The Lemon Table (18 page)

He said, and I’ll remember it until my dying day, he said, in that dry voice of his, as if I’d started talking private life in the surgery, he said, “No, not you.”

I thought I’d misheard, and then he said again, “No, not you, you bitch.”

That was a year or two ago, and there’s been worse, but that was the worst, if you know what I mean. I just got out of bed and ran to my room, leaving my clothes in a pile next to his bed. He could work that out for himself in the morning, if he cared to. Not that he did, or remembered. Shame doesn’t come into it, not anymore.

“Cole Slaw,” I read. “Oriental Bean Sprout Salad. Chicory and Beetroot Salad. Wilted Greens. Western Salad. Caesar Salad.” He lifts his head a little. I go on. “Four servings. For this famous recipe from California, leave: 1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced, in ¾ cup olive oil: none other.”

“Cup,” he repeats. By which he means he doesn’t like the way Americans give measures in cups, any fool knows how the size of a cup can vary. He’s always been like that, very precise. If he was cooking and a recipe said. “Take two or three spoonfuls of something,” he’d get ratty because he’d want to know if two was right or three was right, they can’t both be right, can they, Viv, one must be better than the other, it’s logical.

Sauté the bread. Two heads of romaine, salt, dry mustard, generous gratings of pepper.

“Generous,” he repeats, meaning as above.

Five fillets of anchovy, three tablespoons wine vinegar.

“Less.”

One egg, two to three tablespoons parmesan cheese.

“Two
to
three?”

“The juice of a lemon.”

“I like your figure,” he says. “I’ve always been a tit man.”

I don’t take any notice.

The first time I did him Caesar Salad, it worked wonders. “You flew Pan Am, I’d been at an Oral-B conference in Michigan, and you joined me, and we were driving from nowhere to nowhere, deliberately.” That was one of his jokes. You see, he’d always want to know what we were doing, and when, and why, and where. Nowadays they’d call him a control freak, but most people were like that then. Once I said to him, why can’t we be more spontaneous, just take off for a change? And he’d given his little smile and said, “Very well, Viv, if that’s what you want, we’ll go from nowhere to nowhere, deliberately.”

He remembered Dino’s Diner, just off the interstate, way down South. We’d stopped for lunch. He remembered our waiter, Emilio, who said he’d been taught to make a Caesar Salad by a man who’d been taught by the man who first invented it. Then he described Emilio making it in front of us, pounding the anchovies with the back of a spoon, dropping the egg from a great height, playing the parmesan grater like a musical instrument. The last-minute scatter of croutons. He remembered it all, and I remembered it with him. He even remembered what the check came to.

When he’s in this mood, he can make things more vivid than a photograph, more vivid than a normal memory. It’s almost like storytelling, the way he invents it, sitting across from me in his pyjamas and dressing-gown. He invents it, but I know it’s true, because I now remember it. The tin sign, the oil-derrick dipping its head to drink, the buzzard in the sky, the scarf with which I tied back my hair, the rainstorm, and the rainbow after the rainstorm.

He always liked his food. He used to ask his patients about their eating habits, and make a little note afterwards. Then one Christmas, just for fun, he worked out whether patients who liked their food took more care with their teeth than those who didn’t. He made a chart of it all. Wouldn’t tell me what he was up to until he’d finished. And the answer, he said, was that there was no statistically significant connection between enjoying your food and looking after your teeth. Which was disappointing in a way, because you want connections to be there, don’t you?

No, he’s always liked his food. That’s why
Bon Viveur’s London 1954
seemed like such a good idea at the time. It was among some old books he’d kept, from when he was first setting up in practice, first learning to enjoy himself, before he was married to Her. I found it in the spare room and thought it might bring back memories. The pages smelled old, and contained sentences like this: “The Empress Club is Tommy Gale and Tommy is the Empress Club.” And this: “If you have never used a vanilla pod, in lieu of a teaspoon, when stirring your coffee, you have missed one of the million and one small pleasures of the table.” You see why I thought it might take him back.

