He arrived home to find the dining table set for two, the heat and smell of cooking drifting out from the kitchen.
He found Clover at the gas stove, hair up, wearing a man’s shirt and grey cotton trousers. A large pan of oily water coming to the boil, a small pan of deep-red sauce, a bundle of pasta wrapped in floury paper.
‘Spaghetti,’ she said to him, rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand.
He looked at the cookery book she had splayed on the kitchen table. The Kitchen in the Corner by Katharine Whitehorn. He turned to the title page. There, in Paddy Fitz’s best doctor scrawl, was ‘Clover – new girls begin here. All my love, Fitz XXX.’
‘Wot you lookin’ at?’
‘Oh . . . nothing.’
‘Nothin’ my arse. When I said spaghetti you thought I meant out of a tin, din’t yer?’
‘Yes, I suppose I did.’
‘I told you, Troy. Fitz taught me everything. I know a lot more than how to cook in a bedsit. The pasta’s fresh from Brewer Street, so’s the parmesan, an’ it’s yer reggiano, not the common stuff and it doesn’t come in a plastic shaker. And the sauce is bacon and tomato. Only I add a bit of red wine, which she don’t mention in the book because she’s trying to keep the cost down.’
Clover’s bit of red, from the look of the bottle, had been a whole glass of ’55 Fronsac. This was cuisine au coin with a bottomless wallet.
‘Found it under the sink,’ she said.
‘That’s fine,’ said Troy. ‘It’s there to be drunk. Where did you find the clothes?’
‘Wardrobe in the spare room. Not the one you put me in. The other. You don’t mind, do you?’
No, he didn’t mind. It was curiously nostalgic to see her in his old trousers, one of his cast-off collarless shirts from the days before mass-production decided to save five minutes in the working day of the average man by sewing the collars in. Tosca had dressed this way, had worn these same clothes. That was why they were still in the wardrobe. Exactly where she had left them and where he had forgotten them. Clover was only an inch or so taller than Troy. They fitted her far better than they had ever fitted Tosca.
‘Keep them,’ he said. ‘They were my wife’s. She nicked them off me. You might as well have them.’
‘You’re married?!’
‘I think so.’
‘Eh?’
‘We’re separated. I haven’t seen her since 1960.’
Clover did not know how to react to this. It was not, he knew, the awkwardness of the fact of separation, it was discovering that there were things her mother had not told her.
‘Wot’s ’er name?’
‘Tosca.’
‘Tosca?’
‘That’s her surname. She’s called Larissa, but hardly ever uses it.’
Troy decided to kill this subject or they’d be into ‘When did you meet?’, ‘Why did you split up?’ He reached into the cupboard and set out two wine glasses. Poured.
‘How long?’ he asked.
‘As long as it takes to cook the pasta. No more than ten minutes. If you clear out the way, that is.’
He retreated to the sitting room, still clutching the cookery book, and decided to read quietly for the while. It purported to be a survival handbook for life in a bedsitter. He’d never lived in one, never had to. He was surprised to find the author moving readily between food and sex. She was establishing the sexual semaphore that is food and drink. Tosca had once told him that the American for sex was ‘coffee’.
‘I don’t get it,’ he had said. ‘Doesn’t everyone get very confused at breakfast?’
‘No, at breakfast coffee means coffee. At night, say eleven going on midnight, if you say to a woman, or a woman says to you, “Youwannacuppacawffee?” then it means sex.’
‘What does “Youwannacuppatea?” mean?’
‘That means orgy. Two men and a woman, two women and a man, three women, two men and a German Shepherd. All the peas in the goddam pod. Whatever. Why do you think most of us don’t drink tea?’
‘Memories of Boston?’
‘Nah. The whole issue’s too darn risky! You nod to a cup of Earl Grey and the next thing you’re in bed with half of Yankee Stadium!’
If only, he thought, there had been such a book as this in 1935 when he was twenty. How differently life might have flowed. His life did not flow. It flooded and it froze, but flow it did not.
A mouthful of what smelt delicious had scarcely touched his lips before Clover asked, ‘What do you think? Is it all right?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Bad as that?’
‘No – I mean, “Don’t ask” appears to be one of the rules.’
