Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
Beau was suffering. Tamar was so easy to be with, he was finding the situation very confusing. He kept thinking he wanted to twinkle, because that would be his normal response to spending time with such a beautiful woman, but then he found he couldn’t, because it was more like being with a friend.
This dynamic was so different. He didn’t have that permanent cliff-edge feeling he normally had with desirable women. The will-we-won’t-we? – or more like when-will-we? – tension just wasn’t there and he didn’t know if that was because he was keeping his promise to his mother or because he just felt so strangely at ease with Tamar.
It was even fun doing food shopping together. Buying groceries with her made doing something he normally found excruciating and old person-ish into a bit of a lark. He could see that she was as discerning as his mother about what to buy. She’d been very particular in the fish shop about which bit of hot-smoked beetroot salmon she’d wanted and she’d seemed to audition each courgette personally in the greengrocers. He’d picked them up to do twirls and little routines to impress her, which had made her laugh.
‘I can’t believe I’m queueing for bread,’ he said, as they waited in the line outside Maker and Baker in Kings Road. ‘It’s like being in Soviet Russia.’
‘This is the sort of thing that made my mother move to London in the nineties,’ said Tamar. ‘Which took some doing in those days. She’d be horrified if she could see me doing this, when there’s so much lovely sliced white bread for the taking in the Co-op.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude about your homeland.’
‘It’s fine. I’m as British as you are, but I totally understand why we would queue fifteen minutes for one loaf of proper sourdough – and once you taste this bread, you will think it was worth it.’
‘Is your mum still in London?’ asked Beau, just to make conversation.
‘No, she died when I was fifteen.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, realising how much more saying that meant now he knew what it was like to lose a parent. ‘My dad died a few months ago.’
‘I know,’ she said, looking at him kindly. ‘I’m so sorry. Your mum told me. It’s very recent for you – is it even six months?’
‘Just over seven,’ he said, trying not to remember the actual date. It made it all too real. But no, he couldn’t stop it – here it came, all flooding back. The phone call from Rey checking he was in the studio, where he then turned up to tell him what had happened and to take Beau home to his mum, who had been almost catatonic with shock.
Beau hadn’t been sure how to take each next breath.
He felt a bit queasy just thinking about it and then something like panic started to rise in him. He really didn’t want to have a meltdown in front of a beautiful woman in a bread queue in St Leonards.
Tamar was looking at him intently. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, putting a hand gently on his shoulder.
He shook his head, unable to speak.
‘Why don’t you go into that café we passed and I’ll be there in a minute? It’s only a few shops back.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d rather stay here with you, if that’s okay, because you know why I’m being a cringing weirdo. You understand.’
A tear rolled down his cheek, the bastard. He wiped it off roughly, mortified, but then Tamar gently folded her arms round him and held him in a firm hug, which was extremely comforting – and extraordinarily unarousing.
When they got back with the shopping, Sophie was delighted to find they’d bought everything exactly as she’d specified. Even the flowers were spot on, she said – one bunch that would be right for the dinner table and another featuring bold flowers, preferably orange.
‘Perfect,’ she said, picking up the rather garish lilies.
‘Who are those orange ones for?’ asked Beau. ‘They don’t seem very you.’
‘They’re for my other neighbour, Agata,’ she said. ‘The one you haven’t met yet. I thought you could deliver them to her and invite her to the dinner tonight. Tell her Olive’s coming and say it’s the usual time.’
Beau waited so long after ringing Agata’s bell, he began to wonder whether she was out or if he should press it again. Perhaps she was upstairs and hadn’t heard it. But just when he was about to give up, a small figure become visible behind the frosted glass.
‘Who is this?’ asked a strongly accented voice.
‘Hi Agata, it’s Beau from next door, Sophie’s other son.’
The door immediately opened. There was a tiny little woman standing there wearing a bright orange hat. It went perfectly with the flowers.
‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘How nice to meet the other son.’
‘These are for you,’ he said, handing her the flowers.
She took them and hugged them to her chest, closing her eyes. ‘Thank you. Tiger lilies. How did you know they are my favourites?’
‘My mum said get orange flowers.’
‘I think my hat was a clue,’ said Agata. ‘I often wear it.’
‘It’s fantastic.’ What a brilliant old bird. How his dad would have loved her. ‘I’ve got something else to deliver as well, actually,’ he added. ‘An invitation.’
‘Why don’t you come in?’ She stepped back to make room for him and seeing her turning awkwardly, holding the flowers, Beau stepped inside and gently took them from her.
‘Shall I stick these in the kitchen sink?’ he asked. ‘You can do something with them later.’
‘Good idea,’ said Agata. ‘And you know where the kitchen is, because it’s like your house in a mirror. I will go into the sitting room, you come and find me there.’
Beau walked through to the kitchen and stopped in his tracks. It was an untouched seventies classic: plain teak cupboards with simple steel handles; large quarry tiles on the floor; brown, white and yellow geometric tiles on the walls. It had been knocked through to create an adjoining dining area with a large table and Cesca chairs – bent metal with rush seats. So cool.
He ran some water into the sink for the flowers and then, seeing a filter jug on the side, he opened the cupboard above it and found some glasses. Elderly people never drank enough. He remembered that from when their granny had lived with them. He filled two glasses with water and carried them to the sitting room.
It was another perfect seventies time capsule, with Agata sitting in an Eames lounge chair by the window.
‘I thought you might like some water,’ he said, putting the glass down on the Noguchi coffee table next to her. ‘Or I could make you a cup of tea.’