He’d marked some of the pages, so I guessed he must have been to the Chelsea Pensioner and the Antelope Tavern and somewhere called Bellometti in Leicester Square, which was run by a fellow known as “Farmer” Bellometti. The entry for this place begins: “‘Farmer’ Bellometti is so elegant that he must embarrass his livestock and shame disorderly furrows.” Sounds like it was written a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? I tried out a few names and places on him. Le Belle Meunière, Brief Encounter, Hungaria Taverna, Monseigneur Grill, Ox on the Roof, Vaglio’s Maison Suisse.

He said, “Suck my cock.”

I said, “I
beg
your pardon.”

He put on a horrid accent and said, “You know how to suck cock, don’t you? You just open your mouth like your cunt—and suck.” Then he looked at me as if to say, Now you know where you are, now you know who you’re dealing with.

I put it down to a bad day, or the drugs. And I didn’t think it had anything to do with me, either. So the next afternoon I tried again.

“Did you ever go to somewhere called Peter’s?”

“Knightsbridge,” he replied. “I’d just done a tricky crown repair on a theatrical lady. American, she was. Said I’d saved her life. Asked if I liked food. Gave me a fiver and told me to take my best girl to Peter’s. Very kindly rang up beforehand and told them to expect me. I’d never been anywhere so fancy. There was a Dutch pianist called Eddie. I had the mixed grill Peter’s: steak, frankfurter, slice of liver, fried egg, grilled tomato and two slices of grilled ham. Remember it to this day. Fat as a tick I was afterwards.”

I wanted to ask who his best girl had been at the time, but instead I said, “What did you have for dessert?”

He frowned, as if consulting a distant menu. “Fill your cunt up with honey and let me lick it out, that’s what I call dessert.”

As I say, I didn’t take it personally. I thought it might have something to do with whichever girl he’d taken to Peter’s all those years ago. Later, in bed, I checked the entry for the restaurant. He’d remembered it absolutely right. And there
was
a Dutch pianist called Eddie. He played every night of the week from Monday to Saturday. The reason he didn’t play on Sunday, I read, was “not due to disinclination on Eddie’s part, or grouchiness on Mr. Steinler’s, but to the primness of our nationals which stultifies gaiety like an ingrowing toenail.” Is that what we do? Do we stultify gaiety? Mr. Steinler, I suppose, must have been the proprietor.

He used to say to me, when we first met, “Life is just a premature reaction to death.” I told him not to be morbid, we had the best years ahead of us.

I don’t want to give the impression that food is the only thing he’s ever been interested in. He used to follow the news, and always had his opinions. His convictions. He liked horse-racing, though he was never a betting man: twice a year, the Derby and the National, that was enough for him, couldn’t even get him to have a flutter on the Oaks or the St. Leger. Very controlled, you see; careful. And he’d read biographies, especially of people in show business, and we travelled, and he liked dancing. But all that’s gone now, you see. And he doesn’t like food anymore; not to eat, anyway. I make him purees in the blender. I won’t buy the tinned stuff. He can’t have alcohol, of course, that would over-excite him. He likes cocoa, and warm milk. Not too hot, it mustn’t boil, just warmed to body temperature.

When it all began, I thought, well it’s better than some things he could have got. Worse than others, better than some. And though he’ll forget things, he’ll always be himself, there, underneath, through and through. It may be like a second childhood, but it’ll be
his
childhood, won’t it? That’s what I thought. Even if it gets bad and he doesn’t recognize me, I’ll recognize him, always, and that will be enough.

When I thought he was having trouble with people, with remembering them, I got down the photo album. I stopped keeping it a few years ago. Didn’t like what came back from the chemist’s, if you want to know the truth. He started at the final page, I don’t know why, but it seemed like a good idea, going backwards through your life rather than forwards. Back, together, with me at his side. The last photos I’d stuck in were from the cruise, and they weren’t very successful. Or rather, they weren’t very flattering. A table of red-faced pensioners in paper hats with staring eyes all pink from the flash. But he examined every picture with what I thought was recognition, then slowly worked his way back through the book: retirement, silver wedding, trip to Canada, weekend breaks in the Cotswolds, Skipper just before we had him put down, the flat after and then before redecoration, Skipper when he first arrived, and so on, back and back, until he got to the holiday we took after we’d been married a year, in Spain, on the beach, with me in a costume I’d worried about in the shop until I realized we’d hardly be likely to run into any of his colleagues. When I’d first put it on I couldn’t believe what it showed. Still, I decided to go for it, and … well, let’s just say that I didn’t have any complaints about its effect on marital relations.

