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Goulash

Mark Plummer

    Roman is already awake when the boy begins to cry. It starts as an unconscious gurgle and grows persistently into a scream. Roman hears the hiss of Caroline’s mother ironing on the landing between their room and the baby’s. He stares at the ceiling and wills the boy to fall back asleep. The patterns in the aertex start becoming clearer in the blue dark. Caroline is a vague, warm lump in the duvet next to him. The baby keeps crying. Caroline doesn’t move. He pushes the duvet back and walks to the door.
    Tracey is peering around the boy’s door, a half ironed shirt hanging over her forearm.
    ‘I was about to go in. I didn’t think you’d heard him.’
    ‘I hear it,’ Roman says and steps into the boy’s room. Blue stars from the nightlight spot his face and chest.
    ‘To be honest, I think it’s too cold in there for him. He’s half frozen.’
    ‘It’s not cold.’
    ‘You’re probably used to it in your country but he’s not, dear of him.’
    ‘It’s not cold. The book says it should be eighteen degrees. It’s eighteen point four.’
    ‘It feels colder than that.’
    ‘The thermometer says eighteen point four.’
    ‘Well, it feels colder.’
    Roman picks the boy up and pushes the door shut with his foot. ‘Shush, Petr. Jedna dv?, prase jde, Nese pytel mouky. Máma se raduje, že bude péct vdolky.’
    Petr stops crying as Roman sings and rubs his cheek against his father’s chest. Roman goes through as many of the rhymes his mother used to sing for him as he can remember. Most of the tunes aren’t right and he has to improvise some of the words.
    He looks down at Petr who looks back at him with the same bemused frown he always pulls when Roman tries to speak to him in Czech. The boy giggles. ‘Da-dy.’
    ‘Táta.’
    ‘Da-dy,’ the boy corrects him with a laughs.
    Roman carries Petr back out onto the landing and towards the bedroom. Tracey turns away from the ironing board and leans her face towards the boy.
    ‘Good morning, sweetheart. You’re up early. Where are you going? You shouldn’t be sleeping in mummy and daddy’s bed, should you? It’s dangerous.’
    ‘You’re not asleep, are you? You’re awake,’ Roman says and quickly shuts the door behind him.
    He goes into the staleness of the bedroom and puts on the light.
    ‘Caroline, get up. Petr’s awake. I need to go to work.’
    ‘I’ve been up all night with him.’
    ‘If I’m late they’ll take an hour out of my pay.’
    ‘Alright,’ she says and sits up against the headboard. She pushes a pillow behind her back. ‘Come to mummy, Peter. Daddy’s grumpy.’
    ‘Grumpy? Fucking hell.’
    ‘Don’t swear in front of him.’
    Roman puts on a jumper and jeans. The boy starts to fuss and Caroline immediately presses him to her breast. The greedy suckling fills the room.
    ‘He’s too old for that shit. He needs proper food or he’ll be too weak. All he eats is that and chocolate.’
    ‘Breast milk is good for him. The health visitor said so.’
    ‘You said the health visitor was a useless bitch.’
    ‘Don’t speak like that in front of him. He’ll take it all in.’
    Roman watches Caroline’s breast clamped in Petr’s mouth. The other one is exposed with her t-shirt pulled up. It’s swollen with milk and blue veins stitch it to her chest. Her dark hair fans out over the white pillow and her sharp cheek bones are highlighted in the dawn. Caroline, a Czech name: Carolina, he’d thought when he first met her. But it turned out to just be a skinny English girl with a bottle of black dye and parents who were Neil Diamond fans. Jim and Tracey Trevorrow are not Czech names.
    ‘When I was his age I was eating goulash, schnitzel, dumplings, everything normal. My brothers had the same, and look how big we are. He’s going to be small and weak.’
    ‘People just don’t give that stuff to babies. It’s not normal here. You’ve got to remember that you’re not in Prague now. You’ve got to do it the way we do it.’

