Chemistry and Other Stories Page 7

  ‘This one,’ Monika said. ‘Not so popular.’

  Auschwitz. A permanent reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust and what mankind is capable of. A full-on three-hour museum and site tour. It’ll blow your mind. Recover back in Kraków with an evening drinking to forget. Round off the night dancing at the city’s liveliest nightclub.

  ‘There’s always one or two get lost,’ Andrew said. ‘Between the clubs and the bars. Who stumble into the gutter and lie there. Jakub and I retrieve them from the police station in the morning.’

  Liz shook her head. What had happened to her shy, thoughtful boy? He must have discerned her perplexity.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said. ‘Half the bars in Kraków have got signs up now: NO BRITISH STAGS OR HENS.’

  ‘The hens are the worse,’ said Monika. ‘I refuse to work on them.’

  ‘You’ve got to remember,’ Andrew said. ‘These English people. They’re scum.’

  After Andrew and Monika returned to Poland, the house was silent and empty in a way that it hadn’t been before they came; nor after John had died. Liz remembered when Andrew was a teenager she’d pass his bedroom door and hear him singing the lyrics of tuneless songs. She’d pause there on the landing and listen, but could make out not a single syllable as her son copied in his tone-deaf way the obscure pronunciation of his favourite band’s singer. As if this irked her memory, Liz would go downstairs singing to herself, the tuneful inanities of the pop songs of her own teenage years. ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’. ‘Poetry in Motion’.

  One day, cleaning Andrew’s room, Liz had found a booklet of lyrics. She switched the Hoover off and read them sitting at his cluttered desk. Calculator. Penknives. Binoculars. Airfix model planes still hanging from the ceiling. The lyrics were densely written, obscure but genuinely intriguing, with odd juxtapositions and thoughtful imagery. She’d felt strangely humbled, and rarely sang to herself again.

  The following spring Liz was sixty years old. The GP practice held a retirement party in the house of one of the partners. More than fifty people came: doctors, nurses, health visitors, midwives, physiotherapists, her fellow receptionists. You didn’t notice what a turnover of staff there was, how constantly people moved on, took maternity leave, retired; how many employees the practice depended upon, then did without. Her own replacement, Lucy, whose children were now at secondary school, was at the party. So, to Liz’s surprise, was Sophie, contacted via someone’s daughter someone knew. She didn’t even look too out of place, wearing clothes cleaner and newer than Liz would have thought she owned, her hair no longer dreadlocked but short, and her skin defaced with fewer piercings than for ten or twelve years.

  Liz was glad to have Sophie walk home with her, and stay the weekend. She brought her mother breakfast in bed, setting the tray on her lap, throwing open the curtains. Liz munched toast sleepily.

  ‘The first day of the rest of your life, Mum. What are you going to do with it?’

  Liz sipped the tea, coming slowly awake. She felt like she was being levered out of a depression she’d otherwise have slipped into; a depression she herself had not considered, but Sophie had.

  ‘Do today, you mean?’ Liz asked.

  ‘No, I mean the rest of your life.’

  Liz frowned. ‘Well, I thought,’ she began. ‘I’d figured … ’ The home improvements, trips, evening classes she’d vaguely imagined seemed too pathetic to mention. She didn’t want to admit: I was thinking of replacing the garden shed. I’ve always wanted to learn Italian. She swallowed the remains of the cup of tea. ‘I have no idea,’ she said.

  ‘In that case,’ Sophie said, ‘we’d better concentrate on today. Let’s go out somewhere. I’ll treat you to lunch.’

  Liz smiled in what she hoped was not a patronising way. ‘You’ve got rich all of a sudden.’ When she looked up, she saw Sophie nodding, wide-eyed, at her.

  ‘I got offered a job,’ she said. ‘A six-month contract. Three of us, doing art projects with kids this summer. Art in the Parks.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Liz said. ‘Here?’

  Sophie grinned. ‘Oxford.’

  Andrew and Monika came back in July. Sophie was, unusually, at home when their taxi arrived. She gave her brother a long, tight hug, the kind that she surely remembered made him uneasy, an embrace inside which Andrew stood unresisting. Sophie and Monika kissed each other’s cheeks, and carried bags inside.

  The visitors unpacked their presents on the kitchen table. ‘Liz,’ Monika said. ‘We bring some of your favourite.’