Now, he stopped at the photo, peered at it for a long time, then looked up at me. “I could really do
her
tits,” he said.

I’m not a prude, whatever you might think. What shocked me wasn’t the “tits.” And after I’d got over it, it wasn’t the “her” either. It was the “do.” That was what shocked me.

He’s good with other people. I mean, he’s proper with them. Gives them a half-smile, and nods, like some old teacher recognizing a former pupil but not quite being able to place the name or which year they were in the sixth form. He’ll look up at them, and pee quietly into his pads, and say, “You’re a very nice man, he’s a very nice man, you’re a very nice man,” in response to whatever they say, and they’ll go away thinking, Yes I’m almost sure he remembered me, he’s still there underneath it all, terribly sad of course, sad for him and sad for her, but I expect he was glad of the visit, and that’s my duty done. I’ll close the door behind them and when I get back he’ll be pushing the tea things on to the floor, smashing another cup. I’ll say, “No, let’s not do that, let’s leave them on the tray,” and he’ll say, “I’m going to stuff my prick up your big fat arse and fuck you up the bum in out in out and then squirt squirt squirt it up you.” Then he’ll give a cackle, as if he’d got away with it just now over tea, as if he’d tricked me. As if he’d always tricked me, all down the years.

From the start he had the better memory, that’s the joke of it. I used to think that I’d be able to rely on him, on him remembering; in the future, I mean. Now I look at the pictures of some weekend break in the Cotswolds twenty years ago and think, where did we stay, what’s that church or abbey, why did I photograph this forsythia hedge, who did the driving, and did we have marital relations? No, I don’t ask the last bit, though I might as well.

He says, “Suck my balls, go on, take them into your mouth one at a time and diddle-diddle them with your tongue.” He doesn’t make it sound fond. He says, “Squirt baby lotion all over your tits and push them together with your hands and let me fuck you between them and come on your neck.” He says, “Let me shit in your mouth, you’ve always wanted me to do that, haven’t you, you tight bitch, just fucking let me do it for a change.” He says, “I’ll pay you to do what I want, but you can’t pick and choose, you have to do everything, I’ll pay you, I’ve got my lump-sum pension, no point leaving it for
her
.” By “her” he doesn’t mean Her. He means me.

I’m not worried about that. I’ve got power of attorney. Except that when he gets worse I’ll have to pay for nursing. And depending how long he lives, I may well spend it all. No point leaving any for
her
indeed. I expect I’ll find myself doing sums. Like: twenty or thirty years ago he spent two or three days working with all the skill and concentration at his disposal to earn money I’ll now spend in an hour or two getting a nurse to wipe his bottom and put up with the jabber of a naughty five-year-old. No, that’s not right. A naughty seventy-five-year-old.

He said, all that time ago, “Viv, I want to have a long affair with you. After we’re married.” On our wedding night he unwrapped me like a present. He was always tender. I used to smile at his ways, I’d say, “It’s all right, I don’t need an anaesthetic for this.” But he didn’t like me making jokes in bed, so I stopped. I think in the end he took it more seriously than I did. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with me in that department either. I just think you should be allowed to laugh if the need arises.

What’s happened now, if you want to know the truth, is that I’m finding it hard to remember what we were like in bed together. It seems like something other people did. People wearing clothes they thought fashionable but which now seem silly. People who went to Peter’s and heard Eddie the Dutch pianist play every night except Sunday. People who stirred their coffee with vanilla pods. That strange, that far away.

Of course, he still has his good days as well as his bad ones. We go from nowhere to nowhere, deliberately. On his good days, he won’t get over-excited, and he’ll enjoy his warm milk, and I’ll read to him. And then, for a while, things will be how they used to be. Not how they used to be before, but how they used to be just a while ago.

I never say his name to get his attention, because he thinks I’m referring to someone else, and that panics him. Instead, I’ll say, “Beef Goulash.” He won’t look up, but I’ll know he’s heard. “Lamb or Pork Goulash,” I’ll continue. “Veal and Pork Goulash. Belgian Beef Stew or Carbonnade Flamande.”

“Foreign muck,” he’ll mutter with a quarter of a smile.