    He has to sign in on a sheet of paper at the reception desk. The night porter is lounging back in a chair and ignores him. The manager is in the backroom hiding from the guests. He looks up as Roman comes in then checks his watch.
    ‘You work in the kitchen, don’t you?’ He steps out into the foyer.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’
    ‘I think I am on time.’
    ‘Only just. I used to be a KP me. Worked my way all the way up to be the manager. I always used to get in early so I could start my work at eight, not just roll in through the door at eight. What’s your name again?’
    ‘Roman.’
    ‘Italian?’
    ‘Czech.’
    ‘Should be Italian with a name like Roman.’ The manager looks to the night porter for a reaction but doesn’t get one. ‘Romans. Get it? They were from Italy. I love history me.’ He peers down at the signing in sheet as Roman fills in the time and he checks his watch. ‘What’s that surname?’
    ‘Dygryn.’
    ‘Bloody hell. It’s like double-Dutch, isn’t it?’ he says to the night porter who smiles with a closed mouth and nods. ‘Dy-gryn? But you don’t grin a lot. Ha ha. Do you, Mr Do-ya-gryn?’
    ‘Doctor Dygryn.’
    ‘You what?’
    ‘Doctor Dygryn. I have doctorate.’
    The manager sniffs and shrugs. ‘Czechoslovakia, eh?’
    ‘Czech Republic.’
    ‘Prague. Lot of criminals.’
    ‘I never found many.’
    ‘Yeah, loads of them. I know me; I went there for my brother’s stag do. Cheap beer. Puppets. Beautiful architecture. Prostitutes.’ He drinks the beer, manipulates the puppets, outlines the architecture and fondles the prostitutes as he lists them. ‘Lots of crime though. You’ve got to be careful going down the streets.’
    ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll try to be. Thanks.’