  Liz watched aghast as Sophie ridiculed one item after another. ‘You brought this stuff in your luggage? You are kidding, right? Sauerkraut? Bigos? Every supermarket in Oxford’s got a Polish section, you numbskulls.’

  It appeared to be the funniest thing Sophie had come across in months. The fact that she’d not seen Andrew in years, and only just met Monika, his friend, did not inhibit her for a moment. The others stared at the unprecious wares. Liz glanced at Monika’s face: the lovely skin tightened over the jawline. Andrew looked embarrassed: he didn’t lift his gaze from studying the grain in the wooden kitchen table.

  ‘Mum could choose from six different kinds of sausage in Summertown alone.’ Sophie shook her head as Andrew morosely unpacked a large jar of honey from layers of bubble wrap. ‘You brought this by plane?’ Sophie shrieked. ‘There’s a Polish restaurant on Cowley Road, we ate there after work on Wednesday.’ She grimaced. ‘Be honest,’ she said. ‘It’s not exactly haute cuisine, is it? Dumplings for starters, dough in the main course and pastries for dessert.’ She looked at Monika. ‘How do you stay so slim?’ Sophie asked. ‘It must be one hell of a struggle, isn’t it?’

  Liz had gained a good impression, last year, of Monika’s temperament. The tension in the room was such it felt like it would only be eased by something – plate, saucer – breaking. It seemed likely Monika might flounce off, at the very least; perhaps even hit out. Instead her clenched expression suddenly loosened. She smiled. Then she began laughing. ‘Sophie. You are right. Yes, you are right. It is terrible. All the women of my mother’s age, they look like the dumplings.’ She turned to Liz. ‘You are naughty,’ she said, wagging her finger, still smiling. ‘You should have told to us. Sophie, she tells us. Andy,’ Monika said, ‘I think we are a little bit stupid.’

  Monika stayed, this time, in Andrew’s room, though the pair displayed no other evidence of a more intimate relationship. Andrew spent time on his own, out walking, or reading at home, while Monika once again attached herself to Liz. They went together to the garden centre in Yarnton, where Monika helped choose a large summer house, and in the days before its delivery they emptied and took apart the old garden shed, which they transported in three trips in and on the roof of Liz’s car to the waste recycling centre at Redbridge. ‘You can’t get anyone to do this kind of odd job any more,’ Liz said. Heaving them with relish, Monika laid extra paving stones ready for the new summer house, which two men brought and put up the following afternoon.

  Sophie came home from running her summer-holiday workshop in one of the municipal parks around the city, just as Andrew wandered in from a walk across Port Meadow.

  ‘You all right?’ one mumbled.

  ‘Yeh. Okay?’ the other responded.

  ‘Why,’ Andrew asked, ‘do people always bang on about heaven?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Sophie said. ‘Like what people?’

  ‘Every religion. Dream of heaven. Work for or wait for or wank for your reward in heaven.’

  When she stopped and tried to look her brother in the eye, what first occurred to Sophie was to wonder what he’d taken. Acid. Mushrooms, maybe. That awestruck sensation.

  ‘I’ve been out on the Meadow all day,’ Andrew said. ‘It’s here, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Heaven. Heaven on earth.’

  There was no sign of either Liz or Monika at home, though the car was in the driveway. Both Sophie and Andrew registered the distant laughter, but
dismissed it as that of neighbours, until some distinctive high note coming through the kitchen window made Sophie say, ‘That’s your girlfriend, isn’t it?’

  They found them at the bottom of the garden, sat in green folding chairs in the otherwise empty, brand-new summer house, drinking champagne. The smell of wood, and wood preservative.

  ‘Fetch two more glasses,’ Liz said. ‘And another bottle, from the fridge. Monika’s helping me christen my new shed.’

  Monika yelped with laughter. ‘Liz. Is no shed,’ she said. ‘This your new summer residence.’ Liz touched Monika’s brown arm as if to beseech her to stop saying such funny things. ‘This Liz place in the country,’ Monika told Sophie and Andrew.

  ‘Seriously, Mum,’ Sophie said. ‘Don’t just fill it up with rusty tools and old paint tins.’

  ‘No,’ said Monika. ‘This Liz yoga room.’

