay, catching sight of the rows of Dijon mustard. That was why Paris was civilized, despite its many annoyances. In a tiny convenience store you could still find five different types of
moutarde de Dijon: mais bien sûr.

•   •   •

“
Bonsoir, Madame.
”

“
Ah, bonsoir, Cat
herine. Ça va?
”

“
Ça va bien, merci, Madame. J’ai pris le vermouth. Je vous offre un verre?
”

“
Oui, oui.
” The old woman gave a great guffaw in her wingback chair as Cat gingerly put the tissue-wrapped bottle down on the great old sideboard. If she asked the question she most desperately wanted to right away, Madame Poulain would get angry. If she waited just a minute, she would be pleased.

Cat drew in a short breath, took a glass off the shelf, and said, “Your medicine, Madame—all’s okay for me to pick it up tomorrow, yes?”

“Sure.” Madame Poulain stubbed out her cigarette. “Tell them to check it this time. I’m sick of the wrong dosage. I am ill. It must be correct.” She lit another cigarette. “Can you make me the drink before you run off again? I mean, of course I know you’re so
terribly
busy but . . .”

“Sure,” said Cat, trying not to smile. The first time she’d come to Madame Poulain’s apartment, overlooking the Seine south toward the Latin Quarter, she had been overawed by the vast airy space, the wooden beams, the old shutters with their carved iron handles, the fretwork on the balcony. Then, as now, the only items on the old mahogany dresser (from Vichy, acquired in shady circumstances by her father, a coward and a traitor, about whom Madame Poulain was only able to speak by expectorating heavily into her ashtray afterward) were menthol cigarettes, an ashtray, and cough syrup. Which, Cat had often thought since, pretty neatly summed up her landlady.

“Was it busy today?” Madame Poulain stretched out in the chair, flexing her long, clawlike hands.

“The market was crowded. But we were not busy. Henri is worried.”

“He should be worried. Now that this fool is in charge we are all doomed. That I should live to see socialism annihilated in this way. When I was a child we would have called that man a fascist. Ha!” Madame Poulain dissolved into a fit of coughing, which consumed her for some time. Cat fetched her a glass of water and poured her vermouth, all the while anxiously listening for other signs of life in the apartment. She could hear nothing.

Eventually Madame Poulain’s hacking subsided and she shoved aside the proffered glass of water, grasping the vermouth. Cat passed her her pills and she swallowed each one laboriously after much sighing, followed by raspy gagging. It was the same every night, had been for these last three years. Olivier had hated Madame Poulain, the couple of times he’d met her. Said she was a fake, a phony. Her family were collaborators. How he knew this Cat had no idea, but Olivier’s biggest
bête noire
was phonies. One of his many ironies.

Don’
t think about Olivier. One . . . two . . . three . . .
Cat looked around the room, counting objects to distract herself. She knew what to do now. When Olivier barged into her thoughts as he did so often, she had a rotating carousel of images with which to distract herself, otherwise . . . otherwise she’d go mad, get so angry she’d smash something. She thought of Winterfold. The Christmas when she and Lucy had made the snowman with a beach-bucket-shaped head, covered in sand from the previous summer in Dorset. The walk into the village on an autumn day when the leaves were quince yellow. Her uncle Bill with the wastepaper basket on his head, trying to find his way from one end of the sitting room to the other. Sitting up in bed in her cozy, sunny room on summer mornings peering out of the window at the peach, violet, turquoise sunrise creeping over the hills behind the house. The patchwork cushion Gran had made her, her name in blue hexagons, and Lucy’s rage that she didn’t get one. “She lives here, she has everything!” she’d shouted. She was three years younger than Cat. It had seemed such a big gap sometimes; now it would be nothing at all, she supposed.

All these things she didn’t know. What was Lucy like, still the same? Cat often wondered. She was going to be a famous writer and live in a turret, that was always her aim. Was Southpaw’s leg still bad, and
did
Gran still sing all day, giving you that quick, catlike smile if you corrected her lyrics? And was the patchwork cushion still there? Resting on the old wicker chair, waiting for her to come back?

Yet it was all so clear to her. She remembered every creaking stair, every mark on every wooden pillar, every old, battered book on the shelf opposite the chair:
Ballet Shoes
next to
Harriet the Spy
and
The Story of Tracy Beaker
, a much-too-young birthday present from her father.

