Ritual (2 page)

Nobody had ever
guessed what he did for a living, nobody in twenty-one years. Most of the time,
this anonymity gave him a slightly bitter sense of satisfaction; but at other
times it made him feel so lost and isolated that he could scarcely breathe.

‘Of course,
this place has been going to the dogs ever since Mrs Foss took over,’ the
waitress said, as if they ought to know exactly who Mrs Foss was, and why she
should have such a degenerative influence. She curled up her lip.
‘Mrs Foss and all the other Fosses.’

‘How many
Fosses are there exactly?’ asked Charlie. Martin covered his mouth with his
hand to hide his amusement. He enjoyed it when his father was being dry with
people.

‘Well,
there’s
six, if you count Edna Foss Lawrence. There used to
be seven, of course, but Ivy went missing the week before Thanksgiving two
years gone.’

Charlie nodded,
as if he remembered Ivy Foss going missing just like it was yesterday. ‘It
sounds to me like too many Fosses spoil the broth,’ he remarked.

‘She’d burn a
can of beans, that woman,’ said the waitress. ‘Come on, now, why don’t you let
me get you the snapper. I should
of
warned you not to
have the veal.’

There was a
sharp sizzling crack, and the restaurant flickered like a scene out of a Mack
Sennett movie. One of the matrons pressed her hands to her face, and cried out,
‘Mercy!’ Everybody looked around, their retinas imprinted with luminous green
trees of lightning. Then a bellowing thunderclap rattled the plates and jingled
the glasses, and set the panes of the old colonial windows buzzing.

‘I think God’s
telling me to finish my veal and behave myself,’ said Charlie.

‘I thought you
said they were demons,’ Martin reminded him.

‘I don’t
believe in demons.’

‘Do you believe
in God?’

Charlie looked
across at Martin, narrow-eyed. The rain began to patter against the windows.

‘Would it make
any difference to you if I said that I didn’t?’

‘Marjorie
always says that you have to believe in something.’

‘How come you
call your mom Marjorie but you won’t call me Charlie?’

‘How come you
never say you hate anything?’

Charlie looked
down at his plate. Then, for the first time in years, he put his knife and fork
together, even though he hadn’t scraped the plate clean. ‘You may find it
difficult to understand, but when you’re somebody’s employee, as I am, you have
to do what’s expected of you, regardless of your own personal feelings.’

‘Even if you don’t respect yourself?’

Charlie was
silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘If you and I are going to be friends, you
should try to get out of the habit of quoting your mother at me.’

Martin flushed.
The waitress came over and set down their drinks. ‘You saved your stomach some
extra torture there, sir,’ she told Charlie, taking his plate away.

‘We’ll have the
apple pandowdy,’ said Charlie.

‘Are you that tired
of life?’ the waitress remarked.

The rain
trailed across the parking lot and dripped from the yew hedges that surrounded
the restaurant gardens. There was another dazzling flicker of lightning, and
another furniture-moving bout of thunder. Charlie sipped his wine and wished it
were colder and drier.

Martin stared
out of the window.

‘You could have
gone to stay with the Harrisons,’ said Charlie.

Martin was
frowning, as if he could see something outside the restaurant, but couldn’t
quite decide what it was. ‘I didn’t want to stay with the Harrisons. I wanted
to come around with you.

In any case,
Gerry Harrison is such a turd-pilot.’

‘Would you keep
it clean?’ Charlie requested. He wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘In any case,
what the hell is a – turd-pilot?’

‘There’s
somebody outside there,’ said Martin.

Charlie turned
around in his seat and looked out into the garden. All he could see was a
sloping lawn and a row of badly trimmed hedges. In the middle of the lawn stood
an old stone sundial, leaning at a derelict angle; and further back, surrounded
by a tangle of old man’s beard, hunched a wet, half-collapsed shed.

‘I don’t see
anybody,’ he said. ‘And who the hell would want to stand out there in the
middle of a storm?’

‘Look – there!’
Martin interrupted him, and pointed.

Charlie
strained his eyes. For one moment, through the rain that herringboned the
windowpanes, he thought he glimpsed somebody standing just to the left of the
shed, veiled like a bride with old man’s beard. Somebody dark, somebody stooped,
with a face that was disturbingly pale. Whoever it was, man or woman, it wasn’t
moving. It was standing staring at the restaurant window, while the rain lashed
across the garden so torrentially that it was almost laughable; like a
storm-at-sea movie in which all the actors are repeatedly doused with
bucketfuls of water.