  ‘What are your plans?’ Sophie asked, lighting a cigarette. She sat by one of the summer house windows, and turned to blow smoke out of it.

  Liz realised she’d not asked Andrew or Monika how their work was going, had not wanted to. Is the stag business thriving? No. She would have sounded just like John. Her son was gazing into the garden.

  ‘Andrew?’ Sophie said.

  Andrew closed his eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, What are your plans?’

  Monika addressed Liz. ‘I am sick of being escort for drinking men,’ she said. ‘Also, we have less work. Other companies more extreme. Like hunting stag, bridegroom, through forest with dogs.’

  Andrew shook his head. ‘We thought we might stay,’ he said quietly.

  ‘In England?’ Sophie asked. ‘Both of you?’

  ‘You can stay here,’ Liz said. ‘Of course.’

  Andrew turned to his mother. His gaze rested on the metal legs of her chair. ‘If you’re sure.’

  Andrew drank water. The women grew jovial, their voices loud in the summer dusk. Liz reached across to her daughter, her middle- and fore-fingers outstretched from her fist, as if to propose a game of Scissors Paper Stone. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Give me a puff.’

  ‘Andy,’ said Monika. ‘I make lasagne. You heat up, please. Shall we have salad, too? Liz. Andy make very nice salad.’

  Andrew walked across the lawn and disappeared into the dark house. A moment later lights came on. They could see him moving about in the kitchen, and watched in silence, as if witnessing a performance, a demonstration: The Miracle of Electricity, perhaps. Homo sapiens Prepares a Meal.

  ‘You know,’ said Monika, ‘Andy doesn’t work for months now.’

  ‘His writing?’ Liz asked.

  Monika shook her head. ‘I support him. No, I don’t mind. Of course. But I think perhaps it will be better in England. For one thing, it will stop him going to see those monks.’

  ‘Andrew’s seeing monks?’ Sophie wondered. She made them sound like illusions, like Andrew might be seeing things that weren’t there.

  ‘You mean those hermits on the hill?’ Liz asked.

  Monika nodded. She told them of the men with uncut beards and shaved heads, in their white habits, who never spoke; who’d repudiated bodily pleasures in order to achieve union with God, in silence and tranquillity. ‘Andy goes to church and sits in pew. If monk goes in, to change cloth or flower, is enough for Andy. He gives him nod, you know, and he is content.’

  Sophie copied Monika’s imitation of this nod, exaggerating it further, into a rocking motion. ‘Monks are social misfits,’ she said. ‘Sociophobes who don’t know how to mix. Monasteries are social services; they’ve been providing residential care for centuries.’ She stopped nodding. ‘One wise abbot and a bunch of freaks. The same with convents. It’s like Ashkenazi Jews have a high incidence of the genes for Asperger’s, right? And the idea is the rabbinical tradition absorbs them. Picture them rocking backwards and forwards in their recitations from the Kabbalah.’

  Sophie broke off to refill her glass. The emptied champagne bottle joined the others on the floor. Liz wondered whether her and John’s secularism had in itself driven their children to rebel, towards transcendental solutions to the difficulty of being. In Sophie’s case, to the chemical raptures, and oblivions, of drugs, sex, performance; in Andrew’s, now, to religion. Would God ever disappear from the minds of men? Would the idea always be there, to catch men falling backwards?

  Sophie was rocking her torso. ‘Little Muslims in their madrassahs, too,’ she said, ‘rocking for Allah. Rock and roll, baby. You know AC/DC? See them on YouTube, Monika. Give the little Muslims air guitars, and let them rock away the blues.’

  Monika was laughing, her cheeks swollen, her eyes filling with tears. The alcohol had smudged or distorted her and – because sober she was beautiful – rendered her eerie, almost grotesque. Or maybe, Liz admitted, it was the champagne’s effect on her own perception. Which notion made bubbles of amusement rise from her own stomach.

  ‘What are suicide bombers, for Christ’s sake,’ Sophie declared, ‘but autistic victims of manipulative abusers? I mean, leave them alone. Religion gives a home to the miserable.’ Sophie was away, riffing, finding new things coming out of her mouth, running after them, running after her tongue. Liz wondered whether she was still on any medication. ‘How often do you hear of a suicide in a monastery? Never. They’re full of at-risk individuals, right, who keep on going to a ripe old age. Self-harmers rendered harmless. It’s a miracle.’

