Seven Days of Us(82)
Yukiko’s Table is a fitting end to this column, being staffed by one family. I went the week before our quarantine, conscious that sushi would be in short supply in our Norfolk plague house. I was seated at a low table, in a room just a shade too bright, while a charming waitress hurried to bring me a cup of bracing, blood-temperature sake. Prawn tempura, light as mermaid’s farts
Andrew stopped and deleted “farts.” It was time to stop aping other critics’ puerile humor and just write. Then he went back and changed the too-wordy bit about headless chickens, before pressing on.
Prawn tempura followed—plump and fresh as rain in batter jackets, with pools of silken tamari. Then came yum cha: sensitively cooked, steaming pillows of umami. I could have happily eaten two baskets more, but left space for the teriyaki salmon—which had none of the “cat food in treacle” quality of its poor imitations. I finished with a boule of Jasmine green tea ice cream, a little ho-hum, but really, who goes to a Japanese restaurant for the puddings? Readers, run and eat at Yukiko’s Table, and tell them a friend recommended you. Farewell, and bonne dégustation.
Andrew read the column back. Was it too corny? No. He had shied away from corniness for too long. And it gave him enormous satisfaction to erase George from this parting family portrait. Should the little shit ever read the review (doubtful, but still), Andrew hoped George would be piqued at his own absence. As a bonus, he had written it in one sitting. Usually his column was a laborious routine of drafting, scrapping, rewriting, Tweeting, and coffee making. This one had written itself—a sign, he felt, that his decision to leave The World was right. He would call Sarah in the New Year. For now, this was his notice. He wasn’t sure what he would do instead. A new freelance gig was bound to turn up. He’d always rather fancied travel writing—assuming Emma was up to it. Or why not aim higher, have a go at writing his memoir? Imagining life without the fortnightly tug of his column was a revelation. Besides, many of his friends were already retired.
It was a relief to be back at his Ercol desk, out of the smoking room with its glinting decanters and miasma of Hartley male. From his compact, bay-windowed study, its walls a minty green chosen by Phoebe, he could see Primrose Hill. He decided to walk there later, before it got dark. Perhaps he would start to do so daily, he thought, adding this to a general intention to do better, be better. He wasn’t about to start writing New Year’s resolutions. But he had some plans. He wanted to take Olivia and Sean to Lemonia on Regent’s Park Road for lunch, and to visit Jesse in Los Angeles, and to be Emma’s rock through whatever ghastly treatment she might need. He thought of Phoebe’s paean to his heroic “restaurent reviews.” It had been too easy, for too long, to let Phoebe cast him as a hero. Olivia’s serious stare, her laudable ideals, had made him feel more Judas-like every year. That was why he didn’t ask about her work. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was just painful to remember his younger, intrepid self, his dreams of making a difference. He’d been jealous, too, he could admit now. Jealous of her freedom—the way she used her freedom. He pressed send on his final column and sat back. His stock of pithiness had run out.
? ? ?
Andrew had volunteered to go and collect Olivia from the Royal Free. In the hall he met Phoebe, coming up from the basement. She sat on the top step, watching him put on his coat. “Daddy,” she said. “Look at this message—what d’you think it means? He’s one of the presenters at work. No idea how he knows I’m single,” she said, sounding gratified that he did. She showed Andrew a text that read: Hi Phoebe, I heard you’re newly single. Before you get snapped up, I’d like to take you out for dinner. How are you fixed for tomorrow night pre-parties? Caspar x
“Sounds promising,” said Andrew.
“He’s really nice. But I’d never thought of him in that way, because of George.” Andrew doubted this, by the moony way she was looking at the message. “He’s super talented, though.”
“Well, there you go. See what happens,” said Andrew. He didn’t want to get drawn into one of Phoebe’s long dissections of her life and be late to the hospital.
“I’m just about to pick up Olivia,” he said. “You coming?”
“No thanks. Hospitals give me the creeps,” she said, wedging her small body against the banister and stretching her legs so that they took up the whole step.
“Right. Well, we’ll be back for lunch.”
“’Kay,” she said, gazing at her phone as if it held all the secrets in the world.
? ? ?
Driving downhill from the Royal Free to Camden, Olivia in the passenger seat, Andrew automatically reached for Radio 4, and then stopped himself. They had just had a very interesting talk about corruption in Liberia, the nightmare of a system rigged by bribes. He had managed to ask lots of questions (the trick was to imagine he was interviewing her to avoid butting in), and learned things he hadn’t from the news. She returned his questions with a couple about the Middle East, which he felt he answered well, considering how long ago it was. He was just trying to think of another inquiry about her future plans—interested, but not invasive, when Olivia said: “I saw Sean this morning.”
“Marvelous!” Andrew felt as if he’d been thrown a lifeline. “I imagine he looked rather different from when you last saw him?”