*

    He changes into his blue overalls and goes into the kitchen. It’s already a blur of movement and noise. Waiters fight over space at the coffee machine. Pans are needlessly slammed into hobs. A radio hopelessly battles the extractor fans. Lazlo, the other KP, runs about delivering plates to the warming cupboards and spatulas to the chef. His clogged feet slide over the floor that’s wet from leaking teapots. Half-cooked sausages huddle in ban maries to keep themselves warm. Piles of toast wait to be reheated and taken out. The breakfast chef sighs and sweats as he opens a bag of hash browns then waddles to the fryer and empties them into the oil.
    Roman weaves his way to the back of the kitchen and switches on the dishwasher. The water jets kick in and the chef looks over.
    ‘Oh, good afternoon, Professor. Nice of you to join us. Busy night at the hospital was it, Doc?’
    ‘I was talking with the manager.’
    ‘Oh, la-di-dah. Very nice. We’ve been down here running our arses off while you’re chatting.’
    Roman makes a point of looking at the chef’s hips touching both sides of the walkway.
    ‘Sorry. I was on time but he started talking to me. What could I do?’
    ‘Giving the manager therapy now are you, Doc?’
    ‘My PhD was in history.’
    ‘You’ll be bloody history if you don’t get them pans washed.’
    Lazlo giggles maniacally and steps back reverently to let the chef through.
    Roman hoses down the pans then starts to scrub at them with a ball of wire wool. He can feel the skin around his nails coming away. The grease and gunge from the brown water seeps into the cuts in his hands. ‘You have beautiful hands, Roman,’ his mother would tell him when he was young. ‘Don’t ruin them. Find a job where you can use your brain. Don’t work hard, work smart.’
    Lazlo comes across and tosses some trays into the sink. ‘Do these first. We need to put more bacon. They must to be clean.’
    ‘Not in this water, they won’t,’ Roman says.
    ‘Just do it. You need to work more hard. You not the same attitude as me. In Lithuania we are proud if we tired when we finish work.’
    ‘You’re an idiot.’
    ‘You just do what I tell you. I am boss for you.’
    ‘No, you are not,’ Roman says and drains the water from the sink.
    ‘I am. I am higher than you. I help to prepare food, not just scrub the pot like you.’
    ‘We are both KPs. We both get minimum wage.’
    ‘But I have more prestige.’
    ‘You’re a fucking idiot.’
    Roman refills the sink and scrubs down the trays. He takes them over to the chef who is talking to a new waitress.
    ‘Don’t you worry, my darling. I’ll see you alright. If you need anything, just give me a shout.’
    Roman images the chef’s naked rolls of fat spreading over the poor girl and suffocating her.
    ‘I have trays for you.’
    ‘I haven’t got bloody time to do that. Put some bacon on them and shove them in the grill.’
    Roman puts the trays down on the bench next to Lazlo and takes the bacon from the fridge.
    ‘Hey, Lazlo,’ the chef shouts. ‘Get me the ladle for the beans.’
    ‘The professor hasn’t washed it yet.’
    ‘You bloody do it then,’ the chef shouts and Lazlo’s giggle ceases immediately.
    He goes to the sink and sulks. Roman smiles and lays the rashers out in lines then puts the trays under the grill. The fat crackles and he thinks of the pork his mother used to cook for him after school.
    Waitresses start to bring in the dishes from the first round of breakfast. Roman pours the muesli mush and the grapefruit rinds with the pulp sucked from them into the food bins. Opened but unused marmalade packets are tossed into black bags. He wipes lipstick from juice glasses and piles them into the glass washer. He hoses jam from side plates and racks them in trays then lifts them into the dish washer. Steam billows up around him. The plates start to have heavier stains on them. Beans have welded themselves onto plates that were warmed too much. He scrapes away the remains of anemic sausages and half-eaten toast with clots of butter. He removes screwed up napkins from half-full coffee cups. Empty medication packets float in pools of egg yolk. His fingers cramp from pulling the stiff trigger on the hose.
    ‘We need more saucers,’ one of the waiters shouts.
    Roman picks up a crate of them from the dishwasher and takes them down to the coffee machine. The base of his back aches and he has to arch backwards to bear the weight. Waitresses push in front of him to get at the coffee machine.
    ‘There aren’t any saucers.’
    ‘I know. I have them here,’ he says.
    They start to take them before he can even put them down.
    ‘What the fuck is that burning?’ shouts the chef and pulls the tray of bacon out from under the grill. ‘You useless twat. Fucking degree but can’t cook bacon. It’s ruined.’
    ‘You just said to put it in the grill. You didn’t say I had to do everything.’
    ‘I didn’t tell you to breathe but you managed that. That’s wasted. Throw it away. Lazlo, you put some more on. Don’t let that twat anywhere near it.’
    Roman throws the bacon into the food bin.
    ‘And empty that out while you’re at it.’
    ‘It needs two people.’
    ‘Tough luck. Figure it out.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Yes, what?’
    Roman stares at him blankly.
    ‘Chef. You should be calling me chef. Yes, chef.’
    ‘But you are not chef. You are just cook.’
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    The chef folds his arms over his chest and raises his eyebrows. ‘Nothing, what?’
    ‘Nothing, chef.’
    Roman wheels the bin out into the alley. Dregs of tea and coffee slap at the sides. The disposal unit is mounted to the outside wall. Moldy teabags and soggy sugar packets are stuck to the sides of it. He hooks the lip of the bin over the edge of the unit and slowly manages to tip the bin. The liquid goes out first in little waves. Then the lumps of food start to drop in. The machine begins to whir and grind down the waste. He hears the clunk of a forgotten teaspoon. It becomes too heavy on his shoulder and he has to lower it back to the floor. Only half of it has gone. He tries to lift it up again but his feet slip and the bin comes away from the machine. A tide of milk, orange juice, cereal and tomato floods him. It soaks through to his jeans. Half-chewed pieces of bacon hang from his overalls. He gags and leans his head against the wall for a moment, then rights the bin and starts to sweep up the mess.