There was a
third flash of lightning, even more intense than the first; and for one split
second every shadow in the garden was blanched white. But whoever had been
sheltering there had disappeared. There was only the old man’s beard, and the
dilapidated shiplap shed, and the bushes that dipped and bowed under the
relentless lashing of the rain.

‘Optical
illusion,’ said Charlie.

Martin didn’t
answer, but kept on staring outside.

‘Ghost?’
Charlie suggested.

‘I don’t know,’
said Martin. ‘It gave me a weird kind of a feeling, that’s all.’

The waitress
returned with their plates of apple pandowdy and a jug of country cream. She
was grimacing as she came across the restaurant. Walking close behind her was a
short, fat woman in a blue and turquoise tent dress. There was an air of
ferocious authority
about
her which told Charlie at
once that this must be Mrs Foss, under whose direction the Iron Kettle was
going to the dogs.

Mrs Foss wore
spectacles that looked as if they had been modelled on the rear end of a ‘58

Plymouth Fury.
The skin around her mouth was tightly lined,
and the fine hairs on her cheeks were clogged with bright beige foundation.

‘Well, hello
there,’ she announced. ‘I’m always glad to see strangers.’

Charlie rose
awkwardly out of his seat, and shook her hand, which was soft and limp, but
jagged with diamond rings.

‘Harriet tells
me you didn’t care for the veal,’ said Mrs Foss, the lines around her lips
bunching tighter.

‘The veal was
acceptable,’ said Charlie, making sure that he didn’t catch Martin’s eye.

‘You didn’t eat
it,’ Mrs Foss accused him. ‘Usually, they polish the plate.’

The patronizing
use of the word ‘they’ didn’t go unnoticed by a man who had eaten and slept in
over four thousand different American establishments.

‘I’m sorry if I
gave you an extra dish to wash.’ Charlie told her.

‘The
dishwashing isn’t here and it isn’t there. What concerns me is that you didn’t
eat your food.’

Charlie lowered
his eyes and played with his spoon. ‘I don’t think I was quite as hungry as I
thought I was.’

Mrs Foss said,
‘
You
won’t find a better restaurant anywhere in
Litchfield County, I can promise you that.’

Charlie was
sorely tempted to say that if there wasn’t anywhere better,
then
God help Litchfield County, but Harriet the waitress chipped in, ‘
Le Reposoir
.’

Mrs Foss turned
to Harriet wild-eyed. ‘Don’t you even whisper that name!’ she barked, her jowls
wobbling like a Shar-pei. ‘Don’t you even breathe
it!
’

‘A rival
restaurant, I gather?’ said Charlie, trying to save Harriet from Mrs Foss’s
blistering wrath. Lightning crackled through the room, and for one second they
were all turned white.

‘I wouldn’t
grace that place by calling it an abattoir, let alone a restaurant,’ snapped
Mrs Foss.

‘I’m sorry,’
said Charlie. ‘I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of it.’

‘Do
yourself
a favour, and stay well clear,’ Mrs Foss said.
‘Those fancified French folks, with all of their unpleasant ideas.’ She
betrayed an upbringing many hundreds of miles south of Litchfield County,
Connecticut, by the way she said ‘idee-yuhs’. ‘Most of the neighbourhood
children take the long way round through Alien’s Corners, since that place was
opened. And you won’t catch any of the local clientele going to dine there, no
sir.’

Charlie reached
into the inside pocket of his sport coat and took out his worn leather-covered
notebook. ‘What did you say it was called, this place?’

‘
Le Reposoir
,’ said Harriet, leaning over
Mrs Foss’s shoulder like Long John Silver’s parrot.

‘That’s Le like
in Jerry Lee Lewis; repos like in repossess; oir like in -’

‘Harriet! Table
six!’ boiled Mrs Foss.

‘I’m going,’
Harriet told her, lifting a hand to ward off Mrs Foss’s anger. ‘I’m going.’

‘I have to
apologize for Harriet,’ fussed Mrs Foss. ‘I promised her mother I’d give her a
job waitressing. There was nothing much else she could do.’ She tapped her
forehead. ‘You wouldn’t say deficient, but you wouldn’t say genius.’

