Chestnut Street (46 page)

The third was from a twelve-year-old boy called Sandy.

He said he had just come to live with his grandfather on Chestnut Street and neither of them could cook. Could she come to their house and teach them five simple meals and then he would come to her house five times and get her on the Net and the Web and whatever she wanted?

He was by far the best on offer.

They made the arrangements on the phone: they would have one trial lesson in each place and then they would see. She decided to go to his house first.

Sandy had sticky-up hair and a lot of freckles. He was welcoming and apologetic.

“The place is a little disorganized,” he said, waving vaguely at an extraordinarily messy kitchen. “It’s just that we’re not really used to it, running a house and everything, if you know what I mean.”

Ivy was much too polite to ask why he was now living with his grandfather. It would emerge or it would not. It was as simple as that.

“Yes, I know what you mean. Do you think we should sort of tidy up a bit to give us some space?”

“Would this have to count as one of the five lessons?” Sandy asked anxiously.

“No, not really. Perhaps you could spend the first day helping to tidy up my electronics for me when you come,” Ivy suggested.

That seemed satisfactory.

Cheerfully, they set about cleaning the place up. Saucepans were scrubbed, dishes washed and dried, and a list was made of the provisions they might need to buy before the next visit. Ivy noted what kind of food Sandy and his grandfather wanted to cook; she
said she would teach him to do one fish dish, one chicken, one meat, one vegetarian and a series of starters and desserts.

“Will your grandfather be taking part in the lessons, do you think?” Ivy asked.

“No, I think he’s sort of leaving it to me,” Sandy said. Ivy had always had this great ability to leave things as they were, so she said no more and they arranged to meet the next day at her house.

Sandy came on time with three pages of notes and told her that the main thing was not to be frightened by it all. It just took a little time and then you knew it forever and ever. She loved the way he thought there was a forever and ever stretching out ahead of her.

Sandy had brought a screwdriver, and he changed some of her plugs to make things easier; he found her a good, firm cushion for her chair and showed her how to use the best light possible. By the time he left she could look up Websites and spend a happy few hours checking out things that interested her, like holidays on canal barges, or how to find the people you were at school with, how to identify common garden birds.…

He would teach her how to contact people by e-mail in two days’ time, and, meanwhile, she was to telephone people and find out their e-mail addresses.

Ivy sat up late trying to work out a suitable easy dish to teach this boy and his grandfather. She settled for cod cooked in foil, with vegetables and herbs. She also brought very simple notes that he would understand, with very specific advice.

Ivy had not understood it when it said to “boot up your computer” so why should Sandy understand instructions like “cook till ready” or “reduce by half.”

Sandy was a quick learner.

“You’re so bright,” Ivy said wistfully. “Your young mind is like a sponge—you take everything in.…”

“Yours isn’t bad either,” he said. “It’s a bit deeper than mine, actually.” And he got all her friends and relations into a list called
Contacts on the machine and suddenly they were all in touch with her regularly. Sometimes only three or four lines but she knew more about their lives than she had ever known before.

And she taught him how to make a basic beef stew, a chicken with lemon and olives, a vegetable casserole, plus a Moroccan salad of grated carrots, orange juice, raisins and pine nuts.

Several times he said that his grandfather had liked the food so far. And that he was going to join the last lesson himself.

Ivy found herself a little annoyed at this. She had grown to enjoy her conversations with Sandy. What was he like, this poor old man who worked mending jewelry? He must be way too old to be still at work. How could his old eyes see the work, anyway?

She must remember to speak clearly and distinctly to him. Sandy had said that he was very nice but that he didn’t understand much of the world.

A pleasant-looking man in early middle-age was sitting in the kitchen when she arrived. He must be an uncle or something. Sandy was always fairly vague about family.

“I’m Ivy—Sandy and I have an exchange system going,” she began.

He stood up to shake hands, tall, handsome, with a lovely smile.

“Don’t I know all about it? We have never eaten so well in our lives!”

“Oh do
you
eat here too?” Sandy had been vaguer than she had realized.

“I’m Mike, his grandfather.”

She looked at him, dumbfounded. This young man as the poor, witless grandfather? He seemed to read her thoughts.

“He didn’t describe you well either, Ivy,” Mike said. “I thought you’d barely make it in the door. And look at you!” He was full of admiration.

It hadn’t happened for a long time.

This time she wasn’t going to make a mess of it.

Gwendoline was often at her window. She knew it was a bit old lady–ish for a woman of thirty-seven but … well … you had to know who was coming and going in the street, didn’t you?

She sat a little back from the curtains but she could still see.

She had seen a small van take away what was left of poor Miss Hardy’s things. A recluse, the woman had been; nobody had even known she was dead until the Pakistani man in the corner shop had asked about her. And then she was found. No relations, apparently, nobody at her funeral, Gwendoline heard. And then, of course, the landlords had the whole place cleaned and fumigated and now it was ready to let again.