*

    The baby is crying when he goes in through the front door. Roman goes into the kitchen. Petr is strapped into his highchair fighting off the bottle that Tracey is trying to give him.
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘He’s hungry, dear of him. I’m trying to give him a bottle but he won’t take it. You should have started weaning him onto the bottle before now.’
    ‘I said this. Caroline wants to keep feeding him though.’
    ‘It’s important that she does.’
    ‘You said he should stop before now.’
    ‘No. I didn’t. You probably misunderstood.’
    ‘Yeah, probably. Where is Caroline?’
    ‘She’s upstairs having a nap.’
    ‘Bloody hell.’ He undoes the straps and lifts Petr up.
    ‘Leave him with me. He’s okay. Let Caroline sleep. She’s exhausted, poor thing.’
    Roman carries the boy up the stairs. ‘Caroline. Caroline. Get up.’ He throws open the curtains in the bedroom.
    ‘Jesus. What the hell are you doing?’
    ‘What is the matter with you? He’s downstairs screaming for you.’
    ‘He’s fine. He was with mum.’
    ‘He was crying. He wants you. If you refuse to give him good food then you need to make sure you do it.’
    The baby soothes as it nears its mother’s breast. Roman takes off his jeans and finds another pair.
    ‘What’s that smell?’
    ‘I spill something at work.’ He throws the dirty jeans into the corner. ‘I need to leave this job.’
    ‘We need the money.’
    ‘Do you know how embarrassing it is when people ask me what I do for a job and I have to say I am a dishwasher? The people there are idiots. Even the manager. Especially the manager. You know, people I went to school with are teachers now or they’re out doing research and writing books. I’m scrubbing pans.’
    ‘But you’re probably earning more than they are in Czech.’
    ‘Of course I’m not. Don’t be stupid.’ He pulls on the new jeans and sits on the bed. ‘I was thinking, maybe we could go home. Stay with my parents.’
    ‘Peter’s too young to go on holiday.’
    ‘I don’t mean a holiday. I mean go to live there for a while. I have a friend, he could get me a job in the university. Maybe just a researcher but I can be junior lecturer within a year.’
    ‘We don’t have enough money.’
    ‘I’d be earning more and everything there is cheaper.’
    ‘What about mum and dad?’
    ‘We can come back for holidays. And they can visit us out there. We can show them Prague and my village. They’ll love it.’
    ‘I don’t think they would. They’d be devastated if we left and they couldn’t see Peter every day.’
    ‘What about my mother? Don’t you think she’d like to meet him? At least see him once.’
    ‘She sees him on Skype every week.’
    ‘It’s not the same. She’s never even kissed her first grandchild.’
    ‘But what would I do?’
    ‘Fucking hell. They have nothing back at home too.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
    The boy falls away from Caroline’s tit. She tries to push it back in but it falls out again and Petr cries.
    ‘I can’t even feed him now because you’ve got me so stressed.’
    Roman picks the boy up.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘I’ll take him for a walk. You have a rest. You’ve had a hard morning.’
    Petr calms in his arms as he walks down the stairs. By the time they reach the bottom he’s giggling as Roman exaggerates each bump in the stairs. Through the window in the hall, Roman sees Tracey getting into the car and reversing out of the drive. He goes into the kitchen and opens the fridge. Bacon, a bowl of beans, cheese, slices of brown banana: the same shit he’s been scrapping into bins all morning. He pushes the shriveled end of cucumber to one side. A microwave burger in a plastic packet is the best he can find. He takes it out and reads the instructions then throws it back into the fridge. The boy laughs.

    The nearest shop is a half-mile walk from the house. Roman’s arms ache by the time he reaches it and has to drop Petr to the floor as they step into the shop. The boy waddles straight to the chocolate shelves.
    ‘Choc-lit, da-dy.’
    ‘Petr, leave that shit.’
    As Roman passes the counter a buzzer sounds. A woman darts round from the back of the shop. Roman sees the back of a sofa and hears the gossip of a television through a beaded doorway.
    ‘Good morning,’ the woman says.
    ‘Morning,’ Roman says and feels his accent balloon into the air like a bubble they’re all waiting to hear pop.
    The old woman swallows then nods, her smile curdling. She goes to stand behind the counter and watches them as Roman leads Petr past the hot cabinet full of sausage rolls and the racks of crisps to the far aisle where baskets are laid out on the floor with vegetables in them. He sifts through decaying skins and manages to find two onions.
    He looks up and the woman is at the end of the aisle pretending to organize a shelf.
    ‘Do you have some garlic?’
    ‘No. No call for it. We don’t really use it here. Awful smelly stuff.’
    He goes to where the woman is shuffling tubs of salt and gravy granules and takes a bottle of olive oil and a tube of tomato puree.
    ‘Do you have paprika?’
    ‘Here,’ the woman says and hands him a jar of red powder.
    ‘Do you have any fresh?’
    ‘This is fresh; it only came in last week.’
    ‘Thank you,’ he says and takes it from her.
    There’s no stewing steak or pork in the chiller at the back of the shop so he makes do with a pack of mince. He drops all of the shopping on the counter then goes back for eggs and baking powder.
    The buzzer on the door goes and an old man comes in. He goes up to the counter.
    ‘Free CD with the paper today, Gerald,’ the woman says as she takes a copy of the Express from the shelf.
    ‘I don’t bloody want it,’ he says. ‘Load of rubbish. And take all that other tat out too.’
    The woman takes the leaflets from the centerfold of the paper.
    ‘Not the TV book, I need that.’
    Roman puts the eggs and pot of baking powder on the counter as the old man counts out silver coins.
    ‘Do you have some Wondra flour?’
    ‘Wonder flour? No, never heard of it.’
    ‘What is it?’ the old man says. ‘Foreign muck? What’s wrong with normal flour?’
    ‘Wondra flour. It’s normal, I think. American or something.’
    ‘They’ve got a Polish shop in Camborne,’ the woman says.
    ‘Bloody disgusting,’ the old man says with a spit. ‘What’s wrong with British shops? Not good enough for you Poles?’
    ‘I’m not Polish. And if you notice, I’m shopping here.’
    ‘And what about you?’ he says, leaning his tobacco stained lips towards Petr. ‘I suppose you don’t speak a word of English.’
    ‘He’s just eighteen months. And his mother, my girlfriend, is English.’
    ‘I suppose you’re going to try and marry her to get a VISA.’
    ‘I don’t need to marry her. I’m European citizen.’
    The old man slaps his newspaper against his palm and Petr flinches. ‘It’s bloody wrong, isn’t it? Bloody wrong. And how can you afford all this? I suppose I’m paying for it.’
    ‘No. I have a job. I’ve been at work all morning. Then I will go to work again tonight.’
    ‘Taking jobs off hardworking English youngsters, eh?’
    Roman pushes all his items into a pile. ‘How much is this, please?’