She had cut them all off, and now she couldn’t go back. Years and years of feeling like this had changed her personality, she knew. She was
a different Cat now, the one she had always secretly feared becoming. When a door banged these days, she jumped.

•   •   •

“How’s Luke?” she asked finally, when Madame Poulain was more settled.

“Asleep. Curled up in the warmth. You spoil him. Like they always say, the English spoil their pets and ignore their children. He’s your pet, hmm?”

Since Madame Poulain seemed to feed Luke on nothing but biscuits while Cat was at work, this was not something Cat felt equal to tackling at that moment. She could not risk an argument, any shift in the status quo. She was, as ever now the day was drawing to a close, so tired she felt she might slide onto the floor. She rubbed her face; it was a little sunburned, and suddenly she longed for winter. For crisp cool days, for cozy evenings inside, not this dried-out, strung-along warmth.

“I’m just going to go and check on him,” she said, getting up. “Then I’ll make you an omelet, yes?”

“Well . . .” To Madame Poulain, any display of concern for another living thing was a waste of cigarette-smoking time. “Go, then. And—oh, before that—your grandmother rang.”

Cat turned round. Her heart started to thump, hard, in her chest. “Gran rang, here? Did she say why?”

“She wants to know why you have not replied to the invitation.”

Cat cleared her throat. “I . . . what invitation?”

“I said that too. The French post. This man will break the country. I do not—”

“Madame Poulain, please”—Cat’s desperation, just this once, nearly broke through—“has there been an invitation?”

“The strangest thing, today there it was. As I told your grandmother when she rang. And I said that I would pass it along to you, the moment you arrived home.” Madame Poulain slid one bony hand down the side of the chair, like a child sitting on secrets. “They don’t know, hmm? They don’t know your little lie to them, do they?” She handed the creamy card to Cat, who held it between her fingers as though it were something magical.

“Not a lie . . .” she said in a faint voice. The address, in Martha’s familiar elegant hand. It wasn’t a lie when you simply hadn’t told them, was it?

That writing: Cat knew it better than anyone’s. Who else had written her those endless stories, dotted with jewellike, tiny illustrations? Who had stuffed notes into her lunchbox for Cat to find, sitting by herself underneath the scratched and slimy benches in the playground, chin resting on her scabbed knees?

Gran used to sit at the kitchen table every morning, teapot next to her, slim, poised frame perfectly still as she gazed out of the window into her garden, making plans for the day ahead, scribbling little ideas and plots and jokes onto her pad, and notes. These notes, which Cat would find hidden behind her sandwiches, she would usually scrunch up and throw away, embarrassed in case they’d find them again.

Your grandma writes you love notes?

You
baby
.

Your mum’s a hippie, everyone knows that. She freaked out and ran away and that’s why you have to live with your grandma!

Hippie! Hippie! Hippie! Cat’s a hippie!

Memories, sensations, long-buried, threatened to wash over her. The envelope paper was thick, heavy, cold, and Cat’s fingers trembled; she fumbled with the glue, wanting to tear it open, wanting to know what was inside and yet at the same time dreading its contents. Madame Poulain watched her, head curving around the wing of the chair like a gargoyle.

“The letter opener is on the dresser, Catherine. Don’t tear. Don’t be so foolish.”

Oh, shut up, you hateful, awful, loathsome, vile, horrific old woman. Shut up or I will hurt you. I will smash your head in with your precious S
èvres vase and I’ll watch you die and laugh as you do.

She was no longer shocked at how easily thoughts like this slid into her head. She read the invitation, the hand-drawn letters, the plea contained within them, and then looked up, staring at nothing, as the voices that screamed at her from rising to sleeping climbed to a fever pitch. Home to Winterfold. Could she even think about going, this time? What would she tell them about what had happened to her since she left England? How could she start? And how would she get there? She had
no money. She had not been able to afford a Métro
carnet
last week, let alone a Eurostar home.
Home.

She let the card drop to the floor as her fingers twisted restlessly in her lap, and Madame Poulain took her silence for surrender. “I would love that omelet. If you are not going to check on Luke, why don’t you make me one?”

“Yes, of course.”
Everything is all right,
Cat said to herself, going into the kitchen, and when Madame Poulain gave a little grunt of curiosity, she realized she had said it out loud, in English.
Everything is all right.