Charlie nodded
his head in acknowledgement, and tucked his notebook back into his coat. ‘I
guess it takes all sorts.’

Mrs Foss
pointed towards his coat. ‘You’re not thinking of going to that place, are
you?’

‘Is there any
reason why I shouldn’t?’ ‘I could give you just about a hundred reasons. I know
folks like that from before. I used to run a restaurant on Chartres Street in
New Orleans; Paula Foss’s Red Beans
And
Rice, that was
the name of the restaurant. I used to know folks like that back in those days.
Frenchified, and suave.
We used to call them the Celestines.
Private, that’s what they were; but secret’s a better word.
Secret.’

Martin said,
‘He’s there again, look.’

Charlie didn’t
understand what Martin meant at first. Then Martin urged him, ‘Out of the
window, lookl’

Mrs Foss
squinted towards the garden. ‘What’s the boy talking about?’

Martin stood
up, and walked stiff-legged over to the wide French windows. The matrons turned
to stare at him. He shielded his eyes with his hand, and peered out into the
rain. Charlie said,

‘Martin?’

‘I saw him,’
said Martin, without turning around. ‘He was by the sundial.’

Mrs Foss
glanced at Charlie, and then went over to stand next to Martin by the window.
‘There’s nobody there, honey. That’s my private garden. Nobody’s allowed in
there.’

Charlie said,
‘Come on,
Martin,
let’s see what we can do to this
apple pandowdy.’

Martin came
away from the window with obvious reluctance. Charlie thought he was looking
pale. Maybe he was tired, from all of their travelling. Charlie was so used to
driving and eating and eating and driving that it was easy for him to forget
how punishing his daily routine could be. Since they had taken the Major Deegan
Expressway out of New York three days ago, heading north-eastwards, they had
covered well over 700 miles and eaten at nine different hotels and restaurants,
from an over-heated Family Cabin in White Plains with sticky red vinyl
banquettes in the dining room to a pretentious English-style Chop House on the
outskirts of Darien at which every dish had been given a Dickensian name – Mr
Micawber’s Muffins, Steak Dombey and Chicken Copper-field.

Martin said, in
a panicky-suffocated voice, ‘You won’t let it in, Dad, will you?’

Charlie was
ducking his head forward to take his first mouthful of apple. He hesitated,
with his spoon still poised. He hadn’t heard Martin talk like that since he was
tiny.

‘What did you
say?”

Martin glanced
quickly back towards the window.
‘Nothing.
It’s okay.’

‘Come on,’
Charlie encouraged him. ‘Eat your dessert.’

Martin slowly
pushed his plate away.

‘You’re not
hungry?’ said Charlie. ‘It’s good. Taste it. It’s just about the best thing
here.’

Martin shook
his head. Charlie watched him for a moment with fatherly concern,
then
went back to his apple. ‘I hope you’re not pining for
anything, that’s all.’ He swallowed, and then reached for his glass of wine.
‘Your mother won’t be home for ten more days, and I can’t keep you with me if
you’re sick.’

Martin said,
with unexpected vehemence, ‘It’s all right, I’m not sick, I’m just not hungry.
Come on, Dad, I’ve been eating three meals a day for three days. I never ate so
much
Goddamned
food in my whole Goddamned life.’

Charlie stared
at him. Martin’s faced was hectic and flushed, as if he were running a sudden
fever.

‘Who taught you
to speak to anybody like that?’ Charlie demanded. He was quiet, but he was also
angry. ‘Is that what you learn from you mother, Goddamned this and Goddamned
that? All I did was
ask
you a civil question.’

Martin lowered
his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I apologize.’

Charlie leaned
forward. ‘What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? Listen – I don’t expect you
to behave like the Angel Gabriel. I never did. But we’re friends here, you and
me. At least that’s what fathers and sons are supposed to be, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

Martin kept his
head bowed while Charlie made a theatrical performance of finishing his apple
pandowdy. In truth, he thought it was foul. The cook had emptied what must have
been half a jar of ground cinnamon in it, which made it taste like mahogany
sawdust. He would describe it in his report as ‘wholesome, reasonably fresh,
but over-generously spiced.’

All around the
building, the gutters
gargled
the rain away down iron
throats. The French windows were as dark as the glass in a blind man’s
spectacles. ‘You know something, it’s hard enough to come to terms with this
situation without either of us getting all tied up into knots about it,’
Charlie told Martin.