    Roman sits the boy in his highchair and searches the cupboards for a saucepan. Tracey’s car is still out and there’s no sign of movement from Caroline. He heats some oil in the pan and chops the onions. Petr giggles as the onion hits the oil and spits.
    ‘Da-dy,’ he says and kicks the underside of his tray. ‘Choc-lit.’
    ‘Táta. And no chocolate.’
    When the onion has started to brown, Roman adds the beef mince and stirs in the paprika, some flour and the tomato paste, then he tops it up with water. He smiles at the flourish with which he adds a pinch of salt and pepper. His mother would let it cook for hours but Tracey will be home by then and he can’t face the comments about the smells and the amount of gas he’s wasted.
    He takes a mixing bowl from the cupboard and mixes together eggs, milk, flour, the baking powder and some salt. The boy starts to fuss. Roman gives him a plastic jug and a spatula and gets him to copy his mixing. The boy laughs and beats the jug violently. Roman puts his finger to his lips then gestures at the bedroom above them.
    ‘Ssh. Nebud maminka.’
    The boy giggles conspiratorially and stirs more gently.
    Roman cuts some slices of bread into cubes and mixes them into the dough. There’s enough mixture for two small loaves which he puts into boiling water. He puts some of the goulash into a bowl to cool for Petr then scrubs down the pan and the mixing bowl. He dries them and puts them away. He won’t leave anything for Tracey to criticize. When the dumplings are cooked, he slices them then puts them into the goulash.
    ‘Goulash, Petr.’
    Roman offers the boy a spoonful of it. Petr clamps his lips around the spoon.
    ‘Fucking hell,’ Roman says and laughs. ‘Is it good?’
    The boy nods. Roman laughs uncontrollably and gives Petr another spoon. The boy again swallows it all. Petr starts to laugh as well.
    The front door opens and Tracey comes through into the kitchen.
    ‘Look at this. I made a goulash and he’s eating it. He loves it.’
    Roman gives him another spoonful. The boy swallows it and looks to his grandmother for congratulations.
    ‘He shouldn’t eat with a metal spoon, it’ll buckle his teeth.’
    ‘Who cares? It’s brilliant. He’s eating real food. He’s eating goulash. Is traditional dish from my country.’
    Tracey looks down at the dish with the rest of the goulash in it.
    ‘Oh yeah. Just a stew really.’
    She takes a cloth and wipes away some gravy that’s dripped onto the worktop. ‘I’ll have to give that a good wipe down later.’ She opens a window. ‘It stinks of onions as soon as you walk in through the door. It’ll probably affect his poor little stomach. Won’t it, darling?’
    She kisses Petr’s forehead and goes upstairs into their bedroom. He hears his name, poor darling, upset stomach, not used to that kind of thing, proper English food. Catherine sighs and he hears her clumsy footsteps coming towards the stairs.
    Roman loads up another spoonful and Petr smiles at him.
    ‘Goo-sh,’ the boy says. ‘Goo-sh, táta.’

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