It was of interest to Gwendoline because her window looked straight across the street at the flat on the first floor of the house opposite. Not that there had ever been anything to see except for a pair of curtains always fastened with a big safety pin. Perhaps the new people might have something a little less depressing to look out on. A nice blind, maybe. Good drapes with a pelmet?

This street was coming up a bit, and once the last of the poor Miss Hardys and her kind were gone, it would be really quite an acceptable place to live.

Gwendoline got home from work around six-thirty each evening. She walked from the tube station through a market and often got very good value in what they were selling off at the end of the day. This evening she had got some haddock at half price, and some tired-looking tomatoes and green beans for a fraction of what they had cost to others earlier on. She could have got a bunch of flowers for ten cents if she had wanted to but it seemed silly, so she left them. She came home well satisfied; her supper had cost her so little. She worked in the accounts department of a big company. She knew only too well, from the repossession orders and legal hassle, the trouble people got themselves into by falling into debt. It wasn’t something that Gwendoline was ever likely to do.

She came into her flat, and looked around her.

It would have been nice to have had a dog to welcome her, but you couldn’t keep a dog cooped up all day in a flat. A cat would have been nice—she
had
thought about getting one once. But someone at work pointed out that they tore your good furniture to shreds. And of course a husband would have been nice, but that hadn’t happened and Gwendoline was damned if she was going to make all the sacrifices that her friends had made just in order to have the title Mrs. in front of her name.

And it wasn’t as if she were
lonely
or anything. Of course not.

She had her television and her books and from her first-floor window she could see all that was going on in the street outside.

She saw the van draw up at the house opposite and a woman get out of the front seat. She looked about the same age as Gwendoline, but maybe she was younger. She had long, dark curly hair, wore jeans and a floppy red sweater and there were four much younger people with her.

As if they were unpacking a summer picnic, they carried all her boxes and crates upstairs. They laughed as they ran up and back and eventually they went round the corner for bags of fish and chips.

Gwendoline could see them sitting around the table, which they had carried up earlier. She could see them perfectly because the new person who had come to live there hadn’t put up any curtains or blinds. Nothing at all. The room was wide open to look into. Extraordinary.

When the fish and chips were finished, the young people left. From down below they called up to her.

“Happy days, Carla. Good luck, Carla.” And they were gone.

Her name was Carla.

Who were these people who had moved her in and shared fish and chips with her? Nieces, nephews, cousins, friends, colleagues?

For some reason Gwendoline found herself drawn to look in the open window. Carla washed the dishes and made herself a mug of tea. Then she began what looked like some kind of carpentry at the table. In about twenty minutes she had assembled a window box and placed it out on a windowsill. Then she carefully filled it with earth and compost from two big bags. And finally put in half a dozen bedding plants, which she took lovingly from transparent bags. She watered it with a little watering can and then stood looking at it with great approval.

Gwendoline had her half-price haddock, and her tired vegetables and for once the sheer value of it all didn’t give her a warm glow of satisfaction. She felt a bit colorless compared to the woman across the street, the woman who had spent her first night in her new home treating her movers to fish and chips and planting a window box.

Gwendoline ironed her blouse and scarf for next morning and tried to concentrate on her book but somehow she found herself looking across the street most of the time. Carla had filled a bookcase. Imagine having all that number of paperbacks instead of borrowing them from the library, where they were free.

Gwendoline watched as the woman across the street admired the bookshelves and then sat down to watch television. Gwendoline could just see her face lit up by the screen. Carla was
laughing at something she was watching. Gwendoline scanned the channels. There was nothing remotely funny on. Maybe this woman had got herself a video.

She seemed curiously self-sufficient in an annoying sort of way.

Next morning Gwendoline was looking from behind her curtain.

Carla was up and squeezing orange juice. Then she examined the contents of her window box, picking some minuscule weed that could have grown in the night and spraying the plants lightly.

She put on her coat and so did Gwendoline. She would see which way the woman went to work. But Carla stopped at the corner shop.

“Hallo, I’m Carla. I’ve come to live round the corner, and I’ll be a
great
customer,” she said.

“Good, good. I am Javed.”

“Is that Mr. Javed or is Javed your first name?” she asked.

Gwendoline was stunned. She had lived here for seven years and had never known the man’s name.

“It is my first name. My family name is Patel,” he said.

“Well, it seems a very friendly neighborhood. I am going to like it here, I know,” she said.

“It is fairly friendly, yes,” Mr. Patel said.

Gwendoline had her opportunity. She
could
have said, “You are welcome to the neighborhood. Yes, it is a nice place. My name is Gwendoline. Why don’t you come for a cup of coffee tonight?” But you just didn’t
say
things like that. Not to strangers. So she just bought a newspaper and left.

At work one of her young colleagues commented.

“You actually
bought
a newspaper today, Gwendoline!”

Gwendoline flushed with annoyance. Yes, she
had
said that it was ludicrous the way people spent a fortune on newspapers on their way to work and then wondered where their money went. But that was just common sense; it didn’t make her into a Scrooge, an eccentric. She found herself wondering where this
Carla worked. She looked a bit bohemian, you know, slightly untidy. Maybe she was something in arts and crafts.