  Monika nodded eagerly. ‘I tell him,’ she said.

  ‘You tell him,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Yes, I tell him this.’

  ‘I’ll see how he’s getting on,’ Liz said. She cradled the empty bottles with her left arm, pincered glasses in the fingers of her right hand. She remembered a psychiatrist telling her many years before – half of Sophie’s lifetime ago – that if they could help the girl through these difficult years then there was a good chance she could look forward to a slow calming of the storm. That her brain and body would draw towards a chemical equilibrium. ‘The long view,’ he said. ‘Not much help now, but still … ’

  Halfway across the lawn Liz paused. There was Andrew laying the kitchen table. She turned. It was that moment in the day when night has not yet fallen, the clear sky is indigo, there is light in the atmosphere but you cannot fathom where it comes from. Sophie and Monika were strange shapes lurking inside the wooden building. The orange glow of Sophie’s cigarette when she inhaled. Liz’s new summer house seemed to be floating at the edge of the lawn, as if it had been brought to her by river, towed down the Thames; it would remain tethered here for an endless succession of summer evenings. Neither she nor her children would be lonely. They would drink champagne and reap the harvest of their days.

  The only sound was the intermittent drone of traffic on North Way, and the ring road further afield, but Liz heard a click and a scrape behind her. She turned back to the house as Andrew leaned out of the kitchen window and called, ‘Ready.’

  ‘Coming,’ she replied. If she hadn’t been standing here, Liz reckoned, they’d never have heard him. But she was, so she in turn called over her shoulder, ‘Sophie. Monika. Supper’s ready.’

  To Liz’s great surprise Monika, rather than Andrew, rose early the following Sunday morning and cycled on John’s old bike to church, first to St Gregory and St Augustine just down Woodstock Road, then on to the Polish Mass at Blackfriars in St Giles. A week later she attended the Oratory at St Aloysius and Our Lady’s Parish Church on Hollow Way. At each church she lingered afterwards and introduced herself to those she overheard speaking in Polish. During the week in between, Monika followed up and extended contacts she made, feeding information into a mobile phone and further details into a Lever Arch File with multicoloured tab dividers. She went to the Polish restaurant Sophie had mentioned, and the connected deli next door, but came back disappointed.

  ‘Sophie,’ she said. ‘Why do you say this place is Polish? This woman is Russian. And her husband,’ she said, with disdainful emphasis, ‘he is f
rom Ukraine.’

  On the Wednesday Sophie hired a van and Monika accompanied her to Hastings, and Eastbourne, and other places along the south coast, where Sophie retrieved possessions scattered among the more or less permanent homes of friends and acquaintances. Reeling in the boundaries of herself. They returned to Oxford late in the evening, but within ten minutes Monika had freshened up and was back out, cycling to a club in town, for a Polish night she’d seen advertised on posters attached to lamp posts.

  Liz was as intrigued as she was impressed by Monika’s energy. She surely had a plan. Liz waited. It didn’t seem likely that Andrew was a part of it. He remained behind in the room Monika left early each morning; walking to and from the summer house with a table, plants, a cabinet she stocked with crisps, nuts, olives, Liz caught sight of Andrew sitting at the window, gazing out across the back gardens, past the old fruit trees and the sun-tired lawns.

  If not involved, at least Andrew remained active, leaving the house once a day for long walks from which he’d return with his eyes wide and unfocused. Tired, perhaps, Liz hoped, until, cycling down to Summertown, she saw her son standing on the pavement on the other side of Banbury Road, watching the traffic go by. Or rather, it appeared to her, from the way he seemed both observant yet preoccupied, watching the space between the traffic going by.

  ‘Why don’t you just call it Warsaw Workers or something?’ Sophie asked. ‘Kraków Cleaning Company?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Monika. ‘Must be polite name, with Oxford in.’

  ‘But everyone knows what good workers Poles are. Everyone wants a Pole working in their house. They may not want them in the country, but they want them in their own home.’

  Monika shook her head. ‘Sophie. You don’t understand. We want to make friends, not enemies.’

  Monika had made a poppy-seed cake for tea. Liz thought it was chocolate, until the first chewy and disappointing mouthful. The three women sat around the kitchen table.