He picked up the cookery book from where it lay splayed next to his plate.
‘It’s one of her rules for social success. Here we are. “Elementary Rules’, subsection entitled ‘Cooking for Men’. Never ask if it’s OK and never apologise.’
‘Is she right?’
‘Of course.’
‘OK. So Fitz didn’t teach me everything.’
‘I’m sure he tried.’
‘But . . . it is OK, isn’t it?’
‘It’s super. You really can cook.’
Head down, she was smiling. He wasn’t at all sure that she wasn’t also blushing a little at the over-solicited compliment.
Afterwards she sat at the table and perused her book while he made coffee. Damn it, let caffeine and Mandrax fight it out in his bloodstream.
And when he set the cup in front of her she spooned in sugar and stirred. He could see the operation of thought as the spoon switched from clockwise to anticlockwise, and he knew, more or less, what was coming.
‘I wonder if I should be there.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? To help him of course!’
‘In what way do you think you could help him?’
‘I could give evidence.’
‘Indeed you could. After all, the prosecution were only too keen to be able to call you. However they can’t find you and without you they’ve had to drop a charge. You’re helping by not being there. If you were there I doubt there’s a thing you could do for Fitz.’
‘I could speak for the defence.’
‘There’d still be a cross-examination.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, let’s begin with the obvious. Did you have sexual intercourse before you were sixteen?’
‘Of course I did. Didn’t you? I mean it’s not illegal, is it?’
‘Yes it is. Did Fitz sleep with you?’
‘Yeah, but that’s different.’
‘How so? You were over sixteen?’
‘No . . . I wasn’t. But it was different. Me and him. Different.’
Troy thought better of asking what she meant. He did not wish to hear the mitigation of the ‘special’ – she surely meant special when she said different? He preferred not know. Sixteen was a line, a legal line, an arbitrary line, below which the law stated that there was no basis of personal responsibility. It was arbitrary whilst trying to be accurate – there were plenty of women knowing and responsible below it and plenty above it who would never be either – but it was a wilfully stupid man who ignored that line.
‘Did Fitz ever introduce you to men with whom you subsequently had sexual intercourse.’
‘What? You mean deliberately?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Fitz doesn’t even need to know you slept with them. The question is did he effect the introduction?’
‘Nah. Fitz didn’t find boyfriends for me. I don’t need anyone to find boyfriends for me. You may not have noticed, Troy, but I’m a looker. Men queue up to ’ave me!’
She stopped, let the change in Troy’s expression sink in.
‘Wossamatter? Have I said something wrong?’
‘Not wrong. Awful. Damning. Imagine that it is not me talking to you across the dinner table, but Henry Furbelow, Queen’s Counsel and in this instance the prosecuting counsel at the Old Bailey. Imagine the effect of your last remark upon him. Upon a jury of middle-aged men and women. If I were Furbelow, I would have a ready follow-up. Are you now or have you ever been a prostitute?’
‘Nah. Leave it out!’
‘They don’t leave it out. Men like Furbelow leave nothing out. Have you ever accepted a gift in money or goods from a man with whom you have just had sexual intercourse?’
‘Yeah. Lots of women do that. If a bloke wants to bung you a few bob for a frock or some make-up it’s no different from if he brings you flowers.’
Troy shook his head.
‘As things stand Fitz isn’t facing a procurement charge. If you get up in court with all your good intentions, they’ll revive that charge and add another count of immoral earnings. And if you ever tell anyone you slept with him before you were sixteen they’ll lock him up and throw away the key.’
‘Tell me what you think, Troy. Is Fitz going to get off ?’
‘If the case against him unrolls as I have seen it do to date, then it’s a shambles, but the judge is old school and cuts the defence no slack. And I’ve watched the jury. There are no free thinkers there. They may just convict him despite all they’ve heard. Stay out of it, Clover.’
He gathered up the plates and stacked them in the kitchen. When he returned she was still sitting there.
‘What you mean is, don’t meddle. Leave well alone. That’s what my grandad says.’
She was angry. He had treated her as a child. What had appeared to be a promising evening without hostilities had just taken a turn for the worst. He pleaded tiredness, told no lies, and went early to bed.