‘Water is perfect, thank you. Most of all I just want to talk to you. Sit, please.’
Beau sat down opposite her and raised his glass before taking a drink. He was trying not to look round the room too obviously, checking out all the classic mid-century furniture that his friends would kill for.
‘I hope you don’t mind my old-fashioned house.’
‘I’m obsessed with your house. It’s off-the-scale cool. If only my mum had done her kitchen like yours.’
Agata laughed. ‘You don’t like the pink, then?’
Beau pulled a face. ‘I’d never say anything to Mum. It’s just such a weirdly big change from our old place, but she likes it and that’s all that matters. But I totally love your house, Agata. Did you do it like this?’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘When we moved here in 1972. I have changed nothing since and I never will.’
‘I’m so glad you haven’t. This is like a dream home for me and all my friends.’
‘So now I am back in fashion,’ said Agata, smiling. ‘For a long time this house was considered a crime. The horror on people’s faces in the 1980s was... Well, for me, very funny, because I knew they were ignorant and stupid. If something is well made and works well to live with, it will always be right and all this change, change, change... pfff.’ She flapped her hands in the air, as if brushing the idea away. ‘I don’t want any more change in my life, Beau. I had enough change by the time I was five.’
Beau wondered what she meant by that but didn’t feel he could ask.
‘And you have also had a terrible change,’ she continued, leaning towards him. ‘Losing your father like that. Such a shock, I am so sorry.’
He smiled at her weakly. ‘Thank you.’
‘And don’t underestimate the effect of the shock. The way he died was so brutal and you all have to get over that before you can even start on the real grieving.’
Beau looked back at her. He’d never thought of that before. Even beyond the visceral sorrow, he had been feeling decidedly peculiar.
‘It’s been a bit like an out-of-body experience,’ he said. ‘I don’t quite feel I’m here.’
Partly because of the other thing that I can’t talk to anybody about , he thought, but she was probably right about the shock too.
‘I understand,’ said Agata. ‘As I said, I had experienced a lot of change and shock already when I was a child.’
It was the second time she’d mentioned it, so he now felt he could ask – that she wanted him to.
‘What happened?’
‘I came to England in 1940 on the last Kindertransport,’ she said, looking at him steadily with her unusually pale blue eyes. ‘On my own. I was five. From Holland to Harwich.’
‘Just you?’
Agata nodded. ‘All the rest of my family were killed by the Nazis. Parents, older siblings, grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunties, great uncles, great aunts. Everybody. And all the neighbours and friends and playmates and teachers and doctors and rabbis and chimney sweeps and shopkeepers and musicians and dressmakers. Everybody I had ever known. Maybe a few survived, but how I would know? They could be anywhere. That is enough change for one life, don’t you think?’
Beau couldn’t reply. He just nodded.
Agata reached over and patted his hand. ‘It’s okay, I’ve had a long time to get used to it, but anything I can control – like the décor in this house – I must control. I’m sure you can understand.’
‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘What country were you born in?’
‘I am Czech,’ said Agata. ‘Well, I was Czech, but I have lived here for over eighty years, so really I’m British.’ She smiled in a complicit way he found endearing and it made him think again how much Matt would have loved her. He would have had his notebook out, drawing her as she talked. But Beau really didn’t want to think about his father’s notebooks.
‘So you may wonder why I still sound like I just got off the last EasyJet from Prague?’
‘Well,’ said Beau, ‘I do think you’re entitled to your national identity...’
‘I fake it!’ said Agata, clapping her hands in delight. ‘I went to school in Norfolk. I lived with an English family there until I was twenty, very good people – and of course, I spoke just like them.’ She had broken into perfect Received Pronunciation. ‘Cut glass,’ she said, in the same voice, then switched back to her Czech accent. Then I moved to London in the fifties, where it was chic to be foreign, and I wore a polo neck and capri pants and a beret and I drank espresso... I was fabulous. Then I met my lovely English husband, with his safe job as an engineer and we moved to this house over fifty years ago. So I’m nearly as English as you are, but I keep my fake accent, because I like it.’
Beau threw his head back, laughing. He laughed more than he had for a long time. It felt great.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be laughing when you’ve just told me such a terrible thing about losing your family – I’m so sorry, but your accent, it’s just so...’ So exactly the kind of thing my dad loved .
Agata smiled broadly, clearly delighted she’d amused him. ‘Well, that’s our secret now, Beau. You can tell everybody the tragic story about my family – it’s better they know, I would be grateful – but my accent is between us? Okay?’
Beau nodded, grinning. ‘I promise, scout’s honour, not that I ever was a scout, but I get the idea. Now, I’d better get back to Mum, who asked me to tell you that dinner is at our place tonight. Olive’s coming and it’s the usual time. Does that make sense?’
‘Every sense,’ said Agata, beaming with delight. ‘Lovely! And you will be there?’
Beau nodded. ‘I will be, plus Mum’s friend Rey, who I think you’ve met, and his friend Tippy, who is really fun, and someone called Charlie, who I think is my uncle’s friend, and another new friend of mum’s, who she’s working with at the moment.’
‘Ah, yes. The very beautiful girl, I have seen them walking past together. You might fall in love, Beau.’
He laughed. ‘Unlikely. It’s the absolutely last thing I’m looking for, plus Mum has given me strict instructions to leave her well alone in that regard.’
‘Instructions about love?’ said Agata. ‘Oh, I wish her luck with that.’