Chestnut Street

  Matthew Kane was there. “Do you live here?” they asked each other at the same time and laughed. They examined each other’s trolleys.

  “An awful lot of creamed rice,” she said, mystified.

  “Four very weak little puppy dogs turned up at my door. They can’t eat anything else just now,” he explained.

  “I see. Good luck with them,” she said.

  “Very up-market pie,” he observed, looking into her trolley.

  “I’m going to pretend to some American hotshot and his druggy girlfriend that I made it myself.”

  “I see—good luck with them,” Matthew said.

  Somehow she got back to London and placed roses on the dining table. She was showered and ready when Will brought them home after many cocktails in a trendy new club.

  “It was so great, we just didn’t want to leave,” Bret said.

  Bret’s girlfriend, Amy, looked either drunk or stoned and very uncoordinated.

  “Can I see your bathroom?” she asked as a greeting.

  Gina was about to show her when Bret interrupted.

  “Not here, honey, no need. We’re with family here,” he said.

  Gina left them and went to the kitchen. She looked back and saw Bret and Amy leaning over the coffee table in the sitting room. There were two lines of white powder there. People were doing drugs here in their apartment. Will was beside her.

  “Please, Gee, don’t be all heavy now, not now, of all times, I beg you.”

  “Who’s heavy?” she asked.

  He gave her that smile that always worked.

  She carried the dish in.

  “Here we are, lovely homemade lamb-and-apricot pie.”

  “You don’t think for a moment that just because you made it that I’m actually going to eat that pastry, do you?” Amy asked.

  “No, I didn’t expect you would,” Gina said pleasantly.

  They all looked at her with surprise.

  “No, I see from your lovely, slim figure you probably never ate pastry in your life.” Gina looked at her admiringly. “Still, the others might like it. Will here can eat anything and he never puts on an ounce—I’m sure it’s the same with you, Bret?”

  Will looked at her, delighted. Gina realized for the first time in five years that it was actually very easy to keep people like Will happy. All you did was tell lies and flatter them all the time and pretend that there was nothing else in your life.

  Amy didn’t form a major part of the night’s conversation but Gina did. She talked on and on about how talented Will was, how good with people, how much he was loved by the talent, how celebrities always asked for him when they went back on the talk show. Bret wondered if it would all cross the Atlantic.

  “If Will wants it to, then it will,” she said confidently.

  Bret was impressed. Will came back into the kitchen, triumphant.

  “It went really great—he likes me,” he said.

  “What’s not to like?” she said gently.

  “I’m meeting him tomorrow morning; imagine—a Saturday!” Will crowed with pleasure.

  “Good. I have to go back home—will you call me and tell me how you get on?”

  “Not again?” He was annoyed.

  “Yes, but you have your meeting—you might go to a club or something afterwards.”

  This weekend there would be a lot to do, brothers to ring, hospitals to contact, day centers to inspect. She might ask an architect to come in and see about altering the house in Chestnut Street, she might inquire at her old school if there were any vacancies. There were puppies to be visited, poor little puppies who ate only creamed rice. She would sit at the kitchen table and would make decisions. Big decisions. And because she could see things clearly now, none of them had anything to do with going to California.

  Ivy wished that people would write letters as they did in the old days. It used to be lovely hearing envelopes fall through the letter box. Nowadays there was nothing but bills and free offers and people telling you that you had won a cruise when it turned out you hadn’t won anything of the sort.

  For a while Ivy wrote her own letters to nephews and nieces. She wrote to people she used to work with when she had been in the flower shop. But it was always the same. They wrote guilty notes scribbled on the back of Christmas cards; they were so sorry, they should have replied, of course, but, really, life was so rushed, and what a pity that Ivy didn’t text or use e-mail.

  Ivy thought she might as well try to fly to the moon as learn anything like that.

  So she sighed and said that it had all been a turn for the worse. She wasn’t lonely or anything; she had had many offers in her time but she had never really concentrated on them. Somehow she had made a mess of relationships. It was just that she liked to keep in touch with people, to know what was going on in their lives.

  She would like to tell them that she had won a prize in a pastry-cooking competition, or how her small dog could now go to the newsagent to pick up the paper all on his own. Or maybe a bit about the holiday she had taken in the Scottish Highlands, or the art-history lectures in the local museum. She could have written about how she ran an informal book club, which met in her house every week; they had snacks and wine and sometimes they had even read the book!

  Not earthshaking stuff, but it was comforting to people to know that a woman of nearly sixty still had a good lifestyle. She had even taken to entering competitions where they asked you to write slogans, and it turned out that Ivy was quite good at this. She had already won a set of suitcases, a garden shed and a year’s supply of breakfast cereal. And now today she had heard she had won a major prize in another competition.

  She would know this afternoon what it was. It was being given by a store down in the shopping mall. Ivy hoped it might be a voucher. She would buy some new cookware and a very upmarket food processor.… She dressed up smartly to receive the gift in case there might be a photographer from the local press.

  Everyone except Ivy gasped at the generosity of the prize. It was the last word in laptop computers, plus a mobile phone, which was so magical, apparently, that it accepted and sent e-mails, whatever exactly they were.

  Ivy, who had been brought up to be very polite, thanked everyone and said it was a wonderful gift that she would treasure.

  “Maybe you could exchange it,” one of her friends said helpfully. But Ivy thought that might look very rude, as if she hadn’t liked it.

  “Maybe you could raffle it later?” another friend suggested.

  “But suppose they heard about it?” Ivy was such a kindly person she couldn’t take the risk.

  So she brought the package home and looked at it glumly. Ivy was not technical.

  She couldn’t set the video. She had great trouble in getting money out of the hole in the wall. She didn’t have a telephone answering mechanism. There was no way she could get to grips with this machine.

  It was a pity because if only she could, then she could contact her favorite nephew, who was in South America; she could keep in touch with some of those nice women she had once worked with who now seemed to have turned into semi-machines and couldn’t communicate without technology.

  Ivy told herself that she wasn’t stupid. Suppose she did learn how to use it? But twenty minutes at the manual showed her that it was another planet.

  Suppose she got lessons?

  Everyone said that classes were hit or miss. Either they all streaked ahead of you or they were so slow you fell asleep. What you needed was one-to-one tutoring. But that was expensive and Ivy didn’t have money to throw away.

  If only there were a way.

  Next week at the local supermarket she studied their community notice board. People were offering babysitting, removal of garden rubbish, shiatsu massage or newspaper deliveries. Nobody was offering cut-price one-to-one lessons in making you computer-literate.

  Other people were seeking help with ironing, someone to do home hairdressing or anyone who would like to take an unexpected
litter of beautiful kittens. It didn’t look promising.

  But then Ivy got an idea.

  And very soon her advertisement was on the board.

  I NEED ABOUT FIVE LESSONS IN HOW TO SET UP MY COMPUTER, GET ON THE INTERNET, AND SEND TEXT MESSAGES. I WILL OFFER, IN RETURN, FIVE LESSONS IN COOKERY.

  She waited with interest. And then there were three replies. Two people were entirely unsuitable. One of them said there was nothing to computing—you just plugged in and away you go. The second said she was only interested in cooking with yeast, and unless that was on offer, she would not share her computer skills.

  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